Derrick's Progressive News
Why anyone would vote for a modern Republican is beyond me.
Contents
Republican Economic Recovery Plan
Upcoming Elections to Cost Record $3.7 Billion
DISCLOSE Act may get July vote even though Scott Brown will oppose it
Health Plans Must Provide Some Tests at No Cost
Webster Tarpley Jobs and Economic Plan
Myths Muddle the Immigration Morass
Here are the 15 most common myths about undocumented immigrants.
Just For Fun: Chinese Magic Table Act (VIDEO)
Derrick (This message was cut off in the previous DPN): I attended the WashCoDems Summerfest picnic Saturday. All the local Democratic candidates gave impressive speeches. David Wu gave an impassioned speech about the realities of legislating and the battle we have with the right wing. I hope he takes this powerful rhetoric back to Washington DC and applies the energy.
Republican Economic Recovery Plan
Source: Democracy for America
From The New York Times
July 14, 2010
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- a right-wing political group representing large corporations -- proposed what it's calling an economic recovery plan. Take a look:
· Privatize Social Security
· Cut taxes for the rich
· Log the national forests
· Expand offshore gas and oil drilling
· Privatize highways and waterways
· Look familiar? That's what the agenda of a Republican Congress looks like and the Chamber of Commerce plans to spend more than $50 million to make it a reality.
This video has been seen by over 10,000,000 people around the world. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth watching.
It tells the truth (mostly) about our consumer society and how we are not happier for it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBE5QAYXp8
Upcoming Elections to Cost Record $3.7 Billion
Source: Public Citizen Email
The fall election season hasn't really even kicked in, but already $1 billion has been spent. That's right; billion with a "b." Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has spent $5.5 million of her own money on her election campaign, and Republican groups will spend $301.5 million this cycle. For comparison, the 2006 midterms - which set a record - cost more than $2.8 billion. Experts say the dramatic increase is due to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which said corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.
DISCLOSE Act may get July vote even though Scott Brown will oppose it
Source: Public Citizen Email
Backers of the DISCLOSE Act still hope for a July vote in the Senate even though Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) has said he will oppose it. The act, which came in response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, requires those who pay for campaign ads to be identified.
Health Plans Must Provide Some Tests at No Cost
By Robert Pear
WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday issued new rules requiring health insurance companies to provide free coverage for dozens of screenings, laboratory tests and other types of preventive care.
The new requirements promise significant benefits for consumers — if they take advantage of the services that should now be more readily available and affordable.
In general, the government said, Americans use preventive services at about half the rate recommended by doctors and public health experts.
The rules will eliminate co-payments, deductibles and other charges for blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol tests; many cancer screenings; routine vaccinations; prenatal care; and regular wellness visits for infants and children.
Other services that must be offered at no charge include counseling to help people stop smoking; screening and counseling for obesity; and tests for infection with the virus that causes AIDS.
“Getting rid of cost-sharing is a long-overdue step in the right direction,” said Kenneth E. Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we will have to do a major public education campaign to get people to take advantage of these clinical preventive services.”
The rules stipulate that no co-payments can be charged for tests and screenings recommended by the United States Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of scientific experts. The rules apply to new health plans that begin coverage after Sept. 23 and to existing health plans that make significant changes after that date. The administration said the requirements could increase premiums by 1.5 percent, on average.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the rules would extend benefits to 31 million people in new employer-sponsored plans and 10 million people in new individual plans next year.
In many cases, insurers will be allowed to charge for goods and services needed to treat a condition detected in a screening. For example, consumers can receive free screenings for depression and high cholesterol, but they might be charged co-payments for antidepressants and cholesterol-lowering drugs.
In some cases, the task force has specified how frequently a service, like colonoscopy, should be performed. If the guidelines are silent, the rules say, an insurer may use “reasonable medical management techniques to determine the frequency” of services.
The administration is working on a supplemental list of free preventive services for women.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America says insurance plans should be required to cover contraceptives without co-payments.
