Human Rights

Rep. Weiner withdraws single payer amendment | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

Representative Anthony Weiner | November 6, 2009

Rep. Weiner Withdraws Single Payer Amendment from Current Health Care Debate |Press Release

Today, Representative Anthony Weiner (D - Brooklyn and Queens), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, released the following statement on his decision to withdraw his single payer amendment to H.R. 3962, the House health care reform bill:

“I have decided not to offer a single payer alternative to the health reform bill at this time. Given how fluid the negotiations are on the final push to get comprehensive health care reform that covers millions of Americans and contains costs through a public option, I became concerned that my amendment might undermine that important goal.”

“I am going to continue to press the case for health care reform in every venue I can. And I also will continue to press for a smarter, less-expensive, more-comprehensive alternative to the employer-based health insurance system we have today.”

"I've discussed the issue with Speaker Pelosi, Chairman Waxman, and agree with them that the health reform bill is so close it deserves every chance to gain a majority."

And...

Kucinich: Why is it we have Finite Resources for Health Care but Unlimited Money for War? | Press Release

Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement:

“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for war?

“The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

Cynthia Papermaster's report on John Yoo follows:

First, a report on our Yoo action yesterday and YouTube of the rousing song "Tell John Yoo That Torture is a Crime." Our next Yoo protest is Wednesday, Nov. 18, 3 p.m. at the law school.

I'm beginning to get to know this guy John Yoo. Today Toby Blome and I went into his civil procedure class as soon as it ended. Toby beat her beautiful drum and I called him out for enabling torture. Yoo packed up his briefcase and as he was leaving we kept asking him when he was going to resign from teaching at UC. And I said you ARE going to be prosecuted, Mr. Yoo. He said "have a nice day." Toby followed him down the hall and up the stairs and he said to her "I'll never resign."

Capitalist Health Insurance for All
By Terry J. Allen | In These Times

"What!" you say. "By using captives, parent companies undercut the free enterprise system and deprive businesses of the right to compete in the market. That sounds like socialism!"--except that when corporations do it, no one screams that Sweden is taking over.

We could capture the same sweet deal if we cut out the middleman and insure ourselves. Single-payer health insurance, or at least, a public option, is the counterpart to captive insurance for us peons who get cancer instead of billion-dollar bonuses and $2,000 co-pays for ambulance rides instead of junkets on corporate jets. Under a public option, the government would act as our own wholly owned subsidiary--our nonprofit, low-overhead captive insurer....Instead of calling public health insurance pull-the-plug-on-granny socialism, we could take a page from the corporate handbook, and call it captive.

Here's what corporations know, but don't want you to find out: Private insurance is for suckers.

Armies of healthcare industry flacks, lobbyists and bought-and-paid-for legislators rant that nonprofit, public insurance is a slippery slope to socialist hell, will limit your choice of physicians to Doc Watson and Dr. Kevorkian, and bankrupt the country. But, in fact, most U.S. Fortune 500 companies wouldn't touch private insurance with a 10-foot colonoscope.

When they need to insure their financial health against fire, terrorism, and liability lawsuits sparked by defective products and polluting factories that kill people, they don't call State Farm. Instead, corporations routinely insure themselves by creating a "captive" insurance company as a wholly-owned subsidiary. "The parent company is insuring its own risk," says Sandy Bigglestone, of Vermont's Captive Insurance division.

But when we the people need health insurance against the high cost of staying alive, we, or our employers, pay private insurers--corporations that are more devoted to protecting their profits than our health. The premiums we pay go not only for our pills and treatments, but also for lobbyists (on whom the health insurance industry currently spends $1.4 million per day for the U.S. Congress alone), campaign contributions, stratospheric executive salaries, private jets, lawyers hired to fight legitimate claims, and, of course, profits. Read more.

Honduran Accord Solidifies Coup D'Etat Rule
By Stephen Lendman

On October 29, Honduran coup d'etat "president" Roberto Micheletti announced that:

"....a few minutes ago I authorized my negotiating team to sign a final agreement" to let Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) decide whether or not deposed President Manuel Zelaya may return to office and complete the remaining weeks of his term, expiring on January 27. If he does, will it matter?

Zelaya is a wealthy businessman, a member of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), a former National Congress Deputy from 1985 - 1998, a former PL Minster for Investment, and president from January 27, 2006 to when he was deposed on June 28.

His 2005 presidential campaign was largely on a law-and-order platform with pledges that, if elected, he'd address Honduras' crime problem with more police programs against and reeducation ones for violent international and local street gang members.

