Trump, Gaza, Healthcare

“A couple of weeks ago, (Kansas Secretary of State) Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states and asked them to provide voter data on name, date of birth, last four digits of their Social Security number, felony conviction history, and whether or not they voted in elections going back to 2006.”

– Tomas Lopez, counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program, on concerns that President Trump’s new Voter Integrity Commission is being run by those who have actively sought and/or implemented more restrictive, voter suppression tactics in the past


Is Presidential Commission on Election Integrity a GOP Trojan Horse to Expand Voter Suppression?

Interview with Tomas Lopez, counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program, conducted by Scott Harris

Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory in the November presidential election surprised most political pollsters and the majority of voters who had supported Hillary Clinton. Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots, which caused a frustrated Trump to repeatedly make the false claim that 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants had voted for the Democratic candidate.

On the basis of this false accusation, designed to provide a rationale for his historic popular vote loss, President Trump initiated the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to investigate alleged fraudulent voting. The Commission is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach serves as vice chairman. Kobach is well known as the architect of voter suppression laws adopted by states across the country, as well as Arizona’s infamous anti-immigrant “papers please” law SB 1070.

On behalf of the Commission, Kobach requested voter information from all 50 state governments in late June. However, the request for voters’ names, addresses, birthdates, party affiliation and the last four digits of Social Security numbers, was refused outright by 19 states, with others unwilling to comply with key parts of the request. Democratic legislators have demanded Kobach be fired, and four lawsuits have been filed against the Commission for violation of various federal laws. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Tomas Lopez, counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program, who discusses his concern that the Commission may be a “Trojan horse,” established to usher in more restrictive voter suppression laws for partisan political advantage. [Rush transcript]
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TOMAS LOPEZ: Last fall, both prior to the election and after the election, President Trump made a number of statements about widespread voter fraud being a concern, and then, you know, an actual thing that he alleges happened in last year’s election. He claimed that three million to five million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, but I can tell that there is no evidence to back that up. Our concern is that this commission that has been set up with Kris Kobach as (vice) chair – and then with also a number of the other leading individuals with a long history of supporting voting restrictions – we were worried that what they’re going to be doing is trying to justify these claims of widespread voter fraud and also forwarding an agenda, we fear, to call for voting restrictions around the country. More aggressive voter purges and generally takimg a big step backward in voting rights.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Tell our listeners exactly what is Kris Kobach and this presidential commission asking the state governments for? What type of information are they after?

TOMAS LOPEZ: Sure. A couple of weeks ago,(Kansas Secretary of State) Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states and asked them to provide voter data on name, date of birth, last four digits of their Social Security number, felony conviction history, whether or not they voted in elections going back to 2006. A whole ream of information, a lot of which many states don’t even allow to be released. This information we now understand, especially after statements have been made, seems as if the commission intends to try to compare this giant list that they would get of 200 million American voters of every state that produces data to federal government databases to try to come up with some kind of alleged list of potential noncitizens that are on the voter rolls or people registered to vote in multiple states and use that information to attempt to justify voter restrictions at the federal level.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Tomas, what has been the response of state governments across the country to this request for voter information from Kris Kobach and this commission?

TOMAS LOPEZ: What we have seen is that states have largely rebuffed this request and that they have done so across party lines. There are over 20 states that in one way or another have declined either to provide any data at all, or have imposed really tough conditions on the commission before that data is being released. There are some states that are providing data that the state is claiming is not shielded by law and what we’re seeing is that across the political spectrum, election officials are not really happy with this request. You have some Democrats, like you might expect, that are questioning the motives of the commission. Questioning why they are asking for such personal data. But you also have the Secretary of State of Mississippi come out and tell the commission they could go jump in the Gulf of Mexico. They’ve exposed an issue that I think touches a nerve for voters, for officials and for people across party lines.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What are the checks and balances on this commission and their work? If indeed, their mission is to further voter suppression across the country, what force in Congress or in civil society in general can challenge that?

