Comments on: Bush Urges Congress To Pass Stimulus Bill
Senate Under Pressure To OK Economic Package To Get Tax Rebates To Workers In May
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George Seldes once said, "Journalism''s job is not impartial ''balanced'' reporting. Journalism''s job is to tell the people what is really going on." Michael Moore''s top-grossing movie Sicko is one example of telling the people what is really going on. Health care activists know that U.S. health insurance is an extremely large and obscenely lucrative industry with the top nine companies "earning" $93 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The health-care industry represents the country''s third-largest economic sector, trailing only energy and retail among the 1,000 largest U.S. firms.
Nevertheless, 16% of Americans still have no health insurance whatsoever and that number will not soon decline, as insurance costs continue to rise two to three times faster than inflation. The consequences are immediate and tragic. Unpaid medical bills are now the number-one cause of personal bankruptcy in the country, and the Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly 18,000 Americans die prematurely each year because they lack coverage and access to adequate care.
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U.S. private health care services differ markedly from other industrialized countries where single payer systems provide everyone with medical care as a basic human right. Unfortunately, objective media coverage and comparisons of single-payer public health care with our current profit-driven corporate system are almost non-existent at this time. To protect their bloated bottom lines, private insurance companies and HMOs invest heavily in lobbyists and corporate-friendly political candidates that promote their "indispensable" role in any future health care reforms. Besides their insider political influence, these firms deploy massive advertising budgets to discourage media investigations of the economic interests shaping our health policies today.
Tens of thousands of Americans engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate, or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues such as 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachment, war propaganda, civil liberties/torture, and many corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine truth emergency in the country as a whole.
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Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying "enough!" and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell the people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond forensic inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda, and illicit political control to rouse the nation to reject a malignant corporate status quo.
This Truth Emergency Movement is holding its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California on January 25-27. Organizers are gathering key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize, and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the U.S. This truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril, and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and independent media activists can transform the way Americans perceive and defend their world. - Reply to this comment
- WHAT A WORTHLESS FISSAD!
TWO OF THE PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE BEATEN FROM WASHINGTON SITTING RIGHT ON THE FRONT PAGE...
WHO LET THE ECONOMY GET IN THIS STATE? THIS MONEY IS JUST A TOKEN TO STOP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FROM MARCHING ON WASHINGTON....ONLY MONEY IS NOT ROTTEN LIKE THE FOOD WAS THEY GAVE THE POPULAS IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION...
AMERICA DO SOMETHING OR SHUT UP! - Reply to this comment
- What''s a single person with no dependents making 75K pay in federal taxes, anyway. Isn''t it something like 15K. That''s a lot more than sales tax and sur tax. They''re paying the bulk of taxes for all that don''t have to pay.
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- If this is a good idea, why stop at $250 billion? Why not borrow some quadrillions of dollars on the credit of Americans, and give each of us some, that way we''d each get maybe $10,000 or $100,000? Since the money is borrowed, and there is a bunch of graft going on where lots of the money isn''t really going to rebates, we would each incur maybe $140,000 in debt, and receive a check for $100,000. The other money going to big mortgage companies, writeoffs for phony depreciation for huge multinational corporations, etc.
But if this is such good medicine for the economy, why not give us a bigger dose?
I wish I could reomve the power of the government to borrow money for me, I could actually borrow $100,000 for myself and blow it on some idiot consumer spending. Don''t really need Nancy Pelosi to make that decision for me. - Reply to this comment
- i keep reading that the point of this "rebate" is to act as a job stimulus--the theory being that if we spend more, then jobs will be created. what on earth is bush smoking up there on pennsylvania ave? the vast majority of the goods sold in this country are imported from other countries. the jobs created will be overseas, and the profits will either be in the pockets of already well-off ceos or shareholders. news flash!! that doesn''t really do much for us in the trenches. how about spending that money to develop alternative energy sources, or job training for folks who lost their jobs to outsourcing--or better yet, let''s do something to get those jobs back...
