Oh, did I forget to mention Zimmerman's father was a magistrate judge in Orange County, Florida?
The lead detective wanted to arrest Zimmerman, BUT the State's Attorney said "NO".
I think it really is about taking authentic leftwing voices off the air waves. Stifling critics of Obama and other corporate Democrats. Anything or anyone who challenges the establishment.
Here's an example from one of the most liberal regions of the nation, San Francisco. Just in time for the 2012 campaign:
The only progressive AM radio talk station, Green960-KKGN, in one of the nation’s most liberal cities, San Francisco, is being taken off the AM dial by radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications, Inc. — a media conglomerate now owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital, LLC — at the beginning of the 2012 Presidential election year.
Adding insult to injury for progressives in the Bay Area, the 960 slot on the dial is being replaced by Clear Channel with the likes of Glenn Beck, Fox News Radio’s John Gibson and other radical Rightwing talkers. Clear Channel’s San Francisco Director of Operations Don Parker in a press release cites Clear Channel’s “goal of expanding talk radio in San Francisco. We saw the opportunity to expand our footprint in this crucial arena as we head into an election year and a population increasingly engaged in local, state, and national events and activism,”
The expansion will amount to moving Green960′s current schedule of progressive talk shows off the AM band, and on to FM’s HD2 radio ghetto where it will become a largely automated “robo-station,” according to several radio insiders familiar with the station and Clear Channel’s plans for it. The station which was formerly Green 960 will have the catchy new name “FM Progressive Talk 103.7-2″ at its new home, if listeners can find it.
The new Rightwing format taking its place on 960 will be known as KNEW, which is currently at 910 on the AM dial featuring a number of Fox News Radio programs. The 910 position will then be filled with a new talk format being developed by Clear Channel called “San Francisco’s Talk 910 KKSF,” which will also include some Fox News Radio veterans.”
We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet. We are more committed to those goals today than ever before.
Bill Clinton comes from there.
Don't worry, plutocrat; Harkin and his colleagues will get over these populist policy promises as soon as they win reelection.
(Living wages -- Oh, what a horror!)
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I would wager that Michelle Duggar has never been to Manila, Philippines (world's most populated city at 111,576.0 people per square mile).
Or Delhi, India (75,512.0 people per square mile).
Or Beijing, China (population has increased 700,000 a year since 2000, and is currently 61,000.0 people per square mile).
Or New York City (27,532.0 people per square mile).
Or Portland, Oregon (4,375.2 people per square mile).
Or San Diego, California (3,771.9 people per square mile).
Or beyond the bright lights of Tontitown, Arkansas (population 2,460, population density 134.2 people per square mile), where she and her family live.
Arkansas, people.
'nuff said.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-controlled Democrats, vote again for Obama in the hopes that he's a closet liberal playing 12-dimensional chess, believing that he's got a plan, a strategy, that nobody can see or figure out, but because he's the smartest, grown-uppiest in the room, in all of Washington (on the whole planet, even) his scheme eludes and confounds us, so we just need to be like Republican voters and have blind faith in our political leaders.
Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]
What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope. London, Philadelphia, where next?
"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
#4 - A Third Party Challenge
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around.
#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republicans"-plan
The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.KEEP READING
It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...
Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?
By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--can't be what, more than $60K a year.
While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.
Really, just let these frickers get what they want.
#3 - Primary Obama
Two powerful arguments for challenging Obama from the left:
MichaelLerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.
RalphNader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).
MichaelLerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington, what's happened to our government in the last 40 years (both parties), has been thoroughly corrupted.
Up until recently I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the DemocraticParty would do it. Due to the hierarchical system of party government, it would be suicide for any professional politician in the DemocraticParty to run against the party's sitting president.
Liberals/progressives within the DemocraticParty, no matter what their rhetoric, no matter what they say, they march to Obama's/Reid's/Pelosi's tune. They vote as they're told to from up top or else they risk the full weight and power and tools of the office of the president, the DNC and the CorporateMasters controlling them. The Party will cover them as best it can, get as many votes as it needs from Democrats in safe districts first, and will only call upon liberals/progressives to betray their constituents from safe districts if it needs them, accompanied by threats/promises of national party help when it comes time for their reelection bid (AlanGrayson, DennisKucinich, 2 examples).
The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the WhiteHouse and a Democratically-controlled Senate overseeing an NSA with today's eavesdropping abilities (I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's really impossible to deny in light of things like this).
As I said, that was up until a few months ago. Word has it that a challenge is coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama. But that would only happen if Obama's numbers went down, and like the idea of the Republicans having a brokered convention, Obama's 'most ardent supporters' would have to wake up and realize that he's sold the people out again and has made more deals with corporations in order to keep any 'normal', moderate Republican from getting into the election.
