Published on Sunday May 4, 2008, by The New York Times. The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs. Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be - often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments. With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline. [more]

Published May 2, 2008 on Huffington Post. Five years ago, President Bush dressed up in a flight suit for a self-congratulatory photo op on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished". Certainly, the war was not over then and victory was not achieved. The mission has been redefined several times and what the president hopes to accomplish in Iraq is unclear. Five years after "Mission Accomplished", the costs to human life continue to build. Since then, nearly four thousand brave American servicemen and women have been killed in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over 5 million Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons have been forced from their homes. Five years after "Mission Accomplished", the strain on our economy is becoming unbearable. Congress has appropriated over $500 billion, and we are spending an average of $245 million a day in Iraq. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate economist, has estimated the total costs to our economy, including caring for our veterans and rebuilding our military, will top $3 trillion dollars. The cost of the Iraq war to the average American family this year will be $16,000. [more]

Published Apr 22, 2008 on Truthdig. How proud the Clintonistas must be. They have learned how to rival what Hillary once termed the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in the effort to destroy a viable Democratic leader who dares to stand in the way of their ambitions. The tactics used to kneecap Barack Obama are the same as had been turned on Bill Clinton in earlier times, from radical-baiting associates to challenging his resolve in protecting the nation from foreign enemies. Sen. Clinton’s eminently sensible and centrist—to a fault—opponent is now viewed as weak and even vaguely unpatriotic because he is thoughtful. Neither Karl Rove nor Dick Morris could have done a better job. On primary election day in Pennsylvania, even with polls showing her well ahead in that state, Hillary went lower in her grab for votes. Seizing upon a question as to how she would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn’t have nuclear weapons, on Israel, which does, Hillary mocked reasoned discourse by promising to “totally obliterate them,” in an apparent reference to the population of Iran. That is not a word gaffe; it is an assertion of the right of our nation to commit genocide on an unprecedented scale. Shouldn’t the potential leader of a nation that used nuclear bombs to obliterate hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese employ extreme caution before making such a threat? Neither the Japanese then nor the Iranian people now were in a position to hold their leaders accountable, and to approve such collective punishment of innocents is to endorse terrorism. [more]

Published on Friday, May 2, 2008 by The New York Times. Third period at Paul Robeson High School in East Oakland was pretty much what you might expect on a sunny Thursday afternoon at the end of the term: distracted students, talk of graduation and nearly silent response to teachers’ questions. Until, of course, the topic turned to the recent cuts in the state’s education budget.0502 06 1 “We don’t have any money because it’s all going to the war,” said Ashley Lawless, a 18-year-old senior who moments before had been obsessively fixing her hair. “And now they’re shutting all this stuff down.” That kind of angry outburst may have been precisely the point of a daylong act of educational disobedience undertaken on Thursday by about two dozen teachers across Oakland, who set aside their normal lesson plans in favor of topics like the war in Iraq, racial inequality and a recent 10 percent cut in the state schools budget. [more]

Plans were announced today for a major national anti-war assembly in Cleveland, Ohio, in June. The National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation is set for the weekend of June 28-29, 2008, in Cleveland and is open to all those opposed to the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq. "May 1st marks five years since the 'mission accomplished' speech by President Bush on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier," said Greg Coleridge, spokesperson for the National Assembly organizing committee and director of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. "In the past five years, the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq has resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. More than 4 million Iraqis have been injured or displaced. More than $500 billion U.S. tax dollars have been wasted. The U.S.-led war and occupation has been a military, human, and economic disaster." [more]