This is to announce that I am going to be mailing fewer pieces, and doing so less frequently for at least a while. I will still mail out pieces that I take to be particularly insightful or provocative (such as this one) or urgent, but I will not likely cover basic alternative news. Such news is available through a number of sites, including DemocracyNow!, CommonDreams, and InformationClearingHouse. I encourage readers of ThereItIs.org to sign up for daily email updates from these other excellent sources. Want more? See the News Roundup and Peak Oil sections of this site. Peace, –Brendan ThereItIs.org […]
Daily Archives: December 8, 2004
4 posts
The Disparate Consensus on Health Care for All 6 Dec. 2004 | New York Times by STEVE LOHR IN Washington, the phrase “universal coverage” is rarely mentioned as the way to provide health insurance for the 45 million uninsured Americans. It evokes memories of the Clinton administration’s sobering failure to forge a national health care plan. Yet among health care experts there is a surprising consensus that the United States must inevitably adopt some kind of universal coverage.
by Brendan Lalor BBC2’s three-part series, “The Power of Nightmares,” provides more than 50 years of historical context for the rise of the politics of fear and is worth a look. a transcript (with a link to a bittorent of the entire .AVI file) a coarser RealPlayer version of the video
December 7, 2004 | New York Times by PAUL KRUGMAN Privatizing Social Security – replacing the current system, in whole or in part, with personal investment accounts – won’t do anything to strengthen the system’s finances. If anything, it will make things worse. Nonetheless, the politics of privatization depend crucially on convincing the public that the system is in imminent danger of collapse, that we must destroy Social Security in order to save it.