A Data Based Argument for Universal Health Care, Part 3: Profiting from Life and Death

We argued in our previous two posts, found here, that people in the United States are less healthy than Japan, the social democracies in western Europe, Cuba, and Costa Rica despite the fact that Americans spend more than twice as much, on a per capita basis, on health care. The next piece of the puzzle [...]

Obama Transition and Agriculture/USDA Policy: Selling Out?

Posted by Tom Philpott at Grist
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/11/19/6373/9820
The transition named its “team members” looking at energy and natural resources agencies, which includes USDA. The list includes Michael R. Taylor, a man who spent his career bouncing between the employ of GMO-seed giant Monsanto and Bill Clinton’s FDA and USDA. Taylor is widely credited with ushering Monsanto’s recombinant bovine growth hormone [...]

Pro-Agribusiness Vilsack on Obama’s Short List for Sec of Agriculture

By Keith Good
FarmPolicy.comà http://www.farmpolicy.com/?p=927#more-927
 
As the executive branch transition unfolds, attention has focused on who might by the next Secretary of Agriculture.
 
Al Kamen noted in today’s Washington Post that, “The Obama transition team considers former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack a near shoo-in for secretary of agriculture, according to a source close to the transition. Vilsack, who [...]

Not Joe the Plumber but the “Other”: the deeper narrative of the McCain campaign

Watching the McCain campaign change its message frequently since September has caused me to wonder what the message really is. It is definitely not the economy, stupid.
 
But what is it? McCain and the Republicans have changed the labels of Obama as follows: from the “Inexperienced” to the “Rock Star” to the “Muslim” (Barack Hussein [...]

More Good News from Iraq: Small Arms Corporations

by Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
September 22nd, 2008
 
Clandestine gun suppliers, funded by the U.S. and Iraqi governments, have flooded Iraq with a million weapons since 2003, charges a new Amnesty International investigation. Because of faulty or non-existent government tracking systems, many of those guns have gone missing, and some have turned up in the hands of [...]

The Bail-Out of Wall Street: Signal of the End of the “Pax Americana”

Huge numbers are flying around these days. Billions and billions of dollars for this firm, for that firm, for the bail-out of Wall Street and the financial services industry. Then there is the “War on Terror” and its two fronts and the billions needed for it. The underlying connection is this: we do not have [...]

A Closer Look at the Status of Alaska’s Environment

By ROXANNE CHAN and SARAH PETRAS
Anhorage Daily News

As public health professionals, we are concerned about the high rates of birth defects in Alaska and possible links to environmental contaminants. As reported last month in the Daily News, the fact that “Alaska infants are twice as likely to be born with major birth defects as infants [...]

The Decline of the American Empire via Iraq: an interview with Howard Zinn

As published in Al-Jazeera
Q: Where is the United States heading in terms of world power and influence?
 
HZ: America has been heading - for some time, and is heading right now – toward less and less world power, less and less influence.
 
Obviously, since the war in Iraq, the rest of the world has fallen away from the United States, and [...]

Quotes of the Day

From Quotes of the Day 
http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html
 
“Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.” — Alan Corenk
 “A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.” — Bill Vaughn
 “Faith is a cop-out. If [...]