So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republicans or Independents). And the most likely way that Obama would drop out is if his numbers plummet.
So what's left?
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
You're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republicans. There are other alternatives besides sitting out the election or voting for Republicans. There are other candidates running as independents, from Green to Libertarian, in just about every race. If for no other reason than to get the 5 percent that is necessary for getting a seat at the table, I think that may be enough for great numbers of Democratic voters this time around. And you had better do it because with each passing day it becomes impossible to turn this all around. (I say this as an old, OLD liberal Democrat (a 'New Deal' Democrat) who has never voted for a Republican, I can honestly say that I can't imagine ever voting for a Democrat again.)
I never advise people to sit out elections, because if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. It's what p!sses me off about Obama, and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying them that brung 'im. Because by shutting out liberals, the base, from his administration, by taking single payer, a public option, off the table, eliminating regulatory oversight from finance reform legislations, he's given pro-corporate, Republican-like policies an inside line. The People's advocates can't even get in the door of this government.
About Barack Obama
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
So who will you vote for with the facts as they are today?
Both parties, controlled by corporations, support globalization. "New World Order". Privatizing national resources.
It's nothing that was ever debated or discussed, and certainly nothing that was ever voted for by the American people. Alluded to, but not ever debated openly, extensively, pros and cons, in the public square. In government circles (think tanks, policy schools, etc.), it's revered as being the solution to ending poverty around the world, and by extension, war. "Lift people out of poverty and they won't go to war over resources -- They won't have any reason, no need to fight for their lives".
A real knee-slapper, don't you think?
We need to nationalize our resources, and not shift the nation's wealth to the 1%. The 1% has proven themselves to be lousy stewards and caretakers, and criminals toward the 99%.
About Paul Ryan
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Republicans' push for tort reform has always been a red herring. The cost of malpractice to the health care system is miniscule, and even at that, it covers only a tiny portion of the harm inflicted on patients by a system designed to produce profit, not good results.
What malpractice suits there are are due to regulatory failure and previous tort reform that have allowed corporations to make as much money as they want without concern for consumers' safety.
Before any medical malpractice case even gets to most courts, for judges not to throw it out of court, it must be reviewed by physician panels. When even the board-certified peers of doctors being sued think a patient has a case, then Republicans' pushing tort reform must have an ulterior motive.
What could it be?
It's two ulterior motives, actually.
One is that what tort reform would prevent is discovery. Discovery, the process by which lawyers can legally pierce and penetrate the Corporate veil and learn the dirty little secrets about how that Corporation has operated.
The other is that lawyers, both individually and in professional association, tend to donate more money to Democrats. Republicans would love to stop that flow of bucks.
Citizens of the US have little enough voice and power in this democracy without eliminating one of the last methods for seeking legal redress and remedies for ourselves.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
It's called Affordable Care Act for the same reason legislation that actually weakens air pollution laws, legislation that makes it legal for huge coal-burning power plants spew as much mercury into the air as they want, is called the Clear Skies Initiative. Or that legislation allowing lumber companies to clear cut forests is called the Healthy Forests Initiative. Or that legislation which invades citizens' privacy and curtails basic Constitutional rights and freedoms is called the Patriot Act. 'Clean Coal'. 'No Child Left Behind'. 'Compassionate Conservativism'.
Oxymoron.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Shorter version: It's either put through Republican legislation or nothing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Funny you didn't mention and differentiate Blue Dogs!
Obama and the DLC-controlled Democratic Party got the healthcare legislation through that the insurance industry and PhRma wanted.
Amy Goodman interviewed whistleblower Wendell Potter, former CIGNA executive, yesterday:
AMY GOODMAN: But don’t the insurance companies like this legislation?Read the entire interview here.
WENDELL POTTER: They do. And that’s why this will not be repealed. They like a lot about it. This legislation, we call it "healthcare reform," but it doesn’t really reform the system. There are a lot of good things in there that does make some of the practices of the insurance industry illegal, things that should have been made illegal a long time ago, so that—
AMY GOODMAN: Like?
WENDELL POTTER:—for that matter, there are good things here. But it doesn’t reform the system. It is built around our health insurance system, as the President said. And they want to keep it in place, because it also guarantees that they will have a lot of new members and billions of dollars in new revenue in the years to come.
AMY GOODMAN: How does it ensure that?
WENDELL POTTER: One of the—the core component of this—and it’s kind of ironic, but the one thing that the Republicans and conservatives are saying they want to repeal is the provision that we all have to buy coverage from private insurance companies.
AMY GOODMAN: Like we do for auto insurance.
