January 2007

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

Polls have continually shown that the two issues that Americans have been most concerned with this past year were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the state of the domestic economy. Not surprisingly, the two issues are remarkably connected.

The New York Times has reported that, despite on-going corporate scandals, the past few years have been "the age of profitability" for American corporations -- surpassing all previous record in the post World War II age. Meanwhile, the American worker is in the worst position she has been in that same stretch of time. Since Bush . . .

December 2005

by Robert B. Reich

Wal-Mart and General Motors have been in the news recently for their efforts to cut the costs of their employee health insurance. They are singled out mainly because they're so large. As health costs soar across the economy, every company that once provided full heath coverage to its employees is actively paring it back.

So why not go all the way? Let's de-couple health care from employment.

November 2005

by Susan Mills

Why have Washington doctors chosen to ally themselves with the two industries most responsible for the shameful state of health care in this country: the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical companies?

Initiative 330 was filed by doctors, but the financing is largely corporate. Together with hospitals, the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical lobby (PhRMA), they have amassed a war-chest of over $8 million -- and counting.

August 2005

by Noam Chomsky

In the debate over Social Security, US President Bush's handlers have already won, at least in the short term. Bush and Karl Rove, his deputy chief of staff, have succeeded in convincing most of the US population that there is a serious problem with Social Security, which opens the way for considering the administration's program of private accounts instead of relying on the public pension system.

The public has been frightened, much as it was by the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

April 2005

by Naomi Jaffe

Granted - more than granted, enthusiastically agreed - the Bushies, red-staters and fundamentalists are arch-hypocrites who profess to care about one brain-dead woman while ignoring, nay, promoting, hunger, mass murder, torture, and misery around the world.

But apart from the predictable, and justified, ridicule of their inconsistency, what does our side really think of the right to life and the right to death? Who should decide, and on what basis? Are we hypocrites too, defending some lives and not others?

February 2005

by Lee Sustar

Say you're expecting to rely on a modest retirement fund. Along comes a hotshot stockbroker promising that if he can handle your money; he'll guarantee you 15 or 40 percent less of a payout than you would have gotten in the first place.

It sounds absurd, but that's the essence of George W. Bush's Social Security "reform." For all of Bush's hype about diverting a portion of the Social Security payroll tax into individual retirement accounts, his proposal is simply a smokescreen for a cut in benefits.

September 2003

Public Citizen

WASHINGTON - August 20 - Bureaucracy in the health care system accounts for about a third of total U.S. health care spending – a sum so great that if the United States were to have a national health insurance program, the administrative savings alone would be enough to provide health care coverage for all the uninsured in this country, according to two new studies.

September 2003

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

In the United States, people with mental illness are discriminated against and abused in all sections of the criminal justice system. For them, working through the harsh and rigid complexities of America's judicial system is a hopeless and abusive experience. Both police and prison officials, who are ill equipped with knowledge and skills, often behave with neglect or brutality towards mentally ill individuals.