The Contrarian

Some of the governor’s comments at a San Antonio church yesterday were flat-out bizarre.

The San Antonio Express-News reports:

The notion that laws should not be informed by religion is an extreme one, Gov. Rick Perry said Sunday in remarks at a San Antonio church, where he challenged the faithful to ‘speak up to defend those whose rights are being eroded by an increasingly secular culture.’

I’ll forgive the guy some pandering to Christian conservatives. He’s running for re-election, after all. And his remarks about un-separating church and state aren’t surprising.

But then it got a little weird:

Perry said he agreed that government should not tell people which church to attend.

‘I totally get that. You know, they’re telling us which cars to buy and which lightbulbs to use now. But they ought not be telling us whether we can go to Baptist, Methodist, whichever one,’ he said.

The government telling people which church to attend? Where is he getting that?

It’s quite a strange statement from the governor of the nation’s second-largest state.

In his column in this morning’s New York Times, Paul Krugman tries to dispel some of the misinformation out there about the proposed health-care reform.

He opens with this hilarious anecdote:

At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to ‘keep your government hands off my Medicare.’ The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, ‘wasn’t having any of it.’

The governor is going all state’s rights on us again.

This afternoon, Rick Perry’s office released a letter the governor has sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. In the letter, Perry once again threatens to invoke the “state’s rights” protections in the 10th Amendment to resist any health care reform passed by Democrats in Washington. (Perry first hit on that rather seditious idea last week.)

Instead of Obama-care, Perry wants the feds to approve a free-market-based plan that Texas officials pitched about 18 months ago.

Under the Perry plan, Texas would divert Medicaid money to allow uninsured Texans to shop for, and buy, health coverage from private insurers.

So, let’s say I’m a poorly paid worker whose not covered by my employer and can’t afford health insurance on my own. (This is totally hypothetical. Honest.) Under Perry’s plan, I would receive taxpayer money (in the form of subsidies) to buy my own plan on the private market.

To institute this plan, Texas first needs permission from the feds — what’s known in policy circles as a Medicaid waiver.

Perry writes to Sebelius that his plan “presents a strategic alternative to continued reliance on government-run health care programs and our already overburdened safety net systems of care.”

I have just one question: Does Perry not realize that Medicaid is a “government-run health care program”? Or that using Medicaid money to fund his plan isn’t reducing our reliance on government-funded health care at all? 

(Here’s a pdf of Perry’s letter to Sebelius. And, for all the policy geeks out there, here’s a pdf of the original Texas proposal from December 2007.)

His plan would accomplish one thing, however: It would shift taxpayer money from Medicaid into insurance company coffers.

And maybe that’s the idea.

Recent polls are showing Americans have their doubts about the health care reform bills under construction in Congress. (The poll numbers don’t look as bad for proponents of the reform bills as some news reports would have you believe, but that’s a story for another day.)I suspect many Americans simply don’t understand the current proposals. The folks at Politico apparently think you and I and most Americans are too stupid to understand the details of the health care debate.

(That’s no joke. The Politico reporters write: “[T]he reality is that the outcome will probably be shaped less by the intelligence of advocates on any side than by the ignorance of most Americans.”)That’s not only insulting, it’s wrong. If there’s confusion about a health care overhaul — perhaps the biggest domestic policy reform in decades — the culprits are, in large part, the reporters covering it.

1. Is it possible, technically speaking, to have a “campaign” staff if you’ve yet to formally announce/launch your campaign?

And:

2. What does it mean that before you even make the aforementioned formal campaign announcement, you’ve already replaced your campaign manager (as Jason Embry reports)?

If Kay Bailey is reading this blog, please answer in the comments section below.

Or, if you’re reading this blog but aren’t Kay Bailey, you’re also more than welcome to answer in the comments section below.

The important concept here is to write in the comments section below.

I’ll help get you started. Here are my answers:

1. Yes it’s possible, because “campaign” seems to have become a permanent state of being for enterprising politicians.

2. It means big trouble.