1/23/2013

Louisiana's Jindal to Abused Women and the Dying: Drop Dead:
When you live in Louisiana, you get used to a certain amount of Neanderthal savagery and brute stupidity. Sure, the education system is getting fucked beyond fucked and the state legislature thinks it's just jim-fuckin' dandy to teach that everything was created when an invisible sky wizard puked it all out, but, hey, how about that food? Sure, sex education is pretty much non-existent in a state where they have the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, but, man, ain't that band playin' some hot zydeco? See? It's a trade-off. A state with a high sales tax, including taxes on food and clothing, lottery, and gambling, along with a state income tax, can't stay out of the red because tax cuts for rich people are so fucking important, so why not raise the sales tax even higher? It's what you get for wanting to laissez les bon temps rouler.

Other than teachers (who are really just terrorists with tenure, but, gosh, shouldn't they be armed?) protesting the shifting of public school funds to private ones run by churches and cults, there's been no real outcry against Governor Bobby Jindal and his merry band of GOP scum weasels in the legislature. But now, with the frightening possibility of having their sick people die without palliative or other care, Louisianians are genuinely shocked to finally discover that Jindal is a weak-chinned shitsack who has no business running a state, let along trying to squeeze himself onto the national stage like the last dingleberry in the Republican sphincter.

Yep, at the end of the month, next week, in fact, the state of Louisiana will stop offering hospice care to adult patients on Medicaid. Why? Because fuck you, brain aneurysm guy, that's why. Budget cuts, bitch. It'll save $3 million bucks this year, maybe even $8.3 million next year. The budget's short $900 million bucks. Gotta find change under the cushions if we have to. Well, it'll save that money barring dying people going in and out of emergency rooms in order to get some relief. Yeah, see, Arizona, always on the leading edge of fuckery in America, tried to do the same thing. That state learned that it cost more to be assholes than to give a damn.

Of course, Jindal already cut funding for charity hospitals, so, you know, he really, really wants poor people to just die already.

Hospices and hospice care providers are dumbfounded by the cuts. But they just want that Medicaid teat to suck on while they give your mother or sister aid and comfort while she fades away because of ovarian cancer.  But even the mostly right-wing newspapers in the state are finding that there is a point where they can be appalled. "To balance the state's budget by eliminating end-of-life care is inhumane," says the Daily World of Opelousas. " Our most vulnerable citizens — regardless of means — should be afforded the most-basic palliative care by a society that has so much," says the Daily Comet of rural Lafourche Parish.

By the way, Jindal is also cutting funding for women's shelters because "the Jindal administration said the state was moving away from costly residential care for domestic violence victims in favor of short-term hotel stays and family care." You got that? Victims of domestic violence should stay with family where their abusers would never find them, obviously. The funding cut also hits sexual assault centers, too, because compassion costs too much.

Yeah, it's a cruel, cruel life in the Bayou State. But, hey, throw us some more beads, mister.