January 8, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot today in an assassination attempt during a public outreach event in Tucson. She was prematurely reported killed by CNN and NPR, but her status is listed as critical, and she is said to be “responding to commands”. The bullet reportedly “passed through her brain”. At least 9 other people were brought in for emergency treatment of wounds suffered. One 9-year-old child, a 63-year-old federal judge, and at least three others have reportedly died.
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January 7, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The planned vote to repeal last year’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [pdf], if successful, would increase the federal budget deficit by $230 billion over the next ten years, would leave 32 million Americans with no access to affordable healthcare insurance, would strip small businesses of tax credits they get to help cover employee health costs, and would increase the cost per insuree across the nation. The Congressional Budget Office has released a study showing the negative impact repeal would have on the federal budget, the welfare of average Americans and the economy more broadly.
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January 5, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
On Tuesday, Pres. Obama signed a raft of new legislation passed during the lame duck session of the 111th Congress. The huge number of signings capped a complicated two-year period of historic achievements and unprecedented Senate obstruction. Here’s a comprehensive list of the new laws Pres. Obama signed on the last day before the Republicans are sworn in as the new majority in the House of Representatives, from the White House…
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January 4, 2011 :: Denver Lessing :: Comments Off
Capping a season of lavish fundraising events where Republican members of Congress raised huge sums from lobbyists, corporate donors and special interests, one Republican freshman is holding a major bash, at $2,500 per person, complete with live performance by Leigh Ann Rimes, $50,000 all-inclusive package deals and luxury suites at the W hotel. Despite Tea Party opposition to corrupt corporate-interest politics, Rep. Jeff Denham is openly positioning himself to be the go-to rainmaker for fellow Republicans.
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January 3, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The 112th Congress will be officially sworn in on Wednesday, and its work will be fraught with challenges and controversies from the very first. On Wednesday, for instance, the House of Representatives will vote on a rules change that will allow Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan to dictate spending priorities and caps to the entire House and Senate, by disallowing any revision of his rewrite guidelines, should the two chambers fail to reach agreement on a budget resolution. Issues like raising the debt ceiling, implementing START, mortgage and foreclosure reform and expanding medical coverage, will all pit liberal against conservative in a split Congress.
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December 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is guaranteed to be controversial long after the shock of its meaning fades from public consciousness. The ruling effectively gave multinational corporations free rein to spend unlimited sums of money with the specific intent of distorting the public discourse and swaying the democratic process in their favor. Some say it amounts to the death of real democracy in the United States.
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November 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Glen Beck has always had a penchant for the outrageous, the egregious, the outright lie. He has made a career of smears, distortions, even verging on hate-rhetoric. His absurd assertion that his white followers should “take back the civil rights movement”, a phrase whose meaning no one could claim to fully understand, was perhaps a sign of near psychotic hubris. But his most recent “Puppetmaster” series, obsessively defaming George Soros, Holocaust survivor, billionaire philanthropist and democracy activist, as a ‘Nazi’ is a sign that Fox News has left all semblance of morality behind.
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November 14, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States government is facing historic budget deficits. A wave of new Republicans are going to Washington, DC, with the idea in mind they will slash “spending”, “shrink the federal workforce” and reduce benefits for “entitlements”, i.e. social programs. What they do not have a way to understand is that the entire budget deficit crisis is a direct result of specific policies enacted by former president George W. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress of 2001-2006.
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November 13, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
In one of the least informed, most reckless votes of the 2010 midterm elections, a racist ideologue aiming to intimidate Oklahomans into voting for him and his party, pushed an unconstitutional response to a non-existent threat. The referendum aimed at preventing Islamic sharia law from supplanting the United States Constitution was a response to a non-existent threat, and it includes language that directly contradicts the Constitution of the United States.
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November 13, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The lame duck Congress, with enormous Democratic majorities in both houses, will have to decide what to do about the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire on the first of January. The Republicans will not take control of the House of Representatives until after the deadline on the Bush tax cuts. The Democratic plan is devoted to two things: the middle class and fiscal responsibility. The Republican plan is devoted to one thing: delivering as much free cash to millionaires as possible, all while ballooning the deficit enormously.
