POLITICS - Wal-Mart's Shelf-correcting System

"Wal-Mart's shelf-correcting system is model for government" article in "The Heritage Foundation" by Edwin Feulner, president.

The above article has its good points with one exception.

And don't forget the manufactured homes, some 10,777 of which are rotting away in Arkansas because FEMA ordered more than it needed.

Wait, New Orleans has neighborhoods still devastated as I type. Hummm.... A thought, these neighborhoods could use those manufactured homes, and they need plenty. DUH

The waste is in letting the manufactured homes rot in Arkansas, not in the quantity ordered. Simply turn them over to New Orleans authorities to use to rebuild the neighborhoods.

SCIENCE - Regulation of Nanotechnology

I've just finished reading a set of articles from various online publications on the issue of Nanotechnology and regulation of that growing industry.

What concerns me is that the writers of the articles seemed to not comprehend the full scope of Nanotechnology and its potential.

Nanotechnology is not just "the manipulation of matter at the molecular level," which is what every one of the articles stated.

Yes, Nanotechnology does use manipulation of matter at the molecular level, but that is not what it is. The technology is making molecular "machines" to do different jobs. This also includes, and here is the real danger, self-replicating nano machines.

Of course, this growing industry is already against government regulation. But consider a kindred industry, the Drug Industry. Think of all the problems that have come to light after the FDA allowed a drug to be released to the public in the past few years.

Now the new Nanotech Industry wants no, or little, regulation?!! For a technology that actually includes self-replication, like a virus?!!!

The potential danger to the public without stringent checks (regulation) is just too dangerous to allow.

POLITICS - Dubai Ports World Deal, Good or Bad?

A Blog post on "The Nation" titled "Corporate Control of Ports Is the Problem -- UPDATED" has good points. In part...

The problem is that Dubai Ports World is a corporation. It happens to be a corporation that is owned by the government of the the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, a nation that served as an operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks of 9-11 attacks, and that has stirred broad concern. But, even if the sale of operational control of the ports to this firm did not raise security alarm bells, it would be a bad idea.

Ports are essential pieces of the infrastructure of the United States, and they are best run by public authorities that are accountable to elected officials and the people those officials represent. While traditional port authorities still exist, they are increasing marginalized as privatization schemes have allowed corporations -- often with tough anti-union attitudes and even tougher bottom lines -- to take charge of more and more of the basic operations at the nation's ports.

"Best run by public authorities." Maybe we should be reconsidering port management, post 9/11, in this way. Port management may be too important as a national security concern to leave to private management.

POLITICS - Slicing Away Liberty

In an essay on CrisisPapers.ORG, "Slicing Away Liberty: 1933 Germany, 2006 America" is an interesting thesis on America today. It opens with....

I must confess that I'm utterly baffled by the lack of sustained, organized outrage and opposition from Democratic officials and ordinary citizens at the Bush Administration's never-ending scandals, corruptions, war-initiations, and the amassing of more and more police-state power into their hands.

..... Something I've wondered at.....

And so, facing little effective opposition, the Bush juggernaut continues on its rampage. How to explain this? Certainly, one could point to a deficient mass-media, to the soporific drug of TV, to having to work so hard that for many there's no time for activism, to education aimed at taking tests and not how to think, to the residual fear-fallout from 9/11, to a penchant for fantasy over reality, to the timid and unimaginative Democratic leadership, to scandal-fatigue, etc. But I would suggest that even more disturbing answers can be found by examining recent history.

Just so nobody misunderstands what follows: I am not saying that George W. Bush is Adolf Hitler, or that the rest of his Administration crew are Nazis. What I am saying is that since history often is opaque (making it difficult to figure out the contemporary parallels), when the past does offer a clear lesson for those of us living today, we should pay special attention.

....he then goes on to summarize the conjunction of what is happening today in America and what happened in history. I encourage my readers to read the entire essay. It's an eye opener.

POLITICS - The Nature of the Beast, Conservatives vs. Liberals

This is a long post because this appeared on a UseNet group from"Freedom Fighter" and has no link, therefore this is his entire post which I agree with.

