By Padmini Arhant
In my earlier post, World Peace – Part 1, I mentioned about the military might prevalent in the economic and political aspects governing the domestic and the international societies. Although, it’s not a revelation that the military industrial complex (MIC) authority spreads beyond the realm of providing national security, it’s imperative to study the extent of the institutional power.
Besides the limited constitutional role by the military to defend the nation upon real and potential attack, the unconstitutional engagements are expansive and encroaching on the general society.
Often, it’s the "potential" more than the ‘real’ threats or attacks that are the premise for the prolonged military operation proved extremely lucrative in the prolific conventional and nuclear arms race.
Remaining facts detailed @http://www.padminiarhant.com
Thank you.
Padmini Arhant
The White House and the Congress members are back at work after a refreshing break from the ‘Thanksgiving’ holiday that allows the average and the privileged citizens to celebrate the family moments together. Not all are able to participate in the long held tradition due to the ceaseless demands of the high commanders, the real authority in the system disguised as democracy.
Military Industrial Complex (MIC) troops expansion policy is having a nuclear impact on the nucleus of the Army, the brave men and women in harm’s way as evidenced in the following reports:
From 1st Sgt. Gonzalo Lassally said of soldiers from Able Troop, 3-71 Cavalry Squadron:
“They become your family and being able to eat together like this, to break bread together is a highlight.”
“We’re thankful for all still being here. We’ve been lucky,
From Padmini Arhant: For the kind attention of,
President Barack Obama, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Diane Feinstein and the united Republican members of Congress endorsing the enormous troop buildup,
Would you, perhaps consider either matching or exceeding the incredible sacrifice by the honorable Sgt. Gonzalo Lassally in the following manner?
As per the above report, “1st Sgt. Gonzalo Lassally, a father of three from Deltona, Fla., has spent four ‘Thanksgivings, three Christmases and “quite a few birthdays” away from home.”
More realities presented @http://www.padminiarhant.com
A special day to thank the people for their love, compassion and actions that positively impact the recipient’s life. In this respect, the nation is thankful to the brave men and women in harm’s way for their sacrifices in many different ways, most importantly their precious life. Within the community, there are many benevolent individuals dedicating their time and resources for others’ welfare. They deserve acknowledgment by the members. Then the family unit, where the relationship is strengthened with genuine care, affection and understanding for each other unconditionally recognized in a subtle or profound manner.
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Why should launching wars and cutting taxes for the rich require only 50 votes while saving lives requires 60?Join me in calling for an end to this unfair system. Tell Majority Leader Reid to modify the rules of the Senate to require only 55 votes to invoke cloture instead of 60. Fill out the form below to sign the petition today!
The problem is the United States Congress is paid too much and is very explicitly a highest bidder whorehouse.
Faced in a time of wars and uncertainty with skyrocketing oil prices breaking businesses, and personal and state budgets as the cost of everything that had to be heated, cooled or moved went skyward would a congress made up of individuals making seventy-four thousand dollars a year instead of $174,000 have responded with ideological indulgence or swift and brutal legislative vengeance?
Confronted with the realization war contractors were stealing billions of tax dollars in cost-plus contracts and other schemes would a congress that made $50,000 a year, minus various taxes, have sighed at the regrettable cost of doing business or went personally to the pentagon each holding a calculator in one hand and a baseball bat in the other?
The American public has been bamboozled into insulating congress from the American experience. To the aristocrat senator and representative strutting around Washington D.C. the economy is a theoretical construct.
Selling legislation is now very straightforward. Rare is the politician who does send out an email saying I have to fight for your rights, now send me money. Why debate at all? Just leave a few versions of legislation on line and whichever group can raise enough money to buy their relief wins. Government by ebay.
Equating political donations with free speech has institutionalized the right of the wealthy to determine public policy in the United States. And after a career living on the public dole kickbacks of “consulting” or lobbying jobs and painless positions on Board of corporations politicians have proven useful to is common place.
