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- Bob Fertik, President, Democrats.com
Published by Associated Press.
KABUL — A suicide bomber killed 16 people and wounded at least 23 others Friday in a busy city square in western Afghanistan, while near Kabul a powerful former warlord narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, officials said.
The attacks came a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai took the oath of office for a second term amid escalating violence across the country. Karzai said he has put national reconciliation with Taliban insurgents at the top of his agenda. [more]
Published by Robert Reich's Blog.
First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada--which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)
So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada. [more]
Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan and the second-most senior member of the House, today ripped into President Obama and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, accusing them of “bowing down” to “nutty right-wing” proposals just to get a health care bill passed.
“I’m getting tired of saving Obama’s can in the White House,” Mr. Conyers, one of the most liberal members of the House and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a radio interview on “The Bill Press Show.”
“I mean, he only won by five votes in the House, and this bill wasn’t anything to write home about,” Mr. Conyers said of the health care legislation that the House passed on Nov. 7. “The public option is only available—which is the only way you manage cost and give some competition to 1,300 other health insurance companies—the only way he could have got that through is that progressives held their nose and voted for the plan anyway.” [more]
Rep. Raśl M. Grijalva yesterday announced his full support for a Congressional investigation of unusual drug company pricing behavior over the past several years. Grijalva, co-chair of the 83-member Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the Government Accountability Office (GAO) should look carefully at why pharmaceutical companies have raised prices on dozens of common prescription drugs far in excess of standard inflation.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, among other lawmakers, sent a letter to the GAO yesterday requesting “ongoing monitoring of pharmaceutical manufacturer drug prices” and an inquiry into “recent trends in prescription drug pricing,” both of which Grijalva said are necessary to protect consumers from unfair and potentially predatory price changes. The call for an investigation is supported by the AARP, which found in a recent study that “average manufacturer price increases for brand name and specialty prescription drugs widely used by Medicare beneficiaries continued to far outstrip the price increases for other consumer goods and services” over the past year. [more]
This article appeared in the December 7, 2009 edition of The Nation.
President Obama's recent words, uttered with Chinese President Hu Jintao at his side, sounded a welcome note for those concerned about climate change: even though the goal of reaching a legally binding agreement at the upcoming UN Copenhagen summit remains out of reach, the president said, "our aim there...is not a partial accord or a political declaration but rather an accord that covers all of the issues in the negotiations and one that has immediate operational effect." This statement was an important step. Nonetheless, many obstacles--chiefly stemming from continuing US intransigence--still stand in the path of a successful global agreement. [more]
Published by The Public Record.
Published by The Huffington Post.
The Financial Services Committee had finished hearing amendments around 3 p.m. and recessed, planning to return at 4 for a final vote on the package. But during the break, some of the Democrats on the committee pigeonholed Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and told him they wouldn't vote for the bill because of the deepening problem of unemployment in their districts.
The refusal to vote for the package, a key priority of the administration, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in particular, was portrayed as a direct rebuke of the White House's "lack of response to the economic situation."
"We will not be proceeding to passage today," Frank began. "I have been meeting with members of the committee, particularly the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who have informed me that they are troubled by what they believe is the lack of response to the economic situation that is confronting them on the part of the administration, and therefore do not feel that they could--in deference to the various constituencies that they represent--vote for passage." [more]
Published by Counterpunch.
"In the beginning of a change the Patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot." --Mark Twain
There is a word; a name actually. The very pronunciation of which sends a deathlike chill down the gelatinous spinal column of the self-styled "progressive" Democrat. Democrat media talking heads have even a more violent reaction. A reaction that is similar to that of the mythical, bloodsucking, soul-destroying vampire when confronted with the light of day. [more]
A congressionally-commissioned scientific study by an influential group of independent scientists released today concludes that the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear arsenal can be maintained indefinitely through the existing program for stockpile stewardship and without nuclear test explosions or pursuit of new warhead designs.
"The new JASON study explodes the old myth that the U.S. needs nuclear test explosions or new warhead designs to maintain an effective nuclear arsenal, and strengthens the case for U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty next year," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. [more]
Published by Z Space.
