Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, interviews Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, regarding a Robust Public Option:
AMY GOODMAN: Congress member Grijalva, I also want to ask you about Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus and his close ties to the healthcare industry. [...]
REP. RAUL GRIJALVA: I think the product that has come out from his committee and himself, I really believe that it has no legitimacy in this debate. It's an insider product. It's there to protect the industry. It is not there to try to look for that middle ground. He is key in holding up deliberations, has been key in trying to work on a consensus, but everything you see in his legislation had to be approved by the industry before it became part of the plan. So I don't think it's legitimate.
[...] I consider Senator Baucus's proposal to be essentially an insider trader move to protect an industry and really doesn't have validity at all, both political validity or content validity.
(more on the propaganda front... - promoted by poligirl)
The President gave a compelling prime time Press Conference last week mostly about Health Care Reform -- the most pressing Issue of our time, and what was the lead story for the next several days?
The merits of Public Option competition?
The plight of 14,000 citizens losing their Health Insurance each day?
No, the lead story was the President's take on the arrest of his friend -- on the emotionally charged "wedge issue" of Racial Profiling. A worthy discussion, no doubt --
But what about the issues of Health Care Reform? What about that Debate?
Of course the Media has been failing to have a Real Health Care Debate for some time now ...
(that pesky 4th amendment... - promoted by poligirl)
NSA 'No Such Agency' apparently continues to operate as there is 'No Such Thing' as a 4th Amendment ...
NSA Whistleblower: Wiretaps Were Combined with Credit Card Records of U.S. Citizens By Kim Zetter - Wired - Jan 23, 2009
NSA whistleblower Russell Tice was back on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC program Thursday evening to expand on his Wednesday revelations that the National Security Agency spied on individual U.S. journalists, entire U.S. news agencies as well as "tens of thousands" of other Americans.
Tice said on Wednesday that the NSA had vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.
Today Tice said that the spy agency also combined information from phone wiretaps with data that was mined from credit card and other financial records. He said information of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens is now in digital databases warehoused at the NSA.
(framing, framing, framing... :D - promoted by poligirl)
I was listening to Thom Hartmann today at work -- one of the things I do to maintain my sanity, between "software emergencies". And I happened to catch part of Thom's interview with author David Korten. Dr. Korten was speaking so plainly about the current Economic Crisis, that I had to make a note to follow up on it.
To give you a sense of it, here is a snippet of it, from an interview Mr. Korten recently gave to Democracy Now! about his latest book:
David Korten: "Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth"
JUAN GONZALEZ: Your book's subtitle, From a Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth -- what is phantom wealth?
Instead of seeing Obama surrounded by bankers like ex Fed chairman Paul Volker and ex Goldman Sachs now Citigroup former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin last Friday, I wish Barack Obama had been huddled with Leo Gerard of the Steelworkers, James Hoffa of the teamsters, Naomi Klein author of "The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Wolfe, "The End of America" , Nomi Prins, "Other People's Money" and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com.
