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"The strategic activism of Progressive Democrats of America gives me new hope that the Democratic Party and our country can be turned around. Out of the ashes and despair of the 2004 election, PDA has been carrying the torch for progressive activism -- PDA is working hard to establish chapters in every congressional district. I was there when PDA launched in Roxbury, Mass., and I’m spreading the word about PDA everywhere I go."
- Rep. Barbara Lee, Co-Chair, Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC)
Early this morning, PDA learned that Rep. Weiner pulled his amendment and that there will be no vote on Medicare for All.
Please, do not make any further calls to Congress asking members to support the Weiner amendment.
Look for an email from the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Healthcare later today explaining this sudden development.
In the coming hours, look for email messages from Congressmen Weiner, Kucinich and Conyers explaining next steps.
We want to thank all of you who have been working the phones and keeping up with the barrage of actions. While we won't get our vote on Weiner, we still have work to do. [more]
Published by Associated Press.
Planned Saturday vote on health bill could be delayed until Sunday or later
A House leader says Democrats haven't yet lined up enough votes to pass their health care overhaul bill.
Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland says the vote that House Democrats had scheduled for Saturday could slip to Sunday or early next week.
Hoyer acknowledged to reporters Friday that Democratic leaders don't yet have the 218 votes needed to pass President Barack Obama's historic health overhaul initiative. [more]
Published by Physicians for a National Health Program.
The new House bill for health care reform (HR 3962), unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi on October 29th, will not fundamentally reform U. S. health care. If you would believe the hype that accompanied its release, you might think that it would be as important as Medicare and Social Security. The New York Times concluded that “This bill will take a long stride toward universal coverage while remaining fiscally responsible.” Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman added: “The political environment is as favorable for reform as it’s likely to get. The legislation on the table isn’t perfect, but it’s as good as anyone could reasonably have expected.” [more]
Published by The Huffington Post.
Defying Washington’s conventional wisdom on health care reform, two senior Democratic House members are preparing a grassroots campaign to sustain a vigorous public option following a vote scheduled Saturday.
To keep Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed successor to H.R. 3200 as strong as possible during conference negotiations with the Senate, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas are building on momentum from the unique town hall-style hearing they hosted Oct. 27. [more]
Published by Alternet.
Thousands of right-wingers rallied yesterday on the lawn on the U.S. Capitol building to hear a parade of Republican lawmakers warn them of an alleged threat to their freedom embedded in the secret channels of the health-care reform bill unveiled last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Lawmakers expect to vote on the bill this Saturday.
Congressional star power was provided on the podium by the likes of Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who called for the rally from the hallowed platform of Sean Hannity's FOX News program. Other big names on the Capitol podium included House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio; Joe "You Lie" Wilson, R-S.C., (who got a huge ovation from the crowd) and Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., who promised that he was doing all he could to ensure that "not one Republican" votes for the health-care reform bill. [more]
Published by The Huffington Post.
That's the number that echoes throughout Rep. Eric Massa's (D-N.Y.) five minute speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, as he fervently calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan. Massa builds his speech by listing off numbers that underscore the massive amounts of money that have been spilled into the war: 2,950 is the number of days we have spent in Afghanistan, $300 billion is how much we have now spent, which comes out to $3,947.36 spent by every family of four. [more]
Published by t r u t h o u t.org.
At approximately 1:30 p.m. CST [yesterday], a soldier went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, killing 12 people and wounding at least 31 others, according to base commander Lieutenant-General Bob Cone.
Truthout spoke with an Army Specialist who is an active-duty Iraq war veteran currently stationed at the base. The soldier spoke on condition of anonymity since the base is now on “lockdown,” and all “non-authorized” military personnel on the base have been ordered not to speak to the press.
“A soldier entered the ‘Soldier Readiness Center (SRC)’ with two handguns and opened fire,” the soldier, who is currently getting treatment for traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) explained. “That facility is where you go just before you deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.” [more]
Published by The Nation.
Thursday's shootings at Fort Hood army base in Texas--which have left at least 11 people dead and 31 others wounded--were of course the "horrific outburst of violence" that President Obama bemoaned and condemned Thursday.
But, because a soldier identified as the gunman had a name that led to the presumption that he was Muslim, the incident inspired an all-too-predictable outbreak of Islamophobia.
