And the congresscritters on the big pharma & health insurance co. teats will have to leave.

The latter would be a piece of cake, the former not so much. The more complex a referendum, the more options for people to object to just one part of it. That would be a no vote, plus people who don't understand the details will vote no on general principles.

CA had a referendum on single payer which got fewer votes in favot than there were valid petition signatures. The single payer folks then wisely switched their efforts to working with the state legislature.

good referendum are simple - not complex.

I'm confused about the CA resolution. I thought CA was the same as NV - the language of the resolution has to be the same as that on the petition. Was there some change to the language, or some thought that this is the problem of people being willing to sign almost anything, but not willing to put their money where their pen went?

Because the federal government does not have the option of referendum, I think many people who live in states that do not use direct democracy tools would be completely confused and distrustful of a national referendum (not that we have a process for one). The closest we seem to have is the 'poll' - and it seems to me that polling has consistently shown at least some majority for single-payer systems - when the question is posed in a way that people understand what is asked.

Here are the top 10 comments about Bain from Romney’s Republican rivals:

1. “The idea that you’ve got private equity companies that come in and take companies apart so they can make profits and have people lose their jobs, that’s not what the Republican Party’s about.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/12/12]

2. “The Bain model is to go in at a very low price, borrow an immense amount of money, pay Bain an immense amount of money and leave. I’ll let you decide if that’s really good capitalism. I think that’s exploitation.” — Newt Gingrich [New York Times, 1/17/12]

3. “Instead of trying to work with them to try to find a way to keep the jobs and to get them back on their feet, it’s all about how much money can we make, how quick can we make it, and then get out of town and find the next carcass to feed upon” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

4. “We find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” — Newt Gingrich [Globe and Mail, 1/9/12]

5. “Now, I have no doubt Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company, Bain Capital, of all the jobs that they killed” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/9/12]

6) “He claims he created 100,000 jobs. The Washington Post, two days ago, reported in their fact check column that he gets three Pinocchios. Now, a Pinocchio is what you get from The Post if you’re not telling the truth.” — Newt Gingrich [1/13/12, NBC News]

7. “There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business, and I happen to think that’s indefensible” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

8. “If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years, then I would be glad to then listen to him” — Newt Gingrich [Mediaite, 12/14/11]

9. “If you’re a victim of Bain Capital’s downsizing, it’s the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain, because he caused it.” — Rick Perry [New York Times, 1/8/12]

10. “They’re vultures that sitting out there on the tree limb waiting for the company to get sick and then they swoop in, they eat the carcass. They leave with that and they leave the skeleton” — Rick Perry [National Journal, 1/10/12]

Just last night, Newt Gingrich defended his attacks, saying “I think there are things you can legitimately look at in Bain Capital. I think there are things you can legitimately look at in anybody’s record, including Mitt Romney’s record.”

PLEASE FORWARD...

ROMNEY ON TRACK TO LOSE ELECTION

Romney’s financial manipulations have, in the last 48 hours, exploded from mysterious shouldering embers into a political bonfire that could consume his entire campaign.
Romney is calling President Obama a liar and Obama is continuing his call for Romney to release full information about his financial manipulations and more than one year of tax returns.
Articles in the Washington Post and Boston Globe have probed and continue to probe into Romney’s convoluted finances and his years as CEO and owner of Bain Capital. Romney has called for retraction of these widely quoted articles without success.
For a Rachel Maddow interview with the Boston Globe writer who probed Romney’s SEC reports click here: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-... .
For a broader discussion of Romney’s financial manipulations on Morning Joe click here: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/morning-joe/481735... .
Either Mitt Romney was "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" of Bain Capital from 1999-2002, when all sorts of ugly outsourcing and vulture fund activities were taking place, or he was just listed as "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" on the company's documents, which means he was simply a figurehead collecting cash generated by said ugly outsourcing and vulture fund activities.
There appears to be more than ample multiple evidence that Romney is not telling the truth about completely leaving Bain after 1999. If you want to read all the details:
1. Click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/mitt... ;
2. Click here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/12/us-... ;
3.Click here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/romne... ;
4. Click here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/b... .
And these articles on Romney/Bain only scratch the surface. After the Boston Globe article on Thursday the Internet lit up like a Christmas tree as everyone with access seemed to have something to report.

More MoJo coverage of Mitt Romney (http://www.motherjones.com/category/tags/romn... ):
►The Mystery of Romney's Exit From Bain:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/m... ;
►Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/r... ;
►Romney Tax Tips: 10 Ways to Stiff the IRS:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/t... ;
►Mitt Romney's Long History of Misremembering His Past:http://www.motherjones.co m/politics/2012/06/mitt-romney -history-problem;
►Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/m... ;
►How Romney Fibs—and Gets Away With It:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/r... .
Of course the Obama campaign wasted no time getting out TV ads on the subject. One of the most recent has Romney singing “God Bless America” while the graphics pound him for his financial manipulations. Click here:http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/14... . Voters in the swing states are getting their first glimpse behind the mask of Romney’s polished campaign performance.
This all brings back Richard Nixon’s famous statement,“I am not a crook.”
The problem for Romney is that it is impossible for him to win an election campaign based on whether or not he is a potential criminal who has lied on legally required reports. Every day the media probes deeper into the Romney financial paper trail and reveals more and more conflicts between Romney’s personally signed reports and his recorded campaign statements is a day closer to his political defeat. If the present political bonfire doesn’t die down soon the GOP may decide at its late August convention to throw Romney under the bus.

