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Confirmation Hearing Schedules and Our IMPACT on Them

1/31/2017

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Dear Friends:​

Confirmation hearings on the new Administration's Cabinet choices are continuing.  Senate Judiciary will vote tomorrow on the proposed Attorney General, Jeff Session.  We've been asking you to call your Senators on this and upcoming floor votes, even when we think your Senator will probably vote NO. In part it is to give Senators who are in agreement with us the "weight" of citizen response, and in part because even those on our side are getting pushed by supporters to vote Yes.

Dianne Feinstein of California indicated she'd had far too few calls concerning Mr. Sessions and might, therefore, have to vote for him.  Now, after she was inundated by your calls, those from the NAACP, and many other human rights groups, she has asked for a delay in the vote because Mr. Sessions has failed to answer questions posed to him before the hearings began.  She has been strengthened by your response. 

Please understand that whatever an elected official's own beliefs about any given issue, if there is no real citizen support for that position within his or her constituency, it makes holding the line on the vote very, very difficult.  That's why we encourage your voices to be raised.  Your voice has "weight" in every serious matter.

The reason we don't suggest that you call the chair or ranking member of a committee at the federal leve is that if you are not a constituent and the person in that position is not interested in higher office, the voices outside their constituency (district or state) hold very little influence if any.  You may, of course, do it, but it expends your energies for little return.  So we focus on your representatives. 

The upcoming hearings are as follows:

Senator Tom Price for Health and Human Services.  He has repeatdly advocated overturning the Affordable Care Act and has proffered outright lies about how it is working.  He is deeply opposed to women making their own decisions about their reproductive care including access to birth control and abortion. He also has ignored the existing laws (the Hyde Amendment of long standing)  that prevent federal funds being used to pay for abortion and pretends they still do, using that as an excuse to remove access to Planned Parenthood and other women's health services.  Moreover, he supports the general conservative goal of ending - yes ending - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veternas Tricare, and VA health care by privatizing them or turning them into tax credits.  None of those strategies would offer the care we have today, not for our elders, not for the poor, not for veterans.  He faced a second committee hearing due to undisclosed financial interests in major pharmaceutical corporations among other issues. He has a likely smooth passage through a floor vote, but we need to keep up the opposition to his leadership of these key issues.

Senate Committe on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) will hear the second round of questions for Betsy DeVos, candidate for Secretary of Education. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, February 2.   Ms. DeVos, wife of the Amway products founder, is a rabid opponent of public schools and is in favor of using tax dollars  - our money - for private schools both secular and religious.  She has never shown an ounce of understanding of what public schools need; her family have all been schooled privately, and she has a strong conservative religious agenda she wishes to have implemented in both those charter schools and public schools regardless of parents' and children's beliefs.  She once advocated making poor children work, saying even jobs in mining would be good.  Shades of the 1890s!  She showed in the first round of questioning that she has no interest in or understanding of curricula or child development or what constitutes real achievement.

Senate HELP Committee has schedule February 2 to question fast-food CEO Andrew Puzder in his quest for Secretary of Labor.  Mr. Puzder has expressed opposition to not only the "Fight for $15" minimum wage movement but to minimum wage. His own fast-food empire, CKE Restaurants (Carl's Jr. and Hardee's) is a chronic violator of basic labor standards. He expressed an interest in purusing automation to replace workers not help them do better.  He wants to remove all liability on both his corporation and its franchise owners for harm done to workers - a standard even Andrew Carnegie rejected.  And he wants to make union organizing very difficult if not impossible to further these anti-worker goals.

No matter who is now up before committee or who has passed to floor votes, please let your Senators know of your opposition.  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was CEO of the company that ignored federal safety standards resulting in the deaths of 12 miners at his Sago Coal Mine. He operates most of his businesses outside the U.S. and has strong and dubious ties to Russian interests.  Mick Mulvaney, candidate for Director of the Office of Managment and Budget was one of the legislators shutting down the government in 23 and 2015.  Steven Mnuchin, candidate for Secretary of the Treasury, played a pivotal role in the financial crisis of 2007-08 while he was head of the branch that promoted toxic mortgages.  He was called the foreclosure king of Wall Street, once trying to take back the home of a 90-year-old woman over a $.29 calculation error.  He withheld payments to survivors of Hurricane Sandy. He has no government experience so tends to view the federal finances for what benefits corporate interests, not the public.

