The legislation proposed by leaders of three House committees would set a 1 percent surtax on couples with more than $350,000 in annual income, with higher rates taking effect for those earning $500,000 and $1 million. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said the surtax would raise $540 billion over the next decade

On July 21, seven members of the Blue Dog Coalition forced House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman to cancel debate and a vote on a health care bill already passed by two other House committees. The Blue Dogs cited their objections to the cost of the program, and Blue Dog spokesman Representative Mike Ross questioned the wisdom of taxing the wealthy.

Some conservative Democrats have taken in sizable sums from Wall Street in campaign donations; 

• Blue Dog leader Ross’ haul from the financial-services sector totalled nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions. 
• Montana’s Sen. Max Baucus counts the securities-and-investment industry as the top sector from which he gains campaign contributions, according to OpenSecrets.org; among his top five contributors are Goldman Sachs, AIG and KKR & Co.

The energy, financial services, and health care industries have accounted for nearly 54 percent of the Blue Dog PAC’s 2009 receipts according to The Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Tax Justice, a progressive think tank, laid out a variety of options [PDF] for paying for health care reform. One suggestion is a 1.45 percent Medicare tax on the capital gains and other non-wage income of millionaires – a measure that could raise billions of dollars.

 Ross reportedly objects to the measure.

Congress has been considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000 — that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1-percenters. This surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion, the 1-percenters received from the Bush tax cuts. In fact, it is so miniscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year — or nine-tenths of 1 percent of their 12-month haul.

But as usual lawmakers, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, are driving their luxury cars over the middle-class. Hence, the letter from Boulder, Colorado’s dot-com tycoon Rep. Jared Polis calling for the surtax’s death. Echoing that demand are those like Sen. Max Baucus, who come from the heartland’s culturally conservative and economically impoverished locales, and quietly build insurmountable campaign war chests as the biggest corporate fundraisers in Congress. They claim to be just “regular folks” from “back home.” Folks who now promise to kill the health care surtax because they say that’s what their communities want. As if their impoverished constituents would knowingly support the richest one percent of the country when they can barely support their own families.

The Media, elite journalists and opinion-mongers who represent corporate media conglomerates and/or are themselves extremely wealthy, support them in this ridiculous fairy-tale. They ignore all the data about inequality, then legitimize the claims that America’s fat cats are being unfairly persecuted. This, at a time when those fat cats are better off than they have been since 1929. NBC’s Meredith Vieira asked President Obama why the surtax is intent on “punishing the rich?” Obama responded with, “No, it’s not punishing the rich. If I can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when I already have security, that’s part of being a community.”

Meanwhile, reform supporters fear that the White House’s bill has been so compromised, so bent to favor the big interests, it’s less Waterloo than watered down, a mockery of the change they had hoped for and that America desperately needs, with 22,000 Americans dying each year simply because they lack health insurance.

The Republicans have more than health care reform in their sights — they want a loss for Obama so crushing it will bring the administration to its knees and restore GOP control of Congress after next year’s elections. Republican Senator Jim DeMint, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

As the Republicans fired away, big business stepped up their lobbying and advertising attacks. The Chamber of Commerce, for one, announced a major campaign to crush the White House’s plan for a competitive public option that would allow consumers to choose between a government plan and private health insurance. The media is filled with messages aimed at moving opinions away from any change that might threaten profits.

According to The Associated Press, the drug industry’s trade group PhRMA (the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America) and the drug company Pfizer “reported spending more money than other health care organizations on lobbying in the second quarter of this year” - $6.2 million from PhRMA, $5.6 million from Pfizer. “Including its latest report, PhRMA has now spent $13.1 million lobbying so far this year. Pfizer has reported $11.7 million in lobbying expenses for 2009.”

This is part of the reason, as Alicia Mundy and Laura Meckler recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, that “the pharmaceuticals industry… is winning most of what it wants in the health-care overhaul.”

Healthcare part two tomorrow.

The establishment is aggressively attacking the old Internet and pushing to replace it with Internet 2. This internet will be a corporate, controlled, electronic Berlin wall. Alternative voices will be silenced and giant corporate propaganda will dominate once again.  

Darryl Mason writes, John Hartigan is full of shit. Bloggers have gone to jail for their work, and to protect their sources, in North Korea, Iran, Egypt, the list of countries persecuting bloggers grows longer by the week. And the CEO of Australia’s biggest news corporation doesn’t know this? The jailing of bloggers for speaking too much truth is obviously not the kind of news that John Hartigan, a Rupert Murdoch CEO, is interested in. How could he not know about those jailing and prosecutions? Remember those words: Political extremism. You will hear that call more and more as the major news corporations scale up their war against independent media, and bloggers.

