elections

Congressional Progressive Caucus: No to cutting working families to pay ransom to millionaires

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 31, 2011

Media Contact: Adam Sarvana (202) 225-2435

(202) 573-2562 cell

Washington, D.C. – Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, today released the following statement on the emerging debt deal:

“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.

This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations. The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways. Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. I will not be a part of it.

Continue reading Congressional Progressive Caucus: No to cutting working families to pay ransom to millionaires →

budget crisis, health care, Right Wing, safety net

How To Deal Seriously with Health Costs

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Save Lives and Money by

Expanding Medicare to All

By Dr. Quentin Young
Beaver County Blue via Fire Dog Lake

July 31, 2011 – With media attention focused on the debt-ceiling drama in Washington, and with so many Americans rightly preoccupied with the frightening level of joblessness and bleak state of the economy, it might seem strange to urge a national celebration of Medicare’s 46th anniversary this Saturday, July 30.

After all, if we’re to believe top lawmakers, Medicare is part of the problem, right? Aren’t we supposed to be talking about raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67, reducing benefits, increasing seniors’ co-pays and deductibles or, even more dire, abolishing the program altogether and handing seniors vouchers to buy private insurance?

Wrong. Despite its market-obsessed detractors and those who would weaken the program in the name of deficit reduction, Medicare is the solution, not the problem. More precisely, an improved Medicare for all – a single-payer health system – is the right prescription for treating not only our health care woes, but our ailing economy as well.

How so?

The biggest albatross around the neck of our health care system is the private insurance industry, which remains firmly entrenched under the new federal health law.

Continue reading How To Deal Seriously with Health Costs →

budget crisis, Environment, Right Wing

Debt Hoax Swindles: Turn on the Lights, and Watch the Roaches Run

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Hidden In The Budget:

The End Of Almost Every

Major Environmental Regulation

By Ariel Schwartz

Today via Fast Company

walruses

Once the debt ceiling debate is settled, Congress is going to have to re-focus on the budget that almost shut down the government a few months ago. As part of that process, members of Congress have attached various provisions to the appropriations bills. One bill includes policy riders that deal with longstanding environmental rules–things like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. It’s called the 2012 Interior and Environmental Appropriations bill [1] and as currently written, it would scale back or reverse decades of environmental protections, including:

Removing Clean Air Act protections

One rider on the bill would nix the EPA’s funding to enforce the Clean Air Act’s upcoming Mercury and Air Toxics standards for power plants, which are intended to cut soot and smog pollution. The same rider would stop the EPA from enacting the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (aka the "good neighbor policy"), which limits power plant pollution that drifts into other states.

Most of the regulations being targeted are Clean Air Act rules put on the books in 1990 (signed by the first President Bush). "These are things people have been aware of for a long time," says Tony Kreindler, director of strategic communications at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Most companies out there that are affected have been preparing for a long time." But Kreindler explains that some companies–such as American Electric Power–have been bitterly fighting the rules, saying they haven’t had enough time to prepare, "while all along everyone else has known somehow that the day has been coming for 20 years."

If funding for the Mercury and Air Toxics rule is upheld, Kreindler estimates that it could prevent 17,000 premature deaths. Another 17,000 could be saved by the good neighbor policy. So if these policies are not upheld, well, do the math.

Continue reading Debt Hoax Swindles: Turn on the Lights, and Watch the Roaches Run →

2012 Election, Economy, Environment

Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates

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Mitt Romney at Screen Machine in Ohio

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Some things just drive you nuts.

Take Mitt Romney. Yesterday the GOP’s presidential wannabe toured Screen Machine, a factory in Pataskala, Ohio, just outside Columbus.  The plant make heavy construction equipment, rock crushers to be exact.

Romney and the owners, Doug and Steve Cohen, held a typical photo-op. Mitt took the occasion to blast both Obama and ‘government’ as ‘bad for business.’

Really? What did Mitt have in mind? A wimpy stimulus package? A failure to build more infrastructure? In that case, he might have a point.

Continue reading Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates →

Environment, Marcellus Shale

The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture

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Clean Water, Green Energy and the Big Blue Marble

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

A Reuter’s story this morning about the rising threat to the water supplies of 12 East Coast cities connected a few dots for me. The threat comes from burning carbon and climate change, which will raise sea levels and wreak havoc in numerous ways.

"Rising sea waters may threaten U.S. coastal cities later this century, while the Midwest and East Coast are at high risk for intense storms, and the West’s water supplies could be compromised, "the story led off. "These are among the expected water-related effects of climate change on 12 cities across the nation over the remainder of the century, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group.

"A lot of people think of climate change in the global context, but they don’t think about the local impact climate change might have, particularly on water-related issues," said Steve Fleischli, a senior attorney with NRDC’s water program."

