Joni Scrooge lies even when she tells the truth

Her hate church creed: All people have the right to an early death, oppression, and the pursuit of an affordable prescription

You’ve seen the clips, or can look them up. When Iowa Senator Joni Ernst (1) spouted the usual Republican lies in favor of gutting Medicaid, nurse and librarian India May shouted “People will die!”. Which, unlike most of what Republicans say, is based on actual, you know, data and evidence about excess and early mortality related to Medicaid cuts.

As the Daily Beast reports in the link above, “Numerous studies have found a direct correlation between Medicaid coverage and mortality. A University of Chicago study found that by signing on Medicaid expansion via the Affordable Care Act, 41 states–including Iowa–saved approximately 27,400 lives between 2010 and 2022.

“Another study found that the refusal of 10 states to sign on cost 15,600 lives between 2014 and 2017.”

In response to these truths, Ernst took the unusual-for-her tack of telling the truth: “We’re all going to die.” (2)

Which is a lie wrapped in the truth. (3)

I didn't know that was possible.

This woman is a wonder.

Yes, Joni, we’re all going to die. Yes, Joni, the sun is going to burn out. Yes, Joni, the universe likely will eventually end in entropic heat death.

Most of us were gobsmacked by this understanding when we were 14, and then grew up.

We realized: those things are so true they don’t matter.

What matters: we have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness before we die.

But not according to Ernst.

She doesn't care that the Medicaid expansion allowed 27,400 people to live longer than they otherwise would have.

That 15,600 died sooner than they otherwise would have.

All that matters to her is that they were all going to die in the end, because it doesn’t matter to her whether they ever lived. (4)

Whether they were able to care for their grandkids for one more day. To enjoy one more sunrise or birthday. To have sex one more time. To bake one more cake. To see their team win. To graduate from high school. To live one more week in a group home where they have independence and safety. To bag groceries and smile at a customer. To go to a million other kinds of work (67% of Medicaid recipients work). (5)

According to Ernst, none of us deserve any of those things. Especially if we’re a child or adult with a disability and need to keep a slightly larger percentage of the value we create (or her God forbid, don’t create any capitalist value at all), instead of maximizing the value the billionaires steal from us. If our lives don’t produce enough net profit for the billionaires, then, with her Apostle Scrooge, she believes we should die sooner rather than later, and decrease the surplus population.(6)

At least she goes back to lying by omission in her in “apology,” when she talks about her religion.

Her real God is Capitalism, which made humans to work for billionaires and let them steal most of the value of our work. If we’re poor and have a disability, or love someone in those categories, our lives don’t matter. In her hate church, all we have the right to is an early death, oppression, and the search for an affordable prescription.

1. Who has been horrible since the beginning. Around 2015, my mom joined me on a work trip to South Carolina. On the shuttle bus downtown one morning, she got talking with someone and said we were from Iowa. The person mentioned Ernst. Mom apologized.

2. Except Chuck Grassley.

3. Actually it’s also just a lie. Women are only incubators, and are no longer allowed to die.

4. We know it doesn’t matter to her by her actions. That she may at some point have said otherwise is irrelevant. I am so tired of journalists saying “x said they do not do y that we have evidence that they did” as though that means anything. By their deeds you shall know them.

5. And if we’re going to be very honest and acknowledge the humanity of those folks, as Ernst will not, let’s say that some of these folks were not mourned. Some of them were abusive assholes, and when they died early, that was one more punch their girlfriend didn’t get. That doesn’t make it right to condemn them to an early death.

6. Don’t worry, she’ll try to make sure there are enough surplussed people to keep wages low by backfilling with people born of forced pregnancies. Though their mothers keep dying off, so it’s hard to get a net increase.