The source of the establishment’s move to claim that bloggers and alternative media outlets are extremists or at worst terrorists was a White House strategy document that the government had been following since 9/11. In a September 5, 2006 speech President George W Bush referred to the document as an unclassified version of the strategy we’ve been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001. The strategy paper on how to win the “war on terror” cites conspiracies as one of the well-springs of terrorism. It also threatens to address and diminish the problems they are causing the government in fulfilling their agenda.

This notion then reappeared in a March 2009 Homeland Security document entitled Domestic Extremism Lexicon, in which the alternative media is listed alongside other radical extremist groups with the implication that people who disagree with the mass media’s version of events are potential domestic terrorists. The DHS document was almost immediately rescinded, but the groups listed alongside Neo-Nazis, Aryan prison gangs and black power extremists again prove that the federal government is targeting American citizens who are merely knowledgeable about their rights and up on current issues as potential domestic terrorists to be treated as a threat to law enforcement.

I’ll admit to having my “extreme” moments (just ask my husband), but I’m no terrorist. I don’t think like a terrorist, I don’t commit terrorist acts, I am not a terrorist, whatever Hartigan and his ilk may say. They can call me anything they like, I’m an American and I’ll say what I like (as long as it doesn’t cause physical harm), and the government and corporate amerika can blow me.

In a speech to the National Press Club, John Hartigan,  CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, savagely dismissed blogs as, “Something of such little intellectual value as to be barely discernible from massive ignorance.”

“Bloggers don’t go to jail for their work. They simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters….It could be said the blogosphere is all eyeballs and no insights,” barked Hartigan.

“In the blogosphere, of course, the mainstream media is always found wanting. It really is time this myth was blown apart.”

“Blogs, and a large number of comment sites, specialize in political extremism and personal vilification. Radical sweeping statements without evidence are common.”

The reason mainstream media is always found wanting is because they blatantly lie about news events. They spin stories to suit the demands of their corporate owners. Blogs and alternative media outlets have become so popular because people are sick of being lied to and manipulated by the corporate media (which is what “mainstream” or “mass” media really is), and are desperately looking for people who will tell them the truth.

In addition, while many in the mainstream media routinely use anonymous sources and little more than bluster and hot air to back up their stories, many respected bloggers provide links to almost every claim they make so readers can research the source evidence for themselves. This is completely opposite to Hartigan’s claim that blogs make “radical sweeping statements without evidence.” Indeed, this phrase more perfectly characterizes the tactics used by the mass media on a daily basis.

Talk about massive ignorance.

Paris, France: The administration of oral THC in rats suppresses sensitivity to opiate dependence, according to preclinical findings published in the June 24 issue of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

An international team of researchers from France and Canada assessed the impact oral THC (dronabinol) exposure in maternally deprived rats.(Rats that are deprived of their mothers immediately after birth are far more vulnerable to opiate dependence than non-deprived subjects.)

“Dronabinol treatment on maternally deprived rats normalized morphine consumption and suppressed sensitivity to morphine conditioning,” researchers reported. “These findings point to the self-medication use of cannabis in subgroups of individuals subjected to adverse postnatal environment(s).”

The study was carried out by Valérie Daugé and her team at the Laboratory for Physiopathology of Diseases of the Central Nervous System (UPMC / CNRS / INSERM).

Daugé’s team analyzed the effects of maternal deprivation combined with injections of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the main active principle in cannabis, on behavior with regard to opiates.

Previously, Daugé and her colleagues had shown that rats deprived of their mothers at birth become hypersensitive to the rewarding effect of morphine and heroin (substances belonging to the opiate family), and rapidly become dependent. In addition, there is a correlation between such behavioral disturbances linked to dependence, and hypoactivity of the enkephalinergic system, the endogenous opioid system.

To these rats, placed under stress from birth, the researchers intermittently administered increasingly high doses of THC (5 or 10 mg/kg) during the period corresponding to their adolescence (between 35 and 48 days after birth). By measuring their consumption of morphine in adulthood, they observed that, unlike results previously obtained, the rats no longer developed typical morphine-dependent behavior. Moreover, biochemical and molecular biological data corroborate these findings. In the striatum, a region of the brain involved in drug dependence, the production of endogenous enkephalins was restored under THC, whereas it diminished in rats stressed from birth which had not received THC.

