Observer: Perry’s Titanic Blunder

by Eileen Smith @ The Observer

... In an interview Monday on Fox News, Perry was caught off-guard by a hard-hitting question posed by one of the many interchangeable female blond newscasters there: “If part of your goal is to keep the federal government out of the lives of Texans, then why give them that power?” Perry responded by not responding, saying only that Medicaid is a failed program and increasing enrollment is “like adding 1,000 people to the Titanic.”

... But where Perry really got it wrong in the Fox interview was his assertion that “every Texan has health care in this state from the standpoint of being able to have access to healthcare.” That’s like saying that every Texan has food in this state from the standpoint of being able to have access to the grocery store. It doesn’t mean the more than six million Texans who are uninsured can actually afford it. And who but our governor has access to experimental adult stem cell spinal infusions? According to a new study released by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, Texas ranks dead last in health care services and delivery. Texas Medicaid is also one of the most limited and strictest programs in the country. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission projects that the state would actually see a net gain of $70 billion over five years if it expanded its Medicaid program. That sounds like some sort of trick.

In the end it looks like Perry would rather go down with the ship than work with the federal government on health care. And he’s taking millions of uninsured Texans down with him.

Read the full story @ The Observer.

The GOP’s Crime Against Voters

There is no public policy justification for a voter ID law. Voter impersonation at the polls - the only type of fraud that could be addressed by a voter ID law - is virtually non-existent. Despite spending millions on a 2005-2006 voter fraud crusade, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott did not find or prosecute one case of voter impersonation. A national five-year effort by the Bush Justice Department netted only 86 prosecutions from 2001 to 2006.

A 2006 study by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice found that 18 percent of Americans age 65 and over did not have a photo ID. In Texas, even the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute admit that 37 percent of Texans over the age of 80 do not have a driver's license. The same study found that up to 25 percent of African Americans do not have a government-issued photo ID.

According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, women are more than twice as likely as men not to have a driver's license. In fact, one of every five senior women does not have a license. Also, a woman's name and address on a photo ID might not match those on the voter list due to name changes related to marriage, divorce and other factors. The Texas Department of Vital Statistics reports an average 200,000 marriages and divorces in Texas each year, after which it can take up to two months to get a new ID. Now, the Federal Real I.D. Act, that turns state driver's licenses into a national identity card, adds additional barriers for everyone, particularly women of every age, to obtain or renew their driver's license.

For many seniors, disabled veterans, and hourly workers, getting a state-issued photo ID is not only costly and time-consuming, it is also difficult if not impractical to get to the forms and information needed to get an ID from agencies with limited locations and hours. Many disable vets and elderly Texans already have difficulty getting to the polls, and forcing vets and seniors who don't have a photo ID to gather documents and jump bureaucratic hurdles to get one before voting is unwarranted and insulting because no one impersonates a voter at the polls.

Nonpartisan academic studies show photo ID laws discourage turnout. An academic study of the 2004 presidential election conducted for the bipartisan Federal Election Assistance Commission found that states with voter ID laws had an overall turnout reduction of 3 percent, a figure that reached 5.7 percent among African Americans and 10 percent among Hispanics. Former Texas Republican Party political director Royal Masset estimated that a photo ID requirement would reduce Democratic turnout in Texas by 3 percent. That is a lot Texans who would be denied the right to vote in Texas!

By Eugene Robinson, WaPo

Spare us any more hooey about “preventing fraud” and “protecting the integrity of the ballot box.”

The Republican-led crusade for voter ID laws has been revealed as a cynical ploy to disenfranchise as many likely Democratic voters as possible, with poor people and minorities the main targets.

Recent developments in Pennsylvania — one of more than a dozen states where voting rights are under siege — should be enough to erase any lingering doubt: The GOP is trying to pull off an unconscionable crime.

Late last month, the majority leader of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Mike Turzai, was addressing a meeting of the Republican State Committee. He must have felt at ease among friends because he spoke a bit too frankly.

Ticking off a list of recent accomplishments by the GOP-controlled Legislature, he mentioned the new law forcing voters to show a photo ID at the polls. Said Turzai, with more than a hint of triumph: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania — done.”

That’s not even slightly ambiguous. The Democratic presidential candidate has won Pennsylvania in every election since 1992.

But now the top Republican in the Pennsylvania House is boasting that, because of the new voter ID law, Mitt Romney will defy history and capture the state’s 20 electoral votes in November.

