Trouble Brewing In Arizona

Jan Brewer, the accidental governor of Arizona who demonized immigrants and health care reform and was elected to a full term in her own right because of all that, is suddenly a victim of buyer's remorse. A movement has been started to recall the governor in part because of her refusal to fund medical assistance for the state's poorer residents, including life-saving organ transplants. Such budget cuts have been likened to the very sorts of "death panels" that Iowa senator Charles Grassley continuously warned that President Obama's health care law would bring.

In Arizona, Brewer is pulling the plug on Grandma to save money. She proposes getting 20 percent of the state's Medicaid patients off the rolls, which, Brewer says, would help save $541.5 million in the coming year. But the cuts will make it more difficult, if not impossible, for many Arizonans to get the medical care they need. Brewer, in fact, is the only governor to stop the funding of transplants, including those for hearts and livers. As Reuters reported, Douglas Gravagna, a carpenter in the Phoenix area, has to rely on a pacemaker and a defibrillator, along with fourteen prescription medications, to keep himself alive. Denied state Medicaid funding for an organ transplant, Gravagna, a heart patient, says that Brewer's decision has pretty much sealed his fate.

"She's signing death warrants - that's what she's doing. This is death for me," says the 44-year-old Gravagna.

The last time Arizona had a governor this contemptible was when Evan Mecham was in charge. Mecham., who died in 2008, became governor of Arizona in January 1987 and quickly gained notoriety for rescinding the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in his state and making racist comments about blacks and Asians. Petitions for a recall election were certified and the election was scheduled for May 1988. Mecham was spared the indignity of being voted out early in his term, ironically, by legislative removal from office. It started when, in January 1988, the state House of Representatives impeached him. He was charged with obstruction of justice and misuse of public funds resulting from failing to report a loan from a real estate developer to his gubernatorial campaign, as required by campaign finance laws - and lending public money to his own Pontiac dealership. That's right, Arizona elected a car salesman - a profession considered even slimier than that of professional politician - as its governor.

Mecham was concurrently indicted by a grand jury - along with his brother - for three counts of perjury, two counts of fraud and one count of failing to report a campaign contribution. Though that body would ultimately acquit Mecham that June (I don't know what happened with his brother), the Arizona State Senate decided they'd had enough of the man from the motor trade. Mecham was convicted and removed from office in April 1988, and the entertaining and morbidly fascinating saga of America's most famous Latter-Day Saint car dealer was over. (So much for Mormon ethics!)

Brewer hasn't done anything illegal, but her budget proposals are inhumane and unfair. Her opponents have to get at least 432,000 signatures by the end of May to set up a recall election, but it could be difficult. It seems she's rather popular among Arizonans, no surprise given her landslide election victory in November.

She's intoxicated with power, which is appropriate for a woman whose married name is "Brewer" and whose maiden name - I am not making this up - is "Drinkwine."