Gee, were Trav and DiMasi thretening to take away the legislators’ health insurance coverage for themselves and their families or something? The insurance that we taxpayers purchase for them. I wonder how quickly they’d jump into line to obey the “leadership vote” order if they did not have affordable insurance and might actually be helped by establishing this as a Constitutional right???
Actually, I was told by one of “the leadership team” who at least had the courage and integrity, of sorts, to return my call, that if Committee Chairs do not follow orders on a “leadership vote” then the bills that their Committee has worked hard on and are important–like the banning of Mercury Products bill which I and the group I lead, The Alliance to Defend Health Care, have worked for–may very well be held back by the legislative leadership from ever getting out of Committee to a full vote required to move on to becoming law and hopefully improving our lives.
I post this because it reveals such far-reaching and destructive dynamics that are pervasive in our current political process. And these dynamics of abuse of power have not only dealt a damaging blow to the Health Care Constitutional Amendment. These “inconvenient truths” also impact all of the various issues that people care about and need a government that serves its people to address.
We need to restore our government to one that is of, by and for the people, instead of one that repeatedly has our elected officials pandering to or caving in to strong-arm leadership tactics, likely instigated by corporate special interests and fueled by their campaign contributions and those of their lobbyists (anyone see Jim Braude on NECN last night reviewing the Globe’s investigation in 2003 that “followed the money trail”: of Bechtel’s and their lobbyists’ campaign constributions to our Mass. elected officials?)
I do believe that what goes around comes around…and I and many others believe in the power of justice and in not giving up. Although we are getting much more cynical which I guess is a good thing due to the realities of what we’re dealing with.
Good post Ann! I’m furious too.
You wrote,
“We need to restore our government to one that is of, by and for the people, instead of one that repeatedly has our elected officials pandering to or caving in to strong-arm leadership tactics, likely instigated by corporate special interests and fueled by their campaign contributions and those of their lobbyists.”
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The question has to be asked, “how do we go about restoring our government to one that is of, by, and for the people?”
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Electing better people to public office will help, but time and time again we’ve seen that it is our political system that eventually wears down even the most dedicated elected public servants.
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Many reforms have been suggested and tried. Clean elections, Instant Run Off elections, etc. All good.
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But only one democratic reform — cross endorsement — is on the ballot this year that could help people better hold their elected representatives accountable.
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I hope health care reformers will now focus on this important opportunity to build our political power and unite with the more than 30 organizations that are working for passage of the Ballot Freedom inititaive.
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More info at http://www.massBallotFreedom.com
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…if a disparate group made common cause over this issue.
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If the tax question, heatlth care amendment, pro-gay marriage, anti-gay marriage, etc. ALL WORKED TOGETHER about adressing a NON-RESPONSIVE, DYSFUNCTIONAL LEGISLATURE – then sparks WOULD fly.
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In the meantime, if you live in a district with an unopposed legislator who voted for the study or for adjournment, flouting your right to know where they stand BEFORE the election, please remember – only 150 stickers to run as a GOP or independent on primary day puts YOU on the November ballot!
I just don’t see the outrage. I don’t think you will either. They killed health care “as a right” but have moved in the direction of more health care coverage for more people.
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They put off voting on the marriage ammendment until November. They’ll still vote for it then.
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They didn’t really do anything outrageous. Were they acting in the finest intentions of good government? Nope. That alone isn’t going to motivate enough voters to make a move. There’s got to be more, and maybe that “more” differs from distict to district.
Wanna bet?
I’ll bet you that they’ll take a vote at ConCon. I don’t know if it will be Nov, Dec, or January or so, but they’ll vote.
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Sure, it might be a vote to study the matter or some other sneaky procedural move, but they’ll vote…
It is supposed to be on the ballot THIS year. The November 7th ballot. The one two days before the rescheduled Con con.
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It is dead.
I thought that I had been reading here over the past few weeks that it would be a moral outrage to have questions relating to individual rights put to vote by referendum.
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Thank goodness, then, that our honorable legislature, by clever and completely legitimate manipulation of the rules, used whatever means necessary to duck these outrages to the conscience masquerading as ballot initiatives.