And so we come to the latest vote in the tragic comedy that healthcare reform has become, another Saturday vote. This one just to allow the Senate to continue the never-ending debate about voting on the eventual bill. Not kidding. And the elephant in the room is still the bribes paid to conservative politicians to block anything that will reduce the obscene profits of private insurers and drug pushers; the endless advertised threats to raise prices if the public, represented by congress, dares to challenge them. Literal threats of course because if you are priced out of the care you need you will suffer or die.
What the new law should do is break the power of private insurers as they would any dangerous racket, deny drug companies of any “ever-greening” patent rights, outlaw outrages like dumping people when they get sick and provide real public health insurance that is available on day one to any American who wants it to create real competition, not provide a fig leaf for cherry-picking and higher prices. You have to call congress again Monday; it’s your two Senators this time, if that is what you want.
And ask them to raise the question of election finance reform soon including political advertising so congress can start running the country rather than servicing a few wealthy patrons and Americans no longer have to pay for representation by the hour.
The Senate health care bill is currently under scrutiny requiring 60 procedural votes to qualify for the Senate voting process. At present, the democrats have 58 votes in favor with two independents unclear and the remaining Republican votes unanimously opposed to the bill. I’ve confidence in the (I) U.S. Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders with his support to alleviate the suffering of millions in Vermont and across the nation.
While the Democrats laying out the facts and figures, the Republican lawmakers are meticulously scanning for flaws in their defense to block the anxiously awaited health care legislation.
Senate version of the health care bill proposes $848 billion allowing coverage for 31 million uninsured Americans with a CBO (Congressional Budget Office) assessment confirming an impressive $130 billion cost savings otherwise a massive federal deficit reduction over a decade.
Remaining article continued @http://www,padminiarhant.com
Dear Mr. Vice President and Rep. Van Hollen,
Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your request. However, the required information sent on priority basis should be available prior to the deadline.
Enclosed please find the contribution and the survey completed with specific targets vital for immediate economic recovery and national progress.
I appreciate your kind remarks and the invitation to participate in the legislative affairs. I pledge my support to defend the policies benefiting the people of the United States of America as well as the global citizens.
Furthermore, I consider it’s really important for the incumbent and the prospective legislators to make a firm commitment to serve the people electing them to office and not become the proxies for the special interests. I reiterate the fact that despite millions of dollars in investments towards any political campaigns, the ultimate power lies with the electorate in a democracy.
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Health Care Reform - A priority for the victims of the status quo.
Please be sure to watch the videos.
Full Content available @http://www.padminiarhant.com
Are you committed to supporting the President's plan for healthcare reform?
President Obama has called for Congress to deliver on comprehensive healthcare reform that provides security and stability for the insured, help for the uninsured, and reins in the costs of healthcare for families, businesses, and government.
This requires a mutual commitment - all of us must pull together in order to accomplish this goal.
The status quo is unsustainable and morally unacceptable. We spend 16% of our gross domestic product on healthcare in this country - $2.4 trillion per year - and insurance premiums have more than doubled since 1998. Wages have remained flat while healthcare costs have increased, leaving families with less money in their paychecks. 45,000 Americans die each year because they don't have access to insurance, and a million more American families go bankrupt each year because of medical bills.
These issues don't discriminate. Rich and poor, labor and management, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, male, female, straight, gay - all of us are impacted by the drag of healthcare costs on our economy.
Will you join the President in supporting reform? Please tell your Senators and Representatives to pass reform this fall. We can't wait another day.
Post a comment to show your support, and share your ideas.