WENDELL POTTER: Exactly, right. And they’re citing or they’re saying that that’s unconstitutional. That’s also all for show, because it is just an effort to try to, in a sense, turn people away from the idea of reform. It sounds complicated, but it’s part of the insurance companies’ strategy.
'Medical loss ratio' is what you're talking about.
And the insurance industry has already figured out the way around it.
Don't believe me? Don't want to take my word for it? You don't have to. Go call Wendell Potter and Lawrence O'Donnell Iiars:
On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, whistleblower Wendell Potter talks with Lawrence O'Donnell about where the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) is in the legislation, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
Why put the insurance industry into the equation of Americans' medical treatment at all? Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The way that the insurance industry makes its profits is by taking a cut of money that can be spent on medical care. And in reality the insurance industry profits like Wall Street and all other corporations that have crashed our economy have profited: By denying claims and preventing treatment (Wall Street and corporations do it by offshoring manufacturing, outsourcing jobs, eliminating jobs in spite of record profits for short term windfalls to shareholders and bonuses for CEOs, etc.).
The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II) of medical care; the insurance industry is "wetting its beak", letting you get medical care (maybe, if you can afford the deductibles, the co-pays, and if your illness is covered by your policy, but) only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
The controlling meme that has been operational for the past 40 years, the sales pitch for privatizing government services and resources, is that "private industry can do it cheaper". While Republicans (Nixon) began it, Democrats joined in (Jimmy Carter). But it's just not true that private industry does it cheaper. Or even better.
What the insurance industry has charged anywhere from 12-39 percent for, the US government (Medicare) does spectacularly well for 4 percent.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Has Obama used all of the tools available to him then to prevent what you say is the Republicans desire to make America fail? No. If 1 in 8 federal judgeships sitting empty is really a problem (and I think it is), then one of the immediate tools that Obama has available to him is recess appointments. Yet he refuses to use it.
That's what is meant by his failure of leadership.
Obama is either inept or what Republicans are doing is serving Obama and Democrats in some way. Which is it? And if it's the latter, what do you think that might be? Politics? That he gets more out of using Republican obstructionism in upcoming elections than from serving the People and the office he was elected to?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Friday, December 17, 2010
Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?
By Sam Graham-Felsen
Obama entered the White House with more than a landslide victory over Sen. John McCain. He brought with him a vast network of supporters, instantly reachable through an unprecedented e-mail list of 13 million people. These supporters were not just left-wing activists but a broad coalition that included the young, African Americans, independents and even Republicans - and they were ready to be mobilized.
Here's "reality", chum:
During the Bush years, Democrats said if the People wanted change, they had to put Democrats in the majority in Congress. So in 2006, we did.
Nothing changed.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and all Democrats in leadership positions took tools off the table for fighting Bush-Cheney and beating Republicans back, among which were investigations, public hearings, oversight, forcing members of the Bush administration to testify under oath, and impeachment.
They said, "You have to give us more Democrats -- 60 in the Senate".
In 2008, we did. We gave them 60 for the Democratic Caucus. And, we gave them the White House.
Obama came into office with the wind at his back. More people voted for him, a black man in good old rac!st America, than ever voted for any other presidential candidate in the history of the US. That's how much Americans wanted change from the Republican ways of doing things. Voters did it because of Obama's ability to persuade, that he was going to change the system, end the corporatocracy, lobbyism in government -- Obama was going to be the People's president, not a corporate tool.
And no sooner did Obama get elected than he slammed the brakes on the momentum of his election & a filibuster-proof Senate (tentative yet, with 2 senators, Kennedy & Byrd, at death's door), Obama did a 180-degree turn on his promises & slowed everything down. To "work in a bipartisan manner with Republicans", after Republicans had already announced they were going to block everything Democrats wanted to do, vote no on everything, in lockstep.
Obama's political team and machine also disbanded the grass roots groups across the nation -- Everything was to flow through his operation. This was a dead giveaway that the last thing these politicians want is an active populist movement.
KEEP READING
I'm for universal heath care too but Republicans don't want it. I don't see a way forward with our current elected officials.
Obama was completely against mandates. He criticized Hillary's support of them -- Here is Candidate Obama on mandates.
Before the healthcare debate even began, Obama made sure that there would be no public option, no single payer universal healthcare, no means for Americans to choose a public healthcare system, no means for containing costs through public healthcare programs. He took single payer off the table and blocked all efforts to get a public option in the final legislation due to the secret deal he made (and then lied about, and then had to own up to when the memo was leaked).
A caller on CSpan not long ago asked Richard Wolffe, who was out plugging his latest book written from his special access to the Obama White House, if we're ever going to get a public option to keep costs down.