News reports named the man who used two handguns in the assault on his fellow soldiers at a base that is a prime point of departure for troops headed to Iraq and Afghanistan as Major Malik Nidal Hasan. [more]
Published by Creators.com.
Trade and globalization: When not referencing blockbuster sports transactions or raucous street protests, debates over these abstract terms can give Ambien and Jack Daniels a run for their money as a cure for insomnia. Of course, that’s the problem—the rules governing what we buy and sell are now playing such a decisive role in almost every major policy that we’re falling asleep at our peril. [more]
Published by Politico.
While Sen. Barbara Boxer was celebrating her committee’s passage of a sweeping climate change bill Thursday, other Democrats and Republicans were already looking for a Plan B.
Rank-and-file members from both parties dismissed the Boxer bill, coal-state senators were unhappy and many said Boxer’s move to approve the bill without any Republicans even in the committee room had poisoned the process. [more]
Published by The New York Times.
Roald Gunderson, an architect who may revolutionize the building industry, shinnied up a slender white ash near his house here on a recent afternoon, hoisting himself higher and higher until the limber trunk began to bend slowly toward the forest floor. [more]
Published by RobertReichsblog.
The Administration's biggest economic mistake so far was to badly underestimate last January how bad the employment situation would become by Fall. As a result, it low-balled the stimulus--settling for a plan that, while avoiding even worse job losses, didn't go nearly far enough.
Obama has to return to Congress, seeking a larger stimulus. [more]
Published by The Washington Post.
In his own telling, Bernard Madoff was a version of the serial killer who leaves notes saying, "Stop me before I kill again." In Madoff's case, he was waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to ask him how he took in billions of dollars, never invested any of it and was reporting steady investment earnings. The answer, it seems, is that he had accomplices--the Keystone Kops of the SEC who were always letting Madoff down: "I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago." So do others.
Madoff spoke those very words in June when he told H. David Kotz, the SEC's inspector general, how he managed to bilk some of American's savviest investors out of billions of dollars. Madoff's scheme was the essence of utter simplicity. He relied on both the kindness of strangers and the stupidity of investigators. It worked brilliantly. [more]
Published by Counterpunch.
Never underestimate the capabilities of the slightest American muscle-flexing.
After deliberately failing to use its massive economic and diplomatic influence in the tiny Central American country, the US has reportedly given the international community reason to breathe a sigh of relief in what Hillary Clinton is calling an “historic agreement”. According to the US, the Honduran governmental power struggle has been resolved, and an agreement for President Manuel Zelaya to be reinstated has been reached. [more]
In Washington, “healthcare reform” has degenerated into a sick joke.
At this point, only spinners who’ve succumbed to their own vertigo could use the word “robust” to describe the public option in the healthcare bill that the House Democratic leadership has sent to the floor.
“A main argument was that a public plan would save people money,” the New York Times has noted. But the insurance industry--claiming to want a level playing field--has gotten the Obama administration to bulldoze the plan. “After House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care bill [on October 29], the Congressional Budget Office said the public plan would cost more than private plans and only 6 million people would sign up.” [more]
Published by ConsortiumNews.
[EDIOTR"S NOTE: PDA believes that healthcare is a human right and remains committed to Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare.]
When the U.S. health care debate began last spring, the insurance industry and its congressional defenders fretted over the prospect that 119 million Americans might defect from private insurance to a public option, thus devastating the business model of wealthy insurance companies.
Since then, however, the industry has won so many concessions that the threat from the surviving public option has shrunk to about five percent of its feared effect. In assessing the House leadership’s health reform bill, the Congressional Budget Office projects that only six million Americans could or would sign up for the bill’s version of the public option. [more]
Published by Politico.
[EDITOR'S NOTE: PDA believes healthcare is a human right and remains firmly committed to Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare.]
After many months of twists and turns in which conventional wisdom changed too many times to count, a final vote on this year’s landmark health care reform bill is near. There were days and weeks when any hope for a public health insurance option seemed lost, yet this Congress is now a short step away from giving that option to the American people. [more]
Published by The Hill.
The House is headed toward a rare Saturday evening vote as Democratic leaders scramble to placate party factions threatening to defeat the healthcare bill over hot button issues such as spending, immigration and abortion.
Meanwhile, AARP is poised to formally endorse the House healthcare bill, according to the AP. The endorsement would be a huge boost to the legislation and would come six years after consumer group infuriated Democrats by backing President George W. Bush’s Medicare prescription drug measure. [more]
Published by SustenanceToday.
