Archive for September, 2009
Sex’s Secret Gift: Aligning With The Flow Of Life
Sex’s Secret Gift: Aligning With The Flow Of Life
The first Daoist book I read on cultivating sexual energy rang a profound bell. Sure, there was the niggling emphasis on avoiding orgasm and making love in a relaxed way (huh?), but at the same time the descriptions of effortless merging sounded so right. I wanted to learn more.
What I learned was not what I expected to learn. After many bruises and breakthroughs, I realized that the Daoists were right. Sex is a mighty tool for centering, balancing and aligning ourselves with the harmonious flow of life.
My husband and I have been experimenting with this peaceful form of lovemaking for the eight years of our relationship. Both of us are delighted with the harmony between us (which is a far cry from the unsettling dramas of our previous relationships) and the unexpected decrease in sexual frustration. We have also experienced some profound healing and a continued, surprising flow of abundance.
via Marnia Robinson: Sex’s Secret Gift: Aligning With The Flow Of Life.
Obama’s Best Answer to GOP’s Hypocritical ‘Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights’ Would Be Medicare for All | BuzzFlash.org
Obama’s Best Answer to GOP’s Hypocritical ‘Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights’ Would Be Medicare for All
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White
I’m no political tactician, but I know a cheap video backed up by nonsensical scare tactics when I see one. And the latest attempt at smearing President Obama’s healthcare initiatives coming out of Republican Party headquarters is exactly that. Take a look:
Why Doesn’t Hillary Clinton Fire Blackwater?
Why Doesn’t Hillary Clinton Fire Blackwater?
By Jeremy Scahill
As a candidate for president, Hillary Clinton pledged to ban Blackwater. In February 2008, she announced that she would sign on as the co-sponsor of a little-known bill put forward in the House by Representative Jan Schakowsky and in the Senate by Bernie Sanders. The Stop Outsourcing Security, or SOS Act, sought to end the use of armed mercenaries in US war zones. Clinton became the only other senator to sign on to the bill and the most important political figure in the US to call for such a ban on “Blackwater and other private mercenary firms in Iraq:”
“These private security contractors have been reckless and have compromised our mission in Iraq,” Clinton said in a February 28, 2008 statement on the campaign trail. “The time to show these contractors the door is long past due. We need to stop filling the coffers of contractors in Iraq, and make sure that armed personnel in Iraq are fully accountable to the U.S. government and follow the chain of command.”
As Secretary of State, Clinton now presides over a diplomatic security force in Iraq that for the “indefinite” future will include Blackwater. ABC News’s “The Blotter” is reporting that Blackwater (which now does business as Xe Services and US Training Center) will continue to be the State Department’s aviation contractor in Iraq, despite a supposed Iraqi ban on the company. “We unilaterally extended the current task order … to ensure the continued security and safety of U.S.personnel in Iraq,” a State Department official said. As I reported in The Nation weeks ago, Blackwater operatives, according to the State Department, “are permitted to continue carrying weapons” in Iraq for the foreseeable future on that contract. On July 31, the Obama administration extended Blackwater’s Iraq contract, increasing Blackwater’s payment by $20 million and bringing the total paid by the State Department to Blackwater for its “aviation services” in Iraq to $187 million.
via RebelReports – Why Doesn’t Hillary Clinton Fire Blackwater?.
Pay For Execs At Bailed Out Banks 40% Higher Than Peers: Report
Pay For Execs At Bailed Out Banks 40% Higher Than Peers: Report
The heads of the 20 banks that have received the biggest government bailouts were paid nearly 40 percent more last year than other CEOs, a study released today shows.
As Bloomberg noted in its piece, “average CEO pay was 430 times larger than for typical workers” and at nine of those 20 banks the value of stock options has soared $90 million this year, based on the study’s examination of corporate proxy statements.
Collectively, those 20 banks have laid off more than 160,000 employees since the start of 2008, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. On average, those CEOs earned nearly $14 million last year; CEOs of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies were paid an average of about $10 million in 2008.
The top five executives at those 20 banks collectively earned $3.2 billion from 2006 to 2008.
via Pay For Execs At Bailed Out Banks 40% Higher Than Peers: Report.
Online Tracking Called Violation Of Basic Privacy Rights; New Legislation Said Required
Online Tracking Called Violation Of Basic Privacy Rights; New Legislation Said Required - On The Hill:
A coalition of 10 consumer and privacy advocacy organizations is calling on Congress to enact legislation to protect consumer privacy in response to threats from the growing practices of online behavioral tracking and targeting. Such tracking constitues a violation of U.S. privacy rights, the organizations contend.
The groups pressed their case in letters sent yesterday to top members of Congress, the correspondence accompanied by extensive supporting documents. Interest groups and lawmakers have voiced concern for more than a year over extensive online tracking by companies seeking to use the data to further their businesses. But yesterday’s objections were some of the strongest to date, by directly invoking privacy rights of the U.S. Constitution.
“Privacy is a fundamental right in the United States,” the organizations say in a letter to Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Joe Barton of Texas, the chairman and ranking Republican, respectively of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “For four decades, the foundation of U.S. privacy policies has been based on Fair Information Practices: collection limitation, data quality, purpose specification, use limitation, security safeguards, openness, individual participation, and accountability.
via On The Hill: Online Tracking Called Violation Of Basic Privacy Rights; New Legislation Said Required.
Canada turmoil as Liberals quit gov’t.
Canada turmoil as Liberals quit gov’t.
Canada’s liberals may force fresh elections and rebuke to Harper’s party.
OTTAWA — Canada’s Liberal Party withdrew Tuesday its crucial support for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s ruling Conservatives, opening the door to a possible fourth snap election in five years next month.
“The Liberal Party cannot support this government any further,” Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said in a nationally-televised speech to his caucus.
“We will hold Stephen Harper to account and we will oppose his government in parliament.”
via ccokzsblog: Canada turmoil as Liberals quit gov’t..
Bailed-out bankers to get options windfall: study
Bailed-out bankers to get options windfall: study | Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) – As shares of bailed-out banks bottomed out earlier this year, stock options were awarded to their top executives, setting them up for millions of dollars in profit as prices rebounded, according to a report released on Wednesday.
The top five executives at 10 financial institutions that took some of the biggest taxpayer bailouts have seen a combined increase in the value of their stock options of nearly $90 million, the report by the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies said.
“Not only are these executives not hurting very much from the crisis, but they might get big windfalls because of the surge in the value of some of their shares,” said Sarah Anderson, lead author of the report, “America’s Bailout Barons,” the 16th in an annual series on executive excess.
via Bailed-out bankers to get options windfall: study | Reuters.
Never mind pillow talk, couples told by Roman Catholic church to PRAY before sex
OPS: OK, exactly when is ‘before sex’ ?
Give us this day our daily… Catholic church issues prayer for faithful to say before sex – | Mail Online
Roman Catholic couples are being encouraged to pray together before they have sex.
A book published by a prominent Church group invites those setting out on married life to recite the specially-composed Prayer Before Making Love.
It is aimed at ‘purifying their intentions’ so that the act is not about selfishness or hedonism.
via Never mind pillow talk, couples told by Roman Catholic church to PRAY before sex | Mail Online.
Labor Draws a Line in the Sand On Public Option
- Political Hotsheet – CBS News
Labor leaders drew a line in the sand today, saying a health carereform bill must include three specific elements — including a government-sponsored health insurance plan, or “public option” — in order to win their support.
The AFL-CIO outlined its demands for both health care and labor law reforms at a meeting today at which it released a new survey of young workers. The data backs up its progressive agenda and attempts to give it a sense of urgency.
The “Young Workers: A Lost Decade” poll, conducted in July of this year, found that 31 percent of workers under 35 report being uninsured, up from 24 percent 10 years ago. Counter to arguments that young people do not want to pay for insurance, 79 percent of the uninsured said they do not have coverage because they cannot afford it or their employer does not offer it.
“Every day people are drowning from the cost of health care,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.
Labor Draws a Line in the Sand On Public Option – Political Hotsheet – CBS News.
David Swanson’s DAYBREAK Is Chart-Topping Inspiration
David Swanson’s DAYBREAK Is Chart-Topping Inspiration
It’s a GREAT DAY in America when heralds of hate, specifically Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin, are booted from their Amazon best seller slots on DAY ONE of the publication of progressive leader David Swanson’s breakthrough tome, DAYBREAK – now at Number One on Amazon’s non-fiction best seller list. From this terrific response to Swanson’s new book arises my sincere desire that DAYBREAK attracts a good many of Beck and Malkin’s readers, so they, too, will have the opportunity to absorb the depth of information and dedication to solutions that David Swanson offers.
Those who regularly read the writings of David Swanson, posted daily across the internet on influential websites, are uniquely informed by his cognizance of the Constitution and wisely instructed on the laws of proper governance. They are similarly impressed by his solutions – yes SOLUTIONS – to the issues he elucidates. He’s an endless source of information and a catalyst for strategic clear-minded citizen action and government action to correct the wrongs he sees. Swanson is consistently less about the problem and more about the solution.
via OpEdNews – Article: David Swanson’s DAYBREAK Is Chart-Topping Inspiration.
Reverse bank robbery
Reverse bank robbery – | guardian.co.uk 
Dean Baker
No wonder America’s banks are making profits again: the US government is bribing them to borrow its own money
Most of us work for a living, the rest are bankers. These days the news is filled with great tales about how America’s banks are coming back.
Even that giant corpse Citigroup is showing signs of life. Its stock is now selling for more than five times the lows it hit earlier this year. Its market capitalization is up near $57bn, a bit more than the $45 billion that the government lent them through the Troubled Assets Relief Programme, or Tarp. Some are even expecting that the government will make a profit on its Citigroup investment.
These hopes are probably somewhat premature. Citigroup still has many bad assets on its books which it has not yet written down. Furthermore, the government is directly on the hook for $300bn of these bad assets, having offered a guarantee as part of its “December Citigroup Rescue Special”.
via Reverse bank robbery | Dean Baker | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Who Will Be Hurt if the Democrats Pass Health Care Alone
OPS: Answer: Only what’s left of the Republican Party
Who Will Be Hurt if the Democrats Pass Health Care Alone – Lincoln Mitchell: Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics, Columbia University
Eight months or so into the Obama presidency, it is pretty clear that Obama’s bipartisan efforts have not been, and will almost certainly not be, fruitful. Critics of Obama might claim this is because Obama has already been captured by the far left of his party, while people more sympathetic to the president might point out that the Republican Party has been captured by an angry and out of touch right wing that has driven the party to irrelevancy. The question this raises for the Obama administration is whether or not it is now prudent to abandon efforts at bipartisanship and seek to pass major legislation, most obviously health care, alone.
Critics of this idea point out that previous legislation of such great significance was passed with bipartisan support. This is true, but a little misleading. For most of the twentieth century partisanship while strong, was often not closely tied to ideology the way it is today. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats were far bigger and more important political forces 50, or even 25, years ago, than they are today. So, while, for example, Lyndon Johnson passed both civil rights and Great Society legislation with support from Republicans, those Republicans were northern liberals who had political views and ideology which today would make them far closer to the Democratic than the Republican Party. Similarly, a fair amount of the Democrats who backed much of Ronald Reagan’s legislative proposals were conservative Democrats who today would likely be Republicans.
via Lincoln Mitchell: Who Will Be Hurt if the Democrats Pass Health Care Alone.
The Secret Government
The Secret Government - The Nation
By Christopher Hayes
It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of “fair play” must be reconsidered.
