|
Home >
Newsletter Archive
> Current Newsletter
LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER
Week of September 2, 2007
The link to this electronic newsletter is being e-mailed to 4,000+
Jefferson County Democrats
We hope you will forward the link to your own e-mail list.
***********************************
CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LIST OF EVENTS
Updated on a regular basis
Bulletin Board:
The Louisville/Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 5:00 pm at Democratic Headquarters, 640 Barret Avenue .
Notice to our Readers & 2007 General Election Candidates:
This newsletter will carry in this space any Democratic candidates' notice of events or communications (250 words or less) to our readers that the candidate provides to the editor at rcrider@louisvilledem.com
|
****************************
***********************************
George: "Dear Sen. McConnell: Will You Help Us Stop The War?"
Stephen George, managing editor at LEO, wrote the following piece about last night's anti-war rally in Louisville and the accompanying march of 300 demonstrators from Bellarmine University (where the rally took place) to the home of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R). REST OF STORY
******************************
Nothing this week
*******************************************
DAILY GRILL
Source is on vacation
****************************************************
Quotes of the Day
"But the facts are what they are. The fact is the pardons happened. The fact is he did take the Fifth (Amendment before a grand jury). The fact is he was indicted. The fact is he does have a legal defense fund. The fact is he said we were going to get to the unvarnished truth, but we didn't." --Lt. Governor Steve Pence (R) on the broken promises and sad legacy of his former running mate, Governor Fletcher (R).
“I’m running against an incumbent so desperate to keep his job, he’s willing to say anything to keep it,” Beshear said. “Well, for every lie they tell about us, we’ll tell the truth about them. And the truth about them is much worse than any lies they can tell about us.” -- Former Lt. Governor Steve Beshear (D) in today's Middlesboro Daily News:
“I never understood how so many think when they get 2 payments ahead on their truck loan and rub 2 quarters together in their pockets they're Republicans!!” Posted by: Robert Cumming on BluegrassReport.org
Recent Senate Votes
Recent House Votes
Congress is in recess
HUMOR
"The undercover police officer said the senator tried to
reach under the stall to touch him, but the senator said, no, he wasn't
trying to touch him, he was only trying to pick up a piece of paper off the
floor. Who picks up paper off the floor in the men's room? I don't even like
when my shoe laces touch the floor in the men's room." --Jay Leno
"You know who I feel sorry for in this whole thing? The undercover cop.
How'd you like to have that job. Sit in an airport bathroom all day, your
pants around your ankles with a coffee and a donut waiting for guys to hit
on you." --Jay Leno
"Sen.
Craig is married. Apparently he told his wife, don't worry about having
dinner ready to me. I'm going to wolf down a hot dog at the airport." --Jay
Leno
"The Democrats may have control of the House, but the Republicans have
control of the bathrooms." --Jay Leno
"Sen. Craig gave a press conference today where he said, I'm not gay, I've
never been way. Then he apologized to his wife, Liza Minnelli." --Jay Leno
"There's another scandal in Washington. One of the senator's from Idaho,
Larry Craig, was arrested in airport men's room. Gives new meaning to the
word 'caucusing.'" --David Letterman
"Sen. Craig said he made a mistake by pleading guilty. And I was thinking,
maybe that was your second mistake." --David Letterman
"The way I look at it, anyone who spends more than two minutes in an airport
men's room is guilty of something." --David Letterman
"The police report says he tapped his foot, which means 'I want gay
sex.' And, also means I'll never wear my iPod to the bathroom again."
--Jimmy Kimmel
"Needless to say,
Senator Craig is also anti-gay marriage and gays in the military, which
I think, shows he doesn't let his personal needs interfere with his work."
