Healthcare Coalition Demands Investigation into Healthcare Monopoly

From the UFCW:

A report today released by Health Care for America Now reveals shocking levels of concentration in the private health insurance market in most states, spurring the grassroots health care coalition to issue a request to the Justice Department to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the state of the private health insurance market.

According to the report, more than 94 percent of all insurance markets in the United States are “highly concentrated,” a term defined by the U.S. Justice Department as a market in which one company holds more than a 42 percent share.

Where one or two companies dominate, competition suffers. And in this case, the American people suffer, too.

Read the whole story here...

Music Review: Bob Dylan and Steve Earle

Bob Dylan, "Together Through Life"
Columbia Records

Steve Earl, "Townes"
New West Records

by Eric Green

Two music giants released record albums around May Day this month. While their ages are quite disparate by about 20 years or so; they are beginning to share the same audiences. True, Dylan's audiences are far broader; but a portion of his appeal is similar to Earle's. And, of course while Earle is a giant, Dylan's giant size is far larger.

Steve Earle has on more than one occasion voice his admiration for Dylan's writing and poetic works. Now, they are sharing living conditions: Steve Earle moved from Nashville, Tennessee to the Village in NYC a few years ago; and, is building as extension on his newly acquired Woodstock, NY home, with his wife, singer/songwriter, Allison Moorer. The Village and Woodstock that is total Dylan folkloric.

But, in "Townes" Earle wanted to make it clear, that his true mentor and leader in his music world was and remains Townes Van Zandt the historic and legendary song writer and performer.

For Earle's 13th studio CD, he chose just 15 of Van Zandts' songs that Earle felt were both important and not overly played and recorded. Of course, sticking to his unpredictability, Earle starts off his CD with one of Van Zandt's better-known songs, "Pacho and Lefty." While, very popular, most people are not aware that he wrote it. The truth is that not enough people know Townes Van Zandt and his body of work. Willy Nelson made the song very popular. Earle chose not to include one of Van Zandt's greatest working class songs: "Tecumseh Valley." Too bad. I guess that fell under the heading of being recorded by many others.

In the course of his promotional tour and the concommittant interviews, Earle has added to the CD many biographical points to Van Zandt's life. He makes it clear that he is not just telling his mentor's good side. He starts off all interviews by being up front about his afflictions lead by drug and alcohol abuse. It is clear that Earle wanted Van Zandt to be around far longer than he lasted, lasted in the sense of being able to produce quality music.

Earle's CD songs include many blues songs of Van Zandt. He said that Van Zandt was a blues singer and that he spent a lot of time with Lightening Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb. Most people who know Van Zandt would agree, but you won't find him in the Blues section of music store categories.

The release of the CD was preceded by a major promotion spread in the NY Times Entertainment Section. Steve Earle has broken through.

In his interview with WFUV, a highly regarded New York City music radio station, he sang a few of the CD's songs, but then, in keeping with Earle's political activism, changed the tone of the interview. He said that he was extremely happy that Obama won the election. He said he voted for him and has never regretted at all. He said that he has patience with the Administration's position on Iraq and Afghanistan. But, he did say that he has tell him where he stands. He won't be happy until every soldier was back home in the U.S. He then sang his great anti-war song, "Rich Man's War."

Earle described the start of his music career being part of a Van Zandt's Texas "cult" of friends. They included Guy Clark and Lucinda Williams.

It is sort of ironic that Earle finally decided to produce an album of Van Zandt's songs as he moved into his 54th birthday, Van Zandt died at the age of 53, in 1998. Van Zandt battled severe depression all of his life.

Dylan

"Together Through Life" is Bob Dylan's 33rd studio album. And, in keeping with his unpredictability, this one defies easy description. Suffice to say, it is an album of human relations with a lot of rhythmic music. The song, "I Fell a Change Comin On" has been interpreted as a boost the recent national election. But, given Dylan's refusal to describe his music, who knows?

For example, a casual listener might simply say that Dylan was looking for a low key, romantic kind of CD. But, then you come across "My Wife's Home Town." This was written, as the CD says by Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter with the lyrics by Dylan and the legend Willie Dixon. He then gives, "Special thanks to the estate of Willie Dixon and the Blues Heaven Foundation." There is more to this CD then meets the eye.

Dylan fans will like this album.

Steve Earle's album might become a legend itself. It has already made Billboard's top 20. Dylan's CDs always sell well.

A concert tour between Earle and Dylan would be real nice.

Book Review: Winter in Madrid

Book Review: Winter in Spain
A Novel
C.J. Sansom
Penguin 2009

One Dimensional Look At Post Civil War Madrid

by Eric Green

C.J. Sansom's, Winter in Madrid, is one war-based novel you can probably live without. Reading through its over 500 pages of novel driven history was easy and mostly enjoyable. Riveting it isn't. It has none of the toughness, tensions and insights that Sebastian Faulks' novels have. One reviewer of the Sansom book compared his novel to Faulks. The only comparison would be that both are history novels to some extent based on facts. [The Faulks trilogy: Birdsong; Woman at the Lion D'Or; and Charlotte Gray are in a higher league.]

It seemed that Sansom had an ulterior motive in writing this book. What was it? To me, it was to paint the Spanish Civil War's International Brigade and the Spanish Republican Government as woeful and doomed to failure. His selective use of history, especially the right-wing British government's treatment of Spain and Germany, was a good thing, but it did make up for its other deficiencies. Those Tories are always easy targets and Sansom makes the most of them. I can see Sansom writing a novel focusing on the Tories and pro-war Laborites that would be quite good.

The spy rings and their ultimate failures were quite predictable. Which characters make it through and those who don't is also woefully predictable.

There is some nice character development. And, as a novelist Sansom does get the reader involved in their lives. Sansom is not an amateur. But, it says a lot about the writer that of the three main characters left standing at the end; one is least committed to anything progressive political, becomes a teacher; another just as lost as before; and, the third is as greedy and cynical as he was in the book itself.

The two other main characters that stood for progressive politics were killed and their causes were never seen as worthwhile.

The novel, on the political side, falls conveniently in line with the current effort in revisionist history to equate Josef Stalin with Adolph Hitler. This novel maintains that political theme through its 500 plus pages. No wonder it is popular book in some circles.

The author's notes at the end bolster the lack of real in depth interest and honest analysis of the Spanish Civil War, International Brigades and its aftermath. Original history has Communist Party members, in England and Spain, as true heroes and very grounded in the reality of stopping the Nazi/Fascist military machine. Sansom tosses that aside with casual aplomb.

Too bad. I am sure that Sansom's other novels and creative efforts are quite good. He should stay away from politics which involve the left.

