Saturday, December 21, 2024

US Congresswoman Kay Granger found living in a memory care facility...

 

Texas representative Kay Granger (R) on the right. Dallas Express. 

US Congresswoman Kay Granger, a Republican in 12th district in Texas, has been found living in a memory care facility. Dallas Express. Granger has not showed up for a vote in Congress since July 24th and when reporters came to visit her office there was nobody there. Calls were also not returned. A tip stated that Granger was a resident of a memory care facility and had an incident where she had been found wandering in her former neighborhood. The managers of the memory facility were able to confirm that Granger was indeed a resident but did not grant an interview. Granger was retiring from her position and another Republican, Craig Goldman won her seat, raising questions as to why Granger hasn't retired. 

My Comment:

I know I have said this before but I will keep harping on this. America is starting to turn into the Soviet Union right before they collapsed where they had a series of geriatric leaders that were really unable to govern. It was true with Joe Biden. It's true with Mitch McConnell. It's true with Nancy Pelosi, and it was true with Dianne Feinstein until she died in office. And now it's true with Kay Granger as well. 

To be fair, I do sympathize with Granger, along with the rest of these folks. Aging is a hard thing and I wouldn't wish Alzheimer's and/or Dementia on anyone. I have seen first hand what it can do to people and it's absolutely heartbreaking when someone you love doesn't recognize you or doesn't remember that you visited them. 

But at some people folks need to step up and say that you can't be in control of the government when your brain doesn't work anymore. It's one thing when you are Trump, where you are old but still sharp, but many of these leaders are just not there anymore. And it's leading to bad outcomes. 

And this isn't a partisan issue. The Dallas Express, that broke this story, is a conservative outlet. I am guessing the folks that own the paper were pretty angry that Granger wasn't there for the crucial budget vote that got passed this weekend, and understandably so. Granger was not fulfilling her duties and the folks that voted for her in 2022 were not being served by her. 

I can tell you first hand how annoying it is to not actually have a congressman. I live in Mike Gallagher's district in Wisconsin and after his unexpected retirement I was left without a congressman for many months until we got one back during election day (Tony Wied ran two campaigns, one for the 2024 term and one for the remainder of Gallagher's term). But at least in my case Gallagher's office was still open for the day to day stuff. 

It appears that Granger's office didn't even do that. She had a staff of around 25 people but their office was closed and there didn't appear to be any constituent services available. She and her staff were drawing a salary even though they weren't going to do anything to help the people. 

What is worse is that the GOP appears to have been somewhat complicit with this. Granger has made some public appearances after her last vote in July, but it should have been obvious that she was no longer fit to serve. But if it hadn't been for a local news outlet in Texas the people would have never known. 

It really does seem like we need some kind of reform on this area. We should not have a permanent political class that continues to run the country even though they aren't capable of doing the job. Some of this is the fact that a lot of these folks are in safe red or blue areas. At least when Biden was shown to be senile, we could vote him out of office, but how do you get rid of someone like Kay Granger? Granger won her post with 64% of the vote. She wisely didn't run in 2024, but if she had? Would there be any way to get rid of her? 


Elon Musk suggests some kind of test and there are such tests available, like the MMSE and SAGE tests that can be used to detect senility and dementia. But right now there isn't a way to actually get candidates and serving officials to take them. Both Trump and Biden laughed off attempts to take these tests and though Trump at least can point to his public appearances to show that he isn't senile, Biden did not. But regardless, these tests aren't mandatory but perhaps they should be?

Another possibility is term limits. Kay Granger has been in the house for 27 years, since 1997. Now I do think that the term limits proposed are a bit too low, you should be able to stay for more than two terms, but do we really need folks in office for more than 20 years? There perhaps should be some kind of limit, combined with age. 

Either way, I think this is going to be a scandal for the Republicans and one that is just going to frustrate people on both sides of the political spectrum. For the Presidency at least, we should be getting someone younger when Trump leaves office in 2028. But what are we going to do with all these ancient folks in congress? Because I doubt Granger is the only one that has issues... 


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