15-11 October Issue

1

September 15, 2014 August Primary Election Issue #1 No. 14-11

www.VoterEducation.netfacebook: The Voter Publications15-11

October 1, 2015 No. 15-11

What Would Defunding Planned Parenthood Mean?

TALKING POINTS1. “Defunding” Planned Par-

enthood would take away vital services from millions.

2. Unless everyone votes, you will insure that the American citi-zen has a “near-zero, statisti-cally non-significant” impact on the decisions made by our elected leaders.

3. About 400 families in Amer-ica rule the other 318 mill-lion of us. That is called an Oligarchy.

4. If Planned Parenthood is de-funded, men and women who can’t afford other ser-vices will have to go without care altogether.

5. The TransPacific Partnership is a scam.

[Continued on page 2, DEFUNDING]

What Would “Defunding” Planned Parenthood Mean?

Services Unavailable — Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of preventive health care services, and serves a total of 2.7 million patients per year. More than 90 percent of what they do nationally is:

• preventive care, including lifesaving cancer screenings,

• birth control, • and testing and treatment

for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

Approximately 1 in 5 women has relied on a Planned Parenthood health center for care in her lifetime.

In 2013 — Planned Parenthood served 2.7 million women, men, and young people.

• 1.5 million of those patients received services through Title X — the nation’s family planning program.

• At least 78 percent of Planned Parenthood’s health care pa-tients live within incomes of 150 percent of the federal pov-

erty level or less (the equiv-alent of $36,375 a year for a family of four in 2015).

• At least 60 percent of the patients Planned Parent-hood serves each year ben-efit from public health cov-erage programs such as the nation’s family planning program and Medicaid.

• In addition, Planned Par-enthood affiliates reached 1.5 million young people and families through sex ed-ucation and outreach.

Patients came into Planned Parenthood health centers 4.6 million times for services.

• 2.2 million, or nearly 52 percent of all patient visits, were with patients enrolled in Medicaid.

Services — Planned Parenthood provided 10.6 million services.

• Nearly 400,000 Pap tests• Nearly 500,000 breast

exams• Nearly 4.5 million STI tests

and treatments, including HIV tests

http://www.VoterEducation.net

2 www.VoterEducation.netfacebook: The Voter Publications15-11

[Continued on page 3, OLIGARCHS]

[DEFUNDING, continued from page 1

http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/social-security-turns-80-changes-needed-to-save-program/

Funding — • Planned Parenthood affiliates received $528.4

million in government reimbursements and grants. The vast majority of that amount is reimbursements through Medicaid.

• Planned Parenthood’s national office and affiliates receive funding from a wide variety of sources, including foundations and individual supporters. Affiliates also receive reimbursements for providing preventive health care services like cancer screenings and birth control to low-income patients, just like other health care providers receive.

• All government funds that Planned Parenthood affiliates receive are restricted for specific purposes. Federal funds are prohibited from covering abortion — except in the dire circumstances of rape, incest, or when the life of the woman is in jeopardy. Planned Parenthood fully complies with this and all government restrictions.

Approximately 1 in 5 women has relied on a Planned Parenthood health center for care in her lifetime. ###

What About Super PACs?PACs Raised — Through the first six months of 2015 Super PACs backing presidential candidates raised $258 million—twice what the candidates’ official campaigns took in and nearly ten times what Super PACs had raised by this point in the 2012 election cycle! So far, 58 individuals have written checks of $1 million or more—sometimes a lot more.

Fewer Than 400 — And The New York Times reports that nearly half of the $388 million raised by presidential candidates and Super PACs comes from fewer than 400 families, calling it “a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era.”

The New American Oligarchs — They’re seizing the enormous political power the Supreme Court offered them in Citizens United and a handful of other appalling decisions. And they’re posing a mortal threat to our democracy.

How Bad Is It? — We’ve always known that politicians are more responsive to corporate CEOs and the wealthy than to ordinary citizens. But now we have proof. An exhaustive study out of Princeton and Northwestern Universities shows just how bad the situation really is.

Average American Has Near Zero Impact — After comparing the political preferences of ordinary Americans and wealthy Americans with adopted government policy, the researchers conclude that average Americans often have a “near-zero, statistically non-significant” impact on the decisions made by our elected leaders.

