There were no flashing lights or red flags that let 4,000 women across this country know that cervical cancer was coming.
Most of these women - mothers, sisters, daughters, and aunts - felt no pain and lived normally unaware of the disease that in a matter of time would take their lives.
Most of these women - the majority of whom were under the age of 65 - are survived by friends and family, neighbors and co-workers who loved them and miss their presence daily.
All of these women - casualties of an illness that is 100 percent preventable - should still be here today.
I interviewed Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri-Huttle in Trenton today. The interview is posted in two parts. In today's installment (below), she talks with Blue Jersey about her accomplishments with Anti-Bullying legislation, the status of legislation on women's health, education, and the Port of New York New Jersey Authority.
The second half of the interview will be posted tomorrow night. There Assemblywoman Vainieri-Huttle talks about the environment, education, affordable housing, marriage equality, and the political landscape in Trenton.
Yesterday, Chris Christie left New Jersey (again, without notification and again omitting out-of-state travel from his daily public schedule) to wing up to New Hampshire and make his endorsement of Mitt Romney. (Seriously, APP, what about this surprises you?)
Christie made his announcement, standing in front of a beaming Romney, before last night's GOP debate in the Granite State. Better to make Romney look inevitable, with GOP establishment figures like Denny Hastert jumping in for Romney today, and a jolt of Christie glitter to brighten up Romney's dull veneer. Seemed to work; Romney's performance last night, by GOP standards, worked for him. He did have Christie in-house, cheering. Though, as Chuck Todd pointed out this AM on msnbc, somebody forgot to tell the electorate Romney's a sure thing.
Christie wasted no time helping out. But helping who, is the question. In yesterday's endorsement, the Gov also endorsed a state's right to enact an individual health mandate. But, invoking the term meant to spook members of his own party - Obamacare - Christie said any comparison between Ronmey's health care program in Massachusetts and Obama's federally was "intellectually dishonest".
That's either a deliberate attempt to misinform voters and paste over a stumbling block for right-wing voters (that Romney has thusfar avoided by skirting around it). Or, maybe Chris Christie just needs to read ThinkProgress. Back in April ThinkProgress did a side-by-side comparison of both plans:
Left out of Christie's endorsement and criticism of "Obamacare" is the fact that Romneycare" is financed with federal dollars, and higher taxes on people who won't buy coverage. Or that advisers and consultants who worked on his program in Massachusetts went on to advise the federal government on the dreaded "Obamacare". But seriously, why bring that up, Gov. Christie?
I wrote this for my personal blog, and it has no specific New Jersey connection per se, but given Governor Christie's aversion toward providing decent health care to its most disadvantaged citizens (see, for example, here, here, and here), I thought it would be appropriate to cross-post to Blue Jersey
François is a refugee, one of 27,000 from Côte d'Ivoire living in a camp in eastern Liberia. His kidneys are failing and he needs dialysis three times per week. But he can't receive dialysis under Liberia's third-world health care system and if he's lucky he'll get emergency treatment when his health deteriorates to the point where he is at death's door.
A typical response to this story is, "Oh, that's terrible. The poor man is suffering, but that's the way things are in third-world countries."
Yet, this story is only partially true. His name is not François. The part about his being without care until he is close to death is true, but he is not a refugee in Liberia - he is an undocumented immigrant living in the United States of America.
These two lede paragraphs from two separate articles in two separate newspapers are pretty sad when taken together.
Gov. Chris Christie signed a proclamation Monday declaring Aug. 7-14 as National Health Center Week, calling community health centers the most effective and efficient way to provide New Jersey residents with a wide range of medical services.
Now this:
Flanked by two of the three Republican women in the state Senate, Christie sought Monday to neutralize Democrats' repeated attempts to restore funding for women's health clinics, pointing to the backdrop -- Southern Jersey Family Medical Center's Burlington City Health Center -- as a clinic that delivers "efficient and effective" care for "patients of both genders and all ages."
