Dennis Kucinich: Health Insurance Companies Have a Death Grip on Our Political Process

PDAMERICA
August 08, 2009

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Health care reform: It’s all about money!

Fight back against health insurance lies + The drug lobby demands, and gets, Obama pledge to protect health care profits

Exclusive: The World’s Largest Parasites by Gary Sudborough

single payer healthcare HR 676 S 703

from the archives:

Sicko by Michael Moore (full movie)

Faulty Forecasting by Ralph Nader

by Ralph Nader
The Nader Page
August 7, 2009

Companies that specialize in stock market forecasting and trading—such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase—pay very high salaries to their employee-vendors. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just released data showing that these and other large banks are giving each of their 5000 trader-forecasters bonuses of at least one million dollars.

In return, these fat cats are very frequently wrong in their recommendations and decidedly unprofessional in their fiduciary relationships with the clueless, trusting clients who rely on them. Win or lose, they get their fees.

These firms and brokers are making money largely from other people’s money—pensions, savings and investments. Overall many produce little more than gambling tips. When these moneyboys try to justify their doings as providing liquidity, hedging against risk, assembling capital for productive investment, listeners are permitted to robustly laugh. This is especially so now during Wall Street’s massive, self-inflicted financial collapse. The economy, and taxpayers, are paying for this reckless speculation.

David Frakt: Military Commissions “A Catastrophic Failure” by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
8 Aug. 2009

A month ago, when the Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony on “legal issues regarding military commissions and the trial of detainees for violations of the law of war”, and the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on “Legal Issues Surrounding the Military Commissions System,” the Obama administration’s proposed revival of the much-criticized Military Commission system of trials for “terror suspects” at Guantánamo attracted a decent amount of media attention.

Last week, however, when the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee convened to hear further testimony about the Military Commissions, few media outlets noticed. This was a great shame, as one of the speakers was Lt. Col. (formerly Maj.) David Frakt of the US Air Force Reserves, whose testimony (PDF) was at least as riveting as that of his former adversary in the Military Commissions, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, the ex-prosecutor who resigned in September 2008. On July 8, Lt. Col Vandeveld told the committee that the Commissions were “broken beyond repair,” and “cannot be fixed, because their very creation — and the only reason to prefer military commissions over federal criminal courts for the Guantánamo detainees — can now be clearly seen as an artifice, a contrivance, to try to obtain prosecutions based on evidence that would not be admissible in any civilian or military prosecution anywhere in our nation.”

In Defense of Food – A Review by Guadamour

by Guadamour
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Guadamour’s blog post
August 8, 2009

In his latest book, In Defense of Food–An Eater’s Manifesto (The Penguin Press 2009), Michael Pollan, the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Bounty of Desire, and other books, argues for the eating of whole foods preferably grown, cooked and eaten in a social setting with others.

Pollan’s book is very important to the current debate on healthcare reform because it convincing shows how most chronic diseases, the diseases that are swamping the health care system, are diet related and that it makes economic sense to spend a little more money on eating real organically grown food than spending trillions on preventable diseases.

A new US Homeland Security approach for safeguarding Americans

Updated: August 9, 2009

Propaganda Alert

compiled by Cem Ertür
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
8 August 2009

1) A new Homeland Security approach for safeguarding Americans (6 August 2009)

2) UK Minister: Our Troops in Afghanistan Are Fighting to Keep Us Safe From Terrorism (4 August 2009)

_____________________

http://csis.org/files/attachments/090806_brennan_transcript.pdf

excerpts from: “A new approach for safeguarding Americans”

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) web site, 6 August 2009

President Obama is under no illusions about the imminence and severity of this threat. Indeed, he has repeatedly and forcefully challenged those who suggest that this threat has passed.

To Americans who ask why our forces still fight and die in Afghanistan, he has made it clear that al-Qaida is actively plotting to attack us again and that he will not tolerate Afghanistan or any other country being a base for terrorists determined to kill Americans. […]

[President Obama] is confronting what he has identified as the most immediate and extreme threat to global security – the possibility that terrorists will obtain and use a nuclear weapon. […]

Sibel Edmonds’ partial testimony via liveblogging (updated)

Updated

by Luke Ryland
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Luke’s blog post
August 8, 2009

Brad is quasi-liveblogging the deposition here.

Sibel

“has been able to say “everything that she hasn’t been able to say so far, implicating many member of Congress in a criminal conspiracy,” according to interviews with Fein and others.”

and:

“Edmonds told me in a brief phone conversation during the break: “Bruce Fein is raising objections to everything”, though that’s to be expected. She said she’s been asked, and has answered, questions on Dan Burton (R-IN), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), and other questions on those high-ranking officials and lobbyists in her “State Secrets Gallery”.”

Tortured Logic: ACLU launches campaign to ask Eric Holder to investigate Bush and Cheney’s war crimes by Andy Worthington

by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
8 Aug. 2009

Yesterday, as part of its “Accountability for Torture” project (to which I contributed here), the ACLU launched a new campaigning video, “Tortured Logic,” in which ten people (including Oliver Stone, Philip Glass and a relative of one of the 9/11 victims) read out passages from the notorious torture memos, issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which were released by the Obama administration in May.

The World Needs A Breather From The US By Mike Whitney

By Mike Whitney
August 7, 2009 “Information Clearing House”

And they’ll get it sooner than many think

We’re making this way too complicated. It’s simple really.

The Fed has only one tool at its disposal; to create more money. Typically, the way the Fed adds to the money supply is by lowering interest rates. When the Fed lowers rates below the rate of inflation; they’re basically selling dollars for under a buck. That’s a good deal, so, naturally, speculators jump on it and trigger a credit expansion. What follows is a frenzy of market activity that ends in a housing, credit, tech or equity bubble. Eventually, the bubble bursts and the economy goes into a tailspin. Then, after a period of digging-out, the process resumes again. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s always the same.

The Expiring Economy by Paul Craig Roberts

by Paul Craig Roberts
Information Clearing House
August 07, 2009

Tent cities springing up all over America are filling with the homeless unemployed from the worst economy since the 1930s. While Americans live in tents, the Obama government has embarked on a $1 billion crash program to build a mega-embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, to rival the one the Bush government build in Baghdad, Iraq.

Hard times have now afflicted Americans for so long that even the extension of unemployment benefits from 6 months to 18 months for 24 high unemployment states, and to 46 – 72 weeks in other states, is beginning to run out. By Christmas 1.5 million Americans will have exhausted unemployment benefits while unemployment rolls continue to rise.