A 1998 internal Philip Morris memo, written by John Scruggs of Philip Morris Management Corporation’s Federal Government Affairs (lobbying) Office, describes a key public relations/lobbying technique that corporations use to dominate virtually the entire decisionmaking environment in which legislators operate. Scruggs calls it the “Echo Chamber Approach to Advocacy.” It involves making a corporation’s chosen message, or slight variations of this message, emanate from virtually every major source that can influence legislators’ decisionmaking: constituents, colleagues, opinion leaders, local and national media like TV, radio, newspapers, fundraisers, advertising, etc. Scruggs says “…[T]his repetition, or ‘piling on’ approach works” because the message emanates from those who have ” ‘the greatest degree of credibility’ with the legislator.” This memo was created by Philip Morris in the 1990s, but since then, due to the cigarette industry’s pioneering reputation of success at influencing legislators, the technique has doubtless spread and is now likely in use by many more corporations and industries.
Category: politics
Corporations, Corruption, Front groups, politics, Tobacco
Dick Armey’s Tobacco Ties
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Dick Armey in his younger days
Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who recently left his job with the astroturf group Freedomworks, has a history of taking tobacco money and doing Big Tobacco’s bidding. The tobacco industry was a friend to Armey throughout his career on Capitol Hill, but Armey, who was an uneven ally to the industry while in the House, arguably became a more reliable ally when, under his guidance, FreedomWorks reflexively opposed higher cigarette taxes in states all across the union. Despite this, we found that some in the industry has less-than-complimentary things to say about Armey. We also found Armey engaged in dubious and dishonest tactics get new members an increase his group’s muscle while at FreedomWorks. Read all about Dick Armey’s tobacco ties and how he used FreedomWorks in a three-part series on my new blog at DeSmogBlog.com.
Corruption, Elections, Ethnic/Minority, politics
Virginia Republicans Rush Through Redistricting Vote While Key Democrat Attends Obama’s Inauguration
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Virginia State Senator Henry Marsh
While Virginia State Senator Henry Marsh, a 79 year old African-American civil rights advocate and a Democrat, was out of the state attending President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremonies, Virginia’s Republican legislators seized the opportunity afforded by his absence to rush through a vote on a new Congressional redistricting map that maximizes the number of seats safe for Republicans. Virginia’s legislature is evenly split with 20 Republican members and 20 Democratic members, but while Marsh was out of town, there were 20 Republicans and 19 Democrats present to vote. Republicans seized upon that short window of time when they had a voting advantage to take a vote on the redistricting measure. It passed by a single vote, 19-20 with 19 Democrats voting against it, and handed an electoral advantage to Republicans. Virginia Democrats said they would challenge the measure in court.
Main Source: Talking Points Memo, January 21, 2013
Corruption, Education, Environment, Lies, Magical thinking, politics, Propaganda, Religion, Secularism
Stealth Anti-Science Bills Disguised as “Academic Freedom” Bills
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The National Center for Science Education is warning that a bill introduced in the Colorado House of Representatives on January 16, HB13-1089 (pdf), called the “Academic Freedom Act,” is really a trojan horse anti-science bill. The bill directs teachers “to create an environment that encourages students to intelligently and respectfully explore scientific questions and learn about scientific evidence related to biological and chemical evolution, global warming, and human cloning.” It sounds innocent enough, but such bills use an “academic freedom” guise to tacitly permit teachers to misinform students by allowing the teaching of creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to evolution, or by allowing teachers to misrepresent evolution as being scientifically controversial. The last time such an anti-evolution bill was introduced in Colorado was in 1972, when a lawmakers tried to put a measure on the ballot that would have allowed “all students and teachers academic freedom of choice as to which of these two theories, creation of evolution, they wish to choose.” That measure never made it onto the ballot. All of the primary sponsors and co-sponsors of Colorado’s 2013 “Academic Freedom Act” in both the House and the Senate are Republicans. These tricky, shifting strategies state and local school boards, state legislatures and teachers are using to undermine the teaching of scientific subjects like evolution, climate change and cloning are described in depth an article published in a September, 2010 article in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics titled Dispatches from the Evolution Wars: Shifting Tactics and Expanding Battlefields.