Obama and the Supreme Court

by Norman Markowitz

Justice David Souter is retiring from the Supreme Court and President Obama will soon be choosing a replacement. There is extensive speculation in the media over who his choice will be and reports that the Republican Right is"gearing up" to fight whoever the nominee will be.

The second point can be dispensed with quickly. The Republican right doesn't have the votes in the Senate to block any Obama appointee to the court barring some scandals that would discredit that nominee.

As for the first point, what is most important is that President Obama choose a militant progressive in the tradition of Louis Brandeis, Hugo Black, William O Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall, someone with the intelligence and strength to actively fight against the Supreme Court's present right-wing majority, which will not in itself be changed, since Justice Souter, considered a conservative Republican when George Bush I nominated him to the court, angered the Republican Right by voting with non right-wing Justices on many important issues over the years, including the crucial December 2000 5-4 vote in which five center-right Republicans on the court ended the Florida recount and in effect appointed George W. Bush president of the United States.

It took Franklin Roosevelt five years to get a Supreme Court appointment and the Supreme Court's vetoes of major New Deal legislation and expected veto of social security, unemployment insurance, and the National Labor Relations Act led to the most momentous court reorganization struggle in U.S. history in 1937, a struggle that FDR lost in terms of expanding the number of Justices but eventually won in terms of pressuring centrist conservatives to join progressives in not vetoing New Deal legislation and beginning, in 1938 the appointment of progressives who over time produced the post WWII Supreme Courts which expanded Civil Rights and Civil Liberties protections while sustaining progressive labor and social welfare legislation.

Richard Nixon as President began the assault on a "liberalized judiciary" forty years ago and Ronald Reagan and George Bush I greatly expanded that assault in order to produce our present business friendly people hostile federal judiciary. In his eight years in the White House, Bill Clinton moderated but did not change that judicial balance of forces. Clinton's appointments were usually business friendly centrists or what I and others call weak "process liberals," those much more interested in formal processes than in justice, seeing themselves as "non-ideological" professionals as against Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and the very slick right-wing Chief Justice, Roberts, for whom right-wing ideology has usually been front and center in their decisions and have determined the character of their decisions. At times they were amenable to compromise, especially once Justice Sandra Day O'Connor served as a swing vote on the court, but since her retirement they have rarely compromised.It is interesting to note that most of the decisions seriously challenging the Republican Right in recent years have come from the oldest appointee to the court, John Paul Stevens, an Illinois Republican whom Gerald Ford appointed over thirty years ago. Breyer, very much of a "non ideological" centrist, and Ginsberg, more of a traditional liberal but not a strong one, have certainly not staked out a serious principled opposition to the Roberts court rightwing majority, although they, along with Souter and Stevens, have usually voted against it.

President Obama should follow in the footsteps of Franklin Roosevelt, not Bill Clinton, in this first Supreme Court appointment. He should look for a candidate who will reflect his commitment to "change we can believe in" just as Franklin Roosevelt looked in early appointments to Hugo Black, William O Douglas, Felix Frankfurter and others whom he knew would support New Deal regulatory and social legislation. Unfortunately, Stevens is in all probability the next Justice to retire and that will not change the present 5-4 balance of forces. But Scalia has been on the court for a generation and Thomas for nearly two decades. Obama will, assuming that he wins a second term, be in the position to craft a progressive Supreme Court majority and change by his appointments the federal judiciary as Franklin Roosevelt did. Now is the time for him to begin and for us to call upon him to begin and to support him in that endeavor.

The Great New York City Bomb Plot

Thomas Riggins

Thank God for the FBI and the NYPD. If an FBI informant had not met up with four mopes (two of them mentally challenged-- low IQ and the other mentally ill--) we may never have been spared from their plot to get anti-aircraft missiles and high explosive bombs. I guess they would have gotten them at a gun show. Good work in the War Against Terrorism. Here are some details from the media.

"The plot BEGAN last June when the [FBI] informant met Cromitie [one of the mopes] at a mosque in Newburgh, according to the [police] complaint."--AP

""NO ONE was at risk," said Kelly, the police commissioner, describing the explosive devices as duds CREATED [by the authorities] to dupe the suspects." CNN

"Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said if there can be any good news out of this case it's that "the group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early and NOT connected to any outside group." [except the FBI of course]--AP

"Obama’s Challenge:
The alleged terrorist plot is the MOST SERIOUS in the U.S. since President Barack Obama took office in January. Obama’s PLAN to CLOSE the Guantanamo Bay military prison has raised CRITICISM about what will happen to as many as 240 suspected terrorists, who may have to be relocated to prisons in the U.S." Bloomberg News

BUT:

"Authorities have “NO evidence whatsoever” that the suspects were part of a wider plot, [Mayor Bloomberg] said." Bloomberg News

"Some have criticized informants' roles in such cases, saying they egged on and ensnared suspects who weren't dangerous".--AP-- WHAT!!! The FBI and NYPD set people up!! Perish the thought!

Once more Lamarck (and what about Lysenko?)

Epigenetics: 100 Reasons To Change The Way We Think About Genetics

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — For years, genes have been considered the one and only way biological traits could be passed down through generations of organisms.

Not anymore.

Increasingly, biologists are finding that non-genetic variation acquired during the life of an organism can sometimes be passed on to offspring—a phenomenon known as epigenetic inheritance. An article forthcoming in the July issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology lists over 100 well-documented cases of epigenetic inheritance between generations of organisms, and suggests that non-DNA inheritance happens much more often than scientists previously thought.

Biologists have suspected for years that some kind of epigenetic inheritance occurs at the cellular level. The different kinds of cells in our bodies provide an example. Skin cells and brain cells have different forms and functions, despite having exactly the same DNA. There must be mechanisms—other than DNA—that make sure skin cells stay skin cells when they divide.

Only recently, however, have researchers begun to find molecular evidence of non-DNA inheritance between organisms as well as between cells. The main question now is: How often does it happen?

"The analysis of these data shows that epigenetic inheritance is ubiquitous …," write Eva Jablonka and Gal Raz, both of Tel-Aviv University in Israel. Their article outlines inherited epigenetic variation in bacteria, protists, fungi, plants, and animals.

These findings "represent the tip of a very large iceberg," the authors say.

For example, Jablonka and Raz cite a study finding that when fruit flies are exposed to certain chemicals, at least 13 generations of their descendants are born with bristly outgrowths on their eyes. Another study found that exposing a pregnant rat to a chemical that alters reproductive hormones leads to generations of sick offspring. Yet another study shows higher rates of heart disease and diabetes in the children and grandchildren of people who were malnourished in adolescence.

In these cases, as well as the rest of the cases Jablonka and Raz cite, the source of the variation in subsequent generations was not DNA. Rather, the new traits were carried on through epigenetic means.

