The GAO identified 1049 rights, benefits and privileges listed here.
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Thursday, June 7, 2012
Steny Hoyer's Daughter Comes Out As Lesbian
The GAO identified 1049 rights, benefits and privileges listed here.
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
The CenterForMedicare & MedicaidServices estimated that after the legislation passed, our healthcare costs would rise more steeply than if we'd done nothing. The CensusBureau reports that the number of uninsured in the US jumped 10 percent to 51 million people in 2009. About 5.8 million were able to go on public programs, but a third of our population under the age of 65 was uninsured for some portion of 2009. The NationalHealthInsuranceSurvey estimates that we now have 58 or 59 million uninsured. And the trend is toward underinsurance. These faulty insurance products leave people financially vulnerable if they have a serious accident or illness. They also have financial barriers to care. Co-pays & deductibles cause people to delay or avoid getting the care they need. And all these trends will worsen.”
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/power_and_the_tiny_acts_of_rebellion_20101122/
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
“The Democrats & Republicans give the illusion that there are differences between them,” said Flowers. “This keeps the public divided. It weakens opposition. We fight over whether a Democrat or a Republican will get elected. We vote for the lesser evil, but meanwhile the policies the two parties enact aren't significantly different. There were no Democrats willing to hold the line on SinglePayer. Not one. I don’t see this changing until we radically shift the balance of power by creating a larger & broader social movement.”
The corporate control of every aspect of American life is mirrored in the corporate control of healthcare. And there are no barriers to prevent corporate domination of every sector of our lives.
“We're at a crisis,” Flowers said. “Healthcare providers, particularly those in primary care, are finding it very difficult to sustain an independent practice. We're seeing greater corporatization of our healthcare. Practices are being taken over by these large corporations. You have absolutely no voice when it comes to dealing with the InsuranceCompany. They tell you what your reimbursements will be. They make it incredibly difficult & complex to get reimbursed. The rules are arbitrary & change frequently.”
“This new legislation doesn't change any of that. It doesn't make it easier for doctors. It adds more administrative complexity . We're going to continue to have a shortage of doctors. As the new law rolls out they're giving waivers as the provisions kick in because corporations like McDonald’s say they can’t comply. Insurance companies such as WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna & Humana that were mandated to sell new policies to children with preexisting conditions announced they weren't going to do it. They said they were going to stop selling new policies to children. So they got waivers from the ObamaAdministration allowing them to charge higher premiums. Healthcare costs are going to rise faster.
KEEP READING
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
“You can’t effect change from the inside,” she has concluded. “We have a huge imbalance of power. Until we have a shift in power we won’t get effective change in any area, whether financial, climate, you name it. With the wealth inequaliti es, with the road we are headed down, we face serious problems. Those who work and advocate for social and economic justice have to now join together. We have to be independen t of political parties and the major funders. The revolution will not be funded. This is very true.”
“Those who are working for effective change are not going to get foundation dollars,” she stated. “Once a foundation or a wealthy individual agrees to give money they control how that money is used. You have to report to them how you spend that money. They control what you can and cannot do. Robert Wood Johnson [the foundation ], for example, funds many public health department s. They fund groups that advocate for health care reform, but those groups are not allowed to pursue or talk about single-pay er. Robert Wood Johnson only supports work that is done to create what they call public/pri vate partnershi p. And we know this is totally ineffectiv e. We tried this before. It is allowing private insurers to exist but developing programs to fill the gaps. Robert Wood Johnson actually works against a single-pay er health care system. The Health Care for America Now coalition was another example. It only supported what the Democrats supported.
There are a lot of activist groups controlled by the Democratic Party, including Families USA and MoveOn. MoveOn is a very good example. If you look at polls of Democrats on single-pay er, about 80 percent support it. But at MoveOn meetings, which is made up mostly of Democrats, when people raised the idea of working for single-pay er they were told by MoveOn leaders that the organizati on was not doing that. And this took place while the Democrats were busy selling out women’s rights, immigrant rights to health care and abandoning the public option. Yet all these groups continued to work for the bill. They argued, in the end, that the health care bill had to be supported because it was not really about health care. It was about the viability of President Obama and the Democratic Party. This is why, in the end, we had to pass it.”
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
Nonsense.
