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Two Texas public employee programs are among the top 25 recipients of the federal subsidy despite Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s opposition to the law Republicans derisively call “Obamacare.”

And records show the Huntsman family business, where GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman sharpened his executive skills, received about $1 million.

It highlights the gap between dire Republican rhetoric about the health care overhaul and the pragmatic impulse to cash in on a new government benefit.

Employer-sponsored health insurance for retirees has been shriveling for years, ever since companies were required to report the estimated liability to investors. Democrats who wrote the new law wanted to provide an incentive for employers to keep offering coverage. Only about 6 percent of private companies currently offer such a benefit for early retirees, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.

But that still works out to more than 400,000 companies. Add state and local government agencies, as well as union plans, and the number swells. Indeed, the Obama administration’s subsidy program got so many applications it stopped accepting new ones after approving more than 6,000. The program pays 80 percent of the claims amount for early retirees ages 55 to 64 whose care costs between $15,000 and $90,000.

The top beneficiary: the United Auto Workers retiree medical plan, which has collected more than $220 million.

“Some people have described this program as `Cash for Clunkers,’ in the sense that if you want it, you have to get in line first,” said Paul Fronstin, an economist with the research group. “There was a lot of advice given to be first in line.” The original Cash for Clunkers was an Obama administration program that paid people to trade in gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient transportation. It created a marketing sensation before running out of cash.

Texas, it seems, heeded the advice. So did Huntsman International.

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a statewide system for public education employees, received more than $70 million as of Sept. 22, according to the federal Health and Human Services Department. The Employees Retirement System of Texas, which covers state employees, received about $30 million.

Huntsman International, the main operating subsidiary of the family-founded chemical conglomerate, is also collecting subsidies.

As candidates, both Perry and Huntsman have sworn to repeal Obama’s signature health care law, which gradually extends coverage to most of the uninsured and makes numerous other changes, including a ban on insurers denying coverage to people in poor health and an unpopular requirement that most Americans carry coverage.

Spokesmen for the Perry and Huntsman campaigns said they see no contradictions.

Texas taxpayers also pay federal taxes, said Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan. “State taxpayers have a right to get those federal funds returned to them, in this care in the form of disbursement to the teachers and state employee retirement systems,” said Sullivan. “No Texas law or policy needed to be changed in order for these agencies to be eligible to receive the funds.”

Huntsman spokesman Tim Miller said his candidate, Obama’s first ambassador to China and a former governor of Utah, is opposed to all subsidies.

Jon Huntsman has not been involved in the family business since 2005, said company spokesman Gary Chapman. Huntsman resigned from the company to pursue his political career.

Asked why Huntsman International applied for the early retiree subsidy, Chapman responded: “We’re a commercial organization. We are looking to maximize our shareholders’ value. If there was a legitimate opportunity for us to get help in this respect, we would go for it.”

Republicans have tried to paint the early retiree subsidy program as a political reward to unions, among the staunchest Democratic loyalists. According to calculations by the office of Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust has made out the best.

A UAW spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment. In its 2007 contracts with Chrysler, GM and Ford, the union agreed to form the trust to pay health care costs for the companies’ retirees, including early retirees too young to qualify for Medicare. The trust started paying bills in January 2010, before Congress passed the health care law.

The calculations by Enzi’s staff also list AT&T, Verizon, General Electric, General Motors, Qwest, Caterpillar and other private companies in the top 25, not to mention the two Texas state programs. AT&T received $157 million.

Several media companies are also benefiting. The Associated Press, a nonprofit news-gathering service owned by the nation’s newspapers, has received $191,888.

Back in Texas, public and private employer retiree plans have collected more than $326 million from the subsidy. They range from American Airlines to Texas A&M University – Perry’s alma mater.

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WASHINGTON — Health care savings in President Barack Obama’s deficit-reduction plan would squeeze future Medicare recipients, cut payments to drug companies and hospitals, and shift costs to states.

Still, some advocates say the president’s approach is less painful than other major ideas being debated this year, from privatizing Medicare to letting the states run Medicaid without a federal guarantee that the poor would get needed care.

“This is a question of `compared to what?’” said John Rother, president of the National Coalition on Health Care, a research and advocacy group. “I would describe this as an attempt to spread the pain pretty broadly. While it does hit Medicare beneficiaries, it’s better than most of the alternatives we’ve seen thus far, which would involve bigger hits.”

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Obama did promise Medicare beneficiaries that he’d veto any legislation asking them to sacrifice without also raising taxes on upper-income earners. But he didn’t issue them a complete pass.

Instead, his administration is borrowing from corporate America’s playbook by proposing to raise a range of costs for future retirees, while mostly shielding Medicare’s 48 million current beneficiaries. Under the president’s plan, starting in 2017:

-Upper-income beneficiaries would pay higher monthly premiums for outpatient and prescription coverage. Eventually about a quarter of all Medicare beneficiaries would be hit with the higher income-related premiums that only a small share of seniors now pay.

-Newly signed-up beneficiaries would pay a penalty if they also purchase private insurance that covers all or most of Medicare’s copayments and deductibles. Administration officials say such insurance encourages over-treatment.

-New beneficiaries would pay a $100 copayment for home health services, unless they have just been discharged from a hospital or nursing home.

-New beneficiaries would pay a higher annual deductible for outpatient services. The so-called Part B deductible, currently $162, is indexed for inflation. It would go up by $25 for new enrollees in 2017, 2019 and 2021.

“You can’t reduce the deficit without making some people pay more or get less,” said Paul Van de Water, a senior analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for the poor. “If you think there should be no cuts in Medicare, anywhere, then this obviously goes too far. If, at the end of the day, you recognize that they have to make some further reductions, then these are about the best you can do.”

Try telling that to the pharmaceutical industry. Obama’s plan would cut their payments by $135 billion over 10 years, accounting for more than one-third of his total health care savings. The president wants drug makers to pay rebates to Medicare, along the lines of what they now pay Medicaid. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America says it would lead to the loss of thousands of jobs in the industry.

Hospitals and nursing homes, slated for a mix of cuts and efficiency measures, are also complaining. The American Hospital Association says if Obama’s plan becomes law, hospitals and related businesses would lose 200,000 jobs by 2021.

Doctors also have reason to be concerned. Without endorsing any particular fix, Obama’s plan assumes that Congress will address the main issue facing doctors: a scheduled 30 percent cut in Medicare payments next year due to a previous budget law gone awry. A solution being considered by congressional advisers would cut payments to specialists and freeze rates for primary care doctors.

Obama also wants to give additional authority to a new agency called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which could force further cuts for medical providers.

All told, Obama’s plan would cut Medicare by $248 billion over 10 years and squeeze another $72 billion from Medicaid. Some of Medicaid savings involve shifting costs to the states by rejiggering the federal payment formula and limiting a strategy currently used by states to draw more federal dollars.

Two leading organizations that supported Obama’s health care overhaul law are expressing concerns about his latest plan. AARP says it could result in arbitrary cuts to Medicare. Families USA, a liberal advocacy group, says the Medicaid cuts could undermine coverage for the uninsured.

According to a Wall Street Journal article from 2008, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s former campaign manager Kent Snyder, died of pneumonia in 2008 because he didn’t have any health insurance.

The resurfacing of this article comes on the heels of Paul’s statement last week at the Tea Party debate about individuals with no health insurance.

“That’s what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody—,” said Paul in response to a question on whether the state should pay for an uninsured person’s health bills.

Read more at Gawker

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Kyle Willis, only 24-years-old and the nephew of the famed Bootsy Collins, became another example of the healthcare problem in America.

Willis was told he needed his wisdom teeth removed to get rid of the infection, but he decided to tough it out because of lack of funds and healthcare.

