INDIVISIBLE Lambertville NJ / New Hope PA

Category: Government

  • Garden State Government and Politics

    From NJ Citizen Action.

    Lower the Cost of Prescription Drugs: The NJ Legislature can take action now to lower the costs of prescription drugs. A2418/S1066 would create an independent New Jersey Prescription Drug Affordability Review Board to evaluate drug prices and set limits on how much payers, including state and local government agencies, pay for high-cost prescription medications. Unfortunately, the bill has stalled since its introduction a year ago.

    We must renew the call for the prescription drug affordability board NOW! Soon budget negotiations, summer recess, and election season will dominate the legislature. Our chance to make prescription drugs affordable in New Jersey is now.

    Action: Click here to contact your legislators today to show your support for a Prescription Drug Affordability Board in New Jersey!

    Expand Healthcare Coverage for Children: Today more than 80,000 children in New Jersey are uninsured, the majority of them are children of color. And, 1 in 4 of the uninsured children also live in households who have been excluded from pandemic relief aid for over a year. Governor Murphy indicated his support for covering all kids in his budget address. But to do that, we will need to pass S876/A4387 without delay. This bill supported by NJCA and our NJ For Health Care partner organizations will:

    • Expand NJ Family Care eligibility to all children who meet the income requirement;
    • Permanently waive premiums that were waived during COVID and eliminates the 90-day waiting period for enrollees;
    • Re-establish a buy-in program within 18 months for children in households that exceed the NJ Family Care income limits and who lack access to affordable coverage; and
    • Establishes an outreach program and demonstration project targeting uninsured children.

    By passing this legislation now, we will make sure every child in our state will have access to quality healthcare in 2022. We cannot delay.  Every day we delay the expansion of coverage for all of our children we risk their health and increase future health care costs for us all.

    Action: Click here to send an email to your government officials to urge passage of S876/A4387

  • In the Absence of Honor

    In the Absence of Honor

    What now, after the Mueller report?

    Contributed by Deb Kline.

    Honor is simply the morality of superior men – H.L. Mencken

    In the hours since the redacted Mueller Report has been made public, many – if not most – on the resistance side believe that the attempts to obstruct justice by the president are stunningly clear. We cannot believe Attorney General William Barr’s claim that there were none.

    Some of us had already moderated our hopes that we would finally get to the truth of what led to this horror show of an administration and subsequent actions to block its discovery. Nevertheless, whether we had already steeled ourselves or not, there was a strangely, familiar sense that we were suddenly thrust back to the day after the election in November 2016.

    Listening to the myriad analysts postulating in the media, to congressional legislators calling for the full report as well as in-person appearances by Barr and Mueller, it became known that while Trump certainly tried to block the investigation, in the end (oh, please don’t let this be the end) he was unwittingly successful because: a) – people around him knew he was ordering them to break the law and didn’t follow through; b) they lied or dissembled enough to make it impossible to uncover the truth, c) destroyed evidence.

    This alone is a profound perversion of the Oath of Office every president takes upon entering. Is this how one “preserves, protects and defends the Constitution of the United States”? The lie has been there since Day One.

    In March 2017, Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic wrote “What Happens When We Don’t Believe the President’s Oath?” in Lawfare:

    “It is that the presidential oath is actually the glue that holds together many of our system’s functional assumptions about the presidency and the institutional reactions to it among actors from judges to bureaucrats to the press. When large enough numbers of people within these systems doubt a president’s oath, those assumptions cease operating. They do so without anyone’s ever announcing, let alone ruling from the bench, that the President didn’t satisfy the Presidential Oath Clause and thus is not really president. They just stop working—or they work a lot less well.”

    We expect that those who occupy the highest offices in government will be people of honor. That whatever their failings, we expect that they have the good of the country and its people at heart. In Robert Mueller, we have a superior model of a man with honor, who follows the letter of the law to the extent that he declines to make a legal judgement on obstruction because people surrounding the president repeatedly lied or destroyed evidence.

    Up until a point, some of the those close to the president had a sense of honor and duty,  whether we agreed with them or not. However, most have left, only to be replaced by those who look at the government and ability to set policy as a means of enriching themselves.    

    Now, we see the decay happening before our eyes, and wonder, will we survive?

    Here’s my answer: Yes. One way or the other we will survive. We are still a democracy, we still have a voice and a vote. We have been through difficult times – many of us remember if not participated in the Civil Rights protests of the ‘60s, the anti-war protests and the Nixon-Watergate trial and resignation of the ‘70s. We survived 9/11. We will survive this president and our despair at what our government has become.