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November 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
An incoming Republican member of the House of Representatives, Alan Nunnelee of Mississippi, has said he would hold the U.S. government hostage in order to make sure millions of Americans are stripped of their health insurance and their healthcare rights. The Affordable Care Act, the most important reform to the health insurance markets since Medicare, and the most comprehensive reform in 100 years, bars insurers from denying coverage or treatment due to “pre-existing conditions”, it reduces the federal budget deficit and incentivizes the training of 20,000 new primary care physicians.
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November 4, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell today spoke to the Heritage Foundation, and called on Pres. Obama to compromise by doing what the Senate minority wants. His speech was at intervals irrational and in turn smelled of sour grapes (McConnell did not get to take control of the Senate, so he proposes his party empower him by continuing to obstruct every proposal made to benefit the American people). But perhaps worst of all, McConnell proposed the Republican majority in the House of Representatives misuse its Constitutional authority to control the purse and violate federal law by undermining provisions of the Affordable Care Act designed to ensure sick Americans are not denied care.
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November 3, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The vicious, at times shameful, elections of 2010, full of more vitriol and more defamatory ads than any in memory, flush with record sums of corporate spending, and in an environment of deep economic malaise, have given the Republicans control of the House of Representatives, while Democrats retain control of the Senate. Rep. John Boehner [...]
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November 2, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
If you are trying to vote in today’s election and have any questions or concerns about irregularities, or if you’re having trouble casting a verifiable vote, with a paper trail, be sure to contact the Verified Voting national voter hot-line at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (687-8683). If you are unsure about where to vote or what your rights [...]
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November 1, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
The anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio has won notoriety across the world for his roundups of people he determines to be “likely illegal immigrants”, whom he then detains in tent camps in the desert heat. Now, he has been forced to sever ties with an anti-immigrant group, after it sent out a mass email claiming he planned to spearhead an effort to prevent Hispanic Americans from exercising their Constitutional right to vote.
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November 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The federal government of the United States is experiencing major annual budget deficits. Republicans have spent most of the last two years decrying “tax and spend liberals” for causing such deficits. But every penny of the current federal budget deficit is directly attributable to specific policies enacted under George W. Bush. And Republicans are promising to return to and expand the very same policies put in place by Bush.
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October 31, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Advertisement targets the following groups for spending millions in secret, undisclosed donations to fund campaign attack ads: Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Job Security, American Future Fund, American Crossroads GPS, American Action Network. The web ad was temporarily pulled from the Think Progress website, while lawyers reviewed its content. The ad has since been reposted.
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October 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Amid allegations the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using membership dues and donations from foreign firms to wage an all-out ad-war against Democratic politics, at least 275 members are demanding the group cease its “punitive campaign” against anyone who supported the Affordable Care Act and reveal their sources and methods of funding the ads.
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October 31, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
I can’t control what people think this was. I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies.
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October 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States midterm Congressional elections, which include votes for state-level executive and legislative officials, will determine how the electoral map might be redrawn for the next 10 years, helping to give one party an advantage over the other. Congressional districts are redrawn roughly every ten years, when new official federal Census data (gathered every [...]
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October 31, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Republicans are hoping their two-year-long strategy of relentless obstructionism, their quest to undermine the government of Pres. Barack Obama in hopes of prolonging economic hardship and using generalized malaise to defeat the Democrats will hand them control of both houses of Congress. But increasingly, analysts appear convinced the House may likely shift to Republicans, while the Senate will not. The challenge of governing with only one house majority may be the greatest challenge to the Republican cause in 2012.
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October 30, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pres. Obama, in a campaign rally in Bridgeport, Connecticut, spoke about the need to defend American consumers against abuses, put hardworking American families first, protect and build the middle class by making education more affordable and giving students a better education. He reminded a cheering crowd that “Germany aren’t cutting education by 20%; they’re not [...]
