Dr. Jake Kleinmahon, who is just one of three pediatric heart doctors with his specialty in Louisiana, said he feels like the state has targeted families like his.
That’s a direct result of losing the Supreme Court. It was the only mechanism keeping minorities and women safe in red states. Now that it’s gone, the apparatus of state power is going to grind them up if they don’t have the resources to get out.
Next time someone says “democrats and republicans are the same” or “Clinton would have been just as bad”, think of the SC and federal district judges she would have appointed. Think of how different things would be for people in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas etc right now.
Then tell me again how your vote doesn’t matter.
No, the problem here is with the Senate, and it’s arcane traditions where unanimous consent is required to get anything substantial done, and if the outsize power it gives the Majority Leader and the committee chairs to set the agends, who are only selected by the majority members. With the normal rules it takes 60 votes to get anything done. But if the Majority Leader or the relevant committee chair doesn’t like a thing, they get a pocket veto to derail it.
Our current situation at the Supreme Court has everything to do with Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham deciding that the Senate’s “advise and consent” role includes being able to perpetually ignore the President by failing to schedule a vote. When RBG died, Republicans made clear that they would have voted down a progressive replacement. I think it was Graham that literally challenged Obama to name a more centrist judge, and gave Garland as an example by name. Then, when Obama nominated Garland, Graham pivoted and said that now that Obama nominated that centrist, the Senate still wouldn’t consider the nomination until after the election.
Make no mistake about it, the reason why Graham and McConnell never scheduled a vote is that they knew it would pass. So two Senators essentially vetoed Obama’s pick, which is in flagrant opposition to the Constitution, which says the whole Senate has to vote on it. (Then , of course, when the tables were turned 4 years later Mitch and Lindsay came to different conclusions).
Even if Clinton won in 2020, there is no guarantee these Senate Republicans would have played fair and lived up to their commitments. They would have found new and novel ways to screw the country.
Agreed the problem is multi faceted, and it needs to be fought on multiple fronts. If I were an American I would support statehood for DC and PR to address the small-d-democratic deficit of the senate, anti-gerrymandering rules, all that stuff.
But none of these things are made better by not having a Democrat in the White House.
Those are all Band-Aids, the problem doesn’t get fixed until the Judiciary is fixed, and so much of that depends on the Senate that we can’t fix the Judiciary without fixing the Senate first.
The Senate was originally founded as a check on direct democracy, after all. Senators were appointed directly by State Legislatures, not by popular vote. Which meant that they needed to have direct political connections, both inside their state and outside, to get anything done. And I think that’s the origin of their arcane rules, they considered themselves part of an exclusive club, so they made rules that reinforced those personal connections to get anything done.
I doubt the founders ever intended for Lindsay Graham to have a permanent veto on naming Supreme Court Justices, or “Coach” Tuberville to have a permanent veto on confirming high-ranking military appointments. Yet here we are.
Let’s be clear. The normal rules are 50 votes to pass legislation. The fillibuster was never meant to be a permanent fixture and needs to be abolished immediately.
It’s more than just the Filibuster. The Senate rules are complex, on purpose, to make actually getting things done difficult, and revising those rules required unanimous consent.
Look at what “Coach” Tuberville is doing. There are a bunch of military promotions that require Senate confirmation. The normal process is to debate each one individually. Debating them and approving them together, in one batch, requires changing the rules, which requires Unanimous Consent. Coach is withholding that consent because the military is transporting women in their ranks who need health care that might require abortion to states that allow it. Which has nothing to do with the merits of the promotions.
He is using the Senate rules as a cudgel to hold Military Readiness hostage until he gets his way. And it’s the inane structure of the Senate rules that allow this.
Im in school in Louisiana where there is a big push to improve the state healthcare ranking from 49/50 to 40 in the next 10 or so years.
Nation wide, over 50% of doctors stay in the same state they did their residency training in. So if you get the resident, chances are you get a doctor in the long term. You want residents to do their training in your state.