Yesterday, somebody asked me if they should go off somewhere and do something else, or stay glued to the Assembly vote, which was in a dramatic holding pattern for five-and-a-half hours. Stay with the Assembly, I said. It will be national news. And it is. The Assembly vote, and Senate vote before it, are not a victory for New Jersey because too many of our neighbors, fathers, and co-workers are getting screwed. It's certainly not a victory for the Democratic Party, which now faces an enthusiasm gap and loss of reliable union ground troops, with a huge election looming. No, it was a victory for Christopher James Christie, delivered perhaps at their own cost, by a new class of Christie enablers with nominal "D's" on their backs. Watch Christie step out front now, before other one-term GOP governors getting ahead on the backs of their state's working people. Comer. Hotshot. Buzzmaster. And it was only a matter of hours before Gov. Christie was on TV letting Matt Lauer talk about his 2012 presidential sizzle, feeding into that by wasting no time going after President Obama. And thanking the Democratic leadership that put him in the Today Show's exclusive interview chair, thanking his enablers inside 10 seconds after he opened his mouth.
So, in case you missed it, is Chris Christie on the morning after. Right below it, for counter-point, is CWA President Hetty Rosenstein on MSNBC's boutique, and NJ-savvy The Ed Show (MSNBC):
Update 9:08: Yes 46 No 32 Bill now going to 2nd reading for purpose of amendment, to alter the in-state-requirement. Asm Gusciora, in a point of order is delaying because the amendments are not on their desks in paper form. He is informed by Speaker Oliver that they're on each assembly member's computer.
Update 8:50: A first for us: Twitter has shut down our feed, for a few hours at least, it looks like. We have exceeded the allowable number of Tweets. We're going to switch our coverage of the Assembly hearing to @deciminyan Update 6:26 Nearly 5-and-a-half hours late, the NJ Assembly session LIVE video feed begins. Watch here. NJN is now also broadcasting LIVE.
Update 6:08 OK, here we go. Follow Deciminyan's Tweets @bluejersey.
Update 6:04: 5 hours late, and counting. It may be a foregone conclusion but Star-Ledger is reporting Gov. Christie told the New York Times today is an "extraordinary day for New Jersey.
Outside, the pro-labor rally - with its signs, its unifying tee shirts and inflatable rat meant to provoke anti-labor Democrats - is winding down, after a day when rain threatened more than it poured.
But inside, now at three-and-one-half hours past the posted start time of the session, the New Jersey Assembly has still not settled down to meet.
Deciminyan is in the room - has been for hours - and is on his second power charge of his laptop. He's live-Tweeting. And we don't know whether they'll get started in 5 minutes or an hour. Right now, there are almost no Assembly members in the chamber.
Follow us at @bluejersey. Thank you to all of you who have retweeted us today, and a big Welcome to all our new Twitter followers and new members of the Blue Jersey community.
Steve Sweeney - Meanwhile, adopting a defensive posture once again against the pro-labor rally outside, 'union man', Democrat and NJ Senate President Steve Sweeney has once again messaged the press by sending widely a copy of Bob Ingle's column, Public unions' stunts sure to backfire. I'll leave it to today's Assembly vote, history, and better-paid commentators than myself to decide who's pulling "stunts" and whether they will "backfire".
I'll just say that Sweeney's shipping out articles favorable to him to reporters strikes me as coming from a position of weakness, and not of strength. If there's a tipping point in the balance of whether he can really continue to lead Democrats, he may have already exceeded it. Time will tell. But I think it looks bad for the mighty muscled Sweeney to show such naked interest in how he looks to reporters.
To begin to dissolve the collective bargaining rights that New Jersey's public workers have counted on for decades, Gov. Chris Christie employed a masterful communications strategy. It isn't easy to convince well-educated voters that the people who live down the street, or across town, are your enemy.