TOMAS LOPEZ: One of the things that is important to understand is that this commission does not have subpoena power. This commission can’t force the states to do anything, can’t force others to do anything. It doesn’t have legislative power. But it does have a really big platform by being created by a presidential executive order, by having the imprimatur and legitimacy that comes from being a presidential commission. This is not something that should be taken lightly. Our concerns and I think that the concerns that voters and election officials are expressing about what this body is doing – they don’t come from nowhere. Kris Kobach is getting a lot of attention, but he’s not the only person on this commission who gives us concerns.

Hans von Spakovsky, another member, in many ways is the intellectual godfather of the effort that we’ve seen in recent years past restrictive voting laws around the country. J. Christian Adams is a former Department of Justice attorney who in recent years has brought a series of lawsuits attempting to force states and localities to more aggressively purge voters so that they can – in such as way that you end up taking eligible voters off the rolls. And J. Kenneth Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio, is somebody who had a long track record when he was running elections in that state, of both troubled administrations and of putting together rules that made it more difficult for people to cast a ballot.

For more information, visit Brennan Center For Justice at brennancenter.org.

Israel and Palestinian Authority President Impose Extended Power Blackout on Gaza

Interview with Stan Heller, executive director of the New Haven-based Middle East Crisis Committee and producer of the Struggle TV program, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

Israel has conducted three military invasions of the Gaza Strip – the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas – since 2008. Gaza has been under an Israeli military blockade since 2006, after Hamas defeated the other major Palestinian political party, Fatah, which exerts some control over the West Bank, though Israel is ultimately in control of both territories.

In June of this year, the internecine conflict between the two Palestinian factions escalated, when the leader of Fatah, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, asked Israel to impose restrictions on electric power that Israel delivers to Gaza. The situation is truly desperate for the two million people living in the third most densely populated geographic area in the world without electricity for most of the day.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Stanley Heller, who founded the Middle East Crisis Committee 35 years ago to address the issues of the Israel – Palestinian conflict and the role played by the U.S. In 2003, he began producing The Struggle, a half-hour weekly video news program that now runs on public access stations from northern Vermont to New Jersey. Heller recently produced his 700th show. Here, he discusses the power blackout imposed on the people of Gaza and how his show has broadened its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent years to address relevant environmental concerns.

For more information, visit the Middle East Crisis Committee at mecc.thestruggle.org and The Struggle TV at thestruggle.org.

As GOP Senate Repeal and Replace Bill Dies, Support for Single-Payer, Universal Healthcare System Grows

Interview with Susan Rogers, retired Chicago internist and advisor to the group Physicians for a National Health Program, conducted by Scott Harris

Not long after it was unveiled on July 13, the second version of the proposed Senate Republican healthcare bill to repeal and replace Obamacare collapsed. A total of four senators announced their opposition to the legislation, which could only afford to lose two votes among the Republican’s slim 52-seat Senate majority. All of the 46 Democrats and two independents had pledged to vote against the measure.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell then moved to a third attempt to make good on the GOP’s long-running campaign pledge to repeal President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation. Following the lead of President Trump, McConnell said he was going to move to repeal Obamacare very soon, and leave debate over a replacement plan for a future date. But not long after his “Plan C” was announced, three Senate Republicans declared their opposition to that plan, killing the standalone repeal attempt.

In its second version, the Senate repeal and replace plan would have maintained the dramatic cuts to Medicaid, assuring that 15 million Americans would have lost their health insurance by 2026, with millions more losing coverage due to higher premiums without subsidies. An amendment by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz would have allowed insurers to offer cheaper policies with few benefits and discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Dr. Susan Rogers, an adviser to the group Physicians for a National Health Program, who assesses the now dead second version of the Senate GOP healthcare bill and reflects on how the current national debate has effected the campaign advocating the adoption of a single- payer, universal healthcare system that would cover all Americans.
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DR. SUSAN ROGERS: This bill is, I mean, it’s as close to health care reform as an elephant is to a mouse. There is no reform in that bill at all. All it does is it decimates Medicaid in order to subsidize tax benefits to the wealthy. One of the misconceptions about the Affordable Care Act is that that’s been the cause for insurance premiums to rise, deductibles to rise, co-payments for care to rise. But all that started way before the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act did not cause that. It may have perpetuated it, it made it happen a little bit faster.