Corruption, Elections, Equal rights, Ethnic/Minority, politics
Republicans’ REDMAP Strategy to Skew Future Elections in Their Favor
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Voter ID wasn’t enough; Republicans still tinkering with election processes to disadvantage voters on the other side
Republicans, finding themselves less able to win elections on the merits of their candidates and policy positions, are continuing to tinker with election processes at the state level to disadvantage voters who disagree with their policies and dislike their candidates. In 2010 and 2011, Republicans worked frenetically in state legislatures to pass so-called “voter ID” laws, which, just prior to the election, were officially outed as a strategy to make voting harder for the people most likely to vote against their candidates: African Americans, the elderly, the poor, students and those with disabilities. As voter ID laws were increasingly discredited and blocked by the courts, Republicans started working on a new strategy: REDMAP, short for “Redistricting Majority Project,” an effort to skew the redistricting process to assure Republicans maintain their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives even though more Democrats than Republicans are now casting ballots across the country. The GOP’s REDMAP strategy involves a plan to win control of state legislatures. Once they achieve that, they initiate an aggressive gerrymandering campaign to redraw the states’ electoral maps and create districts that are completely safe for Republicans. But beyond eliminating competitive elections in Congressional races, a new part of the GOP’s strategy is to change the rules about how the states apportion their electoral college votes. The new strategy will magnify the effect of Republican votes in the Electoral College in future elections. The GOP wants to change the current winner-take-all rule for apportioning electoral college votes to instead apportioning electoral votes based on the winner in each individual Congressional district within the state. The change would hand beleaguered Republicans a huge process advantage over Democrats. As an example, if the GOP’s hoped-for rule had been in place in Pennsylvania in the November, 2012 election, for example, Mitt Romney would have won 13 of that state’s 20 electoral college votes, even though Obama won the state with 52 percent of the popular vote.
Main Source: Huffington Post, January 17, 2012
Advertising, Corporations, Ethics, Gun violence, Lobbying, Media, politics, Propaganda, Safety, Security, Violence
NRA Puts President Obama’s Kids in the Political Crosshairs
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The National Rifle Association (NRA) posted a 35 second Internet ad called “Stand and Fight” that takes aim at President Obama’s children over the issue of gun safety regulations. The ad accuses President Obama of being an “elitist hypocrite” for accepting armed secret service protection for his children, Sasha, age 11, and Malia, age 14, while other children attend school without armed guards. The voiceover in the ad asks “Are the president’s kids more important that yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when HIS kids are protected by armed guards at THEIR school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security. Protection for their kids and gun-free zones for ours.” There were reports on MSNBC that the NRA pulled the ad almost as quickly as they posted it, but as of this evening the ad was still visible at the NRA’s new website, NRAStandandFight.com.
animal abuse, Corporations, Ethics, politics, Worker advocacy
Trojan Horse Ag-Gag Bill Introduced in New Hampshire
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Chickens in a battery cage (Wikimedia image)
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is sounding alarm bells about a bill introduced in New Hampshire’s House of Representatives that requires people who photograph or make video recordings of cruelty against livestock to report it to police within 24 hours and turn over their unedited video or photos to authorities. So what’s wrong with that? And why does the HSUS oppose it? After all, it sounds like it’s aimed at exposing animal abuse, right? Nope. It’s a particularly tricky form of an industry-crafted “Ag-Gag” bill meant to stifle reporting on animal cruelty in commercial livestock operations. How? When whistleblowers expose cruelty at commercial animal enterprises, a common excuse put forth by business owners is that the abuse was a one-off occurrence or a single event perpetrated by a rogue employee who has, of course, since been fired. People working to expose animal abuse in big agribusiness enterprises have learned that they must document repeated instances of cruelty in order to make a solid case against the company that will hold up in court. Such high-quality evidence is animal advocates’ only leverage to try and stop to the abuse. If people are required to turn over a video recording of a single instance of abuse the same day it was taken, it would make it virtually impossible to document a pattern of abuse to the extent necessary to make a tight enough case to stop it.