“The [doctors] gave him antibiotic and pain medication, but he couldn’t afford to pay for the antibiotic, so he chose the pain meds, which was not what he needed,” Willis’ aunt Patti Collins told WLWT-TV.

While Willis’ discomfort subsided, the infection continued to spread, causing lethal swelling in his brain.

Read more at NYDailyNews

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INDIANAPOLIS — A new survey from a large benefits consultant says nearly one of every 10 mid-sized or big employers expects to stop offering health coverage to workers once federal insurance exchanges start in 2014.

Towers Watson says an additional 20 percent of the companies it surveyed last month are unsure about what they will do. The remaining 71 percent expect to continue offering benefits.

Exchanges were devised under the health care overhaul and aim to provide a marketplace for people to buy insurance that can be subsidized by the government based on income levels.

Benefits experts say retailers and companies that pay low wages are most likely to drop coverage for their workers. But they also caution that companies are far from making a final decision on this.

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Some 26 states opposing the law and an alliance of small businesses argue that Congress didn’t have the power to require virtually all Americans to maintain health insurance. The Justice Department says the legislative branch exercised its “quintessential” right.

A three-judge federal appeals court panel in Cincinnati heard arguments last week about whether the law’s mandate to buy health insurance went beyond congressional authority, and a federal appeals court based in Richmond, Va. heard oral arguments May 10 in another legal challenge to the law.

Lawyers on both sides have said the cases ultimately will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. But the appeal court panel’s decision in Atlanta is being closely watched and could help shape the debate.

There’s considerable legal firepower on both sides of the argument. Former U.S. Solicitor Paul Clement represents the challenging states and current U.S. Solicitor Neal Katyal will speak for the government.

It unfolded in what’s considered one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts. But the randomly selected panel includes two appointees of Democratic President Bill Clinton, and observers say it’s hard to predict how they’ll decide. The Clinton appointees are circuit Judges Frank Hull and Stanley Marcus, while Chief Judge Joel Dubina was tapped by President George H.W. Bush.

Two similar lawsuits are pending in Virginia. Three federal judges, all Democratic appointees, have upheld the law. Two federal judges, both Republican appointees, have invalidated it.

At issue Wednesday is a ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a Republican-appointed judge in Florida. It not only struck down a requirement that nearly all Americans carry health insurance, but it threw out other provisions ranging from Medicare discounts for some seniors to a change that allows adult children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ coverage.

The 11th Circuit braced for a crush of people for the arguments, and was opening an adjoining courtroom for the spillover crowd. It also was planning to sell $26 audiotapes of the arguments to those who want recordings of the court sessions.

Outside the federal courthouse in Atlanta, about 75 people gathered on the sidewalk carrying signs ranging from “Hands off my health care” to “No taxpayer funded abortion” and “Throw the socialist out of the White House.” No chanting was permitted. One woman who repeated “No more Tea Party” was escorted away by a courthouse security officer.

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Moments earlier, the Senate had agreed to make one relatively minor change in the law, voting to strip out a paperwork requirement for businesses.

President Barack Obama, who has vowed to veto any total repeal of his signature legislative accomplishment, has said he would accept the change. It does not directly affect health care.

Republicans conceded in advance their attempt at total repeal would fall short. But they also said they had accomplished an objective of forcing rank and file Democrats to take a position on an issue that reverberated in the 2010 campaign and may play a role in 2012.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the vote marked an opportunity for Democrats who voted for the bill last year “to listen to those who have desperately been trying to get your attention.”

“To say, yes, maybe my vote for this bill was a mistake, and that we can do better,” McConnell said.

Democrats worked to minimize any political repercussions, a concern for a party already acutely aware it must defend 23 seats – and its shrunken Senate majority – in the 2012 elections.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Republican repeal movement would “take away a child’s right to get health insurance and instead give insurance companies the right to use asthma or diabetes as an excuse to take away that care.”

“It would kick kids off their parents’ health insurance,” Reid said. “It would take away seniors’ rights to a free wellness check.”

Democrats also countered with the proposed repeal of the law’s requirement that businesses, charities, and state and local governments file income tax forms every time they purchase $600 or more in goods.

It was approved 81-17, after Republicans pointed out it had originally been their idea.

Across the street from the Capitol, Democrats convened a Judiciary Committee hearing to solicit testimony on the constitutionality of the law they passed and Obama signed months ago.

“Many who argue the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional are the same people who condemn judicial activism,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who presided. “They are pushing the Supreme Court to strike down this law because they could not defeat it in Congress.”

Republicans were scathing in response.

“The sensible process would have been to have . held a hearing on the law’s constitutionality before the bill passed, not after,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa. “Like Alice in Wonderland, sentence first, verdict afterward.”

Two federal judges have ruled the law is unconstitutional, partially or in its entirety, citing a requirement for individuals to purchase coverage and pay a penalty in taxes if they fail to do so. Two other judges have upheld the law.

The controversy has yet to reach the Supreme Court, but it is widely expected to, and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., announced he would file legislation urging the justices to act quickly.

The maneuvering occurred around a law as ambitious as any in recent years, and as controversial. According to the Congressional Budget Office, it would expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it, crack down on insurance industry abuses and cut federal budget deficits. At its core, the bill would require most Americans to purchase insurance, a so-called individual mandate that has become one of the principal points of opposition among Republicans and the tea party activists who propelled them to gains last fall.

The bill’s critics argue the law gave government too large a role in the health care system, will harm Medicare and raises taxes and fees that will burden the economy. They also sharply dispute the CBO estimate that deficits will fall once the bill takes effect, arguing that the forecasts rest on spending cuts to Medicare and other programs that will not materialize.

Either way, the day’s events shaped up as the latest maneuvering in a struggle that has spanned more than two years.

Republicans said a proposal by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., to eliminate the reporting requirement to the Internal Revenue Service was legislative pilferage, noting that Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., filed a bill to that effect last year.

The measure calls for $44 billion in spending cuts to offset the revenue loss from the change, but unlike Johanns’ earlier measure, Stabenow’s specifies that none of the funds can come from Social Security.

Under federal law, Social Security benefits are generally guaranteed. As a result, the provision Stabenow advanced assures merely that no administrative costs can be cut at the agency.

No similar protection was included for the agency that oversees Medicare.

The House approved legislation repealing the health care law last month on a party-line vote, ignoring a veto threat from Obama and Reid’s blunt statement the bill would never see the light of day in the Senate. McConnell responded quickly that he would look for an opportunity to force a vote.

All 47 Republicans voted to repeal the law, but no Democrat joined them.

At a news conference shortly after the vote, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the party’s campaign committee, said the vote marked the “first steps in a long road that will culminate in 2012 whereby we will expose the flaws and the weaknesses in this legislation.”

The law that passed a year ago had the support of 58 Democrats and two independents aligned with them. All 40 Republicans voted against it.

Democratic ranks have been thinned since then, and their current majority is 53-47.

Of those 53 seats, 23 are on the ballot in 2012, including several that Republicans are targeting. One on the list, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, said in advance he would oppose the Republican repeal proposal.

“There are a lot of good parts in the bill and some that I will work to improve,” Nelson told reporters in his home state. “The repealers already have health care. But they’re ready, willing and eager to take it away from hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans.”

Virginia — It  turns out that Judge Henry E. Hudson, the George W. Bush appointed Republican judge who declared Barack Obama’s healthcare program unconstitutional, is the same judge who sentenced Michael Vick for dogfighting in 2007. Thanks to Jack and Jill Politics for the tip.

Hudson is also a major investor in a Republican campaign firm that has ties to the attorney who brought that anti-health care case before him.

