Economic Stimulus = Treasury Bonds, Paid Back by Future Generations

I had a chat about economics with my family on mothers' day and I remember the question of China's loan for the economic stimulus checks. At the time I hadn't read too much detail about the stimulus checks so I didn't have an educated opinion of the subject.
It seems the answer was simpler than I thought; foreign owned treasury bonds bought by countries like Japan, China, UK and groups such as OPEC (see chart) pay for stimulus checks sent out to U.S. taxpayers. These countries own our country's debt.
Take a look at #4 on the chart, "oil exporters," footnote #3 lays out the list of included countries who are also under OPEC, which is important to note that its members started trading in Euros instead of Dollars (U.S. isn't part of OPEC) shortly before the U.S. began invading it's member countries. How many countries in that footnote were part of Bush's "axis of evil?" What a coincidence.

chart -Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Bonds

http://www.xe.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

"After the introduction of the euro (1999), pre-invasion Iraq decided it wanted to be paid for its oil in euros instead of US dollars causing OPEC to consider changing its oil exchange currency to euros, although after Iraq's invasion, the interim government reversed this policy, and the subsequent Iraq governments stuck to the US dollar.[16] Member states Iran and Venezuela have undergone similar shifts from the dollar to the Euro.

In 2000, Chávez hosted the first summit of heads of state of OPEC in 25 years. The next year, however, the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan,"
the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt against Hugo Chavez, "and 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation prompted a surge in oil prices to levels far higher than those targeted by OPEC during the preceding period.
On November 19, 2007, global oil prices reacted strongly as OPEC members spoke openly about potentially converting their cash reserves to the euro and away from the US dollar."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#Responding_to_war_and_low_prices
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27état_attempt


"The Bureau of the Public Debt borrows money needed to operate the Federal Government, accounts for the resulting debt, and provides reimbursable services to other Federal agencies. The bureau pays interest to investors and redeems investors' securities. Borrowings total about $5 trillion each year through 220 or so marketable securities auctions and savings bond sales at over 40,000 locations throughout the U.S. The Bureau of the Public Debt sells securities directly to and maintains accounts for investors in its TreasuryDirect system."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_the_Public_Deb

Right now the only presidential candidate with clear plans to prevent future generations from having to take the burden of paying off these debts is Ralph Nader.
"In recent years, the big five oil companies - ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, BP and Shell - have booked record profits - a big chunk of which result from oil industry market manipulation and anti-competitive practices. (For example, oil companies have exploited their market position to intentionally restrict refining capacity by driving smaller, independent refiners out of business.)

Nader/Gonzalez would strictly regulate the oil industry - clamping down on speculators and enforcing the antitrust laws.

Nader/Gonzalez would also revoke federal subsidies to the oil industry, repeal multi-billion tax breaks and impose a windfall profits tax to fuel a transition to a solar energy economy.

Nader/Gonzalez would cut the bloated, wasteful military budget.
(Hillary Clinton and Obama have committed themselves to increasing the armed forces by tens of thousands of troops. John McCain would outdo them both.) http://www.votenader.org/issues/military-budget

Corporate crime costs Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Tens of thousands of Americans are killed each year and hundreds of thousands of Americans injured and sickened each year by preventable corporate-bred violence.

From pollution, medical negligence, procurement fraud, product defects, and financial fraud, to antitrust, public corruption, foreign bribery and occupational homicide, corporate crime is widely ignored by politicians – yet acutely felt by all Americans.

Nader/Gonzalez would crack down on corporate crime and violence with a twelve point program: http://www.votenader.org/issues/corporate-crime/

Nader/Gonzalez proposes a straightforward carbon tax—set to annual benchmarks to bring, with the expansion of solar energy, US emissions to at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

A phased in initial price of $50 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions would harness $300 billion annually—money that would be put back in the pockets of American taxpayers, and money that would finance a green industrial revolution, providing a boon of 10 million new green collar jobs (in efficiency retrofits, cogeneration, geothermal, solar energy generation, and green grid enhancements) in the first five years. http://www.votenader.org/issues/carbon-tax/

