Paul Wilczynski's Observations

Boston Globe: On the backs of the poor

In a editorial, the Boston Globe says ...

Let's not pretend that the Republican plan to cut Medicaid this fall has anything to do with finding the money to pay for Hurricane Katrina. Congressional leaders floated plans to slash the healthcare program for the poor by $10 billion in April, long before hurricane season. The great urgency then was the need to reduce pressure on the budget created by the war in Iraq and the profligate tax cuts President Bush gave the richest Americans.

Now the hurricane has ripped the lid off shameful poverty in the world's richest nation. New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward was revealed as a kind of urban Appalachia, requiring the same wholesale response Bobby Kennedy's tour through rural Appalachia called forth in the 1960s. It would be ironic and cruel if programs to help poor people elsewhere were sacrificed to repair the lives of the poor people who were in Katrina's path. ...

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 8:34 AM