But with the new laws, so many of my classmates are not even considering doing their residency training in Louisiana. I sure as hell dont want to. So this law is making more people seek training outside of the state and less will likely return after. Its going to end up draining even more doctors out of the already horribly health deprived state. Absolute lunacy.
We ain’t getting to 40 like this.
If they only would have let Obama appoint his justice! Then RBG could have retired instead of dying on the bench trying to hang on until a dem president. That whole shit was so underhanded, and then the GOP called it BS when dems tried to keep out a literal rapist.
They dared the dems to do something about it, and the dems blinked. They always blink.
😭 yeah… It’s such pain to have to fight someone who’s fighting dirty. You either have to figure out how to beat them anyway, or get dirty yourself, and dems weren’t ready to get dirty yet.
This is part of the GOP strategy.
Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has openly acknowledged that the GOP strategy is to make it so miserable for Democrats in red and purple states that they will move to blue states. That would, in turn, cement Republican power in the White House, Senate and thereby the Supreme Court.
There was a thread yesterday saying the usual “Democrats should pick a better candidate than Biden”.
Clinton failed. Should have run a better campaign.
Obviously. But that’s not the point I was making.
America is such a strange place—I know a lot of conservatives will probably cheer in response to this doctor leaving the state. The resulting huge void in the ladder of pediatric care and the poor health outcomes for children are just collateral damages in the struggle for republicans to be able to openly hate and discriminate against the queer community again. It’s ironic (or maybe just hypocritical?) that the republicans have pivoted all their messaging to “we have to protect the children,” while directly creating situations like this that hurt children.
See also: places with no OB/GYNs because Republicans have made it literally impossible for them to do their jobs legally.
This will inevitably create even higher healthcare costs. More and more procedures and specialists require someone to fly to a blue city or state.
Dr. Jake Kleinmahon works at Ochsner Hospital for Children in New Orleans as the medical director of the hospital’s pediatric heart transplant, heart failure and ventricular assist device programs. He is just one of three doctors in the state with that specialization, he told WDSU, an NBC affiliate in New Orleans.
Kleinmahon, who is gay, told WDSU that he and his husband had planned to retire in New Orleans, but he now feels like the anti-LGBTQ legislation passed by the Legislature has made the state a hostile place for families like his.
For anyone wanting more context, OPs article re-reports and links to https://www.wdsu.com/article/louisiana-heart-doctor-says-he-is-leaving-state-due-to-discriminatory-anti-lgbtq-law/44706683# , which has more quotes from the doctor.
All the best run states, with the highest education, best health, lowest crime, highest wages and strongest economies, are progressive. Inclusivity and taking care of the disadvantaged isn’t just a moral good. It makes us all better off when we give everyone a fair chance. This doctor is one example.
New Orleans used to be the 3rd largest city in the US and the 4th busiest port in the world. There’s no reason that Louisiana couldn’t have been as rich and prosperous as California or New York. But years of conservative policies make you poor.
I would like to thank the Southern United States of continuing the rich tradition of sending talent to the North East.
It’s really damn sad that we’re at this place. It’s sad for everyone involved. His patients lose a great provider, and his family has to leave the place they know and love. I know it’s nothing new, but it pains me to see LGBT people be driven out of the places they want to live.
We are everywhere. We always have been, and we always will be, no matter what the homo- and transphobes think. The enemy wants us to push us around at their whims, but they don’t want to acknowledge that we deserve happiness and safety wherever we are.
Brain drain. He won’t be the only one
Good. Conservatives do not deserve nice things like healthcare. Let them suffer and die as they insist.
If it were only the ones creating the problems that were getting hurt I’d agree with you
The kids that this will hurt did note vote for them
Dr. Jake Kleinmahon, who is just one of three pediatric heart doctors with his specialty in Louisiana
I’m SURE so many doctors with his expertise will literally FLOCK to Louisiana… not
Last month the Republican-dominated Legislature overturned his veto of a bill that will ban transition-related medical care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery, **for minors starting Jan. 1, 2024. **
I don’t know if gender transitioning surgeries for minors is a reason to dislike a state. Seems to say more about this guys morals that he’s pro-life altering surgery for minors.
