The Kansas City Star
Kansas Republicans have managed to sink nearly as low as infamous and heartless duke
Charles Hammer – July 19, 2023
I was impelled to write this column by a recent history book: “Samuel Pepys and the Strange Wrecking of the Gloucester,” by Nigel Pickford.
The war frigate Gloucester sank in 1682 during a storm off the British coast, imperiling not just its lowly crew but many nobles and — above all — James, Duke of York, who would soon be King of England. James escaped through the frigate’s big rear windows into his own lifeboat.
The tale reminded me of a column I wrote nearly five years ago. In it, I praised Kansas Republican leaders for being more generous to the poor than were the British grandees who starved millions in the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, forcing scurvy-ravaged millions more onto “ghost ships” sailing for America. Our Kansas Republicans are better people than Sir Charles Trevelyn, the British official who cheered the Potato Famine on.
“The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson,” Sir Charles wrote. “That calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”
OK, but just how much better are today’s Republican leaders? In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, millionaire President Donald Trump tweeted moral criticism of the suffering Puerto Ricans.
“They want everything done for them,” he groused.
Former Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley once justified cutting estate taxes on the rich as a way to honor “the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Every darn penny they have? Precisely because of Kansas Republicans, our poor folks have few pennies to blow on women and booze. We stand as a stingy island in the middle of four surrounding states — three of them Republican — that have raised the minimum wage above the lousy national $7.25 hourly.
Citizens of Nebraska, Missouri and Oklahoma dodged past their leaders with initiative petitions that permitted a vote on the issue. These same three — against the will of fulminating Republican politicians — also voted to expand Medicaid to help the poor.
But in miserly Republican Kansas, we don’t tolerate voter initiatives. Nor do we suffer throwing more money away on doctors for the poor. Kansas stands rock solid among America’s 10 states that refuse to expand Medicaid. It was killed once by the Kansas senate, a second time when vetoed by then Gov. Sam Brownback. An aide to Brownback, Melika Willoughby, explained:
“This isn’t just bad policy, this is morally reprehensible…”
Morals again. Morals are very important to Republicans.
Here’s one good thing about Kansas legislators: By stiffing our own poor folks, Republicans helped fund care for the needy in the 40 states that did expand Medicaid. Our Kansas legislators thus have nobly given away billions in free federal dollars to lavish on health care for the poor of other states.
Republicans demand poor folks work a job to get care under Medicaid. But if a single mother with two children earns $8,751 a year, we cut her off because she is too rich.
So how moral were those fancy rich Britons in 1682 as the frigate Gloucester battled the raging Atlantic ocean? As I said, the Duke of York escaped through the frigate’s rear windows into his own lifeboat, leading Sir John Berry later to write:
“His highness took as many persons of quality with him in the boat as she could carry.”
Persons of quality. Of course. Nearly all of the “quality” was saved. An estimated 130 to 250 others drowned.
“But here I cannot pass in silence,” one observer later wrote, “that those that could swim made up to the Boat where the Duke was, and grappled on the sides thereof, endeavoring to get into it, but their hands were ordered to be cut off…and thereby they were deprived not only of getting into the Boats that came from other Ships, but also of the ability of swimming.”
Surely, then, our Kansas Republican legislators must be better than that.
Or are they?