Wolffe makes it clear that Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats never had any intention of going with a public option or expanding public healthcare in any way (although Wolffe is mistaken when he says that Obama never ran on supporting a public option).
If only Obama had kept his campaign promises.
Obama campaigned on reregulating businesses and banks. He campaigned on ending tax breaks and subsidies to companies moving their factories and jobs overseas.
Now? Not so much.
You get the regulations first and THEN you give them the money. You put a whole healthcare program together BEFORE you get money for healthcare IT that, heaven only knows how it can comply with HIPAA. You keep your entire shopping list of needs and wants ON THE TABLE (single payer universal health care) BEFORE you concede it away. Anyone who has ever written a contract, negotiated a deal of any kind knows this.
Obama has done everything A ss-backwards. What he does only makes sense if he's NOT a populist, NOT a liberal (we knew he wasn't, but Obama's most ardent supporters implored people to believe that "once he gets into the Oval Office, you'll see!"), and IS a continuation of the same failed policies of the transnational corporations that have destroyed the middle class.
What Obama is doing ONLY makes sense if what he wants is NOT what Obama's most ardent followers claims that they want. The only way to get Obama to do the people's bidding, get him to champion We The People and not the Corporations is for Obama's 'most ardent supporters' to stop defending him; they work against their own best interests when they do that.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Do you think that 10 million more voters went to the polls in 2008 to vote for Obama than the other guy, more voters than in the history of the nation, new and returning voters, so that Obama and Democrats would write and pass Republican legislation?
Did you?
About Obama Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Friday, December 17, 2010
Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?
By Sam Graham-Felsen
Obama entered the White House with more than a landslide victory over Sen. John McCain. He brought with him a vast network of supporters, instantly reachable through an unprecedented e-mail list of 13 million people. These supporters were not just left-wing activists but a broad coalition that included the young, African Americans, independents and even Republicans - and they were ready to be mobilized.
Single payer. Medicare for all. That is what makes most sense
======================================
Yes, but that's not what Obama (or politicians in either of the parties) wants.
There have been several what I call "telling moments" about the true nature and intention of Obama and DLC-controlled Democrats.
Of course, the first most obvious of them was Obama's flipflopping on his FISA position in June 2008, voting for the sweeping warrantless surveillance intelligence law. Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the "Potomac Primaries" (he was running then as "lefter than Hillary), but issued a statement that day declaring "I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty."
So in February 2008 Obama implied he would have voted no, and in July 2008, after liberal activists had already "fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign", and after the bulk of the primaries and caucuses in heavily liberal states had taken place and he'd gotten their votes, he blew off the left.
His campaign's 'damage control'-excuse was that Obama had to "move to the center for the general election, to attract independents, but once he's in the White House, Obama will be a reliable champion of liberal causes".
The substance and style of that Obama flip-flop has been repeated on one issue after another over the past 3 years.
Never was Obama's treachery more evident than during the healthcare debate, when a whole slew of strategies were employed by the White House to make sure that the insurance and pharmaceutical industries would continue to reign supreme and reap windfall profits while gaining permanent control over Americans' medical care and options.
Instead of what Americans put Obama and Democrats into power to get (affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone), Obama managed to put the insurance industry in as the gatekeeper to Americans' healthcare, requiring Americans to pay the insurance industry, but with no controls over costs.
Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.
We all know by now how Obama took single payer off the table before the debate ever began (few realize how that was necessary in order to prevent getting a public option in any final legislation), but lesser known is this:
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
How Obama has handled the massive problems is EXACTLY how Republicans would've handled them (and how BushCheney was handling them). Obama's not governing as he had promised or as a real Democrat would have.
The real shame, the real tragedy for all of us is that Obama could have been a transcendent president, good for both business AND the People. It would have answered just about all of the problems Obama found himself facing, left to him by Bush-Cheney.
On the domestic front, the job creation possibilities were lost when the real reform proposed by single payer universal healthcare advocates was eliminated from even getting a seat at the table, and Obama chose to preserve an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care, which is government-sanctioned racketeering.
The 'job creation' reform that survived was billions spent on the Patriot Act-like invasion of citizens' privacy and the outsourcing of jobs that's involved with putting medical records on the internet -- All for a system that doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).
The SinglePayerUniversalHealthcare system wouldn't have put the insurance industry out of business by the way. It would've been a two-tiered system: Basic coverage for everyone and boutique coverage for those willing to pay for it. So nobody had to worry about poor Big Insurance and Pharma -- There would have been work for all. Big Insurance and Pharma would just had to have made smarter gambles, with no taxpayer bailouts.
With single payer universal health care, there would be more treatment shifted to non-physician practitioners (nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants, and other allied health professionals). Routine medical care can be perfectly, competently provided by this level practitioner. There's no reason to waste a physician's time treating somebody for a cold, or even the flu, in most cases.