Though these words echo his famous endorsement of working “the dark side” in order to triumph in the “war on terror,” they were not, in fact, written by Dick Cheney. They come from the Doolittle Report, which was commissioned by President Eisenhower in 1954 to craft an intelligence strategy for winning the cold war. From a strategic perspective, the threat posed by global communism, headquartered in a massive, nuclear-armed superpower with almost 6 million men under arms, and Al Qaeda, a networked, globally distributed group of thousands of nonstate actors, could not be more different. But the national security state’s understanding of each as an existential threat was, and continues to be, nearly identical. The enemy is ingenious, relentless and unencumbered by the procedural and moral niceties that hamstring the bureaucrats of a liberal democracy. Victory–indeed, survival–requires us to become more like them.
And so: the CIA contracted a Mafia boss to murder Fidel Castro, sent biotoxins to the Republic of Congo with orders to poison Patrice Lumumba and tested LSD on unsuspecting citizens (one of whom jumped out of a window to his death). It fomented coups and bloodshed against democratically elected governments, while the National Security Agency, in coordination with the major telegram companies, read every single telegram coming in or going out of the country for three decades. The FBI infiltrated peaceful antiwar groups, breaking up marriages of activists with forged evidence of infidelity, while surveilling civil rights leaders with an assortment of bugs and break-ins. It even attempted to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide, shipping him tapes of him midcoitus with a mistress and a note that said, “There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
Axelrod hits Grassley and Enzi for not ‘negotiating in good faith.’
Axelrod hits Grassley and Enzi for not ‘negotiating in good faith.’ - Think Progress »
Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod On Monday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used his daily press briefing to criticize “Gang of Six” health care negotiator Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) for attacking Democratic health care proposals with “generic Republican talking points” when he delivered the weekly Republican radio address on Saturday. “I think Sen. Enzi’s clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table,” said Gibbs. Now, another top White House aide has dug into Enzi as well as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who recently sent a fundraising appeal saying he was working to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’” In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, senior adviser David Axelrod said the two senators appeared to be “satisfied with the status quo“:
“If you’re sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don’t send out mailers saying, ‘Help me stop Obama-care.’ That’s just common sense,” Mr. Axelrod said. The two senators’ actions, he said, “suggested they don’t want to participate” in bipartisan talks. “They’re satisfied with the status quo. We are not,” Mr. Axelrod said.
via Think Progress » Axelrod hits Grassley and Enzi for not ‘negotiating in good faith.’.
Cantor Suggests Canceling The Rest Of The Stimulus
Cantor Suggests Canceling The Rest Of The Stimulus - Think Progress »
One of the most bitter opponents of the economic stimulus package is House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has repeatedly claimed that the stimulus is “failing.”
Yesterday in an interview with CNBC’s Erin Burnett, Cantor floated the idea of canceling the rest of the economic stimulus and using the money to pay off debt:
CANTOR: Since we know now that the Stimulus has not met the criteria by which it was passed and the White House promoted it, which was to stave off job losses and to stop unemployment from reaching above 8.5%, since we know it’s been a failure, why not do the responsible thing, which is to take the $400 billion that has not been committed yet – or not been spent, but been committed to the stimulus – and just pay off the debt and deficit so we can get our fiscal house back in order?
Watch it:
via Think Progress » Cantor Suggests Canceling The Rest Of The Stimulus.
Something New On Health Care: Deal-Breakers From The President -
Something New On Health Care: Deal-Breakers From The President - The Atlantic Politics Channel
This time, the President is going to be specific. Next week, President Obama is going to give Democrats a health care plan they can begin to sell.
He plans to list specific goals that any health insurance reform plan that arrives at his desk must achieve, according to Democratic strategists familiar with the plan. Some of these “goals” have already been agreed to, including new anti-discrimination restrictions on insurance companies. Others will be new, including the level of subsidies he expects to give the uninsured so they can buy into the system.
Obama will also specify a “pay for” mechanism he prefers, and will specify an income level below which he does not want to see taxed.
He will insist upon a mechanism to cut costs and increase competition among insurance companies — and perhaps will even specify a percentage rate — and he will say that his preferred mechanism remains a government-subsidized public health insurance option, but he will remain agnostic about whether the plan must include a robust public option. Officials won’t say whether the president intends to endorse a specific “trigger” mechanism if the competition mechanism fails, but they say he will make it clear that the final bill must contain language that increases competition.
via Something New On Health Care: Deal-Breakers From The President – The Atlantic Politics Channel.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: Astounding, final moments of her interview with Tom Ridge
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: Astounding, final moments of her interview with Tom Ridge
Probing interview with the former DHS honcho, the entire interview can be found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/
via YouTube – MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow: Astounding, final moments of her interview with Tom Ridge.
Call to Jury Duty Strikes Fear of Financial Ruin
Call to Jury Duty Strikes Fear of Financial Ruin - - NYTimes.com
One by one, jurors answered Judge Robert A. Rosenberg when he asked whether serving a trial of four to five weeks would be a hardship. Chemelle Charles, a nurse, said it definitely would: “I’m the only one working in my house right now.”
Ms. Charles’s husband, a lumberyard employee, was laid off in July, she said. On that recent morning, Judge Rosenberg dismissed Ms. Charles, along with more than half of the 80 potential jurors he interviewed, many of them for similar reasons.
Few people like jury duty. But for many people squeezed by the recession, a jury summons holds a new fear: financial ruin.
Judges and court officials around the country say they are seeing the impact of the recession in their courtrooms. While no one keeps overall statistics on juror excuses, those closest to the process say that in many parts of the country an increasing number of jurors are trying to get out of service, forcing courts to call an ever larger pool of jurors to meet their needs.
via Call to Jury Duty Strikes Fear of Financial Ruin – NYTimes.com.
Hoyer maintains support for public option
OPS: The Public Option is a classic case of ” Be careful what you wish for”. HR676 is the only solution to this mess.
Hoyer maintains support for public option
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told cheering and jeering constituents Tuesday he still supports a public health insurance option as part of a health care overhaul.
Previously he’s said there’s room for compromise.
At a packed high school gym, Hoyer, D-Md., was shouted down repeatedly during a town hall meeting where a crowd of 1,500 appeared to be evenly split between supporters and opponents of the health care overhaul effort.
One woman pressed the Democratic leader on whether he’d give in on the public option if Republicans refused to compromise.
via Hoyer maintains support for public option.
What A Weed-Killer Chemical Company Is Fighting For You NOT To Find Out
Syngenta, Maker Of Weed-Killer Atrazine, Wants Lobbying Documents Excluded From Class-Action Lawsuit
Lawyers representing the maker of the herbicide atrazine are asking that documents related to the company’s lobbying and trade association activities be excluded from a class action lawsuit being filed by some Illinois water utilities.
As the Investigative Fund reported last week, many utilities say they cannot afford expensive carbon filters that would remove atrazine from public drinking water. They are going to court to try to force the Swiss chemical company Syngenta to pay for installing such filtering systems.
In an interview today, the lawyer for Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., Kurt Reeg, said the water districts had requested documents outside of the scope of the lawsuit.
“They’re asking what efforts have been made to lobby congress and the EPA with respect to herbicide legislation,” Reeg said. “They want to know about all of Syngenta’s trade association activities. It’s totally out of the realm of this case.”
The lawyer for the water utilities, Stephen Tillery, disagreed. “Their main argument is that the EPA has established that atrazine is safe. What the lobbying records will show is that Syngenta and its trade associations were inside the room when the EPA made that decision. They had special access. Environmental groups didn’t have that kind of access. The public didn’t even have that kind of access.”
via Syngenta, Maker Of Weed-Killer Atrazine, Wants Lobbying Documents Excluded From Class-Action Lawsuit.
White House: Obama May Detail Health Care Goals In Speech, Shift Strategy
White House: Obama May Detail Health Care Goals In Speech, Shift Strategy
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, faced with falling approval ratings and increasingly impatient with Senate negotiations over health care, is weighing a shift in strategy that would offer more details of his goals for overhauling the nation’s health care system.
The president is considering a speech in the next week or so in which he would be “more prescriptive” about what he feels Congress must include in a bill, top adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday in an interview. The speech might occur before the Sept. 15 deadline the White House gave to Senate negotiators to seek a bipartisan bill, Axelrod said. He suggested that two key Republicans have not bargained in good faith.
Congress reconvenes next Tuesday after an August recess in which critics of Obama’s health proposals dominated many public forums.
via White House: Obama May Detail Health Care Goals In Speech, Shift Strategy.
U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus
U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus - – WSJ.com
WASHINGTON — Government efforts to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy appear to be helping the U.S. climb out of the worst recession in decades.
But there’s little agreement about which programs are having the biggest impact. Some economists argue that efforts such as the Federal Reserve’s aggressive buying of Treasury debt and mortgage-backed securities, as well as government efforts to shore up banks, are providing a bigger boost than the administration’s $787 billion stimulus package.
The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. “There’s a method to the madness. We’re getting out of this,” said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.
via U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus – WSJ.com.
So You Just Squandered Billions . . . Take Another Whack at It
So You Just Squandered Billions . . . Take Another Whack at It – Steven Pearlstein – - washingtonpost.com
You’ve probably never heard of Jay Levine, Chris Ricciardi, John Costas or Stanford Kurland, but they are charter members of Wall Street’s Mulligan Club.
Back during the heyday of the credit bubble, they were the financiers who earned huge bonuses for creating, trading and investing other people’s money in those complex securities that resulted in trillions of dollars in losses and brought global financial markets to their knees. And now they’re out there again hustling for investors and hoping to make another score buying and trading the same securities.
Like golfers who treat themselves to a second drive after hooking the first one deep into the woods, these guys play on without apology or penalty. The maddening thing is that they’re getting away with it and nobody seems to care.
Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says
Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says - - NYTimes.com
Low-wage workers are routinely denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage, according to a new study based on a survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.
“We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate,” said Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors and a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the City University of New York. The study, to be released on Wednesday, was financed by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations.
In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay.
via Low-Wage Workers Are Often Cheated, Study Says – NYTimes.com.
The “Intolerance” Party? GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party’s Future
The “Intolerance” Party? GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party’s Future
A major rift has emerged within the Republican Party. On one side: Ideologues who are inciting the base with wild rhetoric and banking on a “great American awakening” that will sweep conservatives back into power. On the other: Strategists, who see the party’s growing intolerance as a prescription for minority status.
So far, the ideologues are winning.
“Nobody helps the cause when they use name-calling instead of substantial criticism,” says strategist Charlie Black, a senior adviser to almost every Republican presidential campaign since Ronald Reagan first ran.
But name-calling and demagoguery are the hallmarks of the movement conservatives and media celebrities like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who are increasingly being viewed as dominant forces in the modern GOP.
via The “Intolerance” Party? GOP Strategists Worry Ideologues Are Bad For The Party’s Future.
We need a public pet option
We need a public pet option | Salon
Want empathy? Send weepy pet parents to town hall meetings waving photos of kittycats in need of new kidneys
By Garrison Keillor
I caught part of a radio call-in show the other day on which a vet was fielding questions about Addison’s disease among basset hounds and a cocker spaniel’s hypothyroid problem and what can be done about a bulldog who snores (he needs to lose weight), and it was interesting to discover the excellent medical care that dogs have come to expect these days. The vet was herself a dog parent, as she put it, and there was genuine feeling in her voice when she discussed the bassets’ hormonal problems, something I haven’t heard in the debate over healthcare for humans this summer.
