As you may know, our primary goal in starting this series was to find a way to fight back against police brutality; to crowdsource a law that would police the police. We did that. And some funny, marvelous things have been happening along the way.
First, we managed to get no less a person than NAACP's Washington Bureau Director and Senior Vice President for Advocacy, Hilary Shelton to guide us. Hilary Shelton is the successor of Thurgood Marshall. After that, a representative of the national ACLU representative expressed a desire to "partner" with us. If we may say so ourselves, those are BFDs!
But most important is what we have been learning about the law and how we can use existing laws as very effective weapons against corrupt police officers and sleazy politicians.
Last week we started a conversation about how to fight back after the shellacking we took in the midterm elections. This week we'll explore how to use the Freedom of Information Act to put Republican Governors on the defensive. Our example will be about those governors who have denied life-saving care to their citizens by refusing to implement the Medicaid Expansion program under the Affordable Care Act. However, you can use Freedom of Information Act requests for any other important issue, including police brutality, Stand Your Ground laws, the institutional racism displayed by police departments, Voter ID laws, gerrymandering and the like.
Using Freedom of Information Act Requests
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides that any person has a right, enforceable in court, to obtain access to [Government] records, except to the extent that such records (or portions of them) are protected from public disclosure by one of nine exemptions or by one of three special law enforcement record exclusions.
With one capricious act, Governors who have refused the Medicaid Extension program have condemned hundreds or even thousands of their constituents to needless pain and early death. We will use the
Freedom of Information Act request to demand answers.
We demand:
(1) Any and all documents used by the Office of the Governor of the State of YOUR STATE HERE in determining whether or not to Expand Medicaid.
(2) Any and all documents with which the Office of the Governor of the State of YOUR STATE HERE uses to track the number of deaths caused, or potentially caused, by the refusal to Expand Medicaid.
(3) Any and all documents with which the YOUR STATE HERE Department of Health uses to track the number of deaths caused, or potentially caused, by the refusal to Expand Medicaid.
(4) Any and all documents with which any State Governmental Agency in the State of YOUR STATE HERE uses to track the number of deaths caused, or potentially caused, by the refusal to Expand Medicaid.
(5) Any and all documents maintained by the YOUR STATE HERE State Government providing the number of uninsured emergency room and/or hospital and/or health clinic visits in YOUR STATE HERE during the last fiscal year.
The way we see it, this is a win-win. If the governor refuses to comply, it's a story. Why are you not tracking the number of people you've killed? If they comply, it's a story. That story, whichever it turns out to be, will be sent to every major newspaper in that state and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton and the AP and Al Jazeera.
NOTE: States will generally charge copy costs for reproducing the documents. This can run from 10¢ to 25¢ per page. Keep that in mind as you draft your state FOIA requests. Additionally, each state will have their own exemptions from their particular Freedom of Information Act. For example, most states will not provide personal information that may include social security numbers. There may be exemptions for legal correspondence that involves the attorney-client privilege, and so on.
You see, when you make an evil decision, any explanation for your decision will be a bad one. The refusal of Republican Governors to Expand Medicaid was perhaps the most under-reported story in 2013. For this reason and many more, including putting pressure on Governors to Expand Medicaid, and, most importantly, stopping the needless pain and deaths, there should be a DailyKos poster doing the same thing in every state that refused to Expand Medicaid.
We need your help!
Do you live in a state that has refused to adopt the Medicaid expansion program under the Affordable Care Act? We haven't seen a state Open Records or Public Records Act yet that doesn't require you to be a resident. Are you living in one of the 20 states named below?
Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
If you do, we need you to join the fight against corrupt Republican governors by filing a
Freedom of Information Act request. Really, we should have said that we need volunteers for 19 states, because a Kossack has already started the process in South Carolina. Nikki Haley will be asked to provide information as outlined above. Stay tuned!
We start with Medicaid Expansion, but there are other answers that we need to obtain. The media has been lackadaisical in reporting on Voter ID laws, restrictions on birth control, and many other hugely important matters, including racism in policing and police brutality. We need not wait on them; we can start the ball a-rolling. Our actions may just shame them into doing the right thing.
Another way to help would be to suggest, in the comments, some Catch-22 questions that cannot be answered generically or politically by a Republican Governor. We've seen what crowdsourcing can do at Daily Kos, so we know you're up to the challenge.