There are four known mechanisms for epigenetic inheritance. According to Jablonka and Raz, the best understood of these is "DNA methylation." Methyls, small chemical groups within cells, latch on to certain areas along the DNA strand. The methyls serve as a kind of switch that renders genes active or inactive.

By turning genes on and off, methyls can have a profound impact on the form and function of cells and organisms, without changing the underlying DNA. If the normal pattern of methyls is altered—by a chemical agent, for example—that new pattern can be passed to future generations.

The result, as in the case of the pregnant rats, can be dramatic and stick around for generations, despite the fact that underlying DNA remains unchanged.

Lamarck revisited

New evidence for epigenetic inheritance has profound implications for the study of evolution, Jablonka and Raz say.

"Incorporating epigenetic inheritance into evolutionary theory extends the scope of evolutionary thinking and leads to notions of heredity and evolution that incorporate development," they write.

This is a vindication of sorts for 18th century naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck, whose writings on evolution predated Charles Darwin's, believed that evolution was driven in part by the inheritance of acquired traits. His classic example was the giraffe. Giraffe ancestors, Lamarck surmised, reached with their necks to munch leaves high in trees. The reaching caused their necks to become slightly longer—a trait that was passed on to descendants. Generation after generation inherited slightly longer necks, and the result is what we see in giraffes today.

With the advent of Mendelian genetics and the later discovery of DNA, Lamarck's ideas fell out of favor entirely. Research on epigenetics, while yet to uncover anything as dramatic as Lamarck's giraffes, does suggest that acquired traits can be heritable, and that Lamarck was not so wrong after all.

Journal reference:

1. Jablonka et al. Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance: Prevalence, Mechanisms, and Implications for the Study of Heredity and Evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 2009; 84 (2): 131 DOI: 10.1086/598822

Adapted from materials provided by University of Chicago Press Journals.

Healthcare fight not over yet

Winning meaningful healthcare reform is going to require UNIFIED and persistent action by people.



Re-posted from The Real News Network

Guns and Butter: For How Long?

Stagnation in Iraq/Expansion in Afghanistan and a Decent/Progressive Domestic Policy: Can Both Survive?

by Phil E. Benjamin

The "guns v. butter" era has begun again. Ever wonder why this debate doesn't take place during Republican periods? Simple. During the Reagan/Bush and Bush periods there was only guns and more guns. There was no butter, translated that meant no social programs to fund; a double negative.

Now that the Democrats are back in power, all three branches, that debate, it was hoped would not take place. Voters in 2008 were hoping for a far less guns department and a far larger butter, creamery. The worldwide financial crisis has thrown a monkey wrench into that equation. In fact, the significant amount of money that the Democrats have put into the economy to save capitalism has masked that argument. But, that debate is coming.

In fact, the health care debate is moving more and more around the issue of financing health care options. The robustness of the Public Option Plan will be largely determined by ideological issues, but if the right wing, corporate interests loses that argument they will recede to the cost and lack of money.

There looks like a growing resentment in the anti-war, anti-imperialist movements; and, bewilderment in the general peace movement with each escalation of the war in Afghanistan, [nuclear armed] Pakistan and further stagnation in Iraq. The military budget moves up, albeit at a lower rate. While the Blackwater gang of mercenaries, thugs and criminals was dumped a reportedly equally repugnant mercenary company, Triple Canopy, has replaced it. There are other hot button items that are deeply worrying people about the direction of the new Administration.

It must be kept in mind that this movement switched from Clinton to Obama mostly over the issue of foreign policy. They are not a happy crew. They may not be organized into one group or one organization, but they do have a unity of thought. They share the basics of a foreign policy that promotes peace that they feel is not taking place to the extent they anticipated.

Clearly, some important domestic policy moves has bolstered public support for the Administration and blunted foreign policy disappointments. A revitalized Labor Department is on the way. Decent people being placed in energy, environmental and health areas. Pro woman Administration statements and actions have take place. Changes at the United Nations have brought an international optimism that has not been seen for decades. And, the reversal of the some of the egregious right wing, anti-people policies of the Reagan/Bush/Bush also has kept people firmly behind the Administration.

How long will this last? We shall see. The best solution would be a rapid de-escalation of the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Stay Tuned

Public Option, Detour or Road to National Health?

by Phil E. Benjamin

Reform or The Full Package?

Will "Public Option Plan" Health Reform Stop Future, Comprehensive Health Legislation; Or, Make it More Possible?

It is time-honored response to reforms that they will head off, detour or destroy more radical and far-reaching policy changes? It is the old "foot in the door" argument. That is, it is important to get that "foot in the door" to be able to get more down the road. Another version of the same theme is working "in the system" rather than staying on the outside being unencumbered.

In the current struggle for a national health program, this debate is hot and heavy. In this debate there is the Single Payer HR 676 side; and, on the other, has become the Public Option Plan advocates. Just a few months ago most were on the same side. It is all in the timing. We have moved from what we want to want is possible.

The debate is clear. HR 676 Single Payer advocates, at least many of them, are urging a no compromise position. They either state that only Single Payer HR 676 should be supported and further argue that the Public Option Plan is a divergence. Or, they just state their repeated support for Single Payer HR 676 without responding to the Public Plan Option. In either case they and their supporters will not be directly involved in this phase of national health policy making. Unfortunately, in some places the angrier HR 676 advocates have attempted to destroy meetings called by Public Option Plan advocates. The actions at Senate and House Committee hearings on behalf of Single Payer legislation, not withstanding.

We are now left with a mild reform direction, which is referred to as a "Public Option Plan." Public Plan Option advocates are putting forward a strong, comprehensive public health plan for House and Senate Committees to consider. They claim to HR 676 advocates that, if most of their points are won, it will be similar to a Medicare option. In this debate over the public option, the center, right and moderate politicians in the Congress are being pressured by the Medical Industrial Complex to have the most private/profit friendly approach. These right wing forces, their recent press conference with the President not withstanding, are opposed to any Public Option Plan. In that world, the breadth between a strong Public Option Program and no such Option is ver wide.

Staying out of this fray, according to the Public Option Plan people is not an option. Pressure must be placed both within the House and Senate Committees dealing with health policies by pressuring elected officials, especially over the Memorial Day recess. At the same, public demonstrations such as the mass mobilization for June 25th in Washington D. C. is crucial.

We didn't come to this point in health policy in a straight line. The Public Option Plan didn't enter the field until the House/Senate/White House combination made it clear that Single Payer or any other comprehensive health plan would not be in the cards in 2009.

There was apparent hope, early on, during the Presidential campaign and in the period just following November 4th that the President would in fact support Single Payer legislation. He never said he would. This did not happen; and, it deeply disappointed many Single Payer advocates. We are now in May/June 2009 and the word "On the Hill" is that a markup of some kind of health legislation would take place. This fits the legislative strategy that will honor the President's commitment to passing health legislation in his first term. This conforms to the 2010 Congressional election; an election that mirrors in time the 1994 election, but, hopefully a far different result.

