Arizona Racial Malice Continues

A new bill introduced in the Arizona legislature contains the following:

" BEFORE A HOSPITAL ADMITS A PERSON FOR NONEMERGENCY CARE, A HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONFIRM THAT THE PERSON IS A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES, A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OR LAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES."
 I just thought I'd let you know about this.  I don't have anything to say about it.

Comments

Eric Noren said…
Makes perfect sense to me. I don't know why we'd want our hospitals providing non-emergency care to people who are here illegally. They're law-breakers. Probably not real likely they'll pay their bills.
Anonymous said…
Here is a good example of Christian ethics meeting right wing sensibilities. Not all republicans claim to be Christians, but most of them probably do. Their Christian virtue seem to fall away when it comes to race or ethnicity, at least in this country. Oh I forgot, we do have separation of church and state. But still.
Dave Dubya said…
And here I thought that being in need of hospital care qualifies as an emergency. But what do I know?

Maybe there's been a rash of elective surgeries for indigent foreigners, walking away without paying. Maybe...but I doubt it.

I bet they'd accept anyone with money, whether here legally or not.
Eric Noren said…
What does this have to do with race or ethnicity? It's all about legal status.
St. Joan said…
Jesus.
Green Eagle said…
What does this have to do with race or ethnicity? HR, when you ask a question like that, I seriously doubt your willingness to confront reality. This question does not deserve an answer, as it is not a real question at all, but just one more chance to repeat right wing cant.

And St. Joan,

"Jesus"

Amen.
Eric Noren said…
Look, you can distort it all you want. Nowhere in your little quote is race or ethnicity mentioned.

Why do you insist on distorting arguments to try and make Republicans look like they are racist or bigoted? If we're all racist, you wouldn't have to assume it -- you could actually demonstrate it.

Is it because you are unable to argue your points on the merits? Oh wait, you refused to argue your points. Apparently they're so obvious they don't need to be articulated. Bravo.
magpie said…
Park the racism issue for a second...

So my sister goes over to the United States, as she is planning to do shortly - God help her - and she is mugged, raped and beaten. They steal everything including her passport.

How is she going to prove that she is in the country legally? And are hospital staff experts on immigration visas anyway? Can you fucking conceive of the burden of work in that?

How does she prove it's an emergency and that she was actually raped if she can't even get looked at?
They'll spot her accent. They'll assume she's not a resident or citizen.

If this happens, there WILL be cases of people refused treatment to the permanent detriment of their health, who should have had it even by the definition of this, frankly, BARBARIC, initiative. Then the hospitals will get hit with lawsuits?
It is also grossly unfair to hospital staff and an insult to their professional commitment to render care as required.

And then what happens next? Are you going to have two security gorillas come along and fling her into the street, distraught?

That's the America you want?
Eric Noren said…
Pay attention Magpie, we're talking about non-emergency hospital visits. The situation you describe would be an emergency. I assume she'll enter the U.S. legally and conduct herself legally. Nothing to worry about.

I repeat: why do you all have to manufacture these crises. The text of the (what I assume is a) bill, makes perfect sense. There are plenty of things in this world to be concerned about, and a bill focused on legality (not race) for non-emergency (not emergency) visits isn't a crisis.

The reason, of course, is you're looking for reasons to hate Republicans. You're looking for news stories that validate the opinions you already hold. Stop the hate.
Green Eagle said…
"Apparently they're so obvious they don't need to be articulated."

That is exactly the truth, and you don't give a damn.

The conservative movement today is rotten with racism, and until you are ready to face up to that fact, the country is going to continue going down into the sewer you are creating.
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
"The reason, of course, is you're looking for reasons to hate Republicans"

If you don't want to be hated, then don't give us a reason. I suppose you also approve of healthcare cuts in the State of Arizona that denies organ transplants to patients in dire need of them. Two people have already died. Republicans scream about death panels and other factitious crap; yet your vaunted Republican Governor in Arizona operates one ... a goddamn Death Panel.

Hypocrite! What offends me is your callous and self-righteous disregard for human life. And then you people support tax cuts for billionaires! Damn straight you are hated!
magpie said…
"The situation you describe will be an emergency"

How will they know...? She's just walked off the street.

"I assume she'll enter the U.S. legally and conduct herself legally"

What she does will not matter -
"HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS OFFICER MUST CONFIRM..."
How will they do that?

