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Urgent – Call Your State Legislators and Demand Medicaid Expansion

By
DrLillisFBurg
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0

( – promoted by lowkell)

Time is running out for the Virginia General Assembly to accept the Medicaid expansion prescribed in the Affordable Care Act.

Yesterday, Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling came out and urged Virginia Republicans to accept Medicaid expansion, in sharp contrast to his GOP colleagues Governor McDonnell, AG Cuccinelli and Speaker of the House Bill Howell.

We cannot allow this opportunity to be missed. We cannot afford to ignore the 400,000 Virginians who would gain health insurance from expansion. We cannot afford to turn down the $2 billion per year increase in Federal Funding for our Medicaid program – funding that comes from the taxes Virginians will continue to pay regardless of the GA decision! We cannot afford to pass up the estimated 30,000 new health care jobs for the Commonwealth.

See below the fold for an email I sent to fellow Members of the Virginia Chapter of Doctors for America.  

The Virginia General Assembly is about to finalize the state budget this weekend. In his original budget proposal, Governor Bob McDonnell cut out the planned Medicaid expansion provided for in the Affordable Care Act for Virginia.

If the Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia State Senate fail to amend the state budget, 400,000 Virginians will continue to be uninsured despite all of our hard work fighting for the Affordable Care Act. Without Medicaid expansion in Virginia, the Commonwealth will lose out on $2B annually provided for in the ACA.

The Medical Society of Virginia, the Virginia Chapter of the American College of Physicians, the Chambers of Commerce, Virginia Hospitals all see the economic and patient benefits to expansion, but legislators in Richmond are still not committed to expansion. We have very little time to convince our representatives in the State Capitol to accept and fully implement the Affordable Care Act by saying “yes” to Medicaid expansion in Virginia.  

Medicaid expansion means 400,000 fewer uninsured Virginians. Medicaid expansion means less uncompensated care for hospitals, community health centers, and physicians. Medicaid expansion, with the 100% Federal funding, means 30,000 new jobs for the Commonwealth. Medicaid expansion in Virginia means YOUR Federal taxes will be used to benefit Virginia, not just states smart enough to expand Medicaid.

Can you call Speaker of the House Bill Howell  (804-698-1028)? Tell Speaker Howell that expanding Medicaid is a win-win for Virginia patients, physicians and taxpayers.

Please take the time to contact Speaker of the House Bill Howell and your own Delegate and Senator in order to finish what we started 5 years ago.  All of our hard work fighting for the Affordable Care Act will mean nothing to the 400,000 Virginians who are eligible for expansion if Richmond refuses to expand its program.

In solidarity,

Christopher Lillis, MD

Virginia State Director

references:

VA-ACP report

Expansion is a win-win for Virginia

Economics of expansion

We cannot refuse this expansion

Virginia News Headlines: Friday Morning

By
lowkell
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0

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, February 1. Also, check out the video of former NY Mayor Ed Koch, who died this morning at the age of 88. Rest in peace (although Koch had so much energy and chutzpah, I doubt he’d enjoy resting).

*Republican-led criticism of Hagel does not appear to shift votes

*Ted Cruz’s Bogus Attack on Hagel (This Ted Cruz dude is utterly rabid, just as you’d expect from a Texas Teapublican. Blech.)

*McDonnell safety task force recommends tougher penalties for gun violation (These are laughable and utterly inadequate, exactly as expected from a panel appointed by Gov. T-Bob.)

*Virginia Lawmakers Approve Bill Forcing Universities To Fund Student Groups That Discriminate (I’m really confused why any Democrats voted for this apparently awful bill. Can someone enlighten me?)

*Editorial: Do not fall for the farce (“Del. Ware offers himself a false choice when he sets his party against his race.”)

*Democrats Criticize Cuccinelli for Book Remarks

*Cuccinellli rejects criticism tying him to Mitt Romney’s ’47 percent’ comment (Actually, Cuccinelli’s FAR more extreme and offensive than Willard “Mitt” Romney.)

*Tea Party Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli: Scalia Is Too Liberal (I posted a link about this story the other day, but it’s worth posting another one in the context of Cuckoo’s new book. This dude’s to the right of Attila the Hun, not even trying to hide it.)

*Bolling backs Medicaid expansion in Va.

*Is Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign driver being paid by Virginia taxpayers?

*“Hybrid Tax” Protested in Richmond

*Virginia ‘Tebow bill’ delayed, in-state tuition spiked

*As bill dies, push to lift ban on uranium mining is losing steam (All those trips to France…for naught. How sad! LOL)

*Navy budget cuts not inevitable, say some Virginia lawmakers

*Editorial: An inelegant and ominous rewrite (“Two state senators think they can improve a 183-year-old constitutional provision on religious freedom.”)

