Liberal Compassion in “Action”

The Zeb Bell show is listened to actively by Idaho liberals looking to find something to object to. (It’s like Media Matters only less effective, professional, and more pointless.) Anyway, Bryan Fischer was a guest and the Mountain Goat Report took issue with Bryan Fischer who stated this:

You know, the governor’s already directed state agencies to do some holdbacks because tax revenues are not where they were anticipated to be and seems to me that when the governor’s done that, he’s admitted that government spending can be cut when it’s necessary and so the concern I’ve got with increased funding for roads—I think most people recognize we need to have a good road system for all kinds of reasons—but the question is:  why are we not talking about where we can cut government spending in some other area of the state budget to free up the money we need for roads, rather than just throwing another tax increase “brick” in the backpack of Idaho taxpayers?

MGR wrote:

So Fischer, whose organization pays no taxes as a non-profit corporation, appears to be concerned with putting “bricks” in taxpayers’ backpacks and he’s suggesting that the budget cuts already in place could or should have been put in place sooner and the money used to pay for the estimated $240 million shortfall in road funding, as if there were some magic, state government waste repository just lying around waiting for some sharp-eyed wizard with an “abracadabra.”

Maybe if he had spoken to any of the more than 500 state employees forced to take days off without pay this past holiday season or the woman, and countless others like her, whose autistic son’s services were cut at the Department of Health and Welfare (where services are already hard to come by), he would have known that there is no magic wand, that emergency across-the-board budget cuts in an already lean state budget affect real people’s lives, many who can ill afford it.

Maybe if he had, he wouldn’t have so cavalierly suggested that these, for many, painful emergency measures should have been inflicted sooner.  Fischer’s lack of empathy for Idahoans enduring the effects of these budget cuts is inexcusable.  No doubt these are tough times and many are and will be making sacrifices, but it is inconceivable to suggest that since an individual can survive an emergency amputation that this individual should have then had the limb amputated sooner.

Actually, Fischer never suggested that this high level of across-the-board cuts should be done. He didn’t say, “Yeah, the lady whose kid has autism should have been cut much sooner.” The cuts have been hard, but they’ve not all ben of the severity that MGR writes of.

In any case, if our road funding is at a point where it’s lagging and is a risk to public safety, then it comes down to a time for hard choices. If our road funding’s an emergency, then Otter needs to make tough cuts to fund it. If it’s not an emergency, he makes less severe increases in fees.

Yet, in the world of the American left, government never should have to make hard choices, only taxpayers.

I would note the compassion of the left here. MGR has noted that this poor lady has a real problem. So what are Democrats and liberals doing about it? Anyone setting up a fund to help this lady pay for extra care to make up for the slack in state funding? I’d send a few bucks to that cause. But there is no fund.

I remember first reading of this phenomenon several years back when a lady had been hurt by not getting dental care from medicaid. Democrats made a huge deal and used it to assail the governor and the legislature as uncompassionate. Yet, I remember thinking, Why didn’t a few well-to-do Democrats chip in and help her get her teeth fixed. Lord knows, they have the money.

It is the freakshow compassion that parades human beings around as nothing more than sideshow victims, props to attack political opponents. They won’t actually help people. They’ll show compassion by demanding government do something. It’s a lousy racket.