Leading Political, Legal Blogger Glenn Greenwald on Afghanistan, State Secrets, Healthcare and the Media
GLENN GREENWALD: ....I think the real question, though, is, the White House claims in public now that the President favors a public option. There have been lots of reports that, in private, they’ve been working against a public option, urging the senators not to include it in the package, that their deals with the healthcare industry is that there would be no public option. So, now one can only speculate about what the reality is, but I think now the question is, you know, they’ve proven in the past that they’re willing to apply heavy pressure tactics on members of Congress. They applied all kinds of threats against House progressives who didn’t want to vote for the war supplemental bill to force them to do so and support the President.AMY GOODMAN: How?GLENN GREENWALD: Well, according to Lynn Woolsey, who is the chair of the House Progressive Caucus, Rahm Emanuel and other White House political officials were calling House freshmen and saying, “If you don’t vote for the war supplemental bill,” that included the IMF money that the President had promised and the war in Afghanistan and Iraq funding, “you will never hear from us again,” meaning you will have to run for reelection without any support from the President or the Democratic Party infrastructure, which is an enormous threat to make for any member of Congress.So, you know, and the Republicans found a way, in 2004, when Arlen Specter had threatened, as Senate Judiciary Committee chair, to block the President’s Supreme Court nominees, if they thought—if he thought they were going to overturn Roe v. Wade, to humiliate him by saying, “You will not have this chairmanship unless you vow in advance to allow these nominations to go forward.” So parties can apply all sorts of pressure on members of Congress who are being recalcitrant, if they’re actually serious about doing so.And so, now the question is, will they apply that kind of pressure to Joe Lieberman and prove that they—that this talk about the President favoring a public option isn’t just lip service to placate the progressive base? Or will they use the senatorial courtesy to say, well, look, there’s nothing we can do about Joe Lieberman, just like they did during the Bush years when it came time to oppose the war in Iraq and other issues?JUAN GONZALEZ: And speaking of that lip service to placate the progressive base, you’ve also shown a light on the debate among the progressive publications over this issue of how serious the Obama administration is about the public option, in the battles between Daily Kos, on the one hand, and the Huffington Post and The Nation. Could you talk about how this is affecting the progressive media?GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I think one of the most significant issues of the Obama administration has been what role progressives—the progressive infrastructure has played in applying pressure on the Obama administration. One of the very first things that the Obama administration did—and Rahm Emanuel has specialized in trying to control and silence the left; I mean, that’s how he built his power base—in the House of Representatives was, they created these weekly meetings called Unity ’09 and Common Purpose, where members of all of the allegedly progressive groups devoted to progressive causes meet every week on Tuesday, often with members of the White House communications team, including oftentimes Rahm Emanuel, and they coordinate their messaging. So, instead of being devoted to, for example, pressuring the administration on issues relating to labor or to choice or to gay issues or to war, instead they’re coordinating their messaging to insure that their real allegiance is to serve the interest and the agenda of the Obama administration. And it’s really enabled the Obama administration to annex large aspects of the progressive infrastructure and to remove what ought to be an important pressure point.I think they’ve done the same with lots of progressive pundits, who aren’t necessarily attending these meetings, but who have voluntarily ceded their role in the progressive world and in progressive opinion making and activism. And you see this conflict more and more, I think. For example, the Huffington Post had an article critical of the Obama administration, reporting, for example, that they were working behind the scenes, in contrast to what Obama was saying, to sabotage the public option. And you saw in various places, on Daily Kos and others, suddenly declarations that the Huffington Post was suspect, and they were right wing, and they were the enemy, because anyone who reflects negatively on Obama has to be discredited. And I think you see that conflict, and I hope it will continue to grow, because it’s healthier than having progressives devote themselves to cheerleading for the President.AMY GOODMAN: But explain why they’re against the public option, the Obama administration. The Obama administration, who—well, Obama was for single payer for years, and we have all the video that we keep playing of him endorsing it.GLENN GREENWALD: Well, one of the interesting—most interesting aspects of what has happened here—and I think