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October 30, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear), hosted by superstar comic news anchors Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert on the National Mall in Washington, DC, has drawn hundreds of thousands of people from across the country. Turnout was estimated at 300,000 beforehand, but images from the Mall show an edge-to-edge crowd filling the lawn from the stage at least as far back as the Washington Monument, meaning the total could well exceed 500,000 people.
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October 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, writes: “Every variation of public service, including elective office, should be anchored by one complete and overriding truth and objective—to make a better world,” as part of a powerful statement urging civility and good-will from all who seek to involve themselves in the work of public service. Hagel’s open letter to the political world comes at a time when many election observers say the campaign of 2010 is the most degenerate and ill-intentioned in memory, where lies are prevailing over evidence and the ability to commit to effective and relentless distortion has become the most sought-after weapon of campaigners.
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October 26, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
One of the men who physically assaulted a MoveOn.org supporter who sought to deliver a corporate corruption “prize” to Republican candidate Rand Paul has been identified. He was the Paul campaign’s coordinator for Bourbon County, Kentucky, but has been fired in the wake of his assault on Ms. Valle. Tim Profitt has reportedly admitted to being the assailant and has issued conflicting statements regarding the incident: apologizing and also claiming the “camera angle” makes his assault, in which he stomped his boot on Ms. Valle’s neck and head, look worse than it was.
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October 26, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Outside a debate between candidates for the Senate in Kentucky, Rand Paul (R) and Jack Conway (D), a gang of apparent supporters of Tea Party favorite Rand Paul brutally assaulted a woman representing the progressive organization MoveOn.org. The progressive activist was seized by Paul supporters, thrown to the ground, beaten and kicked; at least one Paul supporter is shown on video stomping on her neck and head with violent force.
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October 25, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
This online advertisement is directed at motivating progressives and independents to vote in the 2010 presidential election. It is unique because it implements several of the tactical approaches of successful viral marketing campaigns, speaking directly to the viewer, putting known faces in humorous or startling situations, and calling attention to a perceived ongoing problem relating to the political sphere with hyperbole artfully used to represent serious policy issues.
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October 16, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
[F]or years, our tax code has actually given billions of dollars in tax breaks that encourage companies to create jobs and profits in other countries. I want to close these tax loopholes. Instead, I want to give every business in America a tax break so they can write off the cost of all new equipment they buy next year. That’s going to make it easier for folks to expand and hire new people. I want to make the research and experimentation tax credit permanent. Because promoting new ideas and technologies is how we’ll create jobs and retain our edge as the world’s engine of discovery and innovation. And I want to provide a tax cut for clean energy manufacturing right here in America. Because that’s how we’ll lead the world in this growing industry.
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October 13, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Karl Rove is a professional liar who has made it his priority to worship at the feet of billionaire corporate interests and those among the wealthy who prefer to avoid doing their part to repay the society that made them wealthy. His modus operandi is: formulate a series of falsehoods which will be repeated by as many individuals, media outlets and sources of propaganda as possible, and support that campaign with money from anyone with enough vested interest that the money will not stop flowing.
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October 2, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
The ‘One Nation Working Together’ rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, is projected to gather 200,000 progressive activists, volunteers and supporters from around the country. There are sister rallies taking place across the country, as part of a collective effort to promote progressive values and “demand change”. The rally has been said to show the progressive base is highly energized and will mobilize to support Democrats and Pres. Obama’s reform agenda.
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September 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In a speech to a packed room at Villanova University, during the university’s three-day celebration of the legacy and work of St. Thomas of Villanova —a celebration that includes scholarly presentations, community gatherings, this keynote address and a day of service in which thousands fan out across the region to do charitable work—, E.J. Dionne called for a politics rooted in conscience and compassion for our fellow human beings. The acclaimed journalist, scholar and Washington Post columnist rooted his talk in Catholic Social Teaching and spoke of an historical drive, in the US, toward comprehensive social justice.