{Note: Check out the UE statement on HR 676 and the Public Option Plan.]

Most Public Option Plan advocates make the argument that this struggle for a robust Public Option Plan will not end with the signing of the health legislation in the Fall of 2009. It will continue well beyond. Why? The economic and financial crisis will dictate our future. This objective reality will keep the fires of reform at fever pitch and not allow elected politicians off the hook.

Democratic Party leaders will have to continue to respond to their constituents and more reforms will be needed to respond to the crisis. This will require more steps toward the more progressive end of the public option plan. Health industry profiteering will e ron and center gain. Demanding no profits in health care will be upon us again.

This is a good debate; and, one which cannot be avoided. Let's do it in a civil way.

Of course, the future is our hands. Not achieving Single Payer HR 676 or Barbara Lee's National Health Service in 2009 doesn't mean the fight is over. On the contrary, this current round has all the seeds of a continuing struggle of an immediate not a long term set.

THE GENERAL HEALTH CARE SERVICES CRISIS CONTINUES

Concomitantly to this DC Beltway debate is a rising need for reform the health system itself. What is being discussed so far has been primarily financing mechanism with some promises beyond.

Check these out:

Expanding the Primary Care system of health care delivery by:

Offering at least 24,000 medical students full tuition forgiveness programs as promoted the U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, as long as they commit themselves to training for Primary Care medical status; [Demands to fill these slots will be far beyond the 24,000.]

Significantly expanding the existing Federal Qualified Community Health Centers System; [Also a Sen. Sanders proposal.]

Continuing federal support for paying 2/3rd of COBRA costs for unemployed workers. This is short term reform is must be expanded beyond its 11 month timetable, unless the Public Option Plan takes over;

Allowing and encouraging all workers on unemployment insurance to seek and gain health care through Medicaid; [The feds are now picking up the costs of UI in most states. The feds can make this happen];

Bailout PUBLIC AND NOT-FOR-PROFIT HOSPITALS [not profit making hospitals] to guarantee in-patient health services for those in need; But, with that bailout strict controls over hospital CEOs and other administrators salaries, expenses and other remunerations. A $500,000 salary ceiling would make sense; and forbidding these same Hospital executives from serving on the board or receiving any money from the insurance, drug and medical device industries.

THERE IS NO DEBATE FOR MEDICAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH PROFESSIONALS AND WORKERS IN THIS CONGRESSIONAL PERIOD; WE MUST FIGHT FOR THE HERE AND NOW. WE MUST THEN KEEP OUR VISION FOR A NATIONAL HEALTH PROGRAM THAT MIRRORS AND NOT OPPOSES THOSE THAT EXIST, THRIVE AND SERVE IN EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. NOT DOING THAT WOULD BE AKIN TO ABANDONING PATIENTS IN THE MINDSET OF CRISIS.

"NO PROFITS IN HEALTH CARE"

Keep the Guns Out of the Parks!

LOADED WEAPONS IN THE PARKS?
WHAT IS THE DEMOCRATIC SENATE DOING?

Thomas Riggins

Everyone, except the bankers, is happy to have the corrupt credit card usurers reigned in a bit by the Obama administration. The Democratic Senate passed new regulations on credit cards that will be helpful for working people-- but it refused to put a 15% cap on interest rates-- a big boon to the monopoly capitalists and kick in the teeth for working people.

The Democrats also caved in to the gun lobby. The Bush administration was blocked by the courts from changing the rules prohibiting loaded weapons in NATIONAL PARKS and WILDLIFE REFUGES. This move was applauded by conservationists and gun control advocates around the country.

But REPUBLICAN SENATOR Tom Coburn of Oklahoma "inserted an amendment to the credit card bill that would allow concealed, loaded guns in parks and refuges (Wall Street Journal, 5-20-09). Coburn is one of the most reactionary members of the Senate. The Democrats could have blocked this amendment. Hey Guys! You were not elected by the NRA and gun lobby (or were you?). Senate Democrats and Representatives should take this awful amendment out of the bill during the House-Senate conference.

Missing Link Found?

Common Ancestor Of Humans, Modern Primates? 'Extraordinary' Fossil Is 47 Million Years Old
by ScienceDaily.com

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2009) — Scientists have found a 47-million-year-old human ancestor. Discovered in Messel Pit, Germany, the fossil, described as Darwinius masillae, is 20 times older than most fossils that explain human evolution.

Known as “Ida,” the fossil is a transitional species – it shows characteristics from the very primitive non-human evolutionary line (prosimians, such as lemurs), but is more related to the human evolutionary line (anthropoids, such as monkeys, apes and humans). At 95% complete, the fossil provides the most complete understanding of the paleobiology of any Eocene primate so far discovered.

The scientists’ findings are published in PLoS One, the open-access, peer-reviewed journal from the Public Library of Science.

For the past two years, an international team of scientists, led by world-renowned Norwegian fossil scientist Dr Jørn Hurum, University of Oslo Natural History Museum, has secretly conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the extraordinary fossil, studying the data to decode humankind’s ancient origins. At 95% complete, Ida is set to revolutionize our understanding of primate evolution.

"This is the first link to all humans ... truly a fossil that links world heritage," said Dr. Hurum.

"It’s really a kind of Rosetta Stone," commented study co-author Professor Philip Gingerich, of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan.

The fossil was apparently discovered in 1983 by private collectors who split and eventually sold two parts of the skeleton on separate plates: the lesser part was restored and, in the process, partly fabricated to make it look more complete. This part was eventually purchased for a private museum in Wyoming, and then described by one of the authors (Jens L. Franzen) who recognized the fabrication. The more complete part has just come to light, and it now belongs to the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo (Norway). The PLoS ONE paper describes the study that resulted from finally having access to the complete fossil specimen.

Unlike Lucy and other famous primate fossils found in Africa’s Cradle of Mankind, Ida is a European fossil, preserved in Germany’s Messel Pit, the mile-wide crater and oil-rich shale is a significant site for fossils of the Eocene Epoch. Fossil analysis reveals that the prehistoric primate was a young female. Opposable big toes and nail bearing tips on the fingers and toes confirm the fossil is a primate, and a foot bone called the talus bone links Ida directly to humans.

The fossil also features the complete soft body outline as well as the gut contents: a herbivore, Ida feasted on fruits, seeds and leaves before she died. X-rays reveal both baby and adult teeth, and the lack of a ‘toothcomb’ or a ‘grooming claw’ which is an attribute of lemurs. The scientists estimate Ida’s age when she died to be approximately nine months, and she measured approximately three feet in length.