Such animal models are validated for understanding the neurobiological and behavioral effects of postnatal conditions in humans. In this context, the findings point to the development of new treatments that could relieve withdrawal effects and suppress drug dependence.

The enkephalinergic system produces endogenous enkephalins, which are neurotransmitters that bind to the same receptors as opiates and inhibit pain messages to the brain.

The clinical data  published this month in the July/August issue of the American Journal on Addictions reported that drug treatment subjects who used cannabis intermittently were more likely to adhere to treatment for opioid dependence

Commenting on the studies, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said, “These findings undermine the notion that cannabis is a so-called ‘gateway’ to hard drug use. Rather, these results indicate that in certain populations marijuana may be a useful tool for deterring the initiation or continuation of hard drug abuse.”

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org . Full text of the study, “Adolescent exposure to delta-9-THC blocks opiate dependence in maternally deprived rats,” appears in Psychopharmacology.

Hospitals that don’t have an in-patient psych facility hold these patients until a bed opens up at one of the publicly funded psychiatric hospitals. This process can sometimes take several days, as these institutions are consistently overcrowded. Typically an ER technician or nurse is assigned to watch the patients to make sure they don’t harm themselves or others. This is referred to as a “one to one.” But there’s never a time when the ratio is actually one to one–the hospital worker assigned to these critical cases will often be responsible for six, seven or even eight patients.

Because no one was really watching this particular individual, he took an overdose of medicine and died. He was a young person who asked for help because some part of him still wanted to live, despite the hardship he was suffering. Our system failed him, and now, parents will have to bury their child because of this failure.

The other death was equally tragic and preventable. This person was in his 50s and was in the ER because of chest pain. Family members repeatedly went to the desk to ask for help, stating that their relative was in severe pain and needed to see a doctor. But with so many people in the waiting room, this is an all-too-common request–and people are told, sometimes callously, that nothing can be done, and they’ll just have to wait. After 14 hours of waiting, the pain had become too much, and the family member insisted he be brought into the hospital. The patient collapsed before he reached a bed to be seen, and attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

One could certainly place blame on the workers at the hospital who were supposed to be responsible for these two patients. But if this seems fair on the surface, it’s misplaced. Even the best health care workers, given a bad situation, make mistakes, and in an overly crowded hospital, it’s a miracle that mistakes like these don’t happen more often. This is little solace to the families and loved ones of the tens of thousands who die unnecessarily every year.

The statistics are staggering, even mind numbing–but every person who dies is someone’s mother, father, daughter or son. Every one of these people had a life that was cut short because it isn’t “good business” to provide health care to those who can’t afford it. This is nothing short of mass murder taking place on a yearly basis, and it’s all in the name of profit. We can’t be satisfied with the answer that this is just “the cost of doing business“. Something must be done, and we can’t wait any longer. We NEED universal health care and a health care system that actually CARES about people and not just about profits.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon occurrence. A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine estimated that 18,000 people died every year because of a lack of health insurance. It’s one thing to read these statistics and be astounded by them, especially considering that we pay more per capita for health care than any other country in the world. It’s another to see the impact of this system on people’s lives every day.

As the number of people who lose their jobs increases, so do the number of people who lose their health insurance. This has only added to the strain on an already strained system. Public hospitals serve as safety nets. Many hospitals will treat patients for emergency situations, as they are required by law to do, and then refer them to a public facility for follow-up surgery, doctor’s visits and prescriptions. The clinics connected to the hospital are only able to see so many patients every day, so the overflow is sent to the ER. This means that wait times to be seen by a doctor regularly grow to unbelievable lengths.

The Emergency Room waiting area can become so crowded that over 50 people can be waiting to be “triaged” by a nurse at any given time. This is a recipe for disaster. Triaging is the first filter to make sure that critically ill patients get priority. The wait time to see a doctor can easily exceed 24 hours.

One in five people who have jobs are uninsured–around 27 million people in all, accounting for about two-thirds of 44 million people who are without coverage in the U.S. Four in five of the uninsured come from a family where at least one person is employed.

But when you have to wait an entire day to see a doctor, taking the time to come to the hospital becomes a full-time job. It’s not uncommon to see young children and infants at the hospital, not because they’re sick themselves, but because their parents are, and they have no one to care for their children.

