What if…. My Parents had Voted for McGovern

I mean, he has Govern in his name!!!  It was his destiny!

At least he’s showing that he’s more competent that our current rulers:

January 7, 2008

McGovern: Time to impeach Bush

Posted: 08:42 AM ET

WASHINGTON (CNN) – George McGovern, the Democratic Party’s 1972 nominee for president, is calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

And in an editorial in Sunday’s Washington Post, McGovern writes the case for impeaching the current president is “far stronger” than the case made against former President Richard Nixon — the man who soundly defeated McGovern in the general election match up.

“Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses,” McGovern writes. “They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time.

“Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world,” he continued.

McGovern, a former three-term senator who ran for president on a fiercely anti-war platform, also called the administration’s policy in Iraq a “a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war” in violation of international law.

“This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949,” he added.

But McGovern acknowledged there is little bipartisan support for an impeachment effort, blaming “superficial partisanship” among Republicans, and a “a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians.”

– CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney

Our Tax System is Broke. Who’s Going to Fix it?

With the amount of money being donated to politicians this campaign season, how are we supposed to believe that any of them will work to reform a tax system that benefits the wealthy and America’s corporations today more than ever.

When you talk about tax reform, the common response for most is the creation of a flat tax. I myself have called for a flat tax many times in the past. Today though, my outlook has been altered. I have done a lot of reading on the subject, and the consensus among true experts in the field is that a flat tax is overly burdensome on the poor and lower middle class. The groups that need the most relief.

What most experts say we need is a simplification of the tax code, and a closing of the loop-holes that benefit the uber rich. Doing these two things could provide for the true tax breaks needed by the poor and middle class, while making the wealthy actually pay their share.

I don’t even want to pretend to be an expert on this subject, but I do believe that this issue should be at the forefront of the elections this year. John Edwards is the one politician that has taken a stand on this issue, and proclaimed that he will go head-to-head with big business to do the right thing and institute tax reform.

Here is an article from a real expert, Paul Krugman:

Wobbled by Wealth?

By PAUL KRUGMAN

At just about every stop I’ve made so far on my book tour, what I’ve come to think of as The Question comes up. I talk about the origins of the long right-wing dominance of American politics, and the reasons I believe that dominance is coming to an end. Then someone asks, “How can you be optimistic about the prospects for progressive change, when big money has so much influence on politics?”

It’s a good question.

The public wants change. “If Americans have ever been angrier with the state of the country,” begins a new strategy memo from the polling organization Democracy Corps, “we have not witnessed it.”

Nor is the demand for change solely about Iraq: there has been a strong revival of economic populism. Democracy Corps asked those who believe America is on the wrong track to choose phrases that best described their views of what’s gone wrong. The most commonly chosen were “Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington” and “Leaders have forgotten the middle class.”

So much, by the way, for pundits who claim that Americans don’t care about economic inequality.

What Happens to With Health Care Reform When Left to the Politicians? Nothing, As Usual

Once again, politicians were too busy catering to lobbyist groups instead of solving any issues.  At the end of the day, the new health care budget is the same as last year, and paves the way for more of the same next year.  I guess they figured that the average American wouldn’t be able to make sense of the endless word smithing found in the budget.  Luckily for us there’s Robert Laszewski, a policy analyst that can decipher the document and give it to us in plain english.   Here is what he found:

The Budget Outcome–Everything Was decided and Nothing Was Decided

The Budget agreement, SCHIP, the Medicare Physician Fee Cut, and Medicare Advantage HMO payments.

For months, I have been telling you four things:

* The federal budget impasse would be resolved because Democrats and Republicans weren’t going to go home without their earmarks. In predicting the budget outcome you might recall my telling you to follow the “pork.”
  * SCHIP would not be allowed to expire and would be extended.
  * The 10% Medicare Physician Fee cut would be avoided just as it has been for a number of years in a row.
  * Democrats were adamant about cutting Medicare Advantage payments as a means to pay for the Medicare physician fee cut and seeing the program’s payments ultimately equalized with the traditional Medicare program.

A Sound Approach to Lowering Health Care Costs

By Smithofthelongfield:

So How Do We Reduce the Costs of Health Care in our Jails and Communities?

One of the programs I advocate is a community approach to correctional health care. This program was introduced by the sheriff of Hampden County Massachusetts and has received praise from the entire correctional health care community. It has proven to be effective at not only lowering the cost of health care at the jail, but throughout the entire community.

The root cause of the high costs of health care in our communities can be traced directly to a lack of care to our poor and uninsured populations. This population is also the population most likely to end up in our county jails. For most people that go to jail, their appointment with the doctor for their intake screening is the first time they have ever seen a medical professional. Unfortunately, due to the transitory nature of jail inmates (prisoners are released or transferred in very short periods of time, the population in a county jail turns over 36 times/year on average), there is usually no follow up care.

In jail, the infection rates for communicable diseases like Hepatitis, TB, and many STDs is 5 times as great as in the community. Couple that with the short stays, and quick releases, and we are actually pushing disease into our community. These inmates are being released to the same population that does not have health care, and is too poor to afford anything but a trip to the ER. A recent survey found that 46% of the women found to have STDs reported having sex with a male that had been an inmate within the preceding 6 months. This is the root of the extreme costs of health care in our jails and our community.

