North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory killing 455-1145 people.
So, the other day, we sued the Governor of North Carolina. We don't like that he's smiling while killing people for no reason. More to the point of the lawsuit, though, we sued Governor Pat McCrory for completely ignoring valid public record requests on the topic of Medicaid expansion. We'll give you an update on that shortly; first, some background.
1. BACKGROUND.
Support the Dream Defender's current project is to spotlight the cruelty of Republican governors and state legislatures that have refused to Expand Medicaid. Members of our group have sent out public records requests to governors and state legislators in twenty-two states. We have now heard back from twenty of them. In the past couple of weeks, we have heard back from Alaska and, thanks to daily kos activist leu2500, Alabama. That makes twenty.
So what about the last two?
On June 22, the Shawnee County District Clerk in Topeka, Kansas filed our lawsuit against Governor Sam Brownback for dilatory and unresponsive responses to our requests. The Sheriff of Shawnee County served Governor Brownback with suit papers on July 1, 2015.
On July 3, we mailed our lawsuit against North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to the Wake County Clerk in Raleigh. McCrory's sin? He had completely ignored our legitimate public records requests. Not a telephone call, not an email, not a letter. Nothing. We've asked a judge in the Superior Court of General Justice in Wake County to remedy that. The Wake County Sheriff should be serving papers on the Governor right about now....
The difference between our Kansas lawsuit and the one we just filed in North Carolina is that Governor Brownback "answered" our requests for public records, but he answered them with gibberish. Governor McCrory has completely refused to respond to our requests for records. Paragraph 10 of our suit against McCrory explains the crux of our case:
10. ... It has been approximately three-and-one-half months since the initial requests were sent by Plaintiff and received by Defendant Governor Pat McCrory. The Defendant has not responded in any way. Although the governing statute gives record holders a "reasonable" time to respond, a quarter of a year is not reasonable. Moreover, the statute also notes that records should be made available "as promptly as possible." During that three-and-one-half month period, Defendant has not telephoned or sent any form of correspondence to Plaintiff.
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2. WHAT WE'VE LEARNED.
In a nutshell, we've learned that Republican Governors and state legislatures cannot be bothered to find out how many people they may be killing or bankrupting due to their refusal to Expand Medicaid. Of the twenty governors or state legislators who have responded to our requests, including those in Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, only Texas had a single document showing how many people might die or file for bankruptcy because the Governor is blocking the Expansion of Medicaid. (Up to 9,000 Texans will die each year, and 61,000+ will suffer catastrophic health care bills.).
Moreover, only one of the governors or state legislators had a document in his or her office that showed how many people are without health care insurance in their state. Isn't that something they should have handy? Shouldn't they care to have that information?
We've also learned that some Governors care enough about how they look to the public to violate the law to protect their images; others don't seem to care how callous and heartless they appear.
3. WHAT WE WANT TO DO.
We want the media to take notice of this issue. We want to publicize this information. We want people in North Carolina and Kansas to realize that their Governors are ignoring public record requests. We want every person in America to know how many people Republican Governors are killing every year by refusing to Expand Medicaid.
But we have no publicist.
We have nobody with experience working with the press. Can you help us? Fellow Kossack and member of StDDs elenacarlena has volunteered to help, but she needs an experienced hand to show her the ropes. Will that be you?
Help Wanted
We need a coordinator for our letters-to-the-editors campaign. We need to send letters to editors in many states.
We need to send out press releases regarding our Kansas lawsuit (see our diary from three weeks ago) and our North Carolina lawsuit.
In addition, we need someone to make early contact with various media outlets, including Rachel Maddow's staff, Associated Press, etc.
