I’m starting to think that Joe Miller’s campaign slogan should be, “I got mine and now I’ll do my best to see you don’t get yours.”
Mr. Miller has seemingly not found a publicly funded program he doesn’t love to dip into for himself and his family, from Medicaid to Denali Kid Care to student loans. But once he’s elected and secures the high paid position of U. S. Senator with all its perks and healthcare benefits, he’ll do his best to see that those programs are eliminated so that you never have a chance to receive those same benefits (About two-thirds of Denali KidCare money comes from the Feds).
Unemployment checks? Not constitutional for the federal government to use tax dollars for that purpose, especially now that his wife doesn’t get unemployment benefits anymore. Denali KidCare? His kids don’t use it anymore so suddenly it’s objectionable because women receiving it have choices.
Subsidized government benefits are apparently OK only while he and his family get them.
He also seems to see no need to follow the rules when he doesn’t feel like it. Miller applied for low income hunting and fishing licenses despite the fact that he didn’t seem to meet the residency requirement and was building a house addition with a loan no low income person I know could have ever gotten.
Deadlines for filing financial disclosure forms seem to simply amuse him. He filed his disclosures months late. As for us little people out here… well, I guess we just aren’t wonderful enough to ignore the law like Joe does.
But it was when Miller finally filed those forms that I really started to look over my shoulder for Ashton Kutcher. Not only did Miller pay for law school with a student loan, but according to his disclosure, he still owes money on it.
So if I have this correct – and honestly, it’s so mind boggling it’s hard not to picture his whole campaign as a huge Punked episode – this man who claims that the constitution does not allow federal spending on education had his college education paid for by our tax dollars and his law school paid for by a student loan taken from out tax dollars which he still hasn’t paid back.
Mr. Miller apparently felt that loaning his own campaign over $100,000 was more important than paying back a student loan so that another young person could benefit from an education before he axes the entire Department.
Because now that his education is paid for, Miller declares the Department of Education is unconstitutional (or maybe not depending on whether he is talking as the pre or post primary candidate) and that federal dollars should not fund education. Except maybe if the state gets those federal dollars to administer in which case the unconstitutionality of federal taxes being used for education is suddenly, magically, resolved. Where is Ashton when I need him?
Mr. Miller’s arrogance towards the electorate reached its apogee with his declaration that he would support repealing the 17th amendment, which allows citizens to directly vote for their senators, based on what he perceives as our history of making poor choices. Apparently if we’d simply elect people he felt were acceptable, he’d allow us to continue the privilege of voting. But if we insist on voting for people he does not deem worthy, well then, what choice does he have but to take that privilege away from us. Paternalism anyone?
We apparently are offered the extreme honor of voting him into office. Then he’ll pull the welcome mat in behind him, rescind the 17th amendment, and he and his privileged peers will decide what’s good for us from then on out. Wow. And I thought the Tea Party was all about giving power back to the people.
If, as Joe Miller claims, the U.S. Constitution is not a living, breathing document, then why did our Founding Fathers put in a means to amend it? Or, in stating that only the Constitution and Bill of Rights are legitimate, is Joe implying that recent amendments like woman’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery were silly mistakes made by an ignorant electorate?
I guess his campaign slogan is actually, “Vote for Joe just this once and he’ll see that you don’t ever have to bother voting again.”