animal abuse, Consumer advocacy, Ethics, Grassroots advocacy, Lobbying, politics, Safety, Secrecy
Agribusiness Pushes “Ag-Gag” Laws Aimed at Keeping Animal Abuse Secret
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Whistleblowing employees in the food industry have been credited with exposing horrible instances of animal abuse, unsafe working conditions, and environmental and public health violations on industrial factory farms by filming these conditions and exposing them to the public. But instead of fixing the problems these workers expose, the agribusiness industry is responding by pushing through laws that effectively block the pubic from finding out about these abuses in the first place. These whistleblower suppression, or “ag-gag” bills, criminalize taking photographs or video recordings at factory farms without permission, ban the distribution of such photos or videos and make it a crime to take a job at a commercial farm operation for the purpose of exposing what goes on there. These industry-backed bills would stop undercover activity like that used by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in 2008 to expose animal cruelty at a Vermont slaughter plant that led to a felony conviction and the plant’s closure, and a landmark investigation at a cow slaughter plant the same year that prompted the largest meat recall in U.S. history and spurred a new federal law banning the slaughter of “downer” cattle.
For more info: What are Agribusiness Groups Trying to Hide with “Ag-Gag” Bills? Humane Society of the United States, January 18, 2012
Consumer advocacy, Corruption, Ethics, Health, politics, Safety, Tobacco, Violence
NRA Blocks Data Collection on Public Health Impact of Guns
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The U.S. government has invested billions to determine the causes behind traffic fatalities and used that information to make policies that have markedly reduce traffic deaths in the United States. Government research on traffic safety has led to the widespread use of seat belts, front and side impact air bags, child safety seats and other advances that have greatly advanced road safety and reduced vehicular deaths for Americans. The number of deaths annually from firearms in the U.S. closely approximates the number of traffic fatalities — roughly 30,000 deaths per year from each. Yet there has been little research into, or advances made in reducing gun deaths. Why? Because the National Rifle Association (NRA) has long worked behind the scenes to block laws allowing the collection and dissemination of data about the impact of gun ownership on Americans’ safety. The NRA quietly pushed a provision that was inserted into the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) restricting the data doctors can collect from their patients about their ownership and use of firearms. From 1986 and 1996, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control conducted peer-reviewed research into the impact of the presence of guns in people’s homes. While there is a widespread belief among gun owners that the presence of guns in their homes makes them safer, the CDC found the opposite — that having a gun in the home creates a 2.7 times greater risk of homicide and a 4.8 greater risk of suicide for the occupants. The NRA took action to prevent CDC from publicizing these results, and blocked continued funding of government research into the impact of firearms on citizen safety.
Corruption, Lies, politics, Religion, Religious hypocrisy, Safety
Republican Senator Michael Crapo’s Religious Hypocrisy
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Senator Crapo’s mug shot (Source: Alexandria, Virginia Police Department)
U.S. Senator Michael Crapo (R-Idaho), a Mormon who has portrayed himself to the media as a teetotaler due to his religion, was arrested Sunday morning, December 23 in Alexandria, Virginia on a charge of drunken driving. The arrest occurred at 12:45 a.m. after Senator Crapo blew through a red light. No one was hurt. The officer who pulled Senator Crapo over arrested him after he failed several field sobriety tests. Senator Crapo’s blood alcohol level was .11%, which is above Idaho’s legal limit of 08%. Crapo was named a bishop in the Mormon church thirty years ago, when he was 31 years old. He attended Brigham Young University, a Mormon institution, and graduated from Harvard Law School. The Mormon church prohibits use of alcohol, coffee, tea and other substances containing caffeine. Despite this, in 2010 Crapo sponsored a bill to cut taxes on microbreweries. At the time he told the Associated Press that he does not drink due to his religion and that if the bill passed, he planned to celebrate by drinking root beer. Crapo issued a public apology after getting his DUI: “I am deeply sorry for the actions that resulted in this circumstance,” Crapo said. “I made a mistake for which I apologize to my family, my Idaho constituents and any others who have put their trust in me. I accept total responsibility and will deal with whatever penalty comes my way in this matter.
