Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Over almost the last 2 years I’ve written several times about the Pennsylvania voter identification law. The law was passed in March 2012 several weeks before the primary election. It seemed to me that the purpose of the law was voter suppression Continue reading “PA voter ID law struck down”
What do you think?
This is the start of an article in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer. And the opening sentence does sum it up well, but there is much more to it. It is Pennsylvania news but the issue is one that could happen almost anywhere and that is certainly worth thinking about.
The Philadelphia nurse charged with assisted suicide for giving morphine to her terminally ill, 93-year-old father has been suspended from her job without pay, run up legal fees of $90,000, and often can’t sleep because she feels so angry and hurt, her husband said in an interview.
In this case, the criminal act appears to be simply handing her terminally ill father his morphine with which he attempted suicide. The morphine had been prescribed for the terminally ill man for pain relief.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that patients have the right to self-administer as much medication as needed for pain, even if it hastens death. But it is apparently still not a right in Pennsylvania.
The suicide may have been successful if the state and not intervened to revive him despite his do-not-resuscitate order and the expressed desire of his health care proxy (his daughter, the Philadelphia nurse later charged with assisted suicide).
The patient did die after several days but I haven’t seen any evidence as to weather the cause of death was the suicide attempt, the treatment, the pre-existing terminal illness, a combination of these, or something else entirely.
This is from another account:
(Pottsville, Pa. – Sept. 17, 2013) Defense attorneys for Barbara Mancini, who faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of “assisted suicide” for allegedly handing morphine to her dying father, today filed a motion to dismiss the case based in part on two U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In both cases, Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill, the nation’s highest court recognized that states cannot erect legal barriers to aggressive treatment of end-of-life pain and suffering, even when it advances the time of death (for more details, see pages 5-7 of the motion atwww.compassionandchoices.org/pennsylvania-v-mancini/).
I think the state is clearly in the wrong here and I don’t understand why the Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is prosecuting Barbara Mancini. But what do you think about the rights of the patient and his daughter?
If you would like see or sign the online petition to stop this prosecution, please click here.
I have previously written about the governmental see-saw on medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania. My understanding was the Feds paid 100% for 3 years, eventually falling to 90% (so the state is stuck with 10% in the long-term). But whether or not the state participates the residents still pay the tax for medicaid expansion in the other states.
As far as I could tell Gov. Corbett was against the Medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania but had not reached a final decision. The legislature went back and forth on it. It seemed to me the needy in Pennsylvania would be the losers. But things may be looking up!
Gov. Corbett would like to use these funds to provide private health coverage rather than add to the state’s Medicaid program. But this requires federal approval. Read the full article here. And more details are to follow.
It seems to me that it a good idea to try different methods of delivering services. If this works our well, it could be a model for other states to deliver medicaid services. So I’m eagerly awaiting more details and hearing the federal response.
Over a year ago the Republicans who control the state legislature and the governor’s office in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided that we needed to spend millions of dollars and disenfranchise many voters in order to fight the virtually nonexistent crime of voter impersonation.
I specify Republicans because the law did not attract a single Democratic vote. And I think it is not just coincidence that this is likely to disenfranchise many more Democratic voters than Republicans.
Unfortunately for the Republicans and the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, this attempt ended up in court, has not yet been enforced, and is now costing even more.
When I wrote about this last year, The Philadephia Inquirer had a good series of articles on the issues but the link I had in my post then is bad. I don’t know why they reorganized the website but I cannot find anything comparable. Fortunately philly.com has posted a good article from the PA Independent on the VoterID issue.
I have no problem with showing ID at the polls. The problem I see is the state limiting what is acceptable as ID and choosing to make obtaining that ID especially difficult.
For those interested in reading more, here are a few recent articles:
Just up the road a few miles from here, the Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Register of Wills has been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Some of those couples have been married in Pennsylvania. But the problem is that such marriages are against state law.
A few weeks ago, the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania announced that she would not defend state law banning gay marriage in court because she believed the law to be unconstitutional. Now the Montgomery County Register of Wills is issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The governor is suing to stop the Montgomery County Register of Wills.
Same-sex marriage has come to Pennsylvania but this is a very confusing but interesting situation and I don’t have a clue as to how it will turn out.
I had a dream the other night. Before going any further I should note that I live in Pennsylvania.
Without going into all the details I will briefly summarize the situation. I was visiting out-of-state and had reason to believe that I might receive a gift of a nice bottle of wine. Now I could have consumed the gift on the spot or drove home with it. I was pretty sure I would do the prudent thing and not drink a bottle of wine before driving a few hours.