It's true that if universal health coverage were to become an official reality, we'd need to expand training programs for both MDs and non-MD providers to insure there were enough to go around, but in the long run it would mean cheaper and more effective service, along with job creation. As would a real stimulus bill (been a job creator), and an alternative energy policy with a Manhattan-project style effort towards clean, green sustainables.
These are all good things, but Obama and Democrats have chosen the dark side. The corporate side.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Then Obama hasn't been playing 11th-dimensional chess? All of this wasn't a ploy, a bold plan to get single payer universal health care?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I support single payer universal healthcare (affordable, quality medical treatment for everyone) and Obama's legislation doesn't. It supports the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
There is no mechanism in Obama's legislation for lowering the costs of treatment.
Obama put a fox in charge of this chicken coop (former WellPoint executive Liz Fowler) to write and enforce the regulations. Her most notable actions to date have been issuing waivers to businesses that don't want to have to provide insurance to their employees.
Obama's legislation prohibits the very thing that was the top issue in the 2008 election: The government being able to negotiate lower drug prices or reimportation.
Obama's healthcare legislation is Bush's Medicare Reform Act of 2003 (which was a $700 billion + giveaway to Big Insurance & PhRma), Part 2.
Not only doesn't Obama's healthcare legislation accomplish what Obama and Democrats were put into power to get (affordable quality medical treatment for everyone, lower drug prices), it is, in fact, a giant leap toward ending all public healthcare (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, CHAMPUS, veterans care, etc.).
Obama's healthcare legislation puts more people into Medicaid, which the states are required to co-pay along with the federal government. The states are already going bankrupt, and moving toward eliminating Medicaid services as a result. States' options are limited, especially those states with constitutional requirements to balance their budgets. So while people may find themselves covered by Medicaid, if you're thinking that should all else fail you've got Medicaid as your safety net, guess again: Medicaid won't cover c/hit.
Having insurance (which is all that Obama's legislation does, and not even for everyone, just for a few million more) doesn't mean getting necessary medical care or that you will be able to afford medical care. All that Obama's healthcare legislation does is require money to go from here (my pockets/taxpayers' pockets) to there (into insurance companies' pockets).
There is no limitation on insurance companies' charging and increasing co-pays and deductibles and eliminating services. There is no requirement for insurance companies to have to provide services not paid for.
Insurance companies have already figured out the way around the restrictions in the bill. The con game in the legislation -- Medical loss ratio. The amount of money insurers must spend on healthcare, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
So you like Republican policies, which should then make you a Republican.
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Single payer, universal health care. Medicare for all. That is what's needed and that is what Obama shouldn't have unilaterally, on his own, taken off the table.
If Republicans are such scvm (and I believe they are) and "so dangerous", why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting them? Why isn't Obama investigating and prosecuting the greatest heist on the People in all history?
Why are Obama and Democrats continuing the war crimes of Bush & Cheney, and blocking investigations and prosecutions into their crimes?
How does a Democratic president, on the heels of the most criminal and corrupt administration in the nation's history, not replace Bush-era US attorneys? Presidents may fire US attorneys, and they do so routinely at the beginning of a new administration. It is unusual to fire US attorneys in mid-term (as Bush did) except in cases of gross misconduct (which wasn’t the case during the Bush administration). This is what Obama's US attorneys do instead of returning the democracy to the American people -- Instead we get Bush-style obscenity prosecutions.
Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters, and by extension, the military industrial complex.
I suggest that you consider Democrats and Republicans as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.
Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, and continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what We, the People thought they were.
Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.
Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Yes, Republicans are scum, but the fact of the matter is that Democrats didn't need Republicans for passing anything.
Democrats enjoyed a greater majority in both houses of Congress than either party has had in decades. Even without 60 (but the Democratic Caucus in the Senate had 60). But one example is that Obama didn't need 60 to pass real healthcare reform. All Democrats needed was 50 plus Biden (reconciliation), which is what they did in the end anyway, but for a corporate-pork-laden bill with no cost constraints that doesn't provide affordable quality medical treatment for everyone.
But Democrats didn't do that.
Democrats also have refused to exercise the discretion that Rule 22 allows: Making Republicans actually filibuster, instead of just threatening to do it.
Rule 22 gives the SenateMajorityLeader the discretion to actually make the call. Filibustering is hard on those soft, pampered bodies. HarryReid has refused to make them do it, letting them merely threaten. He should. Americans love reality TV. 'Survivor-Washington, DC'. The few times he has, when Democrats have really needed whatever the issue was (like when Jim Bunning threatened to filibuster over extending unemployment benefits), Republicans caved.