“For women, what could be more basic preventive care than birth control?” asked Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood.
Other services that must be provided without charge include genetic counseling for certain women with a family history of breast cancer, counseling to promote breast-feeding by new mothers and screening for osteoporosis in older women.
Ms. Sebelius said that 100,000 deaths could be averted each year if doctors and patients effectively used five services: colorectal and breast cancer screening, flu vaccines and counseling on smoking cessation and on aspirin therapy to prevent heart disease.
Webster Tarpley Jobs and Economic Plan
Some Progressive Ideas to Save the Country
Walter F. Brown provided this article/link.
30 Million Productive Jobs to Rebuild Us Infrastructure, Industry and Agriculture: The Program to End the Economic Depression
by Webster G. Tarpley, www.tarpley.net November 14, 2009
Derrick: I removed a nutty bullet points.
The US and the world are gripped by a deepening economic depression. There is no recovery and no automatic business cycle which will revive the economy. This bottomless depression will worsen until policies are reformed. The depression results from deregulated and globalized financial speculation, especially the $1.5 quadrillion world derivatives bubble. The US industrial base has been gutted, and the US standard of living has fallen by almost two thirds over the last four decades. We must reverse this trend of speculation, de-industrialization, and immiseration. Current policy bails out bankers, but harms working people, industrial producers, farmers, and small business. We must defend civil society and democratic institutions from the effects of high unemployment and economic breakdown. We therefore demand:
1. Measures to reduce speculation and minimize the burden of fictitious capital:
- End all bailouts of banks and financial institutions. Claw back the TARP and other public money given or lent to financiers.
- Abolish the notion of too big to fail; JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Wells Fargo and other Wall Street zombie banks are insolvent and must be seized by the FDIC for chapter 7 liquidation, with derivatives eliminated by triage.
- Re-institute the Glass-Steagall firewall to separate banks, brokerages, and insurance.
- Ban credit default swaps and adjustable rate mortgages.
- To generate revenue and discourage speculation, levy a 1% Tobin tax (securities transfer tax or trading tax) on all financial transactions including derivatives (futures, options, indices, and over the counter derivatives), stocks, bonds, foreign exchange, and commodities, especially program trading, high-frequency trading, and flash trading.
- Set up a 15% reserve requirement for all OTC derivatives.
- Use Tobin tax revenue and a revived corporate income tax to provide immediate tax relief to individuals, families, the self-employed, and small business by increasing personal exemptions and standard deductions.
- Stop all foreclosures on primary residences, businesses, and farms for five years or the duration of the depression, whichever lasts longer.
- Set a 10% maximum rate of interest on credit cards and payday loans.
- Re-regulate commodities markets with 100% margin requirements, position limits, and anti-speculation protections for hedgers and end users to prevent oil and gasoline price spikes.
- Enforce labor laws and anti-trust laws against monopolies and cartels. Restore individual chapter 11.
2. Measures to nationalize the Federal Reserve, cut federal borrowing, and provide 0% federal credit for production:
- Seize the Federal Reserve and bring it under the US Treasury as the National Bank of the United States, no longer the preserve of unelected and unaccountable cliques of incompetent and predatory bankers.
- The size of the money supply, interest rates, and approved types of lending must be determined by public laws passed and debated openly, passed by the congress and signed by the president.
- Stop US government borrowing from zombie banks and foreigners -- let the US government function as its own bank.
- Reverse current policy by instituting 0% federal LENDING with preferential treatment for tangible physical production and manufacturing of goods and commodities, to include industry, agriculture, construction, mining, energy production, transportation, infrastructure building, public works, and scientific research, but not financial services and speculation.
- Issue successive tranches of $1 trillion as needed to create 30 million union-wage productive jobs and attain full employment for the first time since 1945, reversing the secular decline in the US standard of living.
- Provide 0% credit to reconvert idle auto and other plants and re-hire unemployed workers to build modern rail, mass transit, farm tractors, and aerospace equipment, including for export.