Ralph/Gonzalez would work to end corporate personhood
http://www.votenader.org/issues/corporate-personhood/


Also check out:
http://www.votenader.org/issues/speculation-tax
http://www.votenader.org/issues/single-payer
http://www.votenader.org/issues/taft-hartley
http://www.votenader.org/issues/corporate-personhood
http://www.votenader.org/issues

Policy Talks@Google: Ralph Nader

Debating the Role of Third Parties in the U.S.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

Different Approaches to Poverty

Summing up this article:

I don't have to sum up McCain because you can guess that he's still using Voodoo Economics, or what Reagan's administration like to call "starving the beast," (cut taxes for rich people and business and EVERYBODY saves!). This has shown time and time again to only create class divide and not wealth across the board.

"Raising the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax credit for low-income workers, has been suggested by Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and would allow higher-income families to claim the credit."

Clinton

• Proposing tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for single workers, supposedly this would provide an average tax cut of $750 for 4 million people
• Offer $1,000 in investing incentives to encourage low-income people to build wealth
• 5 million jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy technology
• $1 billion annually to states to create 100,000 new jobs to improve energy efficiency in public buildings
• A program to weatherize 20 million low-income homes would reduce heating bills and create 2,000 new jobs
• Take 300,000 families off welfare
• Force capable fathers to pay child support
• job programs would help struggling fathers through job training/counseling

Obama

• Reduce the marriage penalty, which taxes some married couples at a higher rate than if each partner filed as a single person

• Plans to tap into alternative energy to create a "green jobs corps" made up of disadvantaged youth
• Responsible Fatherhood programs
• Address Domestic violence
• Sponsor activities to sustain healthy relations and marriages
• Limit reductions in welfare payments if both parents work
• Grants for programs to educate young people about the consequences of early parenthood
• Aims to remove penalties on married families and "break the cycle of early parenthood" (good luck)
• Grants would be given to states to fund transitional job programs
• Require states to give full child support to the families

Ya, they're pretty much the same thing, numbers are slightly different and Obama wants to encourage fathers instead of forcing them in to anything, as Clinton suggests. Both seem to want to create another unemployment division.

Ralph Nader

"Stop tax cuts and start dealing with real problems."

As far as environmental issues/jobs, Ralph Nader was instrumental in establishing EPA, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act. Personally, I feel poverty has less to do with focusing on "deadbeat dads" and removing people from welfare when the U.S. education system is a joke. Take college tution:

In February (2006) Congress ... cut $12 billion out of the student loan programs, mostly from students and parents. In a report just out, the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) found that in California, 17.9% of public college students and 28.8% of private college graduates have unmanageable student loan debt were they to take jobs as teachers or social workers. Yet these critical careers desperately need college graduates to replenish their ranks. (To download the full report, go to http://www.calpirg.org. See also http://www.studentloanjustice.org.
"Sallie Mae and the Student Loan Swindle" Ralph Nader, Counterpunch.org May 13/14, 2006
see also "Sallie Mae's Success Too Costly?" CBS 60 Minutes May 7, 2006

If a student can't start working on their career because of the burden of debt ruining their credit, how can they begin raising a family? A lot of single mothers and fathers put themselves through college with student loans.

Nader on Education

• Invest in K-12 education; that will reduce poverty
• Teach democratic principles & citizenship in schools
• Kick Channel One & commercialism out of class
• Focus on civic & consumer education
• Help people grow up civic instead of growing up corporate is an important function of the Department of Education
• Children are spending more and more money directly -- under 12 years of age they spent $ 12 billion last year, and they caused their parents to spend $ 150 billion. They need a consumer perspective, how to become a smart shopper.
• Charity work is good; but politics addresses root causes
• While the minimal government benefits still afforded the poor are provided only to the most impoverished, no such “means testing” is applied to corporate welfare beneficiaries. By and large the bigger the company, the more it extracts in government supports.

