They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn That the Union makes us strong.

The House has just passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would effectively restore to Americans the internationally and domestically recognized but nonexistant right to form unions.  The US labor movement has invested untold millions in lobbying for this victory, and plans to invest untold more in trying to achieve the same victory in the Senate in the coming months.  Should that happen, the fate of the bill is already known.  Cheney has promised to have Bush veto it.

But that's not all Bush intends to veto.  Here's a recent Associated Press story:

The New York Times and CBS News recently polled the US public:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/03022007_poll.pdf

After a long list of questions that confused any distinction between health care and health coverage, the New York Times/CBS asked:

"Do you think it would be fair or unfair for the government in Washington to require all Americans to participate in a national health care plan, funded by taxpayers?"

By 48 to 43 percent, respondents said: unfair.  But a strong majority had already said they thought it was very important for the government to cover everyone, even if it meant raising taxes.  What was seen as unfair here, for some people, was almost certainly the national health care plan, which sounds like something more than a national health coverage plan.  In fact it sounds like Walter Reed Hospital.

The New York Times article reporting on the poll quoted one respondent who obviously thought national health care, not just coverage, was being discussed:

To the editor:

As the President persists in pursuing victory in Iraq and everyone who is not a US Senator debates whether a "surge" will achieve it, I find myself wondering what “victory” might look like. I fear it could look like a celebration of the President’s “invade first, maybe ask questions later” foreign policy—oh, and an invasion of Iran. Why anyone would welcome that “victory” is beyond me. Imagine how many more American soldiers shipped home in boxes such a “victory” could bring. In this light, the real lesson of Viet Nam may well be that the American People can win by losing--fewer caskets--and I hope they learn it in time to ship the President’s Middle East policy somewhere, in boxes--preferably somewhere far, far away.

Robert A. Letcher, PhD
Columbus. Ohio
Department of Energy Research Shows Technology Does Not Reduce Risks of Nuclear Proliferation and Terrorism

Background

The Bush administration requested $250 million in its fiscal 2007 budget as a first installment for a program to "reprocess" spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. Spent fuel is intensely radioactive, and reprocessing is a complex chemical operation that separates plutonium from those elements in spent fuel that make it highly radioactive. At that point the plutonium can be used to make new reactor fuel or nuclear weapons. For this reason, there has been a long-standing concern that reprocessing facilities anywhere would be potential sources for terrorists seeking the materials required to make nuclear weapons, and that such facilities could ease the path for nations beginning nuclear weapons programs. These concerns led the United States to abandon its reprocessing program in the 1970s.

Why extracting plutonium from spent nuclear reactor fuel is a bad idea

Background:

The Bush administration is requesting a FY2008 budget of $405 million for its major new nuclear energy initiative, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which involves "reprocessing" the used (or "spent") fuel from nuclear power reactors. Reprocessing separates plutonium and uranium from other nuclear waste contained in spent nuclear fuel. The separated plutonium can be used to fuel reactors, but also to make nuclear weapons. Nearly three decades ago, the United States decided on non-proliferation grounds not to reprocess spent fuel from U.S. power reactors, but instead to directly dispose of it in a deep underground geologic repository where it would remain isolated from the environment for at least tens of thousands of years.

Americans frustrated with the Democratic congressional leaders for dithering over Iraq should never forget who actually drove us into the Iraqi quagmire. Even those Democrats who voted for the president's war resolution in 2002 did so only after the president repeatedly promised -- with the deepest insincerity -- that he would only invade Iraq as a "last resort."

            Responsibility for that lie and many others rests squarely with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who have spent nearly four years, thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to create catastrophe. Today every policy alternative, including a phased withdrawal, is likely to impose costly consequences on us, on the Iraqis and on the world.

            So perhaps the Democrats deserve more than a month or two to determine how best to extricate our troops from that complex and perilous trap.

FOR THE WASHINGTON STATE SENATE HEARING CALLING FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES TO INVESTIGATE AND CONSIDER HEARINGS ON EVIDENCE THAT COULD LEAD TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH AND VICE-PRESIDENT RICHARD B. CHENEY

MARCH 1, 2007

One of the first big show trials here in the post-9/11 homeland was of a Muslim professor from Florida, now 49, Sami al-Arian. Pro-Israel hawks had resented this computer professor at the University of South Florida long before Atta and the hijackers flew their planes into the World Trade Center towers, because they saw al-Arian, a Palestinian born in Kuwait of parents kicked out of their homeland in 1948, as an effective agitator here for the Palestinian cause.

            As John Sugg, a fine journalist based in Tampa who's followed al-Arian's tribulations for years, wrote in the spring of 2006: "When was al-Arian important? More than a decade ago, when Israel's Likudniks in the United States, such as [Steven] Emerson, were working feverishly to undermine the Oslo peace process. No Arab voice could be tolerated, and al-Arian was vigorously trying to communicate with our government and its leaders. He was being successful, making speeches to intelligence and military commanders at MacDill AFB's Central Command, inviting the FBI and other officials to attend meetings of his groups. People were beginning to listen."

Wow, the weapons heavies had to cut and run. A sense of enlightened self-interest - the same stuff that legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky was preaching in Chicago's Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood six decades ago - enabled a bunch of little guys out West to stare down the future of nuclear warfare, and win.

This unprecedented development must be savored. Divine Strake, the simulated nuclear blast the Defense Threat Reduction Agency was initially planning to set off nine months ago at the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas - which would have raised a 10,000-foot mushroom cloud of god-knows-what - has been scrapped for good. After several postponements and a round of power-point presentations at various locations downwind of the test site that did nothing but fuel people's outrage, it ain't gonna happen.

Tell Your Representative to Support HRes 121! Rep. Michael Honda (D-CA) has reintroduced his resolution on "Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women" House Resolution 121 denounces Japan's sexual enslavement of Asian and Pacific Island women during World War II and demands that the Japanese government apologize and accept historical responsibility. Urge your representative to co-sponsor this resolution, and to support it should it come to a vote. The sexual slavery system was widely practiced by the Japanese military in countries it occupied during World War II.

February 20 marked the 65th anniversary of Japan's invasion of then Portuguese Timor in 1942. Approximately 40,000 East Timorese were killed during the three-year Japanese occupation, and about one thousand Timorese women were enslaved by the Japanese military, of whom at least thirteen are still alive.

In a recent statement, the Japan Coalition for East Timor called on their government to extend an "official apology to the victims as soon as possible" and should consult with the victims on compensation.

Pages

Subscribe to ColumbusFreePress.com  RSS