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. |
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 WantedWe 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) |
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.