I have not been a pet parent for 20 years so perhaps I’m not up to speed here, but back in the day, dogs slept in the garage or on the porch so they could defend the home against socialism, and if they snored, it definitely was their problem and not ours. Ditto hypothyroidism. And there was a death panel around whose name was Dad.
Dad grew up on a farm and was not overly sentimental about animals. He did not purchase jewelry for them or talk to them in a high-pitched voice. He would have blanched at the thought that the average cost of a visit to the vet with your cat is now $172. The chance of Dad paying that much to care for Snowball was about the same as Snowball’s chances in hell. But that has all changed, and now the American people shell out upward of $10 billion a year for healthcare for pets.
more…………
via We need a public pet option | Salon.
Obama won’t insist on public option, aides say
Obama won’t insist on public option, aides say – Raw Story »
In a move that is sure to raise the hackles of his party’s liberal base, President Barack Obama will not insist that Congressional legislation to reform healthcare include the so-called public option to compete with private health insurers, according to a report Wednesday.
Buried in a Politico report Wednesday was the fact that Obama officials have allegedly decided not to insist on a public option in a planned speech the President is set to deliver on healthcare.
Expected to come in early to mid-September, an Obama speech to the nation will outline what the president is looking to see in healthcare reform.
“Obama is considering detailing his health-care demands in a major speech as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the August recess,” Politico’s Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen write. “And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said.
via Raw Story » Obama won’t insist on public option, aides say.
Deputy Reagan Attorney General calls for expanded CIA probe
Deputy Reagan Attorney General calls for expanded CIA probe – Raw Story »
In an interview late Tuesday, Bruce Fein, an Associate Deputy Attorney General to President Ronald Reagan, said the Justice Department should expand a probe into the CIA’s interrogation techniques — including the possibility of targeting former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Likening the probe to those conducted over murders during the civil rights era — where new investigations began even though few facts had been unearthed — Fein said that the new probe was appropriate.
“Well, there may be no new facts but that’s what you could say about a lot of things in the South during the civil rights movement… I’m not trying to suggest they’re identical, but this is not unheard of,” Fein said. “You have a new assessment of what the situation was; the climate is different, and if they’re showing violations of law there’s always the pardon power if there is extenuating circumstances.
via Raw Story » Deputy Reagan Attorney General calls for expanded CIA probe.
Speculation grows that Justice Stevens may soon retire
Speculation grows that Justice Stevens may soon retire – The Raw Story »
Justice Stevens slows his hiring at high court
Justice Stevens, 89, hires fewer law clerks, prompting talk that he’s contemplating retirement
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court’s liberals will retire next year.
If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.
via The Raw Story » Speculation grows that Justice Stevens may soon retire.
The More Things Change
The More Things Change – Tomgram
Bush’s Third Term? You’re Living It
David Swanson,
A presidential candidate opposed to the Iraq War is elected and enters the Oval Office. Yet six months later, there are still essentially the same number of troops in Iraq as were there when his predecessor left, the same number, in fact, used in the original invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Moreover, the new president remains on the “withdrawal” schedule the previous administration laid out for him with the same caveats being issued about whether it can even be met.
That administration also built a humongous, three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar embassy in Baghdad, undoubtedly the most expensive on the planet. Staffed with approximately 1,000 “diplomats,” it was clearly meant to be a massive command center for Iraq (and, given neocon dreams, the region). Last weekend, well into the Obama era, the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s yearly budget for “running” that embassy — $1.5 billion (that is not a misprint) in 2009 — will actually rise to $1.8 billion for 2010 and 2011. In addition, the Obama administration now plans to invest upwards of a billion dollars in constructing a massive embassy in Islamabad and other diplomatic facilities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Here, too, there will be a massive influx of “diplomats,” and here, too, a U.S. command center for the region is clearly being created.
via Tomgram: David Swanson, The More Things Change.
Holding Wall Street Bankers Accountable
Holding Wall Street Bankers Accountable
by Jim Hightower on Creators.com
Don’t you wish that someone in authority, someone with an ounce of chutzpah, someone with his or her head screwed on right, would direct a few obvious, pointed, even rude questions to the Wall Street honchos who have ripped off America?
Questions like: Who, exactly, in your bank directed the rip-off? Who made these stupid decisions? Who — by name — is accountable for this mess?
The White House really doesn’t seem interested in pressing these questions. The chairman of the Senate finance committee and the head of the house banking committee have been too polite to keep probing them. And, of course, Republican leaders don’t even want to know the answers.
But, wait a second — who’s this guy, this guy in New York who has dared to confront some of the biggest Wall Street elites and demand answers? You’ve probably never heard of Jed Rakoff, but he’s a federal district judge whose Manhattan court gets many of the cases involving the financial powers.
via Holding Wall Street Bankers Accountable by Jim Hightower on Creators.com – A Syndicate Of Talent.
New Light on Copenhagen Climate Talks
New Light on Copenhagen Climate Talks - Truthdig
By Amy Goodman
On Sept. 1, the European Union stopped manufacturing and importing incandescent light bulbs. Europeans will now turn to the much more efficient compact fluorescent, halogen and LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs. Incandescents, critics argue, waste up to 95 percent of energy as heat, using only 5 percent for light. The EU hopes to save the equivalent of 11 million households’ energy usage through the year 2020, worth $7.33 billion per year to the European economy.
The ban precedes the December 2009 Copenhagen climate conference, held by the United Nations to update the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Greenhouse-gas emissions now occur faster than ever. Copenhagen will be critical to the success or failure of establishing a practical, binding global plan of action before human-caused climate change reaches the point of no return, creating a cascade of catastrophes.
Eventually, global warming will become irreversible if action is not taken. Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere are measured in “parts per million” (PPM). Environmentalist Bill McKibben says that a sustainable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 PPM. He has named his organization 350.org to reinforce the point. We are currently at 387 PPM and climbing. McKibben and 350.org are calling for a global day of action, on Oct. 24, to pressure governments before the Copenhagen summit.
A new generation of environmental activists is already in motion. This week, two young people were arrested in West Virginia for halting a Massey Energy Co. mountaintop coal-mining operation with a weeklong “tree sit,” and six people in London were arrested at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters for protesting the bank’s investment in fossil fuels. They glued themselves together and to the floor of the bank to hamper their removal, leading Reuters to headline its story “Protesters stick together in UK bank demonstration.”
via Truthdig – Reports – New Light on Copenhagen Climate Talks.
Assembly line nuclear reactors
OPS: A dangerous step in the wrong direction
Assembly line nuclear reactors
Tom Sanders led the team at Sandia National Laboratories that developed this innovation.
The advantages are
1) Higher levels of safety and security,
2) An exportable nuclear power plant that is controllable and monitored by the exporter,
3) Minimized potential for use of nuclear material as weapons as the device is a breeder reactor,
4) 100 to 300 megawatt capacity,
5) Two year construction and installation period,
6) Higher efficiencies
7) Minimized waste,
Lifetime 50 years, and
9) Cost of 250 million dollars.
The idea is to mass produce and ship the device to parts of the world that have no means of producing electricity.
via Assembly line nuclear reactors.
Great Barrier Reef facing ‘catastrophic damage’ from climate change
Great Barrier Reef facing ‘catastrophic damage’ from climate change - – Telegraph
The Great Barrier Reef faces “catastrophic damage” from climate change and chemical runoff, according to a major report carried out by the Australian government.
The reef, which stretches for 1,200 miles off the northeast coast of Australia, has “poor” prospects of survival as a result of over-development and a failure by the relevant authorities to protect it from illegal fishing and chemical run-off, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said its first report on the state of the reef’s health.
The report warned that damage to mangroves, increasing algae on coral reefs, ocean acidification and coral bleaching were already evident.
“While populations of almost all marine species are intact and there are no records of extinctions, some ecologically important species, such as dugongs, marine turtles, seabirds, black teatfish and some sharks, have declined significantly,” it said.
“Disease in corals and pest outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish and cyanobacteria appear to be becoming more frequent and more serious.”
via Great Barrier Reef facing ‘catastrophic damage’ from climate change – Telegraph.
Sony to throw its weight behind 3D TV
Sony to throw its weight behind 3D TV – FT.com
Sets to go on sale globally by end of 2010
3D technology looks set to hit the home consumer market next year, with Sony on Wednesday announcing plans to sell 3D televisions globally by the end of 2010.
Sony’s decision to throw its weight behind the technology will be an important boost for the 3D industry, which has so far focused mainly on cinemas. British Sky Broadcasting has said it would introduce a 3D satellite channel in the UK next year, but it had been unclear whether there would be equipment available to view it on.
via FT.com / Technology – Sony to throw its weight behind 3D TV.
BP reveals ‘giant’ oil discovery
BP reveals ‘giant’ oil discovery - FT.com
Gulf of Mexico field likely to hold at least 3bn barrels
BP, the UK energy group, on Wednesday reported a “giant” discovery in the Gulf of Mexico – in what looks to be one of the largest finds of recent years – that helps open a new frontier for US oil production.
The Tiber field, in deep water about 250 miles south-east of Houston, is likely to hold at least 3bn barrels of oil, with 500m-plus of that recoverable with today’s technology, but could be even larger.
via FT.com / Companies / Oil & Gas – BP reveals ‘giant’ oil discovery.
WTO Ruling Doesn’t Reflect Current Market
WTO Ruling Doesn’t Reflect Current Market - Dustin Ensinger economyincisis.org
The National Cotton Council said that the Brazilian government is using outdated information to skew reality.
A World Trade Organization arbitration panel ruled on Monday that the Brazilian government has the right to impose retaliatory tariffs amounting to nearly $300 billion on U.S. goods in response to an earlier ruling finding America’s cotton subsidies to be a violation of international trade rules.
The WTO ruled that Brazil can impose sanctions of U.S. goods totaling $294.7 million, much less than the $2.68 billion the Brazilian government sought and much more than the $30 million worth of tariffs the U.S. government said would be appropriate.
The resolution in the long-running case, first brought to the international trade body by the Brazilian government in 2002, could pave the way for other emerging market nations to seek penalties against the U.S. for its agricultural subsidies. The gap between rich and poor nations in terms of subsides to farmers has been a major point of contention for years and one of the main reasons that no consensus can be reached in the most recent round of global trade negotiations.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Blum on the need for a U.S. VAT
Blum on the need for a U.S. VAT – Charles Blum – economyincisis.org
The following article was taken from TradeReform.org.
Charles Blum is a Director of the Coalition for a Prosperous America.
The United States needs to adopt an entirely new tax system that allows the country to be competitive in global markets, according to Charles Blum, president of the International Advisory Services Group in Washington, D.C.
The United States is not over taxed, but is “badly taxed,” according to Blum. The tax burden in the United States accounts for 25.4 percent of total GDP, compared to 40.3 percent of GDP for the European Union’s 15 member states. “Our tax system relies too heavily on non-border adjustable income taxes,” according to Blum. “This hurts American’s ability to save and invest domestically.” Because other nations employ a consumption tax, U.S. exports are taxed twice and imports escape any taxation, making it advantageous to produce offshore.
The United States is the only country among 150 nations that does not have consumption tax. All of these other nations apply a consumption tax to their imports, which amounts to a double tax burden on U.S. exports. To make matters worse for American producers, foreign countries rebate their consumption taxes to their exporters, while the U.S. refuses to apply an offsetting tax on imports.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
New Era for Japanese Politics
New Era for Japanese Politics – Craig Harrington -economyincisis.org
Last week voters overwhelmingly elected the upstart Democratic Party of Japan to a 308 seat majority in the 480 seat House of Representatives.
Japan has been governed and directed by the same political party for the better part of 55 years. Save for a few months of interruption, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has been the face and voice of Japanese political legacy.
