Pesticide Watch to Hold Special Screening of "Food, Inc" Friday, July 3

Pesticide Watch Education Fund will host a special opening-night screening of the new film Food, Inc. Local advocates and leaders will share their perspective and provide solutions to many of the problems raised in the film, hailed as the next Inconvenient Truth. Following the film, chefs, academics and activists will participate in a lively discussion on how the region, state and country can tackle the challenges facing farms and the food system.

WHERE: The Crest Theatre, 1013 K Street, Sacramento

WHEN: 8:00-9:30pm Film; 9:30-10:30 Panel

WHO: Ann Martin Rolke, chef, blogger, author; Gail Feenstra, Food Systems Analyst, UC Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education Program; Jaclyn Hopkins, coordinator EAT Sacramento; Elizabeth Martin-Craig, Pesticide Watch Education Fund community organizer.
Time: Friday, July 3, 2009 - 8:00pm PST

Peripheral Canal: Panama Canal North?
Proposed government boondoggle would be 500 to 700 feet wide, with 1,300 foot right-of-way
by Dan Bacher

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Dianne Feinstein, corporate agribusiness and other supporters of the peripheral canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have carefully avoided discussing what an actual canal would look like, as well as its enormous environmental impacts and budget-busting cost to the taxpayers.

However, in the size and scope of the project, it would be very similar to the Panama Canal, according to recent comments by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan on the floor on the floor when she and other legislators were asked to vote on a bill to fund a committee to develop a plan to implement the Delta Vision recommendations.

A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras

It is impossible to imagine that the US was not aware that the coup was in the works. At minimum, the US could have flexed its tremendous economic muscle before the coup and told the military coup plotters to stand down.

By Jeremy Scahill

There is a lot of great analysis circulating on the military coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. I do not see a need to re-invent the wheel. (See here here here and here). However, a few key things jump out at me. First, we know that the coup was led by Gen. Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas. As we know very well from history, these “graduates” maintain ties to the US military as they climb the military career ladders in their respective countries. That is a major reason why the US trains these individuals.

Secondly, the US has a fairly significant military presence in Honduras. Joint Task Force-Bravo is located at Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras. The base is home to some 550 US military personnel and more than 650 US and Honduran civilians:

They work in six different areas including the Joint Staff, Air Force Forces (612th Air Base Squadron), Army Forces, Joint Security Forces and the Medical Element. 1st Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment, a US Army South asset, is a tenant unit also based at Soto Cano. The J-Staff provides command and control for JTF-B.

The New York Times reports that “The unit focuses on training Honduran military forces, counternarcotics operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief missions throughout Central America.”

Significantly, according to GlobalSecurity, “Soto Cano is a Honduran military installation and home of the Honduran Air Force.”

This connection to the Air Force is particularly significant given this report in NarcoNews:

The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the School of the Americas in 1996. The Air Force has been a central protagonist in the Honduran crisis. When the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes for the opinion poll, the ballot boxes were stored on an Air Force base until citizens accompanied by Zelaya rescued them. Zelaya reports that after soldiers kidnapped him, they took him to an Air Force base, where he was put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.

Candle Light Budget Vigil at the Capitol (North Steps)

Join with other concerned residents of California -
Put the "Civil" Back in "Civilization"!

Tues., June 30, 2009
8:30-9:30 pm

Candle Light Budget Vigil at the Capitol (North Steps)
Surround Capitol Park with candles!
Demand a decent budget!
(Please bring candles in jars or other wax-catching holders.)
No elimination of vital state programs and services!
No shutting down parks and important government protective bodies!
No state default!
Time: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 - 8:30pm PST

Single payer and the Public Option
by Sheila Kuehl

This is my second health related essay of 2009. You have either received it because you signed onto my health essay list or because someone forwarded it to you. If you received it by forwarding, this essay is from former California State Senator Sheila Kuehl. If you want to subscribe to these essays, go to my website at www.SheilaKuehl.org. If you want to unsubscribe, the button is below.

As many of you may know, I was the author of a bill to establish a Medicare-like, single payer program in California. The bill passed both houses of our state legislature in 2006 and, again, in 2008, and was vetoed both times by the current Governor. Since I termed out of the Legislature at the end of last November, the bill is being carried this year by Sen. Mark Leno (SB 810).

