LePage Wants To Make it More Difficult to Get Medicaid

The thing about attacking social programs is that it is can, in some cases, be easy to get away with: the poorest tend not to vote in as great a proportion as the middle class and wealthy. Tweaks in social programs can net impressive sounding savings, and the human cost is all too easy to ignore.

So when Governor LePage proposes something like extending the waiting period for qualifying for state medicaid from 45 days to 90 days, it is, perhaps, easy to consider that the savings of such an extension ($3 million in the next fiscal year...whoopee) are worth a mere month and half of waiting for the poor or disabled.

However, one should consider that crucial, uncovered medical expenses for a disabled person for just an extra 45 days could potentially run into the thousands or tens of thousands. More likely, those forced to wait longer for medicaid will simply go longer without medical care, endangering their lives and well being.

Why does it take the state 90 days to make a determination about medicaid eligibility? The truth is, it doesn't. The state laws stipulate that it must not. This is simply a way to squeeze a few more bucks out of our state's poorest, while the Governor goes on making promising every concession he can to the wealthiest.

It's interesting--don't you think--that Governor "Cut the Red Tape" LePage wants to hasten the decision making for industrial permits and the approval process for complex and potentially environmentally damaging projects (in the name of efficiency!) while doubling the amount of time needed to provide healthcare for the poor and disabled.

No Surprise on LePage's DOC pick

After Atrios, here is a Maine edition of simple answers to stupid questions.

Q: Why did LePage pick Private Prison Warden Joseph Ponte to head the Department of Corrections?

A: [Private Prison company and Ponte's employer] CCA...contributed $25,000 to LePage's election campaign.

This has been another edition of simple answers to stupid quetsions.

LePage's War on the Environment

Well, it didn't take long to realize that our worst nightmares vis a vis the Maine environment really are about to come true. I think this lede from the Kennebec Journal about sums it up:

Gov. Paul LePage has proposed zoning 10 million acres of northern Maine for development, repealing laws that require manufacturers to take back recyclable goods for disposal and reversing a ban on the use of a chemical linked to cancer in children's products.

Holy Cow! Have you ever seen so much and such diverse SUCK crammed into a single sentence?Kudos to KJ reporter Beth Quimby. My late and wonderful high school Journalism teacher Ms. Lane would have definitely dispensed a gold star for that one. I mean, cripes...10 MILLION acres, repealing recycling laws, reversing a chemical ban, and children's cancer all right there in the lede.

And, of course, as always with LePage it just gets worse! LePage also wants to:

* Making Maine's environmental laws conform to less stringent federal standards;

* Requiring a cost-benefit analysis for all rulemakings;

* Relaxing air emissions removal standards, especially for smaller projects;

I especially love that second one. Picture this kind of analysis: "Well, this toxic byproduct causes mind-controlling brain slugs to grow on the skulls of the elderly, but a ban on dumping it into Auburn Lake will cost businesses $100,000 a year! RULE CHANGE DENIED!!1!one!"

And relaxing our regulations to fit federal guidelines? Anyone else see the irony here? A loony tea party conservative, a guy who represents the spittle flinging nitwits who hate the federal government with every fiber of their being, who worship at the altar of "state sovereignty," wants Maine to abandon its particularly specialized environmental protections and follow bare minimum "one size fits all" federal rules? Uh...right, but god help us all if the Federal Government wants to establish healthcare standards. That's commie pinko triple Nazi-Socialism.

Folks, you might be asking yourself where these proposals come from. Like, did Governor Illiterate LeTripleChin think of these things himself? It doesn't seem likely does it...hmmm...let's see:

LePage's proposals are based on a series of "red tape workshops" the administration is holding with chambers of commerce to identify government rules that may dampen the state's business climate.

Aha! Those pesky chamber folks again. Look, I know I'm starting to get a little Glen Becky paranoid sounding about the evil horrors of your state or local chamber of commerce...and it's not that such organizations are bad. They aren't. But they are, most definitely, SPECIAL INTEREST groups who have things beside the best interests of their fellow man at heart. The Governor's hypocrisy on this front is maddening.

