Health
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: Depleted Uranium in the USA
By Dave Lindorff
The Nuclear Regulator Commission will be holding hearings tomorrow
and Wednesday in Hawaii on an application by the US Army for a permit
to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch
of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains
of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield
Barracks on the island of Oahu. In fact, what the Army is asking for is
a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing
of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a
pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that
any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many
as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa
alone.
But that’s only a small part of the story.
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A Safe Substitute for Alcohol
By David Swanson
The U.S. Department of Justice says that alcohol plays a pivotal role in two-thirds of all cases of violence against an intimate (a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend), and blames alcohol for contributing to 100,000 sexual assaults against young people every year. That's right, alcohol hurts more people than al Qaeda.
Of course, alcohol does not always lead every consumer of it to violence. Most people who drink alcohol don't hurt anyone. But a large percentage of those who do get violent have been drinking alcohol. Should we ban it? We tried that once with miserable results, and we've banned other substances with equally bad outcomes.
How do we fix Social Security/Medicare and the lack of Health Care for the general public?
September 12th, 2009
Everyone wants to fix the Social Security system, the Medicare system and provide Health Care for the general public. Hello, everyone is going at these issues from the wrong angle. What needs to be introduces is:
'My Fellow Americans...': The Speech President Obama Should Give to Congress Next Week
As imagined by Dave Lindorff
My Fellow Americans.
I stand before you a chastened president. I made a mistake. Two mistakes really. (wild applause from Republican side)
I thought that Congress could do its job and through the
deliberative process, produce a health care reform plan that would win
broad support across the aisle and among all of you. But I’m afraid
that I was wrong. Health care is an enormous industry—maybe the biggest
and most powerful industry in the country—and it has far too much power
in Washington. Literally thousands of lobbyists, carrying tens of
billions of dollars in campaign contributions—have invaded these halls (and my house!) (relieved laughter)
and distorted the process, and in the end have stymied reform. (some hissing)
Meanwhile, I have realized that the answer has been staring us in the face all along.
A Few More Thoughts About Single-Payer and Medicare
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.
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Progressives Should be Shutting Down These So-Called 'Town Meetings' Too!
By Dave Lindorff
Many progressives are getting all bent out of shape over the "brown
shirt" rabble organized by health industry PR firms to disrupt the
so-called "town meetings" being organized all over the country by
Democratic members of Congress.
What they are conveniently forgetting is that these are not really
"town meetings" at all, at least in the sense of the town meetings I
grew up with, and started out covering as a young journalist in
Connecticut--that is, meetings called and run democratically, with
leaders elected from the floor, open to all residents of a community.
Stop Complaining About Right-Wing Protests! The Left Should Be (Re)Learning How It's Done
By Dave Lindorff
OMG! Those protesters showing up at Democratic “town meetings” to
promote the president’s health care “reform” program are being bused in
from out of town?
Scandal! Que horrible! (Gasp)
But wait! That’s exactly what we on the left always did when we
held demonstrations—at least if we could. Who in the trade union
movement hasn’t called on fellow workers in other unions to join them
in rallies during struggles with an employer, or asked them to join
sparse picket-lines? Who hasn’t pulled out the stops trying to get
people from other cities to attend a local protest?
Health Care Reform Sell-Out: Why Obama and the Democrats are Either Shysters or Idiots
By Dave LIndorff
As I wrote months ago in an article titled America’s Stupid Health Care Debate: Keeping Some Ideas Off the Table and several subsequent pieces on my website,
President Obama and the Democrats who currently run Congress have been
hoist on their own collective petard by their craven and gutless
refusal to consider adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system to
finance health care in the US, or simply to expand Medicare, which is a
successful single- payer program, to cover everyone, instead of just
people over 65 and the disabled.
Of Blue Dogs and Pink Jellyfish
By Dave Lindorff
What’s the difference between a Blue Dog Democrat and a progressive
Democrat? One is a vertebrate with a spine and a willingness to bite.
The other is a jellyfish with no spine and no teeth.
This difference has been glaringly apparent in the current fight over health care reform.
The Blue Dogs in House and Senate have been giving the progressive
Democrats an object lesson in how a small group in Congress can get its
way. They have threatened to withhold their support for the Obama
Administration’s key policy objective of a health reform package, and
have managed, with just a handful of votes between them, to remove
almost all progressive content from that legislation by threatening to
walk if they don’t get their way.
Agent Orange Causes Media Blindness
By Dave Lindorff
Agent Orange, the herbicide used as a weapon by US military forces
in Vietnam for nearly a decade to defoliate vast stretches of inhabited
forest and jungle in an effort to deprive the Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese forces of both cover and a supportive populace, has long
been known to have caused a large number of serious and debilitating
diseases, many of them passed on to children of those exposed. But now
it also appears to cause a peculiar blindness among American
journalists.
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