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POPSObama: McCain's Health Plan 'Radical' Annenberg FactCheck had this to say about McCain's healthcare proposal: Workers would be taxed on the value of any employer-paid health benefits, partially offsetting the $5,000 credit for those now covered by such plans. Experts say a tax credit plan like this would likely cause companies to reduce or eliminate health benefits for their employees. Sounds great, John. Got any more crap you want to sell us?
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POPSAn Election Without Meaning Props, gossip, accusations, and public relations. It is impression management from a candidates’ perspective. How can we fool the most people into believing that we stand for something? It is billions of dollars of gravy for the media folks and continued profit maximization for the war machine, Wall Street, and insurance companies, no matter who is determined the winner in November.
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POPSPBS don't miss Roger Weisberg's Critical Condition is a powerful, eye-opening look at the health care crisis in America. In an election season when health care reform has become one of the nation's most hotly debated issues, Critical Condition lays out the human consequences of an increasingly expensive and inaccessible system.
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POPSSocial welfare programs do not keep a country from prosperity
The Nordic states have also worked to keep social expenditures compatible with an open, competitive, market-based economic system. Tax rates on capital are relatively low. Labor market policies pay low-skilled and otherwise difficult-to-employ individuals to work in the service sector, in key quality-of-life areas such as child care, health, and support for the elderly and disabled. The results for the households at the bottom of the income distribution are astoundingly good, especially in contrast to...American social policy. The U.S. spends less than almost all rich countries on social services for the poor and disabled, and it gets what it pays for: the highest poverty rate among the rich countries and an exploding prison population. Actually, by shunning public spending on health, the U.S. gets much less than it pays for, because its dependence on private health care has led to a ramshackle system that yields mediocre results at very high costs.
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POPSToo Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
This text was from Norman Solomon. Look closely at the lower left of the pic.... The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter. The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter. The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter. The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter. Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter. Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter. The current odds of pumping at least several hundred billion taxpayer dollars into corporate America: too b
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POPSMark Morford on all the Numbers making us dizzy
Read the colmn, here's a bit more: but it's best not to think about it too much. Fair enough? I know, it's tough not to feel a little shaken, unnerved, openly disgusted. A $700 billion bailout of a Bush-gutted economy by an already nearly bankrupt U.S. Treasury? Two trillion for a failed war in Iraq? Ten trillion in national debt and a $480 billion budget deficit (not counting the $700B for the bailout and it could be much more) and a record trade deficit, with all those numbers nearly double (if not far more) of what they were in 2001? Why, you'd almost think someone -- or maybe an entire administration, perhaps the most irresponsible in modern U.S. history -- was largely to blame. But they're not! Because they're just numbers! Like these: 47 million Americans without health insurance (up 30 percent from eight years ago). The U.S. dollar now worth roughly half of its 2001 value. More than 150 signing statements challenging over 1,100 provisions of federal law from a president
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POPSSocialism for Dummies Any politician who votes to bail out Wall Street titans while simultaneously telling average Americans to suck it up and tighten their belts should be booted from office. Any politician who claims taxes can continue to be cut in the face of the gargantuan debt we are about to take on should be shown the door. The chatter in the business world is that a “new model” of finance must emerge from the ruins left by the shattering of the old. The same must apply to our politics, too.
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POPSToo Big to Fail and Too Small to Matter
(cont.)The leverage for the U.S. Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter. The political momentum for bailing out corporate America is too big to fail. The political momentum for funding adequate payment rates from Medicaid to reimburse healthcare providers is too small to matter. The oil conglomerates are too big to fail. Global warming is too small to matter. The prison industry is too big to fail. The need for preschool is too small to matter. Corporate power is too big to fail. The ordeals of working people and want-to-be-working people are too small to matter. Human worth as maximized by dollars: too big to fail. Human worth as affirmed by humanistic values: too small to matter. The current odds of pumping at least several hundred billion taxpayer dollars into corporate America: too big to fail. The current odds of launching a massive federal jobs program: too sm
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POPSMcCain/Palin Health Insurance Plan "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation." John McCain
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POPSNational and South Sudan governments sign accord According to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the Interim National Constitution the two national bodies have to define the legal framework in the fields of joint competence, also to agree on the modalities to implement the federal attributions. The legal affairs committee is one of the eleven panels set by the Joint Political Executive Committee meetings between the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) on the implementation process of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
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POPSAnother broken Bush promise? Today there is talk of we the taxpayers bailing out another wall street failure- AIG, the largest insurance company. Bush will prop the market up any way he can to prevent the Dems from taking over. IT"S YOUR TAXES, it massive govt debt, people-time to educate yourselves.
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POPSMcCain's Radical Agenda "This entire McCain health insurance transformation is right out of the right-wing Republicans’ ideological playbook: fewer regulations; let the market decide; and send unsophisticated consumers into the crucible alone. You would think that with some of the most venerable houses on Wall Street crumbling like sand castles right before our eyes, we’d be a little wary about spreading this toxic formula even further into the health care system. But we’re not even paying much attention. "