Derrick's Progressive News
Canada’s Greatest – Where is our Tommy Douglas?
Progressive News Contents
The National Association of Free Clinics Needs Your Help
On Healthcare: Hold Your Noses and Celebrate Anyway
Take The Crack Pipe Away From Wall Street (VIDEO)
Obama Blasts Banks For Opposing Financial Reform
Thom Hartmann Show: Rep. Peter DeFazio is trying to bring back Glass-Steagall
Poll Shows NRA Members Are More Moderate Than Their Leaders, Support Some Restrictions On Firearms
President Obama Is Wrong About Afghanistan And We Need To Tell Him So
Beyond Bars: Re-visioning the Prison System, Wednesday 12-16-09
Just For Fun: I Didn’t Feel Old Until…
Darrel Johannes provided this article/link.
Last night, I watched a wonderful film, “Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story”, a lovingly and accurately made 3-hour miniseries that tells the story of how Canada succeeded in providing universal health care to it’s citizens. The battles they fought are eerily similar to what we have now, tea baggers and all. Here is a short scene from the miniseries as Baptist Minister Tommy Douglas campaigned in his first election. The film is available for purchase from Amazon.com and for rent at NetFlix. Get it. Watch it. Various clips are on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_wDL8XcRwU
Here is the real Tommy Douglas at the Regina Convention that founded the CCF. At the 50th Anniversary Convention in 1983, he delivered what many consider his greatest speech. Those present cheered him for over 20 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWrKJlBuZbM&feature=related
From Wikipedia:
Despite being a federal Member of Parliament and not yet a member of the legislative assembly, Douglas was elected the leader of the Saskatchewan CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation ) in 1942 but did not resign from the House of Commons until June 1, 1944. He led the CCF to power in the June 15, 1944 provincial election, winning 47 of 53 seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan, and thus forming the first democratic socialist government in not only Canada, but all of North America.
Douglas and the Saskatchewan CCF then went on to win five straight majority victories in all subsequent Saskatchewan provincial elections up to 1960. Most of his government's pioneering innovations came about during its first term, including:
- the creation of the publicly owned Saskatchewan Power Corp., successor to the Saskatchewan Electrical Power Commission, which began a long program of extending electrical service to isolated farms and villages;
- the creation of Canada's first publicly owned automobile insurance service, the Saskatchewan Government Insurance Office;
- the creation of a large number of Crown Corporations, many of which competed with existing private sector interests;
- legislation that allowed the unionization of the public service;
- a program to offer free hospital care to all citizens—the first in Canada.
- passage of the Saskatchewan Bill of Rights, legislation that broke new ground as it protected both fundamental freedoms and equality rights against abuse not only by government actors but also on the part of powerful private institutions and persons. (The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights preceded the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations by 18 months).
Premier Douglas was the first head of any government in Canada to call for a constitutional bill of rights. This he did at a federal-provincial conference in Quebec City in January, 1950. No one in attendance at the conference supported him in this. Ten years later, Premier Lesage of Quebec joined with Premier Douglas at a First Ministers' Conference in July, 1960, in advocating for a constitutional bill of rights. Thus, respectable momentum was given to the idea that finally came to fruition, on April 17, 1982, with the proclamation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.[22]
Thanks to a booming postwar economy and the prudent financial management of provincial treasurer Clarence Fines, the Douglas government slowly paid off the huge public debt left by the previous Liberal government, and created a budget surplus for the Saskatchewan government. Coupled with a federal government promise in 1959 to give even more money for medical care, this paved the way for Douglas's most notable achievement, the introduction of universal medicare legislation in 1961.
The National Association of Free Clinics Needs Your Help
The National Association of Free Clinics (NAFC) is the only nonprofit 501c(3) (ID# 56-2273242) organization whose mission is solely focused on the issues and needs of the more than 1,200 free clinics and the people they serve in the United States.
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., the NAFC is an effective advocate for the issues and concerns of free clinics, their volunteer workforce of doctors, dentists, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, nurse practitioners, technicians and other health care professionals, and the patients served by free clinics in communities throughout the nation.
The NAFC just completed a huge free clinic in Kansas City, MO. They are looking to do their next in Charlotte, NC; Atlanta GA; or Hartford Connecticut. These are the home towns of senators who have been blocking access to health insurance reform. The main stumbling block is finding a big enough venue to hold these events that serve thousands.
