Special remembrances and so many thanks to the ex-ITUP staff. You made the organization great; you created a fun and supportive workplace, and you did fabulous work to assure coverage for the uninsured.

 In the single payer systems, private doctors and hospitals deliver the services and government pays their bills for your services. We have a next-door neighbor, Canada, with a single payer system that works reasonably well. Medicare is a single payer system for the elderly and disabled and works well for them. Some well-run European systems like France and Norway are single payer, and their citizens are reasonably happy with the results. Single payer is not the only way to universal coverage. The Germans, Dutch and Swiss all have universal coverage using private insurance, whether through employers or individuals.

The election results are step one of a four-step process to return democracy to our nation. I think the next step is the 2020 election where Democrats and Republicans need to purge President Trump and his faithful corrupt acolytes. After that gerrymandering and voter suppression must be eliminated, and the corrosive elements of special interest financing have to be curtailed. Finally we will need to re-build the independence of the judiciary.  

Voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah voted with strong majorities to accept the Medicaid expansion segment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In Wisconsin, Maine and Kansas the gubernatorial candidates opposed to the Medicaid expansion were beaten at the polls, opening the door for Medicaid expansion if legislators are in agreement.

President Trump’s campaign in 2016 and 2018 is all about bashing illegal immigrants and the policies of the administration have been consistent with his campaign rhetoric. He is not just lying to the American people about immigrants. He is damaging our long term economic growth

The 14th Amendment of the Constitution provides "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Asylum, Sanctuary and Refuge

Asylum dates back to medieval times when an individual could seek refuge or sanctuary against persecution in a church. It is one of the hallmarks of civilization, and an important element of one’s humanity.

My wife Katie has worked on getting better results for public school kids as long and as diligently as I have worked on health care for the uninsured. We know Marshall Tuck very well and have seen what he can do in turning around poor performing schools. At the very top of his platform are more funding for public schools and greater support for teachers.  https://marshalltuck.com/invest-in-our-teachers-and-principals/ and https://marshalltuck.com/issues/classrooms-that-are-fully-funded/

American voters have a real choice next week. It’s basically a referendum on Donald Trump, which is unfortunate, but he has remade the Republican Party in his own image, and too many elected Republicans have acquiesced in the most disgraceful aspects of his Presidency.

Marshall Tuck (D) v. Tony Thurmond (D)

I strongly support Marshall Tuck for State Superintendent of Schools and hope you will consider him on the November ballot. Marshall has been on the ground turning around poor performing schools for low-income children throughout Los Angeles.

What an incredible and captivating treat.

Financing Medicare for All is far better done at the federal than at the state level.

We have some very big problems that need to be addressed by our federal, state and local elected officials. Voting has never been more important, so please vote in the November midterms and get all your friends, family and colleagues to vote as well.

Medicare for All – A Single Payer Health Care System for California and the Nation

Medicare was established back in 1965 under the Johnson Administration. It’s a program for seniors (65 and older) and for many of the nation’s disabled. It has advantages such as freedom of choice of providers and regulated rates and disadvantages such as uncovered costs and services and shaky financing.

It is essentially NAFTA updated.

Judge Kavanagh has some fairly retrograde views on the sorts of issues that are going to be coming before the US Supreme Court.

The uninsured rate for the nation as a whole fell 5.8% from 14.5% uninsured to 8.6% uninsured between 2013 and 2017 due to the Affordable Care Act.

President Trump’s supporters and enablers are stretching credulity in their efforts to protect their favorite commander in chief’s tenure and reputation. If President Trump commits a crime, like shooting or jailing his political rival(s), of course he could be charged with murder or other crimes and tried in a criminal proceeding in state or federal court depending on where the crime occurred. He does not first have to be impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate; that appears nowhere in the Constitution or in the nation’s jurisprudence. In my opinion, that’s a Giuliani/Kavanaugh/McConnell myth. On the other hand any President of either party should not be subjected to a series of political/judicial persecutions as President Clinton was by Judge Starr, Speaker Gingrich and their associates (among them Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh). If President Trump descends from his fitful rages into a full fledged, disabling mental illness or has a heart attack and can no longer fulfill the duties of his office, the 25th Amendment is the right recourse for his cabinet to remove/suspend him from office. If indeed he and President Putin and others cooked up some deals to finance him, and get him elected, and he’s been selling our nation and its allies down the river since acceding to the presidency, the right remedy is impeachment and conviction then removal from office.

As yet there is no evidence he has done any of the above, so the most important steps for all Americans is to let the Mueller investigation take its course and to vote in the November elections.

In my view, all workers should have the opportunity to join unions, and those unions should play a major role in representing us in the workplace and in the public square. Men and women died for the right to form unions, to strike, to bargain collectively. We need unions now to become the inspiring force and to play the vital roles in our democracy that they did during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. We need unions to become associations that workers want to proudly join.