Consumer advocacy, Corporations, Ethics, Grassroots advocacy, Human rights, politics, Safety, Security, Violence
Gun Backlash Gathers Steam
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Protesters mass in Washington, D.C. to demand action against gun slaughter (Credit:Fox News, D.C.)
The National Rifle Association has gone dark, shutting down its Facebook page, going silent on Twitter and staying silent on it’s blog as it hunkers down in face of anti-gun protesters marching on its Washington, D.C. headquarters in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. WalMart, one of the world’s largest sellers of both guns and kids’ toys, announced it is pulling Bushmaster rifles off its shelves nationwide. And another large gun seller, Dick’s Sporting Goods, tastefully removed all guns from view at its store closest to Newtown, Connecticut, where the mass killing took place last Friday, and announced it will stop selling “modern sporting rifles” at stores nationwide. The California state treasurer is considering purging the state’s pension investment funds of stock in companies that manufacture guns, and Cerberus Capital Management, a big investment firm, divested itself of holdings in Freedom Group, which makes Bushmaster rifles like the one the shooter used at Sandy Hook. The California State Teachers’ Retirement Fund is also looking to divest itself of funds invested in Freedom Group. Meanwhile, online petitions demanding legislators move quickly to better regulate guns and gun purchases are gathering signatures at phenomenal rates. One petition we’ve been following on SignOn.org — the biggest one so far — continues to gather hundreds of signatures every hour and is currently up to almost 380,000 signors. Another petition on the White House’s “We the People” petition website that sprang up demanding the Obama administration take immediate action to limit access to guns has gathered 184,202 signatures. It needed just 25,000 signatures to get serious consideration by the Obama administration.
Ethics, Grassroots advocacy, Lobbying, politics, Safety, Security, Violence
Petition Demanding Common Sense Federal Gun Safety Laws Gathers Quick Support
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A Bushmaster .233 semiautomatic rifle, the kind that was used to slaughter 20 children in Newtown, CT. The National Rifle Association has campaigned to keep the gun legal.
In almost the blink of an eye, an online petition demanding sensible federal-level gun safety laws has gathered more than 230,000 signatures, and is continuing to gather signatures at a rate of almost 2,000 per hour. The response to the petition was so overwhelming that shortly after starting it, the woman who began the petition changed the goal for the number of signers to 250,000. The petition’s impetus was the December 14 bloodbath at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in which a 20 year-old gunman entered the school and slaughtered 20 six and seven year old pupils and six adult employees who tried to save the children. The petition seeks closure of gun show loopholes that allow people to buy guns without background checks, an end to the online sale of ammunition, mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases during which thorough background checks are conducted, and mandatory psychological and medical evaluations prior to making gun purchases. The petition also requests that character references be provided and evaluated out prior to gun purchases. More accountability should be placed in the hands of retailers, the petition says. When patrons refuse wait periods, authorities should be notified. Gun handling training and testing should be mandatory, as should a renewal process that includes many of the above-mentioned evaluation terms. “Our second amendment rights are long overdue a reevaluation. How many more senseless and entirely PREVENTABLE shootings have to occur before we do something about Gun Control,” asks Staci Sarkin, the petition’s creator. The petition will be send to the House of Representatives. “As a citizen and constituent of this great country, I am asking that you take a firm stand and make a positive change by restricting access to guns and saving lives,” Sarkin’s petition states. Sign the petition here.
Ethics, Human rights, Lobbying, politics, Safety, Security, Violence
CO Gov. Hickenlooper Says the Time is Right to Talk About Gun Violence in U.S.
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Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper courageously said the time is right to talk about guns and gun violence in the U.S. and what can be done about it.