With all of these candidates whose moral values are, in our view, sadly lacking and whose experience has never been in the public interest, we urge constant vigilance and strong opposition. 

To call your Senators please dial 202-224-3121  or connect to them for district phones and FAX or email contact at:
http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

These people will have a great deal of say over our future, how we live,  what benefits we will receive and how, whether we may operate freely or be constrained by unknown limitations.  This is on all of us to oppose. Make your voice heard today, tomorrow, through the confirmation floor votes so that you send the message that we will NOT go back to an insecure time when corporations rule, and we suffer.

Thank you.

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Call your Senator - demand a NO vote on confirmation!

1/30/2017

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Dear Friends:

The vote to confirm Sen. Jeff Sessions as our nation's Attorney General is today.  He will be in charge of upholding the immigration orders we have protested this past week.  Those have now spread to include visa holders entering from Mexico (O'Hare airport in Chicago was where that first occurred yesterday.)

With this Administration defying much of the five federal court orders directives, we cannot have an Attorney General who cares nothing for civil rights and human rights.

Please call your Senator now at 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121 and tell him or her to vote NO on Sessions' confirmation.

If you cannot get through, please use our link to get a FAX number or district office phones. 

http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html

We must have an Attorney General who both knows our civil rights and upholds them!​

Thank you!

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This is not over. More demonstrations at LAX and SFO today

1/29/2017

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Dear Friends:

An update on the status of the refugees being denied entry:

The three Temporary Restraining Orders issued late yesterday concerning the fate of Muslims returning to America are being met with mixed response.  The orders actively prevent deportation but not necessarily detention.  Although several Muslim refugees have indeed been released, it is not clear what the fate of others has been or will be.  The order had no impact on the approximately 173 people waiting to board planes abroad. They remain in limbo.

There are protests continuing at LAX and SFO international terminals.  Attorneys for ACLU and some individual private attorneys continue to work to secure the release of any people still being detained, but the principle of the Muslim ban is still being protested.

And please be sure it is a ban on Muslims. Christians from the seven targeted countries are NOT being detained.  Leaders from the Protestant, Catholic, and evangelical world are objecting vigorously to this discrimination even as it is on behalf of their own members. Jen Smyers, director of policy and advocacy for immigrant and refugee issues of the Church World Service is speaking against the preferential treatment for Christians along with Jose Vasquez of the US Conference on Catholic Bishops among others.  Pitting religions against one another is being declared immoral, and upholding equal rights under the law is being affirmed. 

To answer questions we have received, there is not any issue at smaller airports such as ours in Sacramento.  Despite the name "international" appended to almost every airport these days, small airports do not serve direct flights from Europe and Asia.  The focus is on those major arrival destinations where overseas travelers clear customs and immigration before heading to smaller city airports. Thus the protests in California remain focused on San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The temporary restraining order extends for seven days. It can be increased, made permanent, but those are steps we will need to observe over the next few days based on Executive Branch appeals, actions, and other factors.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made public that due to existing refugee and immigrant policy, those stranded abroad may find refuge in Canada. If people know of someone in that situation abroad, this may provide some help and relief so please get the word to them if possible.

This is not over.  The White House is committed to the policy and is not backing down.  We cannot back down on our commitment to justice, equality, and fair treatment.  If you are inclined and physically able, please join the protests in San Francisco and Los Angeles airports today.  And please keep calling Congress to end this policy of fear and discrimination!  Call tomorrow 202-224-3121 to insist that Congress over-rides the Executive Order and abides by our Constitution at all times. 

Thank you!

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Understand that at JFK and LAX, the border officials NOT abiding by court rulings

1/28/2017

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Dear Friends,

Latest word - may not be accurate - is that the ICE and other officials at JFK and LAX are NOT abiding by the court rulings ending the ban on immigrant re-entry, especially for Muslims. 