A new Congressionally-commissioned report by the National Research Council found that coal-fired electricity generation in the U.S. caused $62 billion in human health and environmental damages during the year the Council studied (2005). Coal-fired electricity caused this $62 billion in environmental impact even without factoring in damages caused by global warming / climate change caused by burning coal. The report, Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production, was sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and is being published by the National Academies Press. [more]
Kucinich makes impassioned plea
On November 3, only thirty-three US Representatives voted to oppose the ill-conceived and misinformed resolution condemning the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) commission's report. the commission was chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone. See the roll call vote here. If your member voted "No," please thank him or her. Find contact info here.
Yet again, Congress determined that it was more important to protect the campaign contributions from the powerful AIPAC lobby, than it was for them to take a balanced and even handed approach in the Middle East. The report found evidence of war crimes committed by Hamas and Israel. [more]
Published by t r u t h o u t.org.
Former Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft had a busy day in court yesterday.
A federal appeals court ruled he could not be held responsible for kidnapping a Canadian citizen in New York and shipping him off to Syria where he was imprisoned for a year and tortured.
But, in another case, five men, who had been living in New York and were ultimately deported, won a $1.26 million settlement from the US government in a suit accusing Ashcroft and other officials of racial profiling, illegal detention and abuse of Muslim, Arab and South Asian men in the days following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. [more]
Published by Counterpunch.
Size matters. And it particularly matters when the size of the financial system grossly exceeds the productive capacity of the underlying economy. Then problems arise. Surplus capital flows into paper assets triggering a boom. Then speculators pile in, driving asset prices higher. Margins grow, debts balloon, and bubbles emerge. The frenzy finally ends when the debts can no longer be serviced and the bubble begins to crumple, sometimes violently. As gas escapes, credit tightens, businesses are forced to cut back, asset prices plunge and unemployment soars. Deflation spreads to every sector. Eventually, the government steps in to rescue the financial system while the broader economy slumps into a coma. [more]
Published by The Onion.
In recognition of mankind's inherent propensity for tragically foolish decisions, Congress allocated nearly $500 billion Monday for the construction of a new national monument honoring human folly. [See the full eleation with notes]
"From Hannibal's disastrous crossing of the Alps to Custer's humiliating defeat at Little Bighorn, human history has been plagued by senseless mistakes, and it is high time we built a memorial to honor that history," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said of the expensive and ill-advised monument. "My deepest hope is that future generations of Americans will one day look upon this pointless edifice and be filled with a sense of awe and wonder at mankind's utter lack of foresight." [more]
Published by The Hill.
The vote on the House's healthcare reform legislation will not be held until Friday evening at the earliest.
The House Rules Committee posted the Manager's Amendment to the healthcare online Tuesday evening, signifying the final legislation as having been officially sent to the floor. [more]
Published by SocialistWorker.
A plan that forces people to buy insurance, and then offers no affordable alternative, isn't reform at all, but the opposite.
After months of rancorous right-wing complaints about a government "takeover" of the health care industry, a proposal for a "public option" has made it into proposed legislation for health care reform under consideration in both the House and Senate.
But the public option is so scaled back that it's barely public--and it can hardly be called an option for most of the millions of uninsured in the U.S. [more]
Published by Truthdig.com.
The most idiotic thing being said about America’s involvement in Afghanistan is that the best way to protect the 68,000 U.S. troops there now is by putting an additional 40,000 in harm’s way.
People who argue for that plan clearly have not read Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s report pushing for escalation. The general is as honest as he is wrong in laying out the purpose of this would-be expanded mission, which is to remold Afghanistan in a Western image by making U.S. troops far more vulnerable, rather than less so. [more]
Published by The Nation.
White House aides announced Tuesday night that President Obama was not watching off-year election results on television.
Actually, the president should have been watching.
Indeed, he should have stayed up late.
Tuesday night started lousy for Obama and the Democrats. [more]
Published by The Huffington Post.
I had arranged to meet David Plouffe on Saturday afternoon at a Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington. The night before, a copy of his new book, The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory, was waiting for me when I checked into my hotel at midnight. I flipped it open, read a few lines and was hooked. I spent the rest of the night reading it.
Plouffe has written the most important political book of the year (for reasons I'll get to in a moment). It's also completely gripping. It reads like a thriller. Even though you know how it ends, you quickly get caught up in every twist and turn of perhaps the most remarkable campaign in American history.
