Stand Up! Take Action! Vote!
By David Swanson
July 2, 2010
The Democratic leadership in the House had to resort to an unusual and underhanded tactic to pass war funding Thursday night.
Norman Solomon
July 2, 2010
Watch — Norman Solomon: From Wall Street to the war, this isn’t what progressive democrats voted for
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For the warfare state, it doesn’t get any better than 99 to 0.
Every living senator voted Wednesday to approve Gen. David Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Call it the unanimity of lemmings—except the senators and their families aren’t the ones who’ll keep plunging into the sea.
No, the killing and suffering and dying will be left to others: American soldiers who, for the most part, had scant economic opportunities in civilian life, and Afghans trapped between terrible poverty and escalating violence.
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Jam the switchboard on July 1
While President Obama’s debt commission works to undermine Social Security and Medicare as part of the nonsensical austerity measures proposed by neocons to relieve the debt created, in large part, by two wars of choice, Congress is poised to approve another $1 million per troop for a total of more than 33 billion dollars!
The pressure we’ve been applying on Congress to vote against the supplemental funding bill for the war in Afghanistan has made a difference. Forty House members have decided to vote no, and at least 10 more are on the fence.
Our sources are telling us that Congress will vote tomorrow, July 1.
California Political Desk
June 30, 2010, Sacramento, CA
Published by California Chronicle
The Assembly Health Committee today approved the California Universal Health Care Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco). The bill guarantees all Californians comprehensive, universal health care while containing ballooning health care costs and improving the quality of care and delivery of health services statewide.
“Our state is being bankrupted by out-of-control health care costs, and small businesses and families are struggling to pay premiums that rise as much as 40% every year,” said Senator Leno. “California´s single payer plan remains the gold standard for health care reform, and is the only proposal that will truly contain health care spending and provide universal coverage for all.”
By David Swanson
WarIsACrime.org
June 29, 2010
Whether an organization opposes a war is not simply a yes or no question. Does it profess opposition when cornered and asked, or does it go all out organizing events, phone calls, press conferences, and civil disobedience? Is the organization a media outlet with multiple views? Does it oppose wars but muddle the issue with unhelpful amendments and rhetoric? How much opposition amounts to opposition?
Nonetheless, it has become clear that many groups opposed wars in significant ways when Bush was president and have not done so since. Additionally, the coalition that opposed the “emergency” war funding bill last year seems to have shrunk considerably by the time this year’s “emergency” war escalation bill came around. It’s not too late to change that, and most of last year’s war opponents jumped on with a statement at the last moment. That may happen again in the coming days.
David Swanson
June 29, 2010
Published by AfterDowningStreet.org.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who will openly tell you he does whatever President Obama and Speaker Pelosi instruct, can bring the war escalation funding to the House floor despite the opposition of Appropriations Chairman David Obey. This is because the House passed the bill without the war escalation funding and sent it to the Senate, which has now sent it back to the House.
Norman Solomon is going on KPFA “Morning Show” tomorrow (Thursday) at 8:10 a.m. to talk about the swap of Petraeus for McChrystal; 94.1 FM on the radio in Northern California and streaming on the web at www.kpfa.org
EVERY WAR HAS TWO LOSERS – An evening with Alice Walker, Haydn Reiss, and Norman Solmon.
This exciting evening will begin with a viewing of Haydn Reiss’s documentary film, Every War Has Two Losers.
Here’s the Rafael Film Center’s page for this event: http://www.cafilm.org/rfc/films/1392.html
Here’s the Facebook page for the film: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Every-War-Has-Two-Losers/154807543895
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Rafael Film Center
San Rafael, CA
Following the movie HAYDN REISS will join Pulitizer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, ALICE WALKER, and the award winning author of War Made Easy and Made Love, Got War, NORMAN SOLOMON, for a discussion about pursuing peace during wartime.
Every War Has Two Losers confronts two powerful ideas: Do wars lead to lasting peace and are wars inevitable? Based on the journals of William Stafford, a conscientious objector in World War Two and award-winning poet, Stafford reasoned that war was a choice – a human choice – and not inevitable. War was but one way to respond to conflict. The film is an invitation on how all of us can contribute to a more peaceful world.
By David Swanson
June 23, 2010
WarIsACrime.org
The video embeded at the bottom of this article and posted on the frontpage of http://congressmanwithguts.com may be the best corporate television interview ever. Not the funniest or most entertaining, but the most willing to directly and clearly expose the most forbidden topics and insist on the most needed changes in perspective.
The CongressmanWithGuts website is Congressman Alan Grayson’s public and participatory demonstration of a simple fact that should be made known to a few hundred congress members who have not grasped it: If you do what the public wants and reach out to the public, you can raise your own funds and not depend on the Party Leadership to fund your campaigns. This, of course, is what allows you to do what the public, and not the Party Leadership, wants.
1) HNW co-chair, Donna Smith,upated us on the Declaration of
Health Independence and talked about some upcoming events including the Washington, DC Brown Bag Lunch Vigil.
2) Katie Robbins from Healthcare-NOW! joined us to talk about
plans for the upcoming US Social Forum.
3) Eve of Brown Bag Lunch Vigil updates.
4) State Medicare for All updates.
The team welcomed Danna Moore from Future 500 to discuss the organization’s efforts to recruit businesses to join in the effort for sound climate legislation. In addition, we discussed the role of the EPA in regulating CO2 and recent attempts to gut the Clean Air Act, the bill which gives the EPA the authority to regulate air quality.