PLEASE stay in touch with people locally to determine if more actions are needed.  Our filters on such issues are not as good as your local ones via news, activist groups, etc.  Consult your local papers - New York Times, Los Angeles Times - to determine what their news desks know.  If you are on the scene and have something to tell us, we will try to post it as soon as we can.

There now have been three almost simultaneous nationwide rulings - NY, VA and WA federal courts all of which stopped the ban. Their rulings were not just for their regions but for the NATION.  Thus, there is NO reason for any enforcement group at any airport to refuse compliance.

Representatives and Senators are now at several airports around the country demanding compliance with the court order. ACLU and other attorneys are working to make sure those in detainment are released immediately. 

The White House is feeling the pressure and has put an ad on CNN saying that they are 'under attack'.  Well, that's called democracy. They apparently are feeling the pressure from this action, opposition to cuts in ACA, and several other issues.  In other words - your advocacy is working!  That one branch of the federal government would place a PAID AD in its own defense asking people to call to express support is absolutely unprecedented. This is the nature of how our system works. It's not an attack. It's disagreement made manifest through effective citizen action. We think this is how the system is meant to work! And you are DOING that!

We will try to keep you updated. Feel free to bring us information to post. This is a hugely turbulent time, and we are doing our best to bring you righteous information that is worth your notice.  Please forgive us if we sometimes get things wrong - we will correct them as quickly as we can.

Thanks to everyone who has taken action, HOWEVER, you did it. Even just calling friends and neighbors to keep them abreast of the situation is powerful.  Bless you in all you do.  Keep hope alive!

Thank you!

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Muslim detainees at LAX and SFO. Action needed!

1/28/2017

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,Dear Friends,

The ban on Muslims from seven nations is underway. Even those with Green Cards, including one man two weeks away from his becoming a U.S. citizen, are either detained at airports around the country or being denied boarding as they try to return home to the United States.

This is our Pastor Niemoller Moment.

If you are able, please join the vigil at Los Angeles International Airport. 

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lax-protest-muslims-trump-20170128-story.html

Apparently there is at least one person detained at San Francisco International as well. We do not have good information on actions yet but you may have information locally on your local news.

Protests have begun to work.  At JFK where most of the detainees are, two people have been released to re-enter the United States.

If you can find your area federal building, are near an airport with Muslim detainees, or you can take any other action, please do so. 

The White House has disconnect its phone. There is no public way in.  However, if you Tweet, @POTUS now reaches the current president.  Who reads those Tweets is anybody's guess, but it IS access.

This is a crisis of almost unprecedented proportions.  In the coming days we will be upgrading our information, but for today, this is what we have.

It's on us. Nobody will make this stop but us, the people. Please do what you can, however you can, for as long as you can.

Thank you.

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Federal Judge in NY just barred the ban in immigrants! GREAT VICTORY!

1/28/2017

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The wave of protests at airports has been coupled with a federal ruling.  In a victory for justice, a judge in the Eastern District of NY has stopped the ban on immigration.​

The Executive Order from the White House is halted.  Where it goes from here is up to the courts and normal review and hearing process.

For the moment, civil rights have been restored.

Stay tuned.

Thank you to everyone who made a call, showed up, protested - we CAN change the world through every means we have.

Blessed be!

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Trying again with Senator Feinstein!  NO to Jeff Sessions as Attorney General

1/26/2017

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Dear Friends,

Apparently between your work and that of others, Senator Feinstein's phones are overwhelmed. This is terrific, but we cannot stop now.  Jeff Sessions' confirmation hearings have been pushed back a week due to nationwide concerns about his frightening lack of concern for civil rights enforcement.

Now is the time to push forward against his confirmation.

Although all her office numbers are overwhelmed, there are FAX numbers probably still open. Write a short note with your name and address asking her NOT to confirm Mr. Sessions as the nation's Attorney General.