Ed Schlick

AP News

PLEASE FORWARD...
ROMNEY ON TRACK TO LOSE ELECTION
Romney’s financial manipulations have, in the last 48 hours, exploded from mysterious shouldering embers into a political bonfire that could consume his entire campaign.
Romney is calling President Obama a liar and Obama is continuing his call for Romney to release full information about his financial manipulations and more than one year of tax returns.
Articles in the Washington Post and Boston Globe have probed and continue to probe into Romney’s convoluted finances and his years as CEO and owner of Bain Capital. Romney has called for retraction of these widely quoted articles without success.
For a Rachel Maddow interview with the Boston Globe writer who probed Romney’s SEC reports click here: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-... .
For a broader discussion of Romney’s financial manipulations on Morning Joe click here: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/morning-joe/481735... .
Either Mitt Romney was "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" of Bain Capital from 1999-2002, when all sorts of ugly outsourcing and vulture fund activities were taking place, or he was just listed as "sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president" on the company's documents, which means he was simply a figurehead collecting cash generated by said ugly outsourcing and vulture fund activities.
There appears to be more than ample multiple evidence that Romney is not telling the truth about completely leaving Bain after 1999. If you want to read all the details:
1. Click here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/mitt... ;
2. Click here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/12/us-... ;
3.Click here: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/romne... ;
4. Click here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/b... .
And these articles on Romney/Bain only scratch the surface. After the Boston Globe article on Thursday the Internet lit up like a Christmas tree as everyone with access seemed to have something to report.
More MoJo coverage of Mitt Romney (http://www.motherjones.com/category/tags/romn... ):
►The Mystery of Romney's Exit From Bain:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/m... ;
►Romney Invested in Medical-Waste Firm That Disposed of Aborted Fetuses, Government Documents Show: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/r... ;
►Romney Tax Tips: 10 Ways to Stiff the IRS:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/t... ;
►Mitt Romney's Long History of Misremembering His Past:http://www.motherjones.co m/politics/2012/06/mitt-romney -history-problem;
►Get-Rich-Quick Profiteers Love Mitt Romney, and He Loves Them Back:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/m... ;
►How Romney Fibs—and Gets Away With It:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/04/r... .
Of course the Obama campaign wasted no time getting out TV ads on the subject. One of the most recent has Romney singing “God Bless America” while the graphics pound him for his financial manipulations. Click here:http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/14... . Voters in the swing states are getting their first glimpse behind the mask of Romney’s polished campaign performance.

This all brings back Richard Nixon’s famous statement,“I am not a crook.”

The problem for Romney is that it is impossible for him to win an election campaign based on whether or not he is a potential criminal who has lied on legally required reports. Every day the media probes deeper into the Romney financial paper trail and reveals more and more conflicts between Romney’s personally signed reports and his recorded campaign statements is a day closer to his political defeat. If the present political bonfire doesn’t die down soon the GOP may decide at its late August convention to throw Romney under the bus.

Ed Schlick
WOLFEBORO, N.H.(AP)— President Barack Obama is keeping up a drumbeat of skepticism over Mitt Romney's insistence — displayed in a blitz of TV interviews — that he stepped down from his private equity firm years earlier than federal records indicate.

Obama planned another day of campaigning in Virginia on Saturday, a state he won in 2008 but before that last supported a Democratic presidential nominee in 1964. Advisers said he would remind voters of the discrepancies between Securities and Exchange Commission filings and Romney's recollection of his role at the Boston-based firm.

His re-election campaign released an ad that repeated its allegation that Romney's Bain Capital shipped American jobs to China and Mexico; that Romney has personal wealth in investments in Switzerland, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands; and that as governor of Massachusetts, he outsourced state jobs to India.

"Mitt Romney's not the solution. He's the problem," Obama's latest ad says as it plays video of Romney awkwardly singing "America the Beautiful."

The ad was set to run in the battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The ad, targeting Romney's vast personal wealth, comes as Democrats — and some Republicans — call for Romney to release tax returns going back several years. Romney has said anew that he won't go beyond releasing his 2010 tax records and, before the election, his 2011 taxes.

"You can never satisfy the opposition research team of the Obama organization," Romney told CBS on Friday. In the same round of interviews in which he defended his account of his role at Bain, Romney said Obama owed him an apology for an aide's suggestion that the Security and Exchange Commission filings, if false, could bring a felony charge.

"This is simply beneath the dignity of the presidency of the United States," Romney told ABC.

It wasn't just Obama, though, pushing the presumptive Republican nominee to put the issue of his tax returns and wealth to rest.

"There is no whining in politics," chided John Weaver, a veteran Republican strategist. "Stop demanding an apology, release your tax returns."

For full AP article click here: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-07-14/bai...


Contact:
Ed Schlick
Executive Director
Maine People’s Voting Coalition
E-mail eschlick@roadrunner.com

YOU CAN JOIN THE COALITION – JUST SEND AN E-MAIL TO GET INFORMATION

have to do with a discussion of single-payer healthcare?

Yes, Romney - if elected - would probably do something with the ACS, but this is a specific group designed for a specific topic. You failed to even mention it in either of your copy/paste posts (one of which also violates copyright rules).

Perhaps you are confused about where you should post? General Discussion or Politics 2012 would be more appropriate places for posts of this sort.