Get Out Your Waders

I suppose that after Sunday's remark by Susan Adler Thorp, calling some Christian conservatives the "Taliban wing of the Republican Party," I can be allowed to call the Commercial Appeal's Paula Wade the Goebbels of the daily paper, a hard-line propagandist willing to do whatever it takes to advance her agenda.

But no, let's not do that.

Tuesday's CA has an editorial by Wade in which she purports to show why both gubernatorial candidates, but especially Hilleary, won't be able to do any new spending without eviscerating TennCare. She paints a picture of a State with a budget squeaky-tight, with unalterable obligations, with poor people ready to die without TennCare. It's a careful construct designed to lead to her conclusion, but she lards it with assumptions she doesn't even question, or regard as questionable.

Wade apparently believes that since TennCare now exists and covers one-quarter of the State's population now -- something not envisioned by its designers -- any changes which threaten to throw anyone off are automatically bad. Wade recently did a series of articles that were largely informed by the supporters and dependents of TC and intended to support their positions. Wade has demonstrated many times over the past three years her unalterable support for the income tax and has recently shown a blind, unyielding lust for TC.

In the editorial, Wade devotes almost four times as much space to pasting Hilleary as she does to mildly chastising Bredesen. I originally started this post intending to go one direction -- her unequal treatment of the two candidates -- before I realized that the editorial served a deeper, more sinister purpose!

Take the time to go and reread the two Wade TennCare stories linked above. They are both horribly lop-sided and partisan. She only quotes supporting information from TC advocates, from the folks who will benefit either directly or indirectly from having TC. The usual "more government" Socialists. Nowhere does she use meaningful, dissenting, critical information; she doesn't even acknowledge the TennCare audit done by the State that clearly shows massive room for improvement. It's the document that's providing the blueprint for the reforms she's criticizing!

What Wade has done is to set herself up. She runs two stories that give her a base. Even though they are biased and untrue and emotionally manipulative (news stories, mind you), by having them in print she can act as though established, unbiased fact is now in evidence. She then proceeds, in the editorial, to use that false base to further her agenda -- preserving and expanding TC.

Think about it -- Wade is so partisan in her support of TC that she ignores the audit, ignores the critics of TC, ignores the fraud and abuse that's glaringly obvious. She's so afraid of anyone touching any part of TC that's she's willing to let us pay for unknown numbers of fraudulent recipients. Complain, and she'll accuse you of sending the sick into the streets to die.

She's one scary woman. She reminds me of this C.S. Lewis quote:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may
be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons
than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty
may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but
those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for
they do so with the approval of their conscience.

Wade is tyrannical.

Until next time.