*Edwards floats new compromise on gun show background checks

*Virginia watchdog agency to investigate tolls on Dulles Greenway

*Downpour creates mess throughout S.W. Virginia

*Capitals vs. Maple Leafs: Struggling Washington wilts in final period in 3-2 loss (Well, at least we have the Nationals!)

An Unwelcome Driver of Social Evolution: The Parable of the Tribes

By
AndySchmooklerforCongress
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0

In the next several postings, continuing to roll out my “Swinging for the Fences” project, I will be identifying several different “systemic forces” that, generally unbeknownst to us, shape the destiny of our societies over time.  

These forces work through different mechanisms, they operate on different scales, and they require different approaches to bring them under control.  And they all connect with the one systemic force — call it for now the Mystery Force — that will be the main focus of this project, and that I’ll be introducing last.

All this will be laid out here in time.  For now, let me introduce each of these other systemic forces in a very brief, even sketchy fashion.  Then in a second round, I’ll develop each of them a bit more fully.

This first one, as I said in the previous posting — about the nature of systems — concerns how “the unplanned structure of the system of interacting human societies — more than human nature — has determined the overall direction that civilization has developed.”  I’ll add that the impact of this systemic force has been far from benign. I believe it to be the greatest single source of the downside of human history, of the tale of violence and bloodshed, of tyranny and oppression, that stains the chronicles of our kind for the past perhaps ten millennia.

For now I’ll just give a suggestive nugget that, I’ll argue, helps substantiate this idea (which is the core of my book The Parable of the Tribes).

In his book Theory of Culture Change, the anthropologist Julian H. Steward notes the striking parallels of development among the five civilizations that apparently arose independently in different parts of the earth:  Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Meso-America, and Peru.  He outlines five stages bridging the course of development from hunting-and-gathering societies to the emergence of full-scale civilization.  We can compare the description of the third (Formative Era) with the fifth (Cyclical Conquest) of these stages:


“In the Formative Era, state warfare was probably of minor importance.  There is little archaeological evidence of militarism, and it is likely that the warfare was limited to raids.” (p. 202)

But then:

“The diagnostic features of [the Cyclical Conquest period] are the emergence of large-scale militarism, the extension of political and economic domination over large areas or empires, a strong tendency toward urbanization, and the construction of fortifications.” (p. 196)

With respect to the parallel development of these five pristine civilizations, I’d like to stress the following points:

1) First, the earlier stages involved a multiplicity of different societies which, in time, converged toward fewer social entities, empires consolidated under more central domination.  Thus, in each case, whole groups of civilized people are converging toward a diminishing set of cultural options.

2) The cultural directions toward which they are gravitating — like the iron filings in the fable of the magnet — do not appear to be more desirable than those they are leaving behind.  In all the world’s great religions, people pray for peace, not war.  But here is social evolution taking people in the direction of greater militarism, more warfare, and life behind fortifications.

3) From the fact that parallel processes drove these different civilizations, and the various groups that started out in those areas, toward a destination that is undesirable, I believe it can be inferred, I believe, that something other than human choice is driving the direction of social evolution.  

That “something” is what my book The Parable of the Tribes is about.

Just how and why that is, I will explore in the second round presentation of these “magnets.”  For now, let me just say two things:

First, the circumstances confronted by the people living thousands of years ago in these nascent civilizations made their subordination to unchosen and undesirable systemic forces inevitable.  It was a fate there was no plausible way they could escape.  For us now, however, at this point in civilization’s development, the situation is different.  Even as the systemic force that warped the development of those earlier civilizations has continued to operate in our times, the possibility has been growing for humankind to control those forces and exercise far greater control over the structure and spirit of our societies.

Second, if you don’t want to wait until the next round to learn more about “the parable of the tribes,” you can find the first chapter of my book, where the core idea is systematically laid out, on the web at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=520.

Cuccinelli Perpetuates Right-Wing Lies

By
Elaine in Roanoke
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12

As has been pointed out on Blue Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli’s new book continues to spread lies that are part of the right wing mythology that demonizes the least among us, equating compassion and care of the weak and the sick with some sort of evil plot. Cuccinelli wants to equate raw greed and hatred of government with good public policy.

One lie Cuccinelli repeats is that somehow Social Security is a “subsidized government benefit.” That’s a blatant lie. Social Security is now, and has been from its inception, a self-funding, social pension insurance program. In fact, it has been a cash cow for the government which has used the revenue from Social Security taxes to add money to the Federal operating budget.

In another lie, Cuccinelli calls Medicaid “outright welfare,” contending that it “makes people dependent on government.” Just who are these “deadbeats” that Cuccinelli wants to be thrown onto their own devices to survive? Let’s look at facts, not right-wing lies.  

