Lizzie Buchen: Keeping low-risk inmates behind bars does not enhance public safety; in fact, doing so may endanger the public, as excessive prison terms hamper reentry, damage families, and weaken communities.
Supremes’ Decision Points Way Past America’s Division
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Bob Letcher: A citizenry cannot claim at once BOTH to value having each other’s back, figuratively, AND to oppose sharing the cost of caring for each other’s back, literally.
Judicial Judo: The Chief Justice and Obamacare
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John Peeler: In handing a defeat to the Republicans, Roberts thereby also handed them a bludgeon with which to attack Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal.
Are LA’s Neighborhood Council Elections Worth the Price?
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Stephen Box: Neighborhood Council elections matter most to City Hall because, without them, City Hall’s commitment to involving the people in an open and participatory government is broken.
Obamacare Is Killing Our Bottom Line
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Clifford Tasner: Heavens! Young people can be covered under Obamacare by their parents plush policies until they’re 26. Cossetting the young isn’t going to help them learn that the world is a harsh place.
Healthcare 101: Ride for Free
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Derrick Ashong: In the end it seems some conservatives truly love individual responsibility…as long as they don’t have to practice it themselves.
Healthcare 101: Don’t Eat That Chocolate Bar
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Derrick Ashong: If we’re going to have a system of privately issued insurance (which we do have, and which the govt has made no moves to get rid of), we run into a basic problem: healthy people don’t wanna’ buy it.
An Offer to the President
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Robert Reich: So here’s the deal: We’ll reelect you. We’ll stand behind you. We’ll give you a mandate to do all this – and more – in your second term. As long as you stand behind us.
Mandatory E-Verify Will Not Magically Solve Immigration Woes
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Michele Waslin: Immigration restrictionists argue that imposing a mandatory employment verification system will ensure that unauthorized workers are not able to get jobs in the U.S. and will choose to leave, leaving millions of jobs wide open for unemployed U.S. citizens. Of course, this ignores the facts.
“White City” in Afghanistan; Black Heart in Florida
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Kirwin: Terry Jones’ Quran burning resulted in killings and extreme danger in Afghanistan. The United Nations ordered all of its personnel to remain locked down in their compounds. A credible rumor has it that the UN will decide whether to completely pull out of the country, despite multiple assertions to the contrary by the UN Special Representative, Staffan de Mistura, who is based in Kabul.
Stephen Box: Balancing Budgets on Labor’s Back
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Stephen Box: The City of Los Angeles is experiencing a Crisis of Leadership, one where the people of Los Angeles are being asked to pay more for less and the people who deliver the city services are being treated as if they are expendable. They’re not.
Mandatory E-Verify Is Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be
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Michele Waslin: While everyone agrees that high unemployment levels must be addressed, simplistic measures like mandating E-Verify are not going to open up jobs for millions of unemployed workers.
Why We Should Trade Broccoli and Asparagus for Hot Dogs and Apple Pie
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Robert Reich: The requirement that everyone purchase health insurance, or pay a fine doesn’t appeal to many Americans. They don’t like the government telling them they have to buy something. But the healthcare system can’t work without this mandate. Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions, or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.
The Tea Party Conservative Strategy for 2011
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Robert Reich: Next week starts the new Congress, and with it the Tea Party conservatives. What are they going to do about government spending? Knowing they don’t stand a chance of getting a direct repeal of the healthcare mandate, they’ll try to strip the federal budget appropriation of money needed to put the healthcare mandate into effect. This could lead to a standoff with the White House over government funding in general, and a possible government shutdown.
Election Guide for Election Haters
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David Swanson: I’ll admit it right now. My name is David and I hate elections. (HI, DAVID!) I hate choosing the evil of two lessers. I hate attack ads. I hate endless repetitive debates that exclude all the interesting questions. I hate painting one candidate as all bad and the other as infallible even when I have to squint to see a difference between them.
My Own Bishop Eddie Long and My Exodus from the Black Church
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Jasmyne Cannick: After having heard this same person lecture about leaving the children the alone and the importance in strong adult role models in the church, I felt brutally betrayed and made my final exit from the church and organized religion. I was not going to co-sign behavior that I knew was wrong by staying in the church.
Blue Dog Democrats Exposed as Frauds
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Paul Hogarth: many Blue Dogs are in trouble because of health care, and ironically what could save their hide is a public option. Instead, they are left selling a corporate-friendly bill hashed behind closed doors that forces Americans to buy private insurance – which will only make their constituents vote Republican. That’s why so many Blue Dogs are retiring – so they can bail and become lobbyists for the insurance industry.
Obama Didn’t Deliver for Progressives, But Paved Way For Success
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the Obama Administration knows that the final health care bill won’t get a single Republican vote – and is preparing to make it possible to pass a public option. But it will only become a reality if progressives focus like a laser beam in order to make that happen.
Healthcare in America
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This video was provided by Bill Moyer’s PBS Television show. It is available on YouTube. Here, Bill Moyer’s interviews Wendell Potter a former healthcare insurance executive. The interview is approximately 37 mins long. The following message was sent to the LA Progressive by a reader who calls himself jacksmith: We have the 37th worst quality [...]
McCain Hopes for A Win, Obama Aims for a Mandate
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Senator John McCain’s campaign should be experiencing a surge in this final week of the campaign, a narrowing of the gap between him and his opponent Senator Barack Obama. In almost every campaign since 1988, except for when Senator Bob Dole lost to President Bill Clinton in 1996, the eventual losers experienced a last minute [...]
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