Matt Blunt continued his assault on the citizens of his state by slashing an additional 1,274 jobs and $240 million from the state budget. When he took office in January he eliminated 1,456 jobs and cut $1.1 billion from the budget of a poor state. He managed to piss off virtually everyone by slashing the First Steps program. First Steps is one of those state-run program success stories. It serves kids who start out with disadvantages and helps them achieve their potentials. He has since found a way to save the program because the public outcry was immediate, loud, and long. Immediately the idea of recalling the governor appeared on bulletin boards, etc. State constitution says we can't recall, we can only remove by impeachment. With all the Republicans in the state legislature we can't do it until 2006, and then only if we turn a lot of these guys out in the street. Which in and of itself is a pretty damn good idea...Perhaps we can save an impeachment and just lame duck his punk-ass in 2006...
Our fair haired governor - and new father of a healthy baby who will never experience want or need - has slashed the state Medicaid budget, and he is eliminating such wasteful programs as the "Foster Grandparents" program, that keep foster kids with family. Our Governor has children who will never receive an immunization in a public health clinic, never wait for a city bus, never wait eight months for a dentist appointment. The Governors child will never receive a free lunch in public school, nor be taken into custody of child and family services when the only parent in the home gets arrested. And the Governor is just a child himself...He is making decisions that affect peoples lives and he has no frame of reference, no perspective. He's never been hungry, or truly cold, or truly hopelessly desolate. I would wager dollars against dimes that he never came home from school to a house that had the power cut that day, and neither will his new child. I congratulate the governor and his wife on their healthy new baby, but he needs to think about all the other babies born in Missouri so far in 2005 whose fathers aren't the Governor and who will experience the things I mentioned above. In Saturday's KC Star the following table of proposed cuts appears on page A 6:
Social Services $94.1 million
Mental Health $15.0 million
Corrections $16.4 million
Health $15.0 million
Economic Development $10.4 million
Transportation $ 6.4 million
Revenue $ 5.8 million
Administration $ 5.8 million
Higher Education $ 4.5 million
Public Safety $ 3.3 million
Information Technology consolidation $ 2.6 million
Natural Resources $ 2.2 million
Agriculture $ 1.8 million
Statewide leasing $ 1.7 million
Elementary and Secondary education $709,000.00
Labor and industrial Relations $686,000.00
It's simply mindboggling! I spent the last two years in an inner-city medical center on a trauma team. Before that, I worked in a public health clinic. Missouri has a high poverty rate, a shameful highway system, our cities are crumbling and our bridges are falling down. Social Services were dismal before the cuts, and the number of uninsured is growing daily, yet we slash health funding...But we pay no taxes. I hear someone complain about paying three hundred bucks a year in taxes on a nice home and I roll my eyes. I moved here from Oregon, and paid a $1300 a year tax bill on a modest home. I bitched, sure, for about five minutes. But I could get on a bus 60 miles inland and go to the coast for a buck. I drove on good roads. Every uninsured citizen in the state was covered by the Oregon Health Plan and paid a premium based on a sliding scale. In Oregon, I paid no sales tax, but I paid an 11% income tax. Last year, as a medical professional, with a comfortable income and lifestyle, I was stunned, and frankly offended, when the state sent me a tax refund. They could have kept that $350 and used it to patch a pothole in Kansas City, or saved it for a few First Steps Occupational Therapist home visits to a disadvantaged child in a rural area. Repeal the freakin' Hancock Amendment, and take care of the children and the infrastructure! Got that?
For Gods sake Missouri! Wake the hell up and pay some fucking taxes! If we can't give a grandmother raising her two grandkids a $136 a month subsidy to help them stay together, well, I am embarrassed. I would give up that meager refund to be secure in the knowledge that the woman in the article continues to receive her subsidy for raising another family, after she thought she was done!
We have the worst Meth problem in the country, according to the politicians, but we are closing a prison. Kansas City is home to the zip code in this country with the worst incidence of diabetes in the entire nation yet we are cutting funding for health services. That zip code? It's served by a for-profit hospital that within a year of acquiring ownership of the hospital, closed the doors to their money-losing outpatient dialysis clinic. (The hospital in question is Research Medical Center, Zip 64132. The owner of that facility? Hospital Corporation of America. This is the hospital chain owned primarily by the Frist family of Tennessee. The same Frist family that our U.S. Senate (Republican) Majority Leader belongs to.)
Missouri has poor people and bad roads. We also have clever kids and beautiful country. But we slash funding for our only two assets: kids and nature. And cutting economic development? That's like eating the chicken, folks, then whining that you have no eggs! If we retained the economic development funding, we could help grow the tax base. Maybe we could afford to pay such low taxes if more people had jobs and paid any taxes at all!!! That vein is throbbing on my temple again.....
