Don’t Let a D-Bag Teabag Sen. Lindsey Graham

MoonHowler

Guest Post by Colonel Morris Davis, Attorney and Former Chief Prosecutor for Guantanamo Military Commissions. Colonel Davis is a Prince William County resident.

South Carolina has a reputation for setting the political bar as low as it can go and seeing who can slither under it. It’s the place where in the 2000 presidential primaries Karl Rove put the shiv to John McCain’s bid with a whisper campaign asking people if they’d be less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he’d fathered an illegitimate black child. While McCain hadn’t, oddly enough, the long-time South Carolina senator and leading segregationist Strom Thurmond had and hid the fact for decades until his death. It’s the state currently under the stewardship of Governor Mark Sanford who last year gave the phrase “hiking the Appalachian Trail” a whole new meaning when he lied to his wife and his constituents about his whereabouts while he was bumping bellies with his “soul mate” down in South America.

The bar was recalibrated downward again last week at a Tea Party Patriots rally in Greenville, S.C., by William Gheen, head of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC). Interestingly — at least to me — Gheen and I are from the same small town, Shelby, N.C., and we’re both graduates of Shelby High School, although I’m several years older and don’t recall ever meeting him. Gheen fired up the Tea Party base and had all of the Patriots in the crowd cheering when he said:

“Barney Frank has been more honest and brave than you (referring to South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham). At least we know about Barney Frank, nobody’s going to hold it over his head. Look, I’m a tolerant person. I don’t care about your private life, Lindsey, but as our U.S. senator, I need to figure out why you’re trying to sell out your own countrymen, I need to make sure you being gay isn’t it.”

ALIPAC issued an email press release saying:

The national border security organization known as Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) is officially calling for U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to make his homosexual lifestyle public knowledge in the interest of political integrity and national security.

“U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is gay and while many people in South Carolina and Washington, D.C., know that, the general public and Graham’s constituents do not,” said William Gheen, President of ALIPAC.” I personally do not care about Graham’s private life, but in this situation his desire to keep this a secret may explain why he is doing a lot of political dirty work for others who have the power to reveal his secrets. Senator Graham needs to come out of the closet inside that log cabin so the public can rest assured he is not being manipulated with his secret.”

On the ALIPAC website, it says Gheen is a “veteran campaign consultant” known for “creating new voter outreach methods.” There’s nothing new about the slash and burn tactic of ambushing opponents with sleazy innuendo. Rove and others of his ilk in the radical right mastered the tradecraft long ago. The citizens of South Carolina have swallowed the bait before — ask John McCain — but I hope by now they have wised up and won’t let Gheen set the hook and drag them over the transom.

What brought the wrath of the radical right down on Senator Graham is that on occasion he breaks ranks with right wing orthodoxy and, heaven forbid, works with colleagues on both sides of the aisle on legislation. Isn’t that what our elected representatives in the legislative branch are supposed to do? If, as Gheen, ALIPAC, and the teabaggers seem to expect, all elected representatives stay in strict lockstep with the party then every vote in the Senate is a preordained 59-41 tally. What’s the point in convening Congress if there’s guaranteed gridlock and an immovable impasse? We don’t need fewer members like Senator Graham, we need more; members who don’t have their heads so far up the rear ends of the Svengalis that pull the strings of their parties that they’ve lost sight of why the voters sent them to Capitol Hill.

It’s disappointing to see groups like ALIPAC and the Tea Party Patriots try to stake a false claim to patriotism. The motto of Gheen’s organization is “fight back with ALIPAC,” but it appears the only fighting Gheen’s a veteran of is a verbal ambush of his own making on a career military officer. Gheen never served a day defending the country as a member of the armed forces (another PINO – Patriot In Name Only) while Senator Graham has been a member of the U.S. Air Force for 28 years. It’s one thing to talk the talk like Gheen, but Senator (Colonel) Graham has walked the walk in defense of America.

