THE 800 NUMBERS ARE SIMPLE - EXCELLENT DIRECTS YOU TO YOUR STATE SENATOR AND STATE ASSEMBLY REP:

Ask California Legislators to Support Taxes to Prevent Health Cuts

http://www.californiaprogressreport....

EXCERPT

* Hanging in the Balance: Severe Cuts to Medi-Cal Eligibility, Benefits, and Provider Rates

* Even Compromise Budget Would Cut Children's Coverage: More Than a Quarter-Million Kids to Lose Insurance

Anthony-Wright.gifBy Anthony Wright
Executive Director of Health Access California

As the Governor and Legislature continue to negotiate over a budget deal TODAY, health advocates and all Californians are being urged to call their state legislators to voice opposition to the health care budget cuts, to urge passage of revenues, and to get other friends and colleagues to do the same.

At stake are devastating health care budget cuts that would:

* Leave one million more Californians uninsured--a majority of whom are children;

* Require 3.5 million Californians--largely low-income parents, seniors, and people with disabilities--to pay more for health care, or get less in terms of specific health care benefits;

* Make deep and destabilizing cuts to the health care system we all rely on, including 10% across-the-board cuts to the emergency rooms, hospitals, clinics and doctors that we all, by age or accident, will eventually use.

We need to close the loopholes and raise the revenues and taxes needed to prevent these severe cuts to our health system. The Legislative Conference Committee has proposed a package that include some upper-income taxes and closing of loopholes; the Governor is rumored to have floated a sales tax. Any revenues are needed to prevent devastating cuts to health care.

ACTION #1: CALL THE TOLL-FREE HOTLINES TODAY:
To Reach State Senators: 800-480-3958
To Reach Assemblymembers: 800-960-7682

You will be connected to your state legislative office, and can leave a message for your state Assemblymember or Senator.

* You can tell them why it is crucial for the state budget to prevent the worst of the cuts with revenues, and why it is so important to you, your family, and your community.

* You can urge them to raise additional revenues to undo the worst of the cuts already approved, especially to children's coverage--where a quarter-million children would be denied coverage as a result of the cuts.

ACTION #2: Forward this within your organization, memberships and at least five friends in California. We need as many Californians as possible to register their opposition to these severe budget cuts.

BACKGROUND: The budget is already late, and we need our legislators to take action NOW in order to protect our state's future! Votes will be taken in the next few weeks.

The compromise budget proposed by the Conference Committee did reject--for now--many draconian cuts in health care, that would have resulted in over one million more Californians not getting health coverage as a result of the budget, and three and a half million Californians having to pay more and/or get less in terms of care and coverage.

Because no cut or restoration is final until a budget is approved, all cuts are still on the table until both parties in the Legislature can agree on taxes. The Conference Committee budget relies on over $9 billion in raised revenues in order to prevent other cuts.

REAL CUTS, ESPECIALLY TO CHILDREN'S COVERAGE: Yet even under this Democrat-supported budget, health care, and in particular children's coverage, gets hit hard. Even with the additional revenues raised, more than a quarter-million children are expected to lose coverage if this version of the budget is fully implemented. The cuts approved that would impact children's health coverage include:

* Imposing additional paperwork burdens so a quarter of a million children fall off coverage under full implementation by 2011.

* Increasing premiums in the Healthy Families program.

* Suspending streamlining and enrollment reforms.

Additional revenues would be needed to prevent these cuts.

What's the deal with the extensive use of the words "meme" and "narrative" in political blog posts? What's wrong with the widely understood words that average readers have always undertood for concepts like common sense, tradition, theory, and story? Are the words "meme" and "narrative" really necessary for discussion of politics or political analysis.

The words irritate me. My mother would describe anyone who used such academic terms to describe concepts that are commonly understood as a "crock of shit." It would be the topic of a long post, I suppose, to analyze why so many writers on lefty blogs use esoteric language to explain themselves. The first reason that comes to mind is intellectual insecurity.

It's easy to hide behind words that 99% of readers do not understand; easy to feel intellectually superior. But to me these writers sound like they're lost in linguistics. It's indulgent. It's lazy. It's unspecific. And to me writers who use them sound like they don't really care whether readers understand what they're trying to say.

If a writer is writing about a common sense, or tradition, or a theory, use those words, not meme. Similarly, the words story or even script are better than the word "narrative."

I'm sure there are other esoteric words that irritate readers here and on other blogs, but these two have gotten to be so overused since I first read them in these forums five or six years ago. After the second time you read it, meme sounds like something you want to wash off and narrative gets to sounding like an incurrable disease. By the end of a post that goes on at length using the terms, I feel dirty and nauseus. Most average readers will skim right over posts like that.