Dr. Margaret Flowers, a pediatrician from Maryland who volunteers for Physicians for a National Health Program, knows what it's like to challenge the corporate leviathan. She was blacklisted by the corporate media. She was locked out of the debate on healthcare reform by the Democratic Party & liberal organizations such as MoveOn. She was abandoned by those in Congress who had once backed calls for a rational health care policy. And when she and seven other activists demanded that the argument for universal health care be considered at the hearings held by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, they were forcibly removed from the hearing room.KEEP READING
“The reform process exposed how broken our system is,” Flowers said when we spoke a few days ago. “The health reform debate was never an actual debate. Those in power were very reluctant to have single-payer advocates testify or come to the table. They would not seriously consider our proposal because it was based on evidence of what works. And they did not want this evidence placed before the public. They needed the reform to be based on what they thought was politically feasible and acceptable to the industries that fund their campaigns.”
“There was nobody in the House or the Senate who held fast on universal health care,” she lamented. “Sen. [Bernie] Sanders from Vermont introduced a single-payer bill, S 703. He introduced an amendment that would have substituted S 703 for what the Senate was putting together. We had to push pretty hard to get that to the Senate floor, but in the end he was forced by the leadership to withdraw it. He was our strongest person. In the House we saw Chairman John Conyers, who is the lead sponsor for the House single-payer bill, give up pushing for single-payer very early in the process in 2009. Dennis Kucinich pushed to get an amendment that would help give states the ability to pass single-payer. He was not successful in getting that kept in the final House bill. He held out for the longest, but in the end he caved.”
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
This was Obama's deal and like everything else he's negotiated since he got into the White House, it belies his promise.
Candidate Obama, in his own words:
"Transparency Will Be Touchstone"
"On transparency", "About inviting the people back into their government again", and "Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests and it's working for corporations"
"We need a president who sees the government not as a tool to enrich well connected friends and high-priced lobbyists, but as a defender of fairness and opportunity for every single American. That's what this country's been about and that's the kind of president I intend to be"
"Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public, no more secrecy.....No more secrecy....."
"Clintons did health care the wrong way, behind closed doors":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0m6Rxm9vU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtIKgGHYPQ
"The American people are the answer"
Obama's Transparency Problem
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Steny Hoyer's Daughter Comes Out As Lesbian
Here is the list of federal benefits, rights and privileges that the GAO identified are conferred upon marriage.
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
The general public and most nonprofit organizations have no access to the documents, although a number of corporate officials can see them.
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Obama Trade Deal Secrecy Insulting, According To Key Democrat
"An advisor at Halliburton or the MPAA is given a password that allows him or her to go on Obama's Office of the U.S. Trade Representative website and view the TPP agreement anytime he or she wants."==============================================
But not the chairman or any members of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade (or any members of Congress).
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Private Prisons Profit From Immigration Crackdown, Federal And Local Law Enforcement Partnerships
What people are forgetting is that taxpayers are paying more to corporations for a privatized prison system than a government run prison system. That's because shareholders have become part of the business model and getting a piece of the pie, too. The profits come from cutting costs (food, beds, healthcare, clothing, heating/cooling/water, training, etc.) for the inmate care and increasing the number of units (inmates) to skim from.
One prison spends more feeding its dogs ($1.20) than its prisoners (90 cents a day). Prisons are now eliminating the number of meals it provides inmates -- Quality and portions could only be cut so much. In America, land of the free. We are 5% of the world's population and we have 25% of the world's prisoners.
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Obama Campaign Admits Fundraising Defeat In May
The handwriting has been on the wall before Citizens' United, since 1974 and Buckley v. Valeo.
Democrats should have had publicly financed elections as their top issue for years.
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
Have you?
The Democratic Party is done with gun control. The Democratic Party is courting the gun lobby. Despite tragedies like what happened to Giffords, despite almost daily *BREAKING NEWS*, 'Gone Postal', Virginia Tech-like massacres, Democrats are AWOL on gun control.
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
LynnWoolsey, head of the ProgressiveCaucus, 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 had the ability to accomplish putting the wars on budget (and thus end the wars) when they took over control of Congress in 2006 and didn't do it. They didn't need Republicans to do this. As the head of the ProgressiveCaucus, LynnWoolsey 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 PublicOption. Woolsey then led the 79 to renege on the pledge. Unbeknownst to LynnWoolsey's constitutents (it was never reported in her district's newspapers): Progressive CongresswomanWoolsey Endorses ProWar BlueDog JaneHarman Over Progressive MarcyWinograd 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 kill Americans with no due process or oversight, push for 'indefinite 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.
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
I think you need to step back and look at the bigger picture of this con game by professional politicians.
To begin with, Pelosi doesn't necessarily vote populist. For example, the job-killing-job-outsourcing trade bills -- Pelosi voted for them.
When Pelosi boasted of getting 420 pieces of legislation passed, I ask "What's the big accomplishment of getting 420 pieces of legislation passed in one chamber of Congress but not the other?" It only becomes law when both chambers pass it.
