The following email was in our inbox and we thought it should be shared:
Last November, Americans went to the polls to end our country’s nightmare of warrantless wiretapping and abuses of civil liberties. We elected President Obama and the Democrats to stick the totalitarian Patriot Act where it belongs - in the [...]

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There is a brilliant article by Lawrence Lessig on the website of  The Nation entitled “How to Get Our Democracy Back.”     http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100222/lessig Please take the time to read it.
It cuts through the details of policy debate and the obfuscation of media-driven punditry to expose the root of the dysfunction of our democracy:  Fundraising Congress.  [...]

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An excellent article last week  in Counterpunch, the online magazine, by Bruce Patterson examines the official treatment of returning veterans and what it says about our country’s political approach to war.  The article is called “Welcome Home, Hold Your Tongue.”  Some exerpts from the article are below.  For the full article (a highly recommended read), [...]

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Did you ever wonder how health care insurance in America became linked with employment?  The answer is that during World War II, when wages were frozen by the government, employers objected that they would not be able to recruit or retain employees.  To offset that problem, the government offered tax exemption for employer-sponsored health insurance [...]

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Here is a good idea forwarded to us by email:
For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress.  Many citizens had no idea that Congress members could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they didn’t pay into Social Security, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of [...]

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During the last few weeks of December and the beginning of January, most media sources publish lists of “best” “worst” or “most important” people, events, or issues of the past year.  After looking through many of them for inspiration in the cause of building the kind of world I’d like to see, I found what [...]

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Our government has focused much effort and treasure at bailing out and shoring up the financial institutions that led the world into crisis and recession.  The following excerpts from an article in The Nation by William Greider suggest that it might be more effective in terms of ending the recession to focus some of that [...]

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We have recently received a note from Alan Maki of Minnesota about his blog posting.  He is trying to get people to think about the connections between the military-industrial complex and global warming.  Here is an exerpt from his blog (to read more, go to http://thepodunkblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/some-thoughts-about-copenhagen-and.html):
I’m curious; is there any industry that contributes more to [...]

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It is possible that any day now President Obama may decide to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Here in the U.S. and no doubt around the world, people will react in pain, anger and sorrow, knowing what tragedy and suffering will follow.

The following is a message received from United for Peace [...]

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President Obama spent last weekend making signals about a move away from a public option in health care reform and toward something he called “health insurance reform.”  The predictable outcry from his supporters caused the White House to try to rephrase the changes.  He is still not spelling out exactly what he wants to see [...]

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