- Extend 0% federal credit for production to small businesses like auto and electronics repair shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, tailors, family farms, taxis, and trucking.
- Maintain commercial credit for retail stores.
- Create an unlimited rediscount guarantee by the National Bank for public works projects to provide cash to local banks for bills of exchange pertaining to infrastructure and public works.
- Repatriate the foreign dollar overhang by encouraging China, Japan, and other dollar holders to place orders for US-made capital goods and modern hospitals.
- Revive the US Export-Import Bank.
- Set up a 10% tariff to protect domestic re-industrialization.
- Maintain Amtrak and USPS.
3. Measures to re-industrialize, build infrastructure, develop science drivers, create jobs, and restore a high-wage economy:
- State and local governments and special government agencies modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority will be prime contractors for an ambitious program of infrastructure and public works subcontracted to the private sector.
- To deal with collapsing US infrastructure, modernize the US electrical grid and provide low-cost energy with 100 fourth-generation, pebble bed, high temperature reactors of 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts each.
- Rebuild the rail system with 50,000 miles of ultra-modern maglev Amtrak rail reaching into every state.
- Rebuild the entire interstate highway system to 21st century standards.
- Rebuild drinking water and waste water systems nationwide.
- Promote canal building and irrigation.
- For health care, build 1,000 500-bed modern hospitals to meet the minimum Hill-Burton standards of 1946.
- Train 250,000 doctors over the next decade.
- The Davis-Bacon Act will mandate union pay scales for all projects.
- For the farm sector, provide a debt freeze for the duration of the crisis, 0% federal credit for working capital and capital improvements, a ban on foreclosures, and federal price supports at 110% of parity across the board, with farm surpluses being used for a new Food for Peace program to stop world famine and genocide.
- Working with other interested nations, invest $100 billion each in: biomedical research to cure dread diseases; high energy physics (including lasers) to develop fusion power and beyond; and a multi-decade NASA program of moon-Mars manned exploration, permanent colonization, and industrial production. These science drivers will provide the technological spin-offs to modernize the entire US economy in the same way that the NASA moon shot gave us microchips and computers in the 1960s.
- These steps will expand and upgrade the national stock of capital goods and enhance the real productivity of US labor. Return the federal budget and foreign trade to surplus in 5 years or less.
4. Measures to defend and expand the social safety net:
- Restore all cuts; full funding at improved levels for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, jobless benefits, WIC, Head Start, and related programs.
- Offer Medicare for All to anyone under 65 who wants it at $100 per person per month, with reduced rates for families, students, and the unemployed.
- Pay for this with Tobin tax revenues and TARP clawback, and by ending the Iraq and Afghan wars.
- Seek to raise life expectancy by five years for starters.
- No rationing or death panels; savings can come only by finding cures.
- Quickly reach a $15 per hour living wage.
- Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act and affirm the right to organize.
- Pass card check to promote collective bargaining.
5. Measures to re-launch world trade and promote world recovery:
- Replace the IMF with a Multilateral Development Bank to finance world trade and infrastructure. The goal of the system must be to re-launch world trade through exports of high-technology capital goods, especially to sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, and the poorer parts of Latin America.
- Promote a world Marshall Plan of great projects of world infrastructure, including: a Middle East reconstruction and development program; plans for the Ganges-Bramaputra, Indus, Mekong, Amazon, and Nile-Congo river basins; bridge-tunnel combinations to span the Bering Strait, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Malacca, the Sicilian narrows, and connect Japan to the Asian mainland; second Panama canal and Kra canals; Eurasian silk road, Cape to Cairo/Dakar to Djibouti, Australian coastal, and Inter-American rail projects, and more. American businesses will receive many of these orders, which means American jobs.
This program will create 30 million jobs in less than five years. It will end the depression, rebuild the US economy, improve wages and standards of living, re-start productive investment, and attain full employment with increased levels of capital investment per job. Most orders placed under this program will go to US private sector bidders. Because of the vastly increased volume of goods put on the market, inflation will not result.