However I do live in Pennsylvania and it is illegal to transport liquor into Pennsylvania with limited exceptions. I could claim it was sacramental wine but since I did not have a sacramental wine license or any other type of liquor license, that did not seem a good option.
The police have recently been enforcing that law. I just thought that should be mentioned lest you think I was dreaming it was Prohibition days.
Anyway, in my dream I drove back home to Pennsylvania with my present and as soon as I crossed the state border I was charged with illegal transportation of liquor into Pennsylvania.
Bad news, then good news, and bad news again on medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania.
House Republicans followed through Monday on their threat to kill a provision written by the state Senate to require Gov. Tom Corbett to seek federal approval for an expansion of Medicaid eligibility to provide taxpayer-paid health care to hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians.
This from an article on the back and forth state of medicaid expansion in PA.
As part of health care reform (Obamacare), the federal government was going to pay to expand medicaid. But since this is a joint program between the federal and state governments, the states need to be willing participants. Seems an inexpensive way for the states to help their poorer residents. The federal government pays 100 percent for the first three years, starting next year, and 90 percent after that.
But 21 states governed by Republicans refused this deal. There are 6 states that haven’t decided yet and Pennsylvania is one of them.
I live in Pennsylvania so I’ve been paying attention to the see-saw here. First our Republican governor says NO. Then the state Senate says YES . Then the state House says No (see the quote above).
So I don’t know what will happen but I suspect the needy in Pennsylvania will be the losers.
The good news is that the crime in Pennsylvania is apparently so low that the police can spare the manpower to observe drivers transporting liquor into Pennsylvania.
According the Daily Local (the local paper in West Chester, PA):
The State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement conducted a Border Patrol detail at two Delaware malls looking for out-of-state residents purchasing alcohol and bringing it back into Pennsylvania….
Three summary citations were issued for illegal transportation of liquor into Pennsylvania.
Who knew that the State police had a bureau (or even the time) for this type if thing? Who knew it was even possible to be guilty of illegal transportation of liquor into Pennsylvania?
I started with the good news and you probably expect it to be followed by the bad news. So I guess the bad news is that I was only joking about the low crime rate.
Makes you wonder about the higher-ups in our state government.
Pennsylvania drivers should beware.
In saw in this morning’s paper (Philadelphia Inquirer) that a state senator has introduced a bill on labeling containing genetically engineered food.
I don’t think there is much evidence that there is a difference safety wise but I think those consumers who wish to avoid genetically engineered foods should be able to identify those products they wish to avoid.
I am more concerned about the addition of undisclosed ingredients to food. Last week, I wrote about the dairy industry’s wish to add secretly add artificial sweeteners to Milk.
Ideally labels should have the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is, they should at a minimum tell you everything added to the food and in addition have other information (organic,, genetically modified, etc) to the extent practical. Obviously, there will not be room enough to tell you everything but let’s aim to have everything a reasonable consumer might look for.
Several new polls show President Obama with a wide lead in many swing-states. Some say there is a bias.
Of course, the polls could be wrong. But it seems unlikely that the people who do the polls would show a deliberate bias as this would tend to destroy any credibility in the long-run.
But there could be all sorts of unintentional bias. Younger voters tend to have cell phone rather than landlines and so might not get the call. I have a landline but tend to look at my caller-ID and not pick up calls from numbers I don’t recognize and that don’t attempt to leave a message. Some who indicate they are probable voters might not actually vote.
There are probably quite a few other reasons. But the one that came to mind is voter suppression as a consequence of the Voter ID laws mainly sponsored by Republican legislatures. This seems to be a factor here in Pennsylvania.
Here in Pennsylvania, the Republicans in the state legislature have based a strict voterID law. I say Republicans because the law did not attact a single Democratic vote. The Philadephia Inquirer has had a good series of articles on the difficulties of getting the ID that some people experience and the legal battles.
Many have a hard time but a few are lucky. Often a case highlighted by the paper is given help by the state but a recent one was Jim Cramer’s dad. Yes, it was that Jim Cramer of Mad Money fame.
A recent study by News21 (http://votingrights.news21.com/article/election-fraud/) rather convincingly shows that the type of voting fraud that would be prevented by VoterID laws is extremely rare. In the study they canvassed voting officials in all 50 states.
They found 10 cases of in-person voter impersonation among 146 million voters – about 1 case in every 15 million. By the way, there were 0 in Pennsylvania. In-person voter impersonation is the only type of voting fraud that would would be prevented by the VoterID laws.
