The election a couple of weeks ago has saved this nation from the idiocy of a teabagger government. There are still too many in the House of Representatives, but the Senate and the White House will be able to head off any truly stupid things they try to do. But things are not so good in a lot of states. Far too many state governments are controlled by teabagger Republican officials. These officials campaigned on a teabagger platform, and now some of them are trying to actually put that platform into state law -- and they do it without thinking of what unpleasant consequences might occur because of that.
A perfect example of this has taken place in the state of Georgia. Reacting to the teabagger ranting of their party base, the legislators decided to do something about immigration and government spending. They passed a very restrictive anti-immigrant law. One of the aspects of that law was that no professional licenses would be approved or re-approved with proof that the person applying is a citizen. Then they cut the Secretary of State's budget by 40% (the office in charge of approving professional licenses).
Those two actions together may have made sense to the teabaggers, but it is now causing problems for the people of Georgia. There are now at least 600 nurses in that state who can no longer work and earn a living, because the Secretary of State doesn't have enough workers to approve all the applications they receive. In addition, there are 1300 doctors and other medical workers who can no longer practice because they are unlicensed and waiting for approval. And the backlog is growing.
A spokesman for the Secretary of State said license approval used to be a simple process and "applications whizzed through". Now they crawl.
It gets even crazier. While the SOS's office must receive and examine all of the extra paperwork required by the legislature, they don't have the expertise or the staff to determine whether the paperwork submitted is real or a forgery. In other words, undocumented immigrants could send in forged papers to get a license, and if they were willing to be patient and wait a long time they could still get a license.
How many undocumented immigrants has this process uncovered? That would be none. In the final analysis, the Georgia teabaggers have passed a law that doesn't accomplish its intended purpose, but has created a backlog that is depriving qualified nurses and doctors of their ability to make an honest living (and in a field where shortages are not uncommon).
That's the folly of letting teabaggers make law.
" In the final analysis, the Georgia teabaggers have passed a law that doesn't accomplish its intended purpose ... "
ReplyDeleteUnless of course their purpose was to solely satisfy a false ideological perception.