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September 6, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
In his weekly address for Saturday, 4 September 2010, Pres. Barack Obama praises the American worker for contributions to our nation’s history and the building of a robust, free and democratic middle-class society. The president also expresses his view that urgent action is needed to help secure the place of the middle class, and of [...]
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August 18, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The women’s suffrage movement finally achieved the goal of full citizenship for women, by way of equal voting rights, 90 years ago today. The victory was hard-one and long in coming. Lydia Chapin Taft, a colonial resident of Uxbridge, Massachusetts, was allowed to vote in three town meetings, beginning in 1756, and the state of New Jersey became the first state to allow women the right to vote, provided they met property requirements, from 1790 until 1807. But in no other state were women provided full voting rights until 18 August 1920.
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August 16, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Republican House minority leader John Boehner, of Ohio, said last Sunday on Meet the Press that, whether or not tax cuts are paid for, Pres. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans must not be allowed to expire. He refused, in increasingly heated and defensive language, to say whether or not tax cuts are paid for. His refusal was as good as an admission that there is no way to pay for the tax cuts and that his party does not, in fact, believe the trickle-down theory behind the Bush tax cuts will actually work.
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August 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The spreading notion that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution should be repealed, in order to stop illegal immigration, is a direct assault on all Americans. Most of us became citizens because we were born in this country. We required no special paperwork beyond a recognition of our birth and the giving of a legal name. We were given social security numbers and citizenship, due to our being born on American soil, and our citizenship was not conditioned on our parents’ behavior or origins.
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August 8, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
John Boehner says the United States should not have any qualities or any conditions of life that might serve as “an incentive for illegal immigrants to come here”. He was commenting specifically on the question of whether the Constitution should grant citizenship to anyone born in the United States, but his reaction suggests that anything of any kind which might be considered a point of attraction for anyone from another country should not be tolerated.
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August 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
A federal judge has overruled California’s ban on gay marriage. Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the referendum banning same-sex marriage, an already existing right, violated the Constitution’s due process and equal protection requirements. The ruling has been touted as one of the most thorough and fact-based examinations of the legality of such laws, designed to bar access for some people to a right most others enjoy. Walker found there was no legitimate legal reason to so limit the rights of same-sex couples, that same-sex marriage causes no discernible harm to any party, and that banning it does cause severe harm to same sex couples and their children.
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July 18, 2010 :: staff :: 2 Comments
In his weekly address, Pres. Obama criticizes Republicans in the United States Senate who are obstructing passage of an emergency extension of unemployment and efforts designed to help steer capital to small business. “When storms strike Main Street, we don’t play politics with emergency aid,” he says. “We don’t desert our fellow Americans when they fall on hard times. We come together and do what we can to help. We rebuild stronger and we move forward.”
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July 17, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
The overhaul of financial regulations that passed Congress yesterday and was signed into law today by Pres. Obama is the most sweeping and significant reform to financial services regulation since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The passage was a major victory for Pres. Obama, who had set significant financial regulatory reform as a top priority since before the 2008 credit crisis hit. It is also shaping up to be a key plank in the Democratic campaign this fall, as Republicans systematically opposed and sought to block the measure, aligning themselves with major banks and financial interests.
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July 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
With Democrats and Republicans fighting each other from hardened rhetorical gun turrets, taking for granted the other side’s evil and intransigence, Pres. Obama’s first 18 months in office have been characterized by a near total lack of cooperation from moderates in the opposition.Republicans are talking like radicals and insurgents, but claiming to be traditional conservatives, and Democrats are struggling to remain populist while tasked with actually governing.
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June 12, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
There is no clearer way to say it than that virtually no one in South Carolina Democratic party politics had ever heard of Alvin Greene until his name showed up on the primary ballot as a candidate for the United States Senate. So how did someone with no party ties, no political background, no money, no campaign operation and with there being virtually no evidence of any campaign effort whatsoever, win the Democratic party nomination to challenge Republican incumbent Jim DeMint?