It's Nov. 19, 1915, in a courtyard of the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Five riflemen take careful aim at a condemned organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, Joe Hill, who stands before them straight and stiff and proud.
"Fire!" he shouts defiantly.
The firing squad didn't miss. But Joe Hill, as the folk ballad says, "ain't never died." On this 94th anniversary of his execution, he lives on as one of the most enduring and influential of American symbols. [more]
Published by The New York Times.
Democratic leaders in the Senate on Wednesday unveiled their proposal for overhauling the health care system, outlining legislation that they said would cover most of the uninsured while reducing the federal budget deficit.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said at an evening news conference that the legislation, embodying President Obama’s signature domestic initiative, would impose new regulations on insurers, extend coverage to 31 million people who currently do not have any and add new benefits to Medicare. [more]
Harry Reid introduced the Senate version of the proposed health care reform today. The proposed compromise language on abortion funding, while not as restrictive as the Stupak amendment, is seriously bad news for women and for single-payer advocates. The bill states that abortion is not an "essential" medical service (it is deemed essential by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology), thereby codifying into law the singling out of abortion from every other common medical procedure that began with the Hyde Amendment. Abortion is common, mainstream medical care, one of the most frequently performed procedures in this country, and a legal right. There is no medical reason why abortion has been declared not essential in the bill, only a political reason—selling out women's healthcare needs to appease the far right. We cannot accept this! It is discriminatory—it will decrease access and affordability of healthcare for women and makes law out of the lie that abortion is not healthcare. The bill provides that there must be at least one plan offered on the exchange that covers abortion, and at least one that does not. If your employer buys insurance through the exchange, will you have to lobby for abortion benefits? Will there be a public record of who bought the "abortion plan"?
[more]
Published by Alternet.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece was delivered as a statement at a press conference called by the Religious Coaltion for Reproductive Choice at the National Press Club on November 16, 2009. The topic was the anti-choice amendment, authored by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., that was attached to the House health-care reform bill.
In the United States, the institutions of government and religion are separate.
This is not just my opinion. It is the law of the land. Our Constitution prohibits Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” The Supreme Court has stated more than once that laws must not advance religion or have a religious purpose. [more]
Nearly 200 sign ad urging single-payer health care reform
In a half-page advertisement appearing in Wednesday's Boston Globe, 196 Massachusetts physicians and physicians-in-training call the state's 2006 health reform plan "bad medicine" and warn against adopting the state's plan nationwide. The health bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives is closely modeled after the Massachusetts reform.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Massachusetts reform has left hundreds of thousands uninsured. The doctors' ad, which takes the form of a letter to their patients, warns that the state's plan is already failing. Health costs have escalated rapidly since the reform's implementation. According to the Boston Globe, the state's largest insurer will hit small businesses with average premium increases of 15 percent to 18 percent as of January 1. [more]
Decisions in the coming weeks will affect the delivery of healthcare in America for decades to come. We are at a crossroads.
On Thursday, October 29, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pulled Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) state single payer (Medicare for All) initiative amendment from the House bill with no notice, no discussion and no vote. This is what Pelosi's democracy looks like. Pelosi is probably well aware that Canadians obtained their national health system province by province. God forbid states like Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota and California should lead the way to a similar system in the U.S!
I was lucky enough to be born into the first American healthcare co-operative started by local unions in Two Harbors, Minnesota in 1944, and be covered by it for my first 21 years. The Two Harbors model was a precursor to HMOs such as Kaiser and Medica. Recently the Two Harbors Community Clinic/First Plan was bought out by Blue Cross as they were too small to compete. Larger groups such as Group Health in Minneapolis also buckled under the competition. So the Max Baucus (D-MT)/Kent Conrad (D-ND) co-op idea is a failed one and either shows their lack of knowledge or disingenuosness to sabotage a strong public option that includes state single payer (Medicare for All) initiatives as supported by Kucinich, John Conyers (D-MI) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT). [more]
Published by Counterpunch.