So many people don’t come in when they need medical help because they can’t afford to take the time off work to wait a day to see a doctor, or they cannot get someone to care for their children. This often only delays the inevitable, and they end up coming in when they have no choice because their health situation has worsened.

Patients asked how long they were suffering from whatever brought them in, frequently answered that it had been many months. Not infrequently, they have a poor prognosis only because they waited so long to come in for treatment. There’s no legitimate reason that people should be forced to suffer like this.

You can see this not only in the fact that an electoral majority elected an African American president in November, which would have been impossible even a decade or two ago, but also the fact that John McCain’s campaign manager has come out in favor of same-sex marriage–and is urging the Republican Party to do the same. That speaks volumes about the changes in mass consciousness in today’s world. 

The vast majority of people in this country have broken with the hate-based and conservative politics that allowed the Republican Party to dominate for the last 30 years, and instead, people are embracing tolerance and social change.

What we already see is that the struggle for gay marriage and immigrant rights is a synthesis of the fight for civil rights and a working-class demand. What we saw on May Day 2006, when millions of immigrant workers came out for a day without an immigrant, is just a glimpse of what’s possible in the coming years–in building a working-class movement that stands for strong unions and also social justice.

The rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s was a qualitative advance from the limits of craft unionism. But it didn’t challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South; it didn’t challenge lynching, which was still the order of the day in the Deep South. It didn’t even succeed at challenging the fact that the National Industrial Recovery Act allowed Southern employers to pay Black workers lower wages than white workers.

In the end, industrial unionism failed when it came to organizing the South because it failed to make the fight for unionization also a fight against social injustice–and for that reason alone, the South has remained a non-union, low-wage noose hanging around the neck of the U.S. labor movement. Long before capital moved to the Global South to escape unions, it was able to move to the Deep South.

If we want to address the needs of today’s labor movement, we have to move forward toward social justice unionism–which makes the fight against oppression central to the class struggle.

We have seen glimpses of this already. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO backed same-sex marriage, helping Massachusetts to become the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. U.S. Labor Against War represented an important attempt toward putting the strength of organized labor behind opposition to the Iraq War.

If we begin to view the class struggle in this respect, then surely we will be able to fully appreciate why, even though the struggle for same-sex marriage does not involve a workplace struggle or a strike, winning it will mark the first victory for our class in the battles that lie in the years ahead.

Just try to imagine a future moment when a major Fortune 500 company finds its Internet completely shut down, not, this time, by a computer virus, but by a strike of its computer technicians, who are joined on the picket line by a walkout of clerical workers, who then convince the UPS delivery drivers to go out on a sympathy strike–all of them ready to fight to the finish to win their main demand: an end to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.

Then maybe we can begin to imagine the future face of the class struggle in a history that has yet to be determined, and a new left that has yet to be built.

Class Struggle is About Equality for All of Us.

From a speech by Sharon Smith　

Sharon Smith is a SocialistWorker.org columnist and author of Subterranean Fire: A History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States and Women and Socialism: Essays on Women’s Liberation.

The election of Roosevelt in 1932 brought hope for millions of working-class families that relief was on the way. But Roosevelt didn’t immediately bring the kind of change that would put food on the table for workers or keep them in their homes.  

On the contrary, Roosevelt conducted a delicate balancing act. His rhetoric was very generous toward workers, but his budget was not. In fact, only big business got significant relief in the early 1930s. After the class struggle began to rise, and the labor movement scored some real victories in 1934, then Roosevelt, facing the possibility of not being re-elected, began to consider it necessary to grant the first major reforms of his administration.

On August 14, 1935, Roosevelt signed The Social Security Act, the first acknowledgement that the government has a responsibility to provide material aid to the poor. The original 1935 law contained the first national unemployment compensation program, aid to the states for various health and welfare programs, and the Aid to Dependent Children program. (Full text of the 1935 law.) He also signed the Wagner Act, finally making it illegal for employers to refuse to recognize unions chosen by their employees to represent them.

The size of the left at the start of the Great Depression was far larger than what exists in the U.S. today. In addition, large sections of workers at the start of the 1930s had either themselves been trained, or had parents and grandparents who trained them, in the traditions of the class struggle, and even the left-wing traditions of the IWW or the Socialist Party. The vast majority of young workers today not only work in low-wage, non-union jobs–or, in reality, multiple low-wage non-union jobs–but they have been cut off from the radical traditions that built the U.S. labor movement in the first place.

That radical tradition must now be learned through reading and discussion, rather than stories handed down from one generation to the next.