"Democracy can’t co-exist with gross income inequality" (on welfare and poverty)
In 1941, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis made a prescient observation when he wrote: “We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.” Today, that concentration of wealth and its political power has reached stunning intensities. In large companies, people who work in the same enterprise are now earning $1 for every $416 that the CEO takes away. In 1940, it was $1 for every $12. Today the financial wealth of the top 1% of households exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95% of American households. Earlier this year Bill Gates’ wealth was equal to the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans. Whatever this enormous imbalance says about the Great software imitator from Redmond, Washington, it means that about tens of millions of Americans, who work year after year, decade after decade, are nearly broke. What democracy worth its salt would have led to this profound inequity?"
Source: Nomination Acceptance Speech Jun 25, 2000

"While the minimal government benefits still afforded the poor are provided only to the most impoverished, no such “means testing” is applied to corporate welfare beneficiaries. By and large the bigger the company, the more it extracts in government supports."

"The new welfare law sets strict time limits for how long poor people can receive government supports, but no such time limitations attach to government handouts to big business."

"The welfare law denies benefits even to legal immigrants; corporate welfare, by contrast, is far more non-discriminating-Uncle Sam subsidizes foreign corporations as well as domestic businesses., including millions to Canadian mining companies. "


Homelessness
He proposed a "Domestic Marshall Plan to abolish poverty and the class/race system;" a public works project to rebuild America’s cities; a big affordable housing program, and an effort to expand mass transit.

[Instead of economic statistics, ] let’s look at the people indicators. We have homelessness. Affordable housing levels are at a peak in terms of not being met even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are reporting record profits. And then the facilities, the schools, the clinics, the public works that serve ordinary Americans aren’t being repaired. If you take people indicators, there’s quite a different economy.
Source: Interview on ‘Meet the Press’ May 7, 2000

14M families spend half of their income on housing
Fourteen million families spend more than half of their entire income on housing much of it crowded and substandard, leaving little for other necessities such as food, clothing and medical care. Any payout for housing beyond that often leads to serious economic problems which push families into bankruptcy and homelessness - not to mention the fact that many forgo proper nutrition and medical care in an attempt to keep their homes. Source: In the Public Interest, "Tax Cuts Homeless Problems Grow" Jun 3, 2003

1.35 million children are homeless
Lack of a stable place to live is traumatic for adults, but for children the experience is particularly cruel. More than 1.35 million children are homeless at some point each year. They exist in shelters, cars, parks or pushed into already badly overcrowded quarters. The homeless life disrupts their education, exposes them to communicable diseases, malnutrition, depression and drug addictions.
Source: In the Public Interest, "Tax Cuts Homeless Problems Grow" Jun 3, 2003

How is Nader Polling

Last week, we reported on a poll showing Ralph Nader at 10 percent in Michigan.

Last month, a Fox News poll showed that one in seven voters (14 percent) would seriously consider voting for Ralph Nader for President in November.

And just this morning, a Suffolk University poll of Pennsylvania Democrats shows Nader at four percent.

But then the pollsters at Suffolk University reported this finding:

Nader's four percent could potentially quadruple, as 17 percent of Democratic respondents said that if their first choice does not get the Democratic nomination, they may vote for Nader.

Here's the point:

This is a volatile election year.

Both parties are securely in the hands of large multinational corporations.

And as a result, on key issues that the American people care about, Nader/Gonzalez are on one side of the political fence, McCain/Clinton/Obama are on the other.

Nader: Obama "stays on a very high plane of generality and abstraction"

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Ralph Nader, three-time presidential candidate. Will he make it four? He has just formed an exploratory committee to decide whether to run for president here in this year, 2008. Ralph Nader, the issue of running and taking away votes from the Democrats, take that on, something that has made many people very angry, feeling that you took the race from Al Gore at a time that was absolutely critical for this country.

RALPH NADER: Well, if you ask Al Gore, he’ll give you ten reasons, each of which independently was a cause of his losing. He believes he won—I agree he won—in Florida, but it was stolen from him before, during, and after the election by the Secretary of State and Jeb Bush, all the way from Tallahassee to that atrocious political decision by the Supreme Court. There are a lot of “what if’s,” Amy. What if he got Tennessee? What if he got Arkansas? What if the mayor of Florida didn’t go to Madrid and not bring out thousands of his votes?

