SNAP Notes

Chris Murphy will be taking on one of the most crucial fights this year, looking to overtake current Rep. Nancy Johnson in CT-5. Murphy recognizes the important issues of this political moment. He is asking the real questions of this race:

• Why was it that CT residents were deceived about the nature and purpose of the war in Iraq?

• How can we hold schools accountable without sacrificing teachers’ autonomy to a teach-to-the-test model of educational impoverishment?

• How can we ensure that we are living and working in a way that defends our grandchildren’s right to a clean, healthy environment?

• What do we need to do to ensure that all people can access healthcare?

Chris has taken healthcare access as one of his major focal points this year – a sensible choice for CT, a state feeling the healthcare crunch. In this issue, particularly, his vision and his ethical leadership strike a markedly different note from that of the incumbent. Rep. Johnson, Chairman of the Health Subcommittee for Ways and Means, has voted in support of the health care industry – even when that means voting against the needs of her own constituents.

Scanning through the FEC’s Disclosure Reports for Johnson, it’s easy to see why: Johnson’s financial support comes heavily from these health industry giants, whereas Murphy has relied much more heavily on individual donations, the support of organized labor—the regular working folk of his own district, and support from other established progressive leaders in Congress (Rosa DeLauro, for example). As I wrote last month, health care is a major election issue this cycle. Chris Murphy can and will stand up for us – not big business – through support for a Patient’s Bill of Rights, affordable health insurance for small business employers, and affordable prescription drugs.

We are delighted to have endorsed Chris Murphy and very excited for the important work of the SNAP PAC field organizers in this key campaign. If you haven’t had a chance to meet Chris in person, you’ll have an opportunity this weekend. Chris Murphy will be visiting Diane Farrell’s district (CT-4) for a SNAP PAC Fundraiser at the New Canaan home of Anne-Marie and Dexter Sutton. This is an excellent opportunity to support SNAP PAC and meet one of our most exciting endorsed candidates!

Yesterday’s LA Times offers a sobering account of the Bush Administration’s quiet war on the discretion of state governments to regulate and sue industries whose practices threaten their constituents. AEI’s Michael S. Greve is on hand to defend the need for such federal intervention to protect business from the supposed threat of “trial lawyers, ambitious state attorneys general and parochial state legislatures.” And politicians and activists rightly call conservative technocrats like him out on their fair weather federalism in advocating both a sacred prohibition against the federal government steering states towards the left and a sacred responsibility for the federal government to steer states to the right. But there’s a second level of hypocrisy that goes undiscussed here.

Hearing Greve breathlessly recount the threat posed by clever lawyers forcing obscene settlements from misunderstood businesses, you might get the sense that we should let someone other than trial lawyers determine guilt or innocence and mete out punishment. Then you might remember that we already do. They’re called juries.

Conservatives are always claiming that their opposition to judicial decisions which limit the power of their constituencies is based in an abiding faith in democracy and a distrust of unelected judges. But in the same breath they argue for tort reform in order to protect those same constituencies from regulation by juries. And they gleefully marshall technocratic arguments to suggest that a sampling of “the people” shouldn’t be trusted to decide such cases. They’re stuck making that argument because for all the talk about Americans hating lawyers and malpractice suits and regulations, it isn’t trial lawyers who decide cases and determine damages. It’s a (not fully representative) sampling of the American people (sometimes overly restricted by tort reform). So conservatives’ concern isn’t about democracy. It’s about power.