Kids With Cancer Being Turned Away From Treatment–Thanks, Shutdown!

By Erin Gloria Ryan | October 2, 2013 | 8:30pm

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Conservatives can’t seem to be able to get their story straight on the government shutdown — some are claiming it’s No Big Deal, while others are wringing their hands and wailing that it’s the Obamapocalypse and that soon we’ll all be personally bludgeoned to a pulp by bureaucrats wielding death panels. Both groups are comically wrong for different reasons, but for now, let’s focus on the wrongness of that first group, the ones who are, like, chilling during the government shutdown because they hate the government, anyway.

On today’s Morning Joe, reliably incorrect wealthy man Bill Kristol claimed that the shutdown isn’t really affecting anything of consequence, and he stopped just short of suggesting poor people eat cake when he said that it’s “not the end of the world” if low-income mothers and their children lose food benefits.

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This dude at the Cato institute favors government shutdowns because his long game — reduced federal power — is worth short game minor shutdown inconveniences. This person at the National Post poked fun at the services that are cut due to the shutdown — The Statue of Liberty! NASA’s space men can’t Space anymore! God, people, quitcher complaining.

For all the problems the shutdown will create for some, it may be the wake-up call many Americans need to understand it is they who drive the economy and make the country a great place to live — not the government.

Principles, principles, principles. Meanwhile, in the world of people who are not paid a living wage to spout conservative talking points, actual bad things are happening.

Like kids who have cancer are being turned away from treatment, because the National Institutes of Health aren’t running clinical trials during the government shutdown. From the Wall Street Journal, via the Atlantic,

At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.

Meanwhile, in Idaho, no one is available to look for 63-year-old missing woman Jo Elliott-Blakeslee, who disappeared while hiking at the Craters of the Moon National Monument. But don’t blame the furloughed federal employees for being heartless, lazy bastards; during the shutdown, federal employees are prohibited from volunteering to do their jobs. Elliott-Blakeslee’s family is appealing to local hikers to help them search for her.

And the Women, Infants and Children program, which provides aid to low-income pregnant women and new mothers who need assistance purchasing government wasteful items like, such as: infant formula, is currently relying on the availability of contingency funds in order to continue operating. One problem: no one is at work to dole out the contingency funds some states’ programs will need if the shutdown lasts for more than a couple of weeks. In Paul Ryan’s home district in Wisconsin, WIC administrators also fear families may not be able to purchase necessities using their WIC vouchers due to merchants fearing they won’t be paid,

Another fear Stein has is that vendors—the stores that cash the WIC checks—may stop doing so because they are afraid they won’t be paid. That will have a huge impact.

“They can’t get formula without these vouchers,” Stein says about her clients. “Mothers wonder, Where am I going to get my baby’s food? They are panicked.”

Well, mothers, maybe the next time you and your baby are hungry, just read Atlas Shrugged until you pass out from fatigue. Instead of eating food, try nourishing yourself with completely practical and useful knowledge! Enrich your body with small-government principles!

Reminder: members of Congress are still getting paid. Did you know that one time in Australia, the Parliament failed to pass a budget and so the queen fired EVERYONE and called for a new election? Way to fuck everything up with your dumb unkillable legislative bodies, authors of the Constitution.

[Progressive Mag]