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• To “repeal and replace” the health care reform law, though popular parts such as making it illegal to deny coverage over pre-existing conditions would stay.
• Prevent all of the Bush tax cuts from expiring.

• Freeze most hiring for the federal government.
• Give small businesses a tax break equal to 20% of their business income.
• Have weekly votes on the House floor to pick winners in the “YouCut” program, in which people make suggestions online.
• Cancel the spending of all remaining stimulus funds.
• Sample language: “Like free peoples of the past, our citizens refuse to accommodate a government that believes it can replace the will of the people with its own.”

Read more at Newser

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More than half a dozen states suing to overturn President Barack Obama’s health care law are also claiming its subsidies for covering retired state government employees, according to a list released Tuesday by the administration.

About 2,000 employers have been approved for the extra help to cover early retirees, mainly private businesses. But the list also includes seven states suing to overturn the health care overhaul as an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.

The seven are Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska and Nevada.

They are part of a group of 20 states that have challenged the law’s requirement for most Americans to carry health insurance or face fines from the IRS. They argue that the government cannot order individuals to buy a particular product. The administration counters that the mandate falls within broad powers conferred on Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

Interested employers include about half the Fortune 500 companies, as well as state and local governments, educational institutions, unions and nonprofit organizations, the administration says. A total of 16 states have been approved, and more are expected to apply.

“In these tough economic times, it is difficult for employers to keep up with skyrocketing health care costs for employees and retirees,” said Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius. The program “will make it a little easier for employers to provide high-quality health benefits to their retirees,” she added.

As medical costs soared in the last 20 years, employers have dramatically scaled back retiree health coverage. The share of large companies providing the benefit dropped from 66 percent in 1988 to 29 percent last year.

To try to hold off a steeper drop, the health care law provides $5 billion to help employers maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older but not yet eligible for Medicare.

The government subsidy amounts to 80 percent of medical claims between $15,000 and $90,000 – significant assistance to help cover high-cost retirees and eligible family members.

Companies can use the federal money to lower their own costs, or pass on the savings to their retirees through lower premiums and reduced cost sharing. Firms that receive federal help have to formally notify their retirees that they’ve gotten a subsidy.

The retiree assistance is designed as temporary relief until the health care law is fully in place in 2014. That’s when competitive insurance markets will open for business, and eligible individuals can get government tax credits to help pay premiums.

The private employers approved for the subsidy include Levi Strauss, United Airlines, Kellogg Co., Mattel, Hewlett-Packard and Dow Chemical, to name a few.

The Associated Press is also getting the subsidy. AP is a not-for-profit news cooperative, owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members.

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We at Newsone wanted to provide our readers with what we feel are the important government websites you should know about. These are the websites that were launched since the Obama Administration came into office.

Take a look for yourself and read through these because they contain a lot of important information.

Healthcare.Gov

The government website where you can go and find which private insurance plans, public programs and community services are available to you.

Recovery.Gov

This is the U.S. Federal Government’s official website  that provides easy access to date about the U.S. Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus) which President Obama signed last fall.

Letsmove.Gov

The government website created by First Lady Michelle Obama to help combat childhood obesity. The goal of this effort is to have children eat healthier, so when they reach adulthood, they do so with a healthy weight.

SBA.Gov

A website where you can find programs and grants to help your business start, grow and succeed.

Restorethegulf.Gov

The site provides the public with information on the response, current operations, news and updates, how to file a claim and obtain other assistance, and links to federal, state and local partners.

From The WashingtonPost.com:

In the past year and a half, President Obama has quietly used his powers to expand federal rights and benefits for gays and lesbians, targeting one government restriction after another in an attempt to change public policy while avoiding a confrontation with Republicans and opponents of gay rights.

The result is that scores of federal rules blocking gay rights have been swept aside or reinterpreted by Obama officials eager to advance the agenda of a constituency that strongly backed the president’s 2008 campaign.

Among the changes: Gay partners of federal workers will now receive long-term health insurance, access to day care and other benefits. Federal Housing Authority loans can no longer consider the sexual orientation of applicants. The Census Bureau plans to report the number of people who report being in a same-sex relationship. Hospitals must allow gays to visit their ill partners. And federal child-care subsidies can be used by the children of same-sex domestic partners.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department is expected to announce that federal officials have rethought the Family and Medical Leave Act, concluding that under the law, a gay federal employee may take leave to care for a child with a gay partner.

Click here to read more.

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At 1300 E. Warren St., you can smell the plight of Detroit.

Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer.

Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. “Some people don’t come forward even though they know the people are here,” said the former Detroit cop. “They don’t have the money.”

Lifelong Detroit residents Darrell and Cheryl Vickers understand this firsthand. On a chilly September morning they had to visit the freezer to identify the body of Darrell’s aunt, Nancy Graham — and say their goodbyes.

The couple, already financially strained, don’t have the $695 needed to cremate her. Other family members, mostly in Florida, don’t have the means to contribute, either. In fact, when Darrell’s grandmother passed recently, his father paid for the cremation on a credit card — at 21% interest.

So the Vickers had to leave their aunt behind. Body number 67.

“It’s devastating to a family not to be able to take care of their own,” said Darrell. “But there’s really no way to come up with that kind of cash in today’s society. There’s just no way.”

To read more, click here.

Source: CNN Money

This week on Washington Watch Roland will be focusing on President Obama’s fight for health care reform and the Chicago beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert.

Do you have something to say about these subjects that you think is worthy of making it on-air? Fill out the form below and your comment JUST might make the cut.

Submit your question or comment HERE.

Also, submit your questions for this week’s guest, Melody Barnes, President Barack Obama’s Domestic Policy Adviser and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

President Barack Obama made a pitch for members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday to fix the health care system this year.

Speaking to the annual legislative conference of the CBC, Obama said that America must reform its health care system now for the sake of the country and its children. “I know there are voices out there telling us we’re moving too fast when it comes to health insurance reform,” President Obama said. “They’re telling us to slow down. They’re telling us to wait.” To counter that trend, the president cited a case of a woman who discovered a lump in her breast in June and was told she would have to wait 6 months to be eligible for health insurance to cover her. He asked the audience how we could expect that woman to wait.

Citing efforts to reform the system dating back to Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, the president said Americans had waited long enough for health insurance reform. “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over,” Obama told the cheering crowd.” There comes a time to remember the fierce urgency of right now. Now’s the time,” the president said.

Obama also cited statistics that showed racial disparities in economic opportunities for blacks and whites, including data that indicated “downward mobility” for young blacks while young whites were facing “upward mobility.”

To read more, click here.

Source: The Daily Voice

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James Baldwin warned: “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

These poignant words come to mind when I think about that freak show, that hot mess that has passed for a dialogue on healthcare reform this past summer. On the one hand, the Obama administration – overlearning from the heavy-handed mistakes the Clintons made on health care reform – wasted time and lost control of the narrative. Seemingly unsure of what it wanted in terms of policy, this White House stood on the sidelines and allowed Congress to draft the legislation and create a huge mess. Fixing the health care system was the cornerstone of the President’s election campaign. Nonetheless, he has appeared too lackadaisical and too indifferent – too eager to compromise with Republicans too early in the game, and for little or nothing in return. In the end, Obama’s team came off looking like amateurs, the high school debate team, or student body president.

On the other hand, with a vacuum of leadership created by Obama, the health insurance lobby was given the opportunity to spread their street money and run amok.  Over three-quarters of the American people want a public option, that is, a choice between private health insurance and a government-run insurance plan that would create competition and lower costs. But the lawmakers who were purchased by the insurance companies – Democrats and Republicans – say there will be no public option. These senators and representatives get their money from one group and their votes from another. We know which group really counts. We’re not talking about democracy, but rather American-style capitalism. Money talks, and, well, you know the rest.

