Parents in Indiana have reportedly been told by state workers to leave their severely disabled kids at homeless shelters if they can’t afford to care for them, in what advocacy groups say is a horrifying example of how government budget cuts are hitting home for ordinary Americans.
Some parents testified at a state hearing this week that employees at the state Bureau of Developmental Disabilities Services gave them the harsh recommendation, according to the Associated Press.
The parents had sought guidance after they failed to receive scheduled Medicaid waivers that pay to support disabled children living independently. GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels has made cuts to the budget of the Family and Social Services Administration, of which the bureau is a part.
“We are people and they are people,” Becky Holladay — whose 22-year-old son has epilepsy, autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — told legislators Tuesday. “They have lives that are worth something.”
October 2010
(via utnereader)
One young man insisted that [Eric] Holder is “the most anti-gun attorney general this nation has ever had.” When Rachel [Maddow] asked how he arrived at this, he had absolutely no idea why he believes what he believes. He referenced Holder’s “voting record beforehand,” which made no sense, since Holder has never held elected office. Asked what it was, exactly, that Holder did on gun policy he didn’t like, the Miller supporter — who, remember, feels so strongly about this issue that he brought it up — replied, “I, uh, I honestly, uh, I don’t know enough about him to answer that truthfully.” … In the same segment, a third Miller supporter insisted Holder was bad because of “the voter intimidation with the Black Panthers.” That voter later argued that members of the New Black Panther Party — which the Bush administration saw as too meaningless to pursue — aren’t being prosecuted because they’re black. This is one of the reasons she’s voting for Joe Miller. Ignorance spreads like a cancer, and right about now, it’s making our body politic pretty sick.
Christine O’Donnell threatened Tuesday to sue a Delaware radio station for not turning over a videotape of an interview with the Republican Senate nominee.
A campaign official demanded that WDEL give them the tape of the interview that had just aired, and, when the station refused, the candidate told host Rick Jenson said she would sue, according to an account from WDEL.The radio station also contends that O’Donnell campaign manager Matt Moran called the station and threatened to “crush WDEL” if the tape was not handed over.
After WDEL’s legal counsel conferred with O’Donnell’s legal team — and showed O’Donnell’s attorneys video of the interview — the campaign’s lawyers apologized to the station.
” —Christine O’Donnell threatened to sue radio station
The campaign also apologized to the station for O’Donnell’s threats that she would “get them and their little dog, too.” — Ryking
(via ryking)
I love this. Someone at Disney was like “Wait, Keith Richards did drugs? The guitar player from the Rolling Stones. HIM?! Well how can we keep him in this movie about comical thieves and rapists shooting guns and killing each other with swords?! IT’S A FAMILY MOVIE PEOPLE!”
Tim Proffit, the Rand Paul supporter who stomped the head of activist Lauren Valle, when asked if he would apologize to Valle for his actions (via apsies)
Wotta tool.
(via silas216)
Meaningful voter fraud is an incredibly difficult thing to pull off. Putting in fake registrations (while highly illegal) is fairly straight forward. However, getting fake people to the polls to vote is challenging. You have to use real people. And, since there are actual election workers watching, you can really only vote once per polling location. If you try very, very hard you might be able to cast a dozen votes. In the process of doing this you would commit roughly a bazillion felonies. It’s not worth it. Similarly, if you’re not eligible to vote for whatever reason, you could risk serious consequences in order to cast a vote that probably won’t actually influence an election. Using voter fraud to steal an election for anything larger than the local school board is nearly impossible in the U.S..
But altering an election outcome by suppressing voters is easy. It appears that the Tea Party wants to do this. Here’s how:
- Talk a lot about voter fraud prior to the election to give your operation a veneer of legitimacy.
- Choose polling places where people who are likely to vote against your candidate vote.
- Challenge voters.
- If you can, try to prevent them from voting. It’s probably illegal—but the poll worker might not know that.
- Even if you don’t get any ballots thrown out, you can slow things down. This creates long lines. People are running late for work. They’ll leave. Fewer votes will be cast.
- If you want to be particularly vicious, start organizie “surveillance squads” or something like that to see if you can intimidate anybody.
In the U.S. voter fraud is a fake problem raised by people looking to suppress voters or by people unwittingly providing political cover for voter suppression.
Let’s spell that out: The Wall Street banks that were bailed out with taxpayer money are using their profits to bankroll Republicans who now claim to be unalterably opposed to any more bailouts, ever, for all time, in any universe — even though the original TARP bailout was a Republican idea, signed into law by a Republican president, with the strong backing of the Republican leadership of both the House and Senate.
