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Obamacare’s Faltering for One Simple Reason: Profit
Jon Schwarz
Aug. 27 2016, 8:05 a.m.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
There have been dozens if not hundreds of news articles about Aetna leaving the Affordable Health Care Act’s online marketplaces in eleven states, and whether this signals serious problems for Obamacare down the road. But none of them have truly explained that what’s happening with Aetna is the consequence of a flaw built into Obamacare from the start: It permits insurance companies to make a profit on the basic healthcare package Americans are now legally required to purchase. This makes Obamacare fundamentally different from essentially all systems of universal healthcare on earth. (There is one tiny exception, the Netherlands, but of the four insurance companies that cover 90 percent of Dutch citizens, just one is for profit.)
Why does this matter? The answer is complicated but extremely important if Obamacare is going to avoid collapsing.
editor’s note: War is not the way to peace. Try a Strategy of Generosity worldide (see www.tikkun.org/gmp) and download the full color description of the strategy
“Human rights” propaganda campaign paves way for military escalation in Syria
19 August 2016
Photographs and video of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh have rapidly become ubiquitous in the media in the US and Western Europe after being distributed by a group aligned with the CIA-backed Islamist “rebels” in Syria. The toddler is shown sitting somewhat dazed in the orange seat of a new and well-equipped ambulance, his face covered in dust and tinged with what appears to be dried blood from what was reportedly a cut to his scalp. Video shows him waiting unattended as a number of photographers and videographers record his image to be broadcast around the world. Clearly, those in charge sensed that the boy, with a mop of hair covering his brow and a cartoon t-shirt, provided a marketable image.
Editor’s Note: the following analysis gives us a perspective on the contradictions in American policy in Syria. Sadly, it remains in the discourse of “Security Through Domination” and hence leaves out of the equation what would happen were the U.S. to launch the Global Marshall Plan within a framework of Tikkun’s proposed “Strategy of Generosity.” To read that alternative path, download the brochure at www.tikkun.org/gmp. –Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com
From: Michael Brenner
mbren@pitt.edu
THE SYRIAN BADLANDS
The Syrian imbroglio is the most complex politico-military conflict of modern times. In terms of number of players, diversity of interests and purposes, intermingling of sectarian and secular ideologies, multiple connections with external parties, and harlequin patterned battlefield, the field of action is unique. Only the Spanish Civil War exhibited a similar mix of elements, although it was simplicity itself by comparison to Syria.
[ https://theintercept.com/2016/08/16/hillary-clinton-picks-tpp-and-fracking-advocate-to-set-up-her-white-house/ ]
The Intercept_
Unofficial _Sources
IMAGE [ https://prod01-cdn04.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/2016/08/ken-salazar-hillary-ft-3-article-header.jpg ]
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Hillary Clinton Picks TPP and Fracking Advocate To Set Up Her White House
Zaid Jilani [ https://theintercept.com/staff/zaidjilani/ ]
Naomi LaChance [ https://theintercept.com/staff/naomilachance/ ]
Aug. 16 2016, 1:56 p.m
Two big issues dogged Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary: theTrans-Pacific Partnership [ http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/15/politics/45-times-secretary-clinton-pushed-the-trade-bill-she-now-opposes/ ] trade agreement (TPP) and fracking [ https://theintercept.com/2016/05/23/hillary-clinton-fracking/ ]. She had a long history of supporting both. Under fire from Bernie Sanders, she came out against the TPP [http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/hillary-clinton-opposes-tpp/ ] and took a more critical position [ http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/03/hillary-clinton-debate-fracking ] on fracking. But critics wondered if this was a sincere conversion or simply campaign rhetoric.
In the last year, untold billions of words have been expended on this “election” and the outsized histories, flaws, and baggage the two personalities now running for president bring with them. Has there ever been this sort of coverage — close to a year of it already — hour after hour, day after day, night after night? Has the New York Times ever featured stories about the same candidate and his cronies, two at a time, on its front page daily the way it’s recently been highlighting the antics of The Donald? Have there ever been so many “experts” of every stripe jawing away about a single subject on cable TV from the crack of dawn to the witching hour?
An interview with African American scholar Adolph Reed on Bernie Sander’s Campaign and the New Class Politics
Bernie Sanders’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination was historic. The expectations were, to say the least, modest. One year ago, ex-Obama chief strategist David Axelrod didn’t hesitate to mock his candidacy saying that “people will have a fling with Bernie. Bernie is like a great fun date because you know he’s not going to be around town too long, and I think you’re going to see people flirt with that.”
But, against all odds, within months Sanders would raise over $200 million in small contributions, and win more than thirteen million votes (43 percent of the total) and twenty-three states. Though he fell short of the nomination, Sanders left an impact on a generation of new voters and the political discourse in the country. What exactly that will mean for the Left and the country’s labor movement remains to be seen.
Patriotic Muslim Dad Hails Dead Son’s Participation in US Crime Against Humanity in Muslim Iraq
By Jay Janson Permalink
(Page 1 of 3 pages)
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When she was Senator, Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton voted for the US invasion of Iraq, an obvious international crime against humanity that would take the lives of a million and half innocent Muslims, probably half of them children. Last week her nominating Democratic Convention, featured a Muslim father, whose son was killed participating in US crime against Muslim people ranting about what a bad guy her opponent Donald Trump is and praising himself and his son as patriotic, though Trump had spoken out against the illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq.Here below, are the very terse, concise, precise, unequivocal, brief to the point, clear and easy to understand Nuremberg Principles of International Law, mostly written by Americans, signed on to by all nations and first used to hang a number of Nazi leaders of a Germany, that invaded only some twenty nations – US since has invaded perhaps more than as twice that number.[1] (Few Americans are interested in this comparison)Principle IAny person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.Principle IIThe fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.Principle IIIThe fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.Principle IVThe fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.Principle VAny person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.Principle VIThe crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:(a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).(b) War crimes:Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labour or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.(c) Crimes against humanity:Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connectionwith any crime against peace or any war crime.Principle VIIComplicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime againsthumanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.(Your author’s mentor and dear friend, Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has stated that by Article Six of the US Constitution, the Nuremberg Principles of International Law are an integral part of the law of the land.)Later in the week, the monolithic wars justifying US media, for decades force fed and controlled by the CIA,[2] brought out information that seemed to indicate Donald Trump’s unwillingness to participate in a previous US genocidal crime against humanity to prevent Vietnam from having the communist government it has today and has had since Americans got tired of killing and being killed in what was French Indochina colonies before World War Two.Do readers recall what America’s beloved heroic champion Muhammad Ali said about his refusal to be drafted during the US war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia?”Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars.