Ida lived 47 million years ago at a critical period in Earth’s history–the Eocene Epoch, a time when the blueprints for modern mammals were being established. Following the extinction of dinosaurs, the early horses, bats, whales and many other creatures including the first primates thrived on a subtropical planet. The Earth was just beginning to take the shape that we know and recognize today – the Himalayas were being formed and modern flora and fauna evolved. Land mammals, including primates, lived amid vast jungle.

Ida was found to be lacking two of the key anatomical features found in lemurs: a grooming claw on the second digit of the foot, and a fused row of teeth in the middle of her lower jaw known as a toothcomb. She has nails rather than the claw typical of non-anthropoid primates such as lemurs, and her teeth are similar to those of monkeys. Her forward facing eyes are like ours – which would have enabled her fields of vision to overlap, allowing 3D vision and an ability to judge distance.

The fossil’s hands show a humanlike opposable thumb. Like all primates, Ida has five fingers on each hand. Her opposable thumb would have provided a ‘precision grip’. In Ida’s case, this is useful for climbing and gathering fruit; in our case, it allows important human functions such as making tools, and writing. Ida would have also had flexible arms, which would have allowed her to use both hands for any task that cannot be done with one – like grabbing a piece of fruit. Like us, Ida also has quite short arms and legs.

Evidence in the talus bone links Ida to us. The bone has the same shape as in humans today. Only the human talus is obviously bigger. X-rays and CT scanning reveal Ida to be about nine months old when she died, and provide clues to her diet – which included berries and plants. Furthermore the lack of a bacculum (penis bone) means that the fossil was definitely female.

X-rays reveal that a broken wrist may have contributed to Ida’s death – her left wrist was healing from a bad fracture. The scientists believe she was overcome by carbon dioxide gas whilst from drinking from the Messel lake: the still waters of the lake were often covered by a low lying blanket of the gas as a result of the volcanic forces that formed the lake and which were still active. Hampered by her broken wrist, Ida slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years.

The findings of the two-year study will be revealed exclusively by Atlantic Productions in a documentary film, "The Link," to be screened by History on Monday May 25th, 2009 at 9pm ET/PT and BBC One in the UK Tuesday May 26th, 2009 at 9pm BST. It will also be broadcast on ZDF, NRK and around the world. A book, "The Link," will be published by Little Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, on Wednesday May 20th. An interactive, content-rich website about Ida has been launched at http://www.revealingthelink.com.

"This little creature is going to show us our connection with all the rest of the mammals," said renowned broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough. "The link they would have said until now is missing ... it is no longer missing."

Journal reference:

Jens L. Franzen, Philip D. Gingerich, Jörg Habersetzer, Jørn H. Hurum, Wighart von Koenigswald, B. Holly Smith. Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4(5): e5723 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
Adapted from materials provided by Public Library of Science.

Unemployment and child poverty in the African American community

New data from EPI.org reveals that the fight for economic recovery is linked to an ongoing struggle against racism:

When it comes to unemployment, total numbers tell only part of the story. Projections that the current unemployment rate of 8.9% will reach 9.8% next year may seem like a gradual leveling off, but any further rises above today’s already high levels will be devastating for certain sectors of the population, particularly minority children.

In his new presentation, Sounding the Alarm, EPI President Lawrence Mishel, projects that the poverty among African American children, which was at a staggering 34.5% even in the comparatively good times of 2007, will reach 52.3% as a result of continued job loss. The African American community has been hit especially hard by the loss of jobs, with unemployment currently at 15% and is set to rise above 18% next year, Mishel projects. Overall, his report estimates that the overall childhood poverty rate in the U.S. will rise from 18% today to more than 27%.

“The economy has deteriorated so much since October/November 2008 that our fears last November—that unemployment would exceed 10% in mid-2010 if there were no economic stimulus—will likely be realized even with the substantial, smart stimulus package in place,” says Mishel. “Consequently, there will be unacceptably high unemployment and poverty rates next year and beyond.”

Actor Sidney Poitier: Striving For A Life Of Excellence

From NPR.org:

Morning Edition, May 20, 2009 · When Academy Award-winning actor Sidney Poitier was born, he was not expected to live. He was premature and so tiny, he could fit into his father's hand.

That was 1927, and as the family lore goes, a fortuneteller assured his mother that he would survive and one day, carry the Poitier name around the world.

Poitier's memoir, Life Beyond Measure, now in paperback, is a series of letters to his great-granddaughter Ayele, taking her back to the moments that shaped him. His chapter on people of courage ends with his own father, Reginald Poitier.

"He was honest," Poitier tells NPR's Renee Montagne. "My father was the quintessential husband and dad."

Read/listen to the whole interview here...

Take the American Auto Revival Pledge

Take the American Auto Revival Pledge

The workers in the auto and supplier plants and dealerships of our country are losing jobs by the hundreds of thousands. And the proud United Auto Workers union has made painful yet patriotic wage concessions in an effort to save America's most important industry. I want President Obama's plan to save the industry and revive manufacturing to succeed—so I'm stepping up to do my part so we can give a big boost to the workers and communities—and to our country—that depend on those crucial industries.

See here...

FREE LUNCH: Book Review

FREE LUNCH: New Book By David Cay Johnson

Reviewed By Edwin C. Pauzer (New York City)
(from reviews at amazon.com)

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (Hardcover)
One thing you can expect when you open a book by David Cay Johnston is narrative that reads like a drama unfolding except that the plot is present-day America and the story is how the wealthy are getting richer at the expense of the middle class. Hence the title "Free Lunch," where the wealthy steal it with government approval, are paid to take it, or get it free, courtesy of the same who hands the bill over to us.

At the very beginning, Johnston explains what the invisible hand of Adam Smith means, for the benefit of those who know it and for those who only think they do--of which there are more than enough of the latter. Smith postulated that a free market economy creates competition that serves the common good but, (and here's the kicker), does not work if government provides them bounty (subsidies), or allows them to collude to keep prices high. He also stated that there would be enterprises that would operate to seek bounties only, the equivalent of modern corporate welfare.

Johnston provides chapter after fascinating chapter of how government at all levels offers break after break which is consistently picked up by Average Joe Taxpayer. Such "bounties" include:

· Misuse of eminent domain, which is supposed to mean appropriating land for the common good such as a new highway or airport. Now it is used to support developers who wish to profit at the expense of the homeowner.

· Tax breaks. Not only do companies such as Wal-Mart, Cabela, or Bass Pro insist on property tax breaks that decimate the local economy rather than improve it, but they might even insist on keeping the sales tax. Communities may not see a return on their investment for decades.

· Government intervention in the form of legislation that may even benefit large companies at the expense of the citizen such as "free-market" energy as espoused by Ken Lay that eventually cost Californians exorbitant charges for no additional electricity generated.