Along the way, I found myself tearing up when I read about the campaign volunteer who had scrimped and saved ("Grabbed some ramen on the weekends... Didn't take the girl to a movie") so he could donate ten dollars to Obama, and laughed at the funny-in-retrospect tales from the trail (like David Axelrod's BlackBerry crashing at a crucial moment because of glazed donut getting stuck in the trackwheel.) [more]
Published by Grist.
The clean energy bill slogging through the U.S. Congress is far weaker than what’s needed. There’s every chance it will a) get weaker still and b) fail to pass in the end. These facts are widely acknowledged among progressives. What’s less agreed upon is who or what is to blame. [more]
Published by McClatchy Newspapers.
How Goldman Sachs targeted foreign investors.
Inside the thick Goldman Sachs investment circular were the details of a secret, $2 billion deal channeled through a Caribbean tax haven. [more]
Published by San Diego News Network. See more healthcare corporation protest stories at Mobilization for Health Care for All.
The protest was a part of a nationwide campaign to dispute health care companies, who demonstrators claim have been raising premiums throughout the recession and have lobbied against the single-payer system.
“The enormous amounts of money you’ve seen health insurance corporations lavishing on members of Congress, on non-stop TV ads, and advertising is killing us,” said protest organizer Jerry Malamud, who was also arrested. “Where do they get the money they spend to rig debate about the health care system? By denying care to those who need it most--in California one out of every five treatments is denied by an insurance company, resulting in denial of treatments and deaths.” [more]
Published by Foreign Policy in Focus.
While President Barack Obama reviews his strategy on Afghanistan, a perfect moment to send a strong unified message to end the war is slipping through our fingers. Whether it's because we seem to have bought into the lies about the goals of this war or because we mistakenly feel that a Democratic president is going to come to the right conclusion on his own, one thing is clear: There's no debate within the Democratic Party or in the White House about whether to end the war. The only thing being debated is how to continue the war. [more]
The unfortunate and untimely death of Senator Edward Kennedy created a vacant U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts. In accordance with Massachusetts’s law a special senatorial election is scheduled for early January 2010 to fill the vacant seat. Four Democratic Party candidates have announced their candidacies, with the ultimate candidate to be selected in a special Democratic Party primary to be held on December 8, 2009.
In response to this unique situation, PDA MA sent out an endorsement questionnaire to all four declared Democratic Party candidates; two responded. PDA MA members reviewed the candidates’ answers and met to consider the question of endorsement. CDs 1 and 2 met on Tuesday, October 27, in Greenfield, and CD 3 met on Saturday, October 31, in Worcester; the three active chapters voted to endorse Congressman Mike Capuano based on his responses to the questionnaire and his record as a U.S. Congressman. [more]
Published by The Nation.
The Washington Post positions itself as a "must-read" daily almanac of the political class – a reliable source of information and insight regarding all things electoral.
That goes double for congressional elections, since the Post is the "hometown paper" of the federal government's company town.
As such, the Post can be expected to follow congressional contests with a rigor and clarity that exceeds that of talk-radio and talk-TV, right? Wrong. [more]
After a powerful conference call with the PDA Clean Elections Group this past week, PDA members were thrilled to learn of the upcoming ballot measure that will establish a pilot program for Fair Elections (Full Public Funding of Elections) in California. Finally there is a chance to start getting the outrageous amount of money out of the political game—a game that we can see in the current healthcare fight influences everything Progressives believe in.
The proposition due to be on the June 2010 California statewide ballot will be called the California Fair Elections Act and will show Californians how they can take back their state by getting politicians out of the fund-raising game so that they will focus on our priorities.
Authored by Sen. Loni Hancock (D-Oakland) and signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger, the California Fair Elections Act would establish a voluntary pilot project for California's secretary of state races in 2014 and 2018. PDA members in California were critical, with their grassroots efforts, calls, faxes and emails, in getting this bill passed to put the act on the ballot. [more]
Published by The Washington Post.
Supporters of the climate bill passed by the House and the similar bill under consideration in the Senate--including President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders--say that the cap-and-trade approach would guarantee greenhouse-gas reductions. But this claim ignores the flaws inherent in both bills that would undermine even their weak emissions-reduction targets and would lock in climate degradation. [more]
Published by Robert Reich's Blog.
