Kentucky now has work requirement for Medicaid

To receive Medicaid in Kentucky, some will now have to work for it.

Kentucky is the first state to require that able-bodied Medicaid recipients will have to work to keep their benefits. Opponents of helping people help themselves are getting ready to sue.

Republican Governor Matt Bevin received federal permission last week to implement the work requirement. Other states had tried before to get permission from the Obama administration but were denied.

So what will this cruel Republican plan entail? Starting this July, if you’re not disabled, and you’re aged 19 to 64, you must work a minimum of 20 hours a week to receive Medicaid coverage. The work requirement is broad – it can be volunteer work, job training, taking classes, caring for the disabled, or even searching for a job. There will also be exemptions to the requirement – people with medical conditions, full-time students, etcetera.

Governor Bevin said around half of the 350,000 Kentuckians who must meet the work requirement are already employed. People will also have to earn dental and vision benefits through things like working toward a GED or taking a financial planning course.

Really, what is so wrong with this plan, other than it coming from Republicans?

“It will soon become the standard and the norm in the United States of America,” Governor Bevin said, “and America will be better for it.”

But critics are already pouncing, saying this plan will seriously harm people and that it violates Medicaid law. So, they’d prefer people stay unemployed and on government assistance?

Another politician had something to say about that: “We must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed, that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can, and then to take wise measures against its return. I do not want to think that it is the destiny of any American to remain permanently on relief rolls.”

What insensitive Republican jerk said that? None. That was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Apparently, not even the godfather of the American nanny state himself wanted people permanently on government relief.

Why do Americans seem to value the best ideas in all areas of life except government? Maybe because in politics we’re too concerned with who gets the credit.

Good for you, Kentucky. I hope this experiment works.

Japan has false missile launch alert

First Hawaii and now Japan. The flash message rang across cell phones yesterday:

“NHK News alert. North Korea likely to have launched a missile. The government J alert (which is the Japanese version of EAS): evacuate inside the building or underground.”

It took the state of Hawaii almost 40 minutes to issue the false alarm. The Japanese took just 5 minutes, but that makes two nuclear weapon false alarms, within the Pacific theater, in just a matter of days.

What’s going on? Oh wait, what’s that? We’ve got secret camera footage into the emergency broadcast control centers from both Hawaii AND Japan? We go there now:

Well now that explains everything. A little tip, Baby Groot is probably not the best employee to have pushing your emergency alert buttons.

After seeing the computer interface for the Hawaiian system, I’m not at all surprised a mistake finally happened. It looks like a screen grab from an old Apple 2. Hey guys, 1981 called… they want their technology back.

But I have absolutely NO idea what caused the false alarm in Japan, and the Japanese apparently don’t either. If they do, they aren’t telling anyone.

We better get a full and detailed explanation from both incidents because speculation is beginning to run wild, and you can’t really blame people for filling in the holes themselves when information is this scarce. Especially at a time when nuclear war seems more likely now than it has been since the Cold War.

It doesn’t help that this latest fake alert came simultaneously as Japan, along with 19 other countries, were meeting in Canada to talk about… wait for it… escalating pressure on North Korea over its nuclear program.

I don’t know whether it’s faulty out of date technology or if Kim Jong Un has weaponized Baby Groot, but these incidents are waking people up to a very dangerous reality, and that’s this: nuclear weapons are no longer the modern day first strike. Cyber warfare is. This is probably NOT what caused these false alarms, but we all have that creeping thought that these things are now all too possible in this day and age.

Science fiction becomes reality between now and the next 10 years. It’s a brave new world.

Corruption abounds in Puerto Rico following hurricane

The air was thick with tension as FEMA agents, U.S Army Corps of Engineers, and their armed security detail entered the warehouse.

They were on a mission to see if the rumors were true.

100 days after Hurricane Maria ripped through the island, half the population is still living without electricity, despite the relief aid and construction materials that were sent to restore the electrical grid.

There was speculation that the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (or PREPA for short) had been hoarding these critical materials.

Once inside the warehouse, it was easy to see this was true. It was filled to the brim with equipment and resources.

That explained why FEMA agents were always so perplexed by the lack of construction materials.

PREPA received the equipment to rebuild, they just failed to do anything with it.

So while the people of Puerto Rico are forced to get by without life-saving electricity every day, their salvation has just been sitting in a warehouse.

It’s just another example of government inefficiency and idiocy at the expense of its citizens. How many lives could have been improved or even saved, if PREPA just did their job and distributed the materials?

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