Scenario one: A conservative governor gets on the phone with a person he believes is a big corporate supporter and brags about how he will bust the unions. They essentially make plans for the corporate takeover of the state. People get angry, but he doesn’t have to resign because he knows it will blow over.
Scenario two: The head of a public broadcasting group talks to a fake Muslim fake donor and NPR could lose its federal funding.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker thinks he has won in his battle to squash the public employee unions and slash public safety net programs.
The problem for him — and the hope for the rest of us — is that he violated open meeting laws, and perhaps a few others. Unless the courts are as corrupted by corporate America as he seems to be, the law can not be upheld.
Video of the meeting shows Rep. Peter Barca, the Assembly Minority Leader, pleading throughout that the meeting was illegal, that he hadn’t even been given a chance to read the law.
Health care advocates from across North Carolina filled the gallery this morning when the NC House Health and Human Services Committee met to consider House Bill 115, a bill that would hand over the control of the state’s health insurance exchange to the insurance companies and their allies.
They had a bit of the deer-in-the-headlights look as they saw the gallery filled to overflowing. There wasn’t even any standing room.
A Facebook friend posted a link to an article that said the public sector is shedding jobs at an alarming […]
North Carolina legislators are trying to pass a tort reform bill that would make it very difficult for the average person to sue for malpractice and gain anything.
Here’s why: The cap on a human life would be $500,000. I know that sounds like a lot, but in terms of legal fees and whatnot, it’s really very small. The big insurance companies who represent doctors and hospitals have millions to spend on delaying the lawsuit until your lawyer and you have nothing left, so most lawyers won’t take the case.
On Tuesday, the NC House of Representatives will vote on H115, the bill that hands over control of the health insurance exchange to Big Insurance and their allies. I’m still hoping it can be stopped, but there hasn’t been much attention paid by the media, even though we advocates have tried and tried to call attention to it. The Raleigh News & Observer did a story, but there has been nothing out here in the western end of the state.
I heard a great joke this morning: A corporate CEO, a Tea Party activist and a union representative are sitting at a table. In the middle is a plate with 12 cookies. The CEO reaches in and takes 11 of the cookies, then turns to the Tea Party activist and says, “Watch out for that union guy; he’s about to take a piece of your cookie.”
It would be funnier of it weren’t so true. Right now, I see posts all over Facebook from friends who are fed up with the unions because of the abuses they’re suddenly hearing about.
This is the same thing the wealthy on the right did with health reform. They villify the Medicare system and other public and public-private hybrid systems around the world in an effort to make working people think any government involvement in health care would be a bad, bad, socialist, commie think to do.
Jobs, Planed Parenthood,living wages, health reform — it’s all the same issue, really.
Big business wants to get rid of the unions so they don’t have to pay benefits or decent wages. Planned Parenthood provides basic health care to millions of women across the country. It prevents many more infant deaths than it causes by keeping women healthy.
I put on my old tie-dye shirt this morning so I can go to the solidarity rally downtown at noon.
We the people are being attacked on so many fronts it’s hard to know where to fight. The answer is we have to fight on all fronts and we have to be united.
Here in North Carolina, we don’t have the right of collective bargaining for public employees. I want things to move in the right direction in Wisconsin.
