Health Care Bill Must Drop Abortion Language, Include Public Option

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Action Needed:

Please send a message to your senators and House member asking them to assure that restrictive abortion language in health care reform legislation be withdrawn, that a strong public plan is included, that age discrimination is removed, that better cost control measures are included and insurance is made truly more affordable for everyone.

Continue reading National Organization for Women Calls for Improvement to Final Healthcare Bill →

– AFL-CIO NOW BLOG – http://blog.aflcio.org –

Tax on Health Care Will Erode Coverage for Middle Class

Posted By Tula Connell On January 4, 2010 @ 10:02 am In Corporate Greed, Legislation & Politics | 13 Comments

A new year brings with it lots of hope.

Let’s hope 2010 brings a health care reform bill that does not penalize working families with a tax on their coverage. Because right now, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert aptly [1] describes it, there is a ”middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version” of the health care reform legislation.

The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.

Continue reading AFL-CIO: Senate Healthcare Tax will hurt millions of working people →

U.S. ITC Rules For US Steelmakers Vs Chinese Imports

By Henry J. Pulizzi
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)–The U.S. International Trade Commission sided with U.S. steelmakers in a case over Chinese steel Wednesday, opening the door to new duties of up to 16% on steel pipes from China.

Continue reading U.S. International Trade Commission Votes to Protect U.S. Steel Pipe Manufacturing →

Labor chief moves on job safety, workers’ rights
By SAM HANANEL, Associated Press Writer Sam Hananel, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jan 1, 8:12 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Soon after she became the nation’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis warned corporate America there was “a new sheriff in town.”

Continue reading US Government Resumes Enforcement of Worker Safety Laws →

by Randy Shannon

Treas. PA 4th CD Chapter, PDA

Gas drillers have been concentrating on the Marcellus Shale deposit in New York as they work with the Pennsylvania Republicans to gain a free hand to exploit our resources. The bought Republican majority in the PA Senate and the minority in the House used the budget crisis as leverage to force Democrats to back down on the gas severance tax.

All the states with a history of gas drilling impose a severance tax on the gas so that the citizens recover a share of the treasure taken from their land. This is in addition to the local lease that the drillers pay to set up operations on a piece of property. The Republicans blocked the severance tax in this year’s budget even though it is estimated that Pennsylvania would receive over $500 million a year in gas severance revenues. The Republicans claimed that the lease income to the state for drilling on gamelands and state forests would be a bonanza. The real bonanza was the lobbyist payoffs to the Republicans.

Continue reading Republicans Christiana, Marshall, Vogel Take Corruption to a New Level – Selling out our natural resources for their personal gain →

A Less Than Honest Policy

If the White House thought they could slip the bailout of Fannie and Freddie through by announcing it in a Christmas Eve news dump, think again. Dennis Kucinich just released this statement:

“Many questions remain unanswered regarding this move by the Treasury. Why suddenly remove the cap? Indications are that Freddie and Fannie, even as millions of Americans lose their homes, have used just $111 billion of the $400 billion previously available to them. Is lifting the cap on assistance a back-door TARP?”

Continue reading Cong. Kucinich to Investigate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “Sky is the Limit” Bailout →

by Randy Shannon

Treasurer, PA 4th CD Chapter

Progressive Democrats of America

December 30, 2009

The chart at the right from the St. Louis Federal Reserve shows that  banks have record low liquid assets, and that they continue to decline even though the recession is over.

These banks must maintain sufficient ALLL, or Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses, to cover their Nonperforming Loans. The chart shows that Nonperforming Loans almost equal the banks’ total assets, and loan losses are growing.

A recent Detroit News story reports that the US Treasury will give GMAC – General Motors Acceptance Corporation – an additional $3.5 billion of capital. This is on top of $13.4 billion already given to GMAC by US taxpayers to prevent GMAC from going bankrupt due to its bad housing loans.

Earlier this week the Treasury announced that it would loan unlimited amounts of money to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, removing the renewable cap on taxpayers transfers to the mortgage lenders.

The chart at the right shows that while credit card charge-offs are rising at Bank of America, the provisions for credit card losses are falling. The fall in provisions for credit card losses at Bank of America and the extremely low ALLL to capital ratio is due to another level of speculation by the banks. They are gambling that their attempt to create a false image of high earnings by minimizing the capital to cover losses will pay off in higher stock prices.

The risk to this gamble is that continuing credit card delinquency and more failed home and commercial mortgages will confront the financial system with another crisis of solvency. The banks are willing to take this risk because they continue to directly control the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve and indirectly control a majority in the US Congress. They believe another bailout is a lock.

This control was challenged only once when a storm of opposition to the first bailout by an enraged public resulted in a No vote in Congress. As documented by Michael Moore in his new film, Capitalism, A Love Story, this vote was reversed through a carefully orchestrated campaign in the media and behind closed doors to thwart the public’s will. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson threatened Congress with the imposition of martial law if the vote were not reversed.

If the first vote of Congress to deny the bailout had stuck, these insolvent banks would have been liquidated and their owners would have taken the losses instead of the US taxpayers. This was the procedure used during and after the depression to deal with banks that were ruined due to either stupidity or corruption. Now that the banks have so much power financially and politically their owners can use the Congress to make the American people cover their losses.

Continue reading Looking into the Continuing Financial Crisis – What Is To Be Done? →

China unveils ‘world’s fastest train link’

BEIJING (AFP) – China on Saturday unveiled what it billed as the fastest rail link in the world — a train connecting the modern cities of Guangzhou and Wuhan at an average speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) an hour.

The super-high-speed train reduces the 1,069 kilometre journey to a three hour ride and cuts the previous journey time by more than seven and a half hours, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Work on the project began in 2005 as part of plans to expand a high-speed network aimed at eventually linking Guangzhou, a business hub in southern China near Hong Kong, with the capital Beijing, Xinhua added.

“The train can go 394.2 kilometres per hour, it’s the fastest train in operation in the world,” Zhang Shuguang, head of the transport bureau at the railways ministry, told Xinhua.

Test runs for the service began earlier in December and the link officially went into service when the first scheduled train left the eastern metropolis of Wuhan on Saturday.

By comparison, the average for high-speed trains in Japan was 243 kilometres per hour while in France it was 277 kilometres per hour, said Xu Fangliang, general engineer in charge of designing the link, according to Xinhua.

Beijing has an ambitious rail development programme aimed at increasing the national network from the current 86,000 kilometres to 120,000 kilometres, making it the most extensive rail system outside the United States.

China unveiled its first high-speed line at the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008 — a service linking the capital with the port city of Tianjin.

In September, officials said they planned to build 42 high-speed lines by 2012 in a massive system overhaul as part of efforts to spur economic growth amid the global downturn.

The network uses technology developed in co-operation with foreign firms such as Siemens, Bombardier and Alstom.