They also need funding. Even with a volunteer staff and a free location, it costs about $250,000 to pay for the crowd control, treatment booths, water, bathrooms, etc. Please visit their web site and chip in $5 or more. Visit NAFC
On Healthcare: Hold Your Noses and Celebrate Anyway
12/11/09, By Bill McKibben, Mother Jones Link
Will Hobbs provided this link/article.
Democrats have been trying to pass a universal healthcare plan for nearly a century. But Woodrow Wilson dropped the ball on the first attempt, FDR gave up on the second, Harry Truman ran smack into the AMA on the third, Richard Nixon collided with Teddy Kennedy on the fourth, and Bill Clinton fell to Harry and Louise (and Bob and Newt) on the fifth.
Now we're on our sixth try, and the fight so far hasn't been a pretty one. The Republican side has been dominated by howling over death panels and socialism, transparently fake attempts at bipartisanship, and promises to filibuster and obstruct endlessly. On the Democratic side, activists have turned abortion funding and the public option into hills to die for, Olympia Snowe and Ben Nelson have become de factor kingmakers, and even at best none of the bills on offer will cover more than about two-thirds of the uninsured.
But you know what? This is still the farthest we've ever gotten, and with Democrats coming out of this week's series of negotiating sessions seemingly united behind a compromise plan, it looks like Harry Reid might actually get something passed through the Senate before Christmas. If that happens, a conference committee will likely report out a final bill sometime in January. And that will be the first time ever that Congress has even gotten to the point of voting on national healthcare.
The first time. So yes: It's not single-payer. The subsidies are inadequate. The public option, if there is one, will be so weak as to be a joke. Every interest group from insurers to doctors to seniors to pharmaceutical companies has been openly bribed to go along. Lots of people will still be left outside the safety net. It's a mess.
But so was Social Security when it passed. It left out domestic workers (because they were mostly black and Southerners demanded it), it left out farmworkers, and its payouts were pathetically small. But what it did do was establish the principle that the elderly should be taken care of. And eventually they were. The healthcare bill we're about to get is exactly the same: It does too little and it leaves too many people out, but it establishes the principle that everyone deserves decent healthcare. And eventually everyone will.
So hold your noses and celebrate anyway. It's taken us a hundred years, but if this messy, inadequate, infuriating healthcare reform passes it will be a historic occasion. FDR will finally be smiling.
By Kevin Drum | Wed Dec. 9, 2009, Mother Jones Link
Byron Dorgan (D–ND) has proposed an amendment to the Senate's healthcare bill that would legalize reimportation of prescription drugs from Canada. No big surprise there: Dorgan's a Democrat, after all. But drug reimportation has lots of Republican supporters too, including Olympia Snowe, David Vitter, Chuck Grassley, and John McCain. Ezra Klein notes just how nonsensical this is:
The case for drug reimportation, as Vitter says, proceeds from the recognition that residents of other countries get much, much lower prices on drugs than Americans do. Many of these drugs were invented by American companies and produced in American factories. But Canada gets them at a discount. Why?
Well, Canada's government bargains its prices down. So does the French government, and the German government, and the British government....But Medicare, and the federal government more generally, are barred from doing the same. And this isn't just about drugs. The story is similar for everything from surgeries to doctor's visits.
....In closing, Vitter urged the Senate to "take this step and do what we all say should be a top priority and actually lower health-care costs. I urge all my colleagues to come together and do this in a bipartisan way." Boiled down to its essentials, Vitter just made a case for a bipartisan embrace of a single-payer system.
Drug reimportation is quite possibly the most ridiculous and hypocritical way conceivable to get lower pharmaceutical prices. If you think the government should bargain down drug prices, then at least have the spine to say that the government should bargain down drug prices. Don't outsource the job to Canada's government-run healthcare system, which, according to conservative conventional wisdom, is little better than an icy death factory that dooms its citizens to bad hips, painful cancer deaths, and endless waiting lines.
There are times when I feel that I'm pretty inured to political opportunism and duplicitousness. But railing against any kind of government interference in the health industry as death panels and socialism, and then turning around and suggesting we take advantage of the benefits of an actual socialist healthcare system really takes the cake.