All of that changed last week, as voters overwhelmingly elected the upstart Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to a 308 seat majority in the 480 seat House of Representatives. The DPJ had previously held just 115 seats, enough to make it the nation’s number two party.
The Wall Street Journal ran several pieces in its August 31st issue detailing the ripple-effect of this monumental change in the Japanese political spectrum. There is no telling what the long-term effects of this election will be, but it is more or less certain that this will be a “new era for Japan.”
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Market Slide on the Horizon
Market Slide on the Horizon - Craig Harrington economyincisis.org
The markets are self-fulfilling, and right now everyone believes that investing will be costly.
Jack Healy, writing for The New York Times, warns that the five month long market rally seen in 2009 could be coming to an end in September.
For various reasons September is historically one of the worst months for market transactions; this year it is expected to dampen optimism and stall the Dow Jones’ charge back to the 10,000 point threshold. Many analysts also fear that it will stamp the rally out entirely, killing whatever momentum had been built up during a strong July and August.
Healy believes that the markets are inflated and due for a slide. Many analysts, and more importantly investors, agree with that assessment. Oil prices are still going strong, but the Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P are struggling to gain 1 percent daily – a feat easily achievable in the summer.
via Economyincrisis.org – America’s Economic Report – Daily.
Has Japan’s Dolphin Slaughter Been Prevented?
Has Japan’s Dolphin Slaughter Been Prevented - Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Media presence in Taiji seems to be keeping the dolphin killers at bay — for now.
A few weeks ago I wrote a review of the amazing film The Cove, which used a sting operation of experts to infiltrate a secret cove in the town of Taiji, Japan to show the world an incredible horror: In Taiji thousands of dolphins are captured and many of them sold to the lucrative world market that uses captive dolphins for tourism at either aquariums or swim-with-dolphins ventures. Making indentured servants of one of the most amazing wild creatures on our planet is sure crime enough, but it gets worse. The dolphins that are not sold into captivity are slaughtered for their meat, which is sometimes sold falsely as whale meat, since dolphins have often toxic levels of mercury in their bodies.
Former dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry, filmmaker Louis Psihoyos and the Oceanic Preservation Society helped bring this tragedy to the public’s eye with the film The Cove and various groups including the The Save Japan Dolphins Coalition (which consists of Earth Island Institute, Elsa Nature Conservancy of Japan, OceanCare, In Defense of Animals, Campaign Whale, and the Animal Welfare Institute) and TakePart Social Action Network of Participant Media have been involved in outreach and media to bring this to the attention of the Japanese and the rest of the world.
Today, the dolphin slaughter was set to begin in Taiji, but the tides there may have changed. Here’s a dispatch from O’Barry who has just returned to Japan for the start of the killing season:
via Has Japan’s Dolphin Slaughter Been Prevented? | Water | AlterNet.
It Is Possible To Pass A Public Option Now
It Is Possible To Pass A Public Option Now - Chris Bowers, Open Left
The Democrats already have the votes and procedures in place to pass a public health-care plan. So what are they waiting for?
In both branches of Congress, Democrats already have the votes and procedural options in place to pass a public option on health care reform. This means it is possible to pass a public option now. It also means that if a public option does not pass as part of health care reform, it will be a because of a political calculation made by the Democratic leadership, not because there was no way to pass one.
Reconciliation Flexible for the Public Option
Despite what Democrats such Kent Conrad, Jim Cooper, and George Stephanopoulos are saying, it is entirely possible to pass a public option through reconciliation in the Senate. As budget expert Stan Collendar wrote two weeks ago, determining what can be passed through reconciliation is a bit of a gray area open to some degree of interpretation:
As I said, this is complicated and will be extremely controversial. There are budget experts on both sides of the aisle and this is more of a judgment call than the application of a hard and fast rule.
One expert arguing that a public option can be passed through reconciliation is Martin Panoe, who served as Secretary for the Senate Democratic caucus from 1995-2008. Last week, Panoe said the following:
via It Is Possible To Pass A Public Option Now | Politics | AlterNet.
There’s a Bubble That Still Threatens the Entire American Economy … and Few Are Talking About It
There’s a Bubble That Still Threatens the Entire American Economy … and Few Are Talking About It - By Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati, AlterNet.
Outrageously large rewards for executives give executives an incentive to behave outrageously — and engage in behaviors that put the rest of us at risk.
At the Institute for Policy Studies, we’ve been tracking our nation’s astounding executive pay bubble since 1994. We began our annual “Executive Excess” series because we believe that excessive executive compensation has deeply troubling consequences, for both our economy and our polity.
To put the matter most simply: Outrageously large rewards for executives give executives an incentive to behave outrageously — and engage in behaviors that put the rest of us at risk.
Over the years, we’ve documented, for instance, how CEOs who downsize, outsource and cook their corporate books have consistently collected bigger paychecks than even the average overpaid U.S. top executive.
Now looking back on our work, we plead guilty to a lack of imagination. We didn’t imagine, even in our most cynical moments, that America’s top executives — in their chase after fortune — would be reckless enough to melt down the entire global financial system.
Obama’s progressive test
Obama’s progressive test - Allison Kilkenny –- True/Slant
Obama Has Betrayed the Progressives Who Got Him Elected — So Now What Do We Do? Total withdrawal dates and single-payer healthcare were never seriously part of the agenda. They were nice, empty promises, made to get elected.
Though he’s barely over six months into his first term, President Obama faces a critical time. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, support for Obama is dropping, and Greg Sargent theorizes this is due to waning support among Democrats and liberals.
Sargent’s theory makes sense. Ask any Democrat or Progressive why they voted for Obama, and you’re likely to hear a range of grievances extending from he’s better than Bush to Nader wasn’t on the ballot, but others say things like he said he’d bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, or he promised healthcare reform.
Clearly, liberals expected big things from their new, exciting President. However, as so oftentimes happens in the world of politics, pragmatism and triangulation sucked the air out of Obama’s audacious hope. While the new President made plans to draw down troops in Iraq (plans that include tens of thousands “residual forces,”) he surged in Afghanistan and approved the use of 17,000 additional troops. Meanwhile, Obama remained silent on the issue of mercenaries including the scandal-ridden Blackwater even though “private contractors,” the pretty euphemism for “private soldiers accountable to no one,” now outnumber troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
via Allison Kilkenny – Unreported – Obama’s progressive test – True/Slant.
The Wing-Nut Code: What Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Are Really Saying to Their Followers
The Wing-Nut Code: What Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin Are Really Saying to Their Followers - By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet.
You thought they were just unhinged. But here’s what they’re really saying to the armed and dangerous.
When Glenn Beck offers an odd-looking icon for his 9-12 Project, or Sarah Palin says something about her native state that sounds a bit to off-kilter to the ears of those in the lower 48, it’s tempting to think, well, they’re just nuts.
Perhaps they are, but that’s beside the point. The point is that when Beck throws up a graphic of a segmented snake as his project’s mascot, or Palin speaks of her native land as the “sovereign” state of Alaska, they’re blowing a kind of dog-whistle for the armed and paranoid who make up the right-wing, neo-militia “Patriot” movement and the broader “Tea Party” coalition.
The loose affiliation of right-wing groups under the Tea Party umbrella can make it difficult to discern who’s truly dangerous, and who’s just an angry blowhard.
Blackwater Security Firm Gets Iraq Contract Extended by State Dept
Exclusive: Controversial Blackwater Security Firm Gets Iraq Contract Extended by State Dept – - ABC News
Company Banned From Operating by Iraqi Government Earlier This Year
The State Department has extended a contract with controversial private security firm Blackwater, ABC News has learned. The contract was due to expire this month.
Sources say the department has agreed to temporarily continue using the subsidiary known as Presidential Airways to provide helicopter transport for embassy employees around Iraq until a new contract with another security company, Dyncorp International, is fully implemented. Presidential Airways is an arm of U.S. Training Center, which is a subsidiary of the company Xe, formerly and still commonly known as Blackwater.
via Blackwater Security Firm Gets Iraq Contract Extended by State Dept – ABC News.
Fox News covers ‘tea party’ as if it were a sports game
Fox News covers ‘tea party’ as if it were a sports game - The Raw Story » Video at link
Fox News, the self-branded “Fair and Balanced” network, appears to have thrown even the most feigned attempt at “balance” in the debate over health insurance reform, right out the window.
Critical media observers need only review reporter Griff Jenkins’ recent coverage of a New Mexico “tea party,” which this writer can only summarize as being similar to to sideline interviews at a sports game … If the interviewer were, say, employed by the team he’s interviewing.
One protester suggested that the group crowding around the reporter is representative of the “silent majority” that is finally waking up. However, a recent SurveyUSA poll found that over two-thirds of Americans support having a public health insurance option.
Although, I cannot claim to recall ever seeing this sort of protest coverage on the Fox News Channel when peace activists marched against the war in Iraq. No, in fact it was quite the opposite, and the crowds that Jenkins waded through were not nearly as friendly.
via The Raw Story » Fox News covers ‘tea party’ as if it were a sports game.
Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP
Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP - by Len Hart
It was not so long ago that GOP Senators Chuck Hegal and Richard Lugar described the Bush administration as “incompetent”! And they were being polite. CONSERVATIVE commentator George Will referred to the Bush administration as “…the gang that couldn’t shoot straight!” In Iraq, Bush’s “puppet” Allawi said of WMD: “…they must be somewhere!”
WMD are where you find them! But that’s not to say that WMD were ever in Iraq! It does not follow that because something is not ‘here’, it must be ‘there’! It does not follow that because something is ‘not’ then something else is somewhere else or that something else ‘is’.
The Bush regime was as utterly incompetent as it was evil. Otherwise, Dick Cheney, who supervised 911, would have just ordered his minions to ‘plant’ WMD in the areas his ‘task force’ had already targeted for theft! In retrospect, the Bush regime turns out to have been half-assed crooks, half-assed murderers, half-assed liars, a ludicrous gang that couldn’t shoot straight.
via The Existentialist Cowboy: Dissecting the Scrambled Brains of the GOP.
Germany: Big losses for the conservative CDU in state elections
Germany: Big losses for the conservative CDU in state election - By Peter Schwarz
The results of the three state elections held in Germany last Sunday provide a glimpse into the real state of social relations in the country.
In both Saarland and Thuringia, where a change of state government and politics seemed possible, considerably more voters turned out than five years ago. In both states the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered dramatic losses, which the free market Free Democratic Party (FDP) could only exploit to a small degree. In the two states where the CDU previously had an absolute majority, the collapse of support for the conservatives was so pronounced that it now lacks the means to form a coalition with the FDP.
In Thuringia, the Left Party and Social Democratic Party (SPD) together won enough votes to form a state government. In Saarland, the SPD and Left Party will form a government with the support of the Greens.
In Saxony, however, where opinion polls ruled out a change in government, voter turnout sunk to an all-time low. The CDU remained the strongest party despite its worst ever result since 1990, and can choose a coalition partner from the FDP, the SPD or the Greens.
via Germany: Big losses for the conservative CDU in state elections.
US Fares Poorly In Child Welfare Survey
US Fares Poorly In Child Welfare Survey - – - WEWS Cleveland
US Infant Mortality Fourth-Worst
PARIS — America has some of the industrial world’s worst rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy and child poverty, even though it spends more per child than better-performing countries such as Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands, a new survey indicates.
