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- Living in a Representative Hypocrisy. Either
Way, Terri Loses and Delay/Bush Win.
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- By Anthony Wade
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- March 22, 2005
www.OpEdNews.com
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- The sad, sad truth about Terri Schiavo is that she cannot win
in this case. Maybe she can get a stay of execution but in the
long run her story has been hijacked by powers that serve only
their own greedy interests and in reality, care very little about
the person behind the story. Today a judge ruled in favor of
Terri’s husband Michael and somewhere, Tom Delay is smiling.
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- Harsh you say? Let’s face facts. This cause celebre championed
by Tom Delay over the past week was never about Terri Schiavo.
Delay took on the cause because of two reasons. First, it would
allow a distraction from what was a mounting avalanche of ethical
problems threatening to finally nail “the hammer” and secondly,
and more importantly, it was an issue that Tom Delay could not
lose on. Similarly for George Bush.
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- The facts are that since the election there was a fall out
between the base of Bush’s support, evangelical Christians, and
the administration. Seeking to shore up his base, Bush has been
salivating over finding a red meat issue he could throw to this
base. Enter Terri Schiavo the latest poster child for the cause of
life. Here is what made taking up this charge so unique to Delay
and the GOP and why they could not lose.
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- Option one has the efforts of Congress succeeding and forcing
the reinsertion of the feeding tube. The GOP would get to declare
victory, say they saved Terri’s life, and paint the democrats as
being on the side of death. In a leaked GOP talking points memo,
it was clear that this issue was brought up for political reasons
as the memo indicated that the GOP should talk about Schiavo
because it will “excite the pro-life base” and is a “great
political issue” that is a “tough issue for democrats.” Under
option one, Bush gets to play his favorite role, as the cowboy,
rushing to the rescue. To portray that part we saw Bush flying
back to DC the other night to sign the legislation that could
potentially save Ms. Schiavo. Never mind that flying back was
completely unnecessary in reality as the bill could have easily
been flown to him for signature and the end result would have been
no different. Where would the cliff-hanging drama be then though?
The right-wing media machine has already played this angle up,
painting Bush as needing to rush back to DC in the night, to
protect life at all cost. Unfortunately, as is true with a lot of
drama, there is little truth behind the fluff.
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- George Bush had the audacity to look in the camera the next
day and say that we should “always err on the side of life.” What
Mr. Bush must be forgetting is the fact that he signed a law in
Texas in 1999 that allows hospitals to decide, against the
wishes of families, when to terminate life sustaining
services. Now, Bush did cow-tow to the pro-lifers back then and
added a clause that allows a ten-day grace period for the family
to find an alternate service provider, but in the end if you are
poor, there is only death. The reason for this is that the real
motivational factors behind the decision for the hospital can all
too easily be financial. The bottom line for the hospital is if
the patient cannot pay, then the case needs to be analyzed to
decide if life sustenance needs to be continued. The mitigating
factor then is money, period. Last week a six month old child
named Sun Hudson was killed by using this law. The fact is that
the mother did not have any other options because she did not have
the money. The hospital tried to paint Sun as needing death for
mercy, but the mother has stated differently. As she puts it, the
hospital just gave up on her son, after only six months.
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- So, in Tom Delay’s own state of Texas there is a law that
allows the extermination of life, based on money, but he had to
try and save Terri Schiavo. George Bush wants us all to believe in
his clever catch phrases, such as “culture of life” but the
realities are so much more graphic. Here is the “culture of life”
that George W. Bush represents:
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- There are currently 40 million Americans without health
insurance.
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- This lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000
unnecessary deaths every year.
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- Since Bush has taken office, 5 million more people have joined
the ranks of the uninsured.
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- Bush has just proposed billions of dollars in cuts to
Medicaid.
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- Bush has just proposed cuts to State Children’s Health
Insurance Program.
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- These cuts will affect one in every six Americans and one in
every four children.
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- The SCHIP cuts alone would render 1.2 million children unable
to access the system.
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- Bush has changed the regulations to allow corporations to
increase their mercury pollution by instituting a ridiculous
cap-and-trade policy. Here, companies can either clean up their
own outfits and then sell, for profit, their unused pollution
allowances to other companies who over-pollute, who then become
“clean” by using other companies pollution standards (I am not
making this up, I swear).
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- Bush’s new budget significantly reduces funding for the Women,
Children and Infants (WIC) program, designed to combat low birth
weight.
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- Sun Hudson was killed last week, by a law George Bush signed
into law, which favors the hospitals (corporations) over the
people.
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- That is quite a track record of hypocrisy. It does not end
there though because all the hypocrites have lined up for their
fair share of the Schiavo pie. Tom Delay himself has actually
marshaled a budget resolution through the House of Representatives
which would cut Medicaid by at least 15 billion. The Senate
restored the funding but Delay, the bastion of social
consciousness, has vowed to stall the entire budget process if he
does not get his cuts. Guess what pays for Terri Schiavo’s
medications? Medicaid.
