They also rejected the government's argument, according to the Reynolds case, that the plaintiff could not possibly prove their case without disclosing classified information. First of all, the question is not whether classified information will be disclosed, but whether specific pieces of evidence would be harmful to national security. Just because something is classified doesn't mean it couldn't be used in a trial; the plaintiff's interest in justice must be weighed against the government's interest in secrecy, rather than deferring automatically to the government's assertion of secrecy. Then if the plaintiffs can prove their case without using those certain pieces of evidence that are found protected as state secrets, the case can still go forward. The court cannot rule on a claim of state secret privilege until it has evaluated the evidence and the claim of secrecy for each piece of evidence. The district court hasn't done this yet, so the case now goes back to the district court.
I'm glad our appeals court is doing their job and not letting the government subvert the legal process!
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( 3 / 15 )At the PDA meeting on Thursday we heard from speakers about our nation's failure to support our troops and veterans. We heard from a young man, Derek, who had joined the military right out of high school. When he got back, he had to battle an impenetrable bureaucracy to claim his VA benefits. He couldn't get signed up for college because he was too busy finding a job (which he needed since the current GI bill doesn't pay full educational expenses). He found it difficult to adjust to directing his own life after years of strict discipline.
Another veteran described the pay differential between service members and contractors, as well as the extreme amount of overhead paid to the companies ($300,000 to the company and only $40,000 of it went to the employee, versus $12,000 a year to service members). He said that military wives are being counseled by government employees to divorce their husbands because the husbands are paid so little that the women would gain more in welfare on their own. Lawyers that are provided to represent service members in divorce proceedings are incompetent or willfully negligent. If a soldier brings habits of violence home from the battlefield, instead of being offered counseling to work through their issues, they can be stripped of their driver’s license and passport, holding them prisoner wherever they are.
Carla Mays described her work as an organizer of veterans for Obama. She described how the Democratic Party has failed to outreach to military families, while the Republicans have been calling to welcome them, inviting them to barbecues, etc. She told us how she was able to reach people in gated communities in Carlsbad, where you can’t go door-to-door, by organizing house parties and getting those who came to organize their own parties. She said Democrats need to visibly provide service to military families in the community, as Republicans have done, to create a relationship that will then allow us to advocate policies and candidates more effectively.
At the end of the meeting we broke into groups to write resolutions for consideration, and hopefully adoption, by the California Democratic Party. Our group’s resolution is posted here. You can join the website to post your comments and write your own resolutions.
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( 2.8 / 15 )I attended the San Diego satellite health reform forum today; the main event took place in Los Angeles. Two other satellite forums took place in Clovis and Oakland. The hosts of the Los Angeles meeting were California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, along with Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Melody Barnes. The Governors highlighted successes in California and Washington, including the second-lowest smoking rate in the country (CA), banning the sale of soda and junk food in schools, nutritional labeling, and covering children up to three times the poverty rate (WA). These accomplishments are indeed praise-worthy.
What Schwarzenegger didn't mention was that California's state legislature passed statewide universal health plans twice before, only to have them vetoed by Schwarzenegger. The reason? The plans passed in California were single-payer plans, in which the state, not private insurers, would pay the cost of healthcare. I fear the choice of Schwarzenegger to host the forum speaks volumes about the Obama administration's attitude toward single-payer.
There were some moving testimonies given during the forum. One woman had lost her husband after they were dropped by the health insurance company for missing one payment. She applied for MediCal but they denied her claim at first and by the time she won an appeal, it was too late for her husband. Another woman recently lost her father. Carole Moss spoke about her son Nile's death from a preventable staph infection he got in the hospital. He was fifteen. She said according to the CDC, existing techniques could save 99,000 lives per year, if they were enforced.
Here in San Diego, Reynaldo Hernandez, a longtime insurance agent, spoke about his growing struggle to find insurance policies that his clients could afford, or even qualify for. Later on, he found out that he himself could not qualify for health insurance. He struggled to bear the heavy costs until he could qualify for Medicare. He said he knew in the United States he had a right to education and legal representation, but asked why he doesn't have a right to healthcare.
The responses of the forum hosts leaned heavily on compromise, bringing stakeholders to the table, and especially prevention. They emphasized the role of diet, exercise, and smoking in causing disease. Multiple speakers mentioned links between obesity and disease, and spoke about ways to encourage health lifestyle choices. While I appreciate the role of fitness to promote health, it began to feel after a while like the hosts were putting all of the blame on patients for the problems in the healthcare system.
Most of the speakers at the forum were pre-selected, and none of those speakers mentioned the single-payer option. There were a few people called on to answer questions, and one of these, a representative from Health Access California, was the only one to mention any specific reform ideas, including offering a public health plan as an option. The White House representative, Melody Barnes, did not reinforce the public plan as an Obama proposal.
At the end of the live feed from Los Angeles, there was a brief period allowed for questions and comments from the San Diego attendees. County Supervisor Greg Cox and Calexico Mayor Louis Fuentes hosted the San Diego event.
Although we had been sitting still under bright spotlights for over two hours, the statements from San Diegans were passionate and direct. One stated that the heavy emphasis on prevention during the Los Angeles forum was diversionary from the true issues, and that the Massechusetts model of mandated private coverage is out-of-whack. One woman reinforced my impression of the event when she asked, "Why are we blaming the patients?"