It all began a hundred thousand years ago on a ledge in front of a cave. A female homo sapiens walked by, attracting the attention of a male. The male stepped forward and smacked her over the head with his club. WHACK! He then dragged the unconscious female into his cave for sex.

One day there were two males standing in front of a cave when a female walked by. The first raised his arm to club the female, but the second male communicated to him that clubbing females over the head to have sex was not nice. WHACK! WHACK! The first male stepped over the unconscious second male and proceeded to rape the female.

On that day the first liberal paid the price for expressing a new idea.

Things didn't change much for thousands of years until the advent of projectile weapons. This was first symbolized by the David and Goliath story in the Bible, where the big strong brute was laid flat by the small but smarter boy. Once brute strength was no longer the controlling factor in social interaction, liberal ideas slowly gained a foothold in human culture, and civilization began.

Throughout human history, the price for advocating tolerance and progressive change has been paid in threats, beatings, excommunication, incarceration, torture, murder, assassination, and execution. Countless liberals have paid the ultimate price for their humanity. Though Jesus Christ is the most famous, names in recent history that come to mind are Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, and Robert Kennedy.

Today there are many conservatives - individuals, groups, and nations - who use threats and violence to silence the voices of reason, tolerance, and progress. Here in America it is seen in racists and homophobes beating blacks and gays, sometimes to death, not for money or out of anger generated by interactive cause, but because of religious or racial intolerance and secular bigotry.

Alan Berg on talk radio was a strong voice against a conservative organization called the Aryan Nation. For thus exercising his freedom of speech, he was shot dead while walking his dog in front of his house.

David Rice is a man on death row in Washington State who has no remorse whatsoever for entering the home of a family of four and carving out their living hearts only because he heard they were "liberals." He got their names from a Democratic Party membership list.

Right-wingers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 men, women, and children as an act of protest. What liberals have ever committed such an abominable atrocity?

The most abominable atrocity in several decades is the 9/11 terrorist attacks in which thousands of innocent civilians were murdered. The alleged perpetrators, Osama Bin Laden and the al Qaeda-Taliban terrorists, epitomize the right-wing religious fundamentalist mentality.

Some believe that the 9/11 attacks were deliberately allowed to happen, or even perpetrated by radical right-wing elements within our own government to further their fascistic agenda.

Arguing that such horrendous crimes are not political in nature or that they are not done primarily by conservatives is utter nonsense. Look back:

• Who nailed who to a cross?


• Who were the Loyalists to the totalitarian monarchy of King George?


• Who started our Civil War to defend slavery?


• Who fought to keep women as property, and now fights their sovereignty over their own bodies in the freedom to choose abortion?


• Who fought against child labor statutes?


• Who fought against the concept of free public education?


• Who fought against the right of women to vote?


• Who fought against anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation?


• Who fought against workers organizing?


• Who fought against government controls on manufacturers of cars "unsafe at any speed?"


• Who killed several thousand innocent civilians in the 9/11 terrorist attacks?


• Who started WW2, murdered 13 million and caused the death of 40 million more?


• Who defended Jim Crow for a hundred years?


• Who fought against voting rights, civil rights, social security, health care for the elderly, and minimum wages?


• Who fights against environmental protection statutes?


• Who opposes equal rights for gays and other free-lifestyle minorities?


• Who cruelly opposes physician-assisted dying for suffering, terminally ill patients soon to die anyway?


• Who is sabotaging the separation of Church and State, and all our other Constitutional rights, freedoms, and protections?


• Who are the moralizing hypocrites forcing their puritanical inhibitions and prohibitions on ALL Americans via legislation and draconian, police-state enforcement practices?


• Who always puts personal gain and corporate wealth and power above the common good?

CONSERVATIVES or LIBERALS?

The historic, undeniable truth is that these evils are THE NATURE OF THE CONSERVATIVE BEAST!

Conservatives have distorted and demonized the word "liberal," whose true political meaning is favoring progressive change, humanistic values, and opposition to authoritarianism. They identify it with governmental waste and tolerance of criminality, when in fact they themselves are guilty of abuses such as corporate welfare bail-outs and tax evasion, fraud against investors, and other white-collar crime. Conservatives fear and oppose all change and progress beyond "what's in it for me?"