And the insurance companies have tapped into the anger of the unwashed fringes, and harnessed their rage at the town hall meetings – the tea-baggers and the militias, the birthers and the white nationalists, the jingoists and the secessionists. These folks don’t know the first thing about health care, but they do know that they hate government, they hate Obama, and they believe he is a foreigner and an illegitimate leader. And a communist Nazi Muslim terrorist. They won’t allow a black man to indoctrinate their children, nor will they allow one of them to take over their country.

Once again, moneyed interests use regular common folk – suckers that they are – to act against their own best interests. Rich Southerners had poor whites fight and die to maintain a system of slavery that rendered their labor unnecessary. During the struggles of the labor movement, corporations hired hooligans to beat up and shoot workers who attempted to organize. Appeals to white-skin privilege kept white workers from organizing with workers of color to better everyone’s station in life. And today, particularly in states with the lowest educational and health standards, working class people who constitute the Republican party “base” fight alongside the corporations to keep health care expensive and inaccessible. Billy Bob is as dumb as bricks, and proud of it.

The mobilization against health care reform has taught us several things:

First of all, the Republican Party is, collectively, coo coo for cocoa puffs. The moderates, the reasonable people, the intelligent ones who are fond of book-learnin’, and those free of mental defect bolted from the GOP. The Southern Strategy (a raw political appeal to white racist voters, which was perfected by the late GOP operative Lee Atwater) turned a reliable election-winning formula into a liability when Obama came on the scene. The base of the party is now mostly white, Southern, Christian fundamentalist and uneducated, and apparently delusional and unstable. A shrinking demographic, there aren’t enough of them to win a national election. Yet, the Republicans cling to their base. Rather than repudiate the people who believe Obama is a foreign citizen and an illegitimate leader who should be stopped if not killed (yes I said it), the Republicans encourage these gun-toting thugs, these brown shirts with their threats of violence. The decisive issue for them didn’t necessarily have to be health care, but health care did the trick. The main point is that for the radical conservatives, government is the enemy they treat with utter contempt. And they hate government so much that they try to destroy the country whenever they get into office. Enactment of real health reform will further marginalize the GOP, and render them irrelevant for generations.

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CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO ANALYSIS ON OBAMA HEALTHCARE ADDRESS.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

From Slate.com:

President Obama didn’t wear a bike helmet on vacation, but maybe he should when he returns to work next week. He’ll need it to protect himself from the hail of incoming advice about how he should handle the health-care-reform fight. He’s being told to be less liberal, change his message, stay on course, get more emotional, and (by everyone) to get more hands-on.

The president will get more involved, aides promise. He will get more specific about what he wants and build a coalition in Congress around those ideas. Then, he’ll have to convince the public and hope that specificity will improve his connection with the American people. Until now, despite his constant effort to sell health care reform, the public-opinion numbers have been moving against him. In a just-released CBS/New York Times poll, 40 percent say they have confidence in his handling of health care, down seven points from a month ago. A plurality of Americans (47 percent) disapprove of his handling of the issue.

How did things get so low? If the president is going to make a new and successful pitch, knowing where he went wrong might help him keep from making the same mistake in the future.

To read more, click here.

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Obama Asks Doctors To Support Healthcare Reform

From TIME.com:

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won’t bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He’s fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That’s the state of your bacon – circa 2009.

To read more, click here.

RELATED:

OPINION: Blacks Need Health Food As Much As Health Care

From DailyKos.com:

Newsweek brings you the five biggest lies of the health care debate. These are whoppers so big that anyone should be embarrassed to be associated with them. But these lies didn’t originate from some obscure quarter, and they’re not being spread over the backyard fence. Here’s a quick look at the Big Lies, and just a few examples of how the top names on the right are willing to bathe in BS if it helps their funders in the insurance industry.

1. You’ll have no choice in what health benefits you receive.

If you read the bill – Title I, Subtitle E, Sections 141-143, on pages 41-48 – it turns out that the Health Choices Commissioner’s job is, essentially, to make your health choices for you. … The so-called “Health Choices Commissioner” will be the closest the United States has come to having an absolute ruler since King George III.
– Heritage Foundation

2. No chemo for older medicare patients.

After he was diagnosed with brain cancer more than a year ago, Sen. Kennedy had excellent care, including surgery and chemotherapy, before he died last week. … In the future, will a man of Kennedy’s age, with brain cancer but without the means of offsetting his own healthcare costs, be kept alive, operated on, given chemotherapy — by a government obsessed with cutting healthcare costs? Rationed care is coming, and the death panels will not be far behind.
– Pat Buchanan

3. Illegal immigrants will get free health insurance.

The National Council of La Raza and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pushed to include illegal immigrants in the president’s healthcare effort. Despite statements to the contrary, the Obama administration could force the American people to pay for the healthcare of millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
– Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas)

4. Death panels will decide who lives.

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.
— Sarah Palin
In Oregon, the law permits doctors to assist in the suicide of terminal patients who wish to end their lives. Let us assume numerous patients have Alzheimer’s and, so, cannot be part of the decision to end their lives. Who then makes the decision to continue or end life? Would it be unfair to call the decision-makers in those cases a death panel?
– Pat Buchanan
“I think that’s a legitimate point. You don’t have to call it death panels if you don’t want to. You can call it a panel. I call it rationing.”
– Michael Steele

To read the full list, click here.

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OPINION: Time For Obama To Get Tough On Healthcare (Us, Too)

OPINION: Lou Dobbs, Lobbyists & Lynchmobs United Against Obama

With recent news of how breast cancer and swine flu affect Black people disproportionately, it begs the question: Why? While there are a slew of racial and socio-economic theories floating around, we think it might have to do with the simple, age-old tradition of Black people avoiding doctors.

Forget about calling the doctor, a lot of African-American kids had to endure at-home health care from Dr. Mom. Here are some of the most popular, and disgusting, home remedies that were guaranteed to work.

Do you recognize any of these? :)

1. Drinking a combination of lime, brandy and honey for a cough

2. Stuffing cotton balls with Puncheon or Bacardi rum in cavities to stop a toothache

3. A good rub down with nutmeg oil for body aches

4. Drinking cod liver oil with crushed garlic, onions, honey and lime juice to knock out a cold

5. Drinking boiled aloe leaves with bitters to soothe a sore throat

6.  Or, for a really bad sore throat drinking lemon, salt, honey and vinegar .

7. Putting Vicks in your nostrils for a stuffy nose

8. Drinking bush tea for everything

9. Swallowing a clove of garlic daily for overall good health

10. Rub Vicks onto the bottom of your feet before putting on your socks  to get rid of the flu

Does your family any home remedies not on this list? Tell us in the comments!

From HuffingtonPost.com:

Race-based attacks and criticism of President Obama have been on the rise during the dog days of August. And they’re not just happening at health care town hall protests.

A reader sent over a picture of a group of protesters camped outside Rep. Susan Davis’s (D-Calif.). “Neighborhood Day” event this past week, brandishing signs calling the president a Black Supremacist and suggesting he’s a Nazi disciple.

“Black National Socialism Is Not Utopia,” reads one poster.

Another has a picture of Obama’s former preacher, Jeremiah Wright, juxtaposed with a picture of Adolph Hitler and one of picture of Obama and Wright together. “Obama’s Church: Black Supremacist,” it reads.

The protesters, the reader writes, were small in number. But their presence outside the event indicates that four weeks into August, the highly personal and often racially tinged vitriol directed at the president shows no sign of abating.

To read more, click here.