The DLC-controlled Democrats aren't forcing filibusters, and Obama isn't taking to the bully pulpit because it might actually work to get Democratic voters' legislative agenda made into the law of the land and do good for the People. And that's not what Obama and DLC-controlled Democrats are there for. They are there to do the work of the transnational corporations, and preventing that are the liberals.
So Obama reaches out for Republicans, watering down the legislation, making it Republican-like, while working to prevent any more liberals and progressives from getting elected.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I am for single payer universal health care, crazy lady. Medicare for all.
And if you want to ever again be addressed seriously or with respect by me, don't reframe my words and attribute positions to me that aren't mine. It's a nasty habit you have.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama took single payer (Medicare For All) off the table, because if the goal is to get affordable quality medical care for all then everything else pales in comparison. He's preserving an anachronistic and failed insurance industry and employer-provided system for medical care. It's government-sanctioned racketeering.
Insurance adds NOTHING to the medical model. The insurance industry is the 'Don Fanucci' (Godfather, Part II -- "I don't want a lot...Just enough to wet my beak") of medical care, letting you get medical care only if you pay them a gratuity up front.
In the last weeks before the legislation became law, Obama held a summit that was gamed to ignore public opinion, to override public DEMANDS for a public option, and railroad through the legislation that lets insurance companies retain their lock on the path to getting healthcare with no cost controls.
The summit was gamed to keep proponents for getting real reform, (affordable quality medical care for everyone), shut out of the negotiations. Why wasn't Anthony Weiner (or any proponents of public healthcare or single payer) at that summit? Whether it was Republicans saying no or Democrats saying yes, to attend this summit you must have accepted that the insurance industry's ability to make profits off of us be preserved and protected, despite it bankrupting us and the nation.
Dylan Ratigan nailed it on a show he did right before Obama entered the last push to get legislation giving the insurance and pharmaceutical industries the keys to the Treasury no real restrictions, no cost controls, nothing that the insurance industry hasn't figured its way around. Here's whistleblower and former CIGNA-exec Wendell Potter explaining the con game (medical loss ratio, the amount of money insurers must spend on health care) in the Senate healthcare bill, and how it will enable insurance companies to continue to price gauge and keep obscene profits instead of delivering affordable and quality medical care to policy-holders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Health insurance ≠ medical treatment.
People need medical care. Affordable, quality medical treatment. Nobody needs to have health insurance.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Facts about ACA:
Insurance is NOT medical treatment.
Having insurance does NOT mean being able to get affordable quality medical care. Mandating that everybody has to purchase health insurance so that a few million people will have insurance isn't the same thing as everyone being able to get affordable, quality medical treatment.
It doesn't even mean that everyone with health insurance is going to be able to get the affordable medical treatment. It doesn't mean that if you pay your insurance premiums, your insurance company is required to pay for all of your healthcare needs.
But that's the 'Bush-speak' that Obama's been getting away with.
Obama and Democrats have been playing with the language, no differently than Bush and Republicans do. Both parties are corporate stooges, protecting the profits of the 1% over the needs of the 99%.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What do you think a doctor's visit and antibiotics for a sinus infection would cost you without insurance?
What do you think that same doctor's visit and antibiotics would cost in deductibles and co-pays if you did have insurance?
About Health Care
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
The scare tactics of these headlines is really shameless exploitation on HP's part.
Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.
Obama's healthcare legislation doesn't control costs and doesn't deliver medical treatment to everyone (not even those who think they're going to get it).
People who voted for Obama and Democrats voted to get affordable, quality medical treatment. That was NOT a vote to protect and further enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats into power to entrench the insurance industry as the gatekeepers to being able to get medical treatment. Voters did NOT send Obama and Democrats to Washington to continue tying insurance benefits to their employment.
Yet that is precisely what Obama and the DLC-controlled Democrats did.
Meet The New 1%: - Healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid:
Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay. One example is Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, who had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98 million.
Agreed on Obama... but not real comfortable with your blurring of terms the term 'liberal,' 'progressive,' 'socialist,' and 'left wing.'
Seems I didn't. I posted this about 15 minutes before your comment.
Your snarky insult and ignorance as to what Lily Ledbetter actually is about tells me that you're more interested in defending your support of Obama and Democrats than in women's rights being "stomped".
