Our governor and legislature have decided to offer businesses hundreds of millions in tax cuts rather than save the lives of needy citizens.
They say the tax cuts will encourage companies to relocate to Arizona, proving to them that this is a great place to live.
And it is, as long as you never get sick.
Stephens told me that his organization “is not only concerned about this for Arizona patients awaiting a transplant but out of concern that this type of action will become commonplace among other states who feel they can bulldoze over Medicaid patients.”
Could death panels be the new SB1070?
Why not? If politicians here get away with it, others can. AHCCCS patients have no influence. They are taxpaying men and women who got sick, lost their jobs, lost their insurance, lost their savings.
Now they’ve been abandoned by politicians who provide themselves with a taxpayer-supported health care plan that offers the same transplants they deny to those in need.
“The people we’re talking about are not a political force,” Stephens said. “That’s why it is important for organizations like ours to speak out for them. They don’t have money. They can’t hire lobbyists.”
In other words, they’re easily ignored, even as they die. Although many people don’t recognize that most of us are only one catastrophic illness away from being in their situation.
As one of the abandoned transplant patients here told me, “I don’t think that people out there who are healthy can picture themselves in our situation. But the truth is most of us were just like them.”
This doesn’t happen in other industrialized countries. As T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post reporter and the author of “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care,” wrote, “We force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.”
Still, Gov. Brewer and the death panel have not budged. Their stubbornness just might prove to be a fatal disease – for others.
Still, there are folks who agree with them. I’ve heard from several readers in that group. A man named Mel e-mailed recently: “Montini, can’t you see that you’re going to fail in your bleeding heart effort to get these people transplants? You are beating a dead horse. Why don’t you just give it up?”
There are two reasons, I told him:
They’re not dead (yet).
They’re not horses.
In the aftermath of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, local politicians, members of the clergy, law enforcement officials and community leaders called upon all of us to ratchet down the nasty political rhetoric. And the people of Arizona (as we knew they would) responded. By ratcheting UP the rhetoric. Just read the responses to news articles and columns written over the past couple of days. Many of the comments (in an effort to actually ratchet down the rhetoric) can’t be printed in the paper. Those that can be shared tell us a lot about ourselves, however. E.J. Montini ☀
The Dream Act is a simple idea. We’ve educated these kids, who were brought into the U.S. by their parents when they were very young. Why not get something back from them as working, taxpaying adults? Under the act they wouldn’t immediately become citizens but be granted permanent residency if they entered the United States before they were 16 and have lived in the country at least five years. They then would have to graduate from high school and complete either two years of college or two years of military service. Democrats promise to bring the Dream Act to a vote before the end of the year in the lame duck session, but those who oppose it already are busy demonizing the politicians who favor it and the people who would participate in it. E.J. Montini ☀
…maybe it doesn’t bother you to find out that before SB 1070 was passed by the Arizona Legislature it was discussed in a conference room where private businessmen met with state elected officials. And maybe it doesn’t bother you that a number of those businessmen were connected to the private prison business, who believe there is a tremendous opportunity for profit if states like Arizona began rounding up illegal immigrants in large numbers. And maybe it doesn’t bother you that the majority of the sponsors of SB 1070 received campaign contributions from the prison industry. And maybe it doesn’t bother you that Gov. Jan Brewer’s closest advisors have business ties to that industry. E.J. Montini ☀
Ever since [Jan] Brewer signed SB 1070, she and U.S. Sen. John McCain have given countless interviews on national TV in which they portray Arizona as a horrifying amalgam of Mogadishu, Kabul, Dante’s fifth circle of Hell and Mel Gibson’s house. The border is “out of control,” shrieks Brewer. Phoenix is second to Mexico City for kidnappings, shouts McCain. There are beheaded corpses and body parts in the desert, Brewer cries. The state is overrun by smuggling cartels and the majority of those crossing the border are drug mules, wails the governor. These ridiculous political rants range from wild exaggeration to complete myth, but fear mongering (along with a promise to fight the federal government and crack down on illegal immigration) has put both Brewer and McCain way ahead in the polls. E.J. Montini ☀
Laws like SB 1070 and employer sanctions make people feel good. They help politicians get elected. They make lawyers rich. But since we pay for the lawsuits, the only things they’re tough on are taxpayers’ wallets. E.J. Montini ☀
Among other things, SB 1070 makes it a crime to transport, harbor, conceal or shield an illegal immigrant if you do so while committing a separate criminal offense. Since no one transports more illegal residents around town than good-willed, good-hearted, church people, it’s likely that one of them will be the first arrested under the law. Assuming they have the guts to carry on with ministries that had no such dangers before, but will now. EJ Montini ☀
People who are 100 percent Democrats or 100 percent Republicans share one common trait: they’re liars. In order to demonstrate 100 percent loyalty to a political party (or to the philosophical labels of Conservative or Progressive) a person has to be willing to ignore his common sense and even his sense of decency and stand up for his side even when he KNOWS they’re wrong. EJ Montini ☀
We won’t throw a parade for a football team that was roughly 2 minutes away from an NFL championship, but we’ve got no problem with the local sheriff staging a parade of suspected illegal immigrants through downtown. EJ Montini ☀
It has become a holiday tradition that the folks at Go Daddy Group Inc. completely out fox the media. The company does this by appearing to waste millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads when in fact that they are pulling the wool over idiots like me by getting us to GIVE them what could amount to millions of dollars in free publicity to help offset the cost. E.J, Montini ☀
It’s only a matter of time before Idaho Sen. Larry Craig resigns. Eventually, even he will get that it isn’t about whether he’s gay or not. It’s about whether he’s a hypocrite or not. And if he’s a pervert or not. The fact is, a man’s foot does not ‘accidentally’ drift into a neighboring stall far enough to touch another man’s shoe. That’s just creepy. And in more than one bathroom it would get you a beating, rather than simply get you arrested. EJ Montini ☀
It’s funny that the group of high profile business people trying to stop the new law and initiative aimed a punishing employers who hire illegal immigrants call themselves ‘Wake Up Arizona!’ Apparently, they’ve been napping for the past several years while public concern on illegal immigration has mounted. Apparently, they’d dozed off all those years when Congress did nothing. Apparently, they were catching some Z’s while xenophobia and anger replaced rational discussion and reasonable solutions. EJ Montini ☀
There are all kind of legal, financial and other requirements in the proposal, but the fact is, it will grant legal status to millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California said, the bill “gives a path out of the shadows and toward legal status for those who are currently here.” In other words, amnesty. E.J. Montini ☀
Churches perform some valuable services and can do great work. But the buildings. The trappings. The showy stuff. It kind of spoils the message for me. E.J. Montini ☀
Given the fact that, logically and in any practical sense, it would be impossible to keep weapons out of the hands of bad people, the only thing we should be discussing is if weapons should be permitted “without restriction.” What does our city, state, country look like under such a law? E.J. Montini ☀
A GNT creation ©2007–2011