If the ruckus over healthcare reform has taught us one thing, it is that bipartisanship is a dream that never will be fulfilled.  And so what if it isn’t?

We must admit, President Obama gave it his best.  He went to Washington with an olive branch, with a desire to find common ground with people of different political persuasions, to include everyone in the process.  But what he has learned, hopefully, is that bipartisanship is but a means to an end.  And in the end, you cannot broker or negotiate with people who have no intent to negotiate, and who really aim to bring you down and destroy you.

Such is the case with healthcare reform, the jewel in the crown for the Obama administration.  The president made this the centerpiece of his agenda of change and bold leadership.  If done the right way, the nation would succeed in putting the health insurance companies in check, cut the cost of healthcare dramatically, and make healthcare a universal right, like all of those “socialist” countries (the rest of the industrialized world, that is).  If the American system of healthcare delivery is so great, why do we have 47 million uninsured people?  Why does the U.S. have a higher rate of infant mortality than 28 other countries?  Why did 1,500 people recently wait in long lines in Los Angeles for free dental care, eye exams and medical exams?

Of course, the best way of achieving insurance reform is a single-payer system, which would eliminate the intermediary insurance companies entirely.  This measure would save the country around $400 billion per year in administrative costs, in other words, all the money they’ve been stealing from us.  If you don’t do that right away, the next best thing is a public option, which would allow for a cheaper government-run health plan that people could choose instead of costly private insurance.

Now, when you propose to stop the thieves from stealing your money, the thieves will do whatever they can to maintain their ability to steal.  This is natural and expected.  The Republican Party and the health insurance industry (with the help of right-wing media) have utilized the militias, the Patriots, the Birthers and the other Obama-haters in order to stop the train of reform.  These are the people who have disrupted healthcare town hall meetings-and in some cases brought pistols and semiautomatic assault rifles to presidential events-because they hate government and they want their country back (translated: no more Black presidents).

The response from the Obama administration has been all-too gentlemanly at best, naïve at worst, as if we’re all just playing a friendly game of dominoes at the family cookout.  Obama was far too willing to compromise too early, to sell the house to try to gain a few Republican votes that never would materialize.  The GOP and their allies have no interest in bipartisanship.  Their only goal is to bring down any healthcare reform legislation, and bring down the Obama presidency with it.  Of course, it doesn’t help any when you have moderate and conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats standing in the way, their only distinction being that they took more of the insurance lobbyist money than other Democrats.

With Democratic control of the House, the Senate and the White House, exactly when would we achieve universal healthcare, if not now?  This moment is important not only because of the immediate matter at hand, but because it will define the rest of this administration, and its ability to get anything done.  You don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don’t bring pork chops to a knife fight.

Obama must succeed.  If he loses this battle, we all lose.  He is poised to become one of the great presidents, and already has achieved more than many of them.  But if he cannot succeed on his cornerstone issue of national healthcare-or at best ends up with a phony reform package with no teeth- he will be unable to achieve much else.  He will do what average presidents do, such as give medals to boy scouts or something, host Easter egg hunts on the White House lawn, and receive foreign heads of state for photo ops.  And that is not what millions of people voted for in November 2008.

At the same time, if we’ve learned anything else, it is that politics is not a spectator sport.  Government requires active participation from the public, and vocal demands that certain things get done.  The election should have provided more than enough evidence that people want change.  But in a nation that is used to pimping whatever it can to make a buck, change is hard to get.  It looks like it is time to take to the streets.  Obama must get tough, but supporters of a progressive agenda must do so as well.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

From Slate.com:

Speculation is rife that the White House will cut loose the “public option”—i.e., the creation of a government health-insurance program to compete against private insurers. The signals aren’t new; I began worrying about this nearly six months ago. (See “Is Obama Soft on Health Insurance?”) The political mainstream seems to be greeting the latest hints from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebeliusand others with its usual shrug that politics is the art of the possible; to make a deal, all sides may have to give something up. The trouble in this instance is that political pragmatism conflicts with programmatic pragmatism. Without a public option, there’s a very real danger that health reform simply won’t work. It might even make things worse.

Click here for more.

From the New York Times:

To meet ambitious goals in improving maternal and child health and reducing AIDS deaths by 2015, Africa needs an additional 800,000 health care workers, a new study has concluded.

Africa has about 30 percent of the 1.16 million doctors, nurses and midwives it needs, according to a study published Aug. 6 in the journal Health Affairs. Researchers estimate it would cost $2.6 billion to pay the additional workers, if they were available.

The estimates are based on the World Health Organization’s recommendation that each African country should have at least 2.28 doctors, nurses and midwives per 1,000 people to care for the population and reach the Millennium Development Goals.

Click here to read more.

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing.  But inciting a riot with corporate underwriting and support of the mainstream media is a completely different thing.  Add to that the endorsement of a major political party, and what you have is a danger to our democracy.

That is what comes to mind when I look at this crazy Birther movement, those people who refuse to believe that President Obama is a U.S. citizen, and demand that he produce his “real” birth certificate that shows he is Kenyan, or Arab, or Martian, or whatever.  At the same time, there is the unwashed, thuggish opposition to healthcare reform- the angry people who are disrupting town hall meetings throughout the nation, hanging lawmakers in effigy and threatening the safety and lives of members of Congress.

These two groups are cut from the same cloth-a white sheet, that is.  They are among the right-wing hate groups that were the subject of a report by the Department of Homeland Security called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The report warned that the current recession and the election of a Black president have provided recruitment opportunities for White supremacist and radical right-wing groups.  The current environment could lead to confrontations between these extremists and government authorities, such as the Oklahoma City bombing and other examples of domestic terrorism in the 1990s.

These right-wing, anti-government groups are united by their hatred of immigration and Latinos, their hostility towards gun control legislation, and their racial resentment towards President Obama.  Those sentiments were on full display at the McCain-Palin campaign rallies in 2008, in which crowd participants called Obama a terrorist and a traitor, carried around Obama monkey dolls and called for his death.  And the sentiments were on display at the tea parties, with their abundance of racist, anti-Obama signs.  It is no accident that hate crimes and hate groups have increased in recent times, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.  James Von Brunn, the White supremacist who opened fire and killed a security officer at the National Holocaust Museum was part of the Birther movement, which itself has racist and anti-Semitic roots.  And the President receives 30 death threats a day, posing a challenge to the Secret Service charged with protecting him.

The tea parties were an example of “astroturfing”: top-down, corporate-sponsored activities disguised as a grassroots movement.  Two of the lobbying organizations that orchestrated the tea parties include FreedomWorks (a conservative action group led by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey), and the free-market group Americans For Prosperity.  Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, these two entities are also involved in the orchestrated fringe opposition to healthcare.  They provide the loud protestors who disrupt healthcare town hall meetings for the sole purpose of shutting off debate.  Americans For Prosperity, for example, operates under the front group Patients United Now.  And another anti-healthcare reform group, Conservatives For Patients’ Rights (CPR), has claimed responsibility for recruiting Tea Party activists and other third parties to disrupt the town hall meetings.  CPR operates in conjunction with the people who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign.  CPR is operated by George W. Bush business partner and private healthcare executive Rick Scott, who was forced to pay an unprecedented $1.7 billion settlement for defrauding taxpayers.

