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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is hosting four public information meetings on the proposed study of the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and its potential impacts on drinking water...The meetings will provide public information about the proposed study scope and design. EPA will solicit public comments on the draft study plan.
The public meetings will be held on:
* July 8 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. CDT at the Hilton Fort Worth in Fort Worth, Texas * July 13 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. MDT at the Marriot Tech Center's Rocky Mountain Events Center in Denver, Colo. * July 22 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT at the Hilton Garden Inn in Canonsburg, Pa. * August 12 at the Anderson Performing Arts Center at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. for 3 sessions - 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT
James Carville has been all over the news lashing out at Obama for not being strong enough in his response to the BP oil disaster. And with the news that the oil geyser will continue spewing its stuff until August, I don't blame the man. He is, after all, from Louisiana.
But for some reason I'm not convinced he's being completely sincere. In fact, Colombia held a presidential election yesterday and (this may seem somewhat bizarre if you don't know much about him) Carville actually helped the establishment candidate who wants to encourage "foreign investment," at a time when BP is considering offshore drilling in Colombia's waters.
A political guru, frequent CNN pundit and a personality who was featured in the well known documentary The War Room, Carville moves in powerful circles in the U.S. What's less commonly known, however, is that Carville is also a virtual kingmaker in Latin America --- indeed, his professional contacts have ranged from Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo to Brazil's Fernando Enrique Cardoso to many others.
On June 8, Californians will vote on several referendums, in addition to primary races. One of those referendums, Proposition 14 (aka the Top Two Primaries Act), could hugely change how those primary races are conducted, and it would definitely not be for the better. As if to add insult to injury, but it could take down a public campaign financing measure along with it.
Prop 14 was put on the ballot through the backroom dealings of State Senator (not Lt. Gov.) Abel Moldonado, the very last holdout on the budget this year. He used the budget crisis for his own profit and one of his demands was to put this measure on the ballot. Now, his reckless action is being opposed by every political party in California and numerous electoral reform groups, groups ranging from the NAACP to the Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition.
But big business wants this to pass because of the control it could give them over elections (explanation below the fold). So your help is needed - $5, $10, $100 - whatever you can chip in to prevent California from descending further into a mess of broken government.
Although the political ramifications remain to be seen from this shocking revelation, in an interview with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, former Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) admitted to both smoking marijuana and eating brownies "laced" with it. "Those were pretty good," said Senator Gravel.
More information, including videos, below the fold.
Once again, the states are leading the way on health care reform. This past week, the Vermont House and Senate passed two versions of a bill that would essentially get a consultant to design three systems for health care in Vermont: something similar to Canadian single payer, something similar to a private system with a public option, and something similar to the recently passed federal health insurance bill.
If you were mad at all about Bush's violations of civil liberties when he was president, this will get you fuming:
In a rare legal action against a government employee accused of leaking secrets, a grand jury has indicted a former senior National Security Agency official on charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007.
The official, Thomas A. Drake, 52, was also accused of obstructing justice by shredding documents, deleting computer records and lying to investigators who were looking into the reporter's sources.
"Our national security demands that the sort of conduct alleged here - violating the government's trust by illegally retaining and disclosing classified information - be prosecuted and prosecuted vigorously," Lanny A. Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division, said in a statement.
This is not just a single instance of outrage. It is a microcosm of the Obama presidency, the political success of corporate America, and the failure of its opposition.
It really doesn't matter if you agree with Kossack nyceve's view of the health bill or not. The fact of the matter is that it's a far from perfect bill, it leaves a system intact that is the source of a ton of the problems that were used to create support for it, and it is not actually universal health care.
To get any kind of actually universal coverage we're going to need to turn to the states. Clearly those thousands of lobbyists are too powerful in DC to really challenge the powers that be in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. So the good news is that there are state-level campaigns for single payer, and they're gaining a lot of momentum in states like California and Pennsylvania.
Apparently inspired by certain Democrats voting against the health insurance reform, the Service Employees International Union - a union representing over 2 million workers - is surprisingly planning to work against Democrats this election season.
Perhaps the strongest challenge to Democrats, if not the Democratic establishment itself, will be in North Carolina. The national SEIU is working with the State Employees Association of North Carolina, its state affiliate, to form the North Carolina First Party.
A national health insurance reform bill is on the brink of passing and all is well on Capitol Hill.
But that doesn't mean too much for the rest of the country. Much of the country still wants more than a public-option-free, far-from-single-payer, band-aid-like bill to fix our broken health care system. One writer states, from the interesting vantage point of Australia, where they do have universal health care:
But Australia has something that America lacks: a universal public system that provides basic medical services for all.
Here, thanks to Medicare, you can be cared for in a public hospital without going broke regardless of your health insurance status...But the political compromise [Barack Obama's] been forced to adopt fails to address the morbidity at the heart of the system.
It's taking the disease and trying to turn it into the cure.
The solution, the real health care reform that we've been asking for since Teddy Roosevelt's time, lies with the state single payer movement. And, at least here in Pennsylvania, we're moving full speed ahead. All that this bill means for us is that we'd better move fast if we want real health care reform any time soon.
Everyone seems to know that the tea party "movement" had a rally on the steps of the capitol yesterday. They got in the face of a few Congressmen and now every Beltway media outlet from the Washington Post to Meet the Press is talking about it. But there was another protest in town yesterday. Thousands of people showed up in front of the White House to tell Obama (and Congress) to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to treat Palestinians fairly, and to generally end the US military empire.
MSNBC estimates that somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 tea party people showed up at the capitol building. Yet the low end of the estimates for the number of people who showed up at the peace demonstration (including myself) is about 2,500, and the high end is about 10,000. Where's our moment on Meet the Press? Where's our article in the New York Times?
This is going to be an action packed weekend in DC and around the nation. On Friday, there will be protests of Yoo. On Saturday, there will be a massive antiwar demonstration (there will also be demonstrations in Philly, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and South Dakota, among other places). On Sunday, there will be a large march for immigration reform. And there will be other related events around the country, along with the small protests and events that happen all the time.
So join me below the fold to see how you can effect change this weekend.
In a recent diary by Cassiodorus, one point of his in particular struck me:
Thus the comparison between the Great Depression and the current Great Recession falls flat, because the popular upheavals of the 1930s are only in evidence today among the least helpful segments of the population. This of course is a major reason why we can expect no FDR-like President to save us from the...economic collapse...
...During the 1930s...intellectual figures such as John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Kenneth Burke, and Richard Wright were actual socialists and not just mere liberals offering occasional plugs for John Kerry.
Another prominent socialist, albeit a bit later than the Depression, was Albert Einstein. He was an all around brilliant man, someone whom I admire greatly. And he wisely said this, although today it would probably be considered way too radical for anyone respectable to utter:
In a lengthy interview on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, Congressman Dennis Kucinich explained why he would not vote for the present health care bill and defended his position against attacks from people on the left like Markos Moulitsas. He also spoke about the subjects of Afghanistan, campaign finance, and the passing of activist Granny D.
I mean, I have a responsibility to take a stand here on behalf of those who want a public option. There's about thirty-four members of the Senate, at least, who have signed on to saying they support a public option. If I were to just concede right now and say, "Well, you know, whatever you want. All this pressure's building. Just forget about it," actually weakens every last-minute bit of negotiations that would try to improve the bill. So I think that it's really critical to take this stand, because without it, there's no real control over premiums. Without it, we have nothing in the bill except the privatization of our healthcare system.
Today in America there is a big and under-reported issue. There are actually people out there, some of them unbelievably in Congress, crazy enough to challenge that great American institution, the military industrial complex. Who doesn't love Halliburton? Or Dick Cheney? Or the Iraq War? Or useless projects that do nothing more than enrich and empower an already powerful and rich elite?
I'll tell you who. 65 good for nothin' Congresspeople. They're the ones who today voted against a symbolic resolution to get our troops out of Afghanistan.
Now, cutting the snark, so many of the other 356 don't even have the gall to vote against a symbolic resolution to end a war! I understand that some people honestly support it, but when less than half of the country supports the war in Afghanistan, it's a bad sign that all of these Congresspeople still do:
In a post on Salon today, Glenn Greenwald reveals to readers the essential tactic of the Democratic Party leadership. It's not trying to get Republican support, it's not filibuster reform, it's not registering people to vote. It's much more manipulative than that.
It is an explanation for the "lack of spine" that Democrats are often said to have - which, we can now see, is merely a convenient illusion for prominent Democrats. It is a scapegoat that they can use so that progressives will continue voting for them even though we get nothing that we ask for, and instead have to take whatever crumbs are given to us.
So what is it?
This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it.
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