Austerity has a human price

Mother of 22 year old autistic son kills son, herself.

I've worked with autistic kids in the past. It's hard enough dealing with them when they're little, they don't respond like normal kids, and they get overstimulated very easily at which point they usually respond with self destructive, self-mutilative, or just plain destructive behavior. But they were little kids, and we had special facilities, so we could deal with them. Dealing with a non-verbal autistic adult who has full adult size and strength... no family can do that alone. It just isn't possible. That way lies a nervous break down, depression, and... well.

Public health programs such as respite centers, day centers, and visiting nurses aimed at people with cognitive disabilities aren't just a good idea. They're the only alternative to stories like this one. Thing is, funding for all of these has been slashed to the point where the state-run programs here in California are all shut down and the ones getting Medicaid money are turning away people because they really don't have the money for the clients they already have. And don't think that charities will take up the gap, they have to do the math and put their limited funds where it gets the most bang for the buck. They're having a hard enough time keeping the soup kitchens and food pantries open, a few thousand dollars will feed hundreds of people for a week, while it will barely serve one severely disabled autistic adult for a week. Feed hundreds, or day care for one. That's the unpleasant choice that charities are having to face this time of reduced giving, and they're choosing to feed the hundreds, not provide day care for the one. And who can blame them, really?

So the austerity that Washington has dictated to the states by refusing to give them community block grants the way Nixon did during the '73 recession is killing people. That's the choice that our Representatives, Senators, and President in Washington have made: the genocide of the handicapped on the altar of austerity. I seem to recall a short German dictator who had the same idea about the handicapped(*)...

- Badtux the "Can we call it fascism?" Penguin
(*) The short German dicator at least made it quick, rather than making the handicapped suffer like the Representatives, Senators, and President are doing to them...

It's that time of year again

61 nameless dead. Often mentally ill, ignored during life, spat upon, despised by all but a few, who died young and early of "natural causes" (I guess starvation, exposure, and disease are "natural" but so it goes). Here this year's dead homeless people, homeless people in one of the wealthiest regions of the country, a region with millions of square feet of vacant commercial space at any given time, are given names (click image to embiggen, and pay attention to the age at which those whose age we know died):

-- Badtux the Sombre Penguin

Quote of the Day

"I don't consider whatever share of my tax dollars is going to keep [the uninsured, the disabled, or just plain unsavory] alive to be a waste of money. It is the cost I'm willing to pay to be able to look myself in the mirror and see a human being looking back."

-- NZForm

But of course lizard people don't have any problem with looking at themselves in the mirror and not seeing a human looking back, because, doh, they're LIZARD PEOPLE, why would they want to see a human looking back?

-- Badtux the Unlizardy Penguin

Another reason to boycott Arizona

Arizona's tightwad legislature just murdered 98 people. In cold blood. Without a trial, without due process, even offering any real excuses for why they have to die. Because, y'know, it's better that 98 people die, than that Arizona's public have to pay $1 apiece more in taxes to fund those organ transplants for people who mostly need public help because, err, they lost their insurance because they got too sick to work and don't happen to have a couple hundred thousand dollars hangin' around... something that could happen to any of us, BTW, in case you haven't been living in a cave.

What is the price of a human life? In Arizona, apparently, it's $1.

-- Badtux the Dollar Penguin

Digby doesn't get it

Digby notes another young man executed by Taser -- he was riding a bike, and when he didn't stop for the cops, they shot him with a taser. He fell off the bike and the cruiser ran over and executed him. And of course Digby says, "gosh, it's nice that the media is finally catching on that these tasers are being wildly abused, maybe there will be public outrage!"

Utter nonsense. Not happening. There will be no general public outrage, any more than there is for the fact that the United States is the world's biggest prison state with more people behind bars than any other nation on the planet, because most of the people involved are those people. You know, those people, unseemly people who have the audacity to be poor, or brown, or have disabilities, people who aren't like us. It's the same thing that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power despite being a brutal dictator... sure, he was brutal, but he was brutal against those people, people who weren't good citizens, as long as you kept your head down and went along with things life in Saddam's Iraq was a lot nicer than life in today's Iraq... thus why the Iraqi government had to execute Saddam, because he was a threat to their power every moment he remained alive.