Because when faced with the facts, evidence that Obama and Democrats have been complicit in the downward spiral of the nation and the plight of the poor and middle class and women, you and Obama's 'most ardent supporters' dig your heels in and attack real democrats like me who are working out butts off to achieve what it is you claim to be fore. You can't bring yourselves to admit you've been had by DLC-controlled Democratic politicians. Until you can, until you and Obama's 'most ardent fans' hold him and Democrats accountable, there really is no hope for the country, of turning America's decline around.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Nothing really has been done to address the pay gap that exists between male and female employees. Since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law, the pay gap has closed at less than half-a-cent per year. That trend is continuing, as the pay gap barely closed from 2009 to 2010:
Women made 77 percent of men’s earnings in 2009, the year the law passed. In 2010, that was virtually unchanged, as women’s wages rose to 77.4 percent of men’s. The gap is even larger for African Americans and Latinos: black women made 67.5 percent of all men’s earnings in 2009, while Latino women made 57.7 percent. In 2010, those figures ticked up to 67.7 percent and 58.7 percent, respectively.
Women make up half of the American workforce, and in two-thirds of American families, the mother is the primary breadwinner or a co-breadwinner. But they make less than their male counterparts in all 50 states, though the size of each state’s wage gap varies. While the gap continues to close in places like Washington, D.C., where women make 91.8 percent of men’s earnings, it is growing in others, like Wyoming, where women’s earnings dropped from 65.5 percent of men’s in 2009 to just 63.8 percent in 2010.
Because of the gender pay gap, women with the same education doing the same job as men earn far less over their working lifetimes. The wage gap costs $723,000 over a 40-year career for women with college degrees. In some industries, the gap can cost women close to a million dollars.
In November 2010, Senate Republicans killed efforts to close the pay gap when they unanimously voted to block the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have updated the Equal Pay Act, closed many of its loopholes, and strengthened incentives to prevent pay discrimination.
There was another bill out there that would not only have made the technical fix of Ledbetter, but updated the Equal Pay Act of 1963, closed loopholes and made a much bigger difference in closing the pay gap. There was no reason why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act could not have been combined with the Paycheck Fairness Act back at the beginning of the first term, in 2009. But while the bill passed the House quickly, Democrats in the Senate didn’t get around to taking up the Paycheck Fairness Act until the lame duck session of 2010, and it predictably failed 58-41, with all Republicans opposing. There’s obviously no guarantee that the Paycheck Fairness Act could have passed earlier in the term. But it’s plausible to argue that leveraging Lilly Ledbetter, which was a campaign issue, into a real advance on equal pay could have paid off. As it is, the Senate quickly got filibustered with little fanfare in the lame duck.
The point is there were other options. But the legislation that could have made a difference was left behind. And it severely damages the credibility of the Administration and its allies to keep waving the bloody shirt of Lilly Ledbetter when it actually did pretty much nothing for the larger cause of equal pay and equal work.
KEEP READING
Let's look at the Lily Ledbetter Act.
Lily Ledbetter has been at the top of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' lists of his "accomplishments" and has gone unchallenged because to explain the ridiculousness of it as an "Obama accomplishment" can't be done in a 10-word sound byte.
To begin with, claiming Lily Ledbetter as Obama's achievement is like the driver of the winning car in this year's Le Mans race (Mike Rockenfeller) picking up a hitch-hiking Obama right before he crossed the finish line and saying Obama won the Le Mans. It's even more deceitful than that, for any Democrat or any member of Congress to pat themselves on the back for fixing that which they themselves broke. But even that doesn't quite explain it.
Obama and Democrats got into power on a pledge to change the way Washington works. Little is ever said or explained about what that really means. I'm going to attempt it:
By the time that elected officials manage to enact legislation, the problem the legislation is to address has usually grown and morphed into something beyond what the legislation would affect or change, making it either irrelevant or creating a boondoggle that gridlocks later congressional efforts. Or, something else.
With Lily Ledbetter, it took 45 years to have the legislature address a problem (statute of limitations for filing equal pay discrimination lawsuits in the Civil Rights Act of 1964) in what never should've been agreed to by Democrats in the first place in 1964. Lily Ledbetter really had nothing to do with "landmark sex discrimination". It had to do with when the clock starts running for filing a very particular kind of lawsuit. It doesn't affect statutes of limitation for any other kind of lawsuit. It doesn't apply to the filing of all lawsuits. It's just for a particular class of lawsuits - For the filing of an equal-pay lawsuit.
And it wasn't 45 years of Congresses trying to fix it. It was a year and a half. It was in response to the Supreme Court's decision in 2007 in one woman's lawsuit. It's not going to affect millions, or thousands or even hundreds of others - Ironically, if it were to affect more women, it never would have passed, no matter what party held the Congress (because it would have meant more money paid out from corporations to women, and Democrats work for corporations just as Republicans do).
