State Houses Thread

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Oklahoma wants to discriminate bigger and better against divorcees, gays, interfaith couples, single parents... #MAGA Make adoption ghastly again https://www.hrc.org/blog/OK-house-passes-bill-harmful-to-kids-hrc-calls-on-governor-to-reject-SB1140?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

[AmazonGrace]

 

[47of74]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Yep.  And of course it's going right to our "100 percent pro life" governor to sign.  

Quote

Republican lawmakers with control of the Iowa statehouse fast-tracked a bill early Wednesday that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy, sending what could be the nation's most restrictive abortion legislation to the governor.

Critics say the so-called "heartbeat" bill would ban the medical procedure before some women even know they're pregnant, and it sets the state up for a legal challenge over its constitutionality.

The measure was passed with nearly back-to-back chamber votes along party lines, culminating in approval in the Senate shortly after 2 a.m. The bill now heads to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is anti-abortion but hasn't said publicly if she will sign it into law. Her press secretary, Brenna Smith, indicated in an email the governor was open to signing it.

"Governor Reynolds is 100 percent pro-life and will never stop fighting for the unborn," Smith said.

Makes me fucking sick.  I've decided I'm going to look at moving out of Iowa.  I'm done.  This state can go to hell if it wants but I'm not going to stick around to hold their fucking hands on the way down. 

[AmazonGrace]

Racists gotta racism. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The GOP is quietly crafting work requirement waivers — for white people"

Spoiler

In January, the Trump administration released new guidelines that would allow states to begin imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients. It was a kindness, really: According to Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meaningful work is essential to “economic self-sufficiency, self-esteem, wellbeing and . . . health.”  

Well, for some of us.  

Since the announcement, states have raced to implement new work requirements, which will have the effect of bumping hundreds of thousands of their poorest citizens off the Medicaid rolls. But in more recent months, a number of GOP-controlled states have been quietly crafting waivers that would end up shielding rural, white residents from this new scheme for self-esteem.

It seems an unusually transparent move, even for a party that tends toward the blatant in its disdain for those not seen as “real Americans.” But most of all, it’s an example of how much-touted moral policy stances — such as solicitude for the “dignity of work,” or “zero tolerance” for drugs, or “extreme” immigration vetting — often give shelter to less attractive tribal loyalties.

In Ohio, Michigan and Kentucky, work-requirement waivers would include exemptions for counties with the highest levels of unemployment, which are overwhelmingly white, rural — and GOP-leaning. But most of these exemptions would do nothing to help people of color who live in high-unemployment urban areas, because they live in places where countywide unemployment numbers are skewed by the inclusion of wealthy suburbs.

In Michigan, for instance, Medicaid work requirements would exempt those living in counties with an unemployment rate of over 8.5 percent — but leave out high-unemployment (and majority-black) cities such as Detroit and Flint. According to an analysis of state data done by The Post, whites would account for 85 percent of those eligible for the unemployment exemption, despite making up only 57 percent of the potentially affected population. African Americans, in contrast, would constitute a mere 1.2 percent of people eligible for an exemption, despite being 23 percent of the affected Medicaid population.

Let’s grant that, as a country, the United States holds close to heart that Protestant ethic that makes paid work an essential marker of adulthood, responsibility and citizenship. And there are arguments to be made for the value of employment, especially here. Jobs aren’t just a wage — for many people, they provide structure to life, an identity, a sense of community, as well as useful skills. Employment can offer a sense of satisfaction, the knowledge that one’s contributions to society are needed and that one’s presence and performance matter.

Whether it’s healthy that we derive so much of our identity from our work is an entirely different question, but the evidence would suggest that this is what we do. One National Bureau of Economic Research study found that as the unemployment rate increases by one percentage point in a given county, the opioid death rate rises by nearly 4 percent and emergency room visits rise by 7 percent. America has always worshipped the bootstrap, but these findings lend credence to the notion that pushing more Americans to work is an obviously positive good.