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Wouldn’t it be better to have the SJC find where the right to healthcare already exists?
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is this really the kind of government we aspire to?
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( i checked dictionary.com, but oddly the definition for ‘honorable’ didn’t mention manipulating rules and using any means necessary to get what you want. must have been an oversight. )
I worked in community-based primary care delivery for 16 years, so there’s nothing anybody can tell me that’s new about health care delivery and the need for access to coverage and care.
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Having said that, however, I, too, am a little disturbed by the health-care-as-basic-right referendum. I’m spending an awful lot of time convincing people that the rights of people should never be put to a referendum vote (remember Jim Crow?) in my efforts for Mass Equality. Putting someone’s rights–no matter what the right or how it’s defined–to a popular vote is, well, antithetical to the tenets I personally value. Rights are conferred by the Constitution and interpreted by the Courts.
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I tend to agree that this is a matter for the courts to decide, just as the courts in Massachusetts have decided in favor of same-sex marriage.
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What am I missing?
is that the content of the Constitution itself is ultimately up to the people, not the courts. Constitutions are not immutable – that’s why they all have procedures by which they can be amended. When the courts conclude that a given right exists in the Constitution, the amendment procedure is available to remove that right by rewriting the text of the Constitution itself. (Note: I’m not saying it’s a good idea – I’m just saying it can be done.) Conversely, if the courts have not decided that a right exists in the Constitution, the people have ways of putting it in. And, as AnnEM points out downthread, the people of Massachusetts have seen fit to alter the text of John Adams’s handiwork over 100 times.
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In a democratic society, the people, one way or another, must have the ability to overrule the courts when it comes to the contents of the Constitution. That’s why the amendment process exists. Here in MA, it’s by legislative votes followed by popular ballot. On the federal side, it’s by legislative votes in the Congress and in the state legislatures. Either way, it goes back either to the people themselves, or their elected representatives.
for taking the time to clarify; it makes sense to my now.
and we have the tool to meaningfully address this, given to us by a 1917 Amendment made to our State Constitution. It grants the right to undertake a Constitutional Amendment by citizen initiative if the People of the Commonwealth conclude that the current Constitution is lacking the safeguards to protect and uphold our human potential for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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Huge numbers of our fellow citizens and state residents experience devastating illness and related suffering that is preventablee with timely healthcare. Mnay experience premature death.
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Huge sums of money are essentially wasted, so are not available for other public good uses, because we do not ensure preventive primary healthcare for all. But then we do pay, largely with public tax dollars, for catastrophic care and extended and expensive treatments for advanced disease (Medicaid, other state funded programs).
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Facts show that entire categories of people in Massachusetts suffer from harmful racial and ethnic health disparities, in large part due to being uninsured (yes, other important factors exist too and must be ameliorated).
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And those who are poor live sicker, more painful lives and die younger; data on the socio-economic determinants of health is irrefutable. Being poor correlates with not having health insurance resulting in limited access to timely care and a much higher disease burden and early death. This is a disgraceful fact of our society. (See the Institute of Medicine Report on Consequnces of Uninsurance.)
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Tens of thousands of activists in the COMMONWEALTH conclude that these inequities in healhtcare are clear and dramatic examples of being denied the safeguards necessary for the enjoyment of life and happiness.
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As Martin Luther King, Jr. so eloquently stated “Of all forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane”. The citizens of Massachusetts are undertaking a remedy to this inequality through the Health Care Constitutional Amendment.
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I agree that it is wrong to attempt to use the Constitution to DENY a group of people their ability to enjoy basic rights, such as whom to enter into the social contract of marriage with, a contract that confers many associated legal rights and protections (parenting, inheritence, financial arrangements, hospital visitation, etc). These are themselves safeguards of life and happiness. That’s why most of us healthcare activists ask for a YES vote on the Health Care Amendment and a NO vote on the DOMA Amendment.
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The Health Care Amendment, if passed, will be the 121st time our State Constitution has been Amendmended. A large and dedicated advocacy and activist community stands ready to use this Constitutional guarantee as the needed legal and political tool to ensure equal access to comprehensive, affordable and equitably financed health care for all.