Republicans Fail Again

It isn’t just that I disagree on policy that makes me angry with Republicans it’s that they consistently fail and Democrats have to clean it up then get blamed for spending what it takes to fix the problem. Once again we have Republicans leading the nation and again we seeing an abject failure to provide competent leadership in a crisis. Trump and his brown nosing enablers in the legislature take the COVID-19 virus seriously at the outset and still haven’t taken the necessary steps to put industry to work on providing the basics needed to treat the soon to be deathly ill thousands of Americans.

Italy which had its first cases January 31, three weeks later there were 76 confirmed cases. As of Sunday there were over 59,000 cases and 5,471 dead. The death rate is high because the Italians don’t have enough critical care beds and ventilators necessary to treat the massive number of sick people. The doctors there are being forced to decide who gets treated based on both likelihood of recovery and length of potential life left to live so older/sicker patients are only receiving minimal treatment to relieve pain because there simply aren’t enough resources to go around.

The United States had its first confirmed case of COVID-19 January 21, so far there are more than 32,000 confirmed cases and 416 deaths. Given what we’re seeing in Italy you’d think Trump would have used his authority to demand that U.S. industry ramp up production of materials necessary to treat Americans quickly. For weeks he said that governors should handle it and the White House wasn’t a shipping business. Just a week ago he finally got around to invoking his powers on the Defense Production Act of 1950 which authorizes a President to prioritize materials for national defense and demand increased production including providing incentives to build more capacity. All the while or doctors and nurses have been trying to make due with shortages of protective gear that is necessary to keep them safe while treating severely ill patients. It’s typical Republican day late and dollar short behavior.

On the economic side Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is more worried that his campaign donors in the airline and hotel industries will suffer profit shortfalls than he is about skyrocketing unemployment figures for working stiffs like you and me. Many Americans are suddenly worrying whether or not they will have enough money to pay the rent or mortgage with enough left over to cover groceries. McConnell’s proposal bails out big business who already got big tax breaks last year 90% of which was used to buy back their own stock to raise share prices which triggered bonuses for executives and leaves the rest of us to sink or swim on our own. Fortunately Senate Democrats said that bill is a non-starter and are demanding that individuals get government support and industry can borrow money and the super-cheap rates currently available from banks.

While one of the Democratic sponsored bills Trump has signed requires that all Americans be able to get tested at no charge that doesn’t help with paying for treatment if you’re one of the 5 million Texans without health insurance and you require hospitalization for COVID-19. Texas has twice the national average of uninsured and the main reason is our Republican Governor and state legislature refuse to expand Medicaid.

If Americans are smart, nine months from now Joe Biden will take office and begin steering in the right direction. Of course Republicans will then complain about the cost and the national debt.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 25, 2020

COVID 19 Republican Failure

In 2019 a petulant Donald Trump declared a national emergency when Congress wouldn’t give him his ridiculous border wall. After weeks of claiming “everything will be fine” the toddler in chief finally  declared a national emergency after COVID-19, aka coronavirus, has spread throughout the country.

China has taken draconian measures in some areas which have drastically reduced infection rates after the initial rapid spread of the disease. Italy has failed to take adequate measures and both the infection rates and death rates are soaring upward. The Italian health care system is overwhelmed in many areas and doctors are making hard decisions about who to treat due to lack of sufficient resources to treat all. They are only providing palliative care to the very old on the grounds that they only have a short time left to live anyway as well as those in poor health to start with as those resources are better used to treat younger, healthier patients who have both a better chance of survival and more to lose.

Unfortunately so far the United States is handling the situation about as poorly as Italy and we may suffer similarly for it.

On Friday the Democratic led House passed H.R. 6201-Families First Coronavirus Response Act which would provide free access to tests for the virus, including for those without health insurance. It would also give workers affected by the virus paid family and sick leave, boost unemployment benefits, strengthen government food programs for children, older people and those with low incomes and help states meet expenses for Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor. More than a quarter of Texas Republicans in the House voted against the bill, they are Brian Babin, Michael Cloud, Louie Gohmert, Lance Gooden, Chip Roy, and Randy Weber.

In the Senate even knowing that passage of the bill was imminent Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell failed to recognize the seriousness of the emergency last Friday and chose to shut down for the scheduled recess and won’t return until Thursday. The excuse is that they’ll be back in a week and will vote on the bill then when the situation has clarified. The Senate’s failure to act will delay relief and exacerbate suffering needlessly.

While the pandemic has spread to 46 states and Washington D.C. the Trump White House asked for funding cuts to the Centers for Disease Control budget. Texas is particularly vulnerable to the consequences of the pandemic due to all the rural hospital closures suffered over the last decade as Republicans have slashed budgets for health care. Closures over the last decade have primarily been driven by $50 million a year in Medicare cuts to Texas rural hospitals starting in 2013 as well as a $80+ million a year underpayment by Texas Medicaid which is controlled by our Republican controlled state legislature and Governor.

Fortunately local officials like the superintendents of Seguin ISD and Schertz/Cibolol/Universal City ISD have taken action and closed all schools in their districts for at least this week. We need the Trump administration to take strong, swift measures like our local officials are doing.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 18, 2020

Religious Exemptions Against Public Interest

Government and religious exemptions are on my mind right now on two separate topics. First up is the pretzel-like logic of conservatives which never ceases to amaze me. They’re the noisiest on the topic of religious freedom but they’ve got this really strange idea that it means letting them push their religion on everyone else. I call your attention to the case of Aimee Madonna in South Carolina where tax-payer funded foster care organization, Miracle Hill Ministries, rejected her because she's the "wrong" religion – the agency will only work with evangelical Protestants, not Catholics, Jews or people of any other faith. That’s a lot of Americans. If Miracle Hill were operating on their own dime there wouldn’t be much I could say other than shame on them for keeping children in need of foster care services from finding loving homes. In this case Donald Trump and his Department of Health and Human Services has actually granted South Carolina a waiver to allow this injustice and discrimination with your tax dollars.

It isn’t just South Carolina either, our own Attorney General Ken Paxton has also requested a waiver to allow foster care and adoption agencies to discriminate against potential parents purely on religious grounds. You might say well the parents can just go to another agency but it’s not that easy. In South Carolina Miracle Hills by far the largest agency. In Texas some of the largest agencies also discriminate based on religion and those that don’t often only cover small sections of the state.

If the adoption agencies in Seguin hold to the same discriminatory practices as Miracle Hill that would mean that over half the city’s population is ineligible to adopt or provide foster care just on the basis of the church they attend. Are you OK with your tax dollars funding discrimination against yourself?

The second topic is non-partisan and a public health issue that involves religious exemptions from required vaccinations for children attending public schools. This is becoming a massive national health problem with Texas near the top of list of states at risk.

When the percentage of people who have been vaccinated for a given disease falls below a certain threshold the risk of that disease spreading throughout the population increases exponentially. The threshold percentage is a function of how communicable the disease is with measles being highly contagious it requires around 93% of the population in a given area to prevent one case of measles from spreading the hundreds of people. Herd immunity protects people who can’t be vaccinated due to health conditions or newborns who aren’t ready to be vaccinated. There are some that have been vaccinated but due to differences in how our immune systems they don’t have full immunity and others with a compromised immune system like cancer patients.

The right of a community to be free of a deadly and immunizable disease should be more important than one person’s right to refuse an immunization. Just as a community like Seguin has a stronger right to protect itself from disastrous fires than a property own has the right to a to burn trash during a drought.

In my view your right to behave as you want stops when you put me and mine at risk. If people don’t want their kids vaccinated then they should keep them home and the parents should stay home too.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - March 4, 2020