What the sheriff of Hampden County did, and what has been replicated throughout the country, is a community approach to health care. Instead of hiring private company in the effort to reduce costs, the jail recruited community providers, public health officials, and other professionals to provide services at the jail on a volunteer/discounted basis, and then act as the primary care provider to inmates that have been diagnosed with an issue, back out in the community upon their release. This continuity of care has greatly reduced the overall health care budget for every community that has implemented this program.

In addition to the community health care program, adding treatment programs, housing assistance, and job training has also greatly reduced recidivism rates in these counties. I believe that this type of program is the answer to the rising costs of health care in our jails and communities on a whole.

More Straight Talk From the Sheriff

For those of you that have not visited the News With Views website and read some of Jim Schwiesow’s posts, I encourage you to do so now. Here is an excerpt from one of his latest posts:

Throughout our history we have been a nation that has presumed to act as the moral conscience of the nations of the world, a champion for international justice and morality. We viewed it as our destiny to promote peace, to subdue injustice and discipline belligerent nations. We set up tribunals to punish those that we believed to be responsible for inhumane acts against the weak and the helpless. We condemned and executed political and military leaders of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan who we felt were responsible for heinous international acts. When one assumes this posture one had better have clean hands. Don’t look now, but ours are dirty – extremely dirty.

That the United States has become an aggressor nation cannot be disputed. We claim a right to anticipatory or preemptive military strikes to enforce our will upon nations that are subjectively labeled as rogue. The simple fact is that we deny the same right of self-direction to governments with policies that diverge from ours that we claim as a divine right. The Bush administration has carried subterfuge to new heights. Inventiveness in regard to fabricating justification for a military invasion has become an art form. The president while searching for ways to secure congressional approval for an attack on Iraq changed pretexts as often as he changed shirts, finally settling on weapons of mass destruction. Today almost five years after the inception of the attack on Iraq no signs of weapons of mass destruction have ever been found and the president has had to alter his propagation for a seemingly interminable conflict as a war for democratization.

Where is it written in our laws or our Constitution that we have the authority to bomb a country and kill innocent non-combatants in order to convert them to democracy?

Is John Edwards Our Man?

So says Ian Welsh on The Huffington Post (see the article). 

The case he makes is compelling.  I would love to see our president actually act upon the promises made in a campaign.  Fight for change.  Do something.  Improve our lives.

Read the article, and tell me what you think…

Pot = Crack? Get Real People..

One of the biggest mistakes made by our government was the criminalization of marijuana.  Almost half of the drug arrest made today are for pot.  Our jails are overcrowded, but we won’t decriminalize pot.  By not doing so, we are only making the problem worse.  By placing an 18 year old kid in jail for posession of a couple joints, we are not doing him any favors.  We are merely introducing them to hardened criminals, and paving the way for them to get involved in harder drugs, and more violent lives.

I have placed a link on the sidebar of this blog to the cost calculator for the war on drugs.  Take a look at some of the information listed there, and make up yout own mind.

I am also including a couple links to some stories I found in Rolling Stone. The first one is an overview of the war on drugs focus on pot, while the second one is on the the futility of the war on drugs in general.  Both of these stories illustrate how useless our current methods of dealing with drug use in America are.  If we spent the money on treatment that we currently do on trying to squash the drug trade, we’d be a lot further ahead, and we could save money in this fruitless war.

A Green City, in China…

It’s a shame that we’re spending all our money on the war in Iraq, and not working to improve our green technologies.  What’s even worse, is that China is fast becoming the leader in the “Green” revolution. 

China has already begun construction on a totally Green city near Shanghai.  Dongtan will run on 100% renewable energy (a mixture of wind, solar, and rice husks) and produce  zero CO2 emissions.

This just proves to me that we have become to complacent and full of ourselves.  We are not the leaders of technology that we believe ourselves to be.  These innovations should be happening here first.  The US should be the model for the rest of the world.  Instead, we’re too busy spending all of our money on a lost war.  Check out the article in WIRED about Dongtan.

Searching for Davey Crockett

Most people think of the Alamo when they hear the name Davey Crockett, but before he undertook that ill-fated expedition, he was a member of congress, an honest one.

The following story appeared in The Life Of Colonel David Crockett, published by Porter & Coates in 1884. Now in the public domain. I found it at Cronk. Too bad we don’t have a Davy Crockett around today…

About the Author: Edward S. Ellis

I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support, rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put the question, when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support of the bill. He commenced:

A Day of Reckoning, Everybody Faces One…

No matter who you are, or think you are, whatever wrongs you commit, whatever lies you tell, will eventually be exposed. You will be held accountable for your actions, and the truth will come out. All the money and power in the world cannot help you escape the truth. Sure, you can delay the inevitable for a while by using money and influence to manipulate the truth, but sooner or later, the lies get too big, and the truth comes out.

Just ask George W. Bush. Let’s take a look at the growing list of lies we have endured from this president.

Weapons of Mass Destruction? There aren’t any in Iraq now, and there certainly weren’t any when “W” was telling us about his proof that they did exist. We now know that that was a bold faced lie, one that was spread to scare the public into supporting his case for war.

Saddam Hussein and the Al-Qaeda link. Yet another lie intended to scare the public and try to keep support going for a war that has clearly lost favor with the citizens of this great country.

The latest lie may be the only one that contains a sliver of truth. While campaigning for republican candidates, he stated “We need to stay in Iraq in order to keep gas prices close to $2 a gallon.” If I remember correctly, when we started down this path, he assured us it had nothing to do with oil…