Trump Administration allows states to start imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients. No use arguing that including various forms of "community engagement" in these requirements gives these Medicaid recipients a soft landing, because if you're too sick to work, you're too sick to take care of someone else who's sick, too. Also, most Medicaid recipients do work -- they just don't make enough money to afford private health insurance, because their bosses don't pay them enough, though they sure do pay themselves well enough. So Medicaid is not an "entitlement" -- and you or I might be a catastrophe or two away from needing it ourselves.
The next time President Trump calls some country that gives us a lot of immigrants a "shithole" country, he might do well to remember that to the degree that "Haiti and African nations" are unable to provide for their citizens to the degree that our government does, it may be because our government is among the many Western governments that have spent centuries plundering them. Yes, it's an unpleasant truth, but facing unpleasant truths is what helps folks grow and mature. Didn't conservatives used to say that all the time?
In the middle of a House vote rubber-stamping more government spying on good Americans, President Trump took positions both for and against the bill on Twitter. First he wondered if the Obama Administration had used these spying powers to go after him, then he said the bill was really about "foreign guys" on "foreign land" (which, uh, no) and that "(w)e need it!" Republicans have no standing to accuse anyone else of "flip-flopping" ever again -- though, having no shame, of course they will.
Good news, everyone! The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or FERC) has unanimously rejected the Energy Department's plan to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants. The Energy Department proposed subsidizing these plants, supposedly as a way of making the electric grid more reliable, but -- as the article says repeatedly in a remarkable display of message discipline -- this was really a "coal bailout." I would have added that this was "our government trying to pick winners and losers," since solar and wind are starting to get competitive price-wise. A lot of Trump voters think this is the kind of bailout that's OK, because it'll put them back to work. But if we were to put them to work building out a renewable energy grid, they'd more likely see it for what it is.
Finally, infamous former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, now running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, still says Mr. Obama's birth certificate is a "forgery (sic) document" and that Congress should pass a "law" or a "regulation" requiring a background check of Presidential candidates. The most famous and obnoxious birther of them all may be President, but Mr. Obama has been out of office for almost a year now, and I'm not sure Mr. Arpaio will get people riled up enough merely by rehashing his greatest hits. You have to find new crazy, after all. Maybe Mr. Arpaio's past it.
Comments