At the core of conservatism is the Machiavellian bully - the despotic practitioner of "might makes right," craving wealth and power, and willing to use any and all means to get them.

Conservatism is the philosophy of the caveman wearing a business suit.

AND THE CAVEMEN'S CLUBS CAN NOW DESTROY OUR EARTH!

POLITICS - The Evidence

In the opinion "Eyewitnesses peel back lies on war debate" (link may move to achieve) by Jay Bookman of "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" writes in part.....

The head of the CIA's Middle East bureau from 2000 to 2005 makes that clear in a new article in Foreign Affairs magazine. Paul Pillar writes that under the Bush administration, "official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions." Instead, "intelligence was misused to justify decisions already made," citing Iraqi WMD as a prime example.

In his article, Pillar also confirms that Bush told a monumental whopper in claiming that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had informally allied against us.

Pillar is not the first to expose that fact. The Sept. 11 commission concluded back in June 2004 that there had been no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and bin Laden. But Pillar, who saw every scrap of intelligence about the Middle East, takes it further, saying the claim by Bush and others "did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the 'alliance' the administration said existed."

In other words, they made it up.

It is yet another example of how we were deceived into war by Bush, a man in whom Americans of both parties had put enormous amounts of faith in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Of course, accusing Bush of deliberately lying to the country still sets off a contentious counterattack. Historians, though, will have no qualms whatsoever about reaching that same conclusion; the evidence is that overwhelming.

And then there was the incompetence. The claims that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction, that we would be welcomed as liberators, that there were no serious ethnic splits in Iraq, that we had enough troops . . . the list is lengthy. How could the administration have been so wrong?

Well, there are none so blind as those who will not see.

If you're contemplating invading and occupying another country — and risking much of your own country's future on the outcome — your first step would be to request an assessment of the situation from your experts, right?

"As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq,"Pillar writes. "The first request I received from any administration policy-maker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war."

A century from now, people will look at such statements in wonder. Unfortunately, for those of us who actually have to deal with the consequences, our interest is more than merely historical. The people who got us into this mess through deception, arrogance and incompetence still hold positions of authority. They still demand unilateral power over how to proceed, and still question the patriotism of those who dare question them.

Food for thought. And this is the Administration that rabid Republicans cheer on.

POLITICS - Changes for FEMA ?

In a MSNBC article "Chertoff overhauls FEMA, rejects criticism" there is a short list of "Among the planned changes at FEMA."

• Tracking trucks carrying food, water, ice, blankets and other emergency supplies by satellite to ensure they arrive at disaster sites quickly and with enough equipment.



• Sending FEMA employees to emergency shelters and other temporary housing venues to register victims for aid, instead of relying on victims to register by phone or the Internet.



• Creating a database of already-approved private contracting firms from disaster regions to remove debris and provide services faster.



• Creating "reconnaissance teams" to report disaster conditions to Homeland Security and FEMA operation centers within hours, and improving communication channels to ensure the information quickly gets to the president and Cabinet-level officials.



• Hiring up to 1,500 new full-time employees as year-round coordinators.

Humm.... Something missing?

You bet. How about bring back the disaster preventative programs FEMA had before the Bush Whitehouse & (so called) Homeland Security gutted FEMA. This is a minimum need.

Here's one I would add, take FEMA out of Homeland Security and put it back as a Cabinet level agency with the added mandate to assist Homeland Security in the event of terrorist disasters.

No matter what Chertoff says, under Homeland Security FEMA cannot focus on the more urgent need of dealing with natural disasters. FEMA cannot do that if Homeland Security can override FEMA decisions.

POLITICS - Guantanamo "Terrorists" ?

Just read an article in Editor & Publisher COM, "Pressing Issues" By Greg Mitchell that had a summery of a National Journal cover story "The Gang That Couldn't Snoop Straight."

Hegland's article, he writes, "provides powerful evidence confirming what many of us have suspected for years." This is part of his summary:

--A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).

--Fewer than 20% of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.

--Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.