Editor’s note: As a 501-c-3 we do not endorse or oppose any candidate for office or any political party. We do try to present views that are not normally heard in the mainstream media, but we often present ideas with which we disagree if they present perspectives that challenge our thinking or what we perceive to be the dominant thinking in the liberal and progressive world. We have long believed that liberals and progressives emerge stronger when we are forced to grapple with such alternative perspectives.–Rabbi Michael Lerner
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The Danger of Excessive Trump Bashing
August 4, 2016
Exclusive: The prospect of Donald Trump in the White House alarms many people but bashing him over his contrarian views on NATO and U.S.-Russian relations could set the stage for disasters under President Hillary Clinton, writes Robert Parry. By Robert Parry
The widespread disdain for Donald Trump and the fear of what his presidency might mean have led to an abandonment of any sense of objectivity by many Trump opponents and, most notably, the “mainstream” U.S. news media. If Trump is for something, it must be bad and must be transformed into one more club to use for hobbling his candidacy.
Trumped
Written by davidswanson
Why would it be that 8 years ago you couldn’t win a Democratic presidential primary if you’d voted for a war on Iraq after pushing all the Bush White House lies about it, and yet now you can? Back then the war looked closer to ending, the death count was lower, and ISIS was only in the planning stages. Reports on the fraud, criminality, and knowingly self-destructive nature of the war launch — reports like the Chilcot report — hadn’t yet been produced. How can you drag this albatross across the finish line at this late date in 2016? Well, you can’t, in fact.
But, Mr. Putin, You Just Don’t Understand
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/5238
Once in a while one of the videos somebody emails me a link to turns out to be well worth watching. Such is this one. In it a former U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union tries to explain to Vladimir Putin why new U.S. missile bases near the border of Russia should not be understood as threatening. He explains that the motivation in Washington, D.C., is not to threaten Russia but to create jobs. Putin responds that, in that case, the United States could have created jobs in peaceful industries rather than in war.
“Pow, Pow, Yous Are Dead!”
Children, Toy Guns, and the Real Thing
By Frida Berrigan
[From our ally TomDispatch.com]
It was a beautiful evening and the kids — Madeline, two; Seamus, almost four; and Rosena, nine — were running across a well-tended town green. Seamus pointed his rainbow flag with the feather handle at his sisters and “pow-powed” them, calling out, “Yous are dead now, guys. I shot yous.”
Madeline and Rosena laughed and just kept on running, with Seamus at their heels. I hid my face in my hands. It wasn’t just that he was playing guns, but that he was using a Pride flag as his gun at a vigil to mourn those killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Editor’s Note: Now don’t go jumping to the conclusion that I agree with Jeff St. Clair’s perspective just because I’ve posted it here. As I repeatedly say, we want a variety of perspectives on the elections on our website, and welcome yours if it’s original, lively, says something most of our readers will not have likely heard in the mainstream media, and is smart. That is not the same thing as true or accurate Asi turns out, he has written columns in which he denounces me personally as an apologist for Zionism (I wish he’d send those charges to the American Jewish leaders who repeatedly attack me for being an anti-Israel self-hating Jew!) So you have to judge for yourself if his perceptions match yours on what was happening at the convention. But we thought there were some points here worth considering, though that doesn’t mean we agree with them.
THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES
Senator Bernie Sanders had two good reasons for endorsing Hillary: 1. His firm belief that the country would be considerably worse off were Donald Trump to win the presidency; 2. If his movement to push the Democratic Party in a progressive direction would had been perceived as having failed to support Hillary Clinton, it would have been blamed if Hillary were to lose in November. If that happened, it would have given progressives the kind of bad reputation consumer advocate Ralph Nader got when he failed to tell his supporters in the 2000 presidential election to not vote for him but vote for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in those few states where the polls indicated that the outcome might well depend on Gore getting the Nader voters. The burden of that would have crippled his movement for many years to come.
Editor’s Note: Tikkun magazine doesn’t endorse any candidate or political party–we are barred from doing so as a non-profit. But we can print articles from our readers and other sources that provide their analyses and their views on the candidates and parties. Michael Moore’s analysis of the election is worthy of serious attention. As we say repeatedly, out choice of articles to print, put on our website and in our Tikkun Daily Blog do not necessarily reflect our own views–which are expressed only in our editorials in the print magazine–but rather reflect our desire to encourage public debate about important ideas (so, yes, we would welcome publication of very different views from those expressed by Moore or anyone else who seems to be backing or critiquing political candidates or political parties–see for example in our Tikkun Daily Blog an article about the Libertarian candidate, and we’ll be doing an interview with Jill Stein and we’ve requested interviews with Trump and Clinton and Sanders). In our Fall 2016 issue of Tikkun magazine we present our analysis of the reasons why many Americans are attracted to rightwing extremist movements and why they are likely to play an important role in American politics no matter who wins the 2016 presidential election.