Myths Muddle the Immigration Morass
The Oregonian | Saturday, July 17, 2010
By THOMAS ROACH
Charles Baccus provided this article/link.
The immigration debate is raging in America. An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, and the proposals regarding what to do about them run the entire spectrum from "throw them all out" to "give them all Green Cards."
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama renewed his call for bipartisan support of comprehensive immigration reform, even as his administration filed a lawsuit seeking to block Arizona's controversial law, due to take effect July 29, requiring police to ask about a person's legal status if the officer suspects the person may be in the country illegally.
Few domestic issues are so polarizing. Much of the divisiveness stems from persistent myths regarding who immigrates to the U.S. and why. After practicing immigration law for 27 years, I may have some insight into the issues surrounding those in undocumented status since most of my practice has involved Mexican farmworkers. Estimates indicate that probably 60 percent of the 11 million illegal immigrants are from Mexico.
Here are the 15 most common myths about undocumented immigrants.
1. Illegal immigrants take American jobs.
Not so. For the most part, illegal immigrants work jobs that Americans simply do not want. Those positions include farmworkers, janitors, chambermaids, busboys, dishwashers, gardeners, nannies and household domestics. Those are not the careers Americans seek. The jobs Mexicans perform in the U.S. are usually minimum wage with no benefits. They do the lousy, backbreaking work Americans can but refuse to do.
2. Illegal immigrants don't pay taxes.
Not true. The majority of illegal immigrants pay the exact same taxes you and I pay. Most illegal immigrants work for employers who don't know they are illegal or possibly suspect they may be illegal but don't want to know for sure.
As a result, the typical employer of an undocumented worker deducts all the federal income and other taxes from all his employees -- legal and illegal alike.
3. Illegal immigrants don't learn English or assimilate.
Yes and no. The typical Mexican who grew up in Mexico attended school there for only three to six years. As a result, most of the older Mexicans who are here speak their native language at a basic level. As a result, it is tremendously difficult for many of those adults to learn fluent English.
The children of those older immigrants, however, go to school in the U.S., are immersed in English-speaking American culture and virtually all speak English. Those second-generation Mexicans speak English and assimilate into U.S. culture the same way the Irish, Italians, Japanese and every other group of new immigrants have.
4. Illegal immigrants don't contribute to the U.S. economy. They just come here to get on welfare.
Not even close. Illegal immigrants contribute immensely to the U.S. economy. They work hard and perform the essential jobs that are vital to keeping the U.S. economy moving forward. They pay taxes and consume goods -- from cars and gas to groceries and houses -- and buy services that, in turn, benefit those U.S. citizens selling those goods and services.
As for illegal immigrants signing up for welfare, U.S. law strictly prohibits those here illegally from obtaining welfare, food stamps or any other type of public assistance.
5. Illegal immigrants can and should apply to legally come in to work in the U.S.
Great idea, except it just happens to be impossible. The present system for employment-based immigration allows only 5,000 low-skill Green Cards per year for the entire United States. The solution to our immigration dilemma will only come from comprehensive immigration reform.
That reform must include four parts: 1) Secure the southern border, 2) allow those here to apply for earned legalization, 3) require all employers to verify the immigration status of their employees, and 4) allow some flexible number of low-skill Green Cards in the future in light of the needs of the U.S. economy.
6. Illegal immigrants commit a disproportionate percentage of crime.
Not true. Numerous reputable studies have shown that the problem of crime in the United States is not caused or even aggravated by immigrants, regardless of their legal status. When someone is arrested, the first question they are asked by the police after their name and address is, "Where were you born?" If the answer to that question is not "U.S.A." the Border Patrol is automatically contacted and the person, if undocumented, is immediately placed into the deportation process. As a result, undocumented individuals have a very high incentive to not break the law.
7. Illegal immigrants abuse the health care system.
Not so. The general rule is that those who are here in undocumented status are not entitled to any taxpayer funded health care. The exception to that rule is that those here illegally can get emergency medical treatment. A recent RAND Corp. study states as follows: "The foreign born (especially the undocumented) use disproportionately fewer medical services and contribute less to health care costs in relation to their population share."
8. Illegal immigrants can and should be ferreted out and deported.
Not likely. The estimated 11 million undocumented individuals in the U.S. is equivalent to the entire populations of Washington, Oregon and Idaho combined. Locating and deporting that many people would be impossible. Besides, millions of those adults unlawfully here have an estimated 4 million U.S. citizen children who the government would be required to find foster parents for if their parents were deported. Finally, if a magic wand was waved and all undocumented workers were gone tomorrow, it is highly unlikely that native-born Americans would do the lousy, backbreaking agricultural and other minimum-wage/no-benefits work that the undocumented do in the U.S. economy.
9. The illegal immigrant situation would be fixed if we just completed the fence along the southern border.
Not even close. For every 15-foot fence there is a 16-foot ladder or a shovel that can dig underneath it. Besides, 40 percent of those undocumented in the U.S. -- about 4.4 million people -- entered legally and overstayed their visas. The fence may help but it alone will not solve our immigration situation.
10. The proposed immigration reforms in Congress are just another "amnesty."
No. Amnesty is defined as "forgiveness without penalty." All of the immigration reform proposals require payment of a fine (maybe $1,000), learning some English, paying all back taxes (if any are owed) and going to the back of the line before obtaining Legal Permanent Residence status.
11. Americans don't support immigration reform.
Not true. When Americans are asked the question, "Do you support a legalization program that would allow those in the U.S. illegally to obtain legal status if they could meet the following requirements: a strong work history, no serious criminal convictions, no deportations, learn some English, pay all back taxes, pay a fine and go to the back of the immigration line?," numerous polls have shown that 60 to 70 percent of likely voters are in favor of such a solution to our immigration situation.
12. Denying illegal immigrants driver's licenses will help solve the immigration problem.
That's crazy. The overwhelming reason the undocumented are here is to work. Almost all workers in America need to drive to get to work. Workers, especially farm workers, typically must travel long distances to get to and from work. From the point of view of the public safety of U.S. citizens, it is much better if everyone driving on the highways has completed a driver's course and has qualified for a driver's license.
13. If employers were required to verify the Social Security number of every employee, we could solve our illegal immigration situation.
Well, yes, sort of. A mandatory Social Security verification system is a good idea but only if an earned legalization program is put in place simultaneously. Under current circumstances, requiring Social Security verification without earned legalization would create chaos in many sectors of the U.S. economy. An estimated 50 to 60 percent of farm workers are undocumented, and the percentage of undocumented workers in many other low-skill, minimum-wage, no-benefits positions -- such as dishwashers, gardeners, dairy workers, janitors, chambermaids -- is also very high.
14. A law like the new law in Arizona would solve our immigration situation
No way. The Arizona law is an overreaction and can best be compared to how we overreacted in 1942 when the U.S. government placed all West Coast Japanese in internment camps. Thirty percent of Arizona's citizens -- over 2 million people -- are Latino and legal. The Arizona law is vague and invites discrimination against them.
15. Those people who are upset about the current immigration situation are racists.
Not even close. Of course, some racism does exist in this debate. But, for the most part, the American public is frustrated and angry that our elected officials prefer to play "gotcha" politics with this difficult and controversial issue rather than addressing it in a mature, common-sense manner. Most Americans recognize that most of the people here illegally are working hard at low-end jobs, and they believe the politicians should find some rational solution to this very contentious matter.
Thomas Roach practices immigration law in Pasco, Wash.
Just For Fun: Chinese Magic Table Act (VIDEO)
Dick Quinn provided this article/link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwVy_2eOfsE
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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 (590 as of July 2010). 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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