In 2008, not-yet-President Obama proposed, as a part of his healthcare reform package, the establishment of a "public option"---an insurance plan offered by the federal government as an alternative to private health insurance, and against which the private companies, left in place, would compete.

CWA is holding a "Hands Off My Health Care" rally at the California State Capitol next Wednesday, July 1st. Sign up now to join your brothers and sisters at this important event:

http://www.unionvoice.org/cwafunds/events/handsoffhealthcare/register.tcl

Here are all the details:

What: "Hands Off My Health Care" Rally
When: Wednesday, July 1st 12:00-1:00pm
Where: State Capitol North Steps, Sacramento, CA
Time: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 12:00pm PST

Rally to Save Vital Services

Wednesday, July 1, 2009
11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
West Steps, State Capitol

Take your furlough day, take a vacation day, or just come out on your lunch hour on Wednesday.

We are turning up the heat and telling the governor:
Enough is enough
Save vital services
Protect our pay and our pensions
Time: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 11:30am PST

Dennis Kucinich votes against climate change bill

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who is widely known as an advocate for the environment and for clean energy, announced on Friday that he had voted against the climate change legislation passed earlier that day by the House of Representatives.

“I oppose H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009,” Kucinich stated in a press release. “The reason is simple. It won’t address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse.”

Adulterers, not gays, pose threat

Re "Mystery over: Trip was tryst in Argentina" (Page A1, June 25): As a very bitter and angry gay man, reading about another holier-than-thou Republican politician or fundamentalist evangelist who has broken one of the Ten Commandments (adultery), it makes me sick to my stomach.

I keep thinking back to the arguments used by these hypocrites to support Propositions 22 and 8: Vote to protect and defend the family; gay marriage will destroy the holy and sacred institution of marriage.

Join the Rally and March to what we hope will be our new Safe Ground site
With Special Guests Papa Roach

Wednesday, July 1st - 10:00 a.m.
Meet at Loaves & Fishes
1321 North C Street, Sacramento, CA 95811

"Safe Ground" is…

§ A secure location, sanctioned by the city & operated by the residents
§ A place with clean water, toilets, and garbage collection
§ A place where residents can be free from harassment and danger
§ A place where homeless people can access services they need to turn their lives around

Every day, more than 1,200 homeless men, women, children and families are struggling to make it on Sacramento County’s streets.

Homelessness is not a new problem. But a bad economy means more people on the streets, and fewer government dollars to help them.
Time: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 10:00am PST

Wellstone Progressive Democrats of Sacramento Monthly Meeting

The next meeting of the Sacramento Wellstone Democratic Club is Wednesday, July 1st - 7pm at the Arden-Dimick Library (891 Watt Ave.)

Agenda and discussion topics for this month’s meeting:

Introductions- Members & Guests
Committee & Officer Reports

Bay-Delta Conservation Plan– Guest Speaker- Keith Coolidge- Bay Delta Authority
Presentation about the Preservation Plan for the San Francisco Bay and the Delta Region

California Water Grab– Guest Speaker- Dan Bacher & Robert Johnson
Presentation about Peripheral Canal and Dam issues raised by Governor Schwarzenegger

Single Payer Healthcare– Guest Speaker- Rose Roach, River-Delta Field Director for CSEA & CSEA’s representative on the CA Education Coalition for Health Care Reform Committee
Information on Health Care reform and where Single-Payer is on everyone’s agenda
Time: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 - 7:00pm PST

Animals on drugs: 11 unlikely highs

25 June 2009 by Rowan Hooper

Animals take to drugs just as readily as we do. Sometimes they avail themselves of natural highs, and sometimes lab animals get very fond of substances they are fed for research. So, sit back with your stimulant of choice and enjoy New Scientist's round-up of animals on drugs.

1. Wallabies on opium

The marsupials of Tasmania have found a means of passing the time on Australia's island state that could also explain mysterious local crop circles. Wallabies have been munching the poppies grown for opium by the pharmaceutical industry.

"We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," the attorney general was quoted in The Mercury newspaper.

Sheep and deer have also been reported as being raving opium fiends.

2. Elephants on acid

In 1962, the director of a zoo in Oklahoma had the bright idea of firing a syringe dart containing almost 300 milligrams of LSD – about 3000 times the normal dose a hippie would take – into one of his elephants. Sadly, the animal went crazy, then died.