There were about 200 times as many other types of voting fraud but VoterID laws and the Republicans who support them focus on the rare cases because they also happen to disenfranchise large numbers of voters who may side with Democrats.
Why solve real problems when you can stick it to the opposition?
Now that the Voter-ID law has been upheld in Pennsylvania, a provision in the law has good news and bad news for those who show up at the polls without an acceptable ID.
The good news in that you can vote with provisional ballot. And your vote will be counted if you meet the requirements of the law. This good news if you are a registered voter and you do have acceptable ID but just forgot to bring it to the polls.
But bad news if you are one of those without an acceptable ID and there are thousands perhaps hundreds of thousands in that group. The Philadephia Inquirer has had a good series of articles on the difficulties of getting the ID that some people experience and the legal battles.
But back to the law. Here is a quote from the state of Pennsylvania website .
Voters who forget to bring ID to the polls in the November 2012 General Election can vote by provisional ballot. Their vote will be counted, as long as the voter returns a copy of their acceptable ID and affirmation letter to their county within 6 calendar days. Affirmations and copies of ID may be returned to the county in person, by mail, fax, or via email.
So if you have an acceptable ID already, just get it to the county ofices in the next few days and your vote will be counted. If you do not have an acceptable ID but can get one in the next few days, again your vote will be counted. But if you are one of those people who can’t get one in the months before the election, does it seem at all likely that you will be able to get one in the next few days?
So to prevent voter impersonation which does happen but seems to very rare, we are spending millions of dollars and disenfranchising thousands of voters.
Apparently the concept of the independent voters or candidates hasn’t quite made it to Pennsylvania. The parties do have lock on things political here and it is a bit difficult for those of us who choose not to be either Republican or Democrat.
A short article by Anthony R. Wood in the Philadelphia Inquirer of August 7 begins this way –
When Jim Foster showed up with his 125-page petition to run for Congress against Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), state elections officials rejected his signatures on the ground that another member of his party already had a candidate.
Since Foster doesn’t belong to a party, he was flabbergasted. He was filing as an “independent.”
There was already an “Independent” who had qualified the day before and the state would not allow 2 people from the same or similarly named parties to run in the same race lest the voters be confused. Apparently the Department of State of Pennsylvania cannot fathom that “independent” and “Independent” are not 2 parties with similar names but rather individuals who are not part of a party.
There is more to the story than I will discuss here so if you have an interest in Pennsylvania politics you might find it worth reading.
But for this story, the main point is that it went to court. And a follow-up story, gave us a bit more on this.
Most people would think it fairly obvious that “independent” and “Independent” are not 2 parties with similar names but the law seems to lack a certain degree of common sense at times. Unfortunately, this is one of those times.
The court did find that Mr. Foster could run but could not be an independent. He would have to identify with a made up party such as the “Philadelphia Party”. But if the first filer for the “Independent” slot was disqualified, Mr. Foster could be the “Independent” candidate. A mixed and rather absurd result in my opinion but then I can think about it logically rather than in terms of Pennsylvania law.
According to Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), yesterday (August 1, 2012) was a date that shall live in infamy. What terrible thing happened that made it comparable to the great loss of life on September 11, 2001 and December 7, 1941 ?
Why it was the implementation of a provision of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) ? Now most folks won’t think this is as terrible as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 or the attack on Pearl Harbor that got us into World War 2 but at least 1 republican representative thinks so.
What was this dastardly provision that is so terrible? It is the provision of preventive health services to women( avert your eyes for the rest of this sentence if you are squeamish) which includes contraception. Surely a terrible thing and a good reason for this date to live in infamy.
Here is the story of CBS News which includes a video of the Congressman. Here is an annoucement from Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services in case you are interested what this provision is actually about.
As I mentioned before this is a complicated issue but “date that shall live in infamy” is a bit over the top.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been getting phone calls on behalf of almost everyone running for office. Now we usually check the CallerID and if we don’t recognize the number, the machine answers. Some one caught us half-asleep this morning and we answered. The call before 9 on a Sunday morning. Of course as soon as we heard the beginning of the “Hello Pennsylvania” call, we hung up. So we don’t know who did it. Could be candidate X or the opponent pretending to be candidate X to make us annoyed at candidate X. I guess we will never know. Anyway, I think a good number of folks are tired of the calls, the mail, and the negative ads and may end up not voting or voting for the least annoying candidate. Kind of a shame as there surely are real differences.