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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRand Paul: America's hungry seniors should turn to charity
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Rand Paul: America's hungry seniors should turn to charity
It's a seriously fucked up new world in Washington, DC.
A Senate subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders, held a hearing Tuesday on the human toll and budget consequences of senior hunger. Panelists shared tales of woe from older Americans unable to get enough food, and urged increased funding for nutrition programs under the Older Americans Act of 1965.
This might have been non-controversial a few years ago, but not with the Tea Party in town. The hearing produced a fierce debate between Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, and Sen. Rand Paul, the prototypical Tea Partier, about whether the government should even perform simple tasks like feeding hungry senior citizens....
Mary Jane Koren, a geriatrician and vice-president of the Commonwealth Fund, noted that seniors often suffer health problems and are put in nursing homes after falling down. Poor nutrition leads to decreased muscle strength, meaning a higher chance of fallingand weaker seniors are more likely to be gravely injured in such a fall. Koren noted that by 2020, the annual cost of medical care for seniors who fall is expected to reach $54.9 billionmany magnitudes more than the approximately $2 billion per year the federal government spends on nutrition assistance for senior citizens.
Sen. Paul, however, explicitly rejected this logic. Its curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that youre saving money, he said. The idea or notion that spending money in Washington somehow is saving money really flies past most of the taxpayers. Instead, Paul touted the nobility of private charity as opposed to government-funded transfer programs. He suggested privatizing Meals on Wheels and other government assistance for hungry seniors.
Sanders had none of this. Senator Paul has suggested that only in Washington can people believe that spending money actually saves money. And I think thats the kind of philosophy that results in us spending about twice as much per person on health care as any other country on earth, Sanders said. ...
In providing this explanation of how social investment works, and the consequences of not making it, Sen. Sanders is making the mistake of thinking that Sen. Paul a) has the capacity to understand what his talking about, and b) gives a shit that there are people dying because they don't have health care, or have to chose between it and starving. ...
More
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/22/987624/-Rand-Paul-America-s-hungry-seniors-should-turn-to-charity?detail=email
Apparently Paul's too young to remember the flood of stories in the 70s about senior citizens who ate canned cat food because it was all they could afford. Of course, he has nothing to worry about -- his Senate pension & health insurance will do him just fine.
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)OKNancy
(41,832 posts)I was going to write the exact same thing.
So, I'll add to it: god, I hate that sorry-assed, snot-nosed, weasel-faced fucker.
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)3catwoman3
(24,072 posts)...work so I don't have to explain to anyone what I am laughing about. Excellent expansion on cyberswede's original statement.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)"shitweasel" is the work for which you are searching?
daredtowork
(3,732 posts)Let's get it from that Paris Hilton Tax that the House of Reps just voted to end.
Or are we seriously saying "take from granny and give to Paris Hilton"?
justhanginon
(3,290 posts)much run out of curse words, curse word combinations and even trying to make up my own. I'm getting carpal tunnel from flipping them off on TV. I'm hoarse from screaming at them. I guess the next step is voodoo dolls and pins.
niyad
(113,628 posts)are apparently impervious to anything that would make them resemble human beings.
Daemonaquila
(1,712 posts)My legal assistant, who's also a nurse, tells the story of working in a university clinic not that long ago, and finding out that frail, elderly patients were still eating cat food out of necessity.
spanone
(135,900 posts)Faux pas
(14,698 posts)one of those 'compassionate christians'.
Orsino
(37,428 posts)I can only hope that Paul pulls a muscle or something as he contorts himself into a weak echo of the Kochs.
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Fuck Rand Paul
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)Every time you use a coupon to buy something, you're 'saving money' that you would have had to spend if you didn't have the coupon, even though you're still spending money to buy whatever item the coupon was giving you savings on.
Heck, when I pay ahead on my mortgage, I spend money to save money.
Paul the self-certified 'optometrist' is blinded by his ideology of miserliness.
Gothmog
(145,667 posts)Rand Paul is an idiot
niyad
(113,628 posts)LiberalLoner
(9,762 posts)Nay
(12,051 posts)like Rand Paul! Good luck with that!
niyad
(113,628 posts)of oxygen and resources are making me rethink my position.
rainmaker21
(52 posts)I would like to see more money spent trying to lift them out of poverty.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)leftofcool
(19,460 posts)renegade000
(2,301 posts)Let's set aside all the issues of whether or not it would actually work and assume it does.
Congratulations, you've just created a society full of moochers! Everyone is going to be able to reap the
benefits of having non-starving elderly people (they are, you know, still likely paying for goods and services and helping to keep others employeed), but only a subset of people actually contributed to achieving this outcome.
Hmm, if only there was some way of having everyone contribute some, in proportion to how much they seem to be benefiting, to all these public investments!
MisterP
(23,730 posts)every time they unlock the doors in the morning, and know they're just a patch
but, hey, Rothbard said it's less moral to tax people to keep a retarded kid alive than to let that kid just DIE already
the Austrian School ran over the Atlantic to a country that didn't recognize the danger and immediately begged for all the welfare they could get their hands on; these same freaks almost destroyed their own country in 1906, and wouldn't have been tolerated with a stronger A-H (Gott erhalte Karl der Kaiser ...)
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)However, I have no confidence that is the case.
I truly don't understand many of my "fellow" Americans.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Beaverhausen
(24,472 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)is that they would immediately be swamped and sunk were it not for government programs.
What a craven shitheel is this manlike object with the dead varmint on his head.
DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)"Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."