Monthly Archives: September 2009

elections

President Obama vs. $280 million Health Insurance Lobby

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Obama Speaks Loudly But Carries a Small Stick

posted by John Nichols on 09/09/2009 @ 8:06pm

President Obama spoke loudly but carried a small stick Wednesday night, when he outlined what’s left of his healthcare reform agenda in a rare address to a joint session of the Congress.

Noting that “it has now been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first called for healthcare reform,” the president told skeptical legislators from both sides of the political aisle. “I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

That was one of several takeaway lines of the night.

Another, delivered to members of the House and Senate who have just returned to Washington after an August of brutal town hall meetings, was: “The time for bickering has passed. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action. Now is the time when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together… Now is the time to deliver on healthcare.”

Continue reading President Obama vs. $280 million Health Insurance Lobby →

elections

Beaver County Steelworkers at Labor Parade

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Labor Day Biden

Photo: Signs at Pittsburgh Labor Parade

Pittsburgh’s Labor Day:
Showing Our Solidarity,
Organizing New Forces

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

If you want to get a good picture of the hard core of the Western Pennsylvania working class and its concerns, one of the best ways to do it is to take part in the annual Labor Day Parade on a gray and rainy Pittsburgh morning.

Pittsburgh is known as a town that takes its Labor Day parades seriously, with turnouts of upwards of 50,000, rivaled only by Detroit and New York City. This year’s Sept 7 event, which featured an appearance by Vice President Joseph Biden, was only a fraction of that, but still numbered in the thousands, with high spirits and an array of contingents.

The main political concerns of the day were passing the Employee Free Choice Act as a spur to unionization, along with health care reform leading to universal coverage. Many of the unions favored HR676 ‘Single Payer’ Medicare for All as the most effective solution. The purpose of it all? “Solidarity and bringing in new members,” said Teamster Carl Paullet, 75, of Ligonier, PA, to a local news reporter. Continue reading Beaver County Steelworkers at Labor Parade →

elections, health care

Can This Government Fix Healthcare?

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US Senator Owned by Insurance Companies
US Senator Owned by Insurance Companies

How Washington is Screwing Up Health Care Reform–Why It May Take a Revolt to Fix It

 

 

Published by The Rolling Stone.

Watch Matt Taibbi break down his report on the sad state of health care reform in his blog, Taibblog.

Let’s start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It’s become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn’t be equal to dreaming it up on purpose. 

The system doesn’t work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it’s a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they’re sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that’s the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won’t get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers.

Continue reading Can This Government Fix Healthcare? →

Economy, labor

Week of Actions for Jobs, Peace and Prosperity

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makeourfuturework

Labor’s Stake
In the Pittsburgh
G-20 Protests

By Alan Hart
United Electrical Workers

When G-20 government leaders met in London last April, thousands of trade unionists marched in protest. Labor organizations from over 100 countries – including the AFL-CIO – issued a “London Declaration” that criticized the G-20’s policies for favoring multinational corporations and banks, and demanded new economic priorities that “put people first.”

Unions are the strongest and most consistent voices for working people. Pittsburgh union members need to take a prominent place in the peaceful protests and educational events planned when the G-20 Summit comes to Pittsburgh.
Continue reading Week of Actions for Jobs, Peace and Prosperity →

labor

Take the SOAR Bus to Pittsburgh for Labor Day Parade

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by Randy Shannon

Seats are available on the SOAR (Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees) bus to the Labor Day Parade in Pittsburgh. There is no charge.

The bus will leave from Maratta Road and Washington Rd. (behind the Fez) at 7:30 am on Monday September 7. Parking is available. The bus will drop people off at the staging area.

After the parade, the USW will provide a snack at the USW building and the bus will leave from the USW building around 2:30pm.

The Pittsburgh Labor Day parade is one of the largest in the USA. Join us to demonstrate for jobs, healthcare, and the rights of workers to organize.

health care, labor

AFGE National Convention Endorses HR 676 – Medicare for All

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Reno, Nevada.   The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the twenty-second international union to endorse HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI).

On August 27th the 38th AFGE National Convention passed Resolution #4003, “Endorsing Universal Health Care H.R. 676.”  The resolution was submitted by Local 2157 which represents workers at the Portland, Oregon, Veterans Administration Medical Center.  AFGE represents 600,000 federal and District of Columbia workers in a wide variety of agencies, including Social Security, the Veterans Administration, and the Bureau of Prisons.

Betsy Zucker, RN, FNP, and a convention delegate from Local 2157, said after the vote: “AFGE members from around the country overwhelmingly endorsed H.R. 676, Single Payer Health Care, on August 27.  Federal workers understand that Medicare-for-All will save money, provide health care to all, and start addressing health care as a human right, not a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder.  AFGE supports health care for people, not for profits!”

health care

Wendell Potter Warns: Co-op Kool-Aid Is Bad for Your Health

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MrYuckThis article submitted by Bob Schmetzer, IBEW

by Wendell Potter

http://www.prwatch.org/node/8520

I’m beginning to think that the Kool-Aid being served at meetings of the Senate Finance Committee’s soon-to-be infamous Gang of Six is coming from either fantasy land or the health insurance industry.

For those of you who might not be following the sorry machinations of health care reform in the Senate Finance Committee, the Gang of Six is a group of three Democrats and three Republicans hand-picked by Committee Chair Max Baucus, who is one of the three Democrats. The gang meets often, supposedly drafting a bipartisan bill. In reality, if such a bill emerges, it will be a gift to the insurance industry because the gang includes some of the industry’s best friends on Capitol Hill.

Continue reading Wendell Potter Warns: Co-op Kool-Aid Is Bad for Your Health →

health care

Watch This TV Ad and Contribute!

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by Randy Shannon

Go to this site to watch ad and help pay for wider distribution:

http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5649/t/4944/content.jsp?content_KEY=2785&tag=poc_e-dfa-kick-u2

elections

County workers, others protest state budget impasse

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PA Budget Protest in Beaver Falls
PA Budget Protest in Beaver Falls

By: J.D. Prose –

Beaver County Times
BEAVER FALLS — Tina Shannon’s small, home-based day-care business has only six children, but five of them are no longer being subsidized because the state has yet to pass a budget.

“The parents are real concerned,” said Shannon, owner of Shannon’s Brown Bear Daycare in New Brighton.

On Tuesday, she joined about 60 Beaver County human services employees and service providers from noon to 1 p.m. as they protested the lack of a state budget and the growing impact on county residents who receive assistance.

“The issue is not just pass a budget,” Shannon said. “It’s pass a budget that we can live with.”

Continue reading County workers, others protest state budget impasse →