A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
The Kalispell Farmers Market kicks off today at Flathead Valley Community College. Just before sunrise, I saw venders start pulling into the FVCC parking lot. This is a sure sign of spring. According to the market’s Facebook page, the event opens at 0900 and closes half-past noon. These are farmers’ hours. I prefer a more civilized schedule.
Montana Medicaid expansion. The bill (SB-405) just signed into law by Gov. Bullock may be in trouble with the Department of Health and Human Services, reported Mike Dennison in the Missoulian late yesterday. The scheme requires waivers from Affordable Care Act’s standard expansion of Medicaid, but what Montana wants is so radical it’s raising federal eyebrows:
Obama administration officials said Friday they are “concerned” that the state plans to charge premiums even to people earning below 50 percent of the federal poverty line (about $5,900 a year for a single person) and that the plan has other “cost-sharing” requirements for those covered.
The word “premium” is in the law, but it’s really a two-percent tax on income. A true premium is based not on the beneficiary’s income but on the benefits provided and the risks taken.
It’s good that HHS is skeptical of taxing the poorest of the poor, but the Obama administration seems willing to approve waivers for some pretty awful practices as long as people are added to the ranks of the insured.
Will the Baltimore and Ferguson riots result in a Republican Presidency? That’s not baseless speculation for those of us who remember the 1965 Watts riot and the riots following the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968. Richard Nixon responded to the fears those riots raised by promising law and order, choosing as his running mate the get tough on rioting blacks governor of Maryland, Spiro Agnew.
Nixon’s most famous utterance was “I am not a crook.” Agnew was a crook (literally; he took bribes), but probably will go down in history at the avaricious apostle of abusive alliteration. Both resigned from office in disgrace, the only elected President and Vice President to do so. We remember their demise, but we should also remember that they rode into power on white horses, brandishing billy clubs, promising safe streets for white Americans. That could happen again.
Linguistic thuggery. Yesterday I noted the ridiculous notion that the word “thug” is somehow a racial epithet, as evil a word as “nigger.” That provoked a series of Tweets from a Missoula resident lecturing me on the etymology of both words, essentially calling me a racist ignoramus. It was a classic example of the righteous certainty characteristic of a closed and empty mind; a classic example of how the disreputable school of critical race studies (or, theory) pollutes clear thinking; and just dead wrong. If a black man burns down a drug store or, say, shoots a policeman, he’s a thug. He can shout to the heavens that calling him a thug is racially abusive, but the word that describes his accusation is the word that describes the the steaming matter that a bull deposits in a barnyard.