While the EPA is neither the best mechanism, nor does it have the ability to entirely address the climate crisis, it is in the position to begin the process and could produce the same or better results than the short term goals of the current legislation under consideration.
Also included: an update on our legislative strategy, the Cleveland Grassroots Leadership Conference, and Mountain-top mining.
Norman Solomon
June 23, 2010
Take Action: Tell Congress – No More Money for War
When the wheels are coming off, it doesn’t do much good to change the driver.
Whatever the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.
Between the lines, some news accounts are implying as much. Hours before Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that “the firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts—even in the military—that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise.”
Michael Aparicio
June 23, 2010, Santa Rosa, CA
Take Action: Eat lunch for peace—become a brown-bagger
Published by Michael Aparicio.
Nearly nine years after September 11, 2001, the U.S.A. continues to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So far these wars have “cost” billions of dollars, over a million causalties, at least a hundred thousand lives, and uncounted traumas.
Yet these “costs” continue to be obscured within government reports and, despite confessing its past failures, the corporate media’s reoccuring reliance on sensational war reporting:
Dennis discusses the link between gutting of social services and paying for Trillion Dollar wars.
CLICK HERE to read the PDSonoma letter delivered to Rep. Woolsey’s staff at the June BBLV. Hands Off Social Security & Medicare!
With $2 BILLION in Sonoma County taxes going to pay for the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, participating in a monthly Brown Bag Lunch Vigil to stop the escalation and funding for wars is an act of community support.
CLICK HERE to learn more about the Cost of War and what that $$$ could be used for instead.
CLICK HERE to learn more about the Brown Bag Lunch Vigils and how WE can help to End War & Occupations by sending a consistent message to our Congressperson to stop funding wars, set firm dates for complete withdrawal, and dismantle corporate influence over our government.
CLICK HERE to Read More about the CA State Democratic Party Resolution to “End the U.S. Occupation and Air War in Afghanistan”.
Santa Rosa, CA
June 16, 2010
Dear Representative Woolsey,
It’s like a trick of misdirection, except that instead of a magician distracting an audience from seeing how the legerdemain is accomplished, we’re living through Congress deflecting our attention from important domestic issues over to patches on a system that is ready to burst.
Instead of enacting health insurance reforms that would have been fiscally responsible, ethical, and humane—such as Medicare for All with a single-payer system—we’re faced with the president and Congress telling us that to balance our budget we need to make cuts in two of the only programs in our country that offer protection to those who most need it: Medicare and Social Security.
— photo by Michael Aparicio
Brad Friedman
June 15, 2010
Join PDA’s Clean, Fair, Transparent Elections Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .
Vic Rawl says inexplicable Democratic primary contest casts ‘cloud’ over state election; Notes ‘irregularities’, problem reports from voters, poll workers, vows ‘electoral reform’, calls for ‘full and unblinking investigation of overall integrity’ of state’s ES&S voting system.
Published by BradBlog.com.
A formal challenge to the announced results of South Carolina’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate has now been filed by Judge Vic Rawl, the candidate who wasn’t announced the winner by the state’s oft-failed, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable ES&S e-voting system.
1) On this call we had a DC Update: The supplemental war spending vote is expected at any time. Featured guest: Mike Darner, United States Congress Legislative Director for Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
2) We Introduced the launch of the PDA vets for peace working group. We had representatives from Iraq Vets against the War and Veterans for Peace. The objective is to add the voices of progresive veterans to PDA’s on-going educational, electoral and legislative campaigns.
Dan Froomkin
June 14, 2010
Take Action: Tell your senators and members of Congress “Cut the military budget, NOT Medicare and Social Security” at the next Brown Bag Lunch Vigil .
Local Focus: Cost of War to Sonoma County
Published by The Huffington Post
When you think about ways to tame the nation’s long-term deficit, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Slashing benefits for the old and sick? Or taking a few whacks at the spectacularly bloated defense budget?
Now that health insurance reform has become law, PDA is taking the fight for Medicare for All single-payer health insurance to the states. In this episode, Tim Carpenter interviews Chuck Pennacchio, Healthcare4AllPA Director and Ben Day, MassCare Director about the single-payer efforts in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Produced by David Pakman of Midweek Politics http://www.midweekpolitics.com/
June 13, 2010
Norman Solomon, Syndicated Columnist & Progressive Democrats of America, National Board Member, discusses President Obama’s relationship with the progressive & liberal wings of the Democratic Party, unaffiliated liberals, and the Political Left.
Washington, DC
Robert C. Koehler
June 12, 2010
Join PDA’s Stop Global Warming/Environmental Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here .
Published by Commondreams.org
As Planet Earth continues to hemorrhage crude oil from its wound—with a worst-case estimate of as much as 100,000 barrels a day—we grope, beyond our anger and guilt, simply to imagine what damage we have done in the pursuit of human empowerment.
We are an affiliated chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)
MOVIE NIGHT!
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
NOTE: Early start time for Wednesday’s meeting, in order that we may enjoy Movie Night and still have time for an endorsement meeting to follow.
PDSonoma meets the 2nd Wednesday of every month except December.
New Members and Guests Always Welcome!
Refreshments can be ordered and enjoyed in our meeting room. Please arrive early if you wish to order refreshments.
Healthcare advocates from fourteen states met in Wayne, Penn., April 10, 2010. The following Declaration is a result of the meeting. Add your name to the Declaration! PDA is planning actions around the country when our goal of 25,000 signatures is met.
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