More comments:
"Subsidizing private insurance is feeding the beast that's killing us."
The "elephant in the room" is the private insurance companies with their profits and high administrative cost, many times that of Medicare. (Someone interjected that the reason is greed.)
Someone even spoke the words single payer! These types of comments were all met with strong applause in the room.
A doctor told how one third of his office staff work on billing, which he compared to his credit card that he can use anywhere to buy whatever he needs.
Someone announced that SB 840, the California single-payer bill twice vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger, has been reintroduced as SB 810.
Unfortunately, the VIPs did not have time to listen to everyone who had something to say, including me, but I sent an email to Mayor Fuentes with my comments, after he said he would include emailed comments in the event report. I hope some of the passionate opinions from the San Diego group will make it into the report that Obama sees from this event. If they do, it will be clear to the President that we are ready and waiting for true universal healthcare, not half-measures.
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( 3 / 21 )Navid and I just watched the documentary FLOW . Everyone should see this film. I don't know what else to say, except that I'm going to sign the petition to add water to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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( 2.8 / 9 )It's not good enough to offer a public option as one choice among private insurers, according to Physicians for a National Health Program . I have also been thinking Obama's plan wastes a lot of resources and effort trying to reform the private insurance companies to act against their own profit motives, when those resources could be spent building a public system that would cover everyone. Keep pushing for single-payer! I'll be attending Obama's western regional health care forum via satellite from San Diego tomorrow. I'll report back here.
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( 5 / 1 )This article describes a recent conference in which a one-state soluction was suggested as a route to peace and justice for Israelis and Palestinians. It's interesting to consider, although quite a transition would be required given the current state of relations.
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( 0 / 0 )This information comes from Mike Copass, chair of the PDA Metro San Diego chapter:
Good news: the Obama campaign "Organizing for America" (OFA), is harnessing grassroots Obama campaign energy to support the President's new Budget -- OFA focuses on supporting Obama's budget priorities of Renewable Energy, affordable Healthcare, and Education. These are great ideas.
Bad news: In that same Obama Budget are countless billions of taxpayer dollars for permanent military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, black sites and rendition programs, money for corporations like Titan Corp (now L-3) the torture 'outsourcers' at Bagram, armaments like Boeing's Future Combat Systems, depleted uranium projectiles, white phosphorus, Raytheon Paveway bombs, and even Dept Homeland Security's military-grade surveillance technology being used on the United States and its citizens (also supported by Lockheed & Raytheon contracts). All that in Obama's Budget.
Imagine going door to door asking for public support for a budget which pledges massive funding for
- constructing and maintaining 1000 US military bases in foreign lands, built & wired by KBR, Bechtel, Halliburton?
- ongoing occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan, where between 3 and 6.6 million excess deaths are estimated post-invasion (nearing Holocaust numbers)
- continuing unspeakable suffering visited on both US troops and to human beings around the planet?
- illegal military operations and bombing in Pakistan?
Would you pledge your support that budget -- even if it contained great new healthcare & green-tech initiatives? What is the progressive response?
For the next MetroSanDiego PDA meeting on Thursday April 16th, I am organizing two speakers to present two viewpoints about the Obama War Budget, one in SUPPORT, and one CRITICAL.
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( 5 / 1 )Navid and I attended the peace rally in San Diego this weekend to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Iraq war. We marched through the streets of Hillcrest to the war memorial in Balboa Park, where we listened to speakers including Cindy Sheehan. It's a small gesture when 4275 American soldiers and over one million Iraqis have died, but it felt good to get out and make some noise for peace.
You can read about the rally and see pictures of the march and rally at the OB Rag and see a lot of photos here . I'm glad people took all those great photos and posted them.
We even got coverage on Michael Moore's website !
The rally was covered by KUSI too, but at the end of covering the actual news event, with interviews and footage, they did a voice-over stating that other people say that the war has accomplished a lot, and that the important thing is that we all have the freedom to express our views, thanks to the American flag, apparently...they literally zoomed in on a flag and said something about red white and blue. I couldn't believe they went out of their way to express an opposing view to what the protest expressed, even though there were no counter-protesters there and they couldn't even find someone on the street to interview who disagreed. So much for objective reporting.
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( 5 / 1 )I've already been boycotting Starbucks based on their discrimination in Saudi Arabia and their failure to sell fair trade certified coffee, but now there's another reason; they're trying to strip key provisions from the Employee Free Choice Act . The problem for me is that Costco and Whole Foods are working with them!
As far as I can see, the Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons in my area are unionized, so I guess those would be more worker-friendly places to shop. Trader Joe's, Henry's, and Fresh & Easy are not unionized.
We need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act with all three key provisions intact: the ability to form a union when a majority of the workers sign a card (without going through a lengthy election process that leaves workers open to pressure and intimidation by their employer); guaranteed timeframe for a contract, otherwise an arbitrator is called in to help; and new stronger penalties for companies that abuse and intimidate workers.
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( 5 / 1 )These poll results clearly show public support for a single-payer healthcare system.
Here's another from October 2007.
Politicians keep claiming that Americans aren't ready for a government health insurance plan, but it's not true. So whose interests are they really protecting???
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