If you want to tout passage of Lily Ledbetter then you're going to have to take the blame for not following it up immediately with legislation for transparency in pay. Being able to find out what everyone else is getting paid. It's a joke without it. It's like taking you to a Michelin star restaurant, blowing the aromas from the kitchen in your face, but not letting you eat anything at all.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Then there's Lynn Woolsey, head of the Progressive Caucus, likes to brag that she was the first to bring a resolution to end the war in Iraq. She, and congressional Democrats, and Obama, ran on ending the practice of paying for the wars through supplemental emergency spending bills, and putting the wars on budget (see why that is significant here).
Democrats have had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) since they took over control of Congress in 2006 and haven't done it. They haven't needed Republicans to do this for years and haven't done it.
As the head of the Progressive Caucus, Lynn Woolsey led 79 of the 82 members of the caucus to pledge that they would not vote for any healthcare reform legislation that didn't include a public option.
Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge. And even when Obama didn't need the last holdout's vote (Dennis Kucinich's) to pass his health insurance windfall legislation, Obama did need to break Kucinich in a big public show in order to put down the public option/single payer movement. Even then, it didn't save Kucinich from being redistricted out of office (he's rumored now to be considering a move to Washington state in order to remain in Congress).
And unbeknownst to Lynn Woolsey's constitutents (it was never reported in her district's newspapers): Progressive Congresswoman Woolsey Endorses Pro-War Blue Dog Jane Harman Over Progressive Marcy Winograd
Democrats have let Obama continue with just about all of BushCheney's policies, and wars, and let Obama go BushCheney even better, by letting Obama assert, unchallenged, that presidents have the right to k!ll Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'preventive detention' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret.
Democrats have abdicated their Constitutionally-required role of oversight of the executive branch; they failed to perform it during the BushCheney administration, and still don't with one of their own in the WhiteHouse.
Shall I go on?
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
On a women's rights, even the most pro-choice of Democrats in Congress, alleged stalwarts who've spent entire careers, decades in public office, have failed miserably to protect women's rights and have let it get to this point. One example would be Barbara Boxer.
In 2006, Democratic senators and the Democratic machine publicly supported Democratic candidate NedLamont who was running for senator in Connecticut against newly independent JoeLieberman. Privately, working behind-the-scenes, Democratic senators and former president BillClinton were working to help Lieberman raise money to beat Lamont, and Republican AlanSchlesinger. Before Lamont won the primary, when Lieberman was still a Democrat, Boxer stumped for Lieberman. She was asked how she could support him given that Lieberman supports hospitals receiving public monies refusing to give contraceptives to r@pe victims, and instead of dodging Lieberman, dropping him like the bad character he is, she dodged the issue.
During the Bush-Cheney administration, she wrote two murder mysteries, because "It was always something I wanted to do if I had the time."
In the 2010 midterm campaign, I asked rhetorically, "If Republicans win back control of Congress, do you think Democrats will be as effective at stymieing Republicans' agenda as Republicans have been the last two years at stymieing Obama's/Democrats' 2008 agenda?" If what Democratic politicians did during the BushCheney years is any indication, no. Let's look at some of the alleged champions of liberals' issues.
BarbaraBoxer has been a terrible champion of liberal issues, but only those paying attention know this.
For example, as a member of Congress, you can't just be for or against something (like abortion) when it comes up for a vote. You have to be meticulous and actively work to set up the conditions surrounding your vote, to make sure it counts. Your 'yes' vote means nothing if there are more 'no' votes to cancel your vote/voice out.
Knowing that, what did Boxer do the entire 8 years of the BushAdministration? She effectively went on sabbatical. She wrote murder mysteries ("Something I always wanted to do, if I ever had the time"). She, of course, took her senatorial salary all those years.
Boxer's support of JoeLieberman in 2006 exposed Boxer's very 'conditional' support of a woman's right to choose (and her general level of ignorance).
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
There is nothing that Republicans have done these past several decades without Democrats having signed on.
We're at a point where women now can't get an abortlon in 92 percent of the counties in the US. There are 3 states in the country that have only one abortion clinic, and other states heavily restrict abortlon, ban abortlons in clinics or any facility that receives public funds, or ban abortlon counseling or clinic recommendations. Kansas has to fly in a physician to perform abortions once a week.
Obama's healthcare reform legislation = ending insurance coverage of abortlon services.
Read here, too.
What good is it that Democrats publicly state they're for protecting Roe vs. Wade when they join with Republicans to carve away the actual abilities for women to obtain abortions? Republicans figured out "Why bother overturning Roe vs. Wade if, instead, we can just make abortion impossible to get?", and Democrats 'compromised' away access to abortion piecemeal.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
neo conservatives and progressives are the same. Just look at the AHCA. It was a neo con plan vehemently fought by progressives then adopted by obama and vehemently defended by progressives. I find this fascinating and comical and sad at the same time. WTF has happened to America?
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