· Kids who take student loans are finding out that what they thought was a loan at six percent suddenly became eighteen percent guaranteeing that they will pay far more than they borrowed for years to come, and the lender is guaranteed no risk.

· Our government is also lavishing subsidies onto for-profit health care companies that consistently look for ways to deny claims. No subsidies go to nonprofit health systems even though studies show they offer superior care. (Adam Smith also said: "What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole").

· The grand prize, which is our current administration in the form of George W. Bush [now hisory-- thank the gods--tr] who sponsored a drug plan for seniors that was worked on (behind closed doors) by Billy Tauzin (R), Max Baucus (D [Obama's point man for "health care reform"--tr]), and John Breaux (D). These "representatives of the people" guaranteed that Adam Smith's dictum of seeking the lowest possible price would be ignored. Their bill guaranteed that our government would not be allowed to negotiate the price of drugs for its citizens even though it would make purchases in bulk.

In each of the above, there has not only been collusion by companies and industries, but also a feckless government that has given its blessing with collusion of its own, subsidies, and bluster of threats to investigate wrong-doing, with investigations that never quite materialize.

Having read his previous work "Perfectly Legal" I was eager to get my hands on this book, and I was not disappointed. In twenty-seven chapters that span the length of less than 300 pages, you will discover how industry and government have actually worked to first deceive, then gouge the average hard-working taxpayer. Any one of these chapters is a revelation that made me open this book at every opportunity.

This is the kind of book you can be sorry that it comes to an end, and also be glad that it does (because it is too painful).

If this book cannot stir the most politically apathetic into action, nothing will.

Maybe they'll just have to see the bill first.

Taking on the Right Dept: How Obama Outmaneuvered His Critics at Notre Dame

...from carl davidson
The Washington Post Writers Group
Class Dismissed : How Obama outmaneuvered his critics at Notre Dame
by E.J. Dionne, Jr.

May 18, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Facing down protesters who didn't want him there, President Obama fought back at Notre Dame not with harsh words but with the most devastating weapons in his political arsenal: a call for "open hearts," "open minds," "fair-minded words," and a search for "common ground."

There were many messages sent from South Bend on Sunday. Obama's opponents seek to reignite the culture wars. He doesn't. They would reduce religious faith to a narrow set of issues. He refused to join them. They often see theological arguments as leading to certainty. He opted for humility.

He did all this without skirting the abortion question and without flinching from the "controversy surrounding my visit here." The thunderous and repeated applause that greeted Obama and the Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's president who took enormous grief for asking him to appear, stood as a rebuke to those who said the president should not have been invited.

For his part, Obama gave what may have been both the most radical and the most conservative speech of his presidency. Acknowledging the Catholic Church's role in supporting his early community organizing work, the president drew on the resources of Catholic social thought. It combines opposition to abortion with a sharp critique of economic injustice, and thus doesn't squeeze into the round holes of contemporary ideology.

"Too many of us view life only through the lens of immediate self-interest and crass materialism," Obama declared. "The strong too often dominate the weak, and too many of those with wealth and with power find all manner of justification for their own privilege in the face of poverty and injustice."

Yet his argument drew on very old ideas, notably original sin and the common good. Obama was as explicit in talking about his faith as George W. Bush ever was about his own, but with distinctly different inflections and conclusions.

The former president often emphasized the comfort and certainty he drew from his religious beliefs. Obama said that "the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt."

"This doubt should not push away our faith," Obama preached. "But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, cause us to be wary of too much self-righteousness." It was a quietly pointed response to his critics.

Obama sent many signals to Catholics, extolling such heroes to progressives and moderates as the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, Notre Dame's former president, and the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.

He also tried to undo mistakes made early in his administration, making clearer, for example, that his revisions of an earlier Bush executive order on the rights of health professionals would continue to "honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion."

He paid more respect to opponents of stem cell research -- he spoke of their "admirable conviction about the sacredness of life" -- than he had in his original announcement altering Bush's policies.

And on abortion, the issue that ignited the protests against him, Obama endorsed a broad agenda: "Let's reduce unintended pregnancies. Let's make adoption more available. Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term."

Almost as significant as Obama's speech were the words of introduction offered by Jenkins. Rather than cower before his critics or apologize, the Notre Dame president warned against the tendency of competing political camps to "demonize each other" and praised Obama for appearing despite the university's opposition to "his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research."

"As we serve our country, we will be motivated by faith, but we cannot appeal only to faith," Jenkins said. "We must also engage in a dialogue that appeals to reason that all can accept," and do so "with love and a generous spirit."

Although Jenkins made no reference to them, the scriptural readings at Catholic Masses on Sunday drew on St. John's emphasis on the law of love. "This I command you: Love one another," Jesus declares in John's Gospel.

It was a hard message to square with the rage directed toward Obama and Jenkins by their detractors. Yet in raising the stakes entailed in Obama's visit, the critics did the president a great service.

By facing their arguments head-on and by demonstrating his attentiveness to Catholic concerns, Obama strengthened moderate and liberal forces inside the church itself. He also struck a forceful blow against those who would keep the nation mired in culture-war politics without end. Obama's opponents on the Catholic Right placed a large bet on his Notre Dame visit. And they lost.

E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University.

Phil Stein: Brave Comrade

by Norman Markowitz

Phil Stein passed away last month and there is an obituary to him in today's New York Times.

I knew Phil for many years and often met him and his wife Gertrude at events and rallies in New York. I also knew Phil's very good friend, comrade, and fellow artist, Charles Keller, who passed away a number of years ago.

From what I can gather, the New York Times obituary, as it deals with Phil' contributions to art is well done(his best known work perhaps is the large mural at the Village Vanguard) but one aspect of it made me very angry. Phil is referred to as an "ardent leftist" when the obituary mentions that he spent three months in prison in 1946 for his part in the Hollywood studio strike. But he is never referred to as a Communist, which is what he was when I first met him and what he had been long for a very very long time before that. Actually, the obituary mentions that Phil went to study in Mexico in 1947 because "work was scarce" in Hollywood in 1947. Isn't mentioned as such.

Ironically I participated a number of years ago with Phil, Charles Keller, and others in interviews for a documentary for South Korean television on the postwar repression. The group interview was held in the reference center for Marxist Studies at the CPUSA's national headquarters on 23rd street.

But it may not be so useful to criticize the obituary on that point because a capitalist newspaper is a capitalist newspaper. Anti-Communism is always about the anti-Communists, their fears and ignorance. And even in the NYT obituary, Phil was in very good company. The obituary notes that Phil worked with "the great Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siqueros," who became the central influence in Phil's development as an artist. But it doesn't mention that Siqueros was also a very prominent Communist.