--The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability. These locals had strong incentives to tar as terrorists any and all Arabs they could get their hands on as the Arabs fled war-torn Afghanistan in late 2001 and 2002 -- including noncombatant teachers and humanitarian workers.

--And the Bush administration has apparently made very little effort to corroborate the plausible claims of innocence detailed by many of the men who were handed over.

Taylor adds: "The tribunal hearings, based largely on such guilt-by-association logic, have been travesties of unfairness. The detainees are presumed guilty unless they can prove their innocence -- without help from lawyers and without being permitted to know the details and sources of the evidence against them.

This is our Wighthouse.

Given the administration's track record on accuracy, why does anyone, let alone everyone, in the major media go along with this instead of saying, "Why should we believe these guys know an al-Qaeda operative when they see one?"

Note that Hegland's last statement also applies to the NSA Eavesdropping Issue.

POLITICS - Demonizing Academics?

Is the Republican Righteous-Right doing this?

In an article "Dangerous Academics, Right-wing Distortions about Leftist Professors" by Robert Jensen, he does think so.

In an “urgent” e-mail last week, right-wing activist David Horowitz hyped his latest book about threats to America’s youth from leftist professors.

The ad for The Professors -- The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America describes me as: “Texas Journalism Professor Robert Jensen, who rabidly hates the United States, and recently told his students, ‘The United States has lost the war in Iraq and that’s a good thing.’”

I’m glad Horowitz got my name right (people often misspell it “Jenson”). But everything else is distortion, and that one sentence teaches much about the reactionary right’s disingenuous rhetorical strategy.

....and....

Why would anyone suggest that I rabidly hate the United States? It’s easier to defame opponents using emotionally charged language than engage on real issues. Accuse them of being irrational and hateful. Ignore the substance of the claims and just sling mud. By even minimal standards of intellectual or political discourse it’s not terribly honorable, but it often works.

Beyond these junkyard dog tactics, Horowitz’s email also makes one crucial factual error. I did write that the U.S. losing the Iraq war was a good thing -- not in celebration of death and destruction, of course, but because the defeat temporarily restrains policymakers in their dangerous attempts to extend the U.S. empire. But that was the first sentence of an opinion piece I published in various newspapers in 2004, not a statement to students. The distinction is important.

Note the last 2 sentences above. So, Horowitz thinks personal dissent is by someone "rabidly hates the United States." Humm, has this idiot read the Constitution lately?

This "junkyard dog," wait... that's an insult to dogs. This brain-dead idiot wouldn't recognize a Constitutional protected right if it hit him in the face. Dissent does not = "hating" America, in point of fact it may be loving America. When you love someone, or something, you try to stop dangerous behaviour before damage is done. Like, "Friends don't let friends drive drunk."

Well, the Bush Whitehouse is driving this country while drunk (DUI), and because Jensen and I love the USA we will dissent and speak out.

POLITICS - Revisiting the NSA Eavesdropping Issue

Came upon a different view on this issue in the "Denver Post" in an article by Bryan Cunningham and Daniel B. Prieto, The eavesdropping debate we should be having.

Bryan Cunningham served in national security positions under Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush, serving as deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council from 2002 to 2004. Daniel B. Prieto previously served on the staff of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security.

A fierce debate surrounds the president's authorization of electronic surveillance, without court approval, of communications between suspected terrorists overseas and people inside the United States. Actually, two debates have emerged: one fiercely partisan, with some painting Democrats as weak on security and others claiming an out-of-control White House; the second over the relative constitutional prerogatives of the president, Congress and the courts.

Unfortunately, a third, and most critical, issue is being overlooked: how to fix outmoded rules for collecting and using intelligence so that Americans are safer from terrorism and secure in our civil liberties in a post-Sept. 11 world of globalization and global terrorism.

Good point. Suggest my readers read the whole article.

Addendum: Readers may want to check the article "White House Ordered to Release Spy Documents" in the ENews Earthlink page.

POLITICS - "Mad as Hell"

Well, Ceri Delbrocco of the "Memphis Flyer" agrees with me. Her article MAD AS HELL: The New Look of "Freedom" says what I've said before, better.