Presidents tend to overcompensate for the errors of their predecessors in the same party and in so doing sow seeds of their own mistakes. Bill Clinton wanted above all to avoid Jimmy Carter's fate--losing re-election because the economy was heading south on Election Day. So Clinton made a deal with Alan Greenspan to slash the budget deficit and thereby jettison much of his ambitious campaign agenda (that was Greenspan's precondition for lowering interest rates and causing an economic boom in time for the re-election) and then Clinton took direction from Dick Morris, who told him to move to the right. The result: Clinton avoided Carter's failure and won re-election handily. But the Clinton years produced few if any major social reforms. Clinton spent so much of his initial political capital, as well as his time and energy, on deficit reduction that he didn't have enough left to enact health care in 1994. [more]
Published by the Daily Mail.
A U.S. plane that featured in a European Parliament report into the 'extraordinary rendition' of terror suspects was met by two SAS helicopters in a secret operation at one of Britain's biggest airports.
The Gulfstream jet landed at Birmingham International Airport on Friday, October 2, having flown in from an undisclosed location, and was seen by a member of staff being met minutes later by the Special Forces regiment aircraft. [more]
Published by The Washington Post.
Number of names on terrorist watch list at 400,000, agency says
Newly released FBI data offer evidence of the broad scope and complexity of the nation's terrorist watch list, documenting a daily flood of names nominated for inclusion to the controversial list. [more]
Imagine public elections in which 2 percent are allowed to vote and Diebold gets to nominate the candidates. Or public parks with guest lists of 2 percent of the public, and private prisons for anyone else who tries to enter. Or how about public schools serving 2 percent of children with fully televised lessons broken up by commercials promoting illiteracy? Welcome to the world of the robust public option.
At first the "public option" was to be a massive but less-than-universal healthcare plan that would prove so efficient and effective that over several years the public would all opt into it. It was a backdoor to a civilized system of Medicare for all. Now what's left of it? Now it's a public option for 2 percent of Americans, and in some states 0 percent, to be run by private corporations, with prices set to avoid any efficiency or competition for the wasteful health insurance companies. [more]
Published by The Washington Post.
Many Choices Up to Them: Result may 'depend . . . on where you live'
The debate over whether to let states opt out of any government-run health insurance plan overlooks a key facet of the health-care measures being assembled in Congress: When Washington is done, the shape of any new health-care system is likely to be finalized in Lansing and Boise and Baton Rouge.
Besides the opt-out choice, proposed last week by Senate leaders, health-care legislation being drafted on Capitol Hill would delegate to state officials a multitude of momentous decisions, from what benefits are offered to low-income families to what hurdles to put in front of private insurance companies before they can raise premiums. [more]
Published by The Kansas City Star.
I support a phased withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan, starting Jan. 1 and ending no later than Dec. 31, 2012. The Afghan people have suffered enough and the U.S. government should promote a negotiated settlement to the war.
Afghanistan has been at war almost continually since 1979. We’ve been over there since 2001. At the end of 2012 we’ll have been there 11 years. That’s more than long enough to achieve our mission. And 32 years of war is too long for the Afghans. [more]
Published by Sibel Edmonds Boiling Frogs
Afghanistan: Eight Years On & No Direction Home
We went to Washington to help launch the Afghan American Women’s Association established in honor of a lifetime of humanitarian achievements by Sima Wali. We came away with a clear picture that the women of Afghanistan will continue to have a strong, clear and uncompromising voice in Washington. In listening to the women of this Afghan/American partnership two things were clear: 1. No matter what happens with American foreign policy, Afghan/American women are not going back to the depredations visited upon them by a political system maddened by greed and its dreams of conquest. 2. Afghan/American women will no longer be fooled by politicians who promise democracy and reconstruction but deliver warlordism and corruption. [more]
Published by Examiner.com.
Answering the need for a more balanced and future-focused approach concerning US, Israeli and Arab relations, J Street has just completed its inaugural conference in Washington with over 1500 in attendance. (Oct. 25-28)
Speaking on behalf of President Obama, National Security Advisor General James Jones addressed the conference and congratulated its success, promising: [more]
Published by McClatchy Newspapers.
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. [more]
Published by The Hill.
An amendment to implement a single-payer health system could get between 100 and 200 votes, one of its sponsors claimed Friday.
Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), one of the liberal lawmakers to have led the push for such an amendment, predicted votes in the "mid-100s" on a provision for a single-payer system in the House--if such a vote is even allowed. [more]
Published by The Associated Press.
They may not like it, but many House liberals look ready to accept a compromise health care bill, putting Democratic leaders well on the way to delivering on President Barack Obama's call for overhaul.
After claiming for months they couldn't vote for a bill without the strongest possible government-run insurance option, liberals are putting aside their disappointment over the weaker version in the legislation for a historic chance to remake America's medical system. [more]
Published by The Star.
A British Muslim detained for three years at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison manned by the United States, revealed that the youngest detainee he knew of was a nine-year-old boy who was also tortured like the rest.
Ruhal Ahmed’s story was among more accounts of atrocities committed against the detainees at Guantanamo, told before an open commission hearing which began Friday on the sidelines of an international conference to criminalize war. [more]
Published by Democracy Now.
While much of the healthcare debate in Washington and the media has focused on the proposal to create a government-run insurance program, the legislation being considered includes many other provisions that could change how healthcare is delivered in this country. We host a roundtable with three guests who have been closely following the debate: Lois Uttley, co-founder of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need; Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of Health Initiatives at Community Service Society of New York; and Dr. Oliver Fein, president of Physicians for a National Health Program. [Includes rush transcript] [more]
[Editor's Note: PDA recognizes healthcare as a human right and remains firmly committed to Medicare for all, single-payer healthcare.]
Published by Think Progress.
After he announced his willingness to filibuster health care reform that includes a public option, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) defended his position by arguing that if the public option paid lower reimbursement rates than private insurers, medical providers would shift costs to Americans with private coverage. He also called the proposed plan “a new entitlement program.” As ThinkProgress and others have pointed out, Lieberman either doesn’t understand the details of the public option proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) or he is misrepresenting them. But in a conference call with Connecticut reporters yesterday, Lieberman claimed that it is the more than 60 percent of state residents that back a government-run insurance option that are confused: [more]
Published by The Christian Science Monitor.
Late Thursday, interim Honduras leader Roberto Micheletti announced he would accept a deal that would restore ousted President Zelaya and respect Nov. 29 election date.
After four months of failed talks and false hopes, is the Honduran crisis finally coming to an end?
Late Thursday, after a group of US diplomats rushed to Honduras this week to restart negotiations that had broken down—yet again—interim President Roberto Micheletti announced that his negotiators will sign a deal as early as Friday that could include the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya to the presidency. [more]
Published by Consortium News.
The agenda was top-heavy with RAND speakers, and the thinking was decidedly “inside the box”—so much so, that I found myself repeating a verse from Kipling, who also recognized the dangers of imperialism, to remind me of the real world:
It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down. [more]
Seven Members of Congress have signed an October 30 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting that Democratic Leadership restore the Kucinich Amendment to the health care reform bill before bringing the bill for a vote.
Added to H.R. 3200 in the Education and Labor Committee, the Kucinich Amendment removes an obstacle for states that seek to enact a statewide single payer health care system. [more]
Over 100 people have risked arrest across the country in sit-ins in the last month; a shift in the debate about health care reform is happening in our country. These actions have helped to put a spotlight on the real problem--the insurance corportaions--and have elevated the real solution--Medicare for All. And they have demonstrated the real engine of change: the determined, courageous action of everyday people willing to put their bodies on the line to challenge injustice. [more]
Editor's Note: PDA believes healthcare is a huamn right and is committed to establishing Medicare for All, single-payer healthcare. Published by The American Prospect.
American presidents have tried seven times to bring us into the community of nations that provide health care to all citizens. Seven times the effort failed. More accurately, it was blocked. In the 1940s, the anti-reform movement was led by doctors, through the American Medical Association. In the 1990s, it was led by the insurance and small-business lobbies. [more]
[Editor's Note: PDA recently endorsed direct carbon pricing accompanied by revenue recyling to households over cap-and-trade as the preferred mechanism for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere.]
Published by Reuters.
The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will advance climate-change legislation quickly, aiming to pass a bill as early as next week, committee Chair Barbara Boxer said on Thursday.
"We're going forward hopefully early next week, that's our plan," Boxer told reporters after three days of hearings on the bill she and Senator John Kerry wrote to reduce U.S. industry emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. [more]
Published by The Huffington Post.
