Supreme Court won’t hear Mississippi NAACP challenge to legislative redistricting.

The Supreme Court won’t order new legislative elections in Mississippi over complaints about the timing of the state’s redistricting.

The Mississippi NAACP had challenged the state’s 2011 state elections because the Legislature did not immediately use the 2010 census to draw new district lines in 2011. The state House and Senate instead argued for several weeks before ending their 2011 session without adopting new maps.

The NAACP had asked for that election to be set aside and special elections to be held under a court-ordered plan. It said that using the old maps violated the one-person, one-vote principle by diluting African-American voting strength.

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Medicaid: Sad stories begin in time to try to sway election.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett @Keithplunkett

I have always had a good relationship with Mississippi’s Associated Press reporters as a Political and Communications Strategist. But, not all AP writers are as ethical in the practice of their craft.

The media picture has become more muddied. The internet, community reporting from bloggers close to story makers, and the quickly growing trend to have an on-staff or contracted content producer for virtually every organization big and small means information is everywhere. It’s a good thing in my mind that no one entity controls the flow of information, as has been the case in the past. It’s how technology and the insatiable appetite of the public for information gave birth to the likes of . . . well, me.

Unlike some online producers, I don’t hide my name or my face when I write an article. That is a trend that will increase as online news becomes more a norm of everyday consumption. I stand behind what I write and we welcome the engaging conversation. I believe it leads to real dialogue, because it rejects the notion that you can say anything and get away with it.

In the drive to compete with smaller and more nimble content producers, large organizations like the AP have loosened standards. For 165 years those standards of neutrality have allowed local beat reporters to take a news article and fill in the local angle with follow up stories. But as we are beginning to see, that is coming to an end. It all started with the changing of the guard in 2008 at the AP, and has ramped up in 2012. A 2011 leaked AP memo called “The New Distinctiveness” laid bare the new rules.

Writer Michael Calderone published a piece in Politico in 2008 about the shift in thinking at AP when he wrote that the organization was

“scrapping the stonefaced approach to journalism that accepts politicians’ statements at face value and offers equal treatment to all sides of an argument. Instead, reporters are encouraged to throw away the weasel words and call it like they see it when they think public officials have revealed themselves as phonies or flip-floppers.”

In other words, the AP is looking to compete with more opinion and analysis. But, not so much define it as such. Instead the analysis and the emotionally charged become part of the overall reporting. Some groups are beginning to take note of the leftward lean, and have even begun referring to the AP as the “Administration’s Propagandist’s”, referring to the number of pro-Obama articles that are appearing.

What is most troubling about this is the number of smaller news markets that are affected by it.

I am consistently surprised by the number of people who still don’t realize how much of the news coming from traditional local outlets is not the product of staff reporters. There are many people that pick up a paper or see a report online that just assume it’s from a local source, even if it is attributed to the Associated Press.

Case in point: a recently published article on the rejection of Medicaid changes by state governors in the Sun Herald, the lead dog of print media on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. While featuring Mississippi as one of the states, none of the named contributing writers were from Mississippi.

I’m not arguing they necessarily should be. But one can’t help but notice the “New Distinctiveness” from the AP in the article. The timing of it suggests a political lean to the left in order to affect upcoming elections, and they use emotionally charged stories to get to the reader.

Here’s an excerpt:

Sandra Pico is poor, but not poor enough.

She makes about $15,000 a year, on which she supports her daughter and unemployed husband. She thought she’d be able to get health insurance after the Supreme Court upheld President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Then she heard her own governor won’t agree to the federal plan to extend Medicaid coverage to people like her in two years. So she expects to remain uninsured, struggling to pay for her blood pressure medicine.

“You fall through the cracks and there’s nothing you can do about it,” said the 52-year-old home health aide. “It makes me feel like garbage, like the American dream, my dream in my homeland is not being accomplished.”

Many working parents like Pico are below the federal poverty line but don’t qualify for Medicaid, a decades-old state-federal insurance program. That’s especially true in states in which conservative governors say they’ll reject the Medicaid expansion under Obama’s health law.

In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid.

Governors in those five states have said they’ll reject the Medicaid expansion underpinning Obama’s health law after the Supreme Court’s decision gave states that option. They favor small government and say they can’t afford the added cost to their states even if it’s delayed by several years. Some states estimate the expansion could ultimately cost them a billion dollars a year or more.

Sun Herald

The article goes on to praise the Obama administrations efforts while demonizing the Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan’s plans as damaging.

If there was ever an example of why online producers of content like Mississippi PEP should exist, then this is it.

Are these sad, heart-wrenching stories? Yes. But, I could find you a hundred stories that shows how government health care like Medicaid has ravaged peoples lives by restricting their choices. How many stories of abuse of the system could be dug up? Just as many.

My thanks goes out to the local AP reporters I have had the privilege of dealing with. Please don’t fall prey to this type of reporting. Let the pundits and politicos among us do what we do. We need you to keep the story steady.

About Keith: Keith Plunkett has worked on communications issues with a range of public officials from aldermen to Congressmen, and a variety of businesses, governmental agencies and non-profits. He serves or has served as a board member of several non-profit, civic and political organizations. Contact him by going to HorizonMediaMarketing.com or follow him on Twitter @Keithplunkett

Senator Giles Ward: Medicaid expansion costs would be too much.