I guess this is a little bit like the old joke about Albert Einstein. "If he succeeds, the Germans will call him a German and the French will call him a Jew. If he fails, the French will call him a
German and the Germans will call him a Jew." If a Communist like Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (who among many other things played an important role in the design of the UN building, even though as a Communist he was barred from visiting New York for years to look at the building he designed) makes a large contribution to the arts, sciences, and professions, they are "depoliticized," so that "Communism" as an abstraction can continue to be demonized, even in 2009.

But let's celebrate Phil a little (he earned it). Phil didn't talk too much about himself so I never knew that he was part of anweather forecasting unit of the U.S. army that moved across Europe with U.S. forces as they advanced from D Day to their meeting with Red Army Troops at the Elbe River. I had seen Phil at so many peace rallies and demonstrations in New York and Washington to I knew about his work in the Hollywood strike and his work in Mexico with Siqueros. I knew also about his remarkable achievements as an artist, but not that he had begun to teach himself painting as a teenager in Newark. I knew about his love of jazz, which I have long shared, but not that his sister, Lorraine, was the wife of Max Gordon, who founded the Village Vanguard (she now manages the club) I knew vaguely that he and Gertrude had lived in Spain in the 1980s, (in the obituary, Gertrude says that "we were looking for a place with a good vibe") but I didn't know he had a radio show devoted to Jazz on a local station.

Phil played an important role in helping to involve me in in the 1990s in the struggle against the U.S-NATO war to dismember Yugoslavia and its accompanying propaganda campaign aimed at demonizing the leadership and people of Serbia. It was through Phil that I met Barry Lituchy, Director of the Jasenovac Research Institute(JRI) , which has sought to educate Americans and people everywhere about the history of the Holocaust in wartime Yugoslavia and use that education to actively resist neo fascism today. Phil and Gertrude strongly and consistently supported the work of JRI as they strongly and consistently supported a myriad of peoples struggles in a marriage that spanned nearly seven decades.

If there are readers of our blog who knew Phil, I would like to hear their comments. I am sure there will be tributes. Phil was a Marxist in theory and a Communist in practice, a gifted artist who worked with and learned from one of the great artists of the twentieth century, and a person who by synthesizing art and politics made both and his society better. He was also, as jazzmen would say, a cool cat.

UE's Road Map to National Health

Welcome to the new home of UE's Poltical Action Updates &emdash; alerts and news about issues affecting working people.

UE's General Executive Board Weighs in on Washington Healthcare Proposals
15 May, 2009
Pittsburgh

Meeting at the union's national headquarters in Pittsburgh on May 14-15, UE's General Executive Board discussed the national debate on healthcare and the reform proposals now being considered by Congress and the Obama administration. The union's national leadership board adopted the following statement on healthcare reform:

STATEMENT ON HEALTHCARE REFORM
May 15, 2009

At least since the 1940s, UE has actively supported proposals to provide healthcare coverage to all in the U.S. through a national public health insurance plan, instead of private for-profit insurance. Our position was restated in the UE Policy resolution adopted at the 2007 convention, "Healthcare for All." At the national level and in UE communities across the country, UE has been an outspoken advocate of the "single-payer", Medicare-for-all solution embodied in HR 676, whose primary sponsor is Rep. John Conyers (D-MI.) In the current Congress, HR 676 has 75 House co-sponsors in addition to Conyers, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced a Senate version of the bill. HR 676 has been endorsed by 516 union organizations in 49 states including 125 central labor councils and 39 AFL-CIO state federations.

For the first time in decades, the country has a presidential administration and a Congress that are working for a major overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system. While we are disappointed that the broadly-outlined plan under consideration by the Obama administration and the Congressional leadership is not single payer, we note that it does include the creation of a public health insurance system. We welcome the national discussion of the need for an alternative to profit-driven health insurance.

Millions of workers and their families face a desperate situation, paying up to half their income for healthcare. Runaway medical costs have been the cause of half the personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in recent years. The healthcare cost crisis pushes municipalities, school districts and private employers to the brink financial collapse and exacerbates the economic crisis in many ways.

The costs of maintaining a private, for-profit health insurance industry impose an enormous burden and competitive disadvantage on U.S. businesses. Nonetheless, blinded by some combination of "free market" ideological rigidity and capitalist class solidarity with the insurance executives, the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, National Federation of Independent Business, and almost every employer continue to oppose a single-payer plan that would drastically reduce their costs. These business interests strenuously object to creating even a strong public plan in competition with private insurers, despite the fact that this would almost certainly bring down employers' costs.

Even a limited public plan, set up in competition with private insurers, would have a major cost-reducing effect on the American healthcare system. Studies show that because they have much lower administrative costs, get larger volume discounts for health services, and do not include profit margins, public healthcare plans such as Medicare are able to offer premiums that are 20 to 30 percent lower than those of private plans.

Most of the plans being advocated by President Obama and leading Congressional Democrats continue to rely on employer-paid health insurance through for-profit insurance companies, but also offer a public health insurance option similar to Medicare. Since the likelihood is growing that such a proposal may be adopted, we need to spell out what provisions would be acceptable to our union in such a plan, and what we would find unacceptable.

A public plan must be open to all workers and their families, and all employers must have the option of insuring their employees through the public plan rather than private insurance. This will allow more workers to share in the benefits of lower-cost public healthcare, and the savings to employers from the public plan will remove a major incentive for corporations to move jobs overseas.

Premiums for the public plan must be indexed to income and affordable for working class people. We oppose any effort to force the public plan to charge artificially high premiums for the purpose of bailing out the private insurance companies. If the private insurers cannot compete with a public plan on a level playing field, perhaps they should get out of the healthcare business.

A public plan must have the ability to bargain with providers over rates for services, and over prescription drug prices. Such bargaining would be one of the public plan's most powerful tools for bringing down healthcare costs overall.

We reject the inclusion of "user fees" such as co-pays, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses in a public plan. Those who need care should not be penalized and forced to pay more than those who are healthy.

We oppose any effort to contract out the administration of the public plan to private profiteers. This would be a waste of resources that should go into providing healthcare, diverting some of those resources instead into cultivating a new crop of millionaires and billionaires. Such privatization would put people in charge of the public plan whose motives are in opposition to the public good.

If we are to have a system where a public plan competes with private insurance companies, consumers must be empowered to choose their coverage by evaluating objective information on the merits of each plan. Marketing must be strictly limited; companies should not be trying to lure customers through costly advertising campaigns, nor such gimmicks as paying to name sports arenas after themselves.

Another measure that would help to reduce the country's healthcare costs is a ban on advertising of prescription drugs. Doctors should prescribe medications on the basis of their evaluation of the patient's medical needs, not because the patient demands a particular brand-name drug after being brainwashed through repeated exposure to costly TV ads from a pharmaceutical company.