Anyway, that's some quality red tape cutting, Paul. I hope you'll also be there to cut the red ribbon at the new children's cancer wing your red tape cutting will one day require.

Off Topic: Maine Chinese Food

Dear Franklin County, Maine:

Your chinese food sucks.

K Thx,

Bede

Stench of Death Hangs Over LePage Environmental Meetings

Why do I hear the Emperor's Theme in my head when I read when I read innocent news items like this? :

Representatives of an array of resource-oriented businesses and activities are meeting today with Gov. Paul LePage and his senior staff at a Roundtable on Maine People and the Environment.

Maybe it's because LePage says creepy things like this:

LePage said liberals who have wanted to “close the woods off” and advocate the preservation of wild lands have attended public hearings and gotten restrictive measures passed. Now, the governor said, it’s time to have business people show up and be heard. He encouraged association members to attend upcoming public hearings before the Legislature...

Oh those evil liberals and their tree hugging. Bede's prediction? LePage will do his best to ruin Maine's greatest asset: its pristine wilderness.

David Farmer on LePage's provincialism

David Farmer has a very intriguing and well thought out guest column in today's Bangor Daily News. In it, Farmer suggests that LePage's actions and words toward the NAACP betray the governor's narrow view of the world, and his inability to see beyond his own circle of experience and influence. As Farmer puts it:

Gov. Paul LePage is no racist. At least not in any classical sense of the word.

Instead, his conduct suggests a lack of awareness or concern with the larger world outside the small circle of mostly older white men he has surrounded himself with. He appears to see little value in understanding perspectives different than his own.

I would say this viewpoint meshes more or less with my own. LePage is a man of limited cultural experience, limited political viewpoints, a limited worldview, and incredibly narrow and provincial idea of how society should work. For LePage, a black advocacy group represents the "other": a somehow threatening and misguided "other." The experience of all Mainers should be as his experience, and anyone whose experience varies must be doing it wrong.

I can think of no other explanation for why a rational human being would not only tell a civil rights organization to kiss his butt, but who would then make up lies that sound like the projections of right-wing fantasyland: where all minorities are out to shake down whites for free stuff, and all blacks are receiving preferential treatment that is worthy of resentment.

Just go to freerepublic.com and read what they have to say about Obama's accomplishments. He only got into Columbia and Harvard because of affirmative action, etc. A white person with his credentials would have gone nowhere, etc. He's had everything handed to him, blah blah blah. We heard the exact same canard about Sonya Sotomayor. In both cases, as with LePage's embarrassing conduct toward the NAACP, we see the smug self satisfaction of indivduals incapable of understanding the varieties of cultural and racial experience in this country, who see any way but their own as somehow unworthy of credit or praise, and who see any intimation that racial inequality might exist in this country as playing the "race card" (whatever the hell that even means).

Of course, Maine is 99.9999999 percent white, so LePage's provincialism may find an eagerly assenting audience. But he sure as hell makes Maine look bad to the rest of the nation.

LePage Taps Special Interest Lobbyist for HHS Post

Here's all you need to know about Paul LePage's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services: she's the head of a lobbying association representing the interests of hospitals.

Is this a big deal? Potentially yes, potentially no. I'm going to give Mary Mayhew the benefit of the doubt. But it is certainly worth pointing out that there can be direct conflicts of interest between the financial interests of hospitals and an affordable, effective, and functioning social services network.

Mayhew, who has no experience at all with social services administration, is already on record as favoring cuts in the state assistance programs, guised, of course, in the language of getting people "off welfare."

She spoke of a need to change the mission of the department.

"Welfare was never meant to be a lifestyle," she said. "Yet that is exactly what it has become for too many families who are trapped in a failing system."

Again, I'll give Mayhew the benefit of the doubt, but my "shill radar" is already beginning to wail. Is this really the time to cut back on social programs...now, at a time of ruinous unemployment and declining wages? Unfortunately, my guess is that we have a DHHS headwho will greedily go along with LePage's mission to hack Maine's social safety net to pieces in the name of "low taxes" and a "good business environment."