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Senator Coburn – Same As It Ever Was

Yesterday, while on Face the Nation, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma began whistling the same old tune. A new devastating tornado, must demand budget cuts before disaster relief. Senator Coburn has been a vigorous supporter of offsets for disaster relief funding. Senator Coburn is living that old Talking Heads tune which has the refrain – Same As It Ever Was. Senator Coburn is again whistling the same tune. I guess this is probably a good thing. At least he’s been consistent. He is treating his own state exactly the same as he treated other states when they needed disaster relief, although I’m not sure it’s a good thing when you are cold and callous.

We all pay taxes. The taxes need to go for something. One of the problems that I have with the current “cut taxes culture” is that we don’t think about what the things are that we really want to pay for. Do we really want to pay for the F-22 Raptor? If so, this a plane that cost tens of millions of dollars apiece. Do we want to pay to upgrade our bridges that seem to be collapsing at an alarming rate? Do we want to pay for disaster relief for the floods in San Antonio? The tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma? Hurricane Sandy that hit New Jersey and New York? If so, we need to quit cutting taxes and start paying for some things.

From the Huffington Post:

“We’ve created kind of a predicate, that you don’t have to be responsible for what goes on in your state,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” while discussing the success Oklahoma has had in using state and private funds after the tornadoes.

Coburn said he doesn’t oppose any federal money going toward the state, however.

“Big storms like [Hurricane] Sandy, or like this tornado — there’s certain things that we can’t do that we need the federal government to do,” he said.

By ecthompsonmd|2013-05-27T20:31:12-04:00May 27th, 2013|Environment, FEMA, Party Politics|Comments Off

The Errington Thompson Show 11-7-09

Now this is a great show. We should take a little time and listen to the show. (BTW, I’m still on Michael Jackson kick. I saw This is it. Man, that was great stuff.)

I start off by congratulating our progressive City Council candidates — Gordon Smith, Cecil Bothwell and Esther Manheimer. Crazy mad props. Also, Mayor Terry Bellamy wins her second term. Congrats!!

Do you remember that gang rape of that high school student out in California? Will new details are emerging. The victim was drugged and beaten. Remember this occurred during a homecoming dance in late October. It appears there were as many as 20 bystanders and none of them were compelled to call the police. This reminds me of that famous case of the New York, it happened in the mid-80s. This woman was beaten and killed if I’m not mistaken in many people watch the whole thing and nobody called the police. If the speculated that many people either photographed or filmed the incident with their cell phones. This is an extremely sad commentary.

By now, everyone is aware of the tragedy at Fort Hood. Sergeant Kimberly Munley appears to be the hero. She fired at the suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan and continued to fire after she was wounded. Now comes the endless speculation. For reasons that are unclear, we, as Americans, always after these major tragedies, think they’re something that we should’ve noticed where we could have intervened. We have several of these major tragedies every year. In my opinion, what we should’ve learned, is that we cannot predict human behavior. I just don’t think we have that ability.

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has single-handedly holding up The Veterans Caregivers and Omnibus Health Benefits Act of 2009. He thinks it’s too expensive. Maybe, he would like to tell the troops that they aren’t worth it.

A New Zealand artist uses manure to sculpt the bust of a Environmental Minister. At least the artist has a sense of humor. The Pennsylvania State police botched a prostitution investigation by sending the informant into a massage parlor multiple times and filming everything. They might have been okay if the officers watching the various sex acts were not laughing and making lewd comments. The Pennsylvania Court of Appeals threw out the case.

My special guest is Alex Koppelman of Salon.com’s War Room. We discuss health care reform, we talk about what is wrong with the media and how we, as Americans, seek out information that agrees with our point of view. What do the Tuesday Elections mean? What about gay rights? We talk about this and more.

BTW, the book that Alex and I were trying to remember is called True Enough: Learning to live in a Post-fact Society by Farhad Manjoo.

There is more! Listen to the Errington Thompson Show – this is great progressive radio!

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By ecthompsonmd|2012-05-07T13:55:48-04:00November 18th, 2009|Healthcare, Military, Podcasts|Comments Off

Senator Coburn – Ask your neighbors and not your government for help

The heartlessness of Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is bad enough, but look at the reaction of the crowd. It is rather heart-wrenching to watch. Coburn basically tells a woman whose husband has a brain injury to go and panhandle his neighbors. If I get a break at work, I’ll have more to say on this terrible scene.

From Slate:

Writing in the New Republic‘s health care blog, the Treatment, Harold Pollock, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, said that when he saw this clip neither he nor his wife, a clinical nurse specialist, “could … believe what we were watching.”

Neither could I. Here’s a transcript:

Q: Sen. Coburn, we need help. My husband has traumatic brain injury. His health insurance will not cover him to eat and drink. And what I need to know is: Are you going to help him? Where he can eat and drink? We left the nursing home, and they told us we are on our own. He left with a feeding tube. I have been working with him, but I’m not a speech pathologist, a professional that takes six years for a masters’, and I’m trying to get him to eat and drink again [inaud].

A: Well, I think—first of all, yeah. We’ll help. The first thing we will do is to see what we can do, individually, to help you, through our office. But the other thing that is missing in this debate is us as neighbors, helping people that need our help. [Applause.] You know we tend to … [Applause.] The idea that the government is a solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.

Pollock, his wife, and Philip Pizzo, dean of Stanford Medical School, found Coburn’s answer to be deeply disturbing. I did, too, of course. But what truly shocked and depressed me was not Coburn’s let-’em-eat-cake response but the fact that it wasn’t met in the room with a collective sharp intake of breath. Instead, Coburn received two quite robust bursts of applause. I have no idea how Congress and the White House can possibly sell health care reform to people like that. (more… )

Thanks to Political Animal for pointing this video out to me.

By ecthompsonmd|2009-08-29T05:38:26-04:00August 29th, 2009|Healthcare, Senate|Comments Off