In plain English, when it comes to making policy, politicians care a lot more about what giant corporations and the wealthy want than what the great majority of their constituents want. There’s a word for that kind of government:

Oligarchy.###

The New Oligarchs and Politics: Deeply Out of Touch With Majority Opinion

The .0001% Rule — The New Oligarchs—not even the top 1%, but the top one-ten-thousandth of 1%—live in a profoundly different world than the rest of us. They have no conception of the challenges facing the working poor or middle class families, of the struggle to pay a doctor’s bill, for example, or scrape together enough money for college tuition.

They don’t worry about their job being moved overseas thanks to some trade deal that will fatten corporate profits at the expense of worker rights and the environment.

And when all that “retirement security” means to them is making sure their compound is well-patrolled at night, the New Oligarchs don’t have to worry about Social Security and Medicare.

Profoundly Different Personal Experiences — Profoundly different personal experiences give the wealthy radically different political views than the general public.





[OLIGARCHS, continued from page 2]

For example, • the top 1% are more than twice as likely to

favor cuts in Medicare • and more than three times as likely to back

cuts in Social Security. Why We’re Struggling — No wonder we keep hearing from Democrats.

• Fewer than 33% of the wealthy support a single-payer health insurance system

• compared to more than 60% of the general public.

That’s why we’re still struggling to implement the deeply flawed Affordable Care Act instead of reaping the benefits of a simple Medicare-for-All system that we know would cover all Americans and reduce health care costs.

• Just 35% believe government should spend whatever is necesary to make sure all students can attend good public schools.

• and only 28% think the government should make it possible for anyone who wants to go to college to do so.

Differences Are Glaring — And when you put real faces on the New Oligarchs, the differences between their narrow political agenda and the public good become even more glaring. The Koch brothers, for example, would make billions by easing environmental regulations their Dirty Energy businesses have to meet, while Robert Mercer, the secretive hedge fund manager who gave $11 million to a Super PAC backing Ted Cruz, would see a huge return on that investment if Cruz’s radical tax proposals were adopted.And Diane Hendricks, the owner of the country’s largest supplier of roofing materials who gave $5 million to Scott Walker’s Super PAC, would benefit enormously from Walker’s promise to lower corporate tax rates and weaken labor unions.New Oligarchs Like These speak for only a tiny fraction of us. But thanks to the Supreme Court’s outrageous decisions equating money with speech, it is their voice that is setting the agenda in Washington, their voice that is drowning out all others ... and their voice that our elected leaders will continue answering to. Until you and I put a stop to it --Robert Weissman, Public Citizen, www.citizen.org ###

The Critical Need for Planned Parenthood Health Centers

Planned Parenthood is many women’s ordinary source of health care.

• Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of preventive health care services, and serves a total of 2.7 million patients per year. More than 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does nationally is preventive care, including lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

• For many of the people Planned Parenthood serves, a Planned Parenthood health center is the only health care provider in their area that offers these services. For others, a Planned Parenthood health center is the only provider that offers these services without long appointment wait times, the only provider that will accept their Medicaid coverage, or the only provider that offers these services at a discounted rate.

• OB/GYN providers, including Planned Parenthood, often provide both primary and preventive care.

• Nearly 60% of women report seeing an OB/GYN on a regular basis and 35% of women view their OB/GYN as their main source of care — this is disproportionately true for low-income women who would be impacted by defunding.i

• Planned Parenthood health centers comprise 13% of publicly funded family planning centers in the U.S., but they serve more than one-third of all patients who get care from the family planning health center network.

• The nation’s community health centers are unable to readily absorb Planned Parenthood patients

• Because of Planned Parenthood’s large role in delivering family planning care across this country, public health experts have rebuffed the notion that other providers, including FQHCs, could serve Planned Parenthood’s patients.

[Continued on page 4, CRITICAL]



[Continued on page 5, KEY]

Loss of Affordable and Accessible Contra-ceptive Services — According to Sara Rosen-baum with the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, de-funding Planned Parenthood

“would mean the loss of affordable and accessible contraceptive services and counseling, as well as breast and cervical cancer screenings and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The assertion that community health centers could step into a breach of this magnitude is simply wrong and displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the health care system works.”