Elephants are regularly reported going on booze-fuelled rampages in India, but zoologists calculating the amount the animals would have to drink to get rowdy have cleared them of being under the influence. The aggressive elephants are simply defending their territories, apparently.

3. Shrews on booze

Pen-tailed tree shrews in Malaysia gorge themselvesMovie Camera on the flowers of the bertam palm, which contain fermented nectar of up to 3.8 per cent alcohol.

Unlike their distant human relatives, however, tree shrews quickly metabolise most of the alcohol they consume into a by-product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). The stuff ends up safely stashed in the shrews' fur, at levels normally found only in severely alcoholic humans.

[Take a look at that picture - see that red line? - that represents a billion dollars. Now click on the picture and watch the video on the income disparities in this country, and state, And remember that when Arnold and the Neanderthal Party say "no new taxes", these are the people and corporations that they are fighting for. Also click on the header to read the links in the article. PS If anyone tries implying that Arnold Schwarzenegger is just like them, ask them if they can afford a house like Arnold's]

California State Budget Crisis Not Caused by the Recession

by Peter Phillips — last modified Jun 23, 2009 02:10 PM

Is California's budget crisis a consequence of the recession? Are such analyses short-sighted? Or worse? According to this commentary, they're part of a trend going back to 1993, during which wages and unions have been undermined to protect corporate profits.

The budget crisis in California has been artificially created by cutting taxes on the wealthiest people and corporations. The current “crisis” is a shock and awe process designed to undermine wages and unions in the state and force labor concessions to protect corporate profits.

According to the California Budget Project, tax cuts enacted in California since 1993 cost the state $11.3 billion dollars annually. Had the state continued taxing corporations and the wealthy at rates equal to those fifteen years ago we would not have a budget crisis today.

Half of all state revenue comes from personal income taxes paid by working people, and another third comes from sales and use taxes. The result is that as a percent of income, taxes hit the lower paid workers the hardest. Corporations only pay for about 1/10th of the state budget. The rest of us are bailing out the rich by accepting massive budget cuts at a time when less spending will only exacerbate the economic situation.

Unions and working people need to say no to massive state budget cuts, and fight for every service and job possible.

Or is it hypocrisy?

CSPA Action Alert: 6.26.09

Delta Water Bills Threaten Our Fisheries
by John Beuttler, Conservation Director, California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA)

Some key Sacramento politicians are now staging efforts to merge various water bills that will pave the way for a Peripheral Canal (they call it “conveyance”) and more dams, but by either name it will mean the end of being able to rebuild and obtain sustainable sportfisheries dependent on the Delta and its tributaries.

The focus of the efforts on the Delta has shifted to a significant extent away from trying to fix the ecosystems collapsing foodweb and fisheries to finding a way to delivery all the water demanded by the state’s corporate agriculture industry that their well financed political machine dictates.

This is not the "change" I was "hoping" for...
--Bill

Obama messes up on health care, big time
June 24, 2009, 9:57 am - by Paul Krugman

Really bad news on the health care front. After making the case for a public option, and doing it very well, Obama said this:

“We have not drawn lines in the sand other than that reform has to control costs and that it has to provide relief to people who don’t have health insurance or are underinsured,” Mr. Obama said. “Those are the broad parameters that we’ve discussed.”

There he goes again, gratuitously making a big gift to the other side.

My big fear about Obama has always been not that he doesn’t understand the issues, but that his urge to compromise — his vision of himself as a politician who transcends the old partisan divisions — will lead him to negotiate with himself, and give away far too much. He did that on the stimulus bill, where he offered an inadequate plan in order to win bipartisan support, then got nothing in return — and was forced to reduce the plan further so that Susan Collins could claim her pound of flesh.

[Two articles: The first one is from March but still accurate - how many single-payer stories have you seen on tv recently? Or in the Bee? And the second is recent but really something that has gotten under my skin - NPR has gone Fox News Lite. Seriously, listen to Talk of the Nation sometime, especially when they talk about any of the wars. And click on the pic for video of Laura Flanders. If you scroll down to the comments, I made one, which I'm going to expand on, here, once I get the time, which will be about the Manufacturing or Engineering of Consent by the media (yes, blogs too) and our political leaders]

FAIR Study: Media Blackout on Single-Payer Healthcare Proponents of popular policy shut out of debate

Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Barack Obama's March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new FAIR study. And advocates of such a system--two of whom participated in yesterday's summit--were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.

