Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

Published by the Huffington Post.DETROIT—A former Detroit city councilwoman was sentenced to more than three years in prison Wednesday for bribery after a federal judge refused to set aside her guilty plea during a stormy court hearing dominated by a dispute over evidence of other payoffs. As guards cleared the packed courtroom, Monica Conyers yelled that she planned to appeal. The wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wanted to withdraw her guilty plea, suggesting she was the victim of "badgering" last year when she admitted taking cash to support a Houston company's sludge contract with the city. But U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn, reviewing a transcript of the June hearing, said Conyers had denied any coercion and voluntarily pleaded guilty to conspiracy. [more]

Published by the Chicago Sun-Times. Most observers predict that the five-person right-wing majority of a divided Supreme Court will overturn hundreds of local laws and decades of precedent to rule that cities cannot regulate the ownership of guns. As the arguments begin before the court in the case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, the justices--and Americans--should pause and take another look. Al-Qaida's attacks on Sept. 11 killed more than 3,000 people. We responded as one nation. We committed billions to the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, passed the Patriot Act, and launched two big wars. Every year in this nation, 30,000 people die due to gun violence. Our response? The activist right-wing judges of the Supreme Court trample precedent, overturn laws and distort the meaning of the Second Amendment, claiming the Founding Fathers intended individuals to have the right to bear arms. (In fact, their real intent was to guarantee the arming of state militias, arguably to ensure that the federal government would not stand in the way of the Southern states organizing to protect slave masters from slave uprisings.) [more]

On Monday afternoon, a controversial Utah bill that charges pregnant women and girls with murder for having miscarriages caused by "intentional or knowing" acts, was signed into law by Gov. Gary Herbert. Published by TruthOut. Contrary to media reports last week, the "Criminal Homicide and Abortion Amendments" or HB12, which previously also applied to miscarriages caused by "reckless" acts, was never "withdrawn" by its sponsor, Republican Representative Carl Wimmer (who is crafting similar "model legislation" for other states). After the governor expressed concern over "possible unintended consequences," of the legislation as written, Rep. Wimmer swiftly introduced a new version, titled "Criminal Homicide and Abortion Revisions" (HB462), which omitted the word "reckless." Gov. Herbert signed the new bill and vetoed the old one. [more]

Take Action: Visit MovetoAmend | Sign the motion | Get involved at FreeSpeechforPeople

Published by FreeSpeechForPeople.org. The damage from the Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United v. FEC" continues to spread as feared. Newly emboldened corporations are suing to overturn state laws that restrict corporate spending on politics: "A pro-natural resource development group [how's that for spin?] and a Bozeman painting company asked a Helena District Court on Monday to strike down Montana’s 1912 ban on corporate donations and expenditures to political campaigns to comply with a January U.S. Supreme Court ruling." Meanwhile, the new third branch of government (the other two being the Democratic and Republican parties), the institution that had predicted in an amicus brief that it would be the largest beneficiary of "Citizens United," is now becoming just that. [more]

Join PDA's Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by The Nation. Doris "Granny D" Haddock, whose 3,200-mile walk across the United States at the age of 90 drew thousands of activists into the movement for political reform, has died Tuesday evening at the age of 100. The Dublin, New Hampshire, grandmother's death came ten years and ten days after she finished the remarkable two-year walk, which she undertook to promote the passage of campaign finance reform legislation (in particular the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform law). [more]

Take Action: Tell Congress "In Afghanistan, don't escalate--remediate"

Marjah isn't even a town, but rather one of the clearest and most dramatic examples of a war of perception as outlined in the US's counter-insurgency doctrine. Publisned by IPS News / Alternet. WASHINGTON--For weeks, the United States public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan war against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand. [more]

Take Action: Eat lunch for peace--become a "brown-bagger"; learn more here.

Published by AfterDowningStreet.org. Sixty-five congress members, including 60 Democrats and 5 Republicans, voted to end the occupation of Afghanistan on Wednesday. But 356 congress members, including 189 Democrats and 167 Republicans voted to keep the war going. The vote followed three hours of debate created by Congressman Dennis Kucinich's introduction of a privileged resolution. [more]

Join PDA's Healthcare for All Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by the Huffington Post. WASHINGTON--Americans and their lawmakers are dramatically out of sync on health care, with large majorities of people looking for bipartisan cooperation that's nowhere in sight. A new Associated Press-GfK Poll finds a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, which suggests President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have a political opening to push their plan. Half of all Americans say health care should be changed a lot or "a great deal," and only 4 percent say it shouldn't be changed at all. [more]

Join PDA's Healthcare for All Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Bill Opens Up Medicare To Anyone Who Can Pay For It Representative Alan Grayson Press Release. Washington, DC--Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Fla., today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The “Public Option Act,” also known as the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act,” would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it. [more]

Published by AP/Huffington Post. A New Hampshire woman who was known as Granny D and walked across the country a decade ago to publicize the need for campaign finance reform has died. She was 100. Spokeswoman Maude Salinger says Doris "Granny D" Haddock died Tuesday night at her home in Dublin. Salinger, who is also a family friend, says Haddock died of chronic respiratory illness, surrounded by her family. [more]

URGENT ACTION: Watch the Debate--Tell your member of Congress to support H. Con. Res. 248.