Anybody who looks at an independent or third party candidate, whether it’s a Green Party candidate or Independent Party candidate, and uses the words "Are you taking away votes from the Democrats?” in my view, is basically saying that small party candidates are second-class citizens. Either we have an equal right to run for elective office in our country, or we are basically developing a two-tier system, where the two dominant parties, with all their commercial support, control the votes in this country. So either none of us are spoilers, because we have an equal right to run, or all of us, because we’re trying to take votes from one another, are spoilers. There’s no stratification. When that word “spoiler” is used to attach to a small party candidate, that, to me, is clear political bigotry, just as if it was used against a class of voters years ago during the pre-civil rights era. So I think ballot access is a major civil liberties issue, and people in this country, whether they like it or not, must recognize how discriminatory that word is and must try to adhere to what the polls tell us, that they really want more voices and choices and that about 60 percent of the people of this country want a viable third party, even though they may not vote for that party.

So we have to get over it, and liberals especially have got to get over their easy abdication of least-worst voting for the Democrats, where they don’t put any pressure or they don’t make any demands on the Democrats, because they fear that the Republicans are worse. That sets up a system where the corporations are pulling 24/7 the Democrats in their direction to become corporate Democrats, like the corporate Republicans, and no one is pulling the other way. Why? Because they’re all freaked out by the Republicans, and they’re going for least-worst voting. All the bargaining power of progressives and liberals atrophy with that attitude.

So if they don’t want to support a small party candidate, if they don’t want to go to our website, naderexplore08.org, and see the reasons in that remarkable letter by my supporters that’s on that website, see the reasons why we are testing the waters, then they at least have to make demands on the Democratic Party, which they did not make in ’00 against Gore and they did not make against John Kerry. In fact, they had a moratorium on demonstrations against the war in ’04.

AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, you, a while ago, said that if Hillary Clinton were the Democratic presidential nominee, you would run for president against her. What is your assessment of Barack Obama?

RALPH NADER: My assessment of Barack Obama is that he knows what the score is in terms of the male distribution of power. He knows what he has said in the past about the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the need for Palestinian rights and a two-state solution. He knows that this war was a criminal war in Iraq and we’ve got to get out of it in a responsible, expeditious manner. He knows that corporations have too much power over workers and consumers and small taxpayers and elections and the government.

But when you watch him, he stays at a very high plain of generality and abstraction about change, and we’re one nation, and we’re one people. And that may sing with the desire of people to feel like they’re part of a unity, but it doesn’t do much for the productivity of the political dialogue. He does not get specific enough. Therefore, I think his main problem is he’s censoring himself, and that is not sufficiently rationalized by saying that’s just a tactic to win the primaries and get elected. After awhile, day after day, week after week, when you self-censor yourself, you become a different person, and it’s a reflection on character.

I also think that if he didn’t self-censor himself, if he started reverberating to the many mainstream press reports on corporate crime, fraud and abuse against pensions, against workers, against small investors; on the labor laws that are obstructing workers from organizing; on the need to have a foreign policy that isn’t militaristic; on the need to have an efficient military budget, where he said he wants to enlarge and modernize the military, which is already absorbing half of the federal government’s operating expenditures; on the need to direct taxpayer money to the necessities of the American people and not to pour them into corporate subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, which we call corporate welfare; on the need to protect consumers, especially in the inner city, from the rapacious practices of lenders; etc., I think he would enormously advance the number of people who would support him. And he certainly has the intellect to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think he has different positions than Hillary Clinton? And what is your assessment of her?

RALPH NADER: His declared positions almost fit the definition of protective imitation (nature or politics). They’re too close to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a corporate Democrat. There’s no better evidence of that than the Fortune magazine cover story in June of last year, which basically said business loves Hillary. Hillary is a big business candidate.

