I Love My Obamacare  website and petition efforts: We have collected over 2,300 signatures of  “ILoveMyObamacare.org”  supporters, including more than 350 gathered at protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison.  We also collected over 600 signatures at the combined labor and teacher rallies last Wednesday at the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.

  Congressman John Conyers is fully supporting this effort for several reasons.  He explains that our I Love My Obamacare effort is the next step towards gaining Medicare for All, HR 676.  If our opponents are able to repeal Obamacare in the US Senate, we may never see “health care for all” during our lifetime.  Fortunately, our and others’ efforts for Obamacare are gaining more strength, as Conyers states that more and more pro-health reform Congress Members on the floor are speaking about their support for “Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare.”  Also, Conyers appreciates the fact that President Obama was crucial in passing the Affordable Care Act last year, and calling the Act Obamacare is a tribute to his and every ones efforts.   

 

While Ohio public employees' rights to bargain collectively are under siege, the Ohio Republican Party executed a perfect sleight of hand by disenfranchising nearly 900,000 Ohio voters. In the most vicious and direct attack on voting rights since Bull Connor ran amok in the deep South, Ohio House Republicans passed HB 159 that requires Ohio voters to produce one of four state photo IDs at the polls.

The only IDs that will be accepted in Ohio if this bill passes the overwhelming Republican State Senate are a U.S. passport, a U.S. military ID, an Ohio driver's license, or an Ohio state ID. This is the most restrictive standard in the nation.

The Republican Party's target is obvious. Studies indicate that 25% of African Americans nationwide do not have a government-issued photo ID, 18% of voters over age 65 do not have a photo ID, and 15% of voters with incomes under $35,000 lack the ID as well. Besides going after blacks, the elderly and the poor, the bill also sets its sights on college students. What do these people have in common? They tend to vote Democratic.

Since Saturday night, the United States, France, and Britain have been bombing Libya with cruise missiles, B-2 stealth bombers, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets, and Harrier attack jets. There is no reliable estimate of the number of civilians killed. The U.S. has taken the lead in the punishing bombing campaign to carry out United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973.

The resolution authorizes UN Member States “to take all necessary measures . . . to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.” The military action taken exceeds the bounds of the “all necessary measures” authorization.

The unfolding multiple nuclear reactor catastrophe in Japan is prompting overdue attention to the 104 nuclear plants in the United States - many of them aging, many of them near earthquake faults, some on the west coast exposed to potential tsunamis.

Nuclear power plants boil water to produce steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. Nuclear power's overly complex fuel cycle begins with uranium mines and ends with deadly radioactive wastes for which there still are no permanent storage facilities to contain them for tens of thousands of years.

Atomic power plants generate 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Over forty years ago, the industry's promoter and regulator, the Atomic Energy Commission estimated that a full nuclear meltdown could contaminate an area "the size of Pennsylvania" and cause massive casualties. You, the taxpayers, have heavily subsidized nuclear power research, development, and promotion from day one with tens of billions of dollars.

The Japanese people are now paying a horrific price for the impossible dream of the "Peaceful Atom." For a half-century they have been told that what's happening now at Fukushima would never occur.

Our hearts and souls must first and foremost go out to them. As fellow humans, we must do everything in our power to ease their wounds, their terrible losses and their unimaginable grief.

We are also obliged---for all our sakes---to make sure this never happens again.

In 1980, I reported from central Pennsylvania on what happened to people there after the accident at Three Mile Island a year before. I interviewed scores of conservative middle Americans who were suffering and dying from a wide range of radiation-related diseases. Lives and families were destroyed in an awful plague of unimaginable cruelty. The phrase "no one died at Three Mile Island" is one of the worst lies human beings have ever told.