Sen. Giles Ward, R-Louisville, brought up the June ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld key provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

“The ruling surprised a lot of people, including me,” Ward said. “But the Supreme Court got one thing right – this entire legislation is a tax.”

Ward went on to say the proposed expansion of Medicaid found in the law’s language was one the state couldn’t afford, saying nearly 400,000 people would be eligible to receive benefits from the expansion but the cost would be too much.

via MEDICAID EXPANSION | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com.

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• Medicaid Expansion: Who’s In? Who’s Out? (npr.org)

Salter: Poverty is not just a voter ID issue, it’s a Mississippi reality

The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law released a study last week that concluded that voter identification laws would have a more profound impact on supposed voter suppression in states with poor, sparsely populated and rural populations like Mississippi than in states not similarly situated.

The fact is that the Brennan Center has been in the business of issuing anti-voter ID studies for some time. Their 2006 study on voter fraud essentially concluded that voter ID was a solution seeking a problem.

The recent Brennan study cites Mississippi’s shortcomings in terms of poverty, the lack of public transportation, large isolated rural populations and the lack of local government offices located conveniently to serve those populations. Most of those criticisms are valid.

What the study misses is the fact that voter ID laws neither create nor substantially alter those Mississippi realities. Poverty, insularity and isolation are unrelenting problems here and those problems make every facet of life difficult for those citizens, not just the exercise of the precious right to vote.

Life is hard in the poorest state in the union every day, not just on Election Day. Whatever perceived obstacles that voter ID laws erect – in the opinion of the Brennan Center – exist every day as obstacles to receiving health care, procuring food and medicine, or simply conducting the most basic of business transactions. Voter ID laws neither improve nor worsen those circumstances.

The nation’s highest court has already spoken to the question of voter ID as an “undue burden” to voting in the Indiana case upon which Mississippi’s law is patterned. In the landmark 2008 case Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Indiana’s voter ID statutes were constitutional.

The 6-3 majority ruling in the case held that Indiana’s voter ID laws did not create an undue burden on eligible voters who are poor, elderly or born outside the state of Indiana. Mississippi’s voter ID law – approved by 62 percent of the voters in 2011 – is a virtual mirror image of the Indiana statute.

via Poverty is a voter issue » Columns » Meridian Star.

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• Chicken Little Syndrome: Voter ID
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Salter: In Mississippi, Medicaid is focus of health care ruling

The top drawer political reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the health care reforms known as “Obamacare” is one founded deeply in the 2012 federal election cycle and the inexorable grind of partisan politics.

But in Mississippi, the central focus of the decision for state policymakers in both the executive and legislative branches of government is what the majority of the Supreme Court said about how the federal government can enforce the expansion of the Medicaid program dictated by the Obama health care reforms.

On Medicaid, the court said that the federal government can’t threaten or withhold funding for the state’s existing Medicaid program simply because the state fails to expand Medicaid as dictated by the Obama health care reform act. That part of the ruling raised the Mississippi Legislature’s attention.

Medicaid in Mississippi is nearly a $5 billion annual proposition utilizing both federal and state dollars that serves some 641,454 Mississippians. Currently, the state offers Medicaid to citizens with an income up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level or $23,050 for a family of four.

It is also the most heavily subsidized Medicaid program in the nation. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011, for every $1 the state spent on medical care for the poor, the federal government spent $5.61. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2012, the ratio dropped to $3 in federal funds for every $1.

For Mississippi, the court’s ruling mitigates what many Mississippi legislative leaders have predicted was the most expensive and difficult portion of the reforms for state government to finance – the expansion of the Medicaid program in the poorest state in the union.

via Desoto Times Tribune > Archives > Opinion > Editorials > In Mississippi, Medicaid is focus of health care ruling.

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Lawmakers prepare for Medicaid battle in 2013

Now that the Supreme Court has ruled the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare constitutional, Mississippi, like every other state, is left with the option of expanding Medicaid.

Whether to do that will be a major focus of the upcoming 2013 legislative session, according to Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves and two local Republican lawmakers.

“It’s terrible public policy, it makes no sense in the long-term for Mississippi taxpayers, said Reeves. ”So, we’re going to look at what our options are. I have staff members working right now with the Division of Medicaid, working with the federal government and others to try to determine what our options are going to be,” Reeves said.

“The federal government gives us $3, the state matches $1, but do we have the $1,” said Sen. Billy Hudson. “Can we afford it…that’s the big question,” he said.

“I’m not really in favor of expanding the program now,” said Rep. Larry Byrd. ”I think that it’s another one of those things that the government is going to send to us and then we’ll end up having to fund it on our own later and it just creates a struggle for our state,” Byrd said.

via Lawmakers prepare for Medicaid battle in 2013 – WDAM.COM – TV 7 – News, Weather and Sports.