Barack Obama took Hu Jintao to task on Tuesday, scolding the dejected-looking Chinese leader at a press conference held in Beijing. Obama delivered one ferocious jab after another, claiming that China's dollar-peg has cost the US millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs while creating gigantic trade imbalances which have destabilized the global economy and thrust the world into a severe recession. Obama demanded that the Chinese government convert to market-oriented exchange rates immediately to preserve jobs in America and to end the de facto tariff that China applies to US goods through currency manipulation. Obama's sharply-worded statement left Hu gasping for air while the assembled members of the western press snapped to their feet in raucous applause. [more]
Published by Truthdig.
What's up with Barack Obama? The candidate for change once promised to take on the powerful banking interests but is now doing their bidding. Finally, a leading Democrat, in this case Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, has a good idea for monitoring the Wall Street fat cats who all but destroyed the American economy, and the Obama administration condemns it. [more]
Published by ABC News.
The CIA built one of its secret European prisons inside an exclusive riding academy outside Vilnius, Lithuania, a current Lithuanian government official and a former U.S. intelligence official told ABC News this week. [more]
Published by Creators.com.
"Repent," the preacher cried out, startling those who heard him.
This was no street evangelist ranting at the passing crowd, but the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England. His sharp admonition was pointed directly at a particular set of sinners, who undoubtedly had never given any thought to the morality of their actions: the barons of global banking.
As in our country, people in Europe are enraged at those hustlers of high finance who wrecked the world's economies, then flexed their political muscle to get governments to replenish their bankrupt vaults. Infuriatingly, these bailed-out bankers have now returned to business as usual, including grabbing monstrous bonus payments for themselves. [more]
Published by NOW on PBS.
Stocks are up, but so is unemployment. What's wrong with this economic picture and what's being done about it?
[more]
Published by Counterpunch.
"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933
There's no reason why a sharp-witted politico like Barack Obama can't survey the wreckage around him and draw the same conclusions as FDR. The unemployment crisis should be the president's first order of business; Job 1. [more]
Published by Freep.
This week marks an important anniversary that will go unnoticed in many corners. Ten years ago, a little known Depression-era law known as the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. It passed with large margins in both houses of Congress and was signed by President Bill Clinton. On Wall Street, the titans of capitalism cheered while it went unnoticed by most Americans that an important guard against financial instability and conflict of interest had been wiped away.
The Glass-Steagall Act had a simple premise: America’s banking sectors and investment houses need to remain separate to prevent banks from gambling on the stock market with our savings. President Franklin Roosevelt knew that banks, like other institutions, could not be trusted to police themselves. After witnessing the widespread failure of financial institutions in the Great Depression, he recognized a firewall was needed between the casino on Wall Street and the private investment engines of Main Street. [more]
Published by The Huffington Post.
I think at the Obama administration we all believe that everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or promoting [a] clean energy economy. --Nancy Sutley interview, July 31, 2009
Question of the week: Given all of their agencies' beautiful rhethoric about "reaching out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts," why haven't EPA chief Lisa Jackson and CEQ administrator Nancy Sutley found three hours in the schedules to visit a mountaintop removal site--the most egregious environmental tragedy in their administration? [more]
Published by Open Left.
In pitting the 10-year cost of Democrats' health care bill against the 10-year projected cost of the bloated Pentagon budget, my newspaper column last week made a simple comparison rarely ever made in politics today--a comparison that might provide citizens with much needed context, but a comparison that is ignored.
Is the comparison's omission deliberate? It's hard to say, but when you read this typical New York Times piece, it's hard to argue that it isn't being irresponsibly ignored: [more]
Published by Common Dreams.
Norman Solomon shares this with us tonight, from the San Francisco Chronicle's PoliticsBlog:
The California Democratic Party just sent a loud message to President Obama, who is pondering the next U.S. move in Afghanistan: Get out.
The state's Dems have gone on record with a Get Out message before--like at their confab last summer. But this one is more specific. And bolder. Marin County activist and media critic Norman Solomon passes on that the CDP's 300-member statewide exec board passed a resolution Sunday called: "End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan." You can find the resolution here. [more]
Published by The Nation.
Representatives of the Honduran resistance against the military coup in Honduras arrived in Los Angeles this week as the Obama administration appeared to be abandoning its support for deposed President Manuel Zelaya and acceptance of the June 28 coup.
The four Hondurans, traveling overnight after four months of street resistance and state repression, displayed the diversity of the new social movement born in the wake of the June 28 coup. Their first meeting was hosted by Carecen, an agency long supportive of Central American immigrants. [more]
Published by Common Dreams/Alburquerque Journal.
