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Take Action: Tell Speaker Pelosi "Reinsert the Kucinich amendment"

Seven Members of Congress have signed an October 30 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting that Democratic Leadership restore the Kucinich Amendment to the health care reform bill before bringing the bill for a vote.
 
Added to H.R. 3200 in the Education and Labor Committee, the Kucinich Amendment removes an obstacle for states that seek to enact a statewide single payer health care system.   [more]

Editor's Note: PDA believes healthcare is a human right and supports Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare.  We plan to continue this fight in the states.  Only single-payer will control costs, provide universality, and patient/doctor choice. 

Grijalva Expresses Disappointment With House Bill, Vows Robust Amendment

Congressman Grijalva announced his deep disappointment, yesterday, that a robust public option was not included in the House version of health care reform legislation released on Thursday. He said he would fight for a floor vote on including a robust plan in the bill, which will require approval by leadership and the Rules Committee.  [more]

Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by TomDispatch.

So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what do you know, especially with the price of the American military slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?

Forget about the butter. It's bad for you anyway. And sheer military power, as well as the money behind it, assures the country of a thick waistline without the cholesterol. So, let's sing the praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast in sight tells us that it's our future.   [more]

The Mobilization for Health Care for All launched its national campaign of "Patients Not Profit" sit-ins at insurance company offices in New York City to demand an end to a system that profits by denying people care. The September 29 protest’s message was clear: Americans want the real "public option"—Medicare for All, a single-payer plan that puts patients first and cuts out the profit. Seventeen people were arrested in health insurer Aetna’s lobby for refusing to leave until the company approved all life-saving treatments for people on their files.

The campaign moved on to Chicago on October 8 with seven arrests at Cigna, and to nine cities across the country on October 15. The Mobilization for Health Care for All plans to organize future actions in as many cities as possible to win health care reform that ensures no barriers between Americans and health care, removing profit from the health care equation.   [more]

In an October 14 email to his supporters, Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida announced his resignation from Congress. Wexler will be the next president of the Center for Middle East Peace. Wexler served as representative for Florida's CD-19 and was an outspoken advocate for impeachment of Dick Cheney and George Bush.

 

[more]

Join the New Campaign To Stop the Chamber Of Commerce from Undermining Health Care, Environmental Protection, Elections and Big Business Regulation

The Chamber of Commerce has declared war on new initiatives to reform the banking and health care industries, and it has opposed legislation to curb global warming. In fact, it is spending over $100 million to defeat these initiatives. On Friday, President Obama slammed the Chamber for its positions on these issues, and five major companies, Nike, Apple, Exelon Energy, PG&E and Public Service Co. of NM all quit the Chamber because of its extremist position on the environment.   [more]

Support the Weiner amendment--call Congress today--vote imminent.

Published by California Nurses Association.

The nation's largest organization of registered nurses today condemned the latest campaign by the insurance industry, threatening massive increases in premium rates if it does not get its way on the healthcare bills currently before Congress.

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry trade lobby, Sunday released a report it commissioned, warning average family premiums will go up to $21,300 if the Senate Finance Committee bill is adopted. 

"This is an outrageous threat by one of the richest industries in America," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the 86,000-member California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.   [more]

Published by The Brad Blog.

An 18-year Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Manager for the FBI has called for a Special Counsel to be appointed to investigate the allegations of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. John M. Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, made his comments during an audio interview released late last week with radio journalist Peter B. Collins.

He also offered a detailed insider's look at the concerns among high-level officials inside the Bureau as Edmonds' disturbing allegations began coming to light back in 2002, before they would be quashed for seven long years by the Bush Administration's unprecedented use of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege" to gag her.   [more]

Published by OpEd News.

It's been at least a couple of years since I first learned about the unconscionable injustices perpetrated upon Don Siegelman. This former Democratic Alabama Governor was in prison at the time. He had been targeted by Bush appointees on a mission to bring him down. There is so much evidence indicating how this was done to him that an objective person would draw no other conclusion. Governor Siegelman was accused of taking a bribe, and that just didn't happen. You don't have to take my word for it. There are whistleblowers who have come out and told what they know. There are 91 former states' attorneys generals going to bat for him. And law professors. And journalists. And bloggers. And lay people.

In this country, which is supposed to be a great democracy, I will never for the life of me understand why Don Siegelman's case is dragging on for so, so long. I get why the Bush Administration wasn't going to give Governor Siegelman a fair shake. That president's politically-motivated appointees wanted to shut down this good Alabaman, good Democrat, good American, good man!   [more]

Fails to include advocates among 'diverse' experts

Published by FAIR.

The New York Times devoted some rare space on September 20 to discussing single-payer (or Medicare-for-all) health reform. The result? A one-sided account of why such a system couldn't work.
With a headline like "Medicare for All? 'Crazy,' 'Socialized' and Unlikely," readers probably had a sense of what the Times had in mind with the piece, which was the latest in a series titled "Prescriptions: Making Sense of the Healthcare Debate." Reporter Katharine Seelye wrote: "Extending Medicare to all has seemed like a good idea to many--except to those who call it 'socialized medicine.' Or crazy."  [more]

Take Action: Tell Congress "Do the right thing for your constituents"

Published by OpEd News.

Single Payer may be as a neglected corpse falling off the gurney again in Washington DC, but in Pennsylvania it is springing to renewed life and growing fast. On October 20, the Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg will resound with the cheers and chants of thousands of Pennsylvanians and enthusiasts from border states eager to get the benefit of having a neighbor with Single Payer Health Care for all its citizens. Movements like this one tend to spread.   [more]

Join PDA's Accountability and Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by IndyBay.org.

Thursday, Sept. 17--Condoleezza Rice was the keynote speaker at a conference on international technology "solutions" in San Jose, CA. She is currently a scholar at the conservative Hoover Institute at Stanford. She's reportedly writing three books and not teaching this fall. Protests took place outside and inside the hotel, with World Can't Wait, San Jose Peace and Justice, and a veterans' group protesting outside.   [more]

Related: Watch "The State of the Unions" with Bill Moyers, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Michael Zweig.

Published by The Nation.

Richard Trumka's great strength as a leader of the AFL-CIO has always been his willingness to challenge this country labor movement to be better not just than its past but also its present.

Long before he assumed the presidency of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations on Thursday, the former head of the United Mineworkers positioned himself as the "old labor" warrior who was determined to push union members to embrace new realities and new opportunities.   [more]

Find "Mad As Hell Doctor" tour stops, here.

Published by Twin Cities Daily Planet.

Forty-five thousand Americans died last year from lack of health insurance. The average physician devotes $85,000 a year on processing paperwork for a multitude of companies handling their patients' insurance plans.  The World Health Organization several years ago ranked the United States 37th in health outcomes, yet the country spends twice as much on health care than any other industrialized nation. Pharmaceutical companies spend $71 billion on marketing but just $23 billion on research and development. Black men in some U.S. cities have a life expectancy on par with Bangladesh.  [more]

Complete CPC and Allies News Archives