it illustrates the point I was just making—is, when Obama was running for president, he not only vowed, in general, to have the most transparent administration ever, talked about how secrecy was the toxin of Washington, but specifically with regard to the healthcare debate, he said the problem has always been in the past, that all the stakeholders get in the meetings, and they get accommodated, and nobody knows what’s actually happening, because it’s all done in secret. And he vowed that healthcare negotiations that he’s involved in, not only wouldn’t they be conducted in secret, they would be put on C-SPAN. Instead, as it turned out, the White House, early on in this process, beginning in March and April, were meeting with pharmaceutical and healthcare industry representatives and reaching secret deals with them to insure that they would not sabotage the healthcare plan.And they made two deals, one with the pharmaceutical industry, not to negotiate for bulk prices, to pay full prices, even though they’re going to be the largest purchaser of pharmaceutical products; and one with the healthcare industry, not to have a public option to compete with what it was that they would be able to charge. So, essentially, they would force and mandate healthy, young Americans to buy the products of the insurance company without providing a public option to keep costs low. It was a huge gift to the healthcare industry. And I think one reason was they were afraid that the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry would advertise against the program. But I think the more important concern is, right now, most healthcare money and pharmaceutical money goes to the Democrats—it went to the Obama campaign, it went to help Democrats take over control of the Congress—and they want that to continue. They don’t want that money to go to Republican coffers to take over the Congress in 2010. And so, one of their principal priorities was to make sure that whatever happened was not a threat to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. And that’s why, I think, that early on they bargained the public option away.JUAN GONZALEZ: And yet, there was no big furor among—in the progressive circles, as there was, for instance, when Dick Cheney had all his private meetings to develop energy policy at the beginning of the Bush administration, over the failure of Obama to come through with his promise of a more open and public process on healthcare reform.GLENN GREENWALD: Right. And, in fact, one of the principal controversies of the Bush-Cheney administration prior to 9/11, as you just alluded to, was the fact that they refused to disclose the energy executives with whom they were meeting to formulate energy policy. And they invoked all kinds of claims about how White House visitor logs were not part of presidential records. They were outside of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, and therefore not disclosable or obtainable. And that created a huge furor among progressives that this was a horribly secret administration.And yet, when it came time to obtain those lists from the Obama White House of the healthcare executives with whom they were meeting, they originally invoked that same theory and said, “We’re not going to disclose it.” And eventually they disclosed part of it. But I think you’re right. This is a case where there was a specific promise to have these healthcare negotiations out in the open; there was an exact opposite of that occurring, and very little furor.
On October 20th over 340,000 Americans called their member of Congress in support of President Obama's plan for health insurance reform. This type of grassroots action is unprecedented. It's a testament to the tremendous amount of support that reform has across the country. As Congress inches closer to voting on reform we must continue to reach out to Senators Snowe and Collins to remind them that we support the president's call for reform. You can contact Sen. Snowe today, toll-free, by dialing 1-800-432-1599. Sen. Collins can be reached at (202) 224-2523. You may also write a personal letter in support of reform. Senator Snowe's mailing address is: 154 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510. Senator Collins' address is: 413 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510. You can also follow the link below to contact our members of Congress.http://my.barackobama.com/timetodeliver
Click For Obama is asking all Obama supporters to help us raise funds by clicking on our website sponsors. Just click, visit the site, and click out. We can raise $100,000 dollars for the month of November 09.Times are tough and money is tight, but if you Click For Obama we can generate funds without having to pay one penny. Click here then click around the sites links. Tell your friends and make this link viral.Thank you,
Click For Obama Team
Imagine if you will a nightmarish situation in which you or a loved one get ill; and even though you are covered by an employer-based health insurance plan, a treatment that will prevent a lifetime disability or even save your life is withheld by the plan, because they call the treatment "experimental" or "medically unnecessary" -- even though your doctors say otherwise!