Take The Crack Pipe Away From Wall Street (VIDEO)
Andrew Ross Sorkin Daily Show Interview
Charles Baccus provided this article/link.
Huffington Post | Nicholas Graham, Posted: 12-10-09 The Huffington Post Link
Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times reporter who runs the influential business blog Dealbook, was a guest on The Daily Show last night to promote his book "Too Big to Fail," which explores the origins of the financial crisis and how it played out.
Stewart started the interview off with a bit of humor, stalling after he welcomed the youthful Sorkin on the show, telling him that need to wait until his father arrived before he could start the interview. They then turned to the book.
Sorkin said that the changes we need to make the system since we pulled back from the precipice have not been made: "A year later we are in no better shape than we were a year before... There are no new rules."
While the banks have indeed de-leveraged to a certain extent, Sorkin noted, there is still no rule allowing them to return to massively leveraging themselves and causing another crisis to occur: "Every time we've had a crisis it's been about leverage and debt, and every time we have never learned the original lesson."
Stewart got heated when discussing what the banks are doing to people with arbitrary credit card rate hikes and other such practices. He told Sorkin he hesitates to use a term of "sexual violence," but that's what the banks are doing to people. "I won't disagree with you," Sorkin replied.
The interview with Sorkin concluding that there will not be progress or accountability on Wall Street and that we need to take the crack pipe away from them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/andrew-ross-sorkin-on-jon_n_387031.html
Obama Blasts Banks For Opposing Financial Reform
By Darlene Superville, Associated Press, The Huffington Post Link
Dick Quinn provided this article/link.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama singled out financial institutions for causing much of the economic tailspin and criticized their opposition to tighter federal oversight of their industry.
While applauding House passage Friday of overhaul legislation and urging quick Senate action, Obama expressed frustration with banks that were helped by a taxpayer bailout and now are "fighting tooth and nail with their lobbyists" against new government controls.
In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama said the economy is only now beginning to recover from the "irresponsibility" of Wall Street institutions that "gambled on risky loans and complex financial products" in pursuit of short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences. "It was, as some have put it, risk management without the management," he said.
The president also told CBS' "60 Minutes" that "the people on Wall Street still don't get it. ... They're still puzzled why it is that people are mad at the banks. Well, let's see. You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year ... in decades and you guys caused the problem," Obama said in an excerpt released in advance of Sunday night's broadcast of his interview.
Thom Hartmann Show: Rep. Peter DeFazio is trying to bring back Glass-Steagall
By Heather Friday Dec 11, 2009
Charles Baccus provided this article/link.
Thom Hartmann talks to Rep. Peter DeFazio about the effort by members of Congress to restore the Glass-Steagall Act to separate banks from gambling. See the 11-minute video here.
Derrick: BTW, not a single Republican voted for the bank regulation bill in the House this last week. See the article here.
Poll Shows NRA Members Are More Moderate Than Their Leaders, Support Some Restrictions On Firearms
Charles Baccus provided this article/link. Charles adds: “It never ceases to amaze me that leaders of organizations/groups/govt/etc frequently do not properly (and many times adversely) represent their paying membership. Here is an amazing example. Very much like our numerous members of our congress DO NOT even begin to properly represent their constituents.”
By Amanda Terkel on Dec 10th, 2009, Think Progress Link
Since the 2008 presidential campaign season, gun associations have been fear-mongering about President Obama to boost their membership, increase their relevancy, and fuel gun sales. The National Rifle Association (NRA) claimed that Obama has a “a deep-rooted hatred of firearm freedoms” and spent tens of millions of dollars during the campaign lobbying against Obama trying to portray him as a threat to the Second Amendment. Even during the transition, the NRA claimed that Obama was discriminating against gun owners in his hiring for government positions.
The NRA’s campaign has been based almost entirely on falsehoods. As FactCheck.org noted, the NRA largely dismissed “Obama’s stated position [on gun rights] as ‘rhetoric‘ and substitute[d] its own interpretation of his record as a secret ‘plan.’” More recently, the Gun Owners of America has been mobilizing against health care by claiming that “wellness and prevention” provisions would lead the Obama administration to issue a “no guns” decree.