- Another whore lining up at the Schiavo trough is Bill Frist
who is fancying himself a champion of the Terri cause to any media
who will pay him attention. When Frist is not pretending to be
full of righteous indignation he is busy championing his other
cause, tort reform. Frist has been fighting to set limit caps in
lawsuits for some time now and if he had his way, people like
Terri Schiavo would never be able to recover any punitive damages,
no matter how severe the case is. It is this ability to sue for
damages that won Terri the one million dollars 15 years ago from
her medical malpractice lawsuit. These monies are what have
brought Terri to the point she is at today. It has paid for her
medical care but if Bill Frist had his way, Terri Schiavo would
never have had the ability to seek those damages. Your
Representative Hypocrisy in action.
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- There was a second option though that Bush and Delay had to
weigh before playing this farce. The second option is why Tom
Delay is smiling today. The GOP knew that even if the judge ruled
against them, and there was a good chance they would, then Terri
Schiavo becomes a martyr to be used continuously as a reason to
“reign in activist judges” or again paint themselves as the
champions of life. The fact of the matter is that there are real
legal problems with what Delay and Bush tried to do in this case.
There are real reasons why we have separation of powers. As John
Conyers has said about this case, “By passing legislation which
wrests jurisdiction away from a state judge and sends it to a
single preselected federal court, we will abandon any pretense of
federalism. The concept of a Jeffersonian Democracy as envisioned
by the founders, and the states as "laboratories of democracy" as
articulated by Justice Brandeis will lie in tatters.”
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- For a party that seems to cry for states rights a lot, the GOP
sure seems to be in a bit of a paradox here. By inserting itself
into a personal matter of one citizen, and trying to undermine how
our system ruled, the GOP is setting a dangerous precedent. How
many other Terri Schiavo’s are there in America? This
administration does not care though, about anything other than
political expediency and its true agenda. While the country was
wrapped up in worrying about the Bush social security scam, we saw
Congress pass a horrific slave-labor bill masquerading as
bankruptcy reform. Never mind that it only amounts to a handout to
companies such as MNBA – one of the largest contributors to
Congress. While we were all looking away today at the plight of
Terri Schiavo, ANWAR drilling was approved by your Congress. This
is the politics of distraction and the GOP knows how to play it
quite well. Next up on their agenda is to destroy the 200 year old
Senate procedure of filibustering so they can nominate the 5% of
Bush’s judicial nominees that were just too extreme. Do not look
too hard at the righteous indignation of those who weep for Terri
Schiavo while they pull the plug on Sun Hudson. There is
maneuvering behind the photo-op. There is a talking points memo
somewhere they desperately do not want you to know about. The cold
hard fact is that Terri Schiavo probably means more to Bush and
Delay dead, than alive.
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- My personal belief is that the feeding tube should be
reinserted, but I understand that we live in a system of
government that has certain rules. This drama has played out for
fifteen years and is the most litigated case of right-to-die in
our history. There are too many people lining up on the side of
Bush-Delay screaming about the sanctity of life while looking the
other way on Sun Hudson. They say that there are differences
between feeding tubes and ventilators. They scramble for any
reason to avoid having to stare at the truth. The truth is simple
here. If you are on the side of life, then you must denounce the
killing of Sun Hudson, period. Life is life. The problem that so
many face in doing that is that then they are forced to have to
admit to the glaring hypocrisy of the people they support so
rabidly.
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- George Bush does not believe in a culture of life. He needs to
tell you that he does and because his words do not match his
actions, you should know the truth. Sun Hudson was killed last
week in Texas because his family had no money. Next up on the
killing list is a 68 year old grandfather named Spiro Nikolouzos.
His family wants him to be kept alive; the hospital wants to pull
the plug. The issue is always money as the family believes the
hospital reached this decision because the Medicaid funding was
running out. Where are George Bush and Tom Delay? In dramatizing
the Schiavo case this week we saw the following quotes:
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- "We should exhaust every avenue before we take a life of a
human being," - House Majority Leader Tom Delay.
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- "Everyone recognizes that time is important here. This is
about defending life." - White House press secretary Scott
McClellan.
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- “We should always err on the side of life” – President George
Bush.
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- The problem is their actions do not agree with their rhetoric.
Their hypocrisy knows no end. This was never about life. Life for
people like Bush and Delay is just an issue you use to divide
people and win elections. The saddest thing is this was never
about Terri Schiavo either. The cause celebre in Bush’s perfect
world would not have been able to recover the damages she has used
for medical treatment costs for fifteen years because of tort
reform and would see her coverage for medications dissipate this
year under the Medicaid cuts.
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- Don’t believe me that this was not about Terri? I will leave
you with a quote from Tom Delay in speaking to the Family Research
Council:
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- “One thing God has brought us is Terri Schiavo, to help
elevate the visibility of what is going on in America, of attacks
against the conservative movement, against me, and
against many others.”
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- Even in speaking about Terri Schiavo, this has always been
about himself. This woman has been through hell for fifteen years
and is now a political football, but somehow it is all about
attacks on Tom Delay. Somehow, Delay views himself as the victim.
Welcome to life in a representative hypocrisy.
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Anthony Wade, a
contributing writer to
opednews.com, is dedicated to educating the populace to the lies
and abuses of the government. He is a 37-year-old independent writer
from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple
websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation
Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that
you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies
and excess.
Anthony Wade’s
Archive:
http://www.opednews.com/archiveswadeanthony.htm
Email
Anthony:
takebacktheus@gmail.com
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