The OECD, a Paris-based watchdog of industrialized nations, urged the United States to shift more of its public spending to its youngest children, under the age of six, to improve their health and educational performance. The report released Tuesday, “Doing Better for Children,” marks the first time the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has reported on child well-being within its 30 member countries. The U.S. spends an average of $140,000 per child, well over the OECD average of $125,000. But this spending is skewed heavily toward older children between 12 and 17, the OECD survey showed. U.S. spending on children under six, a period the OECD says is key to children’s future well-being, lags far behind other countries, amounting to only $20,000 per child on average compared to the OECD average of $30,000, the survey showed.
via US Fares Poorly In Child Welfare Survey – Health News Story – WEWS Cleveland.
Water, Water—Not Everywhere
Water, Water—Not Everywhere - | CommonDreams.org – by Olga Bonfiglio
Without water, nothing can live. And in the Western United States, there isn’t much of it because the region is a desert.
“Everything yearns to be alive in the desert,” says Riley Mitchell, a park ranger at Capitol Reef National Park in southern Utah.
For example, short, clumpy trees grow in the cracks of rock where they find even the least bit of soil. Look a little closer and you see vegetation surviving in this land and that includes many flowering plants. Lizards scurry across your path in order to alter their body temperature, which gets too cold under a rock or too hot in the sun.
In the desert everything living screams for water, including your own body. You don’t sweat in its dry heat. Your lips crack and your skin dries as your body dehydrates. If you haven’t taken care to consume enough water you’ll know it because you’ll feel faint.
via Water, Water—Not Everywhere | CommonDreams.org.
New International Version Bible To Undergo Revision
OPS: Now they can add the parts where Jesus walked with Dinosaurs and carried a gun
New International Version Bible To Undergo Revision
The top-selling Bible in North America will undergo its first revision in 25 years, modernizing the language in some sections and promising to reopen a contentious debate about changing gender terms in the sacred text. The New International Version, the Bible of choice for conservative evangelicals, will be revised to reflect changes in English usage and advances in Biblical scholarship, it was announced Tuesday. The revision is scheduled to be completed late next year and published in 2011.
“We want to reach English speakers across the globe with a Bible that is accurate, accessible and that speaks to its readers in a language they can understand,” said Keith Danby, global president and CEO of Biblica, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Christian ministry that holds the NIV copyright.
But past attempts to remake the NIV for contemporary audiences in different editions have been plagued by controversies about gender language that have pitted theological conservatives against each other.
via New International Version Bible To Undergo Revision.
Wall Street Stealth Lobby Defends $35 Billion Derivatives Haul
Wall Street Stealth Lobby Defends $35 Billion Derivatives Haul – - Bloomberg.com
(Bloomberg) — Wall Street is suiting up for a battle to protect one of its richest fiefdoms, the $592 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market that is facing the biggest overhaul since its creation 30 years ago.
Five U.S. commercial banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp., are on track to earn more than $35 billion this year trading unregulated derivatives contracts. At stake is how much of that business they and other dealers will be able to keep.
“Business models of the larger dealers have such a paucity of opportunities for profit that they have to defend the last great frontier for double-digit, even triple-digit returns,” said Christopher Whalen, managing director of Torrance, California-based Institutional Risk Analytics, which analyzes banks for investors.
via Wall Street Stealth Lobby Defends $35 Billion Derivatives Haul – Bloomberg.com.
Lack of Mercury Reporting is Fishy
Lack of Mercury Reporting is Fishy - By Russ Baker
On August 20, while scanning the New York Times the old-fashioned way, i.e. on paper, I stopped to look at a small article, no bigger than a long paragraph, tucked away in a column full of short items called “National Briefing.” The headline read: “Mercury Found in Every Fish Tested, Scientists Say”.
I stopped to read, and found that “When government scientists went looking for mercury contamination in fish in 291 streams around the nation, they found it in every fish they tested . . . even in isolated rural waterways.”
Alarming enough. Then it continued: “In a statement, the department said that some of the streams tested were affected by mining operations, which can be a source of mercury pollution, so the findings, by scientists at the United States Geological Survey, do not necessarily reflect contamination levels nationwide.”
via Lack of Mercury Reporting is Fishy.
AFL-CIO threatens Democrats over public option
OPS: Ok this needed to be done. But I’d have a lot more respect for them if they showed any balls at all over the past 15 years prior to this
AFL-CIO threatens Democrats over public option – Raw Story »
The AFL-CIO, America’s largest federation of labor unions representing over 11 million members, is digging its heels in and telling congressional Democrats they will not enjoy the union’s support unless a public insurance policy emerges from the current debate.
“The AFL-CIO’s incoming president, Richard Trumka, outlined ‘three absolute musts’ in any overhaul package: a public option, an employer mandate and no tax on employer-provided health benefits,” reported Politico.
“Asked if the union would work against any bill that did not hit those targets, Trumka told reporters during a briefing: ‘That means we won’t support the bill if it doesn’t have the public option.’”
via Raw Story » AFL-CIO threatens Democrats over public option.
Protester holds up a copy of the ‘U.S.S. Constitution’ to prove that Congress can’t regulate health care.
OPS: When are the rest of us going to face facts? We are dealing with mentally damaged individuals here.
Protester holds up a copy of the ‘U.S.S. Constitution’ to prove that Congress can’t regulate health care. – Think Progress »
One of the newest right-wing memes is that federal government doesn’t have the constitutional authority to enact health care reform. At a town hall protest in San Diego on Saturday, one attendee tried to make one of these “tenther” arguments by holding up a copy of the “U.S.S. Constitution’:
Right here. I got a book here called the U.S.S. Constitution. I’m sure everybody’s seen this before. And you know what? I’ve this book three times now, and I’ve referenced it dozens of times and I can’t find one little paragraph in here that says the government has the right to take over our health care.
Watch it:
Grassley: The ‘Only Way To Get A Bipartisan Agreement Is To Defeat A Democratic Proposal On The First Hand’
OPS: Don’t you have to wonder what alternate universe his definition of Bipartisan come from?
Grassley: The ‘Only Way To Get A Bipartisan Agreement Is To Defeat A Democratic Proposal On The First Hand’ - Think Progress »
Over the August recess, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), one of the three Republicans engaged in the “Gang of Six” health care negotiations, has repeatedly made public statements that have created deep doubts about his commitment to reaching a bipartisan deal on health care reform. Just yesterday, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein reported that Grassley sent out a fundraising letter requesting help in his effort to “defeat ‘Obama-care.’”
Now, Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports that on a conference call with Iowa radio reporters today, Grassley suggested that the only way to reach a bipartisan compromise would be to first defeat the current Democratic health care proposals:
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says there may be only one path Democrats can take to get Republicans to support for health care reform. “There’s a feeling that the only way to get a bipartisan agreement is to defeat a Democratic proposal on the first hand and then the Democrats will come to Republican leadership and then, at that point, they’ll know the only way they’re going to get health care reform is bipartisan,” Grassley says.
Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory: Nancy Pelosi Is Banning Patriotic Hold Music On Congressional Phones
Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory: Nancy Pelosi Is Banning Patriotic Hold Music On Congressional Phones – Think Progress » 
muicnotes3 Today, the right-wing site The New Ledger has a report about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “problem” with “patriotic music”:
If you’ve ever been stuck on hold with a congressional office in the past, at least you’ve been able to enjoy some good patriotic music, as opposed to the lilting tones of generic smooth jazz that have been driving elevator users insane for decades. For years, congressional offices have played patriotic anthems as the background music during hold times.
Not any more. After we were startled by the hold music when we called a House office recently, sources on Capitol Hill informed us this week that the Democratic House leadership has made a sweeping decision that congressional offices now have the options of “smooth jazz” elevator music or no music at all.
Rep. Nadler Says Holder’s Torture Investigation Should Examine Cheney
Rep. Nadler Says Holder’s Torture Investigation Should Examine Cheney – Think Progress »
Last week Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he will be appointing U.S. attorney John Durham as a special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes committed by CIA interrogators who “went beyond the legal guidelines” for interrogations set out by the Bush administration.
Human Rights Watch responded to the announcement by imploring Holder to go further and investigate those who “planned, authorized, and facilitated the use of abusive methods.” As constitutional attorney and blogger Glenn Greenwald has noted, Holder’s investigation would effectively immunize interrogators who complied with the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) interrogation memos, which authorized brutal torture, and ensure that White House officials who authorized torture “will never be held to account.”
In an appearance today on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) echoed the concerns of these advocates. He told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that Holder should not “limit the investigation” to field interrogators and that he should also investigate the people who gave the orders that resulted in abuse and torture, including former Vice President Cheney:
via Think Progress » Rep. Nadler Says Holder’s Torture Investigation Should Examine Cheney.
Iran offers to resume nuclear talks
Iran offers to resume nuclear talks | | guardian.co.uk
Leading nuclear negotiator in Iran offers talks with six-nation group but west remains cautious
Iran said today that it was ready to resume negotiations over its nuclear programme and a broad range of other issues with a six-nation group of major powers.
Said Jalili, the country’s lead nuclear negotiator, issued a statement saying Tehran had completed a package of proposals for dialogue “regarding all security, political and economic issues, in addition to the nuclear issue”.
However, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, who heads negotiations for the six-nation group, had not been informed of the Iranian package by this afternoon. Solana is travelling around the Middle East, but a spokeswoman in his Brussels office said: “There are plenty of people here ready to take the call. I am not aware of any contact or message or transmission.”
via Iran offers to resume nuclear talks | World news | guardian.co.uk.
US Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques
US Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques
One of the first women to die in Iraq shot and killed herself after objecting to harsh “interrogation techniques.”
The true stories of how American troops, killed in Iraq, actually died keep spilling out this week. On Tuesday, we explored the case of Kenny Stanton, Jr., murdered last month by our allies, the Iraqi police, though the military didn’t make that known at the time. Now we learn that one of the first female soldiers killed in Iraq died by her own hand after objecting to interrogation techniques used on prisoners.
She was Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, 27, a Flagstaff, Az., native serving with C Company, 311th Military Intelligence BN, 101st Airborne. Peterson was an Arabic-speaking interrogator assigned to the prison at our air base in troubled Tal-Afar in northwestern Iraq. According to official records, she died on Sept. 15, 2003, from a “non-hostile weapons discharge.”
via t r u t h o u t | US Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques.
Burner Helping House Liberals Hold Firm on Public Insurance Option
Burner Helping House Liberals Hold Firm on Public Insurance Option – - Roll Call
The Newly Revitalized Progressive Caucus is Ready to Take a Stand: “An organizer for liberal House Democrats says the bloc “isn’t bluffing” as it prepares to take a reputation-defining stand to protect a public insurance option in the health care overhaul.”
An organizer for liberal House Democrats says the bloc “isn’t bluffing” as it prepares to take a reputation-defining stand to protect a public insurance option in the health care overhaul.
Darcy Burner, executive director of the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation, said the health care debate has rallied traditionally disparate Congressional liberals to hang together, while galvanizing support for their position from an array of left-leaning outside groups. The result, she said, is that Democratic leaders will not be able to clear a package through the House if it does not include the public plan.
“We have never had the Progressive Caucus organized the way it is right now,” Burner said during a Friday roundtable with Roll Call. “This is not the normal scenario. And Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] knows it.”
via Burner Helping House Liberals Hold Firm on Public Insurance Option – Roll Call.
The Rise of Mercenary Armies: A Threat to Global Security
The Rise of Mercenary Armies: A Threat to Global Security
Help White House Thwart Peace Movement
by Sherwood Ross
The growing use of private armies not only subjects target populations to savage warfare but makes it easier for the White House to subvert domestic public opinion and wage wars.
