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The trouble with health "insurance"
Mary Shaw
Washington is abuzz with news from the Senate Finance Committee's recent Health Care Roundtable Discussions and President Obama's announcement on Monday that he supports proposed voluntary action by the insurance industry and its allies to cut health care cost inflation by 1.5% per year.
However, as the National Coalition on Health Care points out, health care costs are actually rising at a rate of more than 6%.
One step forward, 4 or 5 steps back. Not a solution.
The problem is Washington's apparent acceptance of the health insurance industry as a necessary player in its health care reform efforts.
Insurance companies are in business to make profits for their shareholders. And they are profiting from the suffering of others, often by denying payment for necessary medical treatment. That itself is incompatible with the core definition of health care.
Obama and the denial of genocide
Mickey Z.
Writer-activist David Boyajian’s investigative articles and commentaries have appeared in Armenian media outlets in the U.S., Europe, Middle East, and Armenia and the Newton Tab and USA Armenian Life newspapers named him among their "Top 10 Newsmakers of 2007." So, when Barack Obama paid a visit to Turkey last month, it seemed like a good time to ask Boyajian for his take on the new president's approach to the issue of the Armenian genocide.
Mickey Z: This April, President Barack Obama broke campaign promise #511, namely to explicitly acknowledge the Armenian genocide as U.S. President. What happened on his recent visit to Turkey? What are the ramifications of his breaking this promise?
Fun and games
Eric Walberg
Bringing the threat of war to Russia’s borders is having wide-ranging repercussions.
As Russian troops marched to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany 8 May, NATO troops — 1,300 of them from 10 member countries and six “partners” — were beginning their month-long Cooperative Longbow/Lancer war “games” on Russia’s southern border. In deference to Moscow, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova and Serbia decided not to participate in the NATO exercises, preferring to send their diplomats to Red Square in homage to the untold Russian sacrifice in pursuit of world peace. According to Russian MP Sergei Abeltsev, the NATO decision to hold the drills in Georgia during the WWII Victory Day celebrations was a “total revision of the history of the Great Patriotic War”.
We’ve Lit a Fire, Now We Need to Fan It, A Populist Health Care Rebellion is Brewing
Kevin Zeese
Last week when I was one of the Baucus Eight, so-named because eight of us were arrested before Sen. Baucus, I hopped others would join us. Yesterday, they did. And, the single payer movement grew stronger.
Before the hearing I joined nearly 50 people in a spirited protest outside the U.S. senate letting all who entered know we wanted a single payer national health care plan.
The Pope is welcomed, but….
Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem
"The Pope’s visit to occupied Palestine is unlike any other visit.
This is the land where 61 years ago Europe implanted Israel,
superimposing it right on top of another people and enabling
the children of the holocaust to murder our people, steal our
land, and expel the bulk of native Palestinians to the four
corners of the globe."
Pope Benedict XVI will not be shaking the
hands of survivors of the Gaza holocaust
As hospitality is a key Arab-Muslim character, the Pope of the Vatican, Benedict XVI, should be accorded all the respect he deserves as the religious leader of hundreds of millions of Roman Catholics, many of them stand alongside Muslims in rejecting the criminal policies and practices of the Israeli state.
The recent genocidal blitz against the effectively imprisoned and thoroughly starved people of Gaza is only one example of Israeli criminality, a criminality that can be compared with the evil deeds of the worst offenders in history.
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part IV
Stephen Lendman
This is the fourth in a series of articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt," now updated in a December 2008 third edition. It tells "the shocking truth about our money system, (how it) trapped us in debt, and how we can break free." This article focuses on America's "web of debt" entrapment.
The Debt Spider Captures America - American Workers Consigned to Debt Serfdom
America has been trapped for over two centuries, with today's debt level way exceeding developing nations. Like bankrupt people staying "afloat by making the minimum payment(s) on (their) credit card(s), the government (avoids) bankruptcy by paying just the interest on its monster debt" - now double in size since Brown's first edition and onerous enough for Controller of the Currency David Walker to warn earlier of its unaffordability by this year. If America can't service the amount, it's officially bankrupt and the economy will collapse. If it happens, IMF austerity will follow and turn America into Guatemala. Other vulnerable economies as well - permanent debt bondage and worker serfdom.
Record Number of Innocent New Yorkers Stopped, Interrogated by NYPD
from Jennifer Carnig
The NYPD stopped and interrogated more innocent people during the first three months of 2009 than during any three-month period since the Department began collecting data on its troubling stop-and-frisk program. Police made more than 151,000 stops of completely innocent New Yorkers – the overwhelming majority of whom were black and Latino. These innocent people did nothing wrong, but their names and addresses are now stored in a police database.
“In just three months, the NYPD stopped enough totally innocent New Yorkers to fill the new Yankee Stadium three times over. What’s worse is that the disrespect suffered in the stop is not the end of it – these New Yorkers’ personal information is now stored in an NYPD database,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The mayor and the Police Department’s top brass must immediately address this racially-targeted, counterproductive tactic. New Yorkers shouldn’t have to be afraid when they see a police officer walking toward them.”
How Much Was Fox Paid to Shill Bush's War Crime in Iraq?
Len Hart
The Fox network conspired with Bush's criminal regime to profit from the US plunder of Iraq. Fox was and will continue to be Bush's 'propaganda ministry' for as long as there is money to be made depicting dead Iraqis who had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. 911 was an inside job.
Who is most motivated to lie about a crime? Simply, the guilty! The biggest lies about any crime are told by those who perpetrate the crime. Fox was clearly motivated and, predictably, told the biggest whoppers about both Iraq wars. The biggest gains and the biggest whoppers are found among Bush, his co-conspirators and the Fox Network. Murdoch should be subpoenaed and compelled to testify before a federal grand jury. He shares Bush's guilt and that of the GOP, the NEOCONS, and willing, eager participants throughout the MIC.
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part III
Stephen Lendman
This is the third in a series of articles on Ellen Brown's superb 2007 book titled "Web of Debt
Global Debt Enslavement - From Gold Reserves to Petrodollars
"The gold standard (while it lasted) was a necessary step in giving bankers' 'fractional reserve' legitimacy, but the ruse could not be sustained indefinitely" because exiting gold to defray foreign debts results in money backing it to be withdrawn from circulation. The result - contraction, recession, or depression, the very problem that forced FDR to drop the gold standard to prevent an even greater collapse. In 1971, Nixon did it permanently "when foreign creditors threatened to exhaust US gold reserves by cashing in their paper dollars for gold."
Max Baucus Should Not Be Deciding Health Care for America
Kevin Zeese ProsperityAgenda.US
The “Senator for K Street” is Putting Campaign Donor Profits Ahead of the Basic Needs of the People
Senator Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee are too corrupted by corporate health industry profiteers donations to give America the health care policy it needs.
Health care is 15% of the U.S. gross domestic product. Health care costs have been rising rapidly for several years. U.S. health care expenditures surpassed $2.4 trillion in 2007, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990. The cost of health care is projected to reach $4.4 trillion by 2018. There is a lot of room for corporate profiteering in the increasing cost of health care. So, the millions the health care industry has invested in Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee could turn out to be a very profitable one.
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