Governor of Wyoming, Matt Mead.
The Support the Dream Defenders group at Daily Kos has sent Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") requests to 21 Red State governors or legislators on the topic of Medicaid Expansion. We have asked these governors and legislators to produce all documents showing what they are doing to ascertain how many people they are killing and bankrupting by failing to Expand Medicaid.
We have received seventeen responses so far.
The seventeenth response was quite a story in itself. So, let me tell you about it. There's this place in the Western portion of the United States called Wyoming, and it has a Governor who calls himself Matt Mead. The state has a very poor reputation for transparency when it comes to FOIA document requests (45th in the country), so we expected some pushback.
On March 10, 2015 the Office of Wyoming Governor Matt Mead received our FOIA requests. Seven days later, the Special Counsel for the Governor of Wyoming sent us the letter pictured below, with a final sentence that could have been, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."
What manner of gobbledygook is this: "The Office of the Governor is not the custodian of records that may be responsive to your request"? Well, if he thought his Jedi Mind Tricks would work on Support the Dream Defenders, he was mistaken. We sent a letter right back asking him, if the Office of the Governor didn't have records pertaining to the Office of the Governor, then who had them?
Thinking that perhaps his Jedi Mind Trick would work this time, the Governor's Special Counsel shot back:
Well, that was enough footsie for us, so we sent an immediate reply, which we like to call our "Lawsuit to follow" letter. In it, we explained that we wanted the documents in the Governor's office that are responsive to our requests, or we wanted a definitive, "No, we have no such records." We gave the Special Counsel seven days upon receipt of the letter to reply, or we would file suit in the District Court in Laramie, Wyoming.
Our group prepared the lawsuit, but it became moot when the Special Counsel lay down like an old bird dog:
As you can see, we finally got our response, and it is much as we expected: Governor Matt Mead cares nothing about the number of people he's killing and bankrupting. Our slightly hardball tactics not only garnered the response we wanted (and expected), but the Governor's Special Counsel reiterated his answer twice in that last paragraph:
The sweet smell of victory! It's like your opponent saying, "We surrender, and, oh, by the way, you know that we concede defeat, right?"
Alabama on Our Minds
Now, that was a nice chapter in this story, but we need your help to reach a happy ending in our book. We need a volunteer in Alabama to re-send an FOIA request to Governor Bentley. The state of Alabama has a residency requirement for FOIA requests, which means that we need a volunteer who lives in Alabama to send the request to his or her Governor. Do you have the time to help out 325,000 of your fellow Alabamians who would receive health care with a Medicaid Expansion? Please send me a private message or volunteer in the comments below. Thank you.
#LetOurPoorPeopleLive
Update on Our FOIA Progress
Four left!
Charting Our FOIA Progress: #LetOurPoorPeopleLive #STDDs
(Dark green indicates we have heard back.)
|
State |
Sent |
Heard Back |
Recipient |
Deaths |
Alabama |
|
|
Gov R.J. Bentley-R |
215-562 |
Alaska |
|
|
Gov Bill Warner-I |
32-91 |
Florida |
|
|
Gov Rick Scott-R |
1158-2221 |
Georgia |
|
|
Gov Nathan Deal-R |
561-1176 |
Idaho |
|
|
Gov Butch Otter-R |
76-179 |
Kansas |
|
|
Gov Sam Brownback-R |
113-330 |
Louisiana |
|
|
Gov Bobby Jindal-R |
249-542 |
Maine |
|
|
Gov Paul LePage-R |
31-157 |
Mississippi |
|
|
Gov Phil Bryant-R |
141-343 |
Missouri |
|
|
Sen Kurt Schaefer-R |
218-700 |
Montana |
|
|
Sen Art Wittich-R |
50-117 |
Nebraska |
|
|
Gov Pete Ricketts-R |
67-212 |
North Carolina |
|
|
Gov Pat McCrory-R |
455-1145 |
Oklahoma |
|
|
Gov Mary Fallin-R |
174-439 |
South Carolina |
|
|
Gov Nikki Haley-R |
209-551 |
South Dakota |
|
|
Gov Dennis Daugaard-R |
36-95 |
Tennessee |
|
|
Gov Bill Haslam-R |
284-759 |
Texas |
|
|
Gov Greg Abbott-R |
1840-3035 |
Virginia |
|
|
Sen Kathy J. Byron-R |
266-987 |
Wisconsin |
|
|
Gov Scott Walker-R |
139-671 |
Wyoming |
|
|
Gov Matt Mead-R |
22-69 |
Notes:
Abbreviations R Republican. D Democratic. I Independent. Gov Governor. Sen State Senator.
Alaska: The newly elected governor supports Medicaid expansion; however, Alaska's legislature opposes it. We sent a supportive FOIA request to the Alaska Governor. Indiana: The Governor now supports the Medicaid expansion. Montana: Montana is waiting for federal approval of their version of Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin: STDDs continue to support Citizen Action of Wisconsin; however, we filed our own FOIA request for Wisconsin.
Source: Health Affairs Blog: Opting Out Of Medicaid Expansion: The Health And Financial Impacts.
Next Action Steps:
1. Letters to the editor by readers, Kossacks, and followers and members of Support the Dream Defenders.
2. Press releases by readers, Kossacks, and followers and members of Support the Dream Defenders. |
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About Support the Dream Defenders
Members of the Daily Kos group Support the Dream Defenders invigorate three ongoing projects:
1. We coalesced to support the Dream Defenders in Florida and their mission, our first project and the origin of our name. The Dream Defenders defend the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. by "develop(ing) the next generation of radical leaders to realize and exercise our independent collective power; building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress our communities." Please donate here.
2. Our Michael Brown Over-Policed Rights Act, crowd-sourced at Daily Kos in the fall of 2014. This bill quickly gained the support of the NAACP and the ACLU. The NAACP forwarded our bill to members of Congress, and we distributed it to members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other progressive members of Congress. President Obama signed into a law a small piece of our bill in December 2014. Our state version of the MBOPRA is currently in committee in the Kansas legislature.
3. Our Freedom of Information Act project. Nineteen Republican governors chose to kill poor people by not expanding Medicaid. Ebola has killed about 9000 people in total; Republican governors kill 17,000 people PER YEAR by refusing federal support for Medicaid, a story ignored by traditional media. Our project forces those governors to out themselves, clapping them in a Catch 22. We will publicize our results through letters to the editor and via press releases. We no longer need volunteers to file FOIA requests, since we have already mailed all such requests.
More information about STTDs here.
This is a community diary.
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6:22 PM PT: We have a volunteer!
A brave Kossack has stepped forward to fight on behalf of fellow Alabamians. Thank you!