Americans are less inclined to oppose a war that is being fought by hired foreign mercenaries, even when their own tax dollars are being squandered to fund it.
“The increasing use of contractors, private forces, or, as some would say, ‘mercenaries’ makes wars easier to begin and to fight—it just takes money and not the citizenry,” said Michael Ratner, of New York’s Center for Constitutional Rights. “To the extent a population is called upon to go to war, there is resistance, a necessary resistance to prevent wars of self-aggrandizement, foolish wars, and, in the case of the United States, hegemonic imperialist wars.”
Indeed, the Pentagon learned the perils of the draft from the massive public protests it provoked during the Viet Nam war. Today, it would prefer, and is working toward, an electronic battlefield where the fighting is done by robots guided by sophisticated surveillance systems that will minimize U.S. casualties. Meanwhile, it tolerates the use of private contractors to help fight its battles.
via The Rise of Mercenary Armies: A Threat to Global Security.
Historical facts about the dangers (and failures) of vaccines
Historical facts about the dangers (and failures) of vaccines
by Mike Adams
Vaccines are the quackery of modern medicine. Mass vaccination programs not only fail to protect the population from infectious disease, they actually accelerate the spread of disease in many cases.
Many website have cropped up over the last few years to counter the pro-vaccine propaganda put out by drug companies (who profit from vaccines) and health regulators (who serve the drug companies). One of those sites is www.VaccinationDebate.com , which lists the following historical facts about vaccines:
• In the USA in 1960, two virologists discovered that both polio vaccines were contaminated with the SV 40 virus which causes cancer in animals as well as changes in human cell tissue cultures. Millions of children had been injected with these vaccines. (Med Jnl of Australia 17/3/1973 p555)
• In 1871-2, England, with 98% of the population aged between 2 and 50 vaccinated against smallpox, it experienced its worst ever smallpox outbreak with 45,000 deaths. During the same period in Germany, with a vaccination rate of 96%, there were over 125,000 deaths from smallpox. (http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/020…)
The Hadwen Documents
• In Germany, compulsory mass vaccination against diphtheria commenced in 1940 and by 1945 diphtheria cases were up from 40,000 to 250,000. (Don’t Get Stuck, Hannah Allen)
• In 1967, Ghana was declared measles free by the World Health Organisation after 96% of its population was vaccinated. In 1972, Ghana experienced one of its worst measles outbreaks with its highest ever mortality rate. (Dr H Albonico, MMR Vaccine Campaign in Switzerland, March 1990)
• In 1977, Dr Jonas Salk who developed the first polio vaccine, testified along with other scientists, that mass inoculation against polio was the cause of most polio cases throughout the USA since 1961. (Science 4/4/77 “Abstracts” )
• In the UK between 1970 and 1990, over 200,000 cases of whooping cough occurred in fully vaccinated children. (Community Disease Surveillance Centre, UK)
• In the 1970′s a tuberculosis vaccine trial in India involving 260,000 people revealed that more cases of TB occurred in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. (The Lancet 12/1/80 p73)
• In 1978, a survey of 30 States in the US revealed that more than half of the children who contracted measles had been adequately vaccinated. (The People’s Doctor, Dr R Mendelsohn)
• The February 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 90% of obstetricians and 66% of pediatricians refused to take the rubella vaccine.
• In 1979, Sweden abandoned the whooping cough vaccine due to its ineffectiveness. Out of 5,140 cases in 1978, it was found that 84% had been vaccinated three times! (BMJ 283:696-697, 1981)
• In the USA, the cost of a single DPT shot had risen from 11 cents in 1982 to $11.40 in 1987. The manufacturers of the vaccine were putting aside $8 per shot to cover legal costs and damages they were paying out to parents of brain damaged children and children who died after vaccination. (The Vine, Issue 7, January 1994, Nambour, Qld)
via Historical facts about the dangers (and failures) of vaccines.
Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’
Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’ – | CommonDreams.org
by Diane Farsetta
Even critics of World Water Week, held annually in Stockholm, Sweden, agree that it’s an important forum where thousands of people working on water issues share information.
This year’s event, held from August 16 to 22, placed special emphasis on the relationship between water and climate change. The closing statement was literally a message to COP15, the major United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December. “Water is a key medium through which climate change impacts will be felt,” it reads, adding that “water-related adaptation” should be seen as part of the solution. The statement also calls for funding “to assist vulnerable, low income countries already affected by climate change,” along with longer-term adaptation efforts.
So why are there critics of World Water Week? In a word, Nestlé.
via Water: The Newest Wave of Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’ | CommonDreams.org.
For farmers, climate change more than theoretical
For farmers, climate change more than theoretical
Margaret Krome
A recent day was supposed to be cloudy all day, but the sun came out, so I hurried a load of laundry out to the clothesline to avoid using the electric dryer. Weather predictions are famously unreliable. Is that one reason so many people remain unconvinced of the sober truths about global warming?
Of Americans surveyed last year by Gallup, 97 percent were familiar with the problems of global warming, but of that number, only 49 percent believed that rising temperatures resulted from human activities.
Meteorologists say that one problem with communicating effectively about climate change is their preoccupation with just getting day-to-day reporting right. Long-term global climate patterns are that much harder — often being subtle, erratic, and hard to tease from the fluctuations caused by volcanoes, El Nino and similar weather factors.
It’s tempting to respond to doubters with more of the usual data: The five hottest years since the recording of climate data started in the 1800s have occurred since 1997, and the 10 hottest have occurred since 1990.
via opinion: Margaret Krome: For farmers, climate change more than theoretical.
We’re pumping out CO2 to the point of no return. It’s time to alter course
We’re pumping out CO2 to the point of no return. It’s time to alter course – | George Monbiot | The Guardian
Scientists now say peak temperatures will not fall back. Join me in taking the 10:10 pledge – it’s the best shot we’ve got left
Until a few months ago, government targets for cutting greenhouse gases at least had the virtue of being wrong. They were the wrong targets, by the wrong dates, and they bore no relationship to the stated aim of preventing more than 2C of global warming. But they used a methodology that even their sternest critics (myself included) believed could be improved until it delivered the right results: the cuts just needed to be raised and accelerated.
Three papers released earlier this year changed all that. The first, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February, showed that the climate change we cause today will be “largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop”. About 40% of the carbon dioxide produced by humans this century will remain in the atmosphere until at least the year 3000. Moreover, thanks to the peculiar ways in which the oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, global average temperatures are likely to “remain approximately constant … until the end of the millennium despite zero further emissions”.
Lefty Groups Raise $60,000 — In One Day — For Ad Attacking Grassley
Lefty Groups Raise $60,000 — In One Day — For Ad Attacking Grassley – | The Plum Line
Here’s the latest sign that the public option, and the specter of GOP obstructionism, remain powerful motivators of the liberal base:
Two progressive groups have raised nearly $60,000 in less than 24 hours for a new ad attacking Chuck Grassley for opposing the public option.
The groups, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy For America, pulled in $59,747 since their anti-Grassley ad went up yesterday, via their fundraising pitch on the Dem fundraising clearinghouse Act Blue.
“We’ll be significantly increasing our ad in Iowa,” Adam Green, a spokesman for Progressive Change Campaign Committee, tells me.
via Lefty Groups Raise $60,000 — In One Day — For Ad Attacking Grassley | The Plum Line.
GAO Study Confirms the Obvious About Health Insurance: Fixed Markets Claiming to be Free Markets Need Competition
GAO Study Confirms the Obvious About Health Insurance: Fixed Markets Claiming to be Free Markets Need Competition
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS by Meg White
You know that stuff we all learned about free markets and competition in Econ 101? Turns out it actually applies to the health insurance industry.
Yesterday the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a letter to Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-WI). The agency’s letter accompanied a report concluding a study of competition in the health insurance industry commissioned by the senator.
KENNEDY AND DINGELL FIGHT FOR MEDICARE FOR ALL
KENNEDY AND DINGELL FIGHT FOR MEDICARE FOR ALL
April 25, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C— Today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Pensions and Labor Committee and Representative John Dingell, Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, introduced their legislation to give all Americans quality healthcare. Their bill will extend Medicare to all Americans, from birth to the end of life and will reduce costs and improve quality, including more effective use of health information technology. It also puts a new emphasis on preventive care, because preventing illness before it occurs is always better and less expensive than treating patients after they become ill.
“The nation’s health care has reached such a crisis point that the American people are looking for bold action. Our experience last year in adopting health reforms in Massachusetts shows that this can happen. Political leaders, business representatives, health experts and average citizens all came together around a health reform plan, “ Senator Kennedy said. “Congress should follow this lead. I believe that the best plan for the nation is to build on a program that all Americans know and respect by creating Medicare for All. Medicare administrative costs are low. Patient satisfaction is high. Patients can choose their doctors and hospitals. And all Americans will be free from the fear of medical expenses and enable them to seek the best possible care when illness strikes.”
“Not only will covering all Americans improve millions of lives, it will actually save money by reducing emergency room costs and increasing access to prevention services and earlier treatments,” said Dingell. “We will all reap the benefits of a healthier nation, a stronger economy and lower health insurance costs.”
via KENNEDY AND DINGELL FIGHT FOR MEDICARE FOR ALL | Press Release.
Wasserman-Schultz Schools Mike Pence on the Public Option
Wasserman-Schultz Schools Mike Pence on the Public Option - | TPMDC
Republicans are fond of the line of critique which holds that employers will take advantage of the creation of a public option to drop their insurance coverage and pay the penalty, “forcing” their employees into the public option. To do this, they often cite a flawed study by the Lewin Group–a research center owned by the giant insurer Wellpoint.
But as Wasserman-Schultz articulates, that’s not how the policy is set up. If employers drop their coverage, they’ll have to pay into insurance exchanges, where their employees will be able to shop around for insurance plans, including, perhaps, but certainly not limited to, a public option.
Somehow, though, I doubt Pence will take this simple policy lesson to heart.
via Wasserman-Schultz Schools Mike Pence on the Public Option | TPMDC.
Majority of Democrats, Republicans, Don’t Understand Obama Health Care Proposal
Majority of Democrats, Republicans, Don’t Understand Obama Health Care Proposal – | TPMDC
A large majority of Americans (of both political parties) say they find Democrats’ health care reform plan confusing, and that President Obama has failed to clearly explain the proposal
About 67 percent of those questioned in a new CBS News poll said they don’t understand the reforms. Sixty-nine percent of Republicans find the new reforms confusing as do 58 percent of Democrats.
The poll comes at the end of the month in which health care headlines were dominated by words like “death” and “panel.” This weekend, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexandr concluded that “of roughly 80 A-section stories on health-care reform since July 1, all but about a dozen focused on political maneuvering or protests.”
via Majority of Democrats, Republicans, Don’t Understand Obama Health Care Proposal | TPMDC.
Cheney In 2012? Some Key GOPers Aren’t Kidding
Cheney In 2012? Some Key GOPers Aren’t Kidding 
At first, it seemed like a joke. Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto opined on Monday that — if the 2012 election were to turn to national security — “it’s hard to think of a better candidate… than Richard B. Cheney.”
But while his headline — “Cheney for President” — provoked guffaws in some quarters, several of the party’s most well-regarded strategists and pollsters are actually taking the idea deadly seriously.
“The Republican Party needs to move forward and build on its past, not return to it,” Alex Castellanos, a frequent CNN analyst and GOP messaging guru, told the Huffington Post via email. “But if the agenda turns to security, Obama is mired in a no-win mess in Afghanistan, and the Obama administration hasn’t created a single job in four years after indebting the nation for generations, maybe Dick Cheney could run on a theme of ‘Change’.”
via Cheney In 2012? Some Key GOPers Aren’t Kidding.