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- Did you know that this rebates voids retiree applicants. They need it the most - fixed income.
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Posted by mcv57 - Reply to this comment
- . . . yes, I pay sur taxes, sales taxes, township taxes, and booze taxes!! Lets get educated Gateway!
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- The people you are mentioning don''''t pay taxes anyways. They are exempt.
Posted by TheGateway1
Let not be ignorant . . . it depends which state the retiree lives in! I live in Illinois, and they tax my pension! - Reply to this comment
- "By the time Congress gets finished with it, this will just be another give away to the non-taxpaying poor. It has nothing to do with taxes just like the EITC has nothing to do with paying taxes." Posted by standlee5
"...the package raises the limit on Federal Housing Administration loans from $362,790 to as high as $729,750 in expensive areas..."
Need any more proof of how wrong you are? As for the "non-taxpaying poor" you mention, there is no such thing, every time anyone in America buys food, water, power, clothing, pays school fees, buys gasoline, or any necessities, and such non necessities as cigarettes, there are taxes attached. Your position is obviously ignorant of this fact. - Reply to this comment
- "Dear Ms. Nancy Pelosi,
I would think that you, being a democrat,..." Posted by pilgrimsway
On the day she announced that she would let the Bush klan off the hook for their crimes and treasons, she showed that she was neither Democrat or Republican, but had indeed firmly planted all four feet into the trough as a member of the corrupt group that includes members from "both sides of the aisle."
At that point I knew, as you should have known, that she was not to be trusted to protect the interests of the American people, why should she start now? - Reply to this comment
- Am I to understand that because I am a disabled Social Security Retiree that pays no taxes, will be left out of this so-called "Stimulus Bill" If this is so its unfair. I worked over 40 years and paid taxes each and every year so that our elected politicians could enjoy the life they live and dictate to the working group laws that sometimes make no sense. Its time for our congressmen and senators to give back to all the people that elected them. I know they favor "big business and upper middleclass", but think about the lower-middleclass and those living below poverty level, that struggle everyday to make ends meet, we need help too.
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- I though this stimulus package was to stimulate the economy! Not to differentiate the income classes.
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- By the time Congress gets finished with it, this will just be another give away to the non-taxpaying poor. It has nothing to do with taxes just like the EITC has nothing to do with paying taxes.
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- Did you know that this rebates voids retiree applicants. They need it the most - fixed income.
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- Dear Ms. Nancy Pelosi,
I would think that you, being a democrat, would have fought for me being disabled with the rising energy prices. My wife, because of the laws (time expired) cannot get disability, and I would have like to have spent some money for the economy for things we needed like food and fuel and clothes in the stimulus package not coming to us. We are living hand to mouth this year alone we, I, got a big raise from S.S. $20.00. Are you a republican? I thank you! "Keep up the good work". Does this party really hear the hurting American people? Or are they becoming Republican? As you know I am being sarcastic with these statements.
Please is there anyone in America who would help 45 million people who need help? This is an advertisement for everyone now running for office.
We are Americans!!
I am trying to keep my cell phone minutes to a minimum! For this is all we can afford in respect to a phone!
Thank you for responding to me and all the others who are in my boat. I wish I could Run for President because I would make sure help all the homeless was provided for! I would with the help of experts get the terrorism stop. I would get the 401k and social security mess solved for the younger and the older. I would make sure the economy was balanced for everyone. I would make the decisions necessary for the deployment of justice for everyone in my itinerary! - Reply to this comment
- Storm the palace! The emperor has no clothes!
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- Posted by b-easy63 at 09:22 PM : Jan 25, 2008
Well said!
Posted by RowdyTexan2 at 10:09 PM : Jan 25, 2008
Ditto. - Reply to this comment
- Ya! Let''s all help pass the new ''clown'' bill!
this is just one more rip off of the American people by these lieing stealing evangelical republican criminals.
vote republican if you want four more years of this idiocy! - Reply to this comment
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