TheNextReport

Pom Pom Princesses The cast of characters that the Republican Party presents to the world, it's social media profile, has at last come fully into the open. We have seen the boorish, nativist side of the GOP in the person of Sean Hannity - the thuggish traffic cop; Rush Limbaugh - the race-baiting gasbag; Glenn Beck - the sequestered child of Josef Goebbels. We have also seen the corporate manager, the ethically challenged Wall Street player who would just as soon see impoverished children go without medical coverage than to have to pay a few dollars more in yearly taxes; and we have witnessed the pastors, reverends and priests, all experts in the revealed word of God, who don't quite get the Sermon on the Mount. With the appearance of kewpie doll Christine O'Donnell onto the national political stage, following in the footsteps of media darling Sarah Palin, the profound neurosis that is the GOP has at last fully emerged from its gristled cocoon. A twisted form of repressed s...

The key executives of the companies responsible for the titanic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico were raked over the coals by members of Congress Tuesday and managed to skillfully dance away and blame each other when the grilling got too hot. Called to account before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D) of California were BP America President Lamar McKay; Steven Newman, CEO of well driller Transocean limited; and Halliburton chief health, safety and environmental officer Tim Probert. In their testimony, all three men appeared to simultaneously accept responsibility for what happened then shift the blame to the other parties. All relied heavily on the fact that critical details regarding the precise cause of the accident are not yet available. Indeed, when asked by several senators about whether certain industry standards for building ocean-based oil rigs were followed, the witnesses indicated several times that they didn’t know the answe...

It Came From Beneath the Sea In France it is known as “la Marée Noir”, the Black Tide. The waves of oil that are rushing to choke the shorelines of Louisiana are well-known to the residents of the Galician coast of Spain and the shores of southwestern France where I used to live. It was there in 2002 that the giant oil tanker Prestige broke apart in rough seas, a nightmare that would bring death to more than 20,000 birds and other wildlife, a nightmare that would spell destruction to the fishing and tourism industries for years afterward. Living near Bordeaux at the time, I witnessed the results of the disaster first hand. For those concerned about the effects of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, past tanker calamities such as the Prestige and the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez are instructive; they help us understand the magnitude of the damage such accidents can have on a region’s habitat, and the dangerous consequences of insufficient government regulation and political wrangling. Wh...

Between 2008 and 2010, millions of average Americans lost their jobs, their homes, their lives to the amoral practices of corporate greed. After ponying up to bail them out the government got around to us; we had to endure a year long spectacle where we were made to grovel for a measure of basic justice in our healthcare. We were told we couldn't afford it Civil War by otheer means; limitations of democracy ; no Medicare, no public option, no trigger, not even support for individual states that might want to institute a public option on their own. The victor? Joew Lieberman

You're in Good Hands So it goes. President Obama and the Democrats can finally crow about the passage of health reform legislation. Yes, it is laudable that the United States has managed, against tremendous political resistance, to provide bare-bones guarantees that most Americans will be "covered" by insurance and that some of the most egregious practices of the insurance companies will finally be brought under a measure of control. Are we to be happy and grateful, however, that we have moved from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century? Now, in retrospect, the fight over reform has been a tragic national drama revealing just how truly backward the United States is and how easily manipulated its electorate has become. The American government allowed a thoroughly criminal private insurance system to flourish for decades, a racket that extorted the populace and profited by refusing an equitable return of services, resulting in the deaths of millions and the obscene enrichment ...

When Mr. Lieberman says no public option, he means no public option—not an "opt-in" or an "opt out" or a "trigger" (a public option only comes into effect if private insurers fail to spread enough coverage). "We are at the point now where this has become the clas Before commenting on what will certainly be an exciting week in Washington, I would direct those interested in the health care debate to a recent that explores some of the myths that have, as I predicted, gradually eaten away at the Democrats health proposal so that the most fundamental institutional reform (the ending of the private insurance monopoly) will be lost.

To Promote the General Welfare Over the last few days we have been graciously informed by the media pundits of two critical facts regarding the seemingly interminable debate over health care reform: first, that President Obama's decision to postpone his trip to Indonesia next week means that a final deal among Democratic legislators is at last ready for prime time; and second, that the agreement -- according to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi -- will exclude from the American people the opportunity to choose a government-run public plan as an alternative to private insurance. Though we have heard this last assertion before, this time the death knell for the public option seems to have a ring of truth. For those of us who at times suffer from short-term memory loss when it comes to the opera of American politics, it may be useful to recall that the public option as presented last year with the full support of the president was passed by the House of Representatives and only bargai...