Part of the NRA’s strategy of instilling fear is a “never-pass-any-new-gun-laws imperative,” which lawmakers often abide by out of concern that they will be punished at the polls by gun owners. But in his Washington Post column today, E.J. Dionne highlights a new survey of 832 gun owners (including 401 NRA members) by conservative pollster Frank Luntz. The poll finds that NRA members are “more reasonable than the organization’s leaders and supporters in Congress in understanding the urgency of keeping guns out of the wrong hands:
– 86 percent of all gun owners believe the country can “do more to stop criminals from getting guns while also protecting the rights of citizens to freely own them.”
– 78 percent of NRA members support “requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen.”
– 82 percent of NRA members support “prohibiting people on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.”
– 69 percent of NRA members support “requiring all gun sellers at gun shows to conduct criminal background checks of the people buying guns.”
Interestingly, NRA members seem to be overwhelmingly against Rep. Todd Tiahrt’s (R-KS) amendment that would prohibit law enforcement agencies from accessing gun trace data and require the FBI to “destroy certain background check records within 24 hours,” which the NRA supports. Sixty-nine percent of NRA members said that they support the statement that the federal government “should not restrict the police’s ability to access, use, and share data that helps them enforce federal, state and local gun laws.”
President Obama Is Wrong About Afghanistan And We Need To Tell Him So
Today even members of the Noble Peace Prize committee were stunned to hear President Obama preaching war at the award of his prize medal. The fact is that we need to be winding down our ruinous occupational excursion there, not getting in deeper. And the most appalling thing is the way the hardcore neocons are chortling over their new "war president".
They tell us our military force in Afghanistan is fighting terror. The exact opposite is true. Ten percent of every dollar we pour into that country goes to bribe the Taliban not to shoot at us . .. . today. And when they talk about building up the Afghan army, what they don't tell you is how many recruits are in fact terrorists in
for the free training. Yes, that's right, in essence the U.S. Army is running the terrorist training camps for the terrorists.
Fax Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1022.php
The page above will send your instant fax to President Obama and all your members of Congress, for no charge to yourself, unlike all the right wing "activist" operations that charge twenty-five dollars or more for doing the same thing.
Notwithstanding some faint lip service, we don't have an ally there who isn't anxious to get the helter skelter out of there, to leave Afghanistan to its local and backward ways. Because every day we stay just means more people who hate us enough to want to leave their own country to try to hurt us here. Congress must refuse to fund. President Obama must get the message that escalation just makes things worse, before it gets dramatically worse. And we need to tell
them that now.
Those who think they are doing our new president a favor by not speaking out in protest have it exactly backwards. Unless we speak out in numbers greater than before, there is no pressure on him except from the right, and you can see exactly where that is taking us now. If you want to help Obama, if you believe he wants to do the progressive thing, you MUST understand that the only political reality is the one we create or not, by our action or by our inaction.
The only way we can save Obama from the disastrous path he is on is by being such a wind behind his back that he has no choice but to make good policy decisions. It does not matter whether he is a strong progressive or not, what matters is whether WE ARE.
So please submit the action page. It all starts with citizen activism. Without ongoing citizen activist not even the most just of policy causes can prevail. Please submit the action page now, and encourage everyone else you know to join you.
And here is the one click Facebook page for this same fax action.
No Afghanistan Fax Action:
http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1022
Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.millionfaxmarch..com/in.htm
Beyond Bars: Re-visioning the Prison System, Wednesday 12-16-09
The Wilsonville Public Library is hosting a talk and discussion:
"Beyond Bars: Re-visioning the Prison System"
Wednesday, 12/16/09
6:30-8:00 p.m
Presented by Portland State University Professor Walidah Imarisha
Join in the conversation!
Free event in the Library's Oak Room
8200 SW Wilsonville Road.
Caylor Roling
Prison Program Director
Partnership for Safety and Justice
825 NE 20th, Suite 250
Portland, OR 97232
503-335-8449
Just For Fun: I Didn’t Feel Old Until…
Char LaFollette provided this article/link.
I DIDNT FEEL OLD UNTIL I SAW.....
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Derrick Duehren www.Duehren.com By day, I’m a technical writer/human factors Specialist for a local telecommunications company; by night, I’m a fire-breathing defender of liberal social policies. I’m a news hound and share with you stories and videos that I feel are worth sharing with you all (301 as of Oct 2009). I do not share my mailing list and all newsletters go out as blind copies, so everyone gets their own individual copy. |
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