Monkeys. That's what we're talking about, mostly-bald monkeys with delusions of not being monkeys. Monkeys don't view any monkeys who aren't part of their own troop as having any value. Same deal with the Americans who don't get irate about cops killing brown people or poor people or disabled people because said people are "not like us". We were monkeys for 2 million years before civilization was invented, and the veneer of civilization is now starting to rub a little thin...

- Badtux the Avian Penguin

Help the homeless, go to jail

Remember, zoning ordinances are more important than human beings. Just ask Dan De Vaul, jailed for letting homeless people camp on his ranch.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

U S A! U S A! U S A!

Iran has better health care than Mississippi.

Yay! We're number, uhm, something something something! U S A! U S A! U S A! Woot!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Empty

The man was sitting by the side of the road, holding a sign. He was probably in his late 50's, with the craggy face and graying whiskers but not yet old enough for Social Security or SSI. I presume the sign said something soliciting money, but I could not read it. His hand was shaking too much from alcohol withdrawal tremors.

There is something missing in some people, a hole they fill in whatever way they can. For some, it is alcohol. For others, drugs. Yet the cause is the same -- a life run off the rails because something is missing, something in their psyche, in their whole mind-body makeup, and there's no way to fill that hole that they can otherwise find.

I'm not sure what the answer is. It's clear that they aren't this way voluntarily, that they no more chose to be this way than you chose your skin color, but there seems nothing that can be done to "cure" them. Drug abuse programs, alcohol abuse programs, none of these work for the "intransigent addict". Yet we treat them like they're just lazy, rather than having something seriously wrong in how their brains are put together. It's odd, really, this man, sitting by the side of the road in the cold, holding his sign while his body trembles craving alcohol... it is as if the majority of Americans shudder, view him with the sort of horror that child molesters might get. Yet he is harmless, other than that hole in his head that leads him to fill it with alcohol. Yet he has been relegated to this nightmarish world of begging for alms on the side of the road and sleeping under bushes because... why?

If he were a stray dog, my town would pick him up and bring him to a no-kill shelter run by the Humane Society where he could live out the remainder of his life well-fed in a warm, secure place with volunteers who regularly come in to interact with him. But he's not a dog, so he's on the street. When did our society start viewing dogs as more important than human beings, anyhow?

-- Badtux the Puzzled Penguin

How to provide universal healthcare

Part II of "Why conservatives hate Democracy" will commence as soon as I get time to finish pulling the statistics together. In the meantime, let's get back to healthcare.

There are five proven ways to provide healthcare to all the citizens of a nation. Conservatives are against all of them:

1. Socialized medicine like in Britain and Scandinavia, where all hospitals and clinics are government-owned and all doctors are government employees (American example: VA and military healthcare systems): Republicans are against it, of course.
2. Single-payer government-owned insurers with private providers, like Canada or Taiwan (American example: TriCare for military retirees/dependents): Against it, of course.
3. Hybrid single/multi-payer government major medical and private supplemental insurance, like France (American example: Medicare): Against it, of course. (At least for non-prunes -- they're afraid of the prunes if they dare try to eliminate Medicare).
4. Employer mandates like in Germany requiring employers to provide insurance, with government insurance payment assistance for the unemployed, and insurers required to must-issue and provide a minimum amount of coverage: Against it, of course.
5. Individual mandates like in Switzerland requiring individuals to purchase insurance, with government insurance payment assistance for the unemployed and those who cannot afford it, and insurers required to must-issue and provide a minimum amount of coverage: Against it, of course.

That's it. Those five ways, or hybrid mixes thereof, are the only proven ways anywhere on this planet for insuring that all the citizens of a nation have access to healthcare when they need it. And Republican conservatives are against each and every one of them, even the most modest ones involving employer or individual mandates that retain a private health insurance industry.