To do it, Christie had to turn ... the bus driver you see every day ... your kid's math teacher ... the guy who works at the library ... the lady who makes lunches for the folks at Vineland Developmental Center .. the cop ... the firefighter ... the woman sitting up all night helping a WWII veteran die peacefully ... into caricature. They are middle class, or working class. But he calls them rich, tells you they're cheating you every day, that they're the ones responsible for a deadened economy. Because they're greedy. Bloodsuckers.
He has to depersonalize them in order to do all that. He's good at it, too. We hear he's going places. And some Democrats stand behind him. The ones that do not deserve to know how many people are standing behind them. Waving across the country now, with some powerful interests behind it, is an effort to get people to turn against each other, blame each other, instead of seeking better governmental solutions, better lawmakers, better spending priorities.
Tomorrow, the NJ Assembly votes on a bill hostile to our public workers. It will make national news. If you can get there, come to the State House at noon. Thousands of people will await the vote. As Couch Potato Politics tells us, it's not too late to call Assembly members.
Meanwhile, here's a reminder of who Chris Christie's talking about when he tells you who New Jersey's public workers are:
We saw it today. The sliding approval ratings of our headstrong governor (more on this later) are being driven downward by New Jersey's women. Women unimpressed by gubernatorial bluster, who may wonder what Chris Christie's attitude towards their gender might be, given that he is incapable of speaking about or to women legislators - like Loretta Weinberg ("take a bat to her"), Valerie Huttle ("a jerk") Sheila Oliver ("liar") and Bonnie Watson Coleman (responsible for a murder) - without unprofessional conduct and insulting language.
On the other hand, maybe New Jersey women don't have to wonder, since everything in Gov. Christie attitude toward his female constituents, particularly those of lower income, is crystal clear. He removed from the state budget the $7.5 million the state was funding women's health and family planning programs, of critical need. He has ignored or resisted all attempts to find alternate ways to restore that funding, while spending freely on other things. And he's caused the state to lose $9 of federal funding for every $1 New Jersey isn't spending on these programs.
Fortunately, there is leadership in both houses of the legislature - with Sen. Loretta Weinberg & Asw Linda Stender in the lead - who will not give up. Yesterday was a killer day in Trenton, and the disgraceful votes in the Senate and Assembly Budget blotted out the rest of the day. So, reaching back a day, here are some pictures from yesterday's rally calling for a full restoration of the funds removed from family planning and women's health programs.
I want to note the delegations from National Council of Jewish Women and Planned Parenthood, who showed in numbers. And that among the men who showed up - sexy beasts all of them - was Rep. Frank Pallone, who towered over everyone else at the podium, and LD-8 candidate Carl Lewis, who pointed out that sometimes it takes a man to stand up for a woman. I have to say it: Feminist men are hot.
Are you ready to give $25 from your pocket to Xanadu ($100 for a family of four)?
That is one of several important questions to be decided this week in Trenton, each of which we'd be seriously fixated on if not for the undoubtedly even more important anti-union armageddon currently unfolding. Still, these things are worth keeping an eye on because they all have a huge impact. Here are the top five, in no particular order:
1. Will thousands of working families be kicked off of Medicaid? Gov. Christie (R-Rove) has decreed that working families earning more than $6,000 a year should be dropped from Medicaid. Thus creating new incentives to go from work to welfare. Will the Democrats stand up and try to block this change (not clear from the reporting exactly how much power the Legislature has, but at the least they could pass a resolution telling the Obama Administration to reject the waivers needed)?