So, why not share this bounty of employment with all? Because despite all of the moral preening, for all the Trump administration’s solemn proclamations about the “dignity of work” and the economic “principles that are central to the American spirit,” these Medicaid regulations — and the thinking behind welfare administration more generally — are rarely as moral and all-embracing as their proponents would have us believe.

It’s simply impossible not to see intent in racial disparities as large as the one these Medicaid waivers would generate. The GOP is making clear that these work requirements aren’t truly about the virtue of work, in general; they are about who needs to be working, and how much. And the answers to such questions are rarely grounded in the publicly espoused morality of help for all but in far more tribal considerations. Who deserves assistance, no strings attached? As it turns out, it’s those who look, think and vote like me. Who needs to get a firmer grip on those bootstraps and work to earn my help? Everyone else.

But of course, this is the problem that besets all of our considerations around welfare, access to aid and government support. Perhaps the GOP officials who crafted these rules have convinced themselves that they are based on well-considered, universally applicable moral ideals. Work is good! Take responsibility! No mooching! But they ought to ask themselves: Why, then, do these policies so frequently end up giving a free pass to their own?

These Medicaid exemptions are a perfect example of a classic double standard — “morals for thee, but not for me.” Dig a little deeper, and it becomes clear the “morals” are a sideshow.

 

[fraurosena]

I am absolutely appalled once again by the utter callousness of GOP'ers and the lengths they are willing to go to in order to stop votes from passing. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

About damned time:

"Virginia General Assembly Approves Medicaid expansion to 400,000 low-income residents"

Spoiler

RICHMOND — The Virginia legislature voted Wednesday to make government health insurance available to 400,000 low-income residents, overcoming five years of GOP resistance. The decision marks a leftward shift in the legislature and an enormous win for Gov. Ralph Northam (D), the pediatrician who ran on expanding access to health care.

Virginia will join 32 other states and the District in expanding Medicaid coverage. The measure is expected to take effect Jan. 1.

“This is not just about helping this group of people,” said Sen. Frank Wagner (Virginia Beach), one of four Republicans inthe Senate who split from their party to join Democrats and pass the measure by a vote of 23 to 17. “This is about getting out there and helping to bend the cost of health care for every Virginian. . . . It is the number one issue on our voters’ minds. By golly, it ought to be the number one issue on the General Assembly’s mind.”

Another Republican who broke ranks, Sen. Ben Chafin (Russell), is a lawyer and a cattle farmer from a rural district where health care is sorely lacking.

“I came to the conclusion that ‘no’ just wasn’t the answer anymore, that doing nothing about the medical conditions, the state of health care in my district, just wasn’t the answer any longer,” he said.

Following the Senate vote, the House of Delegates approved the measure by a 67 to 31 margin and cheers erupted in the chamber.

“This budget is the culmination of five years of effort to bring our taxpayer dollars home from Washington and expand Medicaid,” said Northam, who is expected to sign the bill. “As a doctor, I’m so proud of the significant step we’ve taken together to help Virginians get quality, affordable care.”.”

Terry White of Chesapeake greeted the news with “Thank you, Jesus!” White, 50, lost private insurance when severe arthritis forced him to give up work in the the Newport News shipyards in 2008. He uses a walker, has congestive heart failure and has been treated for prostate cancer, but he is ineligible for Medicaid under the current system. He has racked up enormous medical bills and had to move in with a sister. “That’s a blessing. That’s gonna help a lot of people.”

The increasing political power of the state’s wealthy suburbs, which have helped Democrats win every statewide office since 2009, nudged the legislature toward expansion, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.

“The fortunes for the Republican party in Richmond were not good if the party stood mainly for divisive issues like no Medicaid expansion, no abortion and no restrictions on guns,” he said. “That’s a losing trifecta in suburban Virginia, and that’s where the votes are.”

Despite Republican efforts to tear it down, the Affordable Care Act “has become more popular than it ever was, and the opportunity to balance the state’s budget with an influx of federal funds became an increasingly popular choice,” he said.