Zelaya also joined Venezuela's Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) based on fair, not one-sided "free" trade; complementarity, not competition; solidarity, not domination; cooperation, not exploitation; and respect for each nation's sovereign freedom from corporate control.

According to supporters like Alejandra Fernandez, a Honduran student, he also:

"raised the minimum wage, gave out free school lunches, provided milk for the babies and pensions for the elderly, distributed energy-saving light bulbs, decreased the price of public transportation, (and) made more scholarships available for students." In addition, he built roads and schools in rural areas. "That's why the elite classes can't stand him and why we want him back. This is really a class struggle." One the Resistance is determined to win and hardliners aim to crush.

Kucinich, Single Payer Co-author, Raises Questions about Stand Alone Vote on National Single Payer | Press Release

Washington D.C. (November 5, 2009) – Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), co-author of HR 676 with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), today made the following statement about the House health care plan:

“The Book of Ecclesiastes says ‘To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven...a time to plant, a time to reap.’

Congressmen John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich, the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single-payer bill, wrote ADS about tomorrow's House vote. Here is what they are asking of you:

We are now asking you to join us in suggesting to congressional leaders that this is not the right time to call the roll on a stand-alone single payer bill.

Now, here's the rest of their letter.

Dear Friends,

We thank you for your continued devotion to the cause of health care for All Americans. We have worked together for many years to write, promote and campaign for HR676, a single payer, not for profit health care system. Your work, in communities across America, has been instrumental in helping at least ten states create single payer movements, with many more states to come.

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is scheduled consider a single payer bill. As the two principal co-authors of the Conyers single payer bill, we want to offer a strong note of caution about tomorrow's vote.

The bill presented tomorrow will not be HR676. While we are happy to relinquish authorship of a single payer bill to any member who can do better, we do not want a weak bill brought forward in a hostile climate to unwittingly accomplish what would be interpreted as a defeat for single payer.

The Next Phase of Healthcare Apartheid
By Norman Solomon

In Washington, “healthcare reform” has degenerated into a sick joke.

At this point, only spinners who’ve succumbed to their own vertigo could use the word “robust” to describe the public option in the healthcare bill that the House Democratic leadership has sent to the floor.

“A main argument was that a public plan would save people money,” the New York Times has noted. But the insurance industry -- claiming to want a level playing field -- has gotten the Obama administration to bulldoze the plan. “After House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care bill [on October 29], the Congressional Budget Office said the public plan would cost more than private plans and only 6 million people would sign up.”

The Tortured Logic Continues
By Amy Goodman | Truthdig

“Extraordinary rendition” is White House-speak for kidnapping. Just ask Maher Arar. He’s a Canadian citizen who was “rendered” by the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year.

Just this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York City, dismissed Arar’s case against the government officials (including FBI Director Robert Mueller, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and former Attorney General John Ashcroft) who allegedly conspired to have him kidnapped and tortured. Arar is safe now, recovering in Canada with his family. But the decision sends a signal to the Obama administration that there will be no judicial intervention to halt the cruel excesses of the Bush-era “Global War on Terror,” including extraordinary rendition, torture and the use of the “state secrets privilege” to hide these crimes.

Arar’s life-altering odyssey is one of the best known and best investigated of those victimized by U.S. extraordinary rendition. After vacationing with his family in Tunisia, Arar attempted to fly home to Canada. On Sept. 26, 2002, while changing planes at JFK Airport, Arar was pulled aside for questioning. He was fingerprinted and searched by the FBI and the New York Police Department. He asked for a lawyer and was told he had no rights. He was then taken to another location and subjected to two days of aggressive interrogations, with no access to phone, food or a lawyer. He was asked about his membership with various terrorist groups, about Osama bin Laden, Iraq, Palestine and more. Shackled, he was then moved to a maximum-security federal detention center in Brooklyn, strip-searched and threatened with deportation to Syria. Read more.

Italy Convicts 23 Americans for C.I.A. Renditions
Armando Spataro, a prosecutor shown in Milan on Wednesday, achieved the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, a significant symbolic victory.
By Rachel Donadio | NY Times

In a landmark ruling, an Italian judge on Wednesday convicted a base chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans, almost all C.I.A. operatives, of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.

The case was a huge symbolic victory for Italian prosecutors, who drew the first convictions involving the American practice of rendition, in which terrorism suspects are captured in one country and taken for questioning in another, often one more open to coercive interrogation techniques.

Critics of the Bush administration have long hailed the case as a repudiation of the tactics it used to fight terrorism. And the fact that Italy would actually convict intelligence agents of an allied country was seen as a bold move that could set a precedent in other cases. Read more.