Washington DC Office - PH: 202-224-3841. FAX: 202-228-3954

Fresno:  PH: 559-485-7430.  FAX: 559-485-9689​

Los Angeles:  PH: 310-914-7300.  FAX: 410-914-7318

San Diego: PH: 619-231-9712.  FAX: 619-231-1108

San Francisco:  PH: 415-393-0707.  FAX: 415-393-0710

While we know general email is not always effective, please use the contact page if nothing else works well.  Here is the direct link to Senator Feinstein's constituent email contact:

http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-me?     

After you enter your own contact information, please pick the "Civil Rights" category to mark.  The space for your comment is at the bottom - please preface your comments with "Please Oppose Jeff Sessions as Attorney General" then write whatever else you like about his disdain for civil rights and voting rights issues.

As a note - the former US Attorneys in the Eastern District of CA have held a quarterly community Hate Crimes Task Force that has helped keep hate crimes down and has empowered law enforcement prosecution of those that have occurred.  We are deeply concerned this would be disbanded under Sessions even though it operated during the Bush administration.  Sessions is not someone we can trust to permit this essential community-wide forum for citizens and law enforcement to continue.   Other Department of Justice jurisdictions have groups very similar. Those, too, are at risk of being disbanded.  We cannot let this happen!

So please be persistent in calls, FAXes, and email - your voice does matter. Democracy is messy and time consuming, but it is incredibly important to press forward.

Thank you all!

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Dianne Feinstein is NOT hearing from you - may vote FOR Jeff Sessions

1/26/2017

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Dear Friends:

Dianne Feinstein has received only 5000 calls against the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.

This is the man who refuses to honor the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act as a part of his duties. He is in accord with the President who has just moved to abolish the office of Civil Rights as part of the Department of Justice.

We cannot let this happen.  Jeff Sessions has a long history of racist sympathies, and he cannot become our Attorney General! With all the problems of voter disenfranchisement and barriers to voting for even fully registered voters, we must have an Attorney General who will uphold the CRA and VRA.

Please call Senator Feinstein NOW and keep calling asking her to do everything in her power as our Senator to keep Jeff Sessions from becoming Attorney General.  Her Capitol office (the best place to call) is 202-224-3841.  If you wish to send a FAX, the number is 202-228-3954.  Call of FAX DAILY - his confirmation vote has been put on hold for a week, so start NOW and keep calling her to protest his becoming our AG.

Whoever holds the position of Attorney General upholds either our core principles or abandons their enforcement. We in the faith community must be voices for justice for every person.  Jeff Sessions is not the person we can tolerate in this office.  Urge Sen. Feinstein to do the right thing and vogte against his nomination.​

Thank you!

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Alt-Information - and what we need to do to save the First Amendment, Open Government

1/25/2017

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​Dear Friends:
​

In the past few days Congress and the Executive Branch have taken steps that are deeply troubling.  There is an assault on our system of democracy that, unopposed, will change forever the trust we may have in our government, the capacity for us to even know what is happening in our federal agencies.

The public voices of our nation’s agencies from the National Park Service to the Environmental Protection Agency were silenced earlier this week. Web sites and Twitter accounts were frozen, and our access to them to ask questions or obtain information was ended. 

Some enterprising NPS employees, using their own resources and time, have created an “Alt NPS” Twitter account through which they continue to post scientific information on climate change and other NPS related issues.  It’s not a lot of access, but it’s a start.  The US Department of Agriculture site, also silenced, is now back online, but their posts of critical scientific information is under scrutiny.

This has a horrible impact on our ability to trust what we read, to obtain what we want to know.

Far more troubling is a Congressional bill, HR 5, The Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017. This bill, passed in the dark of night by the House, changes the entire nature of how we will regulate business, industry, agriculture, mining, or any business at all.

Every proposed regulation will be vetted in terms of the “burden” it might place on the entity being regulated, not the benefit to our nation and our people.  

Every regulation will be open to objection, and every business objecting to being regulated will be given more weight than those negatively impacted by the actions of said businesses.

Although amendments were offered to exclude areas from this regulatory roll back, no exemptions were made for public health and welfare, for assuring food safety, for protecting employees not even from exposure to toxins and carcinogens, not for communities exposed to toxic materials, and not even to protect our children by assuring their toys are safe.