"why do you all have to manufacture these crises?"

What I described is perfectly horribly feasible. This is just another idiotic counter-productive initiative dreamed up by Republicans to exploit people's fears.

"You're looking for reasons to hate Republicans"

Oh get a grip... is anyone oppressing you by insisting that the reason a hospital exists is to help people with medical problems?
Eric Noren said…
Look, Green Eagle's title is demonstrably false: "Arizona Racial Malice Continues".

Nothing he quotes below is backed up by the lie of the title: you can't show me any "racial malice."

If any of the rest of you were intellectually honest, you would join me in pointing this out. Instead, you're spending time attacking me.

There will come a time when a Republican will actually make a racial statement, just as there will be a Democrat who makes a racial statement (note that I didn't say "racist"). Because Green Eagle has cried wolf here, no objective person will believe him when he posts a true quote.

Don't any of you realize that there are many things to disagree about, but lies like this hurt your own credibility? The fact that you can't even police yourselves doesn't speak well for any of you.
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
Heathen Republican: “ Look, Green Eagle's title is demonstrably false (…) If any of the rest of you were intellectually honest, you would join me in pointing this out. Instead, you're spending time attacking me.”

You want intellectual honesty? Here is your damn intellectual honesty: ARIZONA CRIME STATS BACK SHERIFF DUPNIK’S CLAIM: “A MECCA FOR PREJUDICE AND BIGOTRY”, an article which I wrote and posted myself on January 10, 2011. And here are the statistics:

Overall crime rates in Arizona are down by roughly 12%; whereas bias and hate crimes are up by substantial margins. According to Arizona’s Total Crime Index, the composite crime rate dropped from 289,554 in 2008 to 255,133 in 2009, a decline of 12%. In contrast, bias and hate crimes increased from 168 incidents in 2007 to 226 in 2009.”

Here is the graph showing a decline in overall crime rates. Here is the graph showing a dramatic rise in bias crimes during a time when overall crimes rates were declining. And here is the source document: Total Crime Index published by the State of Arizona.

Now lets put this statement by Heathen Republican into context: “ Don't any of you realize that there are many things to disagree about, but lies like this hurt your own credibility? The fact that you can't even police yourselves doesn't speak well for any of you.”

Don’t you realize what a fool you have made of yourself? Now take your goddam sanctimonious attitude and shove it up your ass!
Eric Noren said…
Oh, well if you wrote it, then I stand corrected. I am appropriately humbled and contrite.

See, these are the kinds of things worth discussing. Actual data on racial bias. Unfortunately Green Eagle's lies don't rise to the same standard.

Thanks Octopus for making my point.
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
Green Eagle,
My apologies to you. I visit your site in the spirit of friendship and support and try to keep my comment civil; but when idiots like Heathen Republican come here as trolls to put you on the defensive, I have to ask to ask this question:

How do you put lipstick on a squeal?

They don't research, they don't read, and when shove hard evidence under their noses, they deny everything and cry foul. Now you know why I hate Republicans!
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
Heathen Republican "Unfortunately Green Eagle's lies don't rise to the same standard (...) Thanks Octopus for making my point."

Lets get something straight, Heathen. These data back Green Eagle's point, not yours. Up yours!
Green Eagle said…
Octopus,

I'd think that you would know by now that a little righteous indignation puts a smile on Green Eagle's face.

Liberals are intimidated over and over again into playing the nice guy while conservatives take the right to spew any lies and viciousness they can think of.

As that bumper sticker said, "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention." I like what you have to say, so there's not a reason on earth for you to be apologetic about it.
magpie said…
I'm still waiting for an explanation from Mr Heathen about how hospital staff are going to make an on-the-spot determination as to whether someone is in the country legally...

Or how the medical issue is going to be judged an emergency, or not, in EVERY case PRIOR to any medical attention being rendered.

waiting

"oh there's a throbbing pain in my side..."
"ah you look like a 14 year old sweatshop slave in the county illegally to me... so it's probably just a stitch, not a burst appendix or anything"
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
Green Eagle and Magpie,
My problem with Wingers and Bagheads is that they see themselves as experts in everything with outsized opinions; yet they are experts at nothing.

Here is Heathen Republican playing footloose with a medical determination that can only be made by trained and qualified people – and politicizing an issue that should never be politicized. They think of themselves as doctors, lawyers, economists, educators, theologians … any discipline chosen at any moment at the drop of a hat … without a thread of knowledge other than a big mouth.