But this new bill does not any change to how health care is delivered. All it does is provides is it provides a way to cut benefits to provide less coverage to people so that people end up buying an insurance policy that essentially offers them no coverage. There’s a lot of benefits that the Affordable Care Act did do, like allowing children to stay on their parents’ policy until they were 26. It required some benefits that needed to be included such as maternity care, physical therapy, long-term care, a whole variety of things that they’ve now taken out so that insurance companies don’t have to provide this. So what it does is it just says it’s an insurance policy, but it’s really not insuring people, because what they’ve done is to make if affordable, they’ve deleted the benefits. And then Medicaid, which is a big provider of health care, they’ve just decimated and the number of people who are now going to be uninsured is phenomenal.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Certainly, the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare has focused a lot a national attention on the question of whether or not health care is a human right. And the Republicans certainly by and large have come down in opposition to the notion that people have a right to get healthcare when they’re sick. How has this debate, your view, moved opinion, if at all, in the direction of people around the country now believing that health care is human right as it is in most of the other industrialized nations of the world who have a universal health care system of some kind in place?

DR. SUSAN ROGERS: Yes, well PNHP, Physicians for a National Health Program, clearly believe that health care is a right and like you say, more and more people are believing that, too. But a lot of the country does not, especially the Republicans who are sponsoring this bill. And one of the things that they promote is this argument that the market forces will finally stabilize health costs and will solve this whole healthcare problem and that competition in buying health insurance policies will – the competition itself will help lower cost. But it doesn’t do that, because that does nothing to what the market allows things to cost. If we look at what we pay in this country, for example, for a chest x-ray. We pay maybe 10 times as much as other industrialized countries with a single-payer system. Same thing for everything. A cardiac bypass can cost three to four times as here in this country, and it’s not any better here than it is elsewhere.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Dr. Rogers, how has all this controversy about Obamacare and now this Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, how has it contributed or not to strengthening support for a single-payer universal health care system of some kind here in this country?

DR. SUSAN ROGERS: Yes, I think over the years, the numbers of people who support single-payer has increased and if you look nationally, it is now the majority of physicians nationally support a single-payer system. And I think there’s just a lot of confusion about single-payer is, which really kind of tempers the support that we should be able garner and now the numbers, like I said, the numbers of doctors and nonphysicians who are supporting single-payer has increased.

Find more information on the campaign for single-payer, universal healthcare by visiting Physicians for a National Health Program at pnhp.org; Health Care Now at healthcare-now.org; and Health Care Over Profit at healthoverprofit.org.

This week’s summary of under-reported news


Compiled by Bob Nixon

British American Tobacco, one of the largest cigarette makers in the world has threatened numerous governments in Africa, including Kenya and Uganda for advocating public health measures to limit tobacco consumption. (“Threats, Bullying, Lawsuits: Tobacco Industry’s Dirty War for the African Market,” The Guardian, July 12, 2017)
In the face of the Trump administration’s cut-off of family planning funding, the international community’s drive to provide modern contraception for millions of poor women has fallen behind. Five years ago, global public health leaders pledged to provide contraception to 120 million women and girls by 2020. But thus far only 30 million women have received contraception assistance. The global campaign was designed to reduce mortality at childbirth and address concerns over growing population growth in poor nations, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. (“2017: The Year We Lost Control of World Population Surge?” The Guardian, July 9, 2017; “‘America Has so Much, Can’t They Help?’: Nigerians Fear Effect of Trump Cuts,” The Guardian, July 9, 2017)
Downtown Detroit has a shiny new streetcar transit system funded by large foundations. It’s seen by many observers as a sign of a comeback for the Motor City amid a downtown property boom and construction of new sports stadiums. But the privately-run transit service ends at the Amtrak station and offers no help to most Detroit residents who don’t own cars, and find it difficult to travel to jobs in the suburbs. (“Detroit’s Underground Economy: Where Capitalism Fails, Alternatives Take Root,” In These Times, June 29, 2017; “Detroit Charts a Public-Private Path to Its Future, with Streetcars,” Christian Science Monitor, May 12, 2017)


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