I was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay when the Supreme Court struck down the judicial system created by President Bush’s executive order and put the ball in Congress’ lap to craft a solution. Senator Graham invited me to his office and asked one thing: “What do you need from me to get the job done right?” That’s the attitude I’ve seen from Senator Graham; what’s the right thing to do, not what’s most politically expedient or what’s tracking best in the polls. In my view, that’s called integrity and there’s not enough of it on Capitol Hill.

The people of South Carolina elected Senator Graham to represent them in the legislative branch of government, not to be head deacon at their church. William Gheen and his type want to derail a good man — an actual patriot, and a dedicated public servant — by pandering to prejudice. I don’t care about Senator Graham’s sexual preference or if he even has one, but I do care about the direction our country is headed. We need leaders with integrity and principles who put the needs of the citizens ahead of their political fortunes. We need more Lindsey Graham’s and the citizens of South Carolina should be proud he’s their senator. I hope they don’t get teabagged by a d-bag like Gheen.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED…..

MoonHowler

‘NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED’ is the crux of any resolution.  In this case, there are 4 key directives.   They  tell us what is going to be done.  All the ‘whereases’ are justifications.

The day before yesterday the  Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released its report which claries the fiscal impact , if any, of the expansion of Medicaid.  Click here to see the entire report.

Poverty Guidelines

10 Components of the Healthcare Bill

In talking this out, why do we need a resolution to do any of this?  Just do it over time and report back.  Can’t the BOCS just direct Ms. Peacor to make a statement after the dust has settled and the ink has dried on the Legislation?   isn’t that what is supposed to happen anyway?

Why all the fanfare?  Why the proclamations from the court house steps and from the Tea Party Rally?  Creating an Opt Out Resolution which doesn’t even opt out  seems like bad business as usual.  What is the price tag for all this investigation?  What is the price tag for pulling people off of their regular jobs to do all this busy work?

The red print is from Moonhowlings.

The Directives from the ‘Resolution:’

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that Prince William Board of County Supervisors requests that the Department of Social Services, assisted by County staff:

1.     Estimate the additional population eligible for Medicaid in Prince William County as of January 1, 2014 according to the provisions of the PPAC and the regulations which will probably be promulgated by the federal government to implement the PPAC; and

It will be difficult to estimate the county demographics for Jan. 1, 2014.  The best we will be able to do is estimation. Estimations may be extrapolated from other existing data.  However, the estimations  are not exact.  Furthermore there are benefits that cannot easily be quantified:

According to News and Messenger:

The 2008 American Community Survey reported that [the county’s] poverty rate was 5.2 percent in 2008, less than half the statewide rate of 10.2 percent and about one third the national rate of 13.2 percent,” according to the quarterly report.

The county’s median household income in 2008, according to ACS figures, was $88,724, leading to its rank of 16th in terms of wealth among the largest counties in the United States. Per capita income in the county for 2008, meanwhile, came in at $36,049, according to the quarterly report.

2.      Estimate the additional financial burden to the County taxpayers for additional administration of benefits for the newly expanded, less-sensitive population; and

What is a less-sensitive population?  A family of 4 making $29,000 is hardly rolling in the lap of luxury.  What is involved in administering Medicaid?  Processing an application, verifying eligibility, enrolling the person/family into the Medicaid program according to the guidelines is pretty much it.  Is there a hidden process we don’t know about?

  • The additional cost to the states represents only a 1.25 percent increase in what states would have spent on Medicaid from 2014 to 2019 in the absence of health reform.
  • The federal government will assume 96 percent of the costs of the Medicaid expansion over the next ten years, according to an analysis of CBO estimates.
  • And having more people covered as a result of the Medicaid expansion and other provisions in the health reform law will reduce state and local governments’ current spending on other services for the uninsured, such as mental health services.

3.  . Work with private health care providers to estimate the magnitude of the reduction of

Working with private health care providers?  Which party will these providers belong to?  How will they be selected?  This information will be anecdotal at best.  Didn’t Linda Chavez warn us about using anecdotal  documentation rather than scientific data?