And so, I think the healthcare proposal is a perfect example by Barack Obama of this protective imitation. Why doesn’t he go for full Medicare? Why doesn’t he go for a deeper analysis of the healthcare problem in this country, namely the need to emphasize prevention of disease and trauma, the need to knock out $220 billion of billing fraud and abuse, according to the Government Accountability Office and Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard University, against the need to reduce malpractice and stop blocking action to go to the courts for the tens of thousands of people who are injured or killed because of the small percentage of reckless doctors operating in this country who should have their license suspended? He should also focus on the enormous administrative expense savings from full Medicare—one payer, not 1,500 payers and cross-billings, etc., that are now taking about $300 billion to $400 billion.

Wordless Interview

Nader at Ten Percent in Michigan

For fully a month now, the national media has largely ignored the Nader/Gonzalez campaign.

And yet, when the people of Michigan were asked earlier this month if the choice in November were between McCain, Clinton or Nader, 46 percent said McCain, 37 percent said Clinton and fully 10 percent said Nader.

If the choice were between McCain, Obama and Nader, Obama pulled 43 percent, McCain 41 percent, and Nader 8 percent.

This reflects national polling. For example, a Fox poll last month showed that about one in seven voters - 14 percent - say they would "seriously consider" voting for Ralph Nader.

Given the virtually total corporate media blackout, this is a remarkable result.

And we are heartened by it.

For Clinton, Obama and McCain, ten percent might seem like peanuts.

But for Nader/Gonzalez, it shows we're on our way up.

It has been our contention all along that the corrupt two-party system cannot stand.

Perhaps we are now seeing the first cracks in the facade of the duopoly.

We have joined with you in a rebuilding project.

Rebuilding a people-powered democracy.

That will deliver single payer, Canadian style, private delivery, public health insurance.

That will cut the bloated, wasteful military budget.

That will reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East.

That will secure a living wage.

That will end the illegal war in Iraq.

Last month the Zogby poll put Ralph Nader at five to six percent nationwide.

This month, it's ten percent in Michigan.

Thanks to you, we have made great strides over the past few months.

But we see this as just a beginning.

Here is what we must do now.

We are very close to securing federal matching funds.

What does it mean to secure matching funds?

For every dollar you give up to $250 - and we thank you for each and every dollar - the federal government will match it.

But to secure matching funds, we must first collect $5,000 in matchable donations in each of at least 20 states.

We are almost there.

So, please, be as generous as you can be.

Give whatever you can now - to help push us over the top.

Together, we can make a difference.

Onward

The Nader Team

PS: We invite your comments to the blog.

Civics Quiz

I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
- Thomas Jefferson

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
- Abraham Lincoln

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.
- Woodrow Wilson

The citizens of the United States must control the mighty commercial forces which they themselves called into being.
- Theodore Roosevelt

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
- Dwight Eisenhower

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves - and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.
- Thomas Jefferson

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Civics Quiz

Which of the following candidates for President of the United States best reflects values expressed above?

a) John McCain
b) Hillary Clinton
c) Barack Obama
d) Ralph Nader

The answer?

d) Ralph Nader
(voteNader.org)

Ralph Nader: "Once again, Pres. Jimmy Carter is to be commended for taking the initiative toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"

Once again, former President Jimmy Carter is to be commended for taking the initiative toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The announcement that he will meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, is consonant with a March 1, 2008 poll by the leading Israeli newspaper - Haaretz - that found 64 percent of Israelis favor direct talks with Hamas. Only 28 percent were opposed. (Hamas was created years ago with the critical support of both the Israeli and U.S. governments as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization.)

An impressive number of retired top Israeli and American government officials have called for - or believe there should be - negotiations with Hamas, the organization which controls Gaza, presently under an Israeli siege.

Both United Nations and European Union officials have demanded that the Israeli government lift the siege or blockade which is severely depriving Palestinian civilian families of needed medicine, food, electricity, clean water, fuel and other critical life-saving supplies and materials. Gaza has become the world's largest prison with 1.5 million inmates - many sick or dying - making that tiny enclave a major humanitarian crisis that invites moral and political denunciation by world leaders.

In addition, during the hostilities over the past year, Palestinians have suffered at least 300 civilian casualties to every Israeli civilian casualty.

