Congress

Weak Public Option Myths That Liberals Believe
By Kevin Gosztola

On Saturday night, the Senate will take a procedural vote to move debate on the current health insurance enrichment bill in Congress forward.

Democratic Senators like Dick Durbin, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Schumer, through a project called Citizens for a Public Option, have been building support for the public option and encouraging Americans to write letters to the editor that debunk health care reform myths---myths that the conservative echo chamber have been propagating.

Senators (and representatives in the House and Obama) can champion this health insurance legislation all they want and claim it will “foster greater competition in the marketplace, create more choices for consumers, and lead to lower costs and better quality for all,” but doctors who have been on the front lines of America's sick care non-system do not believe many of the arguments that Democrats are using to create support for a public option.

Myth #1 – Public option will help control costs

Specter Opposes Adding Troops in Afghanistan
By Spencer Ackerman | Washington Independent

On a blogger conference call this afternoon, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) announced he can’t support a potential addition of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. “We ought not to add troops in Afghanistan,” Specter said, adding that he questioned “even staying” in Afghanistan unless the administration demonstrates that continuing the war is “indispensable to our fight against al-Qaeda.” His position, he said, came as a result of extensive consultations with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the heads of the intelligence community, as well as antipathy to the government of Hamid Karzai.

I asked Specter if he wanted to see the Obama administration embrace an exit strategy for the eight-year war. “I think there ought to be an exit strategy,” Specter said, which ought to be “geared toward our expectations as to what we’re looking to accomplish.” But he demurred on seeking a timeline for winding down the war. “I would want to see the administration’s proposals, and see what people on the ground over there think,” Specter said. “It’s hard to answer that with any specificity.” He added that he endorsed the Obama administration’s style of decisionmaking, defending the “very thoughtful” president against charges of “dithering” lodged by former Vice President Cheney. Read more.

VIDEO: Who Decides About War?

"Who Decides About War?," the National Conference on War Powers, Law, and Democracy, took place October 2-3, 2009 in Washington D.C.. Organized by the Guard Home! campaign, Liberty Tree Foundation, and many partners, and hosted by the National Lawyers Guild at the Georgetown Law School, this conference was the first of its kind in many years, uniting academics with activists, attorneys with veterans, in exploring key reforms necessary to democratizing defense in the United States, and making war less likely.

• Keynote Remarks: Dr. Morton Halperin and Jeremy Scahill
• Panel I - War Powers and the States

Panelists: State Rep. Michael Fisher (VT), Sen. Rich Madaleno (MD), Sen. Jamin Raskin (MD)

• Panel II - War Powers Principles: Constitution, Law, & the People

Panelists: Elaine Brower (moderator), Leah Bolger, Ben Manski, Benson Scotch, David Swanson

• Panel III - War Powers in Practice

Panelists: Jean Athey (moderator), John Bonifaz, Prof. Caleb Rossiter, Prof. Don Wallace

• Roundtable: Peace Advocacy and Defense Reform Panelists: Phyllis Bennis, Geoff Millard, Elaine Brower, Kevin Zeese, Jeremy Scahill

For a full listing of speakers at the conference, click here.

To order a DVD of the proceedings, please contact us. Watch videos of the event.

Democrats Propose Surtax to Cover War Costs
Yahoo! News | CQ Politics

Senior House Democrats have introduced legislation that would impose a surtax beginning in 2011 to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bill was unveiled late Thursday by David R. Obey of Wisconsin, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and has the backing of John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, and John B. Larson of Connecticut, chairman of the Democratic Caucus.

"For the last year, as we've struggled to pass health care reform, we've been told that we have to pay for the bill -- and the cost over the next decade will be about a trillion dollars," the three lawmakers said in a joint statement. "Now the president is being asked to consider an enlarged counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, which proponents tell us will take at least a decade and would also cost about a trillion dollars. But unlike the health care bill, that would not be paid for. We believe that's wrong."

Discussing the idea earlier this month, Murtha said he knew the bill would not be enacted and that advocates of a surtax were simply trying to send a message about the moral obligation to pay for the wars. Read more.