Why should we expect there to be a reduction of available health care options for the Medicaid population?

Why isn’t the BOCS attempting to bring more medical services to the county?  Aren’t these businesses we are trying to attract?

4. Advise the Commonwealth and the federal government that unless additional resources are found at the federal and state levels of government to fund the administration of the expansion of Medicaid, that Prince William County will be forced to raise taxes on County residents or slash strategic services in order to fund eligibility workers to administer the massive expansion in the eligible population which will become effective on January 1, 2014 enrollment of newly covered beneficiaries.

Gobbledeegoop?  What did that paragraph just direct?  Talk about obsfucation.  Geez.

When will we advise the Commonwealth and the federal government?  According to the  CBPP study:

Contrary to claims made by health reform critics, the Medicaid expansion does not pose substantial financial burdens on states. The additional state spending that will result from the expansion is only 1.25 percent of what states would have spent in the absence of health reform, but it will cover 16 million more people, which will help reduce states’ costs for other programs and bring numerous other benefits to the states. The federal government will pick up most of the costs of the Medicaid expansion, overall making it a good deal for the states.

And…..(and let’s put that Peacor woman to work)

AND, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Prince William BOCS directs the County Executive to:

  1. Estimate the increased cost burden the PPAC will have on the County’s provision of health insurance to its employees; and
  1. Provide comment to the Federal government as regulations and procedures are written which implement the Health Reform legislation in order to ensure that the impacts on local governments both from the significant expansion of Medicaid and from the implementation of other sections of the legislation are fully articulated.

DMV Ferrets out White Supremist License Plate

MoonHowler

I will admit it.  I would have been up all night trying to figure out why this license plate was racist.  I still wouldn’t have gotten it. 

VA License Plate:  14CV88

It seems that Virginia uses a computer to root out off color, racist and other types of messages that the state doesn’t want dotting its hiways and by-ways.  Sometimes, however,, expressions that aren’t quite as obvious slip through. 

According to the Washington Post:

The owner of a Ford truck bearing the license plate 14CV88 will have to find a new message after the DMV on Wednesday canceled its earlier approval of that series of letters and numbers.

A photo of the truck hit the Web a few days ago, went viral on car and other blogs and finally came to the attention of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group for American Muslims. On Wednesday morning, the group complained to the DMV that the plate contained a white supremacist and neo-Nazi statement.

A few hours later, the DMV agreed that the plate contains a coded message: The number 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, doubled to signify “Heil Hitler,” said CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper. “CV” stands for “Confederate veteran” — the plate was a special model embossed with a Confederate flag, which Virginia makes available for a $10 fee to card-carrying members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And 14 is code for imprisoned white supremacist David Lane’s 14-word motto: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

“If the license plate had been on a VW Beetle with nothing else on it, or a Volvo station wagon, no one would probably have noticed,” said Hooper. “But when the Confederate flag is thrown in . . . it shows the convergence of anti-government and anti-Islamic sentiments that unfortunately seem to be growing.”

The DMV would not release the identity or location of the vehicle owner, citing privacy laws. Virginia has the highest percentage of personalized plates in the nation

The giveaway that something was amiss, Hooper said, was the truck itself. An enormous photo of the burning World Trade Center towers covers the entire tailgate, with the words: “Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11.”

It certainly wouldn’t have offended me.  I wouldn’t have gotten it.  I have a hard time decoding plates that are n’t even off color or racist.  I am sort of impressed that VA has the highest percentage of personalized plates.  That is sure making some money for someone.  On many of the plates, the addtional fees are due each year. 

A panel can convene to judge ‘expressions’ that might not be too obvious.  I don’t think that would be a good job for me.  How many people on this blog have personalized plates or vanity plates?  I am too cheap.  And why is 88 a reference to Hitler?  [best Jon Stewart voice: sillll eeeee]