Politics Plus

Jesse Kelly is the Republican who ran against and lost to Gabrielle Giffords.  Part of his campaign was to help remove Giffords from office by shooting a fully automatic M-16.  Now that someone really targeted Giffords, you’d think that he’d at least have the decency to keep a low profile, if not apologize for his irresponsible use of violent symbolism.  But no.  This vile Republican is already pulling strings to try to get the seat in Congress.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was successfully moved to a rehabilitation center in Houston today after a miraculous recovery since being shot in the head two weeks ago. While most politicians from both parties have hoped for a speedy recovery, some have questioned whether Giffords should be allowed to continue to hold her seat or be forced to vacate it since she is incapacitated — a question the Republican who challenged Giffords last year also appears to be asking. According to Arizona Capitol Reports (subscription-only newsletter), Jesse Kelly is so antsy to challenger her again, that he requested a legal inquiry as to whether he could run again if Giffords lost her seat:

Attorney Lee Miller, who serves as legal counsel for the Arizona Republican Party, told our reporter Kelly’s campaign contacted him earlier this week to find out how the seat would be filled if Giffords couldn’t serve.

The next day, the newsletter added:

Yesterday’s item about Jesse Kelly exploring a special election for the CD8 seat in the wake of Giffords’ shooting created waves in Tucson political circles, one source from south of the Gila said today. ‘I think Jesse Kelly has more problems than just dealing with a Yellow Sheet story. It’s probably going to be picked up by Politico,’ said the source.

The last time Kelly ran, the former Marine ran a campaign ad urging suporters to “get on target for victory in November.” “Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly,” it continued… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

I’m not suggesting that Kelly intended for there to be an assassination attempt against her, but I am claiming that his association of removing her from office and shooting a fully automatic M-16 irresponsibly plants the notion that political violence is good in the unstable brains of people who lack the rational capacity to understand the difference between symbolism and intent.  I don’t know that Loughner was effected by this.  I also don’t know that he was not.

As for the seat, I consider it indecent for anyone on either side to start trying to get it until we know far more about Giffords’ condition than we now do, but for this man to do so, given his place in this tragedy as a possible provocateur, even if unintentional, reaches a level of depravity that exceeds mere indecency.  There is only one word that fits.  Jesse Kelly is a Republican.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the RepubliCare Death Angel, has found a way to cover, she says, the 94 people needing transplants she defunded, killing two to date.  She is including them in an $151 million “uncompensated care pool”.  To pay for it, she wants to kick 280,000 people off Medicaid and kill the Medicaid funding for 5,200 seriously mentally ill adults.  All of these go into the same pool.  How such a pool works is that doctors who wish to participate treat people covered by the pool, they do so and apply for payment.  If there is money available, they get paid.  If not, they don’t.  With too many people competing for too little funding, doctors will only be reimbursed a small part of the cost of their services, so few will participate.  Those needing organ transplants will not get them and die.  Some of the 280,000 she wants to kick off Medicaid will die from lack of care. This is RepubliCare in action.

Last year, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and the state legislature decided to save a relatively paltry sum of public money by refusing to pay for life-saving transplants for 98 patients (two of whom have died in the interim). After months of unrelenting bad publicity, Brewer has relented.

In the executive summary of her budget proposal for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, Brewer has proposed setting up a $151 million “uncompensated-care pool to pay health-care providers for ‘life-saving’ procedures” like the transplants.

That’s the good news, though the fund has not yet been created and there are still nearly 100 people on the transplant list and it very well could be too small to cover the need. What’s more, the new uncompensated-care pool doesn’t come without strings.

The governor’s plan calls for removing 280,000 mostly childless adults from Medicaid. That would slash $541.5 million in general-fund spending next year, according to the summary.

Cutting 5,200 “seriously mentally ill individuals” from Medicaid would lower spending by $79.8 million. The governor proposed $10.3 million in prescription-drug funding to offset the eliminated coverage….

The pool won’t be big enough to guarantee transplants because taking people out of Medicaid will create a surge in hospital patients who can’t afford to pay, according to Sarah Muench, a spokeswoman for Representative Anna Tovar. The Democrat from Tolleson opposed the transplant cuts.

“All of those people will be making use of that fund,” Muench said in a telephone interview. “The likelihood of receiving transplants is very low.”