More than half of Medicaid providers are not currently offering appointments to enrollees and over two-thirds of states report difficulty in ensuring enough providers, including OB/GYN care, in particular for Medicaid enrollees.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nationwide, Planned Parenthood serves 36 percent of women receiving contraceptive care from safety-net family planning centers, even though they comprise only 10 percent of such centers. In 18 states, Planned Parenthood health centers serve more than 40 percent of women receiving contraceptive care from safety-net family planning providers. Each Planned Parenthood health center serves, on average, nearly 3,000 patients for contraceptive services each year, far more than other clinic types.Women Choose — Women choose to access these services at Planned Parenthood because of the emphasis on expert, quality reproductive health care.Planned Parenthood is a crucial entry point into the health care system for many women. Women feel more comfortable being honest with OB/GYN providers like Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood regularly screens for obesity, high blood pressure, and tobacco use, and offers counseling, treatment, or referrals when results indicate that additional care management is needed.

Planned Parenthood Surpasses — A Guttmacher Institute survey of providers offering publicly funded family planning care—including

health departments, federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), and Planned Parenthood health centers—found that,

“Planned Parenthood clinics surpass other clinics in terms of offering a wide variety of [contraceptive] methods and making those methods easily accessible.”

Planned Parenthood Health Centers Are Key Access Points For Underserved Communities.• A majority (54 percent) of Planned

Parenthood health centers are located in health professional shortage areas, rural areas, or medically underserved areas.

• Seventy-eight percent [78%] of Planned Parenthood patients have incomes at or below 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL), and approximately 60 percent of Planned Parenthood patients access care through the Medicaid program or the Title X family planning program.

• According to a recent Guttmacher Institute report, in 21 percent of the counties with a Planned Parenthood health center, Planned Parenthood is the only safety-net family planning provider. In 68 percent of counties with a Planned Parenthood health center, Planned Parenthood serves at least half of all safety-net family planning patients—reinforcing the vital role that Planned Parenthood plays in delivering family planning care.

• Without Planned Parenthood, many patients would not have timely access to basic reproductive health care.

The mainstream health care field recognizes Planned Parenthood’s unique role.Recognizing the expert care Planned Parenthood offers, other providers often refer patients to Planned Parenthood to ensure they receive information about and access to the full range of contraceptive methods and services. For example, among FQHCs that reported a family planning-focused provider in their largest site’s community, 69 percent reported making referrals for family planning services.

[Continued from page 3, CRITICAL]



“Any proposal to exclude Planned Parenthood from public health programs will severely curtail women’s access to essential health care services, including family planning, well-woman exams, breast and cervical cancers screenings, and HIV testing and counseling,” leaders of 18 health care groups wrote to Congress.“For many women in America, Planned Parenthood is the only place where they are able to get needed quality care,” said Mark S. DeFrancesco, MD, MBA, FACOG, president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Ludicrous — The American Public Health Association (APHA) called it “ludicrous” to suggest other providers could simply take on Planned Parenthood’s patients.ii

“[Not all] of the Medicaid services that would have been obtained .fr6m Planned Parenthood Federation of America would instead be obtained from other health clinics and medical practitioners, “ —Congressional Budget Office.

“In many communities, there are not other health care providers that would be equipped to fill the void created by the prohibition of funding for [Planned Parenthood,] a qualified, trusted family planning provider,” The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association ‘

“Some of [the Community Health Centers and Federally Qualified Health Centers] are at capacity, some of them also don’t provide the full range of services,” said Alma Salganicoff, director of women’s health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation

The American College of Emergency Physicians report:

“Women who can’t find affordable family planning services sometimes end up in the emergency room.... Other women go without care altogether.”

###

[Continued from page 4, KEY] Coming October 2017:Online Voter Registration

During the 2015 session, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 228, Online Voter Registration, and the Governor signed the bill into law in May. This new legislation will allow the implementation of online vot-er registration beginning October 2017. Florida now joins over 20 states who have already implemented this non-political program that will reduce costs, pro-vide greater accessibility for voters, and will bolster the integrity of the process.

Online voter registration will provide new voters with the option to use a signature currently on file with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Ve-hicles (DHSMV) when completing the online applica-tion, ultimately eliminating the current need to print, sign and mail/deliver a completed paper application. Each registrant will be assigned a unique identifier for security purposes when completing the online appli-cation.

The Florida Division of Elections is responsible for constructing the new program, conducting a compre-hensive risk evaluation, coordinating efforts with the DHSMV and local Supervisors of Elections, and per-forming a routine assessment every two years.