Under the act, Washington allows states to open their Medicaid rolls to people with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $16,643 for an individual. The federal government pledged to pay at least 90 percent of the cost, which in Virginia would amount to about $2 billion a year.

The Republican-controlled state legislature refused it for years. GOP leaders said they feared the federal government would renege on its funding promise, sticking Virginia with an unbearable tab.

“If I spent money like the federal government, then I’d be sleeping in my car and somebody’d be trying to repossess the car,” said Sen. Richard Black (R-Loudoun).

But opposition in the House crumbled after Democrats nearly won control of the chamber in November, amid a blue wave widely viewed as a rebuke to President Trump. A chastened House Speaker M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights), seeking to rebrand Republicans as results-oriented pragmatists, came out in favor of expansion if work requirements, co-pays and other conservative strings were attached.

In February, 19 of the 51 Republicans in the House joined Democrats to pass a budget bill that expanded Medicaid, apparently concluding that they have more to fear from energized Democrats and independents than from potential primary challengers on the right.

Easing their evolution was Northam’s assumption of the governorship in January. The former state senator and lieutenant governor, a soft-spoken pediatrician and former Army doctor once wooed by Republicans, has close friends on both sides of the aisle. His predecessor, Terry McAuliffe (D), tried to expand Medicaid for four years but did not enjoy the same respect and trust from Republicans in Richmond.

In an odd twist, it was the Virginia Senate — traditionally the more moderate chamber and the one that had backed expansion in previous years with help from two now-retired moderate Republicans — that had remained dug in.

That split between the House and the Senate forced the legislature to adjourn its regular session March 10 without a budget. Legislators must pass a spending plan by July 1 to avoid a government shutdown.

Virginia’s existing Medicaid program is one of the least generous in the nation. To be eligible, a disabled individual can make no more than $9,700 a year. The cutoff for a family of three is $6,900. Able-bodied, childless adults are not eligible, no matter how poor.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Virginia can raise those income limits to $16,750 a year for a disabled person or able-bodied adult, and $28,700 for a family of three.

The leanness — some say stinginess — of the current Medicaid program partly accounts for Virginia’s reluctance to expand. The current program covers 1 million, so adding 400,000 represents a 40 percent increase — a much bigger leap for Virginia than for most states.

Republican hold-outs in the Senate saw the carnage last year when Democrats flipped 15 House seats, but they were insulated since they were not on the ballot. And some doubted that embracing “Obamacare” would help their party, which has not won a statewide election since 2009. While voters called health care a priority in exit polls, some Senate Republicans blamed the GOP losses in November on an anti-Trump wave, not pro-Medicaid fervor.

They fought up to the moment of the vote Wednesday, with 10 hours of procedural moves, passionate floor speeches and an appearance by former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, the Republican from Pennsylvania, who left office in 2007 and ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2012 and 2016. He warned senators that Obamacare could be killed by Congress.

“We are picking up some momentum, I feel very, very good” that legislation repealing the ACA will advance in Congress, said Santorum, who now lives in Virginia. “That means that everything that happened here will be for naught, in fact you’ll create something that you’ll have to get rid of in a matter of two years.”

Santorum’s appearance was organized by Americans for Prosperity, the conservative activist group funded by the Koch brothers. People wearing green Americans for Prosperity shirts and holding signs calling for “No Medicaid expansion in Virginia” lined the meeting room. Expansion supporters waited in the hallway outside; their signs reminded individual senators of the percentage of voters in their districts who favor expansion.

Capitol Police had to separate the two factions when they got into a shouting match, a rarity in the marble corridors where a staffer regularly scolds anyone who speaks above a whisper.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. slammed the vote, saying that it “abandons Virginia’s longstanding reputation for fiscal responsibility.”

In a floor speech, he also lamented the tone of the debate.

“In the years I have been in the Senate, I have never been treated more disrespectfully by some of these advocacy groups,” he said. “Lying down in front of my office.. with made up tombstones, asking people to blow their horns when they go past my law office...The verbal abuse I took yesterday, just walking from the Pocahantas Building, was unbelievable.”