Single-payer--a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada's current system)--polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09). But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major U.S. newspaper.

Over the past week, hundreds of stories in major newspapers and on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer mentioned healthcare reform, according to a search of the Nexis database (2/25/09-3/4/09). Yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of "single-payer" (or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as "Medicare for all," or the proposed single-payer bill, H.R. 676), and only five included the views of advocates of single-payer--none of which appeared on television.

Of a total of 10 newspaper columns FAIR found that mentioned single-payer, Krauthammer's syndicated column critical of the concept, published in the Washington Post (2/27/09) and reprinted in four other daily newspapers, accounted for five instances. Only three columns in the study period advocated for a single-payer system (San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/26/09; Boston Globe, 3/1/09; St. Petersburg Times, 3/3/09).

[...]

---

Why won't NPR cover real health care reform? Follow the money....

Wed, 06/17/2009 - 8:44pm — Mytwords

A few days ago a reader (h/t to Masbrow) mentioned an interesting article by Felice Pace in CounterPunch. Pace does a little exploring with the NPR search engine to see how poor, old single payer fares there. He notes that "...stories mention single payer. [but] I can find no NPR news reports or other shows which actually focused on single payer or on the movement to achieve it."*** This prompts him to ask, "Why is NPR refusing to report on what 60% of US citizens and the majority of health professionals want?" To answer that question he did a little more digging at NPR and found that (as of 2006) NPR's financial health care was mighty dependent on some heavy hitters in insurance industry:
• $1 million+: Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, Prudential Financial
• $500,000 - $999,999: Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Allstate Insurance Company, Northwestern Mutual Foundation
• $250,000 - $499,999: AARP, The Hartford Financial Services Group, UnumProvident
• $100,000 – $249,999: Liberty Mutual Insurance Company

[By Congress, he means people like Dianne Feinstein (video). Who, btw is your Senator who you can ask to support S 703. SF Phone: (415) 393-0707; Washington DC Phone: (202) 224-3841.

You can also ask Doris Matsui to make up for her war vote by supporting HR 676. Sacramento Phone: (916) 498-5600; Washington DC Phone: (202) 225-7163

If you want, you could remind them of the only healthcare plan that will save $350 BILLION and put 2.6 MILLION people to work

Congress to Transfer Hundreds of Billions in Tax Dollars to the Insurance Industry

Tuesday 16 June 2009
by: Kevin Zeese, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Single-payer witnesses show the common-sense path, but Congress is listening to industry donors.

Yesterday, as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) left the health-care hearing room, he leaned over to me and said:

"I used to sell insurance. The basic rule is the larger the pool the less expensive the health care. Today we have 1,300 separate pools - separate health care plans - and that is why health care is so expensive; 700 pools would be more efficient and less expensive and one pool would be the least expensive. That's why single payer is the answer."

Nothing like common sense.

But, common sense was not on display in the Senate yesterday. Instead, the Senate is seeking a path to the goal of universal coverage by protecting the least-efficient model - the for-profit insurance industry that through waste, fraud, abuse and bureaucracy eats up 31 percent of the cost of health care.

Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) who chaired the hearing, standing in for the ailing Ted Kennedy, has received $2.1 million from the insurance industry throughout his career, another $547,000 from the pharmaceutical industry and $467,000 from health care professionals. Dodd opened the hearing stating the stark facts:

Americans spend more than $2 trillion on health care every year - more than 18 percent of our GDP. By 2040, 34 cents of every dollar we spend could be on health care. That is not simply unacceptable - it's unsustainable. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs for individuals and families alike continue to skyrocket.

It was evident throughout the day that money was on the minds of the senators. But, they could not look into the face of the obviously most efficient path, single payer. Instead, they were going through contortions to protect their benefactors in the insurance industry.

This rocks!



Capitol Protesters Demand to See Governor

Anger boiled over in the state Capitol as the disabled and their advocates temporarily blocked the main corridor

CSPA Goes to War with Schwarzenegger over Delta Salinity Standards.
by Dan Bacher

The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance is going to war with the Schwarzenegger administration over its failure to comply with California Delta salinity standards in an evidentiary hearing in Sacramento on Thursday, June 25.