Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Trust Women- Dr. George Tiller’s motto and button that he often wore
Progressive Groups Push Public Option Big Bucks committed.
Billing it as their largest health reform campaign ever, progressive leaders are planning to spend at least $82 million to push reforms that include a public health insurance plan option.
The campaign, expected to be announced Monday, is designed to put public plan opponents on notice that supporters are ready for a fight.
“We know that the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry and conservative opponents to reform have huge piggy banks filled with money they plan to use to counter real health care reform, and we plan to fight back and fight for what we want,” said Jacki Schechner, a spokeswoman for Health Care for America Now, a coalition pushing for the public plan.
The substantial investment by 11 progressive groups is funding a nationwide push that includes organizing grass-roots supporters and paid advertising, phone banks and direct mail.
The coalition plans to bring at least 5,000 people to Washington on June 25 to make more than 300 lobbying visits. And in mid-June, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean plans to deliver hundreds of thousands of signatures to Congress, demanding that lawmakers pass a public plan. http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=9898BF64-18FE-70B2-A8938E1E170B821D
Tiller Murder: There have been 41 bombings, 175 arson assaults, 17 attempted murders, 8 murders. The inflammatory rhetoric that stimulates the Disturbed- ‘Tiller executes babies for $5,000’; ‘Tiller the Baby Killer’; ‘Tiller aborts babies for any reason at any time right up to birth’; ‘Tiller can, will abort for no other reason than the mother has a pain in her foot.’ All were said by Bill O’Reilly, FOX News thug, who’s brave enough to incite from his studio. http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200906010025
GM: De-industrialization? Michael Moore advises that we shouldn’t shut GM plants, but rather convert them for other (post)-industrial purposes.
John Nichols laments:
…sometimes the "bold" gesture is really just more of the same.
This is an important reality to recognize as the major media in the United States begins to play up the reshaping of General Motors by the Obama administration's auto-industry task force as a courageous or groundbreaking "new" initiative to "save" domestic automaking.
It's not.
The GM bankruptcy and bailout is the continuation of post-industrial policies of the Clinton and Bush years. Those policies, which encouraged companies to shutter factories in the US and move operations to foreign countries with lower wages and weaker regulations, were defined by Wall Street rather than Main Street. The model of a "healthy" American company was defined by stock and bond speculators, who rewarded short-term thinking and brutal cost-cutting, even if these strategies resulted in the loss of millions of jobs, the closing of hundreds of functional factories and the deindustrialization of communities, regions and whole states that had once been among the most productive in the world. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/439875/the_new_gm_layoffs_factory_closings_offshoring?rel=emailNation
Ralph Nader has qualms with bankruptcy:
The common shareholders who own GM have been wiped out. They had no voice in Congress to discuss it. The auto suppliers, the auto dealers, consumer groups had no voice to discuss it in Congress. Workers had no actual voice in Congress, other than to tell Congress to lay low while the UAW was negotiating this deal, again, in private. So, we have a process which is very similar to the Chrysler process, which is a White House fiat to a bankruptcy court fiat to Fiat in Italy, if I may have a little play on words. But the bankruptcy process itself is extremely autocratic. Under Chapter 11, the judge keeps pounding the gavel and denying the claimants interventions and appeals on behalf of the combined force of the Obama task force and top brass in GM.
Now, why is this going to turn out bad? Because Obama has made the American taxpayer responsible for saving GM, to a level which will eventually reach $70 billion, but then he makes his government irresponsible by saying he doesn’t want to run GM. Well, what if GM management continues to ship its production to China, which is the grand China strategy of GM from several years back, and unemployed workers and closed factories and, by consequence, closed dealers? Is Obama going to step aside?
So, you have so many questions, Amy, that aren’t being answered. For example, are the China assets and unrepatriated profits of GM going to be included in the bankruptcy procedure, or are they going to be excluded? What about the act of closing dealers? Dealers don’t cost manufacturers anything. The franchise agreement makes certain of that. So why are we further inconveniencing motorists, rupturing their relationship over the years with dealers that are closer to home and making them travel more and more? The answer is, the fewer dealers, the more likely the price of cars go up. So there are all kinds of reasons why this should go back to Congress for thorough House and Senate hearings, if Congress wanted to adhere to its constitutional duties. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/2/ralph_nader_and_labor_professor_harley
Obama to the Middle East: Pressure on Israel? Headlines are of rising tension between the governments over the settlement issue, that Obama is being firm.
Tensions between the Obama administration and Benjamin Netanyahu's government are nearing crisis levels after senior American officials harshly criticized the prime minister and his settlements policies on Monday.
"The Israelis apparently wanted to check if we are serious on settlements, and they found out that we are," a senior official told Haaretz. "This has nothing to do with the speech in Cairo, and it's going to be our position after the speech in Cairo, because we believe it's in Israel's long-term security interests."
Last night Defense Minister Ehud Barak met in New York with the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell. The American told Barak that the U.S. was no longer willing to return to the understandings between the Sharon and Olmert governments and the Bush administration, which allowed continued settlement construction.
Mitchell said the administration was particularly unhappy about the Netanyahu government's unwillingness to recognize the principle of two states for two peoples. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1089797.html
While Egyptians (amongst others) wonder if Obama will challenge the powers that be in their country:
For years, Mubarak's critics could bank on strong American backing as they tried to challenge the 81-year-old Egyptian leader's 27-year rule.
Then-President George W. Bush and his administration pushed Mubarak and leaders across the Middle East to reform.
"For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy in the Middle East, and we achieved neither," then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said four years ago this month in Cairo. "Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people."
The Bush administration's strategy faltered when anti-American groups from Egypt to Lebanon became the biggest beneficiaries of the Republican push for political reforms.
…Now Obama is charting a different path.
He's expected to use Thursday's speech to call for a cooperative era of ambitious regional diplomacy, and Egypt is expected to play a central role in his push. The country is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid. It's one of only two Arab nations to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and Mubarak has signaled an aggressive new willingness to challenge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attempts to shift the balance of power in the Middle East.
"The new administration values Egypt in a completely different way," said Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for Egypt's Foreign Ministry. "They understand the importance of this country to peace and stability in the region and the world."
There are widespread expectations in Cairo that Obama will play down calls for democratic reforms in Egypt and instead rely on private meetings to raise the issue with Mubarak. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/69224.html
Obama adds another Republican: John McHugh was slated to lose his seat from upcoming re-districting.
President Obama today announced his intention to nominate New York Rep. John McHugh (R) as secretary of the army. At an afternoon event at the White House, the president focused on McHugh's 16-year service on the House Armed Services Committee, on which he is currently ranking member, as experience that "uniquely qualifies him to help led America's Army."
"John understands personally and deeply the sacrifices that our soldiers and their families make every day," Obama said in a statement praising McHugh's qualifications. He added: "As Secretary of the Army, he will ensure that our soldiers are trained and equipped to meet the full spectrum of challenges and threats of our time -- the conventional and the unconventional, the nation state and the terrorist network."
In remarks following the president's, McHugh, who served on the Board of Visitors at West Point and whose upstate district includes Ft. Drum, also noted his personal connections to the army. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/mchugh-to-be-army-secretary-sp.html
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