The corporate intervention (pharma, hospitals, A.M.A., and insurance industry) in the health care reform effort has made it emphatically clear that Election Reform must precede any other efforts at progressive reform. 
    The American public has made it clear that they want affordable, accessible, quality health care.  The politicians are giving us unaffordable, inaccessible, poor quality health care.  We the people will be paying more, be able to afford less, and can expect no improvement in quality of health care given the current health care reform proposal. 
With current reforms, politicians receiving big bucks from medical industry corporations will force Americans to big dollars to insurance companies for inferior coverage.   Current reform will not guarantee these insurance companies will keep premiums, deductibles, or co-pay rates at affordable levels.  There is no guarantee that you will not pay in and then have benefits denied.  Restrictions against denials will be fazed in at best years from now, providing enough time for further revisions that will leave us with the mandatory payments/taxation with no effective (accessible and affordable) access to care.  Given the way things have gone so far, and the reasons they have gone the way they have, leaves us with no reason to believe that “reconciliation” efforts with  operate to serve the public interest.  So, we can expect every effort at reform to go so long as corporate interests shares greater influence over our “elected” officials than public interests. 
Without the influence of corporate interest, changes such as health care reform would serve the interest of the voting public, rather than the campaign financing corporations.  If political campaigns were publicly funded, and Corporations were not afforded personhood deserving of “free speech” status, we could get health care reform that serves the interest of public health rather than corporate profits.  If corporations were not provided the rights of individuals, and if individuals were held responsible for the truth of what they say, that is if as it stands individuals can be sued for slanderous lies (something for which corporations have not been held responsible), oh, and make a hand count a constitutional requirement, then we might manage to recoup our democracy, or government by and for the people. 
     Until then, we can expect every effort at reform to take the same path we have seen with health care reform.  Something that as a liberal I can no longer support as it has evolved. 

MC Kean

This may be the only good thing about health care reform.   Make good on your promise and leave us now please Mr. Limbaugh.  But then who else would have him?

Informed and engaged progressives aren't entirely enthusiastic about the measure. Here are some of the most serious complaints.

There's momentum to repair our fractured health care system -- but activism is desperately needed to keep the process honest.

In an historic vote in the U.S. House of Representatives, a health-care reform bill containing a public health-insurance plan passed the chamber by a vote of 220-215. One Republican, Joseph Cao of Louisiana, voted with the Democrats, while 39 Democrats, including Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich, voted against H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Facing razor-thin margins in the House, Democratic leaders are hoping to convert the sole liberal who opposes their health care bill, but it seems they have their work cut out because he isn't budging.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on Monday defended his opposition to the proposal in an appearance on MSNBC's Countdown With Keith Olbermann, citing as his central concern its lack of a robust public option to provide competition for insurance companies.

"This bill represents a giveaway to the insurance industry," Kucinich said. "$70 billion dollars a year, and no guarantees of any control over premiums, forcing people to buy private insurance, five consecutive years of double-digit premium increases."

The proposal the White House and Democrats are coalescing around comprises subsidies for lower-income individuals and a mandate that they purchase insurance. It also bans insurers from dropping sick people from their plans or denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

An ardent proponent of a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system, Kucinich reiterated his view that the current template offers private insurers "a version of a bailout" and predicted they'll continue "socking it to consumers."

"I told the president twice in two different meetings that I couldn't support the bill if it didn't have a robust public option and at least if it didn't have something that was going to protect consumers from these rampant premium increases," he added.

The Congressional Budget Office projected that the Senate bill, upon which the current version is closely based, will by 2019 extend coverage to roughly 31 million legal American residents while reducing the deficit by $132 billion.

Democrats and progressives consider Kucinich one of the more likely Congressmen to flip his "no" vote, as he favors a progressive health care overhaul and agrees with the broad principles behind the reform effort.

He voted against the narrowly-approved House legislation in November, which contained a public option but one that was weaker than progressives advocated for. The likely elimination of the provision altogether seems to make Kucinich's vote all the more elusive.

The Ohio congressman left no doubt that he plans to oppose the bill again, even if he were to cast the swing-vote. "If that sounded like a no, you're correct," he told guest host Lawrence O'Donnell, declaring the effort was like "building on sand."

Many Democrats and progressives insist that failing to pass health care reform would be politically disastrous for the party in the November midterm elections.

The congressman told Raw Story in January that Democrats "lost the initiative the minute that our party jumped into bed with the insurance companies." He alleged that the proposals on the table would further escalate income inequality in the United States.

A potentially deadly drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been linked to the deaths of soldiers returning from war. Yet the FDA continues to approve it.

Epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson explains why it's equality, and not high income, that makes a society thrive.

The problem today for most isn't this recession, it's that except for the top 10 percent, average household income hasn't changed a bit for 10 to 20 years.

Private monopolies determine the breakfast cereal we eat, the car we drive, the medical treatment we receive, what we feed our pets: they're the ones that threaten our liberty.