Only Jan Brewer would come up with the idea of cutting 5,200 seriously mentally ill patients off of care within two weeks of a madman’s bloody rampage in her own state… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Keith Obbermann covered this quite well with Arizona State Senator David Schapira (D).

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This is such an obvious scam that, if the Obama administration authorized the change in Medicaid eligibility, I shall be quite surprised.  If they refuse, Republicans will blame Obama for the murder of their own transplant refusal victims.

In both the next round of Republican political theater and the next round of attacks on HCR, House Republicans are proposing budget cuts they say will save $2.5 Trillion over ten years.  What are they going to cut?  Well, surprise!  They have no specific proposals.  They want to return non defense, non entitlement spending to 2006 levels.  Their plan is simple.  If Obama presents a budget larger than that in those areas, they will say “No!”.  That and lying are the only things they are actually adept at doing.  Then they will blame Obama.  If any cuts in Obama’s budget do cause pain to Main Street, they will blame Obama for the pain.  But over and above this, they are attempting to cripple the implementation of those parts of HCR that actually benefit Main Street.

House Republicans unveiled on Thursday a list of spending cuts [Republican Liar delinked] they said would save $2.5 trillion over 10 years.

Most of the savings, $2.29 trillion, would come from holding spending at 2006 levels on the part of the federal budget that isn’t entitlement or defense spending, according to the document released by the Republican Study Committee [Republican Liar delinked] chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

The so-called discretionary part of the budget represents just 16 percent of federal spending. Many experts have said it’s impossible for the nation to cut its way to fiscal health by addressing just that part of the budget.

But by attacking that first, Republicans were going after the easiest part of the budget since trying to cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare will make cutting everything else seem like child’s play.

Besides holding discretionary spending to 2006 levels, other savings would come from not spending money to implement certain parts of the new health care law.

According to the document, $80 billion in savings over 10 years would come from not spending on the roll out of various programs related to the new health care law as well as not spending federal money to defend health care law related lawsuits… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NPR>

There is one bright side to this.  If we can keep spreading that this is what they are doing, we can Americans will be reminded of how Republicans govern.

I have long complained that activist Republican ideologues, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas had a conflict of interest in the Citizens United and other nefarious decisions.  I covered this last March in Teabuggery Reaches the Extreme Court and last December in When Scalia Goose Steps with the Tea Party.  I’m pleased to report that Common Cause has filed a petition claiming exactly that.

When the conservative financier Charles Koch sent out invitations for a political retreat in Palm Springs later this month, he highlighted past appearances at the gathering of “notable leaders” like Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court.

A leading liberal group is now trying to use that connection to argue that Mr. Scalia and Mr. Thomas should disqualify themselves from hearing campaign finance cases because they may be biased toward Mr. Koch, a billionaire who has been a major player in financing conservative causes.

The group, Common Cause, filed a petition with the Justice Department on Wednesday asking it to investigate potential conflicts by Justices Scalia and Thomas and move for their disqualification from the landmark Citizens United case, in which the court last year lifted a ban on corporate spending on political campaigns. Common Cause also cited the role of Mr. Thomas’s wife, Virginia Thomas, in forming a conservative political group opposed to the Obama administration as grounds for his disqualification.

The petition is a new tack for opponents of the court’s decision in the Citizens United case. Common Cause, by its own acknowledgment, faces a difficult task in getting the justices’ to remove themselves from the case and seeking to have the Citizens United decision itself vacated.

“We’re treading in new territory here for us,” said Arn H. Pearson, Common Cause’s vice president for programs. “But a situation like this raises fundamental questions about public confidence in the Supreme Court.”

Officials at Koch Industries, which Mr. Koch leads, did not respond to e-mails and a phone call Wednesday seeking comment on the petition. A spokeswoman at the Supreme Court declined comment.

Supreme Court justices have wide latitude in deciding whether to recuse themselves from hearing cases. In one of the more well-known examples in recent years, Justice Scalia refused to remove himself from hearing a challenge to Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force after he had gone duck hunting with Mr. Cheney in 2004.

“It’s a steep uphill climb for Common Cause, but not an insurmountable one,” said Steven Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University. At the very least, he said, the group’s petition could force a “public airing” of questions surrounding the two justices’ past appearances at the Koch retreat and their connections to the group… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

I won’t begin to claim sufficient legal expertise to discuss the legal ins and outs of this, but I’m sertain that the conflict of interest does exist.  If it did not these Republican activists would not have exceeded the bounds of the question before them to reach an unconstitutional decision.