The Lengths Some Must Go For Food & Shelter

From Think Progress: 

Rickie Lawrence Gardner, a 49-year-old man from the small town of Moulton, Alabama, entered Bank Independent on Monday and handed the teller a note saying he had a gun and to hand over the bank’s money. After the employee complied, Gardner took the bag of cash, walked outside, and locked it in his car. He then sat on a bench in front of the bank and waited for police officers to arrive. 

“When officers got there, he did not offer any kind of resistance. He was just waiting on them,” Moulton Police Chief Lyndon McWhorter said. “His is the first bank robbery I’ve ever worked where the robber was waiting outside the bank for the police to turn himself in.” 

What drove Gardner to such a drastic measure? He was on the cusp of losing his job because a leg injury put him in so much pain that it prevented him from working. Facing possible homelessness, jail was a preferable option in his mind. And he wasn’t looking for just a short stay. Despite his note, Gardner wasn’t even carrying a gun when he committed the robbery; he’d only mentioned it in the note, according to the AP, “because he thought it would get him a longer sentence...”

...Alabama lawmakers have also made it increasingly difficult for poor residents like Gardner to receive health care. Though some Republican governors in states like Arizona and Ohio have embraced Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to cover poor citizens, Alabama has steadfastly opposed doing so, despite the fact that it’s fully funded by the federal government for the first three years. As a result, hundreds of thousands of low-income individuals won’t receive health care. Even without the Medicaid expansion, it’s already incredibly difficult to be eligible in Alabama. A single adult, like Gardner, who makes more than $1,332 per year is considered too wealthy to qualify for Medicaid in Alabama...

These are the lengths to which some are going as help for those who cannot find/hold onto a job is becoming far more scarce as a result of austerity measures. 

GOP Candidate Ken Cuccinelli & Southwest Virginia

From Tricities.com:

...Unfortunately, Ken Cuccinelli realizes this area exists; it is his target for creating greater disparity, less hope for jobs, and diminished health care, while literally making false plans for what he calls tax equity. 

By the proposed elimination of coal employment tax credits, Cuccinelli would place at risk the remaining 5,100 direct coal miner jobs that depend on these incentives to be competitive in the global energy market. 

Cuccinelli's opposition to the state transportation plan, which he refuses to say whether he would retain or repeal, places at risk the construction of the so-called Coalfield Expressway, a $5 billion highway that would break the isolation of the region and create hundreds of public-private construction jobs and new manufacturing opportunities. 

The attorney general's shrill opposition to Medicaid extension would not only deny health care services to 400,000 poor, blind, elderly and disabled Virginians, but specifically 25,000 to 30,000 in the coalfields...

The sad thing is that many of the people very likely to vote for (from a demographic perspective) are also very likely to be negatively affected by his policies should he win the gubernatorial election. 

Another GOP Governor For Medicaid Expansion

From the Detroit News:

Gov. Rick Snyder is redoubling his efforts to get lawmakers this month to approve expanding the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor before the Legislature recesses for the summer. 

Snyder said Friday he has invited U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to meet with Republican lawmakers to consider a House GOP proposal to put a four-year lifetime cap for able-bodied adults to be on Medicaid. 

As state policymakers and business leaders departed Mackinac Island on Friday after the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual three-day policy conference, Snyder said Medicaid expansion is a more pressing issue for the Legislature to address before its scheduled June 27 summer adjournment than raising new revenues for roads. 

"I would say it has more urgency," Snyder told reporters after wrapping up a policy conference that focused on education, immigration and Detroit's future.

Gov. Brewer To AZ Republicans: Expand Medicaid Or Else

From Think Progress: 

Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) has a message for her party: expand Medicaid — or else. 

The combative GOP governor is sticking by a threat she made to veto all legislation until lawmakers resolve the 2014 state budget and pass Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. On Thursday, Brewer proved that wasn’t just talk, vetoing five bills sent to her desk in quick succession. 

“I warned that I would not sign additional measures into law until we see resolution of the two most pressing issues facing us: adoption of a fiscal 2014 state budget and plan for Medicaid,”wrote Brewer in her veto message. “It is disappointing I must demonstrate the moratorium was not an idle threat.” 

Arizona officials only have five weeks before reaching the constitutional deadline for passing a budget. Last Thursday, six Republican state senators joined a unified Democratic caucus to pass a Medicaid expansion bill — but efforts have been gummed up in the state House since then.

Governor Brewer, of finger-pointing fame, has been considered a Tea Party favourite over the years. I wonder if now, she will be considered a RINO (Republican in name only) like other Republicans who do not tow the party line to the hilt?

The Deep South Supports Medicaid Expansion

From the Pew Charitable Trusts: 

A large majority of people living in the Deep South supports the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act, even though their governors and representatives oppose it, according to a new poll.

The Republican governors and legislatures in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina have rejected the Medicaid expansion, which would extend health care coverage to more low-income people. But a poll conducted in March and April by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that 62 percent of the people in those states support the expansion, one of the key instruments in the Obama administration’s strategy to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.

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The survey included 2,500 respondents (500 in each of the states) with an overall margin of error of about 2 percentage points and a 4.4 percent margin of error for individual states.