So what do conservatives propose? Well:

1. "Let them eat cake." Otherwise stated as, "healthcare is a privilege, not a right." But life is the most fundamental right, without which all other rights are worthless. If you're dead because you did not get healthcare when you needed it, WTF good is the right to bear arms? Dead people can't bear arms, they're DEAD! This is a non-starter from both a moral point of view due to the dead bodies that result and from a political point of view in a democracy. But then, we already knew conservatives hated democracy and have no problems creating as many dead bodies as necessary in pursuit of their agenda of profiting from the labors of others via all means possible.
2. Unicorns and cotton candy trees: a "free market" healthcare system which is guaranteed to not cover the oldest / sickest individuals because they aren't profitable to insure, thus resulting in dead bodies. We already have up to 22,000 people per year killed due to lack of health insurance, any move towards even more "free market" would result in even more dead bodies. But once again, conservatives have no problem with murdering people, as long as they just set up the policies that lead to the deaths rather than pull the actual trigger. They, like, get fucking woodies from the notion of dead people, as long as there's profit involved. Remember, for a conservative, if there's profit involved it is by definition "good", and if something hurts profits, it is by definition "evil". A conservative denotes "good" and "evil" by how much profit can be made doing it, not by any morality that you might recognize by reading the Bible or any other holy book.

In short: What conservatives propose is a lot of dead bodies. Which is not surprising, since "a lot of dead bodies" is their answer for any societal question, whether said question is illegal immigration, dealing with terrorists, or whatever. And they see absolutely no problem with that (see #1, "Let them eat cake"). From a moral point of view it is completely immoral, but conservatives view the right to make a profit as more important than the right to life. Unless we're talking about fetuses, but that's another issue.

-- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

Can't-do America

How we ration health care in America -- if you are in the United States, health care is rationed according to your family income and insurance status. If you need, say, a knee replacement, and you have money and insurance, you immediately jump to the front of the queue. If you need a heart-lung replacement due to chemotherapy killing your lungs, well, you'll get the first one but then your insurance will be dropped and you will be sent home to die.

Yet every time anybody proposes to solve this problem of people being killed by this nation's heartless, brutal, and murderous health care system that rations by sending healthy people to the front of the line and sending sick people home to die, we're told "it can't be done." Nevermind that every other industrialized nation does it, they're can-do nations and we're can't-do America. We can't do this, we can't do that, we can't, can't, can't, can't.

Once upon a time, forty years ago today, America could send a man to the moon. After the space shuttle program winds down next year, we won't even be able to send a man into orbit. And it's all because of the America-hating "can't-do" Americans, who are destroying this nation with their constant refrain of "can't, can't, can't, can't, can't". Well, for any of you can't-do Americans who manage to find their way to this post: Fuck you. Fuck you and closed-minded stupidity and ignorance. Fuck you and your selfish brutality of "can't can't can't" that relegates thousands of Americans to death each year for the crime of merely getting sick. Fuck you up every orifice of your America-hating carcass. You and your refrain of "can't, can't, can't" and your stingy small-minded selfishness have taken this once-great nation from being able to send a man to the Moon until today when we can't even make our own UNDERWEAR, for cryin' out loud. But of course, your Party commissars on Hate Radio, Chairman Rush and his Little Green Book that tells you what to think, and so forth, says that this nation's reeking carcass that can't even make its own underwear anymore is the world's greatest nation so USA! USA! USA! Yeah right. Go eat some more fried foods from Wal-mart and get your only exercise by clicking the TV clicker and kill yourselves with your unhealthy "lifestyles", already. You're a wart, a blot, a disgrace to what America once was and perhaps some day can be again, and if you had one speck of morality in your feeble-witted "brain" you'd go out back behind your house with your favorite handgun that you stroke every day while masturbating to Glenn Beck's demented cry-fest and put a bullet through your head. But of course your piggish waddling self is never going to do anything like that, because that would require that you admit you've run this once-great nation into the ground with your sickening cry of "can't, can't, can't", and your Party commissars on Hate Radio tell you that's not true so you'll never admit it.

So it goes, in the reeking carcass of a nation that once could send a man to the moon, but today can't even make its own underwear.