--Jimmy Kimmel, on Larry Craig's bathroom incident
"Earlier today, after months of scandals and political
pressure, Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales
announced he's going to resign. Gonzales said, 'There comes a time when a
man should resign, and that time for me was last January.'" --Conan O'Brien
"Alberto Gonzales is stepping down, but he can't recall why." --David
Letterman
"Russian leader Vladimir Putin -- have you seen this guy? He gets his
picture taken a lot with his shirt off. We used to have a pantless
president, they've got a shirtless president. He was named 'Sexiest Commie
Alive' ... nearly edging out Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il. ... But people are
stunned the Russian president appearing in public without a shirt. And I was
thinking, 'Well heck, our president often appears in public without a
brain'" --David Letterman
"The good news is that President Bush's daughter,
Jenna Bush, is engaged. The bad news is she is marrying Rudolph
Giuliani. ... Dick Cheney is hoping for a shotgun wedding. ... Jenna
announced her engagement two weeks ago, although President Bush knew about
it over a month ago from some wiretaps. ... If you'd like to get the young
couple something for the wedding, they are registered at Mobil, Exxon and
Shell." -Jay Leno
"At a political forum here in Hollywood last week,
Hillary Clinton
said she does not support gay marriage. In fact, she said she's not too
crazy about straight marriage anymore either." -Jay Leno
"Fred Thompson said he's still testing the waters in his bid for the
presidency. He's been testing the water for what, six month now? In fact,
those aren't wrinkles on his face. He's starting to prune up" --Jay Leno
IMPORTANT READERS NOTE: The Progress Report will be on "recess" over the next two weeks.
NEED COMPUTER ASSISTANCE??
Democrat Activist Mike Bailey is now providing “Professional Computer Support.” He can be contacted at 502-558-4026, or mikebailey2000@usa.net.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Think Fast
Source is on vacation
INTERESTING
Bush’s Medicare Drug Program Fails to Cut Costs, by Tula Connell
The first report card on Bush’s Medicare prescription drug program is in—and it shows a failing grade for controlling the cost of medication for seniors.
Seniors in Medicare’s Part D prescription drug program are more likely to pay at least $300 a month for medicines than those on other plans, according to a study published by the journal Health Affairs.
Hat tip to the
Alliance for Retired
Americans for highlighting the study, which reports that
experts consider the poll of more than 16,000 seniors, performed by the
Kaiser Family Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund and the Tufts-New England
Medical Center, the closest thing yet to a “report card” on Part
D. Further:
The study found that eight percent of seniors in the government’s Medicare plans spent $300 or more out-of-pocket for drugs, compared with 5 percent for both those covered by the Veterans Affairs Department, which negotiates prices for drugs it covers, and those covered by workplace insurance. Medicare recipients were also more likely to delay or forgo filling prescriptions because of the expense, with one in five enrollees saying they had put off or even skipped getting some medications because of Part D’s high costs. Part of the reason so many beneficiaries are having difficulty paying for their medications is that many low-income seniors apparently do not know that they can get additional government subsidies to lower their costs, the survey indicated.
Part D, the voluntary prescription drug program, went into effect in January 2006 and is provided only through private plans, either stand-alone prescription drug plans or through a Medicare Advantage plan. Congress passed the Medicare drug legislation by a slim margin—and several lawmakers likely would not have voted for the bill had they been told the true cost. While the Bush administration claimed the legislation would cost $400 million over 10 years, Congress learned that Medicare’s chief actuary had estimated the true cost of the program at $534 billion.
Democrats in Congress have proposed expanding the number of low-income seniors eligible for such subsidies by cutting overpayments to private Medicare Advantage plans and say the new findings show the benefit is not working well for those who need it most: seniors who have several chronic illnesses and must take a number of medications.
Says Alliance for Retired Americans President George Kourpias: What we have in this report is incontrovertible evidence that prohibiting the government from negotiating lower drug prices has hurt seniors.
****************************
Mourning in Bush America: Greed Is Good, by Tula Connell
The six Utah coal miners still remain trapped after the Crandall Canyon mine collapse 22 days ago. And the three men who died trying to rescue the six miners are just being laid to rest. But owner Robert Murray was ready to move on—and make money.