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May 3, 2010 :: staff :: One Comment
Every time a major issue arises, we’ve come to expect that an army of lobbyists will descend on Capitol Hill in the hopes of tilting the laws in their favor. That’s one of the reasons I ran for President: because I believe so strongly that the voices of ordinary Americans were being drowned out by the clamor of a privileged few in Washington. And that’s why, since the day I took office, my administration has been taking steps to reform the system. Recently, however, the Supreme Court issued a decision that overturned decades of law and precedent – dealing a huge blow to our efforts to rein in this undue influence. In short, this decision gives corporations and other special interests the power to spend unlimited amounts of money – literally millions of dollars – to affect elections throughout our country. This, in turn, will multiply their influence over decision-making in our government.
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May 3, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The 1st of May brought massive immigration rights protests across the country, calling for fair treatment, equality before the law, humane reform and the repeal of Arizona’s immigrant-ID law. The wave of protest this year may have swelled due to widespread anger over Arizona’s passage of a draconian anti-immigrant law that establishes a mandate for police to stop anyone whom they have a “reasonable suspicion” that person’s immigration status is not fully up to date, demanding papers.
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April 25, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The governor of Arizona has signed into law a measure that would allow police to demand proof of legal residency in cases where they believe an individual might be an undocumented immigrant. The same law would also require people to carry proof of legal residency. It is unclear how the law would be enforced without racial profiling and whether or not US citizens would be subject to legal penalties if caught not carrying proof of citizenship.
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March 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The healthcare reform process has taken a full year of agonizing, sometimes gut-wrenching debate, or something popularly referred to as debate, but not properly qualifying. At times, the consensus of media punditry appeared to be leaning toward the notion that the healthcare reform process had already derailed Barack Obama’s young presidency. Cries of “socialism!” and “kill the bill!” never really died down, and Democratic leaders appeared at a loss for how better to explain the legislation than to explain it as it was and as its aims were.
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March 20, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
The town of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, voted last weekend to approve a warrant article —a kind of citizen-prompted legislation— banning any method of vote-counting that is not fully conducted within view of citizen election monitors. The vote means that even traditional methods of counting ballots, if conducted in a “blind” way, out of view of people who can assess the physical veracity of the count, will not be considered legitimate within the town.
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February 28, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: Comments Off
The media are exploding with reports that explicitly declare that “the public opposes the current healthcare reform bills” passed by both houses of Congress. In fact, this is patently false, and any of the major polls on the subject bear this out, if one devotes the time necessary to understand the numbers. It is inaccurate to say “the public opposes”, because there is not one uniform majority of Americans opposing a specific set of initiatives in the pending reforms.
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February 28, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Republican House minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today on Meet the Press that Republicans want healthcare reform, but they favor a “common-sense, modest, incremental approach”. The statement is sly and problematic: Cantor wants to imply that incremental is responsible, playing on the emotional fetish that brings many to conservative politics, but he is simply fudging the facts and reframing an historically irresponsible approach in order to attack the president. Incremental fixes to the pervasive healthcare crisis have so far failed to reverse the trend toward ever-higher costs and ever-less-competent insurers.
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February 27, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Republican party’s Congressional leadership is participating in a bipartisan healthcare reform summit moderated by Pres. Barack Obama, at Blair House near the White House. The “square-table” discussion includes the leading budgetary and health policy partisans from the House and Senate, as well as Pres. Obama, Vice Pres. Biden and Sec. of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. The president invited Republicans to “show me what you got”, and to lay out constructive alternative ideas for healthcare reform, in the interest of building consensus.
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February 12, 2010 :: Eva Scherson :: Comments Off
Let down your guard for five seconds, and you will likely find some emanation of the pseudo-conservative hostility market explaining that Pres. Obama is deliberately plotting the destruction of the United States of America, that his administration is lazy and incompetent, and that terrorists are about to seize control of the homeland. Those propagandists, who expect you will not notice their absurd claims are in fact lies, are the ones who are, very deliberately, trying to ruin America.
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