-- Badtux the Rude Penguin

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The right to life does not stop at birth

On the evening of July 4, 2009, Eric De La Cruz died, killed by the patchwork U.S. "healthcare" system and its infuriating inability to provide a working system of healthcare for all Americans. This young man had a congenital heart defect which was quite solvable by a heart transplant, but because he was uninsured and Nevada Medicaid won't pay for transplants, he died.

233 years before Eric De La Cruz was killed by our "healthcare" system, some guys in Philadelphia wrote these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ...

Over 18,000 Eric De La Cruz's are killed by our "healthcare" system every year because of its refusal to pay for needed care for all Americans who need care. This is a slaughter of innocents, over six times the death toll of the 9/11 attacks PER YEAR. Clearly our "healthcare" industry is killing, slaughtering, tens of thousands of innocents per year guilty of nothing except being born poor or maybe not the brightest bulb in the chandelier or just plain unlucky, and has no intention to stop doing so. Whenever any industry infringes so baldly upon our inherent human right to life, it is completely within the realm of our founders' intents to have our government secure these rights, and if it does not do so, to change our government if necessary -- which we did, in November 2008, when we elected President Obama on a platform of healthcare reform and withdrawal from Iraq.

There are some people who say that the right to life is conditional -- that you have a right to life only if you have the ability to pay cash for your health care. There are others who say there is no such right because it is not listed in the Constitution of the United States of America, 9th Amendment of the Constitution nonwithstanding. This is utter nonsense. Rights are granted to us by our Creator, not by a piece of paper, and are absolute, not conditional, and the right to life is the most fundamental right without which all other rights are meaningless. When any entity infringes upon this most fundamental of our human rights, it is well within the provence of government as envisioned by our founding fathers to deal with this threat to our most fundamental human rights via whatever means are necessary -- which, in the case of our corrupt murderous health insurance industry, should with all fairness be the death penalty just as much as for any other mass murderer, but I'll settle for Medicare For All single-payer health insurance and let those bastards spend the rest of their lives begging for alms on streetcorners.

-- Badtux the Human Rights Penguin

An ode to health insurance company executives

This one is to the monopolist health care executives who arbitrarily cancel the policies of people suffering expensive illnesses just to keep from having to pay for their care -- and say they're not going to stop.

Fuck yeah.

-- Badtux the Social Penguin
H/T to the Mad Librarian

An example of why American healthcare is Teh Fail

Young man condemned to death because of pre-existing condition that disqualifies him from health insurance. And also, apparently, because the people of Nevada are skinflints who won't fund their Medicaid program enough to cover serious illnesses, instead throwing those people out on the streets to die.

That's not the kind of story you hear about in France, because it wouldn't happen in France. That's not the sort of story you hear about in Netherlands, because it wouldn't happen in the Netherlands. Or in Germany. Or Austria. Or Canada. Or even in the sorry British Public Health Service, which is always woefully underfunded. People don't get denied health care there just because they're poor or have the bad luck to live in a state populated by retired vicious elderly skinflints who hate everybody and everything and they have their Medicare so why should they care about the healthcare of youngsters? It's only in this sick, sad society where we condemn people to die because we're a nation of vicious hateful bastards.

-- Badtux the Disgusted Penguin

How do you want to die?

Death is inevitable. All of us die, in the end. The question is, what kind of death do you want? A death in a warm bed at home, surrounded by family and friends? A death in a cold, impersonal hospital bed? Burial in the family plot next to your father and mother and grandmother? Or dead of exposure on the streets with no known relatives or friends, to be later cremated and buried in an anonymous grave?

They were single and married, young and old, from San Jose and parts unknown. What tied them together is how they died: cold and alone on the streets of Silicon Valley, their lives now statistics, their stories never told. There were 55 of them, men and women as young as 18, as old as 76, all homeless people who died this year — more than ever before in Santa Clara County, according to the coroner's office. Forty-one people died on county streets — in a park, on a bench or tucked beneath a freeway overpass — last year.

And I notice that, once again, these human beings are as nameless in death as they were in life. I pointed this out last year that the Mercury News is not willing to give these poor souls even the minimal recognition that EHC Lifebuilders gives them by naming their names. Once again the Mercury News shows that the shame of the Silicon Valley is the shame of the Mercury News too -- rather than show us these people, they would prefer to hide them and pretend they don't exist except as a meaningless statistic, paper cutouts, not real people with names, people like you and me.