Kucinich Speaks in Support of Medicare Pay Reforms | Press Release

Washington D.C. (November 19, 2009) – During debate of H.R. 3961 - Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement:

“Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3961, the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act. Medicare is one of the most popular government programs in part because, in contrast to private insurance plans, seniors and people with certain disabilities can have access to their doctor of choice. Doctors will be less willing to participate, however, if they are not sufficiently paid, as is the case now. I have met with doctors and doctor representatives in the Cleveland area to discuss the issue and the urgency is clear. We must maintain incentives that lead to a high standard of care. I am especially supportive of the extra growth allowance for primary care services as a small down payment toward addressing a severe shortage of primary care physicians. For those reasons, I support the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act.”

“Unfortunately, the bill also includes statutory-pay-as-you-go requirements. Our country’s economy continues to flounder in the worst downturn since the Great Depression, yet Congress insists on passing legislation that will constrain our ability to respond appropriately to our economic circumstances.”

“The nation’s unemployment rate is over 10%, and is likely to remain high well into the next year. The private sector is slashing payrolls and squeezing productivity out of the employees who remain, stubbornly refusing to contribute to an economic recovery. The government must be the spender of last resort to get Americans working again. While the Recovery Act has certainly helped to stave off a more severe economic downturn, it is obviously insufficient. We have more work to do, but pay-as-you-go requirements will only inhibit our ability to help our constituents.”

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For Immediate Release:

Contact: Nathan White (202)225-5871

By Dave Lindorff

If you are sitting in class taking a test, and you’ve chosen to sit amongst your bone-headed, slacker friends, don’t turn to them for help when you can’t figure out of any of the answers. They may all tell you the same thing, but they’ll all be wrong.

That’s the situation President Obama finds himself in today in the White House. Having surrounded himself with the very Wall Street con men who set up the crooked game that led to the current financial crisis and economic collapse, and finding that the lousy advice they have been giving him since last January has left the country still mired in deepening economic decline, with the banks still not lending and unemployment still mounting, and with growing signs that instead of bottoming out and starting to recover, the economy is threatening to fall a second time, to new lows and higher unemployment, Obama has turned to the same rotten advisors for answers.

The 15 Biggest Congressional Recipients Of Wall Street Campaign Cash | Huffington Post

Reforming Wall Street is a hot topic on Capitol Hill these days. Congress is currently weighing two financial reform bills that would, to varying degrees, reshape the way the financial system is regulated.

Still, Wall Street's influence in Washington appears to be as strong as ever. After all, it was just last spring that Senator Dick Durbin, frustrated by pushback on bankruptcy reform, denounced the financial sector's influence on the Senate: the banks, he said, "they frankly own the place." The Center for Responsive Politics, a research group that tracks money in politics, reports that financial industries -- the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, specifically -- have been one of the biggest benefactors to Congress over the past two decades,,,

We [Huffington Post] took a look at the Center for Responsive Politics's database, OpenSecrets.org, to see which members of Congress have so far received Wall Street money for the 2010 election cycle. The answers may surprise you. Check out our slideshow of the top 15 recipients and choose which politician may be taking too much money from Wall Street. Read more, view the slideshow.

International Justice Group Takes Aim at Bush Officials
By Daphne Evitar | Washington Independent

The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.

So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report calling on the United States to follow its legal obligation to prosecute the leaders in the U.S. government responsible for the “torture, cruel and inhuman treatment” of detainees during its own “war on terror.”

“Investigations and prosecutions should focus on the engineers of official policies that were the basis of illegal abuses, to send a clear signal that the absolute prohibition of torture and the ban on cruel and inhuman treatment will be respected by the United States,” the report said, adding that if the U.S. government fails to initiate prosecutions, then other countries will take up the cause. Italy, for example, recently convicted 23 Americans for their involvement in “extraordinary renditions.”

“Failing to hold accountable the architects and overseers of a policy of abuse undermines the U.S. justice system and the fundamental idea that law provides a check on power,” Alex Boraine, acting president of ICTJ, said in a statement today. “As we have seen in countless examples around the world, abuse of power by allowing torture and cruel treatment can tear down what the law and democracy have built.” Read more.

As they cave on healthcare and refuse to cut off the funding, providing no reason to pay any attention to them, the CPC is asking Obama to meet with them. Talk talk talk. Here's the letter PDF.

Here's a list. Hint: 4 of them are Republicans. Context: None of them are in the same league as the president.