Critics are worried the law will open up a Pandora's box of unintended legal consequences.

A potentially deadly drug manufactured by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been linked to the deaths of soldiers returning from war. Yet the FDA continues to approve it.

Government works quite well for big corporations, banks, insurance companies, military contractors, lobbyists, and for the rich and powerful. But it does not work for people.

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives. 

Ryan McVay / Stone Sub / Getty

What does it tell us that female soldiers deployed overseas stop drinking water after 7 p.m. to reduce the odds of being raped if they have to use the bathroom at night? Or that a soldier who was assaulted when she went out for a cigarette was afraid to report it for fear she would be demoted — for having gone out without her weapon? Or that, as Representative Jane Harman puts it, "a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire."

The fight over "Don't ask, don't tell" made headlines this winter as an issue of justice and history and the social evolution of our military institutions. We've heard much less about another set of hearings in the House Armed Services Committee. Maybe that's because too many commanders still don't ask, and too many victims still won't tell, about the levels of violence endured by women in uniform. (See TIME's special report on the state of the American woman.)

The Pentagon's latest figures show that nearly 3,000 women were sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2008, up 9% from the year before; among women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number rose 25%. When you look at the entire universe of female veterans, close to a third say they were victims of rape or assault while they were serving — twice the rate in the civilian population. (See the top 10 crime stories of 2009.)

The problem is even worse than that. The Pentagon estimates that 80% to 90% of sexual assaults go unreported, and it's no wonder. Anonymity is all but impossible; a Government Accountability Office report concluded that most victims stay silent because of "the belief that nothing would be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule; and concern that peers would gossip." More than half feared they would be labeled troublemakers. A civilian who is raped can get confidential, or "privileged," advice from her doctors, lawyers, victim advocates; the only privilege in the military applies to chaplains. A civilian who knows her assailant has a much better chance of avoiding him than does a soldier at a remote base, where filing charges can be a career killer — not for the assailant but the victim. Women worry that they will be removed from their units for their own "protection" and talk about not wanting to undermine their missions or the cohesion of their units. And then some just do the math: only 8% of cases that are investigated end in prosecution, compared with 40% for civilians arrested for sex crimes. Astonishingly, about 80% of those convicted are honorably discharged nonetheless.

The sense of betrayal runs deep in victims who joined the military to be part of a loyal team pursuing a larger cause; experts liken the trauma to incest and the particular damage done when assault is inflicted by a member of the military "family." Women are often denied claims for posttraumatic stress caused by the assault if they did not bring charges at the time. There are not nearly enough mental-health professionals in the system to help them. Female vets are four times more likely to be homeless than male vets are, according to the Service Women's Action Network, and of those, 40% report being victims of sexual assault. (See pictures of an Army town coping with PTSD.)

Experts offer many theories for the causes: that military culture is intrinsically violent and hypermasculine, that the military is slow to identify potential risks among raw young recruits, that too many commanders would rather look the other way than acknowledge a breakdown in their units, that it has simply not been made a high enough priority. "A lot of my male colleagues believe that the only thing a general needs to worry about is whether he can win a war," says Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez of the Armed Services Committee. "People are not taking this seriously. Commanding officers in the field are not understanding how important this is."

But there are some signs that both Congress and the Pentagon are getting serious about this problem. It is now possible for victims to seek medical treatment without having to report the crime to police or their chain of command. More field hospitals have trained nurse practitioners to treat the victims; more bases have rape kits. "More than ever," Sanchez says, "I believe that our leadership at the very top is beginning to realize that they need to be proactive."

According to a report by the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in the Military Services, the progress made so far remains "evident, but uneven." The failure to provide a basic guarantee of safety to women, who now represent 15% of the armed forces, is not just a moral issue, or a morale issue. What does it say if the military can't or won't protect the people we ask to protect us?

See poll results about men, women and society.

See 25 people who mattered in 2009.

Wall Street tycoon Pete Peterson wants to bring IMF-style economic insanity to the U.S. The scary part? He might get away with it.

Michael Moore lets loose on Beck, the Democrats, and the state of our economy as he unrolls his DVD release of capitalism.

The idea of sexual pleasure as a harmful addiction parallels the most perverse aspects of Western religious history.

Meet the fast-growing "patriot" group that's recruiting soldiers to resist the Obama administration.

• Civil rights report shows 250% rise in 'patriot' groups
• Economy and media conspiracy theories fuel growth

A Louisiana sheriff has begun training 200 local volunteers in basic hand-to-hand combat techniques as part of Project Exodus aimed at protecting the northwestern corner of the state from the danger of terrorists, the Shreveport Times reports.

OAKLAND, CA (KGO) -- Students in California lead a statewide protest against education budget cuts that has also inspired demonstrations around the country. They called it a "Day of Action."

By Mike Adams
Natural News

In a gathering of vitamin D researchers recently held in Toronto, Dr. Cedric Garland delivered a blockbuster announcement: Breast cancer can be virtually “eradicated” by raising vitamin D levels.