By: Gregg Shotwell - Live Bait & Ammo #162
One’s disappointment with the Obama administration may be tempered by ideology, loyalty, or world weariness. Most issues have more sides than a pentagon. Most of us are mature enough to understand that our personal opinion is as fraught with prejudice and pride as the next point maker at happy hour. Even the most ideologically inebriated understand compromise is the essence of politics. But some ethical decisions are void of gray area.
Certain actions indicate a point of moral divergence as stark and plain as a crossroad. You may choose the road less traveled, but you can’t choose both and remain one moral crusader.
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By: Andy Piascik
Suddenly Staughton Lynd is all the rage...Again.In the last 18 months, Lynd has published two new books, a third that’s a reprint of an earlier work, plus a memoir co-authored with his wife Alice. In addition, a portrait of his life as an activist through 1970 by Carl Mirra of Adelphi University has been published, with another book about his work after 1970 by Mark Weber of Kent State University due soon.
Soldier, coal miner, Sixties veteran, recent graduate – there’s much to be gained by one and all from a study of Lynd’s life and work. In so doing, it’s remarkable to discover how frequently he was in the right place at the right time and, more importantly, on the right side.
Forty-six years ago, during the tumultuous summer of 1964, Lynd was invited to coordinate the Freedom Schools established in Mississippi by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The schools were an integral part of the Herculean effort to end apartheid in the United States and became models for alternative schools everywhere.
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By: Peter Shapiro
Analysis of health care reform
Now that the dust has settled, however, a hard look at the legislation that prompted all the fuss suggests that, far from ‘fixing our broken health care system,’ it merely reproduces some of its worst features.
The bill does nothing to lessen the grip of the private insurance industry on our health care system. It won’t bring exploding health care costs under control. It does little to change the shameful disparities in access to treatment in a society that treats medical care as a commodity to be bought and sold, rather than as something all of us need and deserve.
What it will do is require everybody to buy health insurance, with federal subsidies for those who can’t afford the premiums on their own. The price tag of these subsidies is $447 billion over the next ten years. That’s money that could have gone to pay directly for medical treatment but which will, instead, wind up in the pockets of the insurance industry - one more corporate bailout at taxpayers’ expense.
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