Our best chance of getting a single-payer universal health care system is not. The top 10 reasons to support H.R. 676 are provided here.<< MORE >>

Allow me to share my recent experience on a major airline carrier, (Jetblue) which resulted in my being
expelled from my flight. First let me preface this tale by saying that I have had a life long terror
of airplane travel. This despite the fact that I have traversed the globe since I was two years old.
However as age and dementia have started their vicious crawl, it has only worsened. One of the
manifestations of this horrific and paralyzing fear, is I always feel compelled to stop at the
cockpit as I am boarding and check my drivers. I ...<< MORE >>

A teacher candidate needs to learn the fundamental tenets of family involvement. These basic premises are essential for building a productive experience with parents to enhance student learning and support family life. To be successful in parent involvement, a teacher must: 1. understand the cultural and socio-economic challenges, strengths, and aspirations of families; 2. recognize the primacy of the home as an authentic and potential place of learning; and, 3. cultivate a collaborative, enriching, and respectful relationship with the student’s parents. Beliefs in these principles, however, are put to a severe test when a teacher works with students and parents caught in homeless situations. << MORE >>

1968 was a seminal year in my life and the lives of many others. It was the year I tried hardest to change the political priorities of my country. With the support of my wife, I joined the campaign of Robert F. Kennedy for President. Without invitation I had designed a plan for RFK to capture the delegates of the states that selected its delegates through the convention system. There were 17 of them at that time. Everyone else was working on the primary states. I sent the plan to the RFK Think Tank in DC. I didn’t have a name to send it to; I just sent it to the Think Tank office. << MORE >>

Article Reprinted from Senator Sanders Website http://Sanders.Senate.Gov
Sanders Op-Ed: Billions for Bailouts! Who Pays? -- 09/19/2008  

The current financial crisis facing our country has been caused by the extreme right-wing economic policies pursued by the Bush administration. These policies, which include huge tax breaks for the rich, unfettered free trade and the wholesale deregulation of commerce, have resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy.

The middle class has really been under assault. Since President Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped into poverty, median family income for ...

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The immediate cause of our financial meltdown is unchecked, unbridled greed. Mainstream newspapers and the business press are doing a fairly good job of explaining how the lack of regulatory oversight led us into this nightmare. But you have to dig down one layer to find the cause of that situation. Under cover of the ideological euphemism known as the "free market" and with enormous cash investments over the past four decades, business elites have captured the regulatory organs of powerful democratic states -- nowhere more so than the United States -- and promoted their own narrow economic agendas for short-term gain. There's an enormous amount of discussion about that in the independent media. But to drill down a layer deeper, to the bedrock of the crisis, you have to go to some deep thinkers who don't get much play in our mainstream economic discourse. << MORE >>

The goal of the transnational corporation is to become truly transnational, poised above the sovereign power of any particular nation, while being served by the sovereign powers of all nations. Cyril Siewert, chief financial officer of Colgate Palmolive company, could have been speaking for all transnationals when he remarked, "The United States doesn't have an automatic call on our [corporation's] resources. There is no mindset that puts this country first." With international “free trade” agreements such as NAFTA, GATT, and FTAA, the giant transnationals have been elevated above the sovereign powers of nation states. These agreements endow anonymous international trade committees with the authority to prevent, over¬rule, or dilute any laws of any nation deemed to burden the investment and market prerogatives of transnational corporations. These trade committees—-of which the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a prime example---set up panels composed of “trade special¬ists" who act as judges over economic issues, placing themselves above the rule and popular control of any nation, thereby insuring the supremacy of international finance capital. This process, called globalization, is treated as an inevitable natural “growth” development beneficial to all. It is in fact a global coup d’état by the giant business interests of the world. << MORE >>

Outspoken author, historian and media critic Michael Parenti visits Sonoma State University August 28 to present the first of the Modern Media Censorship Lectures to be held Thursdays during the fall semester (7 PM in Darwin Hall 103). << MORE >>

In recent weeks we have heard a number of folks say that they wonder if Barack Obama would actually do the good things he says he will do if he is elected President. Fair enough, but what's the alternative? The danger that if John McCain is elected President he will do the things he says he will do. Of course, McCain might not do the things he says he will do. So where does that leave us? What should we, the voters, do in the face of this quandary? The first thing we should do is not judge candidates by whether they might deliver the goods promised during an election campaign. Why not? Because we can never know for sure. Despite fine rhetoric and charismatic appeal during their election campaigns, we did not know beforehand whether or not FDR or JFK would, or could, actually deliver the goods. Only with historical hindsight do we now know that they did deliver. And so it will be with every other candidate, both present and future. << MORE >>

A few days before Congress passed its Housing Bill, Carlene Balderrama of Taunton MA found her own solution to the housing crisis. Just a little over two hours in advance of the time her mortgage company, PHH Mortgage Corporation -- may its name live in infamy -- was to auction off her home, Balderrama killed herself with her husband's rifle. This is not the kind of response to hard times that James Grant had in mind when he wrote his July 19 Wall Street Journal essay entitled "Why No Outrage?" "One might infer from the lack of popular anger," the famed Wall Street contrarian wrote, "that the credit crisis was God's fault rather than the doing of the bankers and the rating agencies and the government's snoozing watchdogs." For contrast, he cites the spirited response to the depression of the 1890s, when lawyer/agitator Mary Lease stirred crowds with the message that "We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out.... We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary..." << MORE >>