These activities should be denounced, but instead have earned the blessings of the Republican Party.  Consorting with Birthers, tea-baggers, fringe hate groups and angry mobs is the way of the new GOP.  And the new GOP is actually the old GOP on steroids.  A party that thrived for years on the Southern Strategy-appealing to White racism for votes-the Republicans have little else but a Southern Strategy left.  Divested of any real ideas and lacking broad-based support, the GOP lost a presidential election, holds a minority in both houses of Congress, and is facing long-term minority party status.  They appeal to their shrinking Neanderthal base by displaying their disdain for Latinos and Latino judges, in the face of rapidly shifting demographics.  Their base cannot undo the election that placed Obama in office, and they cannot keep back the winds of change that have swept through Washington and the country.  Their only alternative is to hate the man for what he is, to question his American-ness, and to stop his administration and its agenda of universal healthcare.

Trying to fight progress, the GOP base is now reduced to playing the role of Bubba, that character from 1950s central casting who was always on hand to beat up a civil rights worker at the segregated lunch counter.

And mainstream media court jesters-cable TV entertainers such as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck of Fox News- use the airwaves to legitimize the hate groups, with the apparent support of their respective corporate networks.  Dobbs expressed his support for the Birther movement, and Beck charged that Obama hates White people.  We would expect nothing else from Fox.  But CNN-which touts its journalistic professionalism-cannot claim to be the network of “Black In America”, “Latino In America” or “Generation Islam” while also harboring and enabling an extremist sympathizer such as Dobbs.  The Southern Poverty Law Center called on CNN to oust Dobbs for his racism and questioning of Obama’s citizenship, but he remains on the network.

Protest and dissent have played an invaluable role in American history.  However, so too has the extralegal presence of the lynchmob.  What is passing as the current public “discourse” regarding healthcare reform has only served to elevate the lynchmob.  Fortunately, the Democrats have caught on.  Hopefully it is not too late.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a journalist and human rights advocate based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune News Service, among others. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson. His blog is davidalove.com.

From crooksandliars.com (via JackandJillPolitics.com):

Helen’s right, damn it. And look at Gibbs’ deflection: “We’ve had a pretty good week.” Sorry, Gibby, health-care reform is slowly slipping away. Don’t just stand there.

Here are my thoughts on what the White House did wrong, in no particular order:

1) Obama outsourced the legislation to Congress instead of presenting it himself and working with them to write the details. He thought he’d outsmart the GOP by doing the opposite of the Clinton plan, but instead the bill is now lost on a sea of “compromise.”

2) Bipartisanship. You just can’t work with ideologues who refuse to operate in good faith. They’re true believers, they will never give an inch. You’d think Obama would have picked up that little lesson while studying the Clinton era.

3) Blue Dogs. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi need to come up with new strategies, since kissing their collective Blue Dog butts only inflates their already-swollen egos. Someone (Obama?) should lay down the law. Put them in the worst offices, cut their staff budgets until they cooperate. Lyndon Johnson wouldn’t be holding their hands.

4) Single payer. It would have been so much easier if we’d started with it. Hell, we might even have won – and it’s simple enough that most people would understand. But whatever.

5) He should have come out fighting for the public option earlier this year. Instead, he let the opponents (and the insurance companies) define the public perception. BIG rookie mistake.

Click here for the 5 remaining mistakes.

His approval ratings slipping, President Barack Obama is retooling his message on his health care overhaul, aiming to win over Americans who already have insurance.

Polling shows that Americans — especially those who already have coverage — are skeptical of the Democratic proposals to expand coverage to millions. So Obama will use a potentially boisterous town hall-style meeting in New Hampshire to highlight how his proposals would affect workers whose employers provide their health insurance.

Critics of the president’s plan — his top domestic priority — have grabbed headlines by disrupting town hall meetings, putting the White House on the defensive. Obama is prepared for possible disruptions Tuesday, said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, appearing on television talk shows.

“I think what the president will do is turn to that person and probably ask them to be civilized and give them an answer to their question,” Gibbs told CBS’ “The Early Show.” The town hall tradition is to give people information, he said, “so they can make a decision about policy that impacts their lives and I think that’s what this town hall meeting will do today and I know the president is excited about engaging the public again.”

Obama has been to hundreds of town meetings and “I’ve never been to one where everybody agreed with everything he said,” Gibbs told NBC’s “Today” show.

Concerns over Obama’s proposal are heating up meetings, chat rooms and radio shows, driving his approval numbers down and threatening the future of his signature domestic priority. While Congress is in recess for the month of August, lawmakers are hearing from constituents worried about divisive issues such as the government’s role in health care and the costs of an overhaul.

“There’s a lot of fear out there,” said Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, a New Hampshire Democrat.

To calm that fear, Obama plans to spend the month highlighting the upside of health overhaul for Americans already with insurance, starting in a state in which 89 percent of residents have health coverage.

In Portsmouth, N.H., Obama will speak directly about his proposal to ban insurance companies from denying individuals coverage because of pre-existing conditions. During a Friday trip to Bozeman, Mont., he will talk about how his plan would block companies from dropping an individual’s coverage if he or she becomes ill. And in Grand Junction, Colo., the president will talk about how the Democrats’ plan would end high out-of-pocket costs in some policies.

The Democratic National Committee began running television advertising that asks, “What’s in it for you?” and then highlights those goals. Officials said the ad started running Monday night in Washington and on cable; it would follow as early as Tuesday in states Obama planned to visit, including New Hampshire.

About 1,800 people are expected for that midday event in the Democratic-leaning Seacoast region of the Granite State. Of those, 70 percent were given tickets based on a random lottery — a potentially dicey crowd in a state known for its grass-roots political activism.

“Participating in government here in New Hampshire is like putting on socks for the average American,” said Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.

Outside, a dozen grass-roots organizations plan a counter-rally.

“We are against the blind-faith, fast-tracking approach being advocated by special-interest supporters of the bill, congressional representatives, as well as the president,” said George Lovejoy, a former state senator and chairman of the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition.

In an e-mail to Obama supporters in New Hampshire, an aide invited supporters to counter the counter-protesters and called them organized by “Washington insiders, insurance companies and well-financed special interests who don’t go a day without spreading lies and stirring up fear.”

Republicans say the heated debate is a sign of widespread public dissatisfaction with Obama’s ideas. But with some of the anxieties spilling into angry disruptions and even threats, Democrats have accused Republicans of orchestrating the events to sabotage legislation. In an article published Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer wrote, “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American.”

Obama and his aides stayed away from such provocative language. Instead, the White House returned to campaign mode, starting with sending members of the Cabinet to key states. The tech-savvy Obama team directly responded to what it considers misinformation through its Twitter and Facebook accounts online, as well as a new page of the White House’s Web site.

As the battle lines for health care reform are being drawn – and redrawn – a silent segment of the population is strategically left out of the conversation.  A group of individuals who have been deemed enemies of society, and cast away behind iron bars to fend for themselves.  In California, health care in the state’s 33 prisons is so inadequate that one unnecessary death takes place per week, as inmates are often stacked in triple bunk beds in hallways and gymnasiums.  With nearly twice the number of prisoners than it was designed to hold, California prisons will have to be cut by about 40,000 in the next two years – and it’s about time.

Federal judges just released a 184-page order demanding that California’s inmate population be reduced by 27%, and gave the state 45 days to come up with a plan.   In what they termed an ‘unconstitutional prison health care system’, the three-judge panel concluded that disease was spreading rampantly and prisoner-on-prisoner violence was all but unavoidable.  Forced to close a $26 billion dollar budget gap, California will now have to look at mechanisms to reducing its extensive prison spending, which in 2007 topped out at nearly $10 billion (approximately $49,000 for each inmate).

Whether it’s for pure economic reasons or for an actual concern over the well being of prisoners, California will hopefully serve as an example for a reversal of the ever-growing prison industrial complex.  A system that unfairly profiles and detains minorities, American jails produce a vicious cycle of recidivism and community breakdown.  Last year, the Pew Center on the States released a scathing report stating that one in every 100 American adults was in jail, and that an astonishing one in 15 Black adults was behind bars.  According to government reports in 2007, there were three times as many Blacks in jail than in college dorms, with Latinos not far behind at 2.7 times more behind bars than in secondary schooling.

