No Healthcare for Working People, But a Quarter-Million for Freakazoid Fraud

So Kentucky taxpayers are just tickled to death - literally - that their healthcare dollars are now going to ensure that only straight, white, christian, conservative, repug married couples get to adopt.

Next "reform": firing all child protective workers who are gay, muslim, atheist, darker than a paper bag or just too liberal.  I give this motherfucker six months to purge the department.

From the Herald:

Democratic lawmakers have vocally opposed Bevin’s hiring of Dumas, criticizing his qualifications and the amount he’s slated to earn when compared to salaries for child-protection workers in the state.

“I don’t think this particular individual was qualified for the job,” Carroll said after the meeting of the Government Contract Review Committee. “My personal opinion is that [Bevin] was playing for the religious vote. He constantly does and that’s his privilege.”

Bevin has defended his hiring of Dumas to overhaul Kentucky’s adoption and foster care systems, saying the criticism is unjustified.

SNIP

The number of substantiated child abuse and neglect findings in Kentucky increased 55 percent from 2012 to 2016. There are more than 8,000 children in Kentucky’s foster care system. An estimated 1,200 of those are available for adoption.

Despite the testimony lauding Dumas’ leadership qualifications, Carroll remained skeptical.

“I don’t see any justifiable reason to pay a minister who knows absolutely nothing about adoption, he knows nothing about the operation of state government,” Carroll said. “He’s had one adoption, so now he’s an expert at adoptions?”

Nope.  He's an expert at establishing and enforcing Dominionism.

Secrecy: Authoritarianism's Dead Giveaway

This is so fucking cute. Bevin snatches a quarter-million dollars from Medicaid patients losing their health coverage in a secret repug Senate bill to pay for a secret hotline run by political hacks to keep state government corruption - wait for it - secret.

Your ass is showing, motherfucker.

Jack Brammer at the Herald:

Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration is spending nearly $250,000 this year for a new hotline and website that state employees and Kentucky residents can use to report wrongdoing in government.

Attorney General Andy Beshear said he has “serious concerns” about the new hotline, calling it redundant and lacking independent, trained investigators.

“I, like all Kentuckians, want to ensure that reports of unethical or illegal actions are reported to and investigated by a trained, independent and nonpartisan government agency,” Beshear said in an email.

Beshear, a Democrat, noted that state employees may anonymously report any questionable activity to his office through its Department of Criminal Investigation at 866-524-3672. That number is answered by sworn law enforcement officers, who are career merit employees, not at-will employees, he said.

Under Bevin’s hotline, reports “will not go to an independent law enforcement agency, but to his political employees who will then decide which allegations are investigated and which are not,” said the state’s chief law-enforcement official.

“That is putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” Beshear said.

Bevin Must Be So Proud

Resign, motherfucker.  No sweet judgeships for practicing homophobic bigots.

From the AP:

A Kentucky family court judge says he won't hear any more adoption cases that involve gay adults.

The Courier-Journal reports Judge Mitchell Nance issued an order Thursday saying he believes that "under no circumstance" would "the best interest of the child be promoted by the adoption by a practicing homosexual."

Nance cited an ethical rule that says judges must disqualify themselves when they have a personal bias or prejudice.

Nance's order said lawyers representing gay people in adoptions in Barren and Metcalfe counties would have to request a special judge.

Don't bother sending Nance the dozens of studies showing that the vast majority of pedophiles and child abuses are heterosexual.  Or the hundreds showing that children thrive with gay parents

He's a trumpy.  He doesn't care about the facts. Fags make him feel icky in his bathing suit area, so no adoptions for them!

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/latest-news/article147409639.html#storylink=cpy

What Price Adoption Security?

When both Planned Parenthood and Right to (Interfere in Your) Life agree on a policy, you know it's a sign of the apocalypse.

From the CBS station in Newark:

It’s a big step forward for a historic and controversial adoption bill. Lawmakers approved a plan Tuesday to unseal birth records for adoptees in New Jersey.

But some critics said it could encourage abortion, reports CBS 2’s Tony Aiello.

“Every time my kids did something for school, they’d ask me what nationality are we. I’d have to say, I don’t know. It was a good experience growing up with the parents that I had, but I still think it’s owed to me to know where I came from,” adoptee Patti Spiegel said.

Like many who were adopted Spiegel is anxious to learn about her biological parents.

“I would say it’s a burning curiosity,” she said.

And it might be satisfied by the Adoption Rights bill just passed by the New Jersey Legislature, which would allow adults who went through so-called “closed adoptions” to see their birth certificates, learn the names of their parents and begin tracing their family medical histories.

“So if somebody has a family history of glaucoma they know what to check for and that could be very good for them,” said Assemblyman Vincent Prieto, D-Hudson County.

Opposition to the bill came mostly from New Jersey’s Catholic bishops and right-to-life groups, who feared the loss of anonymity would sway some pregnant women against adoption.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark spokesman Jim Goodness said Catholic charities arranged thousands of adoptions, promising anonymity.

“There are women and men who have been involved in the adoption process for generations who are now having their privacy taken away from them,” Goodness said.

The bill provides a mechanism for biological parents to have their names blanked out, as long as they provide cultural and medical history details.

Bastard Nation dissects the opposition:

Most ideological opposition organizes the debate around central issues which are actually peripheral to adoptee rights. Both Planned Parenthood and Right to Life oppose open records because they feel that access to or frequency of abortion will be affected by changes in the law. Planned Parenthood and other feminist organizations have asserted that permanently sealed records are a reproductive choice equivalent to the medical confidentiality of abortion. The state chapters of the ACLU that have come out against open records have used a tortured argument based on non-existent privacy rights that neither the general public nor legislators have taken very seriously. Concerted outreach and education is effective in neutralizing this opposition, both with the general public and within the oppositional organization itself.

Hat tip to emailer Wil, who writes:

"My birth father was only able to contact me because my birth mother had kept detailed records of my whereabouts. I have been communicating with my birth father weekly for almost 30 years now. It has been invaluable for me to know my birth family's health history. I have also learned that many of my interests are genetically based.

One must question the motives of The National Council for Adoption, Planned Parenthood and the other anti-freedom of information groups that are against open access to birth records."

I am not an adoptee, nor have I been a principal on either side of an adoption. As a First Amendment absolutist, I demand disclosure, but as a civil liberties activist, I defer to personal privacy. I have to hope that any adoptee disclosure law manages to thread the needle of giving adoptees needed information while protecting birth families.