Op-Ed
Last Thursday, ironically just one day before the latest tragic school massacre in Connecticut, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper became a lone voice of political sanity on gun issues in the U.S. when he said it’s finally time to have an open discussion about guns and gun control in Colorado. Hickenlooper said he wanted to wait until a few months had passed after the Aurora Theater massacre to raise the issue, and no sooner did he mention it than yet another horrific mass shooting took place in an elementary school in Connecticut, killing 20 very young children and seven adults. Today, on the day of that tragic massacre, President Obama backed up Hickenlooper. Obama, reacting at a White House briefing as many of us do to such shootings, with great sadness, uttered a statement that it is finally time for action to be taken to reduce gun violence in the U.S.:
“As a country we have been through this too many times. Whether it is an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago — these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. We’re going to have to come together to meaningful action on this, regardless of the politics,” Obama said.
Corporations, Corruption, Elections, Lies, Lobbying, politics, Worker advocacy
ALEC Authored Michigan’s Wage-Depressing Law
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Michigan workers, locked out of their state capitol, protest a so-called “right tow work” bill that cuts wages and depresses benefits
The wording of the union-killing bill Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed this week was taken virtually word for word from “model” legislation crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a stealth lobbying group for corporations. The Natural Resources Defense Council has calls ALEC “Corporate America’s Trojan Horse in the States.” ALEC is essentially an exclusive club for state-level legislators and corporate representatives that masquerades as a charitable, non-profit group. ALEC charges legislators just $50 a year to join, while corporations pay anywhere from $7,000 to $25,000 a year. In return corporations get ongoing opportunities to have their lobbyists hobnob closely with thousands of state legislators. ALEC puts on corporate-sponsored confabs at tony beach and golf resorts where lobbyists get plenty of face time with state legislators and influence them to introduce their favored legislation in state houses back home. Legislators never intentionally reveal that the bills came from ALEC when they introduce them. One of ALEC’s highest legislative priorities has been passing so-called “right to work” (RTW) bills across the country to slash the political power of unions.
Corruption, Economics, Equal rights, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, politics, Religion, Secularism
The City of Grand Junction, Colorado’s Shameful End-Run Around the Constitution
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Grand Junction’s Ten Commandments tablet, donated in 1959 by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which only admits people who believe in God.
Anyone who thinks that electing narrow-minded people to city councils in small American towns doesn’t get expensive, think again. The parochial minds of just five elected city council members in the town of Grand Junction, Colorado cost city taxpayers $64,000 and led to the creation of a big, permanent public reminder on City Hall grounds of how they spent that huge sum to evade the law and collectively thumb their nose at the U.S. Constitution.
It all started in 1959, when the City of Grand Junction accepted a gift from the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE), a do-good civic group that restricts its membership only to people who believe in God. The gift was a stone tablet engraved with the Ten Commandments, a religious symbol commanding people to worship God, which City officials installed on City Hall grounds. There it sat, little-noticed, for the next fifty years, its presence often obscured by mature landscaping. All that changed in 2000, when the City put the finishing touches on construction of a new City Hall building and relocated the Ten Commandments to a much more visible location on the grounds.
The tablet’s more prominent location made it more noticeable, and some local citizens also finally happened to notice the Constitutional violation it represented. As a result, in April, 2001 five local citizens and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the City over the monument, asking them to remove it because it made members of minority religious groups, nonbelievers and community political outsiders feel unwelcome. The plaintiffs also contended it represented a government establishment of religion.
Corruption, Elections, Equal rights, Ethics, Ethnic/Minority, Human rights, Lies, politics, Poverty
Former GOP Officials Admit Use of “Voter ID” to Suppress Democratic Turnout
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The Palm Beach Post ran a blockbuster story November 25 in which several former high-up GOP officials admitted that “Voter ID” laws and a law cutting back early voting were GOP tactics aimed at suppressing the Democratic vote in Florida. Former Florida Republican Governor Charlie Crist and Jim Greer, former chair of the Florida Republican Party, both admitted that the GOP’s push to enact “Voter ID” laws out of a purported concern for voter fraud was really a ruse to block Democratic voters from the polls. Greer told the Palm Beach Post, “The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates…It’s done for one reason and one reason only.” Greer said Republican staffers and consultants told him ,”We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us.” Wayne Bertsch, who coordinated campaigns for GOP candidates for local offices, also admitted the reasons GOP officials gave for advancing voter ID laws were bogus. Crist said while he was in office as Florida’s governor, Republican Party leaders contacted him to discuss curtailing early voting hours as a way to suppress turnout among Democratic voters. Crist has since left the GOP and is now an Independent. Greer has been indicted for using a phony campaign fundraising operation to pocket $200,000. But the Post also found another GOP-affiliated consultant, who asked not to be named who confirmed that the true purpose behind enacting voter ID and a law to cut back on early voting in Florida were meant to suppress Democratic turnout in the general election.