As millions of pounds of explosions rip across their mountain communities, including the clean energy landmark of Coal River Mountain, scores of residents from the Appalachian coalfields have joined with supporters from across the country in a series of sit-ins, die-ins, protests, and a haunting "Day of the Dead" funeral procession and sit-in in the courtyard of the Washington, DC headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency. [more]
Published by The Washington Independent.
Among other things in the Homeland Security appropriations bill President Obama signed into law yesterday is a provision that authorizes the Defense Department to continue to conceal photos of the torture and abuse of detainees by U.S. forces. The American Civil Liberties Union had specifically sought those photos, and sued to get them, among other documents relating to detainee abuse, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The exemption signed, however, is much broader than simply the photos sought in the lawsuit. It would apply to any other photos taken between Sept. 11, 2001 and Jan.22, 2009 that the Secretary of Defense has certified would, if released, endanger U.S. citizens, servicemen, or employees overseas. [more]
Published by The Huffington Post.
For four years now, I have been following the fates of the hundreds of men who have been--and the 200 plus men who still are--being held at Guantánamo Bay, and, the record is now clear, most of whom have been tortured. But until this week I had never actually heard such a single man's actual voice.
When I went to the prison in June of this year, we journalists were brought to view the prisoners from afar--exactly as if they were dangerous animals in a cage. They called to us, anguishedly, in a voice that still haunts me. "Can I talk to them?" I asked. Many of them speak English. No; no, no, was the answer. No one is permitted to talk to them. Prisoners in the US have many rights to speak, even from prison; but silencing the Guantánamo detainees has been a key to maintaining a working injustice, as well as a key to manipulating US popular opinion. [more]
Published by Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The defense share of GDP is at its highest level since the first quarter of 1993.
GDP grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the 3rd quarter, driven by a 22.4 percent jump in car sales, the result of the Cash for Clunkers (C4C) program. This increase in car sales accounted for 42.0 percent of the growth in the quarter. Consumption as a whole, which grew at a 3.4 percent annual rate, added 2.36 percentage points to growth. Other components making large contributions to growth were inventories, which added 0.94 percentage points; national defense, which added 0.45 percentage points; and residential construction, which added 0.53 percentage points, its first positive number since the fourth quarter of 2005. [more]
Published by The New York Times.
The best symbol of the $787 billion federal stimulus program turns out not to be a construction worker in a hard hat, but rather a classroom teacher saved from a layoff.
On Friday, the Obama administration released the most detailed information yet on the jobs created by the stimulus. Of the 640,239 jobs recipients claimed to have created or saved so far, officials said, more than half—325,000—were in education. Most were teachers’ jobs that states said were saved when stimulus money averted a need for layoffs. [more]
Published by Tikkun.
The Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress appear to be continuing the Bush administration policy of ignoring and denouncing those who have the temerity to report violations of international humanitarian law by the United States or its allies. The latest example can be seen in their reaction to the United Nations Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict, which was headed by the renowned South African jurist Richard Goldstone. [more]
Published by The Palestine Chronicle.
The celebrated American scientist charged with spying for Israel had asked for $2 million for his secrets, federal prosecutors has revealed.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Stewart D. Nozette on Oct. 19 as he attempted to deliver state secrets to an undercover FBI agent, disguised as an Israeli intelligence operative.
According to the FBI, during the recent weeks and before his arrest, Nozette collected $11,000, through a Washington DC post office box, for sharing sensitive information with the FBI agent. [more]
For several years now, the news media have identified healthcare and the war in Iraq as key issues in American politics. But very little of the reporting or the punditry goes beneath the buzz-word surfaces to the human realities that span from local hospitals to a faraway war.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift,” Martin Luther King Jr. said 40 years ago, “is approaching spiritual death.” Today, nearly one in six Americans has no health insurance, and tens of millions of others are woefully under-insured--while the war in Iraq continues to further skew the U.S. government's budget priorities.
By launching the national “Healthcare Not Warfare” campaign, Progressive Democrats of America is moving ahead with a grassroots opportunity to turn from warfare to healthcare for all. While growing ever since it came into existence four years ago, PDA has been working with--and, more often, pushing--Democrats in Congress to end the occupation of Iraq. And, integral to its progressive program, PDA has been mobilizing support behind H.R. 676, the bill to create a universal single payer system to guarantee healthcare for all. [more]
