Stevie and Lindsey:
Author: susie
Songs to aging children come
Joni Mitchell:
http://youtu.be/Qli5LGnJ2r0
Harvest moon
Neil Young:
When I’m 64
Beatles:
http://youtu.be/ViKkjSzdwL4
Rejecting Comcast
How one Massachusetts town tried to keep Comcast out. They got in anyway, but this same argument will be played out across the country.
Just watch
All of a sudden, we’re going to listen to the U.N.?
(Reuters) – Moves by some U.S. states to legalize marijuana are not in line with international drugs conventions, the U.N. anti-narcotics chief said on Wednesday, adding he would discuss the issue in Washington next week.
Residents of Oregon, Alaska, and the U.S. capital voted this month to allow the use of marijuana, boosting the legalization movement as cannabis usage is increasingly recognized by the American mainstream.
“I don’t see how (the new laws) can be compatible with existing conventions,” Yury Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told reporters.
Asked whether there was anything the UNODC could do about it, Fedotov said he would raise the problem next week with the U.S. State Department and other U.N. agencies.
Phil Donahue on anti-war voices in the media
AMY GOODMAN: Phil, you, after your legendary career, what, 29 years on The Phil Donahue Show, you came back and were a—continued to broadcast on MSNBC, prime-time slot, right before the invasion of Iraq. You were the most popular show on MSNBC at the time. And then right before the war, you were unceremoniously dumped. And a secret, later, memo came out of NBC that they didn’t want to have an antiwar voice in their flagship show as the other networks were waving the American flag.
PHIL DONAHUE: Yes, that was a memo published by The New York Times, and it was written up by a Republican pollster, who took a survey, where they put 25 people in a room and showed them one of my aggressive programs, and most of the people didn’t like me, was the result. I was called in to Neal Shapiro’s office and informed.
AMY GOODMAN: He was at NBC at the time.
PHIL DONAHUE: He was then, yeah; he’s now head of PBS here in New York. So, it was definitely a political termination. And it’s interesting, because during that time, they were terrified. This is—you should know that this is October through—say, August through January—August of ’02 through January and February. The invasion was April of 2003.
AMY GOODMAN: March.
PHIL DONAHUE: And I was gone by then. But this is not long after the towers. And so, you know, corporate media—
AMY GOODMAN: You were replaced by Michael Savage.
Continue reading “Phil Donahue on anti-war voices in the media”
See?
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are having an effect already!
Hillary’s critics on the left may finally have the opportunity they’ve been waiting for.
Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the groups most closely associated with the so-called “Warren wing of the Democratic Party,” said his organization reached out to Clinton’s camp before the election and that a meeting was “very soon.”
He declined to name the Clinton advisers with whom he’s been in contact, saying discussions have so far been limited to “conversations about having conversations.” “We want to keep as open a line of communication with Hillary Clinton and her team as possible,” he told msnbc.
The meeting will hopefully be a precursor to a larger summit with more progressive leaders and Clinton herself. “The more the merrier,” Green said. “Individual meetings are useful, but progressive movement-wide meetings would be really smart for her.”
Their message is that Clinton should adopt the kind of economic inequality issues championed by Warren, both for substantive and political reasons. “This is the path to victory in the primary and general election,” Green and co-founder Stephanie Taylor wrote in an op-ed in The Hill.
Other liberal groups, which have sometimes been critical of Clinton, are also interested in a chance to bend Clinton’s ear on these issues. MoveOn.org, which has 8 million members and traces it roots to defending Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, said that while noting is planned at the moment, they anticipate some kind of interaction with Clinton. “We would be open and expecting a meeting and interactions with anybody looking for the Democratic nomination,” said a source at the group.
Until we get single payer
The Center for Public Policy Priorities recently analyzed ER billing by the three biggest insurers in Texas — Humana, Blue Cross and United Healthcare.
“ In an emergency department we see everyone, and we’re not even legally allowed to ask if they’re going to pay their bill. Large numbers of people pay nothing.
– Dr. Bruce Moskow, president, Texas College of Emergency Physicians
The report found that in more than half of Humana’s Texas hospitals, none of the ER doctors who see patients there were within Humana’s network.The same was true at just under half the Texas hospitals that take United Healthcare insurance, and at about a fifth of those that take Blue Cross.
Stacey Pogue, a health policy analyst and the report’s author, says that sort of arrangement is unfair to patients.
“No other consumer services are sold to us this way,” she says. “It would be like going into a restaurant, and ordering a meal and then getting a bill from the waiter, and from the restaurant separately, and the cook separately and the busboy separately. And some of them will negotiate with you on the price, and some of them will accept coupons, and the others don’t.”
Texas insurers have said they would like emergency room doctors to join their networks, but can’t force them to.
The ER doctors counter that insurance companies often don’t pay them enough, even if they do join the network.
Continue reading “Until we get single payer”
WTF is the matter with Kansas?
Sam Brownback is the dream Republican governor! I wonder why none of his policies are working?
Financial projections released late Monday paint a grim picture for Kansas’s budget in the wake of Gov. Sam Brownback’s (R) decision to sign massive income tax cuts into law.
The estimates showed that the state is on track to collect $1 billion less in revenue next year and in 2016 than had previously been projected, according to the Kansas City Star.
The estimates also said the state will use up $380 million in reserves and still have to cut another $280 million for fiscal year 2015 to balance the state’s current budget. In addition, in 2016, revenues are expected to be $436 million short of expenditures according to the forecast.
You’d almost think they live in an economic fairyland, where Republicans wave their wands, create tax cuts and the economy suddenly booms!