And why anybody should die shivering on the streets when we have literally thousands of empty office buildings and warehouse buildings all over this county any one of which could sleep literally thousands of people... well, nobody asks that question. We are the richest city in the richest state in the richest planet of this nation. We have the capability to make sure these people don't have to shiver in the dark and die alone under an overpass. What we lack is the will. Shame on us all.

-- Badtux the Housed Penguin

Sad all around

Librarian recognizes man who ran down two old ladies, calls cops. Turns out he was a 66 year old dude who was living out of his car, who apparently has "problems".

Our society's treatment of its old, its poor, its mentally ill is abysmal, and the result is dead bodies. But hey, we don't care, because at least we don't have to pay taxes to take care of the old, the poor, the mentally ill, and money is more important than human beings, right? Right? Right?!

-- Badtux the Priorities Penguin

Ted Kennedy is dying

Ted Kennedy diagnosed with incurable brain cancer. Sad to say, the most that can be done for him is to extend his life a bit with radiation therapy and chemotherapy. And even there, he's as likely to die from the chemotherapy as from the cancer.

Let's just hope that Ted can get the drugs he needs to go peacefully. That's not a given anymore, because the Department of inJustice has been prosecuting doctors who prescribe "too much" pain killers to terminally ill patients. Can't let a dying man get addicted to morphine, after all. Why, if a dying man got addicted to morphine, he might... die?!

- Badtux the Healthcare Penguin

This is "freedom" in America

If you're on your own land, doing your own thing, government can demolish your home and steal your land, put you in jail for objecting to it, and then charge you tens of thousands of dollars for what they've done to you.

I've had dealings with folks like Theron Saluteen who live like that. Generally they have problems that keep them from participating in society as a whole, and just want to be left alone. They harm nobody, they aren't out there robbing or killing or raping anything, they're just doing their own thing. They're not pretty, but so what.

But none of that matters in Soviet America, where if you are not a proper little Sovak consumer who behaves the way Party ideology says you must behave, why, ve haff ways of dealing with zat, da? Like bulldozing your home, hauling you away to jail, and charging you $40,000 for the privilege of having your home destroyed.

So it goes, in Soviet America, where we pretend we are free -- as long as we behave in government-approved manner at all times.

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin

Why martial law could happen in America

Do you really believe that cops with no hesitancy about Tasering college kids for asking a question, studying in a library, skateboarding, or just because they ask for it would have any problems using so-called "non-lethal devices" (that have killed over 400 people over the past five years) or worse to enforce a martial law declaration?

C'mon. Let's get real here. Cops believe that civilians are The Enemy. Cops have their own culture, which overlaps with civilian culture only at the edges. Cops have their own values, which are not civilian values. Any cop who has any objection to enforcing ridiculous, unconstitutional laws has been forced out of the profession by the War on Drugs, which violates the Constitution in oh so many ways by outlawing consensual commerce between adults, seizing property without compensation or any meaningful due process, removing voting rights in violation of the 14th Amendment, and so forth. If a cop's chain of command told him to enforce a dusk to dawn curfew in order to prevent rioting over a Presidential decree that elections were cancelled and Congress dismissed due to "terrorist threats", he would do it -- period. Using all force allowed by departmental policies. If a cop's chain of command ordered him to arrest Duncan Black of Atrios fame as a member of a "terror cell" and escort him to a USAF cargo jet for processing to Guantanamo Bay, he would do so, without a thought, or if he did have a thought, said thought would be "I'll just do my job, and if he's innocent the courts will free him." If a cop was ordered to arrest a sitting judge (who had the timerity to rule that arresting Duncan Black was illegal) and escort him to that jet it'd be the same response.