In the end, Wagner, Chafin joined two other Republicans, Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (Augusta), and Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Fauquier) to vote for expansion.

I didn't realize Sanscrotum is now a Virginia resident. I wonder why we were so unlucky.

[AmazonGrace]

 I think he answered his own question

[Cartmann99]

22 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

About damned time:

"Virginia General Assembly Approves Medicaid expansion to 400,000 low-income residents"

  Reveal hidden contents

RICHMOND — The Virginia legislature voted Wednesday to make government health insurance available to 400,000 low-income residents, overcoming five years of GOP resistance. The decision marks a leftward shift in the legislature and an enormous win for Gov. Ralph Northam (D), the pediatrician who ran on expanding access to health care.

Virginia will join 32 other states and the District in expanding Medicaid coverage. The measure is expected to take effect Jan. 1.

“This is not just about helping this group of people,” said Sen. Frank Wagner (Virginia Beach), one of four Republicans inthe Senate who split from their party to join Democrats and pass the measure by a vote of 23 to 17. “This is about getting out there and helping to bend the cost of health care for every Virginian. . . . It is the number one issue on our voters’ minds. By golly, it ought to be the number one issue on the General Assembly’s mind.”

Another Republican who broke ranks, Sen. Ben Chafin (Russell), is a lawyer and a cattle farmer from a rural district where health care is sorely lacking.

“I came to the conclusion that ‘no’ just wasn’t the answer anymore, that doing nothing about the medical conditions, the state of health care in my district, just wasn’t the answer any longer,” he said.

Following the Senate vote, the House of Delegates approved the measure by a 67 to 31 margin and cheers erupted in the chamber.

“This budget is the culmination of five years of effort to bring our taxpayer dollars home from Washington and expand Medicaid,” said Northam, who is expected to sign the bill. “As a doctor, I’m so proud of the significant step we’ve taken together to help Virginians get quality, affordable care.”.”

Terry White of Chesapeake greeted the news with “Thank you, Jesus!” White, 50, lost private insurance when severe arthritis forced him to give up work in the the Newport News shipyards in 2008. He uses a walker, has congestive heart failure and has been treated for prostate cancer, but he is ineligible for Medicaid under the current system. He has racked up enormous medical bills and had to move in with a sister. “That’s a blessing. That’s gonna help a lot of people.”

The increasing political power of the state’s wealthy suburbs, which have helped Democrats win every statewide office since 2009, nudged the legislature toward expansion, said Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington.

“The fortunes for the Republican party in Richmond were not good if the party stood mainly for divisive issues like no Medicaid expansion, no abortion and no restrictions on guns,” he said. “That’s a losing trifecta in suburban Virginia, and that’s where the votes are.”

Despite Republican efforts to tear it down, the Affordable Care Act “has become more popular than it ever was, and the opportunity to balance the state’s budget with an influx of federal funds became an increasingly popular choice,” he said.

Under the act, Washington allows states to open their Medicaid rolls to people with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $16,643 for an individual. The federal government pledged to pay at least 90 percent of the cost, which in Virginia would amount to about $2 billion a year.

The Republican-controlled state legislature refused it for years. GOP leaders said they feared the federal government would renege on its funding promise, sticking Virginia with an unbearable tab.

“If I spent money like the federal government, then I’d be sleeping in my car and somebody’d be trying to repossess the car,” said Sen. Richard Black (R-Loudoun).

But opposition in the House crumbled after Democrats nearly won control of the chamber in November, amid a blue wave widely viewed as a rebuke to President Trump. A chastened House Speaker M. Kirkland Cox (R-Colonial Heights), seeking to rebrand Republicans as results-oriented pragmatists, came out in favor of expansion if work requirements, co-pays and other conservative strings were attached.

In February, 19 of the 51 Republicans in the House joined Democrats to pass a budget bill that expanded Medicaid, apparently concluding that they have more to fear from energized Democrats and independents than from potential primary challengers on the right.