Chris McDaniel: Despite SCOTUS Ruling on Healthcare Law, “Right-to-Privacy” Contradiction Offers Glimmer of Hope for Mississippi Challenge

BY: Chris McDaniel @senatormcdaniel

In the Supreme Court’s recent decision affirming Obamacare’s individual mandate, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended the mandate to carry health insurance, but then recognized that the Constitution still limited Congress from imposing other mandates.

“Other provisions of the Constitution also check congressional overreaching,” Ginsburg wrote. “A mandate to purchase a particular product would be unconstitutional if, for example, the edict impermissibly abridged the freedom of speech, interfered with the free exercise of religion or infringed on a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.”

And so a small glimmer of hope still exists.

See other Mississippi PEP Contributors

In 2010, a group of Mississippi citizens, including Gov. Phil Bryant, filed the nation’s first private class action petition designed to challenge the new healthcare law.  It is the first to highlight a contradiction between the new law’s mandate and the zone of privacy first articulated by the Supreme Court decades ago.

It is a legal theory that still survives today, despite the Court’s ruling in June.

Although the Constitution does not mention a generalized right of privacy, the Court has issued a series of controversial decisions, including the disappointing case of Roe v. Wade, which fabricate a zone of privacy – one without clear contours, shielded by the so-called penumbra of a variety of provisions in the Bill of Rights.  Purportedly invented to protect individual rights, it encompasses a person’s autonomous decisions regarding private matters and the right to keep the intimate details of those private matters confidential.

Federal courts have provided legal protection to decisions relating to marriage, procreation, abortion, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, education, medical records and even homosexual sodomy.  It’s a notion of liberty that has been broadly defined with aspirational language such as “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

So if the Court is to be consistent, an individual’s refusal to enter into a health insurance contract in the face of an illegitimate governmental demand is subject to some degree of protection.

Put another way, the doctor-patient relationship is one which evokes the so-called zone of privacy.  Public concern over the accessibility of health records has led to increasing efforts on the federal and state level to protect medical information.  Patient data, whether transactional or safety related, is protected by legal mechanisms to ensure confidentiality.

By compelling individuals to enter into a contract to purchase insurance from another entity, the law will require them to share private and personal information with the contracting party, forcing citizens to fully disclose medical conditions, treatments, habits and behaviors to corporate strangers.

Not only will an insurer be privy to all past medical information, Congress’s mandate will, by necessity, grant the compelled insurer access to present and future medical information of a confidential nature.  In other words, as Justice Ginsburg explained, it infringes “on a liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause.”

If judicially enforceable privacy rights mean anything then medical details certainly merit protection, since information regarding one’s mind, body and health is a matter that the individual is ordinarily entitled to keep private.  A decision not to contract with an insurance company and disclose confidential medical information with an entity other than one’s physician should fall within a constitutionally protected area.

After his review of the Mississippi case, Adam Freedman, a writer for National Review Magazine, offered an optimistic perspective:  “Let us hope that Bryant v. Holder reaches the Supreme Court.  If there is any logic left to constitutional law, the justices will have a narrow choice:  either strike down the individual mandate or overturn the broad privacy right created by Roe and its progeny.”

It is what one might call a no-lose situation.

And perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates that the American people are not willing to give up without a fight.

About Chris McDaniel: Chris is an attorney, conservative commentator and a Republican politician in the Mississippi Senate who has represented the 42nd District, which encompasses part of South Mississippi, since 2008. He resides with his family in Ellisville, Mississippi. 

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October trial set in Mississippi suit over health care law

State Seal of Mississippi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A federal judge in Mississippi has scheduled a trial for October in a lawsuit that claims the Obama Administration’s health care law is illegal, in part based on arguments that it violates individual privacy rights by forcing citizens to buy insurance.

The lawsuit was one of several filed around the country challenging the Affordable Care Act. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling last month that upheld most of the law, including the individual mandate that requires people to buy insurance or face a penalty. The justices said that portion of the law was legal because the penalty for failing to get insurance amounts to a tax.

The lawsuit in Mississippi claims the law violates individual privacy rights because it would force citizens to disclose medical information to insurance companies when they are forced to purchase policies. The government denies that.

The suit was filed by three Mississippi residents in April 2010. Gov. Phil Bryant, who was lieutenant governor at the time, later joined the lawsuit as a private citizen.

via Oct. trial set in Miss. suit over health care law | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com.

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SCOTUS ObamaCare ruling-Mississippian’s react: Governor Phil Bryant

Gov. Phil Bryant issued the following statement regarding the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States on ObamaCare:

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold ObamaCare and its individual mandate is alarming. It is a stunning expansion of federal power and an assault on the liberty of American citizens.  That is exactly why I personally filed a legal challenge to ObamaCare in 2011 and why we joined the multi-state lawsuit on which the Supreme Court ruled today.

Although I am continuing to review the ruling by the Supreme Court, I would resist any expansion of Medicaid that could result in significant tax increases or dramatic cuts to education, public safety and job creation.

Many of us hoped ObamaCare would fall today by a vote of the Supreme Court; instead, it will fall in November by a vote of the American people.  I plan to work hard between now and November to elect Mitt Romney and a Republican Congress so we can repeal the damaging policies of this president.”

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SCOTUS ruling on Obamacare in plain English.

This from staff of the court:

In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.