A very complex, mandatory private insurance scheme recently passed the U.S. House. The public is being overwhelmed by sound bites on one hand about how great it is, on the other, how terrible. We are hearing few of the details that are actually in the bill. Having read the bill, it is clear now that what started as health reform has emerged from the political process as health "deform," building on the worst, not the best of the current system.
It is still a toss-up as to whether the Senate will pass any bill this year. However, due to intense political pressure, the Senate is likely to pass a bill that will make some House provisions better and others worse. What actually comes out in the final conference-committee bill is anyone's guess at this point--so little time, so many deals still to be made, so many political funders to be appeased. [more]
Published by Counterpunch.
The liberal imagination has broadened the scope of what it wants to dismiss as unrealistic, utopian and unpragmatic, i.e. as for all practical purposes impossible. These claims have typically been accompanied by the assurance that “This is not something that Americans would go for–it’s not the American way.” There are countless variations on this theme. Obama’s case against a single payer health care system is a conspicuous case in point. What distinguishes Obama’s position on this issue is not merely the weakness of his “arguments”, but the straight-ahead factual falsehood of the some of the counterclaims he has put forward in order to turn the desirable into the impossible. [more]
Published by t r u t h o u t.org.
As most of us are preparing for the holidays a small clique in the Senate, with their collaborators in the Washington punditry, are planning for a dramatic hostage-taking event. Their target of opportunity is a bill to increase the nation's debt limit. The hostage-takers propose to obstruct the bill's passage unless the rest of the country gives into their demands to cut Social Security and Medicare and takes other steps to meet their warped sense of fiscal responsibility.
The debt limit must be increased at regular intervals in order to allow the government to function normally because the government is currently operating at a deficit. If the debt limit is not passed, then at some point the government will not be able to pay workers and contractors. It won't be able to send out Social Security checks or make payments for Medicaid and unemployment insurance to state governments. And, it will not be able to make interest payments on government bonds, effectively defaulting on the national debt. [more]
Published by Alternet.
Wall Street's raking in massive profits and paying its execs and traders record bonuses, thanks in part to government cash. What about ordinary Americans?
Working Americans continue to suffer from the worst financial crash since the Great Depression, and Washington has so far offered up only band-aids to help them out--extended unemployment benefits, small stimulus checks and deeply flawed mortgage relief programs that have done little to stem the tide of foreclosures. [more]
Published by BuzzFlash.
The ongoing absolutism in Congress in trying to prevent women--or at least poor women--from obtaining abortions is one of the more shameful spectacles in America.
The sanctimonious Blue Dog Democrats and the Republicans, who almost unanimously opposed any right to abortion, present two basic arguments. One is that abortion is murder, and therefore must be illegal, or, in more nuanced form, they say that they or their constituents oppose abortion and therefore it is wrong to have their tax money paying for the procedure. [more]
Published by Democracy Now!
An interview of Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel, EPA lawyers critical of cap-and-trade plan
The Environmental Protection Agency is being accused of trying to silence two longtime EPA enforcement attorneys who have publicly criticized a key component of the climate change legislation being considered by Congress. Last week the EPA directed Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel to remove or edit a video they posted to YouTube that warns a cap-and-trade plan will not effectively combat global warming and is “fatally flawed.” The couple instead advocate for a solution involving carbon fees with rebates. [Watch the interview, here.] [more]
Published by Salon.
A psychiatrist who tried to prevent Fort Hood-style violence among Marines about to "lose it" instead loses his job
Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to "lose it." Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, "One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire." [more]
Published by The Nation.
The California Democratic Party speaks with a loud voice in national politics. [more]
Published by Arab American Institue.
A story universally missed last week was the extraordinary debate that occurred in Congress in advance of a vote on a resolution against the Goldstone Report. It may have been that this story not seen as newsworthy as others playing out at the same time: the fallout over Secretary of State Clinton’s “whip lash” performances in Jerusalem, Marrakesh and Cairo; Palestinian President Abbas’ announcement that he would not run in 2010; and Israel’s seizure of a ship it claimed was transporting weapons from Iran to Hizbollah. [more]
Published by Legal Schnauzer.