2. Will we have to pay $25 each to bail out Xanadu? Sens. Ray Lesniak (D-Progressive Social Causes and Crony Capitalism) and Kevin O'Toole (R-Tool) have introduced a bill to expand the ability of the Christie Administration to give away our money to large developers to include the Meadowlands. If you have driven the Turnpike recently, you may be aware that the Meadowlands includes a large eyesore called Xanadu which has been a total failure. Apparently the solution to this problem is for everyone in the state to pay $25 (that is $200 million divided by the 8 million people in NJ) to a large Canadian developer in order to get the mall ready for opening. I have two questions: could those of us below I-195 at least have the option of giving the money to a more local mall that is not 100 miles away, or perhaps have it go to the casinos and at least get $25 in chips back? And if this expert is right that even with $200 million of our tax money the project only has a 50-50 chance of success (after all four prior owners have failed), do we get double our money back if it fails again? Seriously, is this really something that the Democrats are going to support instead of using to bash Christie?
4. Women's health: what happens next? Planned Parenthood, our own Sen. Weinberg (D - Actually a D), and many others have been running probably the best progressive campaign of the year against Christie's deeply unpopular cuts in women's health. What happens next? Do the Dems take it up a notch? Like hold Xanadu, which costs over 20 times as much, hostage? Now, you may say: those are the kind of techniques that Republicans use, not Democrats. Which brings us to the next and final point...
5. Will the Democrats reverse all of their progress in making Chris Christie unpopular? For a while, Senate President Sweeney (D-Sorry About that Marriage Thing) and Speaker Oliver (D-What Happened to that Awesome State Convention Speech?) were on a roll - and Christie was having bad week after bad week - jobs numbers, helicopters, women's health - and looked more arrogant than strong. Now, Christie is going to have a new round of bragging rights from overcoming the unions' power. Christie this week looks more strong than arrogant. Are there any other tricks up leadership's sleeve to help boost Christie's sagging poll numbers?
It is going to be an interesting week with a lot at stake for our state's future. And please post additions to this list if I missed something.
S2937, the Christie-Sweeney plan to dramatically alter collective bargaining rights in New Jersey, passed the Senate this afternoon 24-15. The Assembly version - A4133, as introduced by Lou Greenwald (D) and Declan O'Scanlon (R) - is next, first in Assembly Budget (which Greenwald chairs), then to the full Assembly for a vote. Gov. Christie will almost certainly sign it into law if it reaches his desk. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, who has pushed this bill despite a body that may not be warm to it, said "bold, demonstrative large steps" are what's needed now.
Labor - CWA Political Director Bob Masters told the Assembly minutes ago that "real Democrats" would have killed this bill. Charlie Wowkanech, NJ AFL-CIO President said, "Where labor has no voice, democracy has no future."
Gov. Christie owes Steve Sweeney - Senate President, Democrat and 'union man' - a great deal for introducing and championing this bill. Its motive and agenda is largely Republican, as any student of current events can see. And Sweeney is choosing to use his position in the Senate to ram home legislation that threatens the long tradition of pubic employee labor having the power of collective bargaining negotiation to help determine working conditions, a fundamental of the Party he leads.
As 12mileseastofTrenton notes, Sweeney's own caucus voted against him 2-1, and the calls for his ouster as Senate President may grow louder.
The Norcross Provision As we noted earlier, the Senate bill was amended today to remove a much-disputed and cost-ineffective provision to limit public workers' access to out-of-state medical care. But Assemblyman Greenwald appears interested in restricting public worker medical care to inside-Jersey, a highly debatable concept given for example that of the top 50 cancer hospitals in the U.S., none is in New Jersey. The part of the bill snidely referred to as the "Norcross provision" comes about as New Jerseyans calculate who might have stood to benefit from this legislation, or at least that part of it. Several of the world's best hospitals in the world are just outside New Jersey's borders, in NYC and in Philadelphia. Norcross, Sweeney's benefactor and South Jersey Democratic Party boss, is Chair of Cooper Hospital in Camden, which has recently stepped up advertising to compete with premiere hospitals in Philadelphia. Restricting public workers to NJ facilities would certainly have boosted traffic to Cooper, and the fact that the provision would have furthered Sweeney's benefactor's interests added to the sense that this was payback to Sweeney's benefactor for Sweeney's monumental effort to ram this home against a rich ethical tradition of his own Party.
