Jan Brewer Needs A Heart Transplant

One of my oldest friends pointed out that my posts were too wordy. So Ray, this spartan post is for you, buddy.

In Arizona, there were 98 very sick, low income American citizens who needed organ transplants to keep from dying. They had been placed on an organ donor list by Access Insurance, an Arizona State government program that received about 4-1 matching funds from the feds. Arizona's ante was about one million.

When it came time for Republican Governor Jan Brewer and her legislature to craft the 2011 state budget, they shut down the program and put the money into prisons instead. As a result, people who were hanging on for dear life until an organ was available were told  to drop dead. Even those patients who managed to survive until they were at the top of the list were simply de-listed. One guy named Feliz was at the hospital, being prepped to receive a liver from his best friend, who had made the donation before his death.  He was sent home to die instead, and the liver was presumably given to a paying customer. In the last two weeks, two of the 98 patients have died of organ failure.

Confronted by the mainstream international media about this travesty, the Governor's response was that the budget was tight and therefore required tough decisions. She said there was simply no money anywhere for the program. The government’s de-listing of patients from organ donor lists has been euphemistically dubbed the Arizona Death Panel, as the government has literally condemned these 98 law-abiding citizens to death. The Republican controlled Arizona State Legislature also gave its stamp of approval to Brewer's decision.  U. S. Senator Jon Kyle, from Arizona, stated that death is simply not Arizona's responsibility. Dr. (and Senator) Chuck Grassley and the rest of the Tea/GOP coalition in Washington have been strangely silent about the Arizona Death Panel, but they are really steamed at the progressives for coming up with such a catchy moniker.

Then another Republican official, a 30 year old named Steven Daglas...from Illinois, saw one of the sick people (a 27 year old woman, who had been taken off of the list, two weeks before she was to receive her transplant) on MSNBC's Countdown, with Keith Olbermann. Now Mr. Daglas is a guy who treasures a photo of himself standing next to his hero, Karl Rove, and touts his credentials as a dyed-in-the wool fiscal conservative, but he took it upon himself, out of a sheer sense of humanity, to try to find a way to help this young woman and the others on the list. 

Mr. Daglas pored through thousands and thousands of pages of the Arizona State budget, line by line. He even accessed budget committee minutes etc. and came up with 26 different ways that Arizona could come up with the million bucks, without taking a dime from the budget. 26! And they were all perfectly legal and viable under state law. One of them was to earmark funds from the AIG settlement. Another was to sell bonds from tobacco money that was already owed to the state. Another would remove superfluous subsidies to some Arizona sports teams. And there were 23 others.

Although his ideas have resonated with Democrats and even some Republicans in Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer has thus far refused to even respond. My hope is that Jan Brewer will get a heart transplant herself (hers is obviously non-functional) and use any one or more of these ideas, before another innocent sick person has to die. Hope springs eternal.

Then I got to thinking. Why prisons over transplants in the first place? I knew that the Arizona budget was tight, just like every other state in the union, but most states have responded to shortfalls by cutting prison beds and boosting less costly community corrections programs, for low-level offenders and drug addicts, who can be safely managed and rehabilitated outside expensive prison walls. Effective use of monitoring devices and cognitive restructuring therapy have been shown to be more effective in preventing recidividism than prison, with no effective increase in crime rates. So why prisons?

And so I thought...Arizona...aren’t those the same rugged individuals who refused to use Daylight Savings Time? Aren't they the same patriots who passed a law  requiring cops to demand proof of legal residency from any brown person who walks against the light or has a cracked windshield? Do they not have more than their fair share of gun-toting, white supremacist, paranoiacs? Yes, yes, and yes, but that still didn't explain why the State Tea/GOP would let 100 people die, just to fund more prisons. Did their prison population suddenly increase?

Apparently it did. In Maricopa County alone (this includes Phoenix) there has been a 28% increase in the HISPANIC prison population since 2004. About 2,751 Hispanics currently reside behind bars. Ok, so that's one reason. All those scary illegal brown fruit pickers, dishwashers, toilet scrapers, stone masons, roofers, pool cleaners, and landscapers cost money to incarcerate. Ok, so they also committed crimes. But, if they were white...uh...legal, most of these folks probably would have gotten sentenced to a term of much less expensive probation. But, being illegal, they can't be on probation because they cannot work legally, so they are sent to prison and then deported. There, that's one reason.

Another reason for the diversion of funds to prisons?  In 2006, Arizona passed a law denying bail to illegal aliens accused of crimes. Once arrested for being brown, even if they hire an immigration attorney to help them become legal and have family who can post both state and federal bonds, they have to remain in jail for months to years. If they finally are exonerated or plead to a non-prisonable charge, then they are released to ICE and are deported. That's another reason.

Then there is the recent huge expansion of private prisons in Arizona. In fact, Arizona pays out more money to private campaign contributors...uh...I mean, private prisons than to state-run facilities. The recent budget diversion has been disproportionately devoted to private prisons run by folks like Corrections Corporation of America. Yet another reason.

Now the budget appears more like a recipe than just a series of unconnected, monumentally stupid decisions by a bunch of ignorant, heartless, yokels. There is method to the apparent madness after all, and it is a recipe that is catching on in other states as well.

You start with two cups of mean spiritedness, and then add one cup xenophobia, one cup jingoism, two cups racism, three cups arrogance, and three cups fear. Blend thoroughly in a bowl paid for by corporate donors, until the ingredients are unrecognizable, then bake in the withering Arizona (you may substitute Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, etc.) sun, until the top crust takes on the tanned, (if it’s brown, you baked it too long!) leathery, wrinkled, texture of Jan Brewer's face. Shovel onto a red white and blue platter and serve lukewarm, to whomever is stupid, afraid, or just naturally paranoid enough to swallow it. 

Sincerely,

J. Brandeis Sperandeo