Monthly Archives: January 2019

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

new rule … cut access to abortion by making insurance providers jump through hoops ~a repost



This is urgent:

The Trump-Pence administration has released a new proposed rule designed to cut people off from abortion care by targeting insurance providers.

What does that mean? It means insurance companies would be forced to jump through ridiculous hoops in order to cover abortion care. It means over a million people, who received coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), would be affected by this new rule and could lose access to abortion care.

Let’s call this what it is: Another blatant attempt to undermine the ACA, stigmatize basic reproductive health care, and block patients from assessing abortion. And it’s part of the Trump-Pence administration’s broader attempt to eliminate access to abortion care altogether.

Please make a comment: 

Your comments are absolutely essential to stopping this rule because HHS has to read every. single. one. Our hundreds of thousands of comments made it difficult for the administration to quickly move forward with a final Trump-Pence gag rule — and that’s what we need to do again now.

All of us deserve health care coverage that meets our needs — regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or decisions about whether or when to have children. That’s why I’m offended by this governmental overreach into whether or not health insurance companies can cover abortion care for their consumers.

This rule goes beyond limiting patients’ access to abortion care. It’s an attempt to single out abortion care and stigmatize people who have abortions — despite the fact that one in four women in America will have an abortion at some point in her life.

Let me make this perfectly clear: Abortion care is health care. Reproductive health care is health care. And any attack on our health care is an attack on all of us.

Friends , a lot of the attacks we’ve seen on health care have been unjust. (The multiple attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and block Medicaid patients from getting care at Planned Parenthood come to mind.)

But many of the attacks on access to reproductive health care have come in the form of rule changes within the Trump administration. They’re subtler — but no less offensive or dangerous for patients

Countless people are relying on us — so thank you so much for making your voice heard.

Sincerely,

Dr. Leana Wen, President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

bloomberg reports … “Trump Citizenship Question on 2020 Census Blocked by Court”


Breaking: a federal judge in New York BLOCKED the Trump administration’s attempt to add a question about citizenship status to the 2020 Census.

This is a huge victory in the fight against this discriminatory question, which the administration conspired to add to the census. Experts who worked on the census in Republican and Democratic administrations are concerned that it could result in an undercount of key communities. And today, the court found exactly that: that there will in fact be an undercount of communities with high populations of immigrants and people of color if the citizenship question is left on the 2020 questionnaire. According to Robert Shapiro, who ran the 2000 census, the citizenship question could dissuade more than 24 million people from filling out the census.

Keeping this question off of the census is a huge priority for redistricting. The 2020 Census will affect reapportionment and the underlying data on how maps get drawn in 2021. By purposefully undercounting certain communities, the Trump administration would be robbing them of political power for a decade — not to mention hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for education, infrastructure, health care, and other critical programs.

Today’s court ruling is a huge win, but the fight isn’t over yet. The Trump administration is expected to swiftly appeal today’s ruling to the Second Circuit, and it is anticipated that the Supreme Court will have the last word on the question before June, when the Census Bureau has to finalize the questionnaire. The citizenship question could still appear on the 2020 Census.

We have to keep up our efforts to advocate for a census that is fair to all communities. Will you chip in to help the NDRC and our allies keep pushing for a fair and accurate census?

— Team NDRC

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Clemency


Earlier this week, I cried learning that Cyntoia Brown would be released on August 7th. Later this year, Cyntoia will be going home to her loved ones.
Here’s a small part of her statement: “I am thankful for all the support, prayers, and encouragement I have received… With God’s help, I am committed to live the rest of my life helping others, especially young people. My hope is to help other young girls avoid ending up where I have been.”
Young girls of color like Cyntoia should have never fallen through the cracks. She should have never been endangered as a teen and then incarcerated. She should have never spent half her life in prison for killing her would-be rapist. There are more stories like Cyntoia’s out there.
Thanks to your help, she will be free come August. We collectively contacted Governor Haslam’s office over 16,000 times. That was the impact you had. We can only prevent her situation from happening to other people by continuing to fight injustice in our criminal justice system.
Thank you for all you do,

Elder Leslie Mathews

 

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Good’ole Abe said…


Austerity Vs Prosperity … 

“The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but cannot do, at all, or cannot, so well do, for themselves in their separate, and individual capacities.

In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere. The desirable things, which the individuals of a people cannot, do, or cannot well do, for themselves, fall into two classes: those, which have relation to wrongs, and those, which have not. Each of these branches off into an infinite variety of subdivisions. The first that in relation to wrongs embraces all crimes, misdemeanors, and nonperformance of contracts. The other embraces all which, in its nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.

From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need for government.”

~ Abe Lincoln