When Greg Craig stepped down late last week as White House counsel, it might have been the single most positive sign progressives have seen on justice matters from the Barack Obama administration.
Jill Simpson, Alabama lawyer and whistleblower in the Don Siegelman case, calls Craig's exit a "terrific step in the right direction." Simpson brought to public attention Craig's connections to Republican strategist Karl Rove. And she pointed out that his former law firm, Williams & Connolly, represented numerous figures from the George W. Bush years. [more]
There's a significant new straw in the political wind for President Obama to consider. The California Democratic Party has just sent him a formal and clear message: Stop making war in Afghanistan.
Overwhelmingly approved on Sunday (Nov. 15) by the California Democratic Party’s 300-member statewide executive board, the resolution is titled “End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan.” [more]
Published by Politico.
Taxpayers currently provide deep subsidies for health insurance plans that cover abortion—a little-recognized fact responsible for much of the angst over an anti-abortion amendment attached to the House health care bill. [more]
Published by The New York Times.
Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.
In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.
The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year. [more]
Publsihed by the Democrat and Chronicle.
One of three New York Democrats to vote against a health care reform bill in the House of Representatives defended his position Sunday, saying the legislation passed by his colleagues will do more harm than good. [more]
Published by Robert Reich's Blog.
Dear Senator,
I know you're in a tough spot. It would be bad enough if you only had to get Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh, Mary Landrieu, and Blanche Lincoln on board, but anyone who has to kiss Joe Lieberman's derriere deserves a congressional medal of honor.
But Harry, you really need to take on future health-care costs. The House bill fails to do this. The public option in the House bill is open only to people without employer-provided health insurance. That will be too small a number to have bargaining clout to get good deals from drug companies and medical providers. And it will mainly attract people who have more expensive medical needs, which is why the Congressional Budget Office decided it would cost more than it would save. [more]
Published by Spiegel Online.
Everyone knows that the ice sheet on Greenland is melting. But new research shows it is disappearing much faster than previously thought. The findings could mean that ocean levels are also rising more quickly.
The dimensions of this frosty giant go way beyond human imagination. With a surface area spanning some 1.7 million square kilometers (656,000 square miles), a view of Greenland's ice above the Sermeq-Kujalleq glacier near Ilulisat makes it seem endless. The idea that this sheet of ice, which is up to three kilometers thick in parts, is melting seems absurd in the extreme. [more]
Published by Change.org.
Religions around the world own seven to eight percent of the world's habitable land, including over five percent of the forests, according to Environment News Service (ENS). Sustainable land use and forest conservation are major pieces of the climate puzzle. [more]
Published by Salon. Updated.
According to The Associated Press, Eric Holder will announce later today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants will be brought from Guantanamo to New York to stand trial, in a real criminal court, for the crimes they are accused of committing. This is a decision I really wish I could praise, as it's clearly both politically risky and the right thing to do. [more]
Published by t r u t h o u t.org.
Nobody seems to know just what Barack Obama said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met recently at the White House. In fact, when it comes to Middle East policy, nobody seems to know much of anything about what goes on inside the White House. I've heard more than one Washington insider say that this administration is totally tight-lipped on the subject. [more]
Published by The MetroWest Daily News.
In Washington, they are fighting the last war again, or rather the war before the war before that. From the White House to the Pentagon to Capitol Hill, Afghanistan is being seen through the lens of Vietnam.
The latest must-read in the West Wing is said to be "Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam." Among other parallels, author Gordon Goldstein has been noting the similarities in the relations between generals and presidents. [more]
Published by The New York Times.
President Obama and other world leaders have decided to put off the difficult task of reaching a climate change agreement at a global climate conference scheduled for next month, agreeing instead to make it the mission of the Copenhagen conference to reach a less specific “politically binding” agreement that would punt the most difficult issues into the future.
At a hastily arranged breakfast on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting on Sunday morning, the leaders, including Lars Lokke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark and the chairman of the climate conference, agreed that in order to salvage Copenhagen they would have to push a fully binding legal agreement down the road, possibly to a second summit meeting in Mexico City later on. [more]
Published by The Los Angeles Times.