In order for us to truly amend our incarceration culture where one in four prisoners in the entire world are in the United States, we have to take a look at the root causes of the dilemma.  Why is it that more than half of all Black men in America don’t finish high school?  Why is the unemployment rate in powerful cities like New York at 50% for Black men?  Why did Congress abolish Pell grants for prisoners in 1994 that virtually eliminated all 350-incarceration college programs across the country?  Is it any coincidence then that six out of 10 Black men who drop out of high school have spent time in jail by their mid-30s?  With unemployment rates on the rise (and many would argue well in to the double digits among people of color), arrests for nonviolent infractions and petty crimes are leaving families motherless, fatherless and hopeless.

We live in a world that promotes law, order and justice, yet our actions often times prove otherwise.  As if the implementation of ridiculous drug laws and the ‘three strike rule’ weren’t enough to catapult our prison population, now our children are increasingly finding themselves in handcuffs at an early age.  In 2006, a 14-year-old Black student in Texas was sentenced to seven years for shoving a teacher’s aide, while in 2007, an eighth grader in New York found herself handcuffed to a pole above her head for three hours while being questioned by police for writing on her desk at school.  In Chicago it’s no better, as 77% of all student arrests were Black, although Blacks make up just half of the city’s student body.

And let’s not forget women, who are in fact the largest growing segment of the prison population.  According to Prisoners for Children, 85% of women are now serving time for non-violent crimes, with Black women six times as likely to go to jail than their White counterparts.  These women, often the heads of their households, are forced to withstand dire circumstances including giving birth while in shackles.

In 2006, the state of California spent about $500 million in overtime for its incarceration system, and in 2007, states spent $44 billion in American tax dollars on prisons.  Whether it’s because of our diminishing economy, or if it’s out of genuine concern, California is leading the way – or rather being forced to lead the way – in amending our unjust prison industrial complex.  If we truly care about the future our nation and all its inhabitants, each and every state needs to follow suit immediately.

READ MORE FROM REVEREND AL SHARPTON:

OPINION: What Gates Will Teach Us
OPINION: The Attacks On Obama

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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made additional cuts to child welfare programs, medical care for the poor and AIDS prevention efforts Tuesday as he signed an $85 billion compromise spending plan that he called “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Schwarzenegger used his line-item veto authority to save an additional $656 million that will let the state restore a reserve fund he says is needed for tough times.

The vetoes include $80 million from child welfare programs; $61 million in county funding to administer Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid; $52 million from AIDS prevention and treatment; $50 million to Healthy Families, the low-cost health insurance program for poor children; and $6.2 million more from state parks.

“Those are ugly cuts and I’m the only one that is really responsible for those cuts because the Legislature left, they didn’t want to make those cuts,” he said.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat who negotiated the original budget compromise with Schwarzenegger, immediately questioned the legality of many of the governor’s line-item vetoes.

“We will fight to restore every dollar of additional cuts to health and human services,” Steinberg said in a statement. “This is not the last word.”

Schwarzenegger called the budget package aimed at balancing the state’s budget through June 30, 2010, the toughest since he took office in 2003. Still, the Republican governor said the package included reforms he has long sought and forces government to live within its means.

He said additional cuts were needed to build a $500 million reserve fund after the state Assembly rejected about $1.1 billion in revenues from local transportation funding and by allowing new offshore oil drilling.

With much of state spending tied up by federal and constitutional requirements, the Schwarzenegger administration wants to ensure the state has a cash cushion in case of emergencies such as earthquakes and wildfires.

California’s economy has been hit by the housing market slump and high unemployment, and the latest efforts to close a $26 billion shortfall came just five months after lawmakers and the governor ended months of negotiations to close a previous $42 billion deficit.

The governor and lawmakers hope the revised spending plan will end California’s cash crisis and let the state stop issuing IOUs to vendors.

Schwarzenegger’s finance director, Michael Genest, warned Tuesday that even with the revised budget deal, California likely will need to borrow $8 billion to $10 billion to cover its cash needs this year, and the state is likely to face another $7 billion to $8 billion deficit in the 2010-11 fiscal year.

Matt Fabian, a bond analyst at Municipal Market Advisors, based in Concord, Mass., said California’s plan was filled with accounting tricks and will likely do little to improve the state’s poor credit rating.

Fitch Ratings rates California’s general obligation bond debt at “BBB,” which is still investment-grade. Most states have a higher-quality “AAA” or “AA” rating.

The package lawmakers agreed to included about $15 billion in spending cuts, as well as reforms that include tougher sanctions on CalWORKS recipients who don’t meet work requirements. Also, in-home support workers will have to undergo background checks and have their fingerprints taken.

In earlier rounds of cuts, California reduced Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for health care providers and eliminated optional benefits such as dental and eye care for adult recipients.

With the vetoes announced Tuesday, the cut to California’s state parks totals about $14 million, which Genest said will likely force as many as 100 of the state’s 279 parks, beaches and attractions to close.

The additional cuts Schwarzenegger made Tuesday also include $37.5 million from the In-Home Supportive Services program, $50 million from the Early Start program for developmentally disabled children, and more than $6 million in cuts from programs for the aging.

House Democrats at work on health legislation are narrowing in on an income tax surcharge on the highest-paid wage earners to help pay the cost of subsidizing insurance for the 50 million who lack it.

Pushing to complete a comprehensive health care bill by Friday and bring it up for committee votes next week, House Democrats abandoned earlier money-raising proposals, including a payroll tax. They planned to meet behind closed doors Thursday to fine-tune the details.

The action in the House stood in contrast to the Senate, where Democrats edged away from their goal of passing health care legislation by early August amid heightening partisan controversy over tax increases and a proposed new government role in providing insurance to consumers.

As discussed in the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, the surtax would apply to individuals with adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 and couples over $250,000, according to officials involved in the discussion. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

In addition, key lawmakers are expected to call for a tax or fee equal to a percentage of a worker’s salary on employers who do not offer health benefits.

Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has said his committee needs to come up with $600 billion in new taxes to deliver on President Barack Obama‘s goal of sweeping changes to thenation’s health care system to bring down costs and cover the 50 million uninsured. Hundreds of billions of dollars more would come from cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to pay for legislation expected to cost around $1 trillion over 10 years.

Top administration officials, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, conferred with Rangel’s committee Democrats on Wednesday as they met throughout the day.

“They know what I’m thinking about and I have no reason to believe I’ll have any problems with them on that part of the bill,” Rangel said of the tax proposals.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., a member of the panel, said the proposed surtax on high-income taxpayers appealed to her and others as a way to avoid a “nickel-and-dime” approach involving numerous smaller tax increases.

Lawmakers cautioned that no final decisions have been made, either by the tax-writing committee or by theDemocratic leadership, which hopes to have legislation drafted by the end of the week and through the House by month’s end.

Smaller tax options remained possibilities, depending on the overall cost of the legislation, including a tax on sugared soft drinks and ending a tax break that drug companies receive for advertising.

In the Senate, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer told The Associated Press that he believes the “ultimate goal” is to have a bill by the end of the year that is signed into law by the president.

Separately, Republicans who met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he expressed flexibility on the timetable, indicating that he was willing to allow more time before legislation is brought to the floor.

Any failure to meet the August goal would be a setback — but not necessarily a fatal one — for Obama’s attempt to achieve comprehensive health care legislation this year. A group of Democratic and Republican senators led by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is still working toward a bipartisan deal, but that effort appeared set back by concerns Reid and other leading Democrats expressed this week over a tax on health care benefits that Baucus was considering to pay for it.