Bachmann: We should ‘make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers’ against health care reform.
OPS: PLEASE! Please do….!
Bachmann: We should ‘make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers’ against health care reform. Think Progress »
Yesterday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) delivered a “speech filled with urgent and violent rhetoric” at a gathering sponsored by the Independence Institute in Denver. During what was originally billed as a “personal legislative briefing,” Bachmann “got downright biblical” when describing her unwavering opposition to health care reform:
“This [health care reform] cannot pass…What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass…Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom. And we may never be able to restore it if we don’t man up and take this one on.”
According to the Colorado Independent, Bachmann also claimed that many Americans pay more than half their income in taxes, adding “it’s nothing more than slavery.” She affirmed that “you’re either for us or against us on this issue” and bragged about being the country’s “second-most hated Republican woman.” Rather than spending quality time in her home district during August recess, some speculate that Bachmann’s trip signals her “branching out” and sowing some “rich, right-wing Western soil” in preparation for a future national run.
Jindal uses taxpayer money for a helicopter to shuttle him to church.
Jindal uses taxpayer money for a helicopter to shuttle him to church. – Think Progress »
A report by The Advocate in Louisiana finds that state taxpayers have been paying for Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) to go to church…in a helicopter:
In May, June and July, there was rarely a Sunday when the governor didn’t board a taxpayer-funded helicopter to attend church services in far-flung parts of the state. He traveled by helicopter to churches less frequently in March and April. Over five months, Jindal took more than three dozen helicopter trips. Fourteen were to attend church services, according to state records. [...]
At least two aides usually accompanied him along with his security detail and State Police pilots. The public pays their salaries as well as the fuel and upkeep for the helicopter.
The helicopter that the governor uses the most costs $1,200 an hour to operate — about $45,000 for five months of church visits.
Last week, Jindal said that he “visits a church when he receives an invitation” and often “schedules meetings with local officials” afterward.
via Think Progress » Jindal uses taxpayer money for a helicopter to shuttle him to church..
Chamber of Commerce admits calling for ‘the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century’ was inappropriate.
Chamber of Commerce admits calling for ‘the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century’ was inappropriate. - Think Progress »
Last week the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the industry federation that calls itself the “voice of business,” called for a “trial on the climate of science change” that would act as “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” in order to discredit scientific studies around global warming. Now, Bill Kovacs, the Chamber’s senior vice president for environment, technology and regulatory affairs who originally called for the trial, has admitted that it was “inappropriate” to use the Scopes analogy:
My “Scopes monkey” analogy was inappropriate and detracted from my ability to effectively convey the Chamber’s position on this important issue.
Commenting on Kovacs’ original comments last week, Brenda Ekwurzel, a researcher for the environmental group Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the Chamber’s campaign against climate change is like the Salem witch trials — “based on myth.” As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has noted, even though a court found Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution, the state supreme court overturned the verdict on a technicality. The anti-evolution movement lost steam (before being reborn as “intelligent design“) and science textbooks with biblical quotations were phased out. (HT: EnvirowKnow)
Change We Can’t Hope For: Obama’s Narrowing Window of Opportunity
Change We Can’t Hope For: Obama’s Narrowing Window of Opportunity
By Dave Lindorff
The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.
The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks, General Gen. Stanley McCrystal, Obama’s version of Lyndon Johnson’s Gen. Westmoreland, will be coming to him asking for more troops. Things are getting hairier in Iraq too
His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.
via OpEdNews – Article: Change We Can’t Hope For: Obama’s Narrowing Window of Opportunity.
Mexico’s health care lures Americans
Mexico’s health care lures Americans – - USATODAY.com
It sounds almost too good to be true: a health care plan with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work — all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year.
To get it, you just have to move to Mexico.
As the United States debates an overhaul of its health care system, thousands of American retirees in Mexico have quietly found a solution of their own, signing up for the health care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute.
The system has flaws, the facilities aren’t cutting-edge, and the deal may not last long because the Mexican government said in a recent report that it is “notorious” for losing money. But for now, retirees say they’re getting a bargain.
via Mexico’s health care lures Americans – USATODAY.com.
Virginia seeks to privatize rest areas
Virginia seeks to privatize rest areas - - The Boston Globe
Which will it be: fewer places to stop on the highway to catch 40 winks, or fast-food galore at rest areas? That’s the choice facing Congress as it considers whether to relax a decades-old ban on businesses along the nation’s interstate highways.
The restriction was instituted during construction of the highway system, in response to community fears that motorists would bypass local businesses and devastate their economies. Only enterprises that existed before 1960 were exempt.
But now officials in Virginia, one of a number of financially strapped states closing rest areas, want to privatize the sites in order to maintain an important public convenience – and maybe even make money.
The Partnership to Save Highway Communities, whose members include the Association of Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchisees, the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers, and McDonald’s Corp., has opposed Virginia’s efforts.
via Virginia seeks to privatize rest areas – The Boston Globe.
Kansas Rep. Jenkins Laughs at Uninsured Single Mother with Son.
Kansas Rep. Jenkins Laughs at Uninsured Single Mother with Son.
Kansas Congressswoman Lynn Jenkins is at it again! It’s no secret that Rep. Jenkins is quickly becoming the queen of political fumbles. First she won’t share her “secret plan” to reform health care, then she wants a “great white hope” to save the GOP, and now she is laughing at uninsured Kansans and their kids.
Like the woman in the video that Rep. Jenkins laughs at when she suggests the idea of a Public Option – may I remind you Jenkins still has not offered any alternative ways to reform health care – I am in the age bracket of youth coming of age and being dropped off their parents coverage.
I am a college student who only has health care because of my mom’s job, not because of my glorious job as a Pharmacy Technician at Wal-Mart that I sell my soul to for $8.70 an hour in order to help pay the bills and go out every now and again. I am going more and more into debt every semester because of student loans all so that when I graduate I can get a job and slowly dig myself out, and maybe if I’m lucky I can get a job with really good health insurance, and life will be swell.
But until I land that stellar job that will solve all my problems I will most likely be dropped off my mom’s plan sometime during my junior or senior year and left to figure out where to go from there, let’s hope I don’t get sick! I don’t want free health care, but I sure as hell don’t want to work 40 hours a week at Wal-Mart with my newly earned college degree in order to get some health insurance. I want an affordable Public Option that I can buy into and be covered in the very likely possibility of me getting sick.
via Forward Kansas. :: Kansas Rep. Jenkins Laughs at Uninsured Single Mother with Son..
The way we eat is trashing the fragile conditions that make human life possible
The way we eat is trashing the fragile conditions that make human life possible – | Grist
In the ongoing debate about whether sustainable agriculture can “feed the world,” it’s important not to lose sight of what industrial agriculture is doing to ecosystems—both in specific areas and on a grand scale.
Producing and distributing lots and lots of calories, leveraged by fossil fuel and synthetic fertilizers and poisons, may solve certain short-term problems; but the practice also creates long-term ones that won’t be easily solved.
In June, a study emerged showing that so-called inert ingredients in Roundup, Monsanto’s widely used flagship herbicide, can kill human cells even at low levels—“particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells,” reports Scientific American. This is an herbicide that’s used on virtually all of our nation’s corn and soy fields, covering tens of millions of acres of cropland. (It’s also widely used by landscapers and on home lawns.)
Then there was the recent atrazine imbroglio. For years, the EPA has been assuring the public that the highly toxic herbicide, still widely used in the Corn Belt, wasn’t showing up in drinking water in worrisome levels. Turns out that was a lie, as some excellent muckraking by the Huffington Post Investigative Fund revealed. Atrazine exposure has been strongly associated with reproductive health maladies, including a rise in hermaphroditism among frog populations.
Note that corn and soy production, as practiced today, is completely reliant on these two broad-spectrum herbicides.
via The way we eat is trashing the fragile conditions that make human life possible | Grist.
National Security Adviser Says President Obama Is Having Greater Success Taking Terrorists Out of Commission Than Bush Did
ABC News Exclusive: National Security Adviser Says President Obama Is Having Greater Success Taking Terrorists Out of Commission Than Bush Did - ABC News Exclusive:
Responding to criticism from former Vice President Cheney that President Obama is making the nation more vulnerable to terrorism, the president’s National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.), told ABC News in an exclusive interview that actually the reverse is true: President Obama’s greater success with international relations has meant more terrorists put out of commission.
“This type of radical fundamentalism or terrorism is a threat not only to the United States but to the global community,” Jones said. “The world is coming together on this matter now that President Obama has taken the leadership on it and is approaching it in a slightly different way – actually a radically different way – to discuss things with other rulers to enhance the working relationships with law enforcement agencies – both national and international.”
FORMER GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER IS SECRETLY CONSIDERING RUNNING FOR STATE SENATE
OPS: Good News. Too bad it’s being delivered by a rag like this with it’s rightwing slant
SPITZER IS EYEING A COMEBACK - – New York Post
Disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been privately talking with friends about a possible comeback, and is considering a run for statewide office next year, several sources told The Post.
Less than 18 months after he left Albany in a prostitution scandal, Spitzer has held informal discussions in recent weeks about the possibility of making a bid for state comptroller or the US Senate seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand, sources said.
The hooker-happy Democrat has also discussed his own halfway-decent poll numbers in recent surveys, which have shown him more popular than Gov. Paterson, whose own numbers have tanked.
via FORMER GOVERNOR ELIOT SPITZER IS SECRETLY CONSIDERING RUNNING FOR STATE SENATE – New York Post.
The Gang of Six Appears to be Dead — But How Many of Them Know It?
The Gang of Six Appears to be Dead — But How Many of Them Know It?
The White House has, for the first time, spoken out against a member of Max Baucus’s “Gang of Six.” After Mike Enzi used the GOP’s weekly radio to attack the Democrats’ health-care plan for promoting “the rationing of [America's] health care,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs fired back that Enzi “clearly turned over his cards on bipartisanship and decided that it’s time to walk away from the table.”
Everyone I’ve spoken to in the Senate believes, strongly, that this process is about to break down, and the Democrats are going to move forward on a more partisan basis. Presumably, the Republicans in the Gang of Six process have heard the same and have no interest in looking like fools when that happens. And so they’re beginning to use their positions in the negotiations not to further the cause of a final bill, but to enhance their stature as spokesmen for the opposition. Grassley, as noted earlier, is sending out fundraising e-mails attacking “Obama-care.” Enzi is lacerating Democratic ideas under the banner of his party. As far as I can tell, the Gang of Six process is already dead. What’s happening now is that the participants seem to be raiding its corpse.
via Ezra Klein – The Gang of Six Appears to be Dead — But How Many of Them Know It?.
Shrinking Medicare’s ‘donut hole’ will cost you
White House drug deal won’t save money
The plan that shrinks Medicare’s ‘donut hole’ for drugs will wind up expanding your tax load.
NEW YORK (Fortune) — This is the fifth installment in a series of health-care columns by Fortune’s Shawn Tully.
The Obama Administration is touting its pact with the pharmaceutical industry as “an historic agreement to lower drug costs.” Both sides claim the deal will save consumers — and especially — the federal government, a total of $80 billion over the next decade.
A close look at the details of the agreement, however, shows that the new rules could have precisely the opposite effect by substantially raising spending on pharmaceuticals. Seniors will wind up paying less in the short term, but taxpayers are going to get soaked down the road.