Note: We don't normally post press releases, but I thought this info was interesting and germane to the proceedings going on right now in the State House, in terms of their impact, according to NAACP, on a particular population segment of African-American women & professionals. And, with all that's going on, I don't have time to tease this into a diary. So, here word-for-word is what NAACP has to say -
Study: Black Women, Professionals Would be Disproportionately Affected by Trenton's Cuts
Ben Jealous, President and CEO of the NAACP issued a strongly worded statement, calling on Trenton leaders to respect the right to collective bargaining as a new report says moves to significantly cut the health care and pension benefits of state workers could fall hardest on New Jersey's black middle-class - particularly on black women and black workers with professional degrees. Ben Jealous:
We see this same pattern in many states and cities across the nation. Public sector jobs are critical in communities of color and attacks on bargaining rights and health care disproportionately affect our communities. The NAACP nationally and in NJ supports bargaining rights, not stripping these rights at this critical time. This recession will never end if benefits and wages continue to decline in all sectors. Now public workers are under attack everywhere and we stand with them.
Public sector jobs have served as the gateway to the middle-class for thousands of black New Jerseyans," said Jeffrey Keefe, a professor of Labor and Employment Relations at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and author of today's report. "But those quality jobs are now threatened by Trenton's proposed cuts to public workers. These cuts will fall disproportionately on African-American workers and their families, further damaging a community still struggling to recover from the economic downtown. Black women, who make up 78% of the black public sector workforce, and Black workers with professional degrees will be particularly hard hit.
The report's key findings include:
Black workers earn 93% more each year working in the public sector than the private sector ($38,091 compared to $19,698).
89% of Black public employees have employer-provided health insurance, compared to just 50% of Black workers in the private sector.
Public sector jobs are particularly important for Black women. 78% of the Black public sector labor force is female, compared to 53% of the private sector Black work force.
The public sector employs five times the proportion of Black professionals as the private sector. 40% of Black workers employed in the public sector are professionals.
The public sector employs college-educated Black workers at 2.5 times the rate of the private sector.
Approximately, 37% of Black public employees are college-educated, compared to 15% of private sector Black workers.
I don't think it qualifies as a victory until we see the bill, but Senator Sweeney and Speaker Oliver have announced they will act to repeal their own "Section 76" language that would have blocked state employees from using their own health insurance at out-of-state hospitals:
Under the new legislation, the entirety of Section 76 of the pending pensions and health benefits reform legislation (S-2937/A-4133) would be repealed. It would be replaced by language that would direct the new health care boards to create insurance plans that would specifically include only in-state providers, and other plans that would include coverage for out-of-state providers. No employee would be forced to choose the in-state option.
Very much a poor compromise in my opinion but certainly an improvement.
This was posted very early this morning, before News Roundup, so maybe not everybody has seen it. Just pulling it back up top for a short while for those who missed it; the discussion in comments is interesting - Rosi
In an explosive tirade that fired up some demonstrators and embarrassed others, a national union leader went nuclear on Gov. Chris Christie, calling him a Nazi over and over.
"Welcome to Nazi Germany," Christopher Shelton, a top official at the Communication Workers of America, told thousands of protesters today outside the Statehouse in Trenton. "The first thing that the Nazis and Adolf Hitler did was go after the unions."
In an extreme example of disaffection with both parties, Shelton also went after Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex).
"Adolf Christie's generals," he called them, because both are backing a bill that would increase pension and health benefit costs for public workers.
We can't afford this kind of distraction - not now. Shelton's resignation needs to be on someone's desk this morning. If he doesn't write it, fire him.
The Wisconsin State Supreme Court last night has overturned a lower court decision and it is now illegal for Wisconsinite public workers to collectively bargain. This is a detrimental blow to the working middle class of Wisconsin and potentially to the working middle class of the entire country. However this can also be used as a positive. We can use this to open our eyes and realize we all must get involved. Remember we have power in numbers.
