A Blog Called Hope

Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts will be the guest speaker at the opening meeting of the 2007-2008 year of
Mended Hearts, Chapter #338 on Tuesday, September 18th at 6:30pm at the Christiansen Conference Center at Landmark Medical Center, 115 Cass Ave., Woonsocket. The meeting is open to the public and free. With Rhode Island facing a major health care crisis, Lt. Gov. Roberts will give her outlook for the future of Rhode Island’s health care system and discuss her work on the Community Hospital Task Force.

In accepting Mended Hearts’ invitation to speak at the meeting of heart patients, caregivers and cardiovascular professionals, Roberts said, “We need to start moving in the direction of a health care system that is affordable, high quality and accessible to all Rhode Islanders. We need to have a system that makes sense, a system in which people receive preventative care so minor ailments do not become major illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease are managed so that fewer patients end up in the emergency room.”
Mended Hearts serves residents of the entire region, including nearby Massachusetts and Connecticut. Mended Hearts meets monthly to provide support, education and help to individuals and families living with heart disease. Mended Hearts, Inc. is the largest national non-profit organization made up of – and serving people with – heart disease. Membership is open to heart patients, family members, caregivers and medical professionals working in the field of cardiac health.

Members of Mended Hearts have the opportunity to be trained to visit other heart patients in the hospital and provide a key role in recovery and personal victory over heart disease. There are over 280 local chapters in the United States and Canada, and volunteer members make more than 227,000 hospital visits each year.

Chairman Lynch announced today that the Rhode Island Democratic Party will join local, county and state committees in a partnership with the DNC to help protect voter’s rights.

Here’s a message from Gov. Dean announcing the program:

Last year, we put DNC staff on the ground all across the country to rebuild our party and stand up to the lies and failures of the Republican Party. The 50-State Strategy worked. Those organizers were key to our unprecedented victories up and down the ballot in 2006.

Our organizers are still on the ground in all 50 states, preparing for 2008 in every way possible. And starting this month, they are kicking off an unprecedented voter protection effort, of a scale never attempted by any organization.

While Democrats protect everyone’s right to vote, Karl Rove and the Republican Party have a long history of threatening this right, working to make it harder for Americans to vote. We’re going to stop them.

Protecting the right of every eligible American to vote is our party’s top priority because we know that it’s good for America and good for our democracy when everyone votes.

All Americans deserve to go to the polls confident that they won’t be harassed or intimidated. That they won’t wait hours for a ballot and that their vote will be counted fairly and accurately. Unfortunately, nearly forty-two years after the signing of the voting rights act, millions of American’s are treated like criminals just for trying to vote.

So we’re going to meet with every election official in the country, visit every polling place, and make sure that every American will have their vote counted-and we will do it now, instead of waiting to hear about big problems on the news on Election Day 2008.

We need your help. By giving $20, $50 or $100 you can help support the organizers working in your state and the vital work they are doing to make sure every vote counts.

http://www.democrats.org/ProtectTheVote

Under the Bush Administration’s politicized Justice Department we have seen an outright attack on voting rights. In their latest scheme, the Republican Administration has manipulated the mission of the Department of Justice, firing U.S. Attorneys who were unwilling to pursue phony “voter fraud” cases, and politicized the Civil Rights Division.

Over the past several years the GOP has tried everything from phone jamming schemes to vote purging to voter intimidation tactics to try and suppress the vote.

That’s why this effort is so necessary. Support our organizers on the ground and help us make sure we can fix voting problems now, instead of on Election Day 2008.

http://www.democrats.org/ProtectTheVote

I’ve promised to build the infrastructure and develop the strategy Democrats need to fight everywhere, and this is exactly the kind of effort it takes. Our work may not be in the headlines right now, but it’s how we are going to make an impact next year and in every election after that.

We all know what happened in Florida in 2000. We all know what happened in Ohio in 2004.

Help make sure it doesn’t happen again in 2008.

http://www.democrats.org/ProtectTheVote

Sincerely,

Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

Former Massachusetts Governor and presidential wannabe Mitt Romney was stumping in a New Hampshire diner yesterday when he was aggressively challenged by a veteran restaurant worker over the struggle for working class Americans to afford health care.

Mitt tried to give his tired old stump speech, but Michele Griffin, the restaurant employee who confronted Romney, wasn’t buying it.

This is from the Washington Post:

The exchange took place at the Red Arrow, one of two diners the Washington Post will be visiting repeatedly during the next six months.

One of the things I’m proud of doing in my state is putting on track a plan that gets everybody health insurance,” Romney began, seeing an opening for his standard stump speech about his efforts as governor of Massachusetts.

But Griffin was in no mood for platitudes, and interrupted.

“After we pay our huge deductibles for our insurance and our cost for our prescriptions, there’s nothing left,” she said.

“Are you a Massachusetts resident?” Romney asked.

“No I’m a New Hampshire resident,” Griffen said, and then added, before Romney could jump in, that “we pay over $1,000 a month for our insurance. Then we have co pays. Every time you go to the doctor, it’s $50 a visit. Then you have co-pays for our prescriptions. Can you tell me what your co pay is?”

“Yes,” Romney said. “$10 for each prescription.”

“That’s very nice isn’t it?” Griffin answered dryly.

“Yes. What are yours? Romney asked.

“Mine are like $30-$50. I have three sick children.”

By the way, in case anyone has forgotten this is the guy who Don Carcieri is supporting for president.

Here’s the video:

Anyone else catch the part where Romney says:

“Despite what Michael Moore said, we are the envy of the world when it comes to health care.”

Right….Tell that people like Michele Giffin.

By the way the U. S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds.” “World Health Organization Assesses The World’s Health Systems,” Press Release, WHO/44, June 21, 2000. http://www.who.int/inf-pr-2000/en/pr2000-44.html

Democracy Corps recently conducted surveys in key battleground districts for 2008 “and the results look like a rerun of 2006 — an election when Democrats lost no incumbents and swept the competitive seats.”

Key findings:

• In the battleground of the 70 most competitive congressional districts (35 Democratic and 35 Republican-held), the Democratic incumbents, including the big class of freshmen, have quickly moved into dramatic leads in the named congressional ballot (52% to 40%.)
• In the 35 Republican battleground districts, the named Republicans trail their generic Democratic opponent by 5 points, 49% to 44%.
• In a poll across seven Republican-held U.S. Senate seats, the named U.S. Senators had a vote to re-elect of only 37% and were garnering only 44% of the vote against a generic challenger.
• The overall image of the Democratic Party has fallen back from the honeymoon post-election period to essentially where it stood for the whole 2006 election period — and that has been stable since April. On the other hand, the Republicans have weakened in the current period since April to their lowest thermometer score in the past half century.

A few weeks ago, RI GOP chairman Giovanni Cicione appeared on PBS’ A Lively Experiment to discuss, among other things, his party’s slate of challengers against Jack Reed, Patrick Kennedy and Jim Langevin. Here’s what he said:

The Hill newspaper reports today that 76 of the current U.S. Senators have been to Iraq since the war
began, with at least 38 saying they’ve made the trip in the last 12 months. None, however, have been there more than Rhode Island’s own Jack Reed, who has been there 1o times. Reed is one of nine senators who have made at least six visits to Iraq since the war began.

James Thurber, professor of political science and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said that Iraq visits give lawmakers more credibility on the war.

“The more trips you go give you more authority,” Thurber said.