A public plan could more easily control overall savings and level of quality. It is true that in some rural areas – not an accident that all of the blue-dogs are from rural states – coops function well and certainly at no worse cost than the Canadian National Health Service does in its remote rural areas.

Today, the population of New Orleans is still about 175,000 people fewer than it was before Hurricane Katrina hit four years ago next month. Along with concerns about jobs and housing costs, the city's vulnerability to flooding has weighed heavily on the minds of many evacuees, many of whom have not returned.

Puerto Rican actor Benicio del Toro received on Thursday the Tomas Gutierrez Alea Award, granted by the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). The award, consisting of a work by painter Agustin Bejarano, was given to del Toro by UNEAC president Miguel Barnet, in a ceremony held at the Martinez Villena Hall in this institution.

Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) is one of those so-called “blue dog” Democrats who remain ambivalent about parts of the Obama political agenda, particularly the Employee Free Choice Act (despite his long-time popularity with Indiana trade unionists) and health care reform.

According to Economic Policy Institute economist Josh Bivens, after a contraction of the Gross Domestic Product, the measure of all economic activity, over the past two quarters of an annualized rate of negative six percent, the GDP for this past quarter will come in at about negative 1.5 percent. Without the President's economic recovery act, the number would have been three times higher, he reports.

While most people understand the urgency of climate change, one of the top concerns many working families have with a cap-and-trade system is added costs for energy.

The legacy of the Bush Administration has been a perfect storm of economic devastation – in finance, housing and jobs. The challenge of fixing this economic mess is enormous – and urgent. Creating good jobs that cannot be outsourced is central to the solution.

Those who have supported the SOA Watch over the years know that Fort Benning and the US Southern Command (SouthCom, the command and control facility for the US military in Latin America and the Caribbean) go hand in hand. Saturday morning, July 25, 60 people (two-thirds of them Latino) gathered in the pouring rain to march to the gates of SouthCom in solidarity with the people of Honduras.

A recent poll showed just about half of Americans think capitalism is better than socialism. With the collapse of the financial system and the economy, the ideology of the free market has fewer and fewer adherents.

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, there have been some significant improvements to the levees of New Orleans. However, even with improvements scheduled to be completed in 2011, advocates say the U.S. government has left the standard of protection at dangerously low levels.

While in prison, Vick met with the president of the Humane Society of the United States. He also will be working with groups aimed at steering young people away from dogfighting. By all accounts, Vick is profoundly remorseful. And if you had to declare bankruptcy and spend two years in Leavenworth, you would also be feeling a share of regret.

These two sentiments, both of which I favor, flow from different aspects of the topic question. No one wants to charge a rich man a higher price for an appendectomy than a poor man. Even if you morally approved soaking the rich, you would have to acknowledge the dangerous exploding "fee schedule" that results often in more, not less waste, and worse health outcomes.

A New Yorker magazine investigative report about why McAllen, Texas, a city located in Hidalgo county – which has the lowest per capita income in the country – has one of the highest medical costs per person in the United States (surpassed only by Miami, Florida), has stirred an unusual controversy over the rarely discussed contradictions that affect the quality and coverage of health services in that country.

At eight in the morning on Monday, ten Alameda County Sheriffs arrived in their patrol cars in front of the tan house on the corner of Tenth and Willow in west Oakland, the oldest African American neighborhood in the city, and one of the oldest on the west coast. The renovated home is surrounded by an iron fence, and the sheriffs poured through its open gate and up the stairs.

A group of apparel makers with business interests in Honduras, in a July 27th letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, endorsed the administration's call for restoration of democracy and basic civil rights and liberties in that country.

If nothing is done about health reform, as Republicans have indicated is their top priority in order to "break" President Obama, a typical family can expect to pay about 71 percent more for health insurance premiums within the next 10 years, says a new memo from the Center for American Progress Action Fund. According to the memo, the average family premium will total more than $22,000, if no health reform is enacted this year.

With environmental awareness so widespread among younger people in our society, most kids have learned more about being green from their school teachers and camp counselors than we adults might have gleaned in a lifetime.

Still used today by some companies, the test involves applying a small amount of the substance under study to an animal’s eye or skin for several hours, and then observing whether or not irritation occurs over the following week or two.

After the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) meeting last September, the government of India had mounted a high voltage campaign how it had secured a “clean and unconditional” waiver. Prime minister Manmohan Singh had hailed the NSG's waiver as enabling “full civil nuclear cooperation” with India

The Committees of Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy has just concluded its 6th National Convention in San Francisco, CA. The CoC was founded in 1994 as a coalition of socialist-oriented groupings from a number of organizations.