The basic problem is that we have allowed our government to get away from us, through apathy, ignorance, and fear. No government survives without the willing aquiescence of the majority of the people. We have allowed our fear to allow ambitious politicians into stampeding us into giving them more and more power, of which the police are the enforcers of that power. The disconnect between the police and the citizenry they are supposed to serve is not because police are inherently evil, it is because we have allowed our government to become disconnected from the citizenry and the police are, in the end, government employees who similarly have become disconnected. The case of health care is a good example. The majority of Americans want universal health care. They don't want patchwork systems of competing HMO's and PPO's and payment approvals and so forth, they want to be able to go into any doctor's office, anywhere, when they get sick, and get taken care of. Yet the plan of the next President of the United States, Hillary Clinton, is to force people at gunpoint to subsidize the private insurance industry by requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance.

As long as the majority of Americans continue to be more interested in the latest episode of their favorite "reality TV" show than in who rules them, we run the risk of martial law and permanent loss of our freedoms, and our police forces and military, despite all the propaganda about how they "protect our freedoms", would happily cooperate in enforcing martial law. Unfortunately, I know of no way to make apathetic, ignorant, fearful people less apathetic, ignorant, or fearful. Other than shock treatment like what happened in the 1929-1932 time frame, which ended Republican rule of America for a generation. Are we there yet? I suspect that in the next few years, we'll find out.

-- Badtux the Ramblin' Penguin

The very picture of the modern conservative

Roy over at Aliculablog makes a funny. Says he of conservatives, In a real marketplace of ideas, the idea of national health care would provoke not waves of bluster, but a serious counterproposal. Maybe if we sweat 'em a bit more, we'll get it.

Silly boy. Modern conservatism isn't about solving problems. Modern conservatism isn't about providing solutions. Modern conservatism is all about "let them eat cake" -- an imperious declaration from upon the throne that there is no place for any collective action on the part of citizens to defend themselves against those who would take advantage of them, or to provide services for themselves that the free market for whatever reason will not or cannot provide in a timely and cost-effective manner. To the modern conservative, the only "problem" is laziness, and the only "solution" is "let them die if they can't make a living on what we pay them as our servants."

The notion of government of the people, by the people, for the people -- the notion that people can get together to defend themselves against those who would harm them -- is derided as "socialism" by modern conservatives. The notion of government services -- other than those services which the modern conservative uses (specifically the police and courts, which the modern conservative uses as his private militia to squash dissent and insure that objections to his rule are beat down violently) -- is similarly derided as "socialist". As for the health care crisis, the modern conservative's answer is to... uhm... do nothing. "Let them die." And if the people object to being told to die, well, let them go to the emergency room.

"Let them eat cake", indeed... and the odd thing is, the majority of the American people, rather than rioting in the streets when told this, just grimly say "there is nothing to be done" and go about their business of being killed by their "betters". What was I saying about, "I have seen the enemy and he is us"?

-- Badtux the Conservative-observing Penguin
(uhm, yeah, I do need eyewash after that, especially with all the closeted gay tearoom queens in the Republican Party nowdays).

Paris is America

Professor Juan Cole asks, why are we so interested in the details of the imprisonment of Princess Paris Hilton, and not so interested in the details of the imprisonment of Iraqi women and children seized in order to convince their menfolk to turn themselves in?

The reason for the focus is simple: Paris Hilton is *us*. Americans. Overindulged. Pampered. Rich. Stupid. With an overweening sense of unwarranted entitlement based upon nothing more than where and to whom she was born. Paris Hilton is America. Where once America was steelworkers and freedom fighters, today America is... Paris. Vacant empty-headed useless people with no conception of "reality", who mostly spend their days selling things nobody needs to people who don't need them but hey, they're neat things, so buy, buy, buy!

Iraqis... heck, most Americans couldn't even find Iraq on a map, and would stare aghast at you if you even suggested that Iraqis were humans and should thus possess all the rights that the Declaration of Independence assures us were granted to us by our Creator. Americans want us out of Iraq because we're losing, not out of any moral qualms about killing people who aren't, like, Paris.

We might as well replace the eagle on the national seal with a poodle-dog and make it official. Replacing George with a picture of Paris on the $1 bill might be a great idea too. After all, Paris Hilton is a far, far better symbol of America than a man who was willing to give up his pampered existence on a plantation in order to lead an army of independence under horrible conditions through ice and snow with, get this, no catering! Oh the horror!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin