8 Articles

Wednesday, November 4, 2009
If Democrats Don't Pass Health Insurance Reform This Year, What Do We Lose? And What Do We Gain?
(1 comments) The “public option” in the president's health care bill is like the “clean” in clean coal. One harnesses the awesome power of the word clean and attaches it to coal, which is anything but. Likewise Democrats deploy the rhetorical power of the words “public” as in “everybody in, nobody out” and “option” as in choice to describe an arrangement will be neither public or for most, an available option.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Why the Public Option is Doomed To Fail, and What Can Be Done About It.
(4 comments) The generous, expansive public option on the lips of Congressional progressives, which would be open to all and compete to lower insurance prices is largely imaginary, while the president's stingy, divisive and means-tested version is all too real. But what about the third version of the public option? What is the Congressional Progressive Caucus doing to promote it, and to allow states to pursue single payer on their own?

Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Who's Blocking Health Care Reform Now? Blue Dogs? Senate Dems? House Progressives? Or the White House Itself?
(9 comments) The only obstacle to passage of the president's health care --- or health insurance legislation is the White House itself. Barack Obama knows better than any of us the difference between what he promised and what is about to be delivered.

Friday, June 5, 2009
Sonia Maria Sotomayor -- She's No Clarence Thomas, But No Thurgood Marshall Either
What is and what should be the story around the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the high court? Should we spend all our time and energy refuting the racism of Republican talking heads, and none examining her record, and how she arrived at the door of the Supreme Court? Is this a good time to explore what a just and democratic society must demand from its courts?

Wednesday, January 28, 2009
House Democratic Leader Declares National Health Care Legislation "Off The Table" This Year, Maybe Next
(34 comments) What does it mean when leading House Democrats, and apparently the White House repudiate their own campaign promises to enact a universal-coverage national health care plan only days into the new Congress and new administration, even though they have a popular president and the biggest Congressional majority in two generations?

Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Community Organizer v. Corrupt Politician: The Dec. 6 New Orleans Congressional Election
(4 comments) The Dec. 6 New Orleans congressional election isn't just a local choice between a privatizing "minority" Republican, a notoriously corrupt Democrat and a caring, competent community organizer running on the Green Party ticket. The days leading to this election are a test of whether there exists even the shadow of a national movement mature enough to hold any black Democrats the least bit accountable.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The Hidden History of US Broadcasting
(1 comments) The US broadcast media regime, in which greedy, amoral corporations enjoy completely free monopoly licenses to run their highly profitable businesses upon the scarce public property that is the broadcast spectrum is usually presented to us as the only "natural" and sensible media order. It is, we've all been told, the benign and logical outcome of democratic give and take and rigorous competition in a free marketplace.

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Holding Barack Obama Accountable
It's time for a little less respect for the high and mighty of either party, and a little more action. It's high time for activists inside and outside the Democratic party to look for creative, innovative, sometimes impolite and civilly disobedient ways to reach larger audiences as they speak truth to the powerful. Even and especially when those in power are nominal Democrats.