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 David Swanson

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has 82 members, 81 in the House and 1 in the Senate, but has taken the anti-progressive onslaught of recent years lying down. The CPC can be counted on to say some pleasant things, but in the end 1 or 2 or 8 or 14 of its members will vote a progressive position. Almost never will the CPC attempt to organize its members to all take a stand. When it did organize 90 members to sign a letter to President Bush "opposing" war funding, virtually all of them turned around and voted for the funding.

By Dave Lindorff

With word being leaked out over the weekend that our Nobel Peace
Prize President is close to announcing plans to escalate the US troop
level in the Afghanistan War by 50%, we are about to have perhaps the
ultimate of ironies—a president announcing a big step-up in American
war-making on November 11, the day known around much of the Western
world as Armistice Day.

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 David Swanson

Congressman Weiner has agreed with Nancy Pelosi not to have a floor vote on his Medicare for All bill. A press release from Congressmen Kucinich and Conyers opposing it helped tip the scale. But Weiner did not ask Pelosi to include in her bill the Kucinich Amendment to allow states to create single-payer. Pelosi made clear that President Obama opposes that, and used the bogus excuse that providing everyone with comprehensive free healthcare would deprive them of the right to pay ever increasing rates for uncertain health "insurance."

By David Swanson

Word is that the full House will vote on national single-payer Medicare for All on Friday. This vote is a cover for the removal of an amendment that was in the House "healthcare" bill until Pelosi stripped it out. That amendment would have made it easier for states to enact single-payer, and still would if a conference committee is persuaded to reinstate it.

By Dave Lindorff

It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide races that
were decided last night, but I think it’s fair to say that the results
in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates
won--in New Jersey’s case knocking off a well-funded Democratic
incumbent--that the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm
Emanuel strategy of playing to the right, of avoiding confrontation in
Congress and of ignoring the progressive voters whose enthusiasm and
effort back in the 2008 campaign put Obama in office.

The Honorable George Miller
2205 Rayburn House Office Building
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative Miller:

On behalf of the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, it is my painful duty to inform you of a motion and vote taken on a resolution this past August as it relates to the current national Healthcare debate. My name is Karen Bernal and I am the elected Chair of the caucus. We apologize for the lateness of the news; we feel however, that it couldn’t be more timely and germane than for you to learn of the action now. The Progressive Caucus, comprised of over 700 active members, is the largest caucus in the State Party. At a statewide two-day summit this past August, the Caucus met to discuss and organize around issues that are of concern to us, both inside and outside of the caucus and Party. As you can imagine, the issue of Healthcare was a dominant issue the entire weekend.

I asked Congressman Dennis Kucinich about the prospects for his health-care Amendment - a provision that would allow states to set up their own single-payer healthcare networks.  Here's what he sent to Democrats.com:

This week on CounterSpin: Making sense of the health care debate. In the past week we've supposedly seen the comeback of the public option, in some form or another. We're also told that Harry Reid must gather 60 votes to pass a bill. Is any of this right? And what about a true public health system like single-payer? Author and activist David Swanson will join us to try and untangle these story lines.

Also on the show: Progressives and others interested in truly universal healthcare, as in healthcare that would cover everyone, have been more or less prodded in recent months to give up the idea of a single payer system -- dismissed as it's been for years by a corporate press corps as not politically viable -- and to get behind the public option, presented as single payer's less ideal but more achievable variant. But does public option as it's now presented have anything at all to do with healthcare that covers everyone? We'll talk with Bruce Dixon, managing editor of Black Agenda Report, about that.

LINKS:

David Swanson
Black Agenda Report