###

Presidential Primary Debate ScheduleRepublicansWed Oct. 28, 2015: Boulder, Colo. (CNBC)November 2015: Wisconsin (Fox Business/Wall Street Journal)Tue Dec. 15, 2015: Las Vegas (CNN/Salem Radio)January 2016: Iowa (Fox News)Sat Feb. 6, 2016: Manchester, New Hampshire (ABC News/IJReview)Sat Feb. 13, 2016: South Carolina (CBS News)Fri Feb. 26, 2016: Houston (NBC/Telemundo/Na-tional Review)Pending:March 2016: TBD (Fox News)Thu March 10, 2016: Florida (CNN/Salem Radio) Democrats

Current candidates include: Hillary Clinton, Ber-nie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Lawrence Lessig, Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chaffee.

Tue Oct. 13, 2015: Las Vegas (CNN)Sat Nov. 14, 2015: Des Moines (CBS/KCCI/Des Moines Regiser)Sat Dec. 19, 2015: Manchester, N.H. (ABC/WMUR)Sun Jan. 17, 2016: Charleston, S.C. (NBC/Congres-sional Black Caucus Institute)February or March: Miami (Univision/The Wash-ington Post)February or March: Wisconsin (PBS)



The Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Scam

The August 2015 issue of The Hightower Lowdown reported that the 1,000-page TPP trade scam is an unprecedented power grab by corporate elites. It is so unbelievably bad for workers, consumers, the envi-ronment, and our democracy that people literally can’t believe what they’re hearing.While the deal is crammed with uglies, two impacts are downright nasty.

One: Consistent with every “free trade agreement” of the past 20 years, TPP provides US corporations more and bigger incentives to export shiploads of our remaining middle-class jobs to low-wage countries. Still throb-bing from Bill Clinton’s 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, the US majority no longer swallows the myth that free trade is invariably good for us.

So people fume with disbelief and outrage when they learn that, far beyond Bill’s three-nation agreement, they’re about to be pounded with a 12-nation, nuclearized NAFTA, pitting our workforce against exploited labor in such repressive regimes as Brunei, Malaysia, and Viet-nam (where some workers get 59 cents an hour).

Two:And worse, TPP would sanction direct attacks on US sovereignty by tens of thousands of foreign corpora-tions. The real intent of this agreement is not to elimi-nate trade protection-ism, but to protect global corporations from YOU, me, and any elected officials who stand up for us. BigPharma, BigOil, BigFood, BigFinance, and all the other Bigs would get sweeping new “profit rights” that would trump our people’s democratic rights.

Of the 30 chapters that comprise this agreement, 24 don’t deal at all with trade, but instead provide new privileges to multinational corporations. Incredibly, TPP provides the authority and means for global cor-porate profiteers to attack directly our democratically enacted laws and regulations. All of this happens out-side US courts.

The audacity and enormity of this power grab is mind-boggling. —Jim Hightower, hightowerlowdown.org

###

Corporate “Talking Points” On TPP

by Jim Hightowerhightowerlowdown.org

Who Profits? — The campaign for the Trans-Pacific Partnership is being engineered by the US Business Coalition for TPP, a who’s who of corporate powers that will directly profit from the deal. To make their case on Capitol Hill, members of USBCTPP (pronounced “tthhbblltt”) visited lawmakers and handed out packets of very persuasive “talking points”— a.k.a. bundles of campaign cash.Their Membership — The front group’s members include more than 150 brand-name corporations and corporate lobbying associations from every industrial-financial-merchandizing category covered by TPP, such as: Goldman Sachs (Wall Street), Pfizer (drug makers), Time Warner (telecom), Philip Morris (tobacco), Disney (media), Apple (computers, smart phones), Facebook (Internet), ExxonMobil (oil & gas), GM (autos), Nike (clothing), Walmart (retailing), Monsanto (biotech), Halliburton (government contracting), Coca-Cola (food & beverages), and Cargill (agribusiness).In just the past year and a half, as more and more Congressional attention focused on TPP and “fast track” moved to a vote, this exclusive club of global corporatists shelled out at least $658 million in the 2014 election cycle alone to our senators and reps, not counting millions more in untraceable “dark money” donations. ###

Stay informed by checking out these organizations.

Global Trade Watch: www.citizen.org/trade/Expose The TPP: www.exposethetpp.org

And check out these efforts as well:Citizens Trade Campaign: www.citizenstrade.orgStopthetpp.org: (a project of the Commu-nications Workers of America): stopthetpp.org


On Your Side [Your legislative representatives are on your side.]

The Protecting and Preserving Social Security Act was introduced by Rep. Deutch in the House and Senator Mazie honoring Social Security’s 80th birthday. Hirono (D-Hl) in the U.S. Senate, improves benefits for all Americans and strengthens the system for generations to come by restoring fairness to Social Security contributions.

