I saw the other day how very Right Wing and Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer--you remember her, the one who had the nerve to publicly scold President Obama on a tarmac in her state? Anyway, she has made it publicly clear to her also-very-Republican state legislature that unless the people of her state get federal government Medicaid expansion, she's going to hold up every bit of legislation they create:
Jan Brewer Ain’t Bluffing: AZ Governor Vetoing All Bills Until Medicaid Expansion Passes
Quite the stunner. It's her own political party's legislature and naturally they're opposed to anything even remotely proposed by our current (black, Kenyan, Socialist, Communist, whatever) president yet she's pushing them for this expansion of Medicaid through "Obamacare." Yeehaw. How rare. How refreshing. Now, not to be done there, Texas legislators seem to have caught on, too:
TexasLawmakersPutDownTheirSwords
If Texas’ less-than-theatrical 83rd legislative session is remembered at all, it will be known for accords, not discord. Lawmakers put down their partisan swords to expand financing for water infrastructure, women’s health, public education and the mentally ill, steering almost entirely clear of bitter ideological battles over immigration enforcement and abortion. The state’s Republican majority pulled its weight in a few major areas: passing legislation requiring drug screening for unemployment benefits and blocking measures opening the door for an expansion of Medicaid, the joint state and federal health care program for children, the disabled and the very poor, under the federal health care overhaul. But Republicans themselves warded off some of the session’s most anticipated battles, like Senator Dan Patrick’s “school choice” effort to finance scholarships so public school students could attend private schools. And House Speaker Joe Straus’s reluctance to tackle redistricting — though Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott wanted to — was an effort to keep Democrats in the fold. That effort seems unlikely to last if the governor calls legislators into a special session on the issue. Indeed, many of the lawmakers’ hardest-fought initiatives this session — preventing wrongful convictions and prosecutorial misconduct, overhauling high school diploma requirements and high-stakes testing, and curbing the authority of regents of the state’s public university systems — did not fall along party lines. And maybe, just maybe they're doing this because they see things working in California, with a Democratic majority: California Faces a New Quandary, Too Much Money Those darn Democrats. Doing the right, responsible things for their state and people. Damn them to hell. (You don't suppose anyone in Kansas government is paying any attention to all this, do you?)