    Individually and collectively, we are compelled to survive. The work may get hard and ugly, but in this community there is strength. We hold each other, lean on each other, give each other courage. We honor you for all that you do, and demand that those who would govern, do so as well.

    Our country deserves no less.

  • Just the Facts

    Contributed by Olga Vanucci.

    • 86% of us think America’s democracy is broken.
    • There are 500,000 elected offices in the U.S.  Less than one-third are held by women. An organization called She Should Run has set a goal of 250,000 women in elected office by 2030.  She Should Run’s Incubator program supports 14,000 women in finding their unique path to elected office. Over 130 Incubator members were on the ballot in 2018.
    • The current Congress is the most diverse in our history.  The House has 102 women, a record, yet still only 23% of the voting members. The Senate has 25 women, a record, yet still only 25% of the total. This Congress also has the largest number of Blacks (55), Hispanics/Latin Americans (44), Asians/Pacific Islanders (15), and Native Americans (4), making up 22% of Congress. The 116th Congress also has 10 members who openly identify as LGBTQ.
    • Search over 142,286 elected offices across the U.S. to find the ones you’re eligible to run for based on where you live:  https://www.runforoffice.org/

    Sources:  

    https://wholeads.us/electedofficials/

    https://www.sheshouldrun.org/outcomes-impact/

    https://ballotpedia.org/116th_United_States_Congress

  • Your State Legislature and Judiciary

    New Jersey

    The NJ Legislative branch is comprised of the Senate and General Assembly. The Senate has 40 members, and the General Assembly has 80 members. One senator and two assembly members are elected from each of the 40 districts of New Jersey. The Senate and General Assembly meet for about 40 sessions a year on Mondays and Thursdays.

    Senators face election every four years, with the next election coming in Nov. 2021. Democrats currently control the NJ Senate, led by Senate President Stephen Sweeney. Loretta Weinberg is the Majority Leader; Thomas Kean Jr. is the Minority Leader. Assembly members face election every two years. In November 2019, the entire NJ Assembly is up for election. Democrats also control the Assembly, led by Craig Coughlin; Louis Greenwald is the Majority Leader, and Jon M. Branmick is the Minority Leader.  Senators and Assembly members are paid $49,000/yr for their work in the legislature.

    Committees from each party draft and review proposed legislation, along with several other bipartisan and non-partisan entities. (Learn more about the role of committees and the process of making a law in “How a Bill Becomes a Law”. In addition, the Office of Legislative Services (OLS), a non-partisan agency, provides legal advice and research support to both houses. OLS staff also drafts the bills and resolutions. For a map of NJ’s state legislative districts, please go here.

    In NJ, Congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn by two distinct politician commissions. The congressional redistricting commission comprises the following 13 members:

    • The majority and minority leaders of each chamber of the New Jersey State Legislature appoint two commissioners a piece (for a total of eight members).
    • The chairs of the state’s two major political parties each appoint two members to the commission (for a total of four members). Commissioners appointed by the political parties cannot be members of Congress or congressional employees.
    • The first 12 commissioners appoint the last member. This member cannot have held public office in the state within the previous five-year period. If the first 12 commissioners cannot agree on an appointment, they must submit two names to the New Jersey Supreme Court. The court must then appoint the final commissioner.

    If the congressional redistricting commission fails to reach an agreement about a redistricting plan, it must submit two plans to the state Supreme Court, which must in turn select from those two plans a final map.

    The state legislative redistricting commission comprises 10 members. The chairs of the state’s two major political parties each appoint five members to the commission. In the event that this commission is unable to reach an agreement about a redistricting plan, the state Supreme Court may appoint a tie-breaking member.

    The NJ Judiciary decides how state laws should be applied. Judges are appointed and serve seven-year terms, but after they have been re-appointed once, they can serve until they are 70.

    The highest court in the Judiciary branch is the state Supreme Court, which consists of a chief justice and six associate justices, who hear cases related to the NJ Constitution and other major issues. The state Superior Court is where most trials take place and is divided into the Appellate, Law, and Chancery divisions. The Appellate Division hears appeals of decisions from lower courts and state agencies. Law hears cases in its Criminal Division and Civil Division. Chancery consists of a General Equity Division and Family Division. General Equity cases involve matters such as contracts. The Family Division deals with family and children’s legal matters.

    Pennsylvania

    The Pennsylvania Legislative branch includes the Senate with 50 members and the House of Representatives with 203 members. The President of the Senate is the Lieutenant Governor, currently Jon Fetterman (D), who only votes in the case of a tie. Pennsylvania state senators serve staggered, four-year terms and half of the Senate is up for election every two years. In 2018, 25 PA Senators were elected, with Republicans maintaining majority control of the Senate, but losing some seats to Democrats. Jake Corman is Senate Majority Leader; Jay Costa is Senate Minority Leader.