Published by The Washington Post. Liberals in the House, who have spent much of the past year complaining that other congressional Democrats and the White House are insufficiently progressive, will get a chance this week to vent about one of their biggest concerns: the war in Afghanistan. [more]

Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by Empire Burlesque.

I.

As we all know--or rather, as everyone but those who climb and claw their way to the top of power's greasy pole knows--the effects of war are vast, unforeseeable, long-lasting--and uncontrollable. The far-reaching ripples of the turbulence will churn against distant shores and hidden corners, then roil back upon you in ways you could never imagine, for generations, even centuries. [more]

Join PDA's Healthcare for All Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Since millions of American patients face medical debt they didn't know they'd have--and many if not most of them purchased insurance to protect against that debt--it seems logical to me that patients should be fully informed up front of the financial risks they are taking on when they seek medical care. Doctors and others providers should publish and post in their offices their methods of debt collection and the numbers of patients they sue in an average practice year. They can put the disclosures of medical debt collection practices right next to the little signs that tell patients they must pay their co-pays prior to receiving medical care. [more]

Join PDA's Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by The Huffington Post. You can't but help admire Tom Friedman's enthusiasm for technological innovations. The NY Times columnist and mega-bestselling author has probably interviewed more scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs about high tech clean energy ideas than anyone in the last few years. [more]

Published by Creators.com. You know what we need to juice up the performance of our weak economy? Viagra. Yes, America needs a new Viagra, specifically targeted to stiffen backbones--in particular, the limp backbones of Barack Obama's team, as well as the flaccid spines of Democratic congressional leaders. Where's the drug industry when we really need it? The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes, then they seduce us by proposing stout actions. But when it comes time to follow through--it's droopsville. Take America's job crisis. Obama and the Democrats eloquently empathize with the plight of struggling families who are falling out of the middle class. They point out that after Wall Street banksters crashed our economy and created the Great Recession, which began in December 2007, the number of jobs available to Americans has plummeted by more than 8.4 million. Since then, another 2.7 million jobseekers have come into the workforce. That leaves us in a hole that is 11.1 million jobs deep. [more]

Take Action: Tell Congress "You bailed out Wall Street, now bail out Main Street"

Published by The Nation. The Simpson-Bowles Commission, just established by the president, will no doubt deliver an attack on Social Security and Medicare dressed up in the sanctimonious rhetoric of deficit reduction. (Back in his salad days, former Senator Alan Simpson was a regular schemer to cut Social Security.) The Obama spending freeze is another symbolic sacrifice to the deficit gods. Most observers believe neither will amount to much, and one can hope that they are right. But what would be the economic consequences if they did? The answer is that a big deficit-reduction program would destroy the economy, or what remains of it, two years into the Great Crisis. [more]

Published by AlterNet. Horrific news surrounding the too-big-to-fail banks continues to march onward into absurdity. A rapacious Bank of America forecloses on a house that's already paid for. Goldman Sachs hides Greece's hundreds of billions in debt until the entire country is a toxic asset to the global economy. Henry Paulson baldly admits that his tenure as Goldman Sachs' CEO helped him rob American taxpayers of trillions. Media, political and financial hypocrites hilariously continue to insist that homeowners shouldn't walk away from underwater mortgages as banks walk away with cash stuffed in their high-end underwear. The frustrated public would laugh, but it'd have to pull the financial gun out of its mouth first. [more]

Join PDA's Israel/Palestine Action Group; learn more here.

Published by Tribune Media Services. DOHA, Qatar—Internationally speaking, there are only two subjects to talk about in the Middle East. These are Israel, the Palestinians and the Americans; and Iran and Israel. The two subjects dominated the annual meeting here of the Institute for Mediterranean Political Studies, a group of senior or retired European, American and Middle Eastern officials and observers, otherwise known as the Club of Monaco. [more]

Published by Palestine Video. Israeli Defense Force chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, called 'The Butcher of Gaza' by Palestinian activists and some of their supporters, spoke at a 'Friends of the IDF' fundraising dinner on Tuesday. Outside New York's well known Waldorf Astoria, protesters let Ashkenazi know how they felt about his presence. [more]

Published by Alternet. John Hall is a former musician and supporter of progressive causes. But since he was elected to Congress, he has become one of the most shameless defenders of Israel's crimes. In the face of expected Republican gains this year, receiving the support of MoveOn, one of the country's largest progressive advocacy groups, is of particular importance for Democratic candidates. One of only a handful of House incumbents to receive the coveted endorsement by MoveOn's political action committee is Democrat John Hall, who represents the 19th district in upstate New York. [more]