Today, nearly 95 percent of American workers invest 6.2 percent of every paycheck in their Social Security premium.

Yet high-income earners stop contributing once they hit the current $118,500 cap—meaning that:

A CEO earning $2 million invests just .37 percent of their earnings to their Social Security premium.

Though Social Security is strong enough to pay out 100 percent of benefits until 2034 and nearly 80 percent of benefits thereafter, Rep. Deutch’s bill puts Social Security on an even stronger fiscal path while improving cost-of-living adjustments for all retirees.

7

To Subscribe for email or mail: www.VoterEducation.net To Unsubscribe: Email request with “Unsubscribe” in the Subject line to:

[email protected]

Copyright 2014-2015 © The Voter Publications, Inc.All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written

permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Paid for by The Voter Publications, Inc. Not coordinated with any candidate.

Assistant Editors: Robert Terpstra, Nancy Morse

Office Staff: Kayla Andresino,Ed Odette, Marie Isaacson

www.VoterEducation.netfacebook: The Voter Publications

Congressman Ted Deutch

2016 ELECTION DATES TO REMEMBER

Mark Your Calendar:2016 Presidential Preference

Primary and Municipal Elections:Tuesday, March 15

Early Voting Period:Saturday, March 5 to Sunday, March 13

Book Closing Deadline (New Registration and Party Changes):

Tuesday, February 16

Absentee Ballot Request Mailing Deadline:Wednesday, March 9

Primary Election:Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Presidential General Election:Tuesday, November 8, 2016

America Is ExceptionalIn screwed news . . . America is exceptional in one thing: poor healthcare.

Ranks Near the Bottom — A new study, by the National Institute of Health, looks into health results in the 17 most developed nations in the world. And it finds that the United States ranks near the bottom of the list in several important in-dicators. Those include teen pregnancies, STDs, infant mortality, heart and lung disease, disability rates, and homicides.

Life Expectancy — When it comes to life expectan-cy — the United States ranks dead last among the 17 other nation studied. On average, a man in the United States lives four years fewer than a man in Switzerland. Steven Woolf, the chair of the pan-el that wrote the report, said he was "stunned" by the results, noting, "the scope of the disadvantage covers all ages, from babies to seniors, both sexes, all classes of society." The study also notes that it's getting worse - as healthcare trends have moved downward ever since the 1970's.

The Answer — Of course, the easy solution to all of this is for the United States to do what the rest of the developed world is doing — and make health-care a basic human right for all its citizens. That means outlawing the for-profit health insurance leaches, who make fortunes denying children life saving medical procedures. —Thom Hartmann, Truthout


mailto:TheVoterPublications%40TheVoter.net?subject=Subscribe

mailto:The%20VoterPublications%40comcast.net?subject=Unsubscribe



Dan Isaacson, Ph.D., EditorVoter Education, Inc.

St. Andrews Estates South6055 Verde Trail South, Apt. H219

Boca Raton, FL 33433-4423561-470-7258

Presort First ClassUS Postage

PAIDBoca Raton, FL

Permit#1767

October 1, 2015 No. 15-11

What Would Defunding Planned Parenthood Mean?

Reasons to Tell Your Daughter Not to Register and Vote

Ask your daughter does she want to be paid less in the same job as a man,

• Then she shouldn't bother to register and vote.

Ask your daughter does she want to earn $430,000 less than a man in the course of her career,


Ask your daughter if she doesn't want respect from men,


Ask your daughter does she want to be denied healthcare services, mammograms, and family planning,


Ask your daughter if she thinks access to contraception is not important,

• Then she shouldn’t bother to register and vote.

Ask your daughter if she likes her doctor to lie to her and falsely claim that abortion causes breast cancer,


Ask your daughter does she want men to have the right to exclude her from the debate about women's health care,


Ask your daughter if she believes the Violence Against Women Act is unimportant,


Ask your daughter if she doesn't want protection against domestic violence,


Ask your daughter if she doesn't care that if a woman and a man apply for a job that the man gets it more than 75% of the time,


SIGNUPS FOR OBAMACARESpread the word to family and friends! Sign-ups for ACA (affectionately known as Obamacare) begin again

on Nov. 1!!


http://www.votereducation.net/mail-or-email-a-copy-to-a-friend/


Documents

15-11 October Issue