The White House expressed its support Wednesday for the emerging House legislation, noting that theCongressional Budget Office had said planned changes to Medicare would save more than $500 billion over 10 years. A significant part of that money would come from the steep reduction in subsidies paid to insurance companies that offer private Medicare coverage.

But in a letter to Rangel and other committee chairmen, budget director Peter Orszag urged additional cuts in projected Medicare and Medicaid spending, as well as consideration of a plan to give an independent commission a greater role in setting future payments rates for Medicare health care providers — something that could weaken Congress’ involvement.

From NYTimes.com:

President Obama went before a convention of receptive but wary doctors on Monday to make the economic case for a health care overhaul, both for the nation and for the physicians’ own bottom lines.

But as the president spoke at the annual conference of the American Medical Association in Chicago, it became clear that one of the major health plans on the table would cost at least $1 trillion over 10 years yet leave tens of millions of people uninsured.

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Look out Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare. Senators are meeting behind closed doors to consider whether the federal government should jump into the health insurance business.

The government already covers medical care for seniors, disabled people, poor families and many children. But coverage in those programs is restricted to people who meet certain qualifications, including age and income.

The issue now is whether middle-class workers and their families should be offered the choice of joining a government-sponsored plan similar to what they get through their employers.

If Congress agrees, a public plan would be part of the health overhaul legislation that lawmakers want to put on President Barack Obama’s desk later this year.

Senators on the Finance Committee on Thursday are weighing several designs for a public plan. They also will be given the option of having no public plan at all.

That last option is the outcome the insurance industry is hoping for.

The companies say a government plan could put them out of business, and they’ve offered to submit to new consumer protections and help find $2 trillion in health care savings over 10 years in the hopes of warding off any government-sponsored plan. Business groups also are leery of the idea. Republicans already are saying a public plan would put bureaucrats, not doctors and patients, in control of life-and-death decisions.

But Democrats think the idea would be a political winner. Since Medicare — a government-run plan — is popular with seniors, they figure a public plan for the middle class would also find acceptance.

Two of the designs that senators will consider call for a plan that’s like Medicare, except it would pay doctors and hospitals a little more generously. In one version, the public plan would be run directly by the government. The alternative would be to have it administered by regional middlemen under contract to the government.

A third idea would leave it up to each state to set up and run their own public insurance plans.

A fourth option, promoted by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., would try to address concerns about unfair competition from a public plan.

Schumer’s proposal would require the public plan to be financed by premiums, not tax dollars. It would have to follow the same solvency rules as private insurers, maintaining a reserve fund to cover liabilities. Doctors and hospitals would be free to participate in the plan, or opt out. And the public plan would have to operate under the same consumer protection rules as private insurers.

Schumer says he believes the public plan would set a high standard for quality. Since it wouldn’t have to turn a profit, it could invest in prevention and wellness.

His idea is getting a close look also from a group of fiscally conservative Democrats in the House, known as the Blue Dogs.

Hospitals, insurance companies, drug makers and doctors are planning to tell President Barack Obama today that they’ll voluntarily slow their rate increases in coming years in a move that government economists say would create breathing room to help provide health insurance to an estimated 50 million Americans who now go without it.

When President Bill Clinton took on health care reform, industry leaders fought back, killing the White House proposal before it could gain any traction. Now those industry leaders are trying to help Obama find a solution to the problem of uninsured Americans, offering $2 trillion in spending reductions over 10 years.

Although the offer from the industry groups doesn’t resolve thorny details of a new health care system, it does offer the prospect of freeing a large chunk of money to help pay for coverage. And it puts the private-sector groups in a good position to influence the bill Congress is writing.

Six major groups plan to deliver a letter to Obama and pledge to cut the growth rate for health care by 1.5 percentage points each year, senior administration officials said Sunday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to sketch the offer before full details are revealed at a White House event scheduled for Monday.

The industry groups are trying to get on the administration bandwagon for expanded coverage now in the hope they can steer Congress away from legislation that would restrict their profitability in future years.

Insurers, for example, want to avoid the creation of a government health plan that would directly compete with them to enroll middle-class workers and their families. Drug makers worry that in the future, new medications might have to pass a cost-benefit test before they can win approval. And hospitals and doctors are concerned the government could dictate what they get paid to care for any patient, not only the elderly and the poor.

Obama has courted industry and provider groups, inviting their representatives to the White House. There’s a sense among some of the groups that now may be the best time to act before public opinion, fueled by anger over costs, turns against them.

It’s unclear whether the proposed savings will prove decisive in pushing a health care overhaul through Congress. There’s no detail on how the savings pledge would be enforced. And, critically, the promised savings in private health care costs would accrue to society as a whole, not just the federal government. That’s a crucial distinction because specific federal savings are needed to help pay for the cost of expanding coverage.

Costs have emerged as the most serious obstacle to Obama’s plan. The estimated federal costs range from $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years, and so far Obama has only spelled out how to get about half of that.

Standing before the nation on a “day of reckoning,” President Barack Obama summoned politicians and public alike Tuesday night to forge a path out of the worst economic disaster in a quarter-century by embracing shared sacrifice and costly new endeavors to improve health care, schools and the environment.

“The time to take charge of our future is here,” Obama declared in his first address to a joint session of Congress, watched by millions of worried Americans on television and the Internet.

Adding words of reassurance, he said, “Tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

Click here for FULL TEXT and VIDEO of Obama’s speech.

Barack Obama has signed a bill extending health coverage to 4 million uninsured children.

The White House signing ceremony today represented a much-needed victory for Obama on healthcare a day after his administration suffered a major setback with the loss of his nominee to lead his drive for sweeping reform, Tom Daschle.

The bill went to the White House fresh from passage in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, on a vote of 290-135.

The bill calls for spending an additional $32.8bn  on the state children’s health insurance programme. Lawmakers generated that revenue by raising the federal tobacco tax. Obama said it is a key step toward his promise of universal health care coverage for all.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is hailing Senate passage of legislation providing government-sponsored health care to roughly 4 million uninsured children.

A day after the bill was approved 66-32, Obama released a statement saying the action amounts to “a down payment on my commitment to ensure that every American has access to quality, affordable health care.”

The measure authorizes an additional $32.8 billion over the next 4 1/2 years for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The House plans to take up the same bill next week.

Obama’s statement said the Senate vote is especially significant at a time when “the worsening economy causes families to lose their jobs and health insurance.”

From Jack Healy at The NYTimes.com:

President-elect Barack Obama said on Thursday that he never spoke to the governor of Illinois about Mr. Obama’s replacement in the United States Senate, and that no one on his staff had been involved in any deal-making regarding Mr. Obama’s successor.

“That would be a violation of everything that this campaign has been about,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Chicago which was called to announce an appointment to his Cabinet.

In his first extended comments on the unfolding political scandal, Mr. Obama said he was “appalled and disappointed” by the details of a complaint filed by federal prosecutors, who have accused the governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, of trying to profit from his power to choose Mr. Obama’s successor. Mr. Obama also restated his call for the governor to resign.

“I think the public trust has been violated,” Mr. Obama said. “I hope that the governor comes to the conclusion that he can no longer effectively serve and that he does resign.”

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From HuffingtonPost.com:

“Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) has been offered the job of Health and Human Services secretary by President-elect Barack Obama and has accepted the job, according to a Democratic source close to Daschle,” Roll Call reports.

Daschle, who served in the Senate until he lost his re-election bid in 2004, also is set to take on the position of “health care czar” in the Obama White House, ensuring that he does not get bigfooted on matters relating to health care policy, according to this source.

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