Why on earth would Turzai imagine such a result? After all, the law applies to all voters, regardless of party affiliation. It is ostensibly meant only to safeguard the electoral process and eliminate fraud. Why would a neutral law have such partisan impact?

Thanks to figures released last week by state officials, we know the answer. It turns out that 758,939 registered Pennsylvania voters do not have the most easily obtained and widely used photo ID, a state driver’s license. That’s an incredible 9.2 percent of the registered electorate.

Most of the voters without driver’s licenses live in urban areas — which just happen to be places where poor people and minorities tend to live. More than 185,000 of these voters without licenses, about one-fourth of the total, live in Philadelphia — which just happens to be a Democratic stronghold where African Americans are a plurality.

Read the full story @ Washington Post.

More:

• The GOP War on Voting

Gov. Perry Says He Will Continue To Shift Uninsured Health Care Costs To The Insured

Gov. Perry's office today sent a letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reaffirming his opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

Perry said in his letter, "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obama care power grab. Neither a 'state' exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better 'patient protection' or in more 'affordable care.' They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care. "

If Gov. Perry has his way, Texas will neither expand Medicaid nor establish a health care insurance exchange, two major provisions of the Affordable Care Act. When the Supreme Court upheld the insurance mandate provision of the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, which the GOP calls "Obamacare," the court also ruled that states may decline to extend Medicaid coverage to 17 million Americans with incomes below 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 for an individual this year.

If Texas declines the federal funding to implement the Medicaid expansion program, up to 2 million Texans will remain uninsured, seeking care in emergency rooms, shifting costs to the privately insured and increasing uncompensated care costs to health care providers. According to a report published by Texas' Republican state Comptroller, Susan Combs, the state’s uncompensated acute-care hospital expenses (emergency room and other urgent care) totaled $460 per resident in 2006, not including uncompensated costs incurred by charitable clinics or physicians. The U.S. average for such costs was $287.57. The uncompensated care problem in Texas is exacerbated by the fact that uninsured individuals often delay seeking medical care, allowing their health problems to become more serious. By the time such individuals do seek treatment, their conditions may be much more costly to treat, driving uncompensated costs even higher. It is estimated the annual costs of such uncompensated care to run in excess of $10 billion.

By refusing to participate in federal Medicaid expansion, Perry, and the Republican controlled state legislature, will force local taxpayers to pay for otherwise uncompensated care provided hospitals, which will hike hospital district taxes. Health insurance premiums, for those lucky enough to have insurance, will increase, too. The Texas Hospital Association estimates that annual health premiums for an average Texas family are $1,551 higher due to the added costs of covering the uninsured.

Texas Voter Photo I.D. Federal Trial Opening Arguments Today

The Texas Voter Photo I.D. case currently before the federal Washington D.C. Circuit Court took another step forward today as the three judge panel heard opening arguments in the trial.

The three judge panel will decide whether Texas can enforce its year-old voter photo I.D. law, which the U.S. Department of Justice contends will prevent over 600,000 registered Latino and African-American voters from casting a ballot in the November General Election.

Originally set to go into effect on January 1, 2012, the Texas Photo I.D. law would require voters to present one of a limited selection of government issued photo I.D. to election Judges in order to qualify to vote. The accepted forms of currently dated photo identification are: Department of Public Safety issued Texas driver's license, Texas election I.D., or personal identification card; Texas concealed handgun license; U.S. military I.D. card; U.S. citizenship certificate; or U.S. passport.

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department or a federal court is required to pre-clear laws affecting voters before they go into effect in jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination -- and that includes Texas.

In March, the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division refused to clear the Texas law, known as Senate Bill 14 (SB 14), saying Texas officials had failed to prove that it wouldn’t adversely affect minorities. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed suit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice in the Washington D.C. Circuit Court to have the state’s controversial voter photo I.D. law implemented without further delay.

Under federal law, lawsuits seeking so-called “pre-clearance” of changes to voting procedures in all of seven mostly Southern states and parts of nine others, are heard by three-judge panels composed of two district court judges and an appeals court judge. D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel and District Court Judges Rosemary Collyer and Robert Wilkins were impaneled to hear the Texas photo ID case.

(click here to read a full summary of case through early June 2012.)

As the trial got under way in a packed courtroom, DOJ trial attorney Elizabeth Westfall said in her opening argument that the federal government will show racial motivation in Texas’ passage of the law.