If you do not want this to happen here you must call your representatives and tell them to oppose the proposed bill which makes it illegal to negotiate over health benefits or you will not vote for them next election. Have everyone you know do the same. If we do not tell our representatives what we want, they will do what they think we want, or what will help them the most. If you know your Reps name and need a phone number, ask me for it. If you don't know who your Reps are call 888-875-6558 and punch in your zip code and you will be connected.
Also, we will be meeting at the Masonic Temple on Barrak Street downtown at 9:00 AM on 6/16/11 to coordinate for a rally in front of the State House at 10:00 AM. We are going to be joined by other Unions, the teachers, local fire and police and others. If you cannot take off the whole day, try to take a few hours and come down for lunch. We need to show a huge presence to show these politicians we mean business. Don't forget to wear red.
We can no longer sit back and let others do the work. It is time to stand up for our rights. This is the bottom of the ninth with two outs. We are the last batter. Let's hit one out of the park and win this game
Workers will have to pay up to 30% of the costs of their health insurance premiums. But what, if anything, will be done to check the skyrocketing price of those premiums? Sweeney won't say.
New Jersey's two senators and the congressman New Jerseyans most closely associate with health care reform are joining forces to speak out against Governor Christie's "draconian" cuts to Medicaid, which will result would result in the loss of medical care for tens of thousands of residents of their home state.
Christie has shown repeatedly that New Jerseyans falling through cracks are not high priority for him - low-income women and people suffering from pain or cancer can attest to that - but in this case the governor is actually widening those cracks.
I listened to a conference call today in which Senator Bob Menendez continued to oppose the Republican plan to end Medicare (a plan which every New Jersey Republican Congressman supports.) For me, the main takeaway was that Menendez is now pointing out that the Ryan plan would lead to cuts as soon as next year for senior health care, such as wellness visits, and would affect thousands of New Jerseyans. Americans already hate the plan so this message, it seems to me, is very important. He vowed to oppose any plan that would end "Medicare as we know it," including an absurd plan from a questioner where ending Medicare was recast as somehow being like health care plans for federal workers. He is open to improved efficiencies like those Democrats already passed in health care reform last year. In short, he was excellent and we could only wish the Democrats from other states were as reliable on this issue.
I'm sorry that this is such a short post and that I didn't ask the Senator any questions myself, but when I called the state police for a helicopter to take me to work they hung up on me. Then my limo didn't show up and I had to walk a hundred yards. So you can see I just won't have time to blog well for a few days.
Twas a good convention. I was moved by speeches given by Chair John Wisniewski, our Senator Frank Lautenberg and most notably the one passionately delivered by Speaker Sheila Oliver. The theme of all was: remember why we're Democrats, and go back to the grass roots who share our values. Young people, candidates, vendors and many interesting folk in attendance. The breakout sessions were informative, and meeting other Dems was most satisfying. Made some great connections with other women throughout the state who want to help with the womens' access to health care issue. Also enjoyed meeting some of the very famous Blue Jersey bloggers in person. They were all over the convention. Rosi, with her trusty computer, kept all of you up to date in real time.
But why do some in our ranks continue to try to plant negative stories with the press? Not designed to help anyone!
Along with the Women's Political Caucus, we hosted the Women's Health Roundtable in Trenton this past week. Very well attended and representatives of the various groups including nurses and other health professionals, womens' organizations, and providers were outspoken in describing what the cuts to these health programs mean for women and their families. Thanks to Jay Lassiter for being there with his camera. I did describe the Governor as having initiated a "war on women". Mike Drewniak, Gov's press secretary, responded with: 'that's over the top - everyone knows Chris Christie is a loving husband and devoted father to two daughters'. I would assume that's very true, and would only add: And they have very good health insurance and access to health care! more below...