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 64% of Medicaid spending in 2011 was for older Americans in nursing homes who had used all their own funds prior to getting Medicaid and for people with severe physical or mental disabilities. Do Cuccinelli and his radical ilk promote throwing those people out on the street? About 20% of Medicaid spending went to poor children. Shall we just let them grow up, if they get to grow up, with no health care at all? Only about 16% of Medicaid money went to adults. In Virginia, Medicaid isn’t even given to childless adults, and parents are only covered if they make $6,600 or less annually, which is far below the Federal poverty level.

I, for one, am sick and tired of people like Cuccinelli dressing up their selfishness and social darwinism in conservative politics. These people aren’t conservative. They’re radical, They’re dangerous to the social fabric that knits this nation together. They’re an affront to my religious faith that teaches me that I am my brother’s keeper, that charity to others is a moral responsibility I should welcome. There is only one solution for the poison they spew. They need to be retired from public office.

Video: Former RNC Chair Says Cuccinelli has “cynical view of the American spirit”

By
lowkell
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0



Also check out Democratic strategist Bob Shrum’s comments that about the history of the social safety net in this country, and how he has “no idea why this guy Cuccinelli would want to borrow one of the worst lines ever uttered in American presidential politics and put it out there as he’s starting to run for governor of Virginia; he needs to get support in Northern Virginia, this is going to hurt him there…” Remind me again why we all assume Cuccinelli’s so politically savvy?  

Augustine Carter’s Kafkaesque struggle to vote in 2012 in Virginia

By
lowkell
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1



More great work by my friends Eric Byler and Annabel Park from their series: The Story of America: A Nation Divided. If you appreciate the work Annabel and Eric are doing and would like to support them, please donate here. Thanks.

Augustine Carter, an 85-year-old voter in Richmond, tells her story of the trouble she went through to vote in 2012. Born in 1928, she never had a birth certificate and she never got a driver’s license because she decided years ago that driving wasn’t for her. Her baptism certificate was sufficient for all identification purposes until the 2012 election. She had to go through a Kafkaesque bureaucracy including being told by someone at the Motor Vehicle Administration that she couldn’t prove that she was not a terrorist.

This video was shot in Richmond on January 29th at the Virginia State Capitol building at a rally organized by the Virginia State Assembly’s black caucus. Augustine Carter was invited to tell her story to illustrate that the new bills currently proposed by Republican lawmakers would actually make these problems even worse. One bill in particular would make current voter ID laws which created such problems for Carter even stricter. This bill is scheduled for a vote in the state senate on Monday…

Video by Eric Byler and Annabel Park

Virginia Uranium Mining Ban Maintained

By
lowkell
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0

Nice work by Sen. McEachin on this issue!

Uranium Ban Maintained; Senator McEachin Thanks Citizens for Advocacy

RICHMOND, VA – Today, Senator Watkins struck his bill that would effectively have lifted the ban on uranium mining in Virginia. Senator A. Donald McEachin (D-Henrico), who has been a strong opponent of uranium mining, made the following statement:

“This is a victory for the citizens of Virginia. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their advocacy and their efforts. Many, many Virginians have written letters, made phone calls and appeared here today to tell the legislators of their concerns for public health and safety should the ban have been lifted.

“I was pleased to have the opportunity to work with such a diverse community of citizens to ensure this ban was maintained. I would also like to thank my Republican colleagues who joined me to keep the ban. This was truly a bipartisan and grassroots effort. Moreover, with the ban in place, we can continue to do the work of finding safe sources of alternative energy to reduce our dependency on foreign oil and on fossil fuels,” Senator McEachin concluded.

Would Violating Conventional Wisdom Help VA Democrats in 2013?

By
Goldmanusa
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3

( – promoted by lowkell)

by Paul Goldman

Could the next 30 days decide the 2013 Virginia governor’s race?  What follows is hard whiskey, with everyone at the bar having a carry permit. So drink up. Bill Bolling says he will decide whether to run by March 1. Is there a 200-proof political play to maximize his chances of running? There could be. But it would take one of the biggest, multi-million-dollar bets in Virginia political history.

The Conventional Wisdom (CW) says the McAuliffe campaign or the DNC should wait until the spring before making a significant investment in expensive, positive TV advertising. The operative word: positive. But what about negative? The CW stays that would be a huge mistake to start with negative ads before anything else, especially in February. The historical data is clear: with Terry being relatively unknown, such a move will damage not only Cuccinelli but also Terry. That’s clear. But that might actually be the best 200-proof play in recent VA political history.