    The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is up for election every two years, with 2020 as the next election year for the House. In 2018, the chamber’s Republican majority decreased from 120-79 (with four vacancies) to 110-93. House Speaker is Mike Turzai, Majority Leader is Bryan Cutler, and Minority Leader is Frank Dermody.

    In Pennsylvania, the statutory authority to draw congressional district boundaries is vested with the Pennsylvania General Assembly. These lines are subject to gubernatorial veto.[34]

    State legislative district lines are drawn by a politician commission. Established in 1968, the commission comprises five members: The Majority and Minority Leaders of both Houses each appoint one member, and the four appointees then appoint a fifth member to serve as the commission’s chair.

    Pennsylvania has 60 Judicial districts,  most of which (except Philadelphia) have Magisterial District Judges, who preside mainly over minor criminal offenses and small civil claims. Magisterial District Judges also preside over preliminary hearings in all misdemeanor and felony criminal cases. Most criminal and civil cases originate in the Courts of Common Pleas, which also serve as appellate courts to the district judges and for local agency decisions.

    The Superior Court hears all appeals from the Courts of Common Pleas not expressly designated to the Commonwealth Court or Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth Court is limited to appeals from final orders of certain state agencies and certain designated cases from the Courts of Common Pleas. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is the final appellate court. All judges in Pennsylvania are elected; the chief justice is determined by seniority.

    In total, 439 judges preside over the Court of Common Pleas, 9 judges preside over the Commonwealth Court, 15 judges preside over the Superior Court, and 7 justices preside over the Supreme Court. Elected judges run in 10 year terms, at which point they are required to run in a non-partisan retention election if they wish to continue to serve.

  • Hot Topic: Government Shutdown

    Contributed by Paige Barnett.

    According to Trump, the United States needs a border wall between us and Mexico for reasons unfounded – yet supported by Trump’s base. Using fear-mongering tactics¹ and untruths, Trump said that he’d build a wall to protect us from the thousands of criminal immigrants illegally crossing the border; that protection is needed against the hordes of gangs who are invading our streets, running drugs and trafficking humans. He said he’d make Mexico pay for it.

    Flash forward, Trump is demanding $5.7 billion dollars from U.S. taxpayers to build this unnecessary wall.  He’s dismissed any attempt by Democrats who offered $2.5 billion for border security to be applied to more effective means, i.e. drones, tunnel detection, immigration judges, etc.²  In response, (sort of) Trump suggested a steel wall instead of a concrete wall and has doubled down on his demand for $5.7 billion dollars.

    As a result of failed negotiations, Trump issued an Executive order which shuttered executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government. As of December 24th, said agencies are closed and/or are working without pay.  We are now in the midst of the 2nd longest – and soon to be longest – government shutdown with not an end in sight.  Trump is willing to extend the shutdown “ for months or even years.”3  

    From one impulsive moment on his campaign trail, Trump’s promise to build this border wall has evolved into a crisis of his own design.  Each side blames the other for the stalemate. But the Democratic-controlled House voted January 3rd to pass a bill that would re-open the government without provisions to fund the wall.  Senate Majority leader McConnell will only bring a spending bill to the floor of the Senate that Trump supports.⁴ In a rebuttal statement to Trump’s eight-minute speech on Tuesday evening,  Pelosi and Schumer said there is no reason for keeping the government partially shuttered because wall negotiations can and should remain separate from wall funding negotiations.4

    Here is a list as published by the New York Times of how the government shutdown is affecting people and places.

    Call to Action!

    • Call, text “resist” to 50409 or tweet your Congresspersons and Senators and let them know you adamantly oppose funding a wall.  Also, thank your Congresspersons and Senators if they’ve opposed funding this blatantly unnecessary wall.
    • Support local and regional food pantries and organizations assisting those who are out of work or working without pay due to the shutdown. Many are leaning heavily on these organizations to make ends meet while waiting for the next paycheck.

    Sources

    ¹https://thinkprogress.org/trumps-border-fear-mongering-is-far-from-reality-26ed4da50603/

    ²https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/06/government-shutdown-2019-negotiations-continue-white-house-congress/2491460002/

    ³https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/07/government-shutdown-becomes-the-third-longest-ever.html

    ⁴https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/house-democrats-prepare-vote-to-reopen-government-as-cracks-appear-in-gop-opposition/2019/01/03/24151490-0f96-11e9-8938-5898adc28fa2_story.html?utm_term=.4886a4b140bd