Proposals being considered by Congress call for assigning uninsured individuals to a "pool" or "exchange," in which they could choose coverage by the public plan or from several private plans. In such a system, those who fail to choose a specific plan should be enrolled in the public plan. This will help to give the public plan a broad range of risk, and help ensure continuity of care and coverage for those individuals.

Private health insurers must be strictly regulated. Both the public and private plans must be required to accept anyone who seeks coverage, and must provide a full range of basic health coverage (hospital care, physician services, prescription drugs, substance abuse and mental health services, and dental care.) Private plans must also be prohibited from imposing excessive deductibles, co-pays and other out-of-pocket costs.

We are opposed to financing healthcare reform by taxing workers' employer-paid health insurance benefits as if these benefits were "income." Revenues needed to finance the program and cover those now uninsured should come from taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and in particular from those who have profited most from the inequities of the current healthcare system: the health insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and for-profit hospital chains.
We oppose any individual or collective mandates that would force people to buy private health insurance. The failed Massachusetts plan has already shown that this is unjust and unworkable. It amounts to a tax on workers to subsidize the profits of the private health insurance companies – an outrageous case of "Robin Hood in reverse."

Labor must lead this fight. Workers create the wealth that finances the system, and workers provide the services. Union activists and negotiators understand better than anyone the many tricks used by insurance companies to squeeze ever more money out of both employers and workers, because we fight against these tactics in every round of contract negotiations. Unions need to apply our experience and our skills to negotiating, for the entire country, the best possible healthcare reform legislation, rather than passively sitting by and waiting to accept whatever Congress comes up with.

We encourage all UE locals, regions, and members to:
1. Continue to put forward single-payer national health insurance as the most comprehensive and simplest path to universal and affordable healthcare.
2. Demand that single payer be the benchmark by which Congress and the administration measures all other proposals. We need to demand that single payer be on the table and that single-payer advocates be included in all hearings and discussions, by Congressional committees and the administration, leading to the enactment of legislation
3. Participate in the upcoming May 30 – June 4 Healthcare Action Week.
4. Work with all advocates of public health insurance (both in the single-payer movement and among advocates for inclusion of a public "option" in a more modest reform plan) to build a united front that demands that healthcare legislation voted by Congress include a public, not-for-profit plan, open to all, that is structured to provide comprehensive healthcare at the lowest possible cost.

Global Day of Action for Troy Davis

See more here

Marx and religion, another look

Asking the right god question
by Gregory Rodriguez
Dallas Morning News

Forget Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. These atheists du jour have nothing on the most famous anti-theist of all time. Good old Karl Marx is still the most eloquent and thoughtful nonbeliever, and his "religion is the opium of the masses" is still the best one-liner in the business.

But as famous as that zinger is, it's too bad that most people have never read the sentences that come before and after it. Marx was a whole lot more sympathetic to religious faith than most people give him credit for. He saw religion as a source of solace that should be abolished only until the sources of people's pain – an unfair economic system – had been eradicated.

"Religious suffering, " he wrote in 1844, "is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."

Marx wasn't just another hater of religion as a childish fantasy or a retreat from rationality. He saw faith as a symptom and not the disease, and he was interested in faith not in terms of right and wrong but because of what it told him about the human condition.

Read the whole story

A Modest Proposal to Private and Public Employers

by Norman Markowitz

I teach at Rutgers, a public university which, like many many others, has followed a "corporate model" of central administration for many years. Previously, university central administrations followed for generations a "feudal model" meaning that working faculty, deans and other administrative staff of arts sciences and professional schools, were given by the Vice Presidents, Provosts, etc, of universities the "privilege" of working as scholars, teachers, etc, with the central administration taking a cut from these bodies as a matter of tribute.

The "corporate model" hasn't so much changed this but made it much worse, that is, there has been a proliferation of high priced Vice Presidents and their support staff while the working faculty has been reduced significantly by having more and more of the undergraduate teaching function of universities turned over to "adjuncts," called at Rutgers partime lecturers, who are paid per course and operate as a reserve army of very cheap labor, providing what can only be called, given their situation, inferior education to undergraduate students who are made to pay more and more in tuition costs for education that for the great majority gives them less and less.

This has been true in good times and bad, but at Rutgers, where we, unlike the majority of public universities, have a unionized faculty, the administration at all levels is scurrying about seeking to follow the state government which is pursuing policies of "furloughs" (forced unpaid leaves which are de facto salary cuts) and suspensions of contracted salary increases).

The larger problem of the fiscal crisis as it effects the states can only be solved through restructuring state and federal relations, re-establishing some system of progressive taxation at the federal level especially but also at the state level so that state governments are not compelled to act like third world countries, providing every conceivable benefit they can to get business at the expense of their citizens in the hope that this will trickle down to the citizens.

But that is not what I am suggesting here, tongue angrily in cheek. In New Jersey, Governor John Corzine, who has put forward these draconian state cuts, has nevertheless also advocated positive policies like the merging of various communities and agencies to save money, along with trying to get more federal stimulus money for the state.

Let me combine Corzine with our present university system and Jonathan Swift and make a modest proposal to crisis ridden administrations---adjunct administrators. Since central administrators have been very distant from faculty and the role of central administration is very confusing to those who do the work of the university, individuals with administrative/ managerial skills could be hired as adjuncts at a tiny fraction of what the present VPs are receiving and of course without pension and health care benefits, like teaching adjuncts.

Since central administrations do computerized budgeting, much of this might in effect be outsourced to foreign countries the way other sorts of administrative work has been outsourced. The savings that this would bring about would then permit the universities to maintain salaries and benefits for working faculty and increase the number of working faculty as against adjuncts, since it is really to the benefit of everyone to have an adjunct doing the work of a Vice President that very few really understand than the work of a professor.

It might also be possible to replace university Presidents (ours is or used to be a good historian who would be welcomed by me at least back to the faculty) with professional fund-raisers or even actors to meet with potential university donors and sit with them at Football games. I have been careful not to suggest that the football coach, the highest paid public employee in the state of New Jersey, as he is in many states, have his job turned over to an adjunct or outsourced, because that would be too radical and besides, American football isn't played outside the U.S. too much.

These "modest proposals" should be food for thought as those of us who are public sectors employees and all workers for that matter seek to resist attempts by employers to make them bear the brunt of an economic crisis that was the result of policies that had nothing to do with them. Our unions here, as unions everywhere, will be carrying forward the fight to sustain jobs and purchasing power, which is the only rational policy to follow in this crisis, not "tradeoffs" of givebacks vs. layoffs, which is the same old race to the bottom. But we must also begin to think of structural changes since "bailouts" that permit managers to save themselves and go back to business as usual is not only philosophically indefensible but practically impossible.