Here’s why the CW is right about going positive too early: but maybe not on the negative side. The problem with McAuliffe going too early with his positive TV: the result is likely to not only raise Terry’s positive ratings, but also pull  independent, or Democratic leaning, anti-Cuccinelli voters from the Bolling column to the McAuliffe column. T-Man doesn’t want to do this, because it will reveal Bolling as mostly just a “spoiler” with no chance to win, only a chance to make it harder for Republicans to win the governor’s race. Bolling can not run if this is the story line for his candidacy in the media.

In other words: If Terry starts his positive advertising right now, it could have the perverse effect of both helping him (image improvement), but also pushing Bolling so low in the early polls as to force him not to run. This, then, is the quandary for T-Man, who wants Bolling to run, yet likewise wants to improve his own standing relative to Cuccinelli.

 

It is fascinating that Cuccinelli doesn’t have a flip-side worry. If early positive advertising helps Cuccinelli, then he too will take hypothetical votes currently going to Bolling. This in turn would tend to make Bolling not want to run, which is what Cuccinelli wants. It would also, if successful, make Cuccinelli more formidable against McAuliffe, again what the Republican wants.

Bottom line: Early advertising is all upside for Cuccinelli. But he can’t afford it. What about negative advertising at this early stage? If Democrats hit Cuccinelli hard enough to have the public backlash against both major party candidates, this would presumably drive votes to Bolling. This result is precisely what McAuliffe would want, as it would help pull Bolling into the race — quite a bank shot in the side pocket!

If Cuccinelli goes negative early, it would drive people from McAuliffe and undecideds to Bolling in some numbers, precisely what the Republican doesn’t want. So the K-Man ain’t going negative, no way no how.

Thus the bottom line: Bolling says he will decide to run by March 1. A February attack on Cuccinelli might hurt McAuliffe temporarily. But it will make Bolling more likely to run. That means a sure McAuliffe win if the CW is right about Bolling getting mostly anti-Cuccinelli GOP votes in the end.

Crazy? Or crazy like a fox? President Obama gambled on an early negative attack on Mitt Romney. It worked brilliantly. Would a replay against Cuccinelli also work? There is some considerable statistical logic to suggest it would. But it would be the most expensive political bank-shot gamble in VA history.

Senate Republicans Continue Overreach, Defeat Virginia Dream Act

By
lowkell
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1

Apparently, despite the drubbing they took in November, Virginia Republicans STILL aren’t interested in the Latino vote. At least, they’re not interested in the Latino vote if it means they have to stop their demonization of human beings they so tactfully and compassionately call “illegals.” Instead, Republicans’ idea of a “dream” is more what we’d call a “nightmare,” at least if you’re not super rich, a big corporation, a polluter, etc.

P.S. The following statement is from the Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus.

Republican Senators keep pushing a backward agenda that Virginia voters have repeatedly rejected

RICHMOND, VA – Today, Senate Republicans defeated the Virginia Dream Act, which would give young people with deferred action status in-state tuition at Virginia’s public colleges. The bill, SB 1090, was rejected by the Senate Education and Health Committee on a party-line vote of 8 to 7.

Senator Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) said, “I’m disappointed that Republicans rejected an opportunity to provide the most basic chance to promising young people to further their education and become valuable contributors to their communities and the Virginia economy.”

Senator A. Donald McEachin (D-Henrico) said, “I think it sends a very unfortunate message that Virginia isn’t ready for prime time yet when it comes to fair treatment of its children. I’m disappointed that it broke down along party lines, and I’m sad that the GOP hasn’t yet opened up its heart to all of our children.”

Sen. Herring: “Cuccinelli’s Extreme Statements Are a Window Into His Values”

By
lowkell
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1

From Sen. Mark Herring; I couldn’t agree more.

Leesburg – Democratic candidate for Attorney General State Senator Mark Herring (Loudoun & Fairfax) issued the following statement today in response to the release of excerpts from Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s forthcoming book:

“Ken Cuccinelli’s extreme statements are a window into his values. Cuccinelli’s extreme ideology has been evident during his time as Attorney General, but attacking the millions of Americans who rely on Social Security and Medicare provides new insight into just how out of touch he truly is.

“The fact that Ken Cuccinelli considers these programs that millions of seniors rely on to be government  ‘goodies’ should be alarming to every Virginian.  Virginia cannot continue to move forward with Ken Cuccinelli.”

UPDATE: Virginia House Democrats weigh in.

*”Delegate Herring speaking at press conference denouncing Cuccinelli’s ‘goodies’ comments”

*”Senator McEachin- Cuccinelli’s comments are an attack on people of faith”

*”@deltoscano – Cuccinelli’s on comments on Medicare and Social Security are ‘disturbing'”

*”@deltoscano – Need to focus on creating jobs and growing the middle class”

*”Senator Favola – Cuccinelli’s comments are hurtful. 1000s of SS and Medicare recipients are veterans”

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