Perhaps it’s because my daughters and grandkids live in New York City that the story caught my eye. ‘We’ll have to make room for them here in Beaver County,’ up in the hills on the west slope of the Alleghenies, I first thought.

But what about the Marcellus shale fracking by the gas drillers? We might not have any decent water here, either.

Continue reading The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture →

elections

Labor and Healthcare Activists Protest Cuts to Medicare at Jason Altmire’s Office

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photo from http://www.beavercountian.com

Nurses and Union Activists Demonstrate Against Medicare Cuts at Rep. Jason Altmire’s Office

Congressman Jason Altmire is a Blue Dog Democrat who has consistently provided decisive votes for the Republican slash and burn social agenda since the 2010 election. The Republican plan to cut Medicare will devastate healthcare services in Beaver County where many elderly and disabled people rely on it. The plan also includes cuts to Social Security.

Progressive Democrats, labor, and community groups are lobbying Altmire to vote against any cuts that would hurt the people of his district. Will he provide the winning vote for the Republicans as he has done this year over and over? Be sure to call and let him know your position.

elections

Progressive Democrat Runs for Congress in Arizona

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Arizona’s New Democrats: Wenona’s Historic Bid Inspires Bipartisan Campaign Against Radical Tea Party Rep. Gosar

Posted: 7/26/11 12:01 PM ET

 

In one of the largest Congressional districts in the nation, stretching across the rural heartland of eastern Arizona from the Four Corners region to the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson, the historic candidacy of Wenona Benally Baldenegro for the Democratic nomination for Congress is marking a new era in Western politics.

For Arizonans exhausted by the extremist Tea Party machinations of freshman Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who many view more dedicated to the Tea Party’s beltway defiance of the Obama administration than the creation of jobs or protecting health care and investments in education, the hands-on rural American experience and Main Street platform ideas of public interest attorney Benally Baldenegro have galvanized a bipartisan campaign across the district’s diverse constituency.

“We’re extremely disappointed in Rep. Gosar,” said Vera Skorupski, a long-time registered Republican from Sedona, Arizona and a campaign supporter of Benally Baldenegro. Citing Gosar’s lack of support for Medicare and health care reform, Skorupski praised Benally Baldenegro for not ignoring the “compassionate conservative” tradition abandoned by “radical” Tea Party activists like Gosar and bringing together Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Raised in the mining town of Kayenta on the Navajo Nation, the Harvard-educated attorney Benally Baldenegro will also become the first female American Indian member of Congress, if elected.

Continue reading Progressive Democrat Runs for Congress in Arizona →

Blue Dogs, PDA, safety net

Messages Sent to Congressman Atmire:

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No  cuts in Social Security!

No cuts in Medicare!

Tax Speculation to Fund Clean Energy and Green Manufacturing Jobs!

Windmills Not Weapons, End the Wars!

Join us for our ‘Brown Bag Lunch’ Vigils every third Wednesday at 12 noon at  Altmire’s Aliquippa office on McMinn St near the Dairy Queen

elections

An American Hero Celebrates 100th Birthday

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Friends, family mark 100th birthday of a Florin hero

smagagnini@sacbee.com

Published Monday, Jul. 25, 2011


More than 150 relatives, friends and neighbors filled Florin Community Center on Sunday to celebrate a true American war hero.

Bob Fletcher – who officially turns 100 on Tuesday – didn’t see combat in World War II. But he was shot at for being a Japanese sympathizer when he quit his job to save three local Japanese American farms whose owners were sent to internment camps.

Most of Sacramento’s 3,000 Japanese Americans who were shipped off to barbed-wire camps from 1942 to 1945 lost everything – even though most were U.S. citizens. Their farms and homes were stolen or foreclosed on by the banks.

But Fletcher, a UC Davis-trained agricultural inspector, knew many Japanese farmers throughout Northern California and hated to see their hard work and life savings disappear.

“They were the same as everybody else – it was obvious they had nothing to do with Pearl Harbor,” Fletcher said.

At his neighbors’ request, he agreed to work three farms – 90 acres of flame Tokay grapes on Florin-Perkins Road – while the Tsukamotos, Okamotos and Nittas were locked up.

Continue reading An American Hero Celebrates 100th Birthday →

elections

SEIU Calls Protest at Altmire’s office Monday July 25 3:30pm: Hands off Social Security and Healthcare

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VIGIL IN SUPPORT OF
SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE

MONDAY
JULY 25TH at 3:30
REP ALTMIRE’S OFFICE
 2110 McCLEAN STREET, ALIQUIPPA

Service Employees International Union HAVE RECEIVED WORD THAT
ALTMIRE INTENDS TO VOTE IN FAVOR OF
CUTS TO SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE.

LET’S JOIN THEM TOMORROW AT ALTMIRE’S ALIQUIPPA OFFICE.