“I will never relent in defending America, whatever it takes.” -
George Bush

“Whatever It Takes” is the new Bush rule of law. Get used to it. It’s the only law in our Brave New World. No other laws are necessary. It’s short and simple: I will do whatever I damn well please, and you damn well better like it. If you don’t, you are an unpatriotic obstructionist who is an enemy of America and of course, an enemy of God.

And that sums it up nicely. She ends with....

But in the Brave New World, with its singular rule of law, unless federal Storm Troopers knock down the doors of your home and drag you off to the gulags, hell - you’re free! With liberty and justice for all, George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled government will make sure every American will eventually get Whatever It Takes.

And from what I see, "we" are letting this happen. More the pity.

POLITICS - A More Democratic World?

Boston Globe article, "A more democratic world rejects Bush's globalism" by By Robert Kuttner (co-editor of The American Prospect), February 4, 2006 it food for thought.

In the Middle East, the people have freely chosen two governments that could not be more a repudiation of Bush's vision for the region, nor more alarming to broader hopes of peace and stability -- Hamas in Palestine and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Even in Iraq, whose election was held under direct American tutelage, our preferred henchmen were decisively ousted.

In Latin America, voters in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and most recently Chile, have chosen governments that are social-democratic at best and caudillo-populist at worst. Mexico, where a popular radical, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leads all polls, is probably next. Some, like Chile's new president, Michelle Bachelet, are admirable, others less so. But none supports Bush's vision of corporate globalism.

The problem is how they see our society. They like our enconomy but do not like the imposition of our culture and diffantlly not "coporate globalism." We need to rethink how we treate other nations and people. Our culture may not fit everyone (suprise, suprise).

POLITICS - Silencing Dissent

The silencing of any dissent by the government, at all levels, is growing and few are saying anything about loosing this basic Constitutional freedom.

The article "Politicians are stifling dissent, critics say" by Steven Thomma, Knight Ridder Newspapers, has examples of our plight.

Here are some of the examples:

1. The ejection of two women from the U.S. Capitol for wearing message T-shirts during President Bush's State of the Union speech this week was the latest incident in a growing trend of stifling dissent in politics. Capitol Police later apologized for ejecting the women from the House of Representatives gallery - after one of them, the wife of a congressman, complained bitterly, as did her husband. The police acknowledged that they'd acted over zealously.



2. In Denver last year, three people were thrown out of a Bush town-hall meeting on Social Security after they arrived in a car sporting a bumper sticker that proclaimed: "No more blood for oil" and wore T-shirts under their other clothes that said "Stop the Lies. Evicting people who oppose the president, even if they don't say a word, was a carryover from Bush's 2004 presidential campaign.



3. In 2004, protesters at both national party conventions were herded into areas far away from delegates, officials and the news media. At the Democratic National Convention in Boston, protesters were kept in enclosed areas surrounded by fences topped with razor wire and watched by armed police.

These are just examples, there are more.

Local, State, and Federal officials are acting as if they don't believe in the Constitution or Freedom of Speech. They act as if dissent is a crime.

We have to teach and reiterate to all Law Enforcement Officials (local, state, federal) that in the USA dissent is not a crime and stop treating people as if they don't have a right to publicly dissent. Especially in "public" speeches given by government officials, "public" includes dissenters.

If we loose the right to protest or dissent protected by the Constitution it will be because we gave it away.

POLITICS - The Republican House of Representatives

When you here about reforming Congress there is an article by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Ma), "The Republicans’ Democracy Disorder" that addresses this issue in the House.

If you are interested on what is being talked about outside the Republican leadership, you should read the full article.

Our goal is to allow the House of Representatives to create public policy that is democratically sustainable. Representative democracy is being thwarted by current Republican practice. The Republican leadership has gotten very good at holding roll call votes open and marshaling its troops. This gives them the ability to win by changing only as many votes as they need to pass legislation, thereby allowing some Republican members of Congress who support this ruse to vote against the legislation. Their purpose is to let Republican members hide from the public, so that they can give their constituents an impression that is contrary to where they really stand. That allows members to boast about how they voted against the Republican leadership 40, 50, 60, 70 percent of the time, when in fact they voted with the Republican leadership 100 percent of the time when they were needed.