Trying five 9/11 suspects in the U.S. leaves the fate of more than 200 others unclear. Some may have to be held long-term—but where?
The Obama administration took an important step toward closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when it announced plans Friday to prosecute the accused Sept. 11 conspirators in the United States. But the move also underscored the near certainty that President Obama will miss a self-imposed January deadline for shuttering the controversial facility. [more]
Published by The New York Times.
In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies. [more]
Published by CounterPunch.
Logically, it is a bad investment for a nation to spend enormous sums on an inefficient, non-versatile, rapidly-aging, fragile or defective technology or system that is intended to fill a military need, or operate as an economic aid, or serve as a reliable part of the public works infrastructure. Experts, concerned that their government may be making such a bad investment in the field of their interest, will sometimes publish editorials as a patriotic effort to both save the public purse and to move their government's policy toward more effective alternatives. [more]
Published by t r u t h o u t.org.
Here we go again.
Whenever conservative stalwart Jesse Helms didn't like something in a bill, he would pull out an abortion amendment to slow things down. Helms is dead and gone but the tactic is alive and well and may just kill health care reform.
On the Senate side, the hurdle is the public option. For 30 years, Jesse Helms, the former senator from North Carolina, was the biggest thorn in the Democrats' side. Now that title goes to the senator that many call "Traitor Joe" Lieberman.
While many Democrats were declaring victory last Saturday night with the passage of a health care reform bill, Republicans, too, had a victory of sorts. They may have successfully passed the "poison pill" that will kill health care reform down the road. [more]
Published by AfterDowningStreet.
The last time I was on Laura Flanders's GRIT tv I argued that the American public opposed the occupation of Afghanistan, but another guest--some Washington, D.C., "progressive"--argued that this had no relevance, since the American public didn't know anything about Afghanistan. [more]
Published by TimesOnline.UK.
Two leaked classified cables from the US Ambassador in Kabul voicing grave concern about sending more American troops to Afghanistan have exposed open conflict inside President Obama’s national security team over his war strategy.
The contents of the cables, passed to The Washington Post and The New York Times yesterday by three officials, also highlighted growing uncertainty inside the White House about how to prosecute the war, amid deep concerns over the corruption of Hamid Karzai’s Government. [more]
Published by Guardian.UK.
From New York to LA: UN human rights expert tours US hearing from subprime crisis victims
SEE ALSO: UN investigator accuses US of shameful neglect of homeless
There were not many people packed in to the Los Angeles "town hall" meeting who had heard of the foreign woman with the unfamiliar title who had come to listen to their tales of plight. But many took it as a good sign that she had worried the last American government enough for it to keep her out of the country. [more]
Published by AxcessNews.
Had she never become an actress, it's easy to imagine that Mimi Kennedy might very well have followed the path blazed by many others with her surname and become a politician - and a very good one. As a national board chairwoman for the grassroots group Progressive Democrats of America, she blogs articles for the Huffington Post and www.pdamerica.org, and travels often to Washington, D.C. to raise money for the social crusade she fervently supports and awareness against the forces she believes are destroying this country from within.
My passion stems from seeking world peace and finding how we can live together creatively rather than violently," Kennedy asserts. "I believe in campaigning for health care, not warfare. The wealth is being sucked up to the top as never before. Things have to be done to get it back under control right now." [more]
For several years now, the news media have identified healthcare and the war in Iraq as key issues in American politics. But very little of the reporting or the punditry goes beneath the buzz-word surfaces to the human realities that span from local hospitals to a faraway war.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” Martin Luther King Jr. said 40 years ago, “is approaching spiritual death.” Today, nearly one in six Americans has no health insurance, and tens of millions of others are woefully under-insured--while the war in Iraq continues to further skew the U.S. government's budget priorities.
By launching the national “Healthcare Not Warfare” campaign, Progressive Democrats of America is moving ahead with a grassroots opportunity to turn from warfare to healthcare for all. While growing ever since it came into existence four years ago, PDA has been working with--and, more often, pushing--Democrats in Congress to end the occupation of Iraq. And, integral to its progressive program, PDA has been mobilizing support behind H.R. 676, the bill to create a universal single payer system to guarantee healthcare for all. [more]