Kucinich: The Insurance Companies are the Problem not the Solution | Press Release

Following a statement on the Floor of the House of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the House health care plan:

“Before we celebrate the new health care legislation, keep in mind that the American people will be required by law to buy private insurance and that they will pay a penalty if they don’t.

“That insurance companies will be subsidized by the government.

“That insurance companies have had double digit increases in premiums in the past four years.

“That we are locking in a for profit structure.

A Review of the FBI's Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (Revised)

Grab a beverage of your choice - it's 441 pages long.

Health Care Bill Linked Here With Majority Leader's and Speaker's Statements

Manager's amendment posted.

Boehner substitute amendment officially filed.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md) released the following statement on the filling of the Manager’s Amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act:

“With the completion of the Manager’s Amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, we are now in the final stage of moving this critical bill through the House. We pledged we would make this amendment available for 72 hours before a vote. Now that the Amendment is posted, the clock has started.

Italian court convicts 23 Americans in CIA rendition case
By Craig Whitlock | Washington Post

An Italian court on Wednesday convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of orchestrating the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he said he was later tortured.

The judge in the case, Oscar Magi, said three other Americans, including the former Rome station chief for the CIA, were covered by diplomatic immunity.

The Americans were all tried in absentia. A Milan prosecutor said his office would seek to have them extradited from the United States, but a formal decision will be made later by the Italian Justice Ministry.

The case is the only instance in which CIA operatives have faced a criminal trial for the controversial tactic of extraordinary rendition, under which terrorism suspects are seized in one country and forcibly transported to another without judicial oversight. Read more.

Kucinich Continues Fight to Restore State Single Payer Amendment | Press Release

Washington D.C. (November 3, 2009) –Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement about the House health care plan on the floor of the House of Representatives:

“Even though insurance companies make money not providing health care, the so-called reform bill gives so much power and money to the insurance companies that we are giving far too much for the few benefits which the bill may confer.

“The insurance companies get at least another 26 million customers.

“They will receive at least an extra $50 billion in new revenue.

“They will be able to raise premiums 25%, even though in each of the last four consecutive years the industry has raised premiums by double digits.

Health Care Premiums Also Used for Lavish Salaries, Luxury Items, Underwriters
West Virginia Democrat Wants Transparency in Insurer Health Care Spending
By Kate Snow, Elizabeth Tribolet and Suzan Clarke | ABC News

A significant portion of health insurance premiums go not for actual medical care but for private jets, generous CEO salaries and underwriters who decide when to drop patients who become too expensive, according to a Senate committee report.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, wrote to 15 of the biggest health insurance companies in August, asking them to provide information on how much of policyholders' monthly premiums was spent on medical care versus the amount that went to administrative costs and company earnings.

Such figures are known in insurance industry-speak as "medical loss ratios." But when insurance companies balked, saying the information was confidential and proprietary, Rockefeller's investigators went digging through public documents and found that much of policyholder premiums was going to nonmedical costs.

The insurance industry has long pointed to federal data that says about 87 percent of every dollar that people spend on premiums goes toward actual medical care, but Rockefeller's investigators found the average for the top six insurance companies is closer to 82 cents on the dollar for medical care.

That five-point difference represents billions of dollars.

And when investigators broke down the information by insurance type, they found that people who buy individual insurance from those companies rather than being part of a small or large business, get the least bang for their buck.

On average just 74 cents of every premium dollar for individual coverage goes to medical care. Read more.

President Barack Obama Signs Hate Crimes Legislation Into Law

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, praised President Barack Obama today for signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. The new law gives the Justice Department the power to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated violence where the perpetrator has selected the victim because of the person's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. The legislation was added as a provision to the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act earlier this Summer. Read more.

BBDY 4 Pack

Even the least of us deserves justice and accountability starts with you. So why don't you send out a reminder. Even Bush deserves all the justice he can get and we should ensure he gets his day in court.

Use these images as a 4 PAK and send 4 different cards to the same person; or, choose your favorite and send the same postcard to 4 different persons.

It's easy. Each individual postcard is formatted to the dimensions of 4.25"x5.5". Quarter a sheet of paper and combine the cards as you like. Don't forget to print the other side. Remember the postage stamps. Then mail one to your best beloved, your friends and neighbors, some acquaintance--your politicians and their parties. Show someone you care about them and about justice. Don’t forget Cheney, Condi, Gonzales and Rove: CCGR 4 PAK.

MAY BE USED AS HANDBILLS W/O REVERSE SIDE.

Justice for Bush

Justice for Bybee

Justice for Delahunty

Justice for Yoo

Reverse Side Postcard