Under the pretense of “restoring” Constitutional balance, courts will be restricted in terms of how they may rule. They may not appeal to precedent. They may review regulator laws in light of the burden provision of HR 5 only.  In other words, the 228-year-old Constitutional separation of powers and the millennia-long use of precedent by our courts has been ended for these purposes.

You must contact your Senators now to stop this bill.  The consequences are dire, and the threat to our Constitution itself is on the line.  Please call and keep calling your Senators to insist this bill be defeated!  Please call them at the Capitol Switchboard – 202-224-3121.  If you want to send a FAX letter, please go to our site http://www.churchimpact.org/take-action.html and obtain the FAX number for your Senators' offices.

This bill sets a totally unacceptable standard.  It takes us back to the 1890s where no protections for workers, families, our communities, or our environment even existed.  It will allow some to be “more equal than others” and will strip the courts of their Constitutional role as arbiter of fairness. 

HR 5 cannot be allowed to undermine all we care about and our standards for due process. Please call today even if you know your Senator will agree. Numbers matter here, and the weight of your opinion can help us block this dreadful threat to open and transparent government and to democracy itself.   

Thank  you!

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Two-step advocacy for health care! Please take action!

1/25/2017

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Dear Friends:

Today 5700 doctors broke with the American Medical Association's endorsement of Tom Price for Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Why? They know Price may be good for doctors, relieving them of caring for low-fee patients, but he will be horrible for patients. 

Price is in policy concert with the anti-Affordable Care Act movement that seeks to cut and cap Medicaid and Medicare down the road.  Medicaid - Medi-Cal in California - covers those already living on the margins financially including elders and those with disabilities whose Social Security income is too small to pay their Part B premiums or the 20% cost share.  It also has recently covered the truly indigent, our large and growing homeless population of adults without children. This has been a godsend for people, often working but not earning enough for our skyrocketing rents, for whom even ACA is out of reach.

Tom Price and much of Congress want to convert Medicaid to a block grant with a fixed amount meaning few or no new people could be added by their respective state and/or their coverage could be capped no matter how ill they may be. Block grants are also not mandated spending meaning truly heartless states could use the money for other purposes including, yes, tax cut offsets for the wealthy.

Jesus gave his disciples the authority to cure those whom they served. Before any other deed, he told them, "Cure the sick, raise he dead, cleanse the lepers, cast our demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts."   " (Matthew 10:8-9) 

We cannot endorse our nation's health care planning being placed in the hands of someone who wishes to kill the program. It is critical that we raise our voices in opposition to this appointment.  We do this in the name of every man, woman, and child whose health hangs in the balance.

If states obtain the right to eliminate services, the conditions no longer covered could be massive.  In MN, a state representative, Steve Drazkowski, proposed eliminating maternal benefits and permitting physicians to reject care for unmarried pregnant women;  doctors and insurance companies may omit coverage for: in-patient care for post birthing longer than 48 hours for natural childbirth, 90 hours for C-section; services for those on ventilators; diagnostic processes for cancer (blanket omission, no exceptions); prostate cancer screening; mental health; diabetes; and even emergency services.

This list is longer. It's too grim a picture of our future to fully post.  No - we are not making this up. It's one legislator's state proposal under a fully decentralized and deregulated health care plan.

Please call your Senators to oppose Tom Price who would willingly support decentralizing health care coverage and turning our health care over to the likes of MN Rep. Drazkowsi.  Ask them to take whatever measures they can including a block or filibuster to stop Tom Price's  nomination. If your Senator is already in opposition, please thank her or him.  This is a key position that cannot be allowed to move forward to abet the dismantling of our health care system.

Please call the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121 to be connected to your Senators. Then call again for your Representative to make sure we get a full look at any replacement bill before we take any more stesps in changing the Affordable Care Act or Children's Health Insurance Plan, or Medicaid, or Medicare. 

Our lives and those of people with far too little say are on the line.  Please act today to stop the nomination of Tom Price and to demand full accountability to us on any health care plan.

Thank you!

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    The Rev Dr Rick Schlosser

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