Chairman's Corner
PageChairman Turnham: Bipartisan 'handshake' needs to be offered to all
The attempt to label and brand Democrats while diminishing our Democrats' real beliefs and true accomplishments is not a handshake, but a sleight of hand.
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Hubbert legacy one of positive, historic achievement
August 4, 2010
In just a few days, tens of thousands of Alabama's children (including mine) will go back to public school.Continue reading "Hubbert legacy one of positive, historic achievement"
Oil clean-up should be priority for November election
July 19, 2010
The ecological and economic disaster in our Gulf of Mexico should first and foremost recalibrate our electoral priorities for November's legislative, governor and judicial races.Continue reading "Oil clean-up should be priority for November election"
Reflecting on 2010: Plenty of success stories inside State House
May 11, 2010
[This editorial from Alabama Democratic Party Chairman Joe Turnham appeared in the Opelika-Auburn News.]Even amidst the cynicism, controversy and partisan election year posturing, the 2010 session of the Alabama Legislature achieved some solid and notable successes.
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Bill necessary for U.S. growth
April 6, 2010
The realities facing the American people concerning our healthcare
system are sobering. Healthcare spending in America represents one-sixth
of overall economic activity and is growing.Entitlement spending on healthcare in the out-years is $39 trillion "underwater" and growing as more baby boomers/busters enter retirement. Forty million of us have no health care insurance and use the emergency room or public hospitals as our primary care provider; thus shifting the cost of healthcare for 12 percent of Americans directly onto hospitals and government.
As a nation we are fatter, more hypertensive, more addicted, less healthy than we were 10 years ago and getting worse. While we have the best health care facilities, doctors and pharmaceutical platform ever known to man, our delivery system, redundancy and waste in the system consumes one-third of all dollars spent. It is a train wreck and super majorities of you reading this column believe reform is absolutely necessary.
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Ethics should never become a partisan issue
January 14, 2010
Lest anyone be misled, Alabama history clearly shows that the creation, funding, improvement and strengthening of the Alabama Ethics Law and the Alabama Ethics Commission, as well as the creation of the Fair Campaign Practices Act, were the handiwork of Alabama Democrats.
In the post-Nixon Watergate period of the 1970s, Democratic Gov. George Wallace and the Alabama Democratic Legislature created the state's first ethics law and commission. In 1992, current Democratic Speaker Seth Hammett, then serving as a young state representative, sponsored a complete rewrite of the original Alabama ethics law. The ensuing legislation Speaker Hammett championed became today's ethics law and for its time, it gave Alabama one of our nation's strongest ethics laws.
Today however, more needs to be done to strengthen and update our law, and subpoena power is a needed instrument which I support.
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Supreme Court Stifles the People of Alabama's Right to Be Heard
December 7, 2009
In the 2010 elections three of Alabama's nine Supreme Court seats will be up for election. Voters should take notice of the recent shocking actions of our highest court as shown by their unwillingness to even hear oral arguments of the people of Alabama in the recent Medicaid lawsuits.
The voters of Alabama should be the ultimate arbiters of who shall sit upon the highest court in our state; yet, big money interests and out-of-state shell groups formed by many of the entities with cases before the courts fund election year advertisement, that in essence buys these judicial elections by skewing communications toward their candidate.
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Reform is only way to save health care system in America
August 11, 2009
In less than a decade, the Medicare Trust Fund will be out of money. Health care costs and the private premiums for insurance are rising much faster than real wages.
Today, more than 50 million Americans have no health care insurance and bankruptcies associated with the lack of health care coverage are rising exponentially. More and more seniors are being forced to take on credit card debt to pay drug bills. Rural hospitals and clinics are closing at alarming rates. The contingent liability of entitlements and federal obligations now tops a whopping $54 trillion.
Click read more below to view the entire article.
To read more about the healtcare debate and the misinformation swirling out there, click here.
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