The name of the position does not matter, but whoever accepts this position be comfortable in knowing that we pay our Admins exactly what we pay our Editors and publicity director. ;o)
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Please Sign Every Single One of These Petitions! ;o)
We also want thousands more to sign petitions to force Governors to see the light. Here's a daily kos petition dealing with Florida Governor Rick Scott and Medicaid Expansion. Here's a moveon.org petition for Medicaid Expansion in Texas. And one for North Carolina. Here's a daily kos and CREDO petition for Medicaid Expansion sent to all Republican Governors. Here's another for Louisiana. And still another for Georgia. Would you please consider signing these petitions? If YOUR state has a petition that does not appear here, please let us know, and we will add it to our next list of petitions.
#LetOurPoorPeopleLive
Update on Our FOIA Progress
Two left! Filing lawsuits, but go ahead and write your letters to the editors.
Charting Our FOIA Progress: #LetOurPoorPeopleLive #STDDs
(Dark green indicates we have heard back.)
|
State |
Sent |
Heard Back |
Recipient |
Deaths |
Alabama |
|
|
Gov R.J. Bentley-R |
215-562 |
Alaska |
|
|
Gov Bill Warner-I |
32-91 |
Florida |
|
|
Gov Rick Scott-R |
1158-2221 |
Georgia |
|
|
Gov Nathan Deal-R |
561-1176 |
Idaho |
|
|
Gov Butch Otter-R |
76-179 |
Kansas |
|
|
Gov Sam Brownback-R |
113-330 |
Louisiana |
|
|
Gov Bobby Jindal-R |
249-542 |
Maine |
|
|
Gov Paul LePage-R |
31-157 |
Mississippi |
|
|
Gov Phil Bryant-R |
141-343 |
Missouri |
|
|
Sen Kurt Schaefer-R |
218-700 |
Montana |
|
|
Sen Art Wittich-R |
50-117 |
Nebraska |
|
|
Gov Pete Ricketts-R |
67-212 |
North Carolina |
|
|
Gov Pat McCrory-R |
455-1145 |
Oklahoma |
|
|
Gov Mary Fallin-R |
174-439 |
South Carolina |
|
|
Gov Nikki Haley-R |
209-551 |
South Dakota |
|
|
Gov Dennis Daugaard-R |
36-95 |
Tennessee |
|
|
Gov Bill Haslam-R |
284-759 |
Texas |
|
|
Gov Greg Abbott-R |
8000-9000 |
Utah |
|
|
Rep Gregory Hughes-R |
102-316 |
Virginia |
|
|
Sen Kathy J. Byron-R |
266-987 |
Wisconsin |
|
|
Gov Scott Walker-R |
139-671 |
Wyoming |
|
|
Gov Matt Mead-R |
22-69 |
|
|
|
Total per Year
(Lowest Estimate) |
23,000 |
Notes:
Abbreviations R Republican. D Democratic. I Independent. Gov Governor. Sen State Senator. Rep State Representative.
Alaska: The newly elected governor supports Medicaid expansion; however, Alaska's legislature opposes it. We sent a supportive FOIA request to the Alaska Governor. Indiana: The Governor now supports the Medicaid expansion. Montana: Montana is waiting for federal approval of their version of Medicaid expansion. Utah: Gregory H. Hughes is the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Wisconsin: STDDs continue to support Citizen Action of Wisconsin; however, we filed our own FOIA request for Wisconsin.
Source: Health Affairs Blog: Opting Out Of Medicaid Expansion: The Health And Financial Impacts.
Next Action Steps:
1. Letters to the editor by readers, Kossacks, and followers and members of Support the Dream Defenders.
2. Press releases by readers, Kossacks, and followers and members of Support the Dream Defenders. |
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About Support the Dream Defenders
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders invigorate three ongoing projects:
1. We coalesced to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defenders defend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop(ing) the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014. This bill quickly gained the support of the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 23,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. We will publicize our results through letters to the editor and via press releases. We no longer need volunteers to file FOIA requests, since we have already mailed all such requests.
More information about STTDs here.
You can receive all future stories of Support the Dream Defenders by clicking here. Then click "Follow," which will make all STDD stories show up in "My Stream" of your Daily Kos page.
This is a community diary.
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