Pat McCrory, the governor of North Carolina, turns away from poor people.
As you may recall, Support the Dream Defenders recently filed a lawsuit against North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory because he had failed to respond at all to our legitimate public records requests for Medicaid Expansion documents. If you will, please direct your attention to the vertical date-stamp in the upper right-hand corner of the photograph above. As you can see, the Wake County Clerk received and filed our lawsuit on July 8, 2015 at 11:16 a.m.
So, we sued Governor McCrory on July 8, and two days later the good governor surrendered.
Not only did the Governor write a letter within two days after the lawsuit was filed, he made sure it was in the mail that same day. Mucking a bad poker hand usually takes longer than this.
At this time, we have accomplished our short-term goal, which was to make the North Carolina Governor answer some hard questions about Medicaid Expansion. As you can see from his letter, he doesn't seem to care how many people are in pain, dying, or filing for bankruptcy because he signed a bill blocking Medicaid Expansion. He doesn't even have a document in his office showing how many people in his state have no health care. Shouldn't every Governor have that?
Our medium-term goal is to begin shaming these Republican Governors and State Legislators for what they are doing, the pain they are causing, and the people they are killing. Not to mention the money they're wasting.
You can help us by tweeting to the hashtags #LetOurPoorPeopleLive and #NationalShamingProject. Send letters to the editors of your local newspapers. Now is time for the media and the American people to tell these villainous scoundrels that they cannot keep getting away with murder.
Our long-term goal is to see Medicaid Expansion a reality across America. This is the part of ObamaCare that is true Single-Payer, and we want it to catch on. We also hate to see thousands and thousands of needless deaths every year. There are four million people across our country in the "Medicaid Gap." Ten percent of them, or about 400,000, live in North Carolina.
#LetOurPoorPeopleLive
Update on Our FOIA Progress
One state left!
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 (Thanks!) |
0 |
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: Gov Bill Warner will sidestep the GOP-controlled legislature and expand Medicaid on his own as of July 16, 2015. Thank you, Gov Warner! 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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