July 2

 Sunny today and probably dry. I watered the pots well yesterday so I don't have to do that again til tomorrow.

I will probably piss off some people but I think Lisa Murkowski's vote for the Republican mess of a (not) budget bill explainable, somewhat justified, and short sighted. She told a reporter who asked for her response to Rand Paul's condemnation of her vote that she works for "the people of Alaska." She acknowledged that "some" (nice diminishing term) in the lower 48 states would be hurt but her concern is Alaska. If more Republican senators had taken their states' people into consideration they would have joined her in voting that abomination down. She did get some benefits for Alaska--at least for the near future if the bill passes the House. If they have to go back to square one with this process Alaska hasn't lost anything. Why do I say "short sighted?" She could have forced the legislature to go back and start over hopefully getting a true budget at the end. She also has shown that her vote can be bought--and rather cheaply at that. Whether that burnishes her reputation in Alaska is a question I can't answer.

There is an interesting bit of semantics running through the Republican programs. They SAY no one will be kicked off of Medicaid. Then they impose more onerous conditions and paperwork which a significant number of recipients won't be able to comply with. They figure that means that people CHOOSE to exit the programs but do those people really have a choice. The government won't actually go out and say "you, you, and you aren't going to get the goodies any more." Does this qualify as "passive-aggressive"? Reminds me of their argument absolving themselves of blame for deporting U.S. citizen children. Their undocumented mothers made the choice to take the kids with them when they were deported. But was that a true choice? If the mothers are deported without the kids what happens to those kids? Is there anyone to take care of them? Are their fathers present and are they legal residents or citizens? What are the family dynamics? Again the government operatives absolve themselves of any culpability by pretending that the mothers had a real choice between good and bad alternatives. But the choices are between horrendous and hellish. That isn't a choice.

Jennifer Rubin has a good and brutal appraisal of the foreseeable consequences of the abominable bill. But her article has only described the direct, primary consequences. I occurred to me that few have mentioned the secondary, tertiary, or further downstream consequences. And those might me far more damaging to our society and economy. The Medicaid provisions will probably result in the closure of a large number of rural hospitals That will create "medical deserts" where people simply have no options to get care except to try to travel large distances to get the care they need. I remember news stories forty years ago when I lived in Colorado about the lack of medical care in counties on the western slope. People in those rural areas had to drive three and four hours to see a doctor. But urban hospitals will also be affected. They will have to deal with both the cut in Medicare reimbursements and an increase in patients that won't have any insurance. They will have to lay off employees which will impact the ability to care for people. We will experience a flood moving through the economy.

You can go through the bill and trace a similar track of primary, secondary, tertiary, etc., effects but no one has asked "Why?" Why is it necessary to impose that kind of chaos on low income Americans? Just to give that already obscenely well off more? In the 1970s, CEOs and their tame politicians promised us that moving jobs out of the U.S. to low wage countries would benefit us and new jobs would be created. We got cheap goods and lower paid jobs. Regan promised that prosperity would "trickle down" because of his tax cuts and the hit to the Federal budget would be recouped because the lower rates would yield higher revenues. Time proved the second assertion false and I have often quipped that what trickled down passed through someone's kidneys or bowels. Why should I believe Thune's promise that we will have a golden age of security, safety, and prosperity?