The above quote is the core of his article. The problem perceived is the Republicans have such a hammer-lock on control of both houses that they can bully others to support their views, especially their fellow Republicans. Think what a "bully" is; someone who thinks he's big and bad enough to beat someone else into submission, like it or not. That sounds like today's Republican Party leadership to me, and note I was a loyal moderate Republican for decades.

By-the-way, from the dictionary: Bully = "a blustering browbeating person; especially : one habitually cruel to others who are weaker."

POLITICS - Wages as a Moral Issue

Now here's something from "Christians" that I actually can totally agree with. I am referring to an article "High Wages, Low Wages, and Morality" in The Cristian Science Monitor.

It starts with...

It's unusual for a controversial economic issue to be fought on moral grounds. But ACORN, a public advocacy group, has been winning a higher "living wage" for workers in state after state, city after city, by appealing to voters' sense of justice.

"It's probably the best [argument] we have," says Jen Kern, director of ACORN's Living Wage Resource Center. A decent income is a moral matter of "fairness," she says. Those who "play by the rules of the game should be able to support themselves by their work."
In the MonitorMonday, 02/06/06

"A job should keep you out of poverty, not keep you poor," agrees Paul Sherry, coordinator of the Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign, a church-based coalition in Cleveland seeking to raise low wages.

I really like Paul Sherry's quote, straight and to the point.

Of course today's Super-Conservative Right screams at the idea of a Living Wage. In affect they are saying that a worker should only earn what the corporate-world says they should earn. The "market" dictates the value of your work.

Humm.... so that's why top corporate officers get really, really big (some say obscene) salaries while their companies are reporting losses on the stock market. Meanwhile, the little guy gets to settle for jobs with salaries so low that many have to work 2 just to make the monthly bills.

POLITICS - UHC Debunking 5 of the Right’s Favorite Myths

There is a interesting article on the Universal Health Care (UHC) proposal in the "Campus Progress," at least "interesting" if you are not a lock-step conservative, i.e. you have an open mind.

In part.....

There are numerous pathologies (such as a fear of increasing the size of the federal government) in the American political climate that prevented Universal Health Care (UHC) from succeeding. For many, blind faith in the free market and the sentiment that "private is always more efficient than public" is the motivation for dismissing such a sweeping reform initiative.

The trouble with UHC isn’t that it’s politically infeasible, financially ruinous, or inefficient, because none of the above is true. The largest impediment to implementing UHC is that it has yet to receive a fair trial in this country.

There are over 40 million people in the U.S. who do not have any health insurance. For a country touted as the most powerful in the world, that figure is appalling. Ensuring that every individual has free access to health care should be an imperative of any fair and just society. Health care, contrary to what those on the right would argue, is not simply a commodity to be bought and sold according to the market, but rather it is a basic human need. As such, it should not be limited to only those who are able to pay for it. Even some conservatives will reluctantly sympathize with the spirit of social justice inherent in UHC, but skepticism about the political and financial feasibility of UHC frequently color their arguments against it.

The first example is:

Myth #1: It would be too expensive

Rather than cost more money, UHC would actually reduce the cost of health care. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that UHC could save up to $14 billion annually by spreading the risk evenly over the entire population, eliminating deductibles and co-pays and making preventive medicine available to the poor and uninsured. The federal government already subsidizes private health insurance in the form of tax deductions. Private insurance companies also spend billions on administration and overhead, advertising, and determining and inspecting patient eligibility, all while trying to make a profit. UHC would not be burdened with some of those costs, like advertising, and unlike private business, it could run at a loss and still be viable. The pressures of profitability would no longer close the door for millions of Americans and drive up costs. As a result, Americans would effectively pay less for health insurance than they do now, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Think about that, "effectively pay less?" If you have an open mind you should read the full article. You may not agree and that's OK. If you do agree, like me, then we still need to push for UHC. Of course, the medical insurance companies and their cohorts the pharmaceuticals, and the super-conservatives, will oppose it with all their $might. They must have their profits no matter what it does to the average American.