Easing their evolution was Northam’s assumption of the governorship in January. The former state senator and lieutenant governor, a soft-spoken pediatrician and former Army doctor once wooed by Republicans, has close friends on both sides of the aisle. His predecessor, Terry McAuliffe (D), tried to expand Medicaid for four years but did not enjoy the same respect and trust from Republicans in Richmond.

In an odd twist, it was the Virginia Senate — traditionally the more moderate chamber and the one that had backed expansion in previous years with help from two now-retired moderate Republicans — that had remained dug in.

That split between the House and the Senate forced the legislature to adjourn its regular session March 10 without a budget. Legislators must pass a spending plan by July 1 to avoid a government shutdown.

Virginia’s existing Medicaid program is one of the least generous in the nation. To be eligible, a disabled individual can make no more than $9,700 a year. The cutoff for a family of three is $6,900. Able-bodied, childless adults are not eligible, no matter how poor.

Under the Affordable Care Act, Virginia can raise those income limits to $16,750 a year for a disabled person or able-bodied adult, and $28,700 for a family of three.

The leanness — some say stinginess — of the current Medicaid program partly accounts for Virginia’s reluctance to expand. The current program covers 1 million, so adding 400,000 represents a 40 percent increase — a much bigger leap for Virginia than for most states.

Republican hold-outs in the Senate saw the carnage last year when Democrats flipped 15 House seats, but they were insulated since they were not on the ballot. And some doubted that embracing “Obamacare” would help their party, which has not won a statewide election since 2009. While voters called health care a priority in exit polls, some Senate Republicans blamed the GOP losses in November on an anti-Trump wave, not pro-Medicaid fervor.

They fought up to the moment of the vote Wednesday, with 10 hours of procedural moves, passionate floor speeches and an appearance by former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, the Republican from Pennsylvania, who left office in 2007 and ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 2012 and 2016. He warned senators that Obamacare could be killed by Congress.

“We are picking up some momentum, I feel very, very good” that legislation repealing the ACA will advance in Congress, said Santorum, who now lives in Virginia. “That means that everything that happened here will be for naught, in fact you’ll create something that you’ll have to get rid of in a matter of two years.”

Santorum’s appearance was organized by Americans for Prosperity, the conservative activist group funded by the Koch brothers. People wearing green Americans for Prosperity shirts and holding signs calling for “No Medicaid expansion in Virginia” lined the meeting room. Expansion supporters waited in the hallway outside; their signs reminded individual senators of the percentage of voters in their districts who favor expansion.

Capitol Police had to separate the two factions when they got into a shouting match, a rarity in the marble corridors where a staffer regularly scolds anyone who speaks above a whisper.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. slammed the vote, saying that it “abandons Virginia’s longstanding reputation for fiscal responsibility.”

In a floor speech, he also lamented the tone of the debate.

“In the years I have been in the Senate, I have never been treated more disrespectfully by some of these advocacy groups,” he said. “Lying down in front of my office.. with made up tombstones, asking people to blow their horns when they go past my law office...The verbal abuse I took yesterday, just walking from the Pocahantas Building, was unbelievable.”

In the end, Wagner, Chafin joined two other Republicans, Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (Augusta), and Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Fauquier) to vote for expansion.

I didn't realize Sanscrotum is now a Virginia resident. I wonder why we were so unlucky.

Doesn't he mostly support himself these days by being a landlord? Have any laws recently changed that make things more favorable for landlords in your state? 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Cartmann99
I suck at typing

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

Doesn't he mostly support himself these days by being a landlord? Have any laws recently changed that make things more favorable for landlords in your state? 

I'm not aware of any such changes, but it's possible. I'm guessing he's moved to Virginia to be close to DC so he can be a paid lobbyist. Apparently he lives in Great Falls, which is a ridiculously expensive area. This is one of the houses available in the area.

[nausicaa]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm not aware of any such changes, but it's possible. I'm guessing he's moved to Virginia to be close to DC so he can be a paid lobbyist. Apparently he lives in Great Falls, which is a ridiculously expensive area. This is one of the houses available in the area.