Shining Light on Roots of Terrorism
By Ray McGovern | Consortium News

But it’s a legitimate and urgent question: Would a more determined commitment by the U.S. government to secure an independent state for the Palestinians and to alleviate their suffering undercut the appeal of al-Qaeda and other extremist groups to young people in the Muslim world?

Or put differently, why should ardent supporters of Israel in the U.S. Congress behave in such a way as to make the Muslim world view the United States as disinterested in the plight of the Palestinians and thus increase the danger of future attacks against the United States, as well as against Israel?...

These so-called “friends of Israel” either don’t know or don’t care that this sort of resolution only makes matters worse regarding American attempts to defuse the explosive anger building across the Middle East. It is a gift to al-Qaeda.

Media commentary on the upcoming 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has raised concern that state secrets may be divulged, including details about how the Bush administration used torture to extract evidence about al-Qaeda.

“I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at” is how American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denney LeBoeuf put it, according to The New York Times on Saturday.

No problem, says Attorney General Eric Holder, who claims to have “great confidence” that other evidence – apart from what may have been gleaned from the 183 times Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, for example – will suffice to convict him.

Maybe so, But what the Fawning Corporate Media (or FCM) have so far neglected is the likelihood that the testimony will be so public that they will have to break their studied silence about why Sheikh Mohammed and his associates say they orchestrated the attacks of 9/11. Read more.

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Universal, Single Payer Postcards-Front
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Read this:

The Sad Saga Of Tom Perriello, A Confused And Dishonest Man, Lost In A Political Nightmare He's Spiritually Unprepared To Navigate.

In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’
By Robert Pear | NY Times

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.

By David Swanson

My dear Republicans friends, it's probably not my place to ask. I'm not one of you, but I'm not your enemy either. I'm not an apologist for the other party or a third party. I'm an advocate for replacing the two parties with three branches. We still teach our children about the three branches of our government, but I'm afraid most adults have forgotten what that was supposed to mean.

Like you, I'd like us to be able to unelect people as well as elect them in fair and verifiable elections. Like many of you, I oppose massive bailouts for Wall Street, bipartisan gerrymandering, corporate control of government, warrantless spying, ballot access restrictions, budget deficits, lying politicians, and the so-called mainstream media.

Pentagon's Global Reach: Around The World In 12 Days
Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO | Blog site

On January 20 a changing of the guard occurred in the United States White House with two-term president George W. Bush being replaced by former freshman senator Barack Obama.

Bush had continued the policies of his predecessor Bill Clinton in relation to the Balkans, Iraq and Colombia - with troops and a massive military base in Kosovo, regular bombings of Iraq and a monumental expansion of military aid to the South American nation - and in addition launched two wars of his own, those against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq two years later.

Obama, so thoroughly does U.S. polity predetermine individual administrations' policies, entered office by intensifying the deadly drone missile attacks in Pakistan begun by Bush in late 2008 and announced that he was doubling the number of American troops in Afghanistan.

Already presiding over the world's largest military budget, officially 41.5% of world expenditures in 2008 and far larger with non-Defense Department spending factored in, in April the new president requested from Congress an additional $85 billion in supplemental funding for the war in Afghanistan and the occupation of Iraq.

U.S. lawmakers were more than accommodating and on July 24 Obama signed Iraq and Afghanistan War Supplemental Appropriations amounting to $106 billion.

On October 28 he signed the $680 billion 2010 National Defense Authorization Act which includes another $130 billion to fund what his administration now calls overseas contingency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

With the authorization of $106 billion in July, the last official supplemental appropriation for the wars, and $130 billion last month for Afghanistan and Iraq the combined official spending for both wars will exceed $1 trillion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 2009 Year Book, total international military spending for 2008 was not much more than that: $1.464 trillion.

By David Swanson

I have not approved of much my congressional representative has done. He votes for war funding. He votes for bailouts for both "bankers" and the sickness industry (aka health insurance "reform"). Like any member of the Democratic Party he does what the party that funds him tells him to do.

But he is 100% correct to denounce as part of a very disturbing trend the announced plans of his craziest critics to burn him in effigy. Symbolizing violence and threatening violence contribute nothing to any discussion. Instead, these tactics degrade, intimidate, anger, and coarsen our politics. They also drown out legitimate criticism, so that the only positions possible are demonization or defense of a person rather than analysis of his actions.

Here's a campaign I support that seeks to expose and discourage this trend before it goes any further: http://stopdomesticterror.com