Medicare-for-All Is a Beginning, Not the End Point

1 September 2020 — Green Social Thought

What Can We Learn from Cuba?

by Don Fitz

As a coup de grâce to the Bernie Sanders campaign Joe Biden declared that he would veto Medicare-for-All. This could drive a dedicated health care advocate to relentlessly pursue Med-4-All asa final goal. However, it is not the final goal. It should be the first step in a complete transformation of medicine which includes combining community medicine with natural medicine and health-care-for-the-world.

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Devastating cuts to Britain’s social security breach int’l human rights law

21 January 2019 — True Publica

By Koldo Casla – odUK: In accordance with international human rights law, countries must take concrete steps to the maximum of their available resources to fulfil economic and social rights progressively. This includes the right to social security and the right to an adequate standard of living.

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The ‘Bedroom Tax’: A Two-Pronged Attack By Insa Koch

1 September 2013 — New Left Project

The ‘bedroom tax’, which was implemented on the 1 April 2013, has been widely criticised as a fundamental attack on the welfare state in Britain. It exposes many people to the risk of losing their houses, threatening to break up family homes and communities. But there is also another problem with the ‘bedroom tax’ which has been largely overlooked: in addition to undermining the welfare state, it fosters feelings of resentment which may well reinforce social divisions among the most marginalised sectors of society.

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FAIR TV: Boston Bombing, Defining Terrorism, Social Security 'Bravery' By Peter Hart

20 April 2013 — FAIR Blog

bagmenThis week on FAIR TV we look at the media’s rush to misjudgment on the Boston Marathon attack. And we ask some questions about which acts of terrorism are called “terrorism”–and which have been largely forgotten. Plus PBS gives us both sides on the debate over Social Security: The right thinks Barack Obama is brave to propose cutting benefits, while the “left” says he’s…also brave. Continue reading

FAIR TV: Misremembering Thatcher, Cutting Social Security, Hillary Clinton's Hair

12 April 2013 — FAIR Blog

This week on FAIR TV: Media remember Margaret Thatcher for turning around Britain’s economy. But do the numbers tell a different story? Also: Barack Obama’s plan to cut Social Security and Medicare is inexplicably deemed a move to the “center,” and pundits are monitoring the 2016 election by paying close attention to… Hillary Clinton’s haircut?

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Black Agenda Report for 11 April 2013: Obama's 2nd Term? Or Reagan's 9th? Fear of a Ded Planet

11 April 2013 — Black Agenda Report

This week in Black Agenda Report

Is This Barack Obama’s 2nd Term? Is it Bill Clinton’s 3rd? Or Is It Ronald Reagan’s 9th?

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

They say that elections do matter, and that there are real differences between Republican and Democratic presidents. But backing up the view to 30 years, that difference looks a lot more like continuity, both at home and in America’s global empire.

Austerity Can’t Solve Crises of Capitalism By Gene Clancy

8 February, 2013 IACenter.org

Millions of workers across the United States received a rude and unpleasant jolt this January when they discovered that their take-home pay had just shrunk by 2 percent. The Social Security payroll tax cut of 2009 was restored, costing workers an average amount of $850 a year, a significant wage decrease for workers on the edge of financial ruin.

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FAIR Media Alert: CEO Evening News?

27 November 2012 — Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

CBS turns to benefit-cutting bosses for ‘fiscal cliff’ commentary

The CBS Evening News has decided the best way to inform viewers about the impending “fiscal cliff” is to let corporate CEOs affiliated with the Fix the Debt campaign recommend cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Continue reading

Brazil Takes the Lead in Trying to Stop Another Senseless War by MARK WEISBROT

2 March 2012 — The Greanville Post

Brazil’s foreign minister, Antonio Patriota, made a courageous and very important statement last week about the rising threat of a military attack on Iran.  He asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to weigh in on the legality of a threatened military strike against Iran. Continue reading

Black Agenda Report 14 September 2011: Obama Subverts Social Security / Black Marriages / Fauntroy's Libya Tale

14 September 2011 — Black Agenda ReportNews, commentary and analysis from the black left

We’re Back……
We have experienced some technical difficulties.  We are rebuilding our article content for the last five months, so these will gradually become available over the next few weeks, but unfortunately without their attached comments.  Some of the links will be changed too, and for this we must apologize. The four and a half years of BAR content published on this site prior to April 2011 will continue to be available.  We thank you for your patience, and the emails and phone calls we’ve received in the last few days.

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Video: LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (PROJECT 12, 8/12)

22 August 2011 — YouTube

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (Project 12, 8/12) Directed and Edited by Diran Lyons: http://lyonspotter.blogspot.com

LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (Project 12, 8/12) features a series of crafted statements that originated as part of detailed political commentaries written by members at democraticunderground.com during the months of July and August 2011.

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Global Research: The Debt Ceiling Crisis in America Selected Articles

1 August, 2011– Global Research

The debt ceiling crisis can be averted by enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment, which mandates the government to pay its debts already incurred, including pensions.  That means Social Security, which IS an “entitlement,” in the original sense of the word.  We’re entitled to it because we’ve paid for it with taxes.   
-Ellen Brown, Bipartisan “Russian Roulette” and America’s Federal Debt

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Robert Samuelson: We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Old

29 July 2011 — Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

When your column is headlined ‘It’s the Elderly, Stupid,’ I guess readers should know what to expect. Robert Samuelson delivers in today’s Washington Post (a column that will appear elsewhere around the country, unfortunately), in a nasty diatribe about the kind of debt debate he thinks the country should be having–one that blames older people:

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Michael Hudson: Greece a Dress Rehearsal for United States

11 July, 2011 — The Real News Network

Michael Hudson: Cuts to Social Security and Medicare and privatization at the state level mirror strategy imposed on Greece

Bio
Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971). ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East. Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.

Joe Bageant: Obama’s Fight for Reform

26 August, 2009 — Joe Bageant

Lay off the footwork and throw a punch!

Almost a year after the Great Giddy Swarming of the Obamians last November, some of the revelers are waking up with one booger of a hangover. And they are asking themselves, ‘What were we thinking when we had that tenth drink of Democratic Party Kool-Aid?’ It was a clear cut case of seduction and date rape. The spike in the drink was, of course, hope. Poor pathetic American liberals. Forever doomed to be naive freshmen at the senior beer bash.

We try to take comfort in that we won’t have to listen to or look at John McCain or Sarah Palin for four years, except in the American Legion Magazine and in Palin’s case, as a centerfold in the next issue of Middle Aged Skin. OK, we really are grateful. But could the pathetic McCain-Palin clown act possibly have created much more havoc than what we are seeing?

Case in point: I got up this morning to the headline: ‘Social Security Checks to Shrink.’ Surely this makes a slew of Generation Xers cackle with glee. But some of us are trying to stay drunk on that check until our date with a heart attack or one of those death panels the Republicans are yammering about. Since January I’ve been telling my wife we could expect Social Security to start shrinking. Ever the concerned citizen, she replies ‘Can’t you find another jag to get on? Eight months for god sake!’

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