News Items
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What We Should be Talking About: Romney’s Foreign Policy Advisers
John Kennedy used to say, “Domestic policy can hurt us; foreign policy can kill us.”
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Dying to Live in Mexico
In 2011, some 12,000 people were murdered in situations presumably related to the drug trafficking industry in Mexico. In 2010, the number was more than 15,000 killed. Between December 2006, when Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) took office and declared a “war on drug traffickers” and January 2012, depending on the source, some 47,000 to 60,000 people have been slain, and some 5,000 disappeared. This grim fact has become the centerpiece of Mexican politics and an inescapable force in daily life throughout much of the country. But neither the number of people killed nor the cruelty…
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THE PAYROLL TAX CUT: Talk about a Ponzi Scheme!
By Gwendolyn Mink Is President Obama trying to kill Social Security without explicitly saying so? He put Social Security “on the table” for consideration by his Deficit Commission — even though Social Security has not contributed to creating or sustaining the deficit/debt in the first place. He kept Social Security on the table when he made a deal to delegate deficit reduction authority over entitlements to an undemocratic Super Committee. Now, in a speech reportedly about jobs, he proposed to extend and increase the ill-considered FICA tax cut he embraced last December — a tax cut that directly undermines the…
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Stop the Cuts to the Social Safety Net!
Medicaid cuts will injure communities of color disproportionately. 11 percent of Asian Americans, 14 percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, 27 percent of Latinos, and 27 percent of African Americans gain access to health care through Medicaid. Medicaid cuts will injure women disproportionately. Women account for 70 percent of Medicaid participants. Social Security is survival income for many older women, especially older single women. Fifty percent of women over age 65 rely on Social Security for 80 percent or more of their income. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research: Unmarried women living alone aged 65 and older…
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Fires Near Los Alamos Nuclear Facility
The forests surrounding Los Alamos National Laboratory have burned and are certain to burn again with some regularity, whether from lightning or human causes. If too many trees are allowed to remain near laboratory facilities, those too will sooner or later burn, despite everyone’s best efforts. We are not as yet very concerned about radioactive or toxic materials being caught up in the present fire because we do not see, at present, much possibility of uncontrollable fire reaching any of those hazards. There are not many trees near some of the most conspicuous hazards, such as the main nuclear waste…
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Case Against Cutting Social Security
The case against cutting Social Security is strong. · Social Security benefits are modest by any measure and are already being cut – by raising the age of eligibility for full benefits and by deducting ever-rising Medicare premiums from benefit checks. · The cuts already in law add up to a19 percent reduction for people born in 1960 and later, see the National Academy of Social Insurance report, “Social Security Beneficiaries Face 19 Percent Cut; New Revenue Can Restore Balance.” · Cutting benefits further could undermine much of what Social Security has achieved and expose millions of vulnerable people –…
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Samantha Power, Libya, and Selective Memory of Genocide
It might seem a bit surprising to see Samantha Power on the National Security Council and working with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who Power famously called a “monster” during the 2008 presidential campaign. But this was a heat-of-battle bit of name-calling, not a designation based on any difference in outlook. Both women are hardliners, along with their colleague Susan Rice, and the three together have constituted a regrettable women’s caucus in favor of a military solution to the conflict in Libya. In her 2002 book A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Power called for greater…
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Low-Income Women Pushed to the Sidelines
Low-income women have been invisible in budget deliberations thus far – yet they will be injured disproportionately by cuts to income programs like Social Security and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families [TANF], as well by cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and Food Stamps. Despite the prolonged recession, income assistance to low-income families has shriveled over the past decade, providing help to less than 40 percent of families who meet TANF criteria and to an even smaller fraction (27 percent) of all families in actual need. For those who do receive benefits, the cash value has eroded so badly that TANF cash assistance does not bring a family…
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Trumka Questioned on Wisconsin, Two-Party System, Journalism and Obama
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, stopped by the National Press Club this afternoon. Trumka underlined the need for economic equality in a 30 minute address before fielding questions submitted by the audience and selected by NPC President Mark Hamrick. Hamrick asked variations of three questions submitted by IPA. Here’s a transcript of those exchanges: Building on Wisconsin: Hamrick: So back to your speech, someone asked, “What is your game plan to spread the spirit of the Wisconsin protest to other parts of the country?’” Trumka: We’re out there every day, educating and mobilizing. And it’s not just in Wisconsin.…
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Herman: U.S., NATO Hypocrisy on Libya Precludes Their Action
I’m surprised that Phyllis Bennis doesn’t recognize the problems of what we may call “clean hands” — and hypocrisy — in her call for Security Council action on Libya. Do the United States, UK, France and Germany have clean hands that would justify antiwar, anti-imperialist and humanitarians calling upon them to act against Libya? They are daily attacking Afghanistan and Pakistan and have given unstinting support to Israeli ethnic cleansing and international law violations. Doesn’t this discredit the Security Council as an instrument of international justice?