All posts by randyshannon

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 →

elections

Pennsylvania Republican Senators Kiss the Gas Lobby and Kick Headstart…

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Marcellus Shale Gas Well
Marcellus Shale Gas Well

And the loser is: The Pennsylvania Taxpayer

Vol. 11, No. 18 – August 31, 2009
Penn Future Facts

Click Here for a printable copy

If the Senate Republicans have their way, and the $1 million in lobbying money spent this year by gas drillers has enough Democrats towing the industry line, the state budget crisis will be resolved without the enactment of a severance tax on natural gas drilling. And the loser would be the Pennsylvania taxpayer.

Multi-billion dollar Texas and Oklahoma-based energy companies as well as multi-national corporations like ExxonMobil are rushing to lock up drilling leases on millions of acres in the Marcellus Shale deposit that underlies most of Pennsylvania. The deposit is the largest and richest in North America. One company alone has identified 3,900 potential drilling sites in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Continue reading Pennsylvania Republican Senators Kiss the Gas Lobby and Kick Headstart… →

elections

Sen. Vogel on PA Budget – A 50% Cut in Pennsylvania Headstart Is Better Than Nothing

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 August 29, 2009 
Pennsylvania Republican Budget:
Cut Families First
Sen. Vogel - Who Does He Serve?
Sen. Vogel - Who Does He Serve?

by Randy Shannon

Farmer and freshman PA State Senator Elder Vogel has backed the Pennsylvania Republican extremists in their attack on the State’s elderly, veterans, disabled, children, and youth by voting for the Republican Budget.

This budget was vetoed by the Govenor, but still the Republicans refuse to raise revenues to fund critical programs for the working families of the state. Now the state has run out of money and all kinds of agencies are shutting down and laying off people. There is no state funding for childcare, headstart, high school or college programs, and many more.

A local headstart employee called Senator Vogel’s office this week to discuss the impact that a 50% cut in headstart funds would have on area children. Vogel’s local staff member replied that “50% is better than nothing.”

Continue reading Sen. Vogel on PA Budget – A 50% Cut in Pennsylvania Headstart Is Better Than Nothing →

Community, Economy, health care

Can the US Afford Single Payer Healthcare? Yes!

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Tina Shannon
Tina Shannon

Presented to Cong. Jason Altmire at a PDA Roundtable Discussion on Healthcare on August 20, 2009

 

by Tina Shannon, Chairperson
PA 4th CD Chapter Progressive Democrats of America
 

Perhaps the biggest sticking point in the single payer/national healthcare argument is cost. If you look at the system of healthcare we have now, it’s hard to imagine being able to provide that to everyone in the country.

But study after study indicates that we can.

June 1991, General Accounting office: “If the US were to shift to a system of universal coverage and a single payer, as in Canada, the savings in administrative costs (10% of health spending) would be more than enough to offset the expense of universal coverage.

December 1991, Congressional Budget Office: “(a) single payer system that paid providers at Medicare’s rates, that population that is currently uninsured could be covered without dramatically increasing national spending on health.”

Continue reading Can the US Afford Single Payer Healthcare? Yes! →

Community, labor, Youth and students

Does PA Senator Elder Vogel Care About Children? Ask Him!

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by Randy Shannon
 
Protest Daycare Cuts in Belleview
Protest Daycare Cuts in Belleview

Who Is Elder Vogel?

Elder Vogel is a farmer on the plateau above the valley of the Beaver and Ohio Rivers . He is also the freshman Republican State Senator representing the 47th Senatorial district encompassing much of Beaver and Lawrence Counties, including the cities of Ambridge, Aliquippa, Beaver Falls, and New Castle.

As his website says: “A citizen-legislator, Senator Vogel is a fourth-generation dairy farmer, operating the family farm in New Sewickley Township which was established in the late 1800s.  For many years, Senator Vogel served as president of the Beaver-Lawrence Farm Bureau, and until his election served as a New Sewickley Township Supervisor.”

Vogel defeated Jason Petrella, a Democratic Party newcomer with no political experience. Petrella was also running with the overhang of scandal. Local Democratic leader Mike Veon and other Democrats were previously ousted for stubbornly supporting a midnight pay raise despite widespread protest and criticism.

What Has Elder Vogel Done?

Continue reading Does PA Senator Elder Vogel Care About Children? Ask Him! →

labor

Another Nestle/Purina Worker and Union Activist Assassinated in Columbia

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"No more state sponsored crime!"
"No more state sponsored crime!"

submitted by IBEW retiree and PDA member Bob Schmetzer

Worker of Nestle Foods la Rosa and Member of SINALTRAINAL in Colombia Assasinated

With deep pain, we inform that on August 21st, 2009 at approximately 6:30pm, strangers arrived to the house and knocked on the door of Gustavo Gomez worker of Nestle Foods la Rosa SA and affiliate of Sinaltrainal in the Municipality of Dosquebras.  When Gustavo Gomez opened the door, they shot him 10 times with a fire arm. He was immediately transported to the Comfamiliar clinic where hours later he passed away.

Our brother Gustavo Gomez was member of the Sinaltrainal Board of Directors of the Dosquebradas sector from 1997 until 2000. He was first cousin to Jose de Jesus Marin Vargas, worker of Nestle Foods La Rosa SA and member of Sinaltrainal who was also assasinated on November 22, 2007 in the Dosquebradas municipality.

Sadly, this crime came about in moments when Sinaltrainal has presented a sheet of petitions to the business Nestle Purina Petcare of Colombia and there are already 12 assasinations of Nestle workers, members of Sinaltrainal in Colombia.

Continue reading Another Nestle/Purina Worker and Union Activist Assassinated in Columbia →

Community, Economy

PA Senate Republicans Declare War on Working Families with Vicious Budget Cuts to Protect the Rich

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 Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center
Pileggi, Scarnati, Vogel Attack Children, Elderly, Vets
Pileggi, Scarnati, Vogel Attack Children, Elderly, Vets

 www.pennbpc.org

 717-255-7156   
 
On May 6, on a party-line vote, the Pennsylvania Senate passed a budget that makes deep cuts in most state services and programs.
 

Senate Bill (SB) 850 proposes spending $24.6 billion in state general fund dollars in FY2009-10, effectively reducing state expenditures to 2005-06 levels. With the addition of $2.7 billion in federal stimulus funds, total state spending rises to $27.3 billion, $1.7 billion less than the spending plan proposed by Governor Ed Rendell in February.

Even with federal stimulus funds accounted for, every major department will be cut. Funding for the Department of Public Welfare will decline by $250 million, a 4% cut, while funding for environmental protection will decline by 40%.

The Senate plan relies on cuts to balance the budget, rejecting other options. The plan leaves the state’s $740 million Rainy Day Fund untouched and contains little new revenue. It rejects the Governor’s proposed tax on smokeless tobacco and other tobacco products, a new natural gas severance tax, and a cigarette tax rate increase. It leaves $500 million in the Health Care Provider Retention Account, a portion of which could be used to avoid service cuts.

Continue reading PA Senate Republicans Declare War on Working Families with Vicious Budget Cuts to Protect the Rich →