Democrats in both chambers of Congress work as a team. And when they also hold the WhiteHouse, the president controls all of it. They identify what they hope to achieve (pro-corporate legislation) and then strategize how to get it while saving each other's hides with constituents come election time.
Those in liberal districts get to talk a good game about being champions of the People, but when push comes to shove, if their votes are needed to cross over and kiII liberal legislation (like a public option or access to abortion), the DNC will make sure they are covered come election time, with massive infusions of money into their campaign war chests and crushing any principled challenges to them from the left in their primaries.
Here's an example of how they tag team us:
KEEP READING
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Private Prisons Profit From Immigration Crackdown, Federal And Local Law Enforcement Partnerships
And because immigration is flat, because fewer are entering the country illegally than at any time in our history, and because capitalism in the US relies on growth and isn't satisfied with the status quo, what will private prison lobbyists do to increase their profits?
Increase the prison population. Get Congress to criminalize more citizens' behaviors.
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
If I were the presidential nominee (meaning, if I ran on a populist platform of reversing the pro-1% rightward legislation of the past 40 years that has gotten us here) would you vote for me?
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
What I mean when I talk about Democratic policies and legislation is the populist, leftist platform that the Democratic Party has but does not follow.
About 40 years ago was when corporate control and money began to infiltrate our system of politics and influence both Republicans and Democrats into deregulating and privatizing. It took off in earnest in the 1980s, with Reagan and the Fepderalist Society and Lee Atwater and Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition on the right and the DLC taking over the Democratic Party (also on the right).
When I said, "Democrats don't get it", I should have been more precise - Democratic voters don't get it. Democratic voters, by and large, don't realize that Democratic politicians are as bought and paid for as Republican politicians. Nothing that has happened to get us to where we are today could have happened without Democrats having signed on.
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Steny Hoyer's Daughter Comes Out As Lesbian
The problem is that 'marriage' affords rights that 'civil unions' do not. About 1100 rights. And the only way to remedy the problem is to legalize gay marriage.
About Gay Marriage
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
Except that neither party is for gun control.
The Democratic Party has been courting the gun lobby.
Gabrielle Giffords is not for gun control. The weapon used on her was purchased legally. The weapon was one that had been banned during the 1990s, but that law expired in 2004 and Giffords supported ending the ban. She supports gun rights, opposed the Washington DC gun ban, and signed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court in support of overturning the ban.
The roll call vote in the Senate on the (Dianne) Feinstein amendment to extend the ban, March 2, 2004. Russ Feingold lovers, note his "nay" vote, as well as other Democrats still serving, like Harry Reid, Mary Landrieu, Tim Johnson (not voting), Ben Nelson, Max Baucus.
In 2007, Representative Carolyn Maloney's bill to reinstate the ban with 67 co-sponsors (Giffords was not among them), went nowhere.
HR 6257 (a bill to reinstate the ban on assault weapons, as well as to expand the list of banned weapons, for ten years) was introduced in June 2008, and then got buried in a House subcommittee one month later, where it d!ed at the end of that Congress (2008).
After Obama and Democrats won the 2008 elections and took control of the White House and Congress, Dianne Feinstein said in April 2009 about introducing legislation in the Senate to reinstate the Assault Weapons Ban, "I wouldn't bring it up now."
Obama has stated that he wouldn't push for the reinstatement of the Assault Weapons Ban. He supports ratifying CIFTA, an inter-American treaty to curb international small arms trafficking.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to take on the gun lobby (or any corporate industry), nor spend the money on the prevention side (funding for mental health treatment, public education and social safety nets, etc.).
So across America, the fight (& gridlock) continues.
If I had to bet right now, I'd say what is going to come out of this are more draconian laws to ban speech and privacy rights (all of said legislation will be used for drug crimes and political groups working to unseat the entrenched corporate power, and not crimes of 'terror'). All because it happened to "their own" (Giffords, Judge John Roll and Giffords aide Gabriel Zimmerman).
About Gabrielle Giffords
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Gabrielle Giffords Weighs 'Gabby PAC' As Next Career Move
"Gabby has always been one to work across party lines and try to get things done for this country. And she's doing to continue to do that."
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"working across party lines" = agreeing to Republican policies and legislation
Because Republicans certainly aren't 'compromising'.
So Gabrielle Giffords' PAC will give money to candidates with Republican leanings. Who are willing to go along in order to get along.
Democratic politicians don't get it. They have to fight, they have to articulate populist policies, they have to educate the people about the issues and why liberal policies worked to create the largest middle class in the history of the world and the best and most educated people the world has ever had. It worked until Republicans hijacked government 40 years ago, with word salad, spin, propaganda, dirty tricks campaigns and outright criminal theft.
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