Source: Palm Beach Post, November 25, 2012
Corruption, Economics, Ethics, Front groups, Grassroots advocacy, Lies, Lobbying, politics, Tobacco
Time for GOP to Dump Norquist, Handmaiden of Cigarette Companies
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Grover Norquist and his group, Americans for Tax Reform, have long lobbied for tobacco industry interests — earning huge payouts from RJR and Philip Morris
Op-Ed
Grover Norquist, who for decades has been the patron saint of anti-tax sentiment for Republicans, is fast losing relevance as Republicans finally start to grasp that the only way America can get out of its fiscal mess is to raise taxes. Legislators are starting to see that their allegiance must be to the United States of America and its people, and not to Grover Norquist. But for GOP legislators, leaving Norquist behind will be one of the best things they can do to help get some credibility back with the American public. By pledging their allegiance to Norquist for so many years, Republicans have put stock in one of the most reliable allies of one of the world’s most reviled industries: the tobacco industry. Previously-secret tobacco industry documents show Norquist and his group Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) have for decades been highly dependable allies to Big Tobacco. Norquist was always at the cigarette makers’ beck and call whenever they needed him. As ATR president, Norquist annually sought and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds to support the companies’ agenda of low cigarette and corporate taxes. In return for the big bucks, Norquist offered his organization up as a conduit for tobacco industry lobbying. Norquist figured prominently in Philip Morris’ quiet, internal 1995 “Get Government Off Our Back” project, in which the cigarette maker secretly created a phony “grassroots” group, to push to “shift government’s priorities” off regulating business. In 1999, Norquist helped cigarette makers fight President Clinton’s proposal to add a one dollar tax on cigarettes to fund health care. Norquist was cast as a “core ally” in Philip Morris’ efforts to enact “tort reform” to block people’s access to the courts. Norquist helped defend cigarette makers against the Department of Justice’s 1999 Lawsuit in which the industry was found guilty of perpetrating five decades of fraud against the American people. Philip Morris’ law firm of Covington and Burling even secretly took the privilege of drafting letters to government agencies, like FDA, that Norquist could sign so they would appear to be from ATR and not a tobacco company.
Children, Economics, Ethics, Health care, Human rights, Insurance, politics, Poverty
Poor and Uninsured in Texas? Tough Luck, Says Gov. Rick Perry
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Texas Governor Rick Perry
Texas is number one in the country for people without health insurance. Fully one quarter of Texans have no health insurance at all. Another 26% are on Medicaid, Medicare or other public assistance programs that provide help to get health care, according to the Texas Medical Association. The poverty rate in Texas is also high. Twenty-one percent of adults, 17% of the elderly and 34% of Texas’ children live in poverty. Despite these dire circumstances, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is refusing an offer from the federal government to expand Medicaid, even though the feds will pick up 100% of the cost for the first three years. The reimbursement rate will drop to 90 percent after that. The offer is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” a slate of changes to health insurance enacted in the U.S. that Gov. Perry and some other Republican governors dislike. Last July, Perry wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last July (pdf) in which he called the offer to expand Medicaid a “gun to the head” of his state. He called the Affordable Care Act a “power grab,” and reiterated that statement in a November 18 blog post on his personal website. By refusing to accept the federal assistance to expand Medicaid, Gov. Perry is turning down $164 billion that would go to help insure the poorest Texas citizens. The assistance would also stimulate Texas’ economy. An analysis by the Center for Public Priorities, a think tank based in Austin, found that every federal dollar the state would spend on Medicaid assistance would return $1.29 in “dynamic state government revenue” over the first ten years of expansion, since Medicaid expenditures generate economic activity while creating a healthier, more productive population.