By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with
Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the
value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of
non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of
strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president
himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US
troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk
about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian
style control over information.

By Dave Lindorff

As the strike by transit workers in Philadelphia enters its fifth
day, it is clear why unions have such a tough time in the United
States, where fewer than one in eight workers is covered by a union
contract.

Although the average pay of transit workers is just $50,000 a year
(that represents take-home pay of less than $35000 take-home after
taxes or about $3000 a month to live on for a typical family of four),
the suburbanites who feel put out because they have to brave huge
traffic jams to get to and from work in the city are grousing that the
transit workers are greedy for holding out for a slightly-less-than 4%
per year pay increase over the three years of their contract.

By Dave Lindorff

Ordinary, average, struggling Americans might be scratching their
heads over the news today, as the Labor Department reports that
unemployment is up by four-tenths of a percent for the month to a
record 10.2%, fully three-tenths of a percent higher than economists
had been forecasting, and stocks do what? Rise by a quarter of a
percent!

What’s going on here?

Well, the tube analysts are quick to say, unemployment figures are
a “lagging” indicator. That is, employment generally lags the overall
economy, with layoffs coming after a recession kicks in, and hiring
waiting until a recovery is well underway.

By Dave Lindorff

If you listen to the happy-talk folks at Treasury and the Fed, and
on the tube, you’d think things had finally turned a corner. The
economy grew at a 3.5% annualized rate in the third quarter ended
September 30. “The Economy is Back in Gear” shouted the headline on an
article by CNN senior writer Chris Isadore. “The recession ended
unofficially in September,” said a reporter on NPR.

By Dave Lindorff

President Barack Obama has staked his presidency on winning his “necessary” war in Afghanistan. Coming into office, one of his first acts, on Feb. 18, was to boost US troop levels in that country by 17,000, bringing the total number of soldiers and Marines in the country to about 57,000, to which one must also add 74,000 private contractors who are doing jobs normally done by uniformed military, and about 33,000 other soldiers from NATO countries and Australia. That’s 164,000 foreign soldiers fighting against Taliban fighters.

By Dave Lindorff

Some critics have written, in response to my article
calling for extension of the single-payer plan called Medicare to all
Americans, that actually Medicare is a badly flawed program that leaves
America's elderly without coverage for many important health services,
and which requires them to pay for supplemental insurance, or to go on
Medicaid, too.

By Dave Lindorff

The “happy talk” campaign in the US media and coming from the White House is just that: Happy Talk.

To get a real picture of what is happening with this economy, here are a few things to keep in mind.

Yes, the rate of decline in economic activity has slowed. But that
is to be expected. When an economy is going at full tilt, as the US
economy was doing in early 2007, a slowdown of any significance yields
huge numbers, in terms of falling production, falling factory
utilization, falling car sales, or, this time around, falling housing
prices.

By Dave Lindorff

If you want to fix the disaster that is called the American
healthcare system, the first thing to do is to clearly point out what
its major failings are, and there are two of these.

The first is cost. America is one of the or possibly the most
expensive places in the world to get sick or injured. The corollary of
that is that it is one of the best places to make a killing if you are
in the medical business, whether as a doctor, a hospital company, a
pharmaceutical firm or a nursing home owner.

By Dave Lindorff

When President Barack Obama made his quick dash up to Ottawa last
week, it's too bad he didn't suffer a gastrointestinal attack, or slip
on some ice and twist an ankle or something. If he had, he might have
had a chance to do what he should have done anyhow: visit a Canadian
health clinic.

Maybe then he would have had his eyes opened to a better idea: government-run health care.

By Dave Lindorff

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved his two shoes at the
head of President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad,
he did something that the White House press corps should have done
years ago.