Santorum has lived in Great Falls since 2007. I know there was some controversy about his family taking advantage of a Pennsylvania state funded online education program while he did not live in the state full-time. It looks like his house is worth about two million.

He also attends a very conservative local Catholic church with links to Opus Dei. 

 

Edited June 1, 2018 by nausicaa

[47of74]

Then there's this sick fuck up in Michigan.

Quote

Michigan State Senate candidate Mike Saari argues men being attracted to 12-year-old girls is normal because it’s in the Bible.

Saari made headlines last February after making deplorable comments about the female judge in the Larry Nassar trial concerning the sexual abuse of underage gymnasts, at one point calling the judge a “feminazi” and making crude reference to her sex life.

 

[AmazonGrace]

5 hours ago, 47of74 said:

Then there's this sick fuck up in Michigan.

 

Somehow I knew he's also a flaming racist and a Republican before clicking the link

[47of74]

12 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Somehow I knew he's also a flaming racist and a Republican before clicking the link

Ain't that a prerequisite for being a Republican these days, being a flaming racist?

[AmazonGrace]

Voted most likely to kill someone: 

 

[47of74]

Yikes

Quote

State Rep. Jason Spencer (R-Woodbine) of Georgia was featured on Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who Is America?” Sunday night shouting racial slurs, flashing his naked buttocks, and making fun of Chinese people.

Baron Cohen, “disguised” as Israeli terrorism expert Col. Erran Morad, convinced Spencer to participate in an anti-terrorism training video meant for elected officials to learn how to protect themselves from terrorists.

“All you damn sand-n-----s over in the Middle East, we are tired of you coming to America and we are tired of you trying to threaten us,” Spencer says in a post-credits video titled, “A Message to Terrorists from Rep. Jason Spencer.”

In addition to brandishing a knife, Spencer continues his rampage: “We will cut off your dick, you understand? We will take your dick and we will shove it in your mouth. How are you going to rape children and women without a dick?”

 

[Audrey2]

9 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Yikes

 

He sounds like a charming twit. As my mother would say, "Does he kiss his mother with that mouth?"

[47of74]

57 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

He sounds like a charming twit. As my mother would say, "Does he kiss his mother with that mouth?"

Yeah, he's quite the charmer....

Quote

In 2016, shortly after President Trump won the election, Mr. Spencer filed and then withdrew — following an outcry — a bill that critics said would have effectively banned Muslims from wearing veils in public.

Last summer, Mr. Spencer got into a Facebook exchange with a former Georgia lawmaker, an African-American attorney named LaDawn Jones, who supported the removal of Confederate statues. In a comment that had threatening racial overtones, Mr. Spencer told Ms. Jones: “Looks like you are afflicted with the same poison you claim to fight against. I can guarantee you won’t be met with torches but something a lot more definitive. People in South Georgia are people of action, not drama.” He added that people who want the statues removed “will go missing in the Okefenokee,” referring to a swamp in Georgia.

Mr. Spencer also sparred with the Catholic Church this year, referring to it as a “pro-child predator special interest group” and the “child sexual predator lobby.” This was in the midst of a heated debate over Georgia’s Hidden Predator Act, which Mr. Spencer wanted to toughen by giving victims of child sexual abuse more power to sue perpetrators and institutions that harbor them.

And now the Republicans are speaking out against him because he said out loud what they're always thinking and that's not supposed to be done...

Quote

On Monday, the speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives demanded Mr. Spencer’s resignation for behavior he called “reprehensible.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

Worth it for punishing the poor

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Meanwhile, if you're in Wichita, you might want to drink more whisky than water.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Toto I don't think we're in 21st century anymore

[AmazonGrace]

 

Apparently she wrote this https://medium.com/@candacefaber/in-response-to-all-of-todays-media-inquiries-d9ddda7fcdac

[Howl]

Yes, this happened: 

Utah Senator Rides High On Medical Pot Vote By Trying Marijuana For First Time

The comments are pretty funny, too.  However,  the senator just ate half a pot gummy treat, and we don't know how it turned out.