Politics
Nebraska lawmakers gave final approval on Wednesday to a bill abolishing the death penalty with enough votes to override a promised veto from Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts. The vote was 32 to 15 in Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature.
Members of Congress are scuttling around like weasels, claiming they can’t disclose what’s in the far-reaching, 12-nation TPP trade treaty. They can go into a sealed room and read a draft, but they can’t copy pages, and they can’t tell the public what they just read. Why not?
Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator who has launched a bid for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, said on Tuesday he will introduce a bill to break up the biggest banks, a position far to the left of the party’s front runner, Hillary Clinton.
Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is calling for revolution. Laying out what appeared to be a key pillar of his campaign, Sanders spoke decisively about the need for the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations to “start paying their fair share of taxes.”
The corporate media’s coverage of Putin and the Ukraine is part of a larger pattern of bias identified by Cohen. He has described the positive US press coverage enjoyed by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, at a time when “the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a ‘transition from communism to democracy’ and thus in America’s best interests.” Whereas the US media presented Yeltsin as pursuing legitimate politics and national interests, the frame that US media now use to portray Putin and Russia is that Putin’s Russia has no legitimate politics and national interests, even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.
Don’t feel bad if trade talk – treaties, exports & imports – makes your eyes glaze over. It’s understandable. Most likely, you’ve heard about this Trans Pacific Partnership, or TTP at least once a week. But you’re busy & probably haven’t really looked beneath the headlines. Even if you have, some of the authors don’t always do a great job breaking the nuts & bolts down for you. So, you leave frustrated that they don’t get to the point. This article seeks to tell this story in more plain language. Make no mistake this TPP story is big, full of intrigue, and needs heroes and heroines to stand up to the bad guys. You can be one of the many that are standing up. But time is short because the congress is being asked to shut down debate on this sucker and say yea or nay to it under a limited time crunch to read & understand what’ll probably be over a 1000 pages & then figure out if it is right for America.
As you may have heard, the Fast Track Bill was introduced last week. It may come up for a vote anytime next week. This would mean that the Congress would surrender its right and obligation to debate a treaty before voting upon it. You have an opportunity to sign your company’s name on to a letter, being sent to our representatives, urging them not to vote for Fast TrackJust go to the following link: www.tradewatch.org or call Lacey Colmooth at 202-454-5134 and ask to have your company’s name added.
After the horrors of the Second World War which included the murder and abuse of millions with the complicity of the “health care” authorities of various warring parties, the international community developed conventions and declarations to the end that “Never again!” would the health system be used to harm either individuals or whole populations. Among these were the Universal Declaration of Rights, Geneva Declaration and the Nuremberg Code. “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person… No one shall be subjected to … inhuman or degrading treatment… Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights… No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence…” – http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
In its study of the nation’s top twenty-five think tanks, FAIR finds that all have received money from corporations, foundations, government, or major individual donors. In many cases, these donors not only get a tax deduction for their contributions, they also can influence the think tank’s formulation of policy.
Julian Assange…Chelsea (a/k/a Bradley) Manning…Edward Snowden…Dr. William H. Thompson…and the list goes on. These brave individuals left their comfortable mundane lives and took a leap into uncertainty where they knew they could be allowed to fall flat and hard to the lowest depths they could imagine or into the supportive arms of people who would call them heroes. These individuals, we call “whistleblowers”, mined the shadowy depths of black budget operations and brought tremendous secrets to light. The aggregation of their revelations no doubt overjoyed those activists who have long been asserting that nefarious things were being perpetrated by our government, in our name, and with our tax monies…But not all secrets are hidden in the dark. Some are right out in the open if you know where to look.
A lawsuit filed by lawyers on behalf of 1,415 plaintiffs, including 38 residents of Fukushima and 357 persons from outside Japan, holds not only the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) but also Toshiba, Hitachi, and General Electric responsible for the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant…As NSNBC International reported, the Fukushima case is a “landmark challenge” to nuclear power plant manufacturers’ immunity from liability in nuclear accidents.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) Investment Chapter…reveals how the pact would make it easier for U.S. firms to offshore American jobs to low-wage countries while newly empowering thousands of foreign firms to seek cash compensation from U.S. taxpayers by challenging U.S. government actions, laws and court rulings before unaccountable foreign tribunals. After five years of secretive TPP negotiations, the text – leaked by WikiLeaks –proves that growing concerns about the controversial “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) system that the TPP would extend are well justified, Public Citizen said.
A proposed bill before the Kansas state legislature would require women to report miscarriages at any stage in pregnancy. This has been described as the first step along the path to criminalizing pregnant women’s bodies.
[Dennis Kucinich to Congress:] Why would Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, be so ready to give up its constitutional power to this president with an Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which represents a wholesale appropriation of war power? This could be one of the most important votes you will ever cast, so I want to share with you, collegially, information that I hope will be of use in your deliberations. I present some thoughts for your consideration as you enter into a momentous, new debate over the authorization of military force, this time against the Islamic State.
Kshama Sawant, the socialist on the City Council, is up for re-election this year. Since joining the council in January of 2014 she has helped push through a gradual raising of the minimum wage to $15 an hour in Seattle. She has expanded funding for social services and blocked, along with housing advocates, an attempt by the Seattle Housing Authority to allow a rent increase of up to 400 percent. She has successfully lobbied for city money to support tent encampments and is fighting for an excise tax on millionaires. And for this she has become the bête noire of the Establishment, especially the Democratic Party.