Now compound the terror that scenario dredges up, from within your most deep-seated instincts of self-preservation, with the prospect of your not being able to sue the health plan for making such a devastating decision. In other words, there would be no downside to the plan for their denial of even life-saving care (other than the public relations mess stirred up by all-too-infrequent articles like this); in fact, there would, of course, be a great financial incentive to simply deny your care, your life be damned.
The fact is, health insurance companies administering employer-based health plans -- the very private insurance plans covering most Americans, even under the health reform bills being considered by Congress -- have that "license to kill": It is contained in Section 514 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, ERISA -- little known to most Americans but very profitably exploited by health insurance companies, costing many people their life savings or even their lives (and shifting the costs of caring for those injured and abandoned by their plans onto state Medicaid rolls).
The Congress is engaged in the Medicare payments to doctors as part of the broader aspect of the health care legislation. Despite the opposition’s insinuations against the government run successful Medicare program, it’s imperative for the lawmakers to sustain the viability of the Medicare and the Medicaid by honoring the providers’ legitimate request for payments increase that would substantially reduce the health care costs currently incurred by the taxpayers through payments to private insurers.
As stated earlier, the conservative and the moderate Democrats’ unwillingness to support the public option is contributing to the stalemate in the health care legislation. Even though, the recent Washington Post/ABC Poll confirmed that an impressive 57 percent of the American population is overwhelmingly in favor of the ‘public option’ plan, some Democratic legislators’ reluctance to join the majority on this issue is disappointing and deserve a valid explanation for their position that is detrimental to the national interest.
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It's not just interns, people. Muslims like myself plan to infiltrate every branch of the government through lawful means. We wish to be--brace yourselves--politically active. Rep. Paul Broun (GA) stated the following regarding CAIR (Council on Islamic-American Relations): "If an organization that is connected to or supports terrorists is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related congressional offices, I think this needs to be made known."
Funny that no one really cares that Muslims are denigrated in this manner. Should Muslims just accept the fact they are not only illegally wiretapped, but also subject to hate speech in Congress?
Let me speak on behalf of the 99.9% of all Muslims world-wide, when I say
From: PADMINI ARHANT WWW.PADMINIARHANT.COM
Hon. President Bill Clinton. New York
Dear Mr. President,
Thank you for your letter. It’s truly an honor to receive your request.
I share your thoughts and concerns about the 2010 elections outcome. Needless to say, that you have experience with the opposition majority during your presidency and the challenges you faced in the legislative process with the “Government Shut Down” led by the former speaker Newt Gingrich and the republican allies. Although, I agree that the Senators competing for their first term or re-election require the grassroots/base support, the general public perception from the health care debate is - the conservative and the moderate democrats forget their promise to the electorate that initially support them to get where they are now.
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The decision by the Maine Senator, Olympia Snowe to get on board in the health care reform is a welcome change and provides hope for the bipartisanship even with a singular vote now.
It would have been a cause for celebration if the bill did not marginalize the purpose of this health care reform i.e. the public option that is no longer an option but a necessity for millions of people and small businesses worst hit in the national crisis.
The misplaced objective of this bill from the start has been to impress the ‘so-called’ fiscal conservatives squandering the national wealth on warfare resulting in massive casualties while being miserly on matter related to saving life.
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In order to assist other progressive activists in moving health care reform -- including a public option -- forward, I have prepared a report entitled Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise: The Public Option as the Best Insurance of Health Care Coverage and Cost Control. As indicated by its Executive Summary (below), this report includes comprehensive (searchable) content, commentary, and hyperlinked references. You may download it in Microsoft Word format here ...
http://douglasdrenkow.com/docs/healthy.doc
If you have trouble downloading the file, I can e-mail it to you as an attachment (less than 1 MB in size).
I hope that by virtue of its thorough and comprehensive examination of the medical, economic, and political dimensions of our health care problems and proposed solutions, the information in this report will lead any reasonable person to conclude that of all the plans being considered by Congress with significant public support as well as any realistic chance of being passed, the public option is the best means of insuring health care coverage and cost control.