Why? Because the deal would weaken incentives for seniors to purchase cheap, generic drugs, incentives that are strong today. It’s brilliantly designed by the manufacturers so that the elderly pay no more from their own pockets to consume costly, brand-name medications, with the government covering most of the extra bill.
via Shrinking Medicare’s ‘donut hole’ will cost you – Aug. 31, 2009.
China’s manufacturing continues to grow
OPS: Also read: US manufacturing continues to decline
China’s manufacturing continues to grow - FT.com
China’s manufacturing sector expanded for a sixth straight month in August to a 16-month high according to two indices published on Tuesday, an indication that economic recovery has continued.
Fears that government curbs on bank lending could stall the recovery have led to high volatility in the Shanghai stock market. Chinese shares fell 6.7 per cent on Monday in their biggest fall in more than a year, though the index rose 0.6 per cent to 2,683.72 on Tuesday.
via FT.com / China – China’s manufacturing continues to grow.
Wall Street set for early slide
Wall Street set for early slide - FT.com
Investors await raft of economic data
US stocks were set for further declines on Tuesday as investors prepared for what is traditionally one of the gloomiest trading months of the year.
But Tuesday’s trading is likely to be determined by a series of economic reports expected by mid-morning, including data on manufacturing, construction spending and home sales. Reports on car sales are also expected from midday.
via FT.com / Markets – Wall Street set for early slide.
Here’s a new approach to killing the American worker and drive wages down
OPS: Here’s a new attempt to kill the American worker
Nasscom proposes new service visa to replace H-1B to end abuse
MUMBAI: The country’s software industry body Nasscom has proposed a new category of service visasfor the US to replace the controversial H-1B visa. The service visa will enable companies to send their employees to the US on work for a certain period and will not lead to immigration or permanent residency.
Nasscom has initiated dialogue with key Congressmen and industry groups, such as TechAmerica, Compete America and the US India Business Council, for the proposed change in visa. It is also encouraging a more comprehensive debate on the issue of immigration abuse rather than limiting it only to H-1B or L1 visas.
“We do not wish to encourage the abuse of visas for immigration. Our objective is to get the work done and bring back our people. There are 11,000-12,000 Indians who go to the US for work and their average stay is less than two years,” said Som Mittal, president, Nasscom. He said the service visa, along the lines of the work permit that Europe currently has for overseas workers, would help address the concerns of visa abuse.
U.S. ethanol group wants origin labeling for oil
U.S. ethanol group wants origin labeling for oil - | Reuters
A U.S. ethanol industry group is pushing lawmakers to craft legislation requiring gasoline filling stations to inform customers what country their fuel came from in hopes of increasing awareness about money spent on oil imported from overseas.
“Most Americans don’t want their paychecks going to Venezuela and other regimes that don’t agree with and support the U.S,” said retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark, who co-chairs Growth Energy, the industry group behind the push.
Clark said Growth was targeting lawmakers such as U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, chairman of the House agriculture committee, and others from fuel-producing states, and urging them to craft legislation that would require such labeling.
via U.S. ethanol group wants origin labeling for oil | U.S. | Reuters.
Engineering Earth ‘is feasible’
Engineering Earth ‘is feasible’ - BBC NEWS
A UK Royal Society study has concluded that many engineering proposals to reduce the impact of climate change are “technically possible”.
Such approaches could be effective, the authors said in their report.
But they also stressed that the potential of geo-engineering should not divert governments away from their efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Such engineering projects could either remove carbon dioxide or reflect the Sun’s rays away from the planet.
Suggestions range from having giant mirrors in space, to erecting giant CO2 scrubbers that would “clean up” the air.
via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Engineering Earth ‘is feasible’.
White House fears liberal war pressure
OPS: it’s about damned time they started feeling pressure from the Left on many issues.
White House fears liberal war pressure- – POLITICO.com
White House officials are increasingly worried liberal, anti-war Democrats will demand a premature end to the Afghanistan war before President Barack Obama can show signs of progress in the eight-year conflict, according to senior administration sources.
These fears, which the officials have discussed on the condition of anonymity over the past few weeks, are rising fast after U.S. casualties hit record levels in July and August.
The aides also expressed concern that Afghan election returns, still being tallied, will result in a narrow reelection for President Hamid Karzai that could result in qualms about his legitimacy — “Tehran II,” as one official put it, in reference to the disputed Iranian election.
The result: some think Afghanistan – not health care – will be the issue that defines the early years of the Obama administration.
via White House fears liberal war pressure – Mike Allen – POLITICO.com.
Attorney General Plans Reshaping of Civil Rights Division
Justice Dept. to Recharge Enforcement of Civil Rights – - NYTimes.com
Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.
As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.
To bolster a unit that has been battered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers, a significant increase for a relatively small but powerful division of the government.
via Attorney General Plans Reshaping of Civil Rights Division – NYTimes.com.
Seven Points About Dick Cheney and Torture
Seven Points About Dick Cheney and Torture
By Jeremy Scahill 
First of all, Dick Cheney has all sorts of nerve purporting to speak in defense of the CIA. His administration outed a senior CIA operative, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, exercising his freedom of speech (because he exercised it to criticize the Bush administration’s lie-filled, one-way propaganda train to the Iraq war).
Second, CIA interrogators themselves have said that they believed that Cheney’s torture policy put individual CIA personnel in legal jeopardy. As Greg Sargent has pointed out, on page 94 of the recently released Inspector General’s report, we learn the following:
“During the course of this Review, a number of Agency officers expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action resulting from their participation in the CTC program….One officer expressed concern that one day, Agency officers will wind up on some “wanted list” to appear before the World Court for war crimes…”
This is not even to mention, in a broader sense, the risk to any US personnel that possibly ended up in “enemy” hands where captors of US prisoners could justify their own acts of torture by pointing to US tactics.
via RebelReports – Seven Points About Dick Cheney and Torture.
Steroids, drink and paranoia: the murky world of the private security contractor
Steroids, drink and paranoia: the murky world of the private security contractor- - The Independent
Terri Judd on the guns for hire fighting for business in Iraq and Afghanistan
Paranoid, competitive and fuelled by guns, alcohol and steroids. That is how one senior contractor in Baghdad describes the private security industry operating in the city’s Green Zone.
It was the world to which Danny Fitzsimons, a 29-year-old former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoia, and with an extensive criminal past, returned three weeks ago.
Despite rules against alcohol, his ArmorGroup colleagues welcomed him with a drinking session. A fight broke out and he shot and killed two of them – a Briton, Paul McGuigan, and an Australian, Darren Hoare – then wounded an Iraqi, Arkhan Mahdi. He faces a premeditated murder charge and execution if found guilty.
China to start building an orbital space station in 2020
China to start building an orbital space station in 2020 – | International Space Fellowship
BEIJING, August 31 – China will begin the construction of its own orbital space station in 2020, the Sina news service said on Monday, citing a top official with the country’s manned spaceflight program.
Gu Yidong said that China would sent two or three space labs into orbit in 2010-2015, while the basic module of the space station is to be orbited by 2020.
The spacecrafts will “form the basic orbital complex of the Chinese space station” when docked together, he said.
According to earlier Chinese media reports, China plans to send a manned mission to the Moon by 2030 and subsequently build a lunar base to send missions to other planets in the Solar System, such as Mars. By 2050, China plans to develop and launch a research probe to space bodies outside the Solar System.
A Chinese astronaut conducted the country’s first spacewalk last September, making China the third country in the world after Russia and the United States to send a man into open space.
via China to start building an orbital space station in 2020 | International Space Fellowship.
To pay unemployment, Florida may borrow over $1 billion
To pay unemployment, Florida may borrow over $1 billion - Raw Story »
Florida has become the 19th state to borrow money to keep unemployment benefits flowing after the trust fund ran dry.
So far the state has borrowed $45 million, but officials estimate that it will have borrowed $1.2 billion by the end of the year.
As we detailed earlier this year in our series with public radio’s Marketplace, states operate their own unemployment insurance systems with little federal control over benefit levels and how well they choose to finance their systems. Like many states, Florida requires employers to pay unemployment insurance tax only on the first $7,000 of each employee’s income — the federal minimum, which has not been updated since 1983.
Is your state’s trust fund in danger of running out? See our interactive map .
via Raw Story » To pay unemployment, Florida may borrow over $1 billion.
Euro jobless rate climbs to 9.5 pct
OPS: Does the EU have a U3 and U6 equivalent?
Euro jobless rate climbs to 9.5 pct
Euro-zone unemployment hits new 10-year high of 9.5 percent in July
The jobless rate in the 16 nations that use the euro climbed to a new 10-year high of 9.5 percent in July despite other signs that the economy is starting to recover, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said Tuesday.
Rising unemployment amid continuing price falls — inflation ran negative for the third straight month in July, although price declines were smaller — is likely to leave the European Central Bank holding its key interest rate steady at 1 percent at its meeting Thursday.
The unemployment rate rose from 9.4 percent in June, with 167,000 more people seeking work in July.
via Euro jobless rate climbs to 9.5 pct – Yahoo! Finance.
Sen. Nelson: Health Care Reform to Pass – without a public option.
Ben. Nelson: Health Care Reform to Pass - theledger.com
Health care reform will pass Congress this year, but without many of the provisions in the House bill and without a public option.
And Osama bin Laden will be found by the United States within a year, but it will not end the threat of terrorism.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson made those predictions Monday during his tour and teaching assignment at Summerlin Academy, the military-style public school in Bartow.
Nelson, who like his colleagues in Congress has been touring his state during the August recess, later had lunch with members of Citrus Mutual in Lakeland and heard concerns of the industry.
The Melbourne Democrat’s visits back home were altered slightly for Friday and the weekend because members of the Senate went to Boston for the funeral of the Sen. Ted Kennedy.
via Sen. Nelson: Health Care Reform to Pass | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL.
Catholic League president: Atheists ‘out there to get us’
Catholic League president: Atheists ‘out there to get us’ - Raw Story »
Catholic League President Bill Donohue presented a paranoid side of his personality to Fox News Monday morning, declaring that “militant, dogmatic” atheists are “out to get” Catholics and dismantle American society.
“I’m talking about the extremists within [liberal] ranks who have become very, very vocal,” Donohue said. “And over the last several decades what we’ve seen is an all-out assault. This kind of new atheism. This militant dogmatic fundamentalist atheism out there to get us.”
Donohue appeared on Fox & Friends to talk about his new book, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America.
Donohue, whose Catholic League represents an estimated 350,000 Catholics, also went on the attack against “disaffected” Christians.
via Raw Story » Catholic League president: Atheists ‘out there to get us’.
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Republicans Don't Care about Voter Fraud....owa Republicans are trying to dismiss claims that the vote count in Tuesday's Iowa Caucus was wrong. An Iowa voter told a local TV station yesterday that he noticed a 20-vote discrepancy in the count - and that Rick Santorum was the real winner of the Caucuses. Republican Party officials, though, are sticking to their first count - showing Mitt Romney as the winner by 8-votes - and there will be no recount.The Republican Party has launched a war on voters around the nation this year with strict new laws that will disenfranchise over 5 million Americans. They claim these laws are necessary to combat so-called voter fraud. Yet in Iowa - where there are no such laws - and where a very, very close and questionable election was just held - Republicans don't seem to care at all about getting it right.Clearly - the war on voters isn't about making sure the people's voices are represented accurately - it's about making sure poor people, young people, and minorities who tend to vote for Democrats - can't vote at all.-Thom(Who do you think won? Tell us here.) -
LEGALIZE Democracy
" We the corporations" On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. __________
MOVE to AMEND
a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE Democracy
Help end Corporate personhood
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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. 