The major party Presidential candidates - McCain, most offensively for one who says he stands against individual and collective torture - and Clinton and Obama - distanced themselves from Carter's forthcoming initiative.

Nader

• Solving Palestinian-Israeli conflict would reduce terrorism. (Feb 2008)
• Palestinian statehood and security for Israel. (Sep 2002)

McCain

• Iran & Syria must not get nukes; they'll exterminate Israel. (Nov 2007)
• Palestine: Against declaration of statehood. (Feb 1999)

Obama

• Palestinian people suffer-but from not recognizing Israel. (Apr 2007)
• FactCheck: Palestinian suffering from stalled peace effort. (Apr 2007)
• Supports Israel's self-defense; but distrusted by Israelis. (Oct 2006)

Clinton

• Supports border security fence in Israel. (Oct 2006)
• Cut off US aid if Palestine declares a state unilaterally. (Oct 2000)
• Focuses on increasing relationship between US and Israel. (Oct 2000)
• Support Israel in finding a safe and secure peace. (May 2000)
• Extend peace treaties to Palestinians, Syrians & Lebanese. (Nov 1999)

(OnTheIssues.org)

McCain, renewing his fealty to Washington's Puppet Show, condemned Carter's move, while Clinton and Obama declared they disagreed with Carter.

It is time for all retired military, diplomatic and national security officials from both parties who agree with Carter - and there are many - to band together and launch the Washington Peace Show leading to what a majority of Palestinians and Israelis want - a viable two-state solution.

It is remarkable that the Republican and Democratic candidates for President of the United States stand in opposition to 64 percent of Israeli public opinion - and in opposition to leading former Israeli intelligence chiefs and foreign ministers - who want negotiations with Hamas.

If you agree with the Nader/Gonzalez platform of reversing U.S. policy in the Middle East, please vote now with your donation to our campaign.

Thank you for your ongoing and generous support.

Onward

-Ralph Nader

U.S. Health Care

Michael Moore's "Sicko" (Now you have no excuse)

Good Movie, Now Where's the Movement?
Sicko and the Politics of Health Care - Ralph Nader, June 2007

Ralph Nader's stance on Health Care (ontheissues.org)

#For single-payer; all major candidates oppose it. (Feb 2008)
#Billing fraud and abuse costs $200B. (Feb 2008)
#Single-payer health care plan over for-profit care. (Feb 2008)
Single-payer health care, Canadian-style system

Hillary Clintons stance on Health Care

# Bottom line is cost; mine is more affordable than Obama's. (Feb 2008)
# Obama's plan includes mandate on 150 million parents. (Feb 2008)
# Taxpayers pay for drug R&D, not drug companies. (Jan 2008)
# My health care program will cover everyone. (Jan 2008)
# Need a health care system that manages chronic diseases. (Jan 2008)
# Universal health care is a core Democratic principle. (Jan 2008)
1993 Clinton Health Care Plan... also see HMO

Barack Obama

# Hillary's plan must either be enforced, or leave out people. (Feb 2008)
# The problem with health care is about affordability. (Jan 2008)
# Subsidies to people who can't afford care--not single payer. (Jan 2008)
# Bring GOP & Dems together to make haelthcare affordable. (Jan 2008)

McCain

# Harness market competition for comprehensive reform. (Feb 2008)
# Preserve quality of health care by individual responsibility. (Dec 2007)
# Give individuals $2500 refundable tax credits for healthcare. (Oct 2007)
# Control health costs so manufacturers stay competitive. (Oct 2007)
# No mandated universal system; no mandated insurance coverage. (Jun 2006)
# We should be able to reimport drugs from Canada. (Jan 2006)

The Insane Cost of U.S. Health Care (everything2)

Election Season

What's been pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year?

Answer:

-Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget,
-adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system,
-impeaching Bush/Cheney,
-opposing nuclear power - among many others.


What candidate, if any, would address these issues?
Post with your opinion and provide references if you have them. Thanks!
Watch NBC Sunday Feb 24th at 8am