If you visit the idiot’s website (not worth your time, trust me), you will find hypocritical, self contradictory statements such as:

A secular conservative can be described as one who asserts conservative principles without religious rhetoric ….”

Followed by this:

Defend religious speech and fight liberal secularists seeking to mandate their “state religion” of secularism …

The idiot cannot spot the incongruity of these statements in juxtaposition. He invokes “reason and logic” on the one hand, then commits every logical fallacy and non sequitur that ever been catalogued and indexed. High-sounding, self-comforting words, words, words … haphazardly thrown into a salad bowl with no understanding of the meaning or context of these words.

Speaking of context, when I was kid growing up in the 1950s, there was a fundamentalist 3rd grade teacher in the local school. As Christmas approached, she put the minority kids in the back of the classroom with paper and crayons to busy themselves as the Christian kids sang carols and exchanged gifts in the front of the classroom. The minority kids were treated as second-class citizens and worse than dirt. When the parents of the minority kids complained, the teacher went into tirades about “them Jews” and “atheist Unitarians” (I was both). Later that year, the teacher was fired for physically abusing a minority kid.

Damn thing about Republicans, they are first to rant about losing their precious freedoms and the first to oppress and abuse others.

You wonder why I hate Republicans? More than dumbshit arrogant, they are dangerously stupid and intolerant of others.
Green Eagle said…
And yet I do believe that Heathen Republican is making far more effort than most of his fellows to find some reality behind the cant.

In my earlier days of interest in right wing groups, long before the internet, much of my contact with them was face to face, and I could see how painful it was to confront the falsity of a lifetime's beliefs. I went through the same thing myself,like many Americans, over the Vietnam war. I do think there is a big difference between Heathen Republican, and a couple of other people who have commented here' who really love their own ignorance and belligerence.
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
Green Eagle,
The timing could not be more apropos. This arrived in my email earlier today:

"Nine-year-old Brisenia Flores was murdered in her home in Arivaca, Arizona in May 2009. She pleaded, “Please don’t shoot me,” right before she was shot — point blank, in the face — by a member of the Minutemen American Defense Corps (MAD).

The alleged mastermind behind Brisenia’s murder, Shawna Forde, has publicly represented anti-Latino hate groups including the Minutemen and the Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR). Forde is currently on trial in Arizona for the murder of Brisenia and her father, Raul. As we speak, the jury is deliberating and will return a verdict within days, or hours.

Our community is waiting on justice for Brisenia.

Her murder represents the violence that follows when hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric and the groups that promote it goes unchecked.

Brisenia’s story has been largely ignored in the mainstream media, but her life has galvanized people around the country to speak out against hate violence towards Latinos. We at Presente designed a poster to honor Brisenia’s memory, and to send a statement that we want justice.

Together, let’s take a stand against anti-Latino violence and the hatred that ruins lives. Please download this memorial poster, display it proudly, and share it with your friends and family:

http://act.presente.org/go/240?akid=301.35244.Zby8OW&t=4


The next time Heathen Republican thinks we are manufacturing stuff, perhaps he should think of the 9-yrear old girl shot in the face by an anti-Hispanic militia group, and perhaps he should create a picture in his mind of a child pleading: "Please don't shoot me ..."

Maybe the crime, a murdered child, and a public trial is too inconvenient for his puny mind to accept since none of us, according to his protestations, have shown him any proof of racial malice.
Green Eagle said…
Octopus,
I have been reporting on Shawna Forde since she was arrested, when her crime and her connection to the right wing netherworld became known. I speculated a couple of weeks ago that her trial for murder (which went to the Jury on Friday) would be utterly ignored by the mainstream media, and that's just what happened.

As they say, if a tree falls in the forest and the press doesn't report on it, it must have been a right wing tree.
Dave Dubya said…
Gee, I wonder where all that "liberal" media was on this story? What do you mean, "What liberal medial"?
(O)CT(O)PUS said…
Good morning, Green Eagle,
Just saw this news story moments ago: Shawna Forde, Anti-Immigration Vigilante, Convicted Of Killing Nine-Year-Old Girl And Her Father In Arizona.

So where has Heathen Republican been hiding? Is he too ashamed to come out and say something coherent and decent for a change?

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