After disappearing from the public for a few days last week, Murray was back, not to offer reassurances to the families of the trapped miners or expressions of regret for the length of time their loved ones have been buried, not to give condolences to the families of the deceased rescue workers or to proffer other basic civilities, but to assert that it’s time to start mining other sections of the mine. After all, what’s a few lost miners when there’s more profit to be made?
“We were shocked that the subject was even brought up,” a spokesman for the agency said late Tuesday. “MSHA remains 100 percent focused on the rescue effort.”
And this response to Murray’s remarks from Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, as noted by Square State:
“That’s totally unacceptable. There will not be business as usual until there is closure.”
Following the outcry from federal officials, state lawmakers and family members, Murray now says the mine never will reopen.
But greed at the expense of all else, including workers’ safety and even lives, has been a hallmark of Murray’s career (see here and here). (And when he does spend money, he tends to fund the worst of the worst Republican campaigns.) As safety advocate Ellen Smith noted, at Murray’s Powhatan No. 6 mine in Ohio, Murray was
in big arguments with the Mine Safety and Health Administration officials over problems they had there, over citations he got, over the fact that they wanted to close down a longwall section to make the mine safer. And we have meeting notes where he was screaming, “You’re costing me $15,000 an hour! I’m losing tens of millions of dollars!”
Murray’s egregious behavior makes him an easy target. But he’s the open sore on an internally rotting body whose smell is apparent, but whose source is less so.
The corpse of Bush America.
Just this week, we’ve seen a dirty laundry list of greed at work:
- Bush happily stomps on the health of America’s children, unilaterally declaring restrictions on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) because he sees momentum building in Congress to expand the hugely successful program. (Scarecrow did a great job on the issue here.) Why would Bush want to expand a program that enabled 2 million more low-income children to have health insurance between 1998 and 2005, when he could reassure his big insurance backers he would never endanger their massive profits?
- Two firefighters die battling a blaze at the abandoned Deutsche Bank building in New York City over the weekend, a blaze labor and community activists say didn’t have to happen. According to Newsday, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which owns the building, employed subcontractor John Galt Corp. to dismantle the building, a move community activists opposed because of John Galt’s numerous city and federal violations. A crucial pipe had been taken apart before the fire, leaving the firefighters without water.
“Firefighters were sent into a death trap,” said Steve Cassidy, president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
- The AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America awarded the grand prize in its My Bad Boss Contest to Pete, whose employer, an Illinois tyrant, threw away the paperwork and forms Pete filed, leaving him without paid leave or disability benefits for those days. Pete, the father of three small children, has a rare form of cancer and needed paid leave to help pay his family’s bills. Pete received the most votes from visitors to the contest, beating out several runners-up, including a waitress whose boss hired her stalker and another worker whose boss didn’t tell him his pregnant wife had called, bleeding and needing to go to the hospital—because he wanted him to keep working.
Greed, bleeding through the sick body with the unhaloed smirk of “Greed is good,”Gordon Gekko hovering above. And how appropriate that subcontractor John Galt bears the same name as the Ayn Rand anti-hero in Atlas Shrugged, who remains in the background until the novel ends, when he makes his appearance and the system collapses. Leaving bumper stickers asking to this day, Who is John Galt?—and Rand’s followers to declare Galt “the perfect man.” According to the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health ( NYCOSH), John Galt (the company) planned to ignore major aspects of the Ground Zero cleanup plan approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Dave Newman, director of NYCOSH’s World Trade Center Project, says that rather than meet the challenges, Galt’s employer, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.,
acts as if they don’t exist, hiring firms without experience, altering plans without official approval, and showing contempt for the community of residents and workers who will be at risk if something goes wrong.”
Something is deeply wrong with America today, asserts AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Writing on Huffington Post, Sweeney says:
Working men and women have lost their value to the people who have been running this country for too long. Ruthless CEOs wring working people dry, and the neocon ideologues in the White House help them.
Our wages are stagnant, our benefits are disappearing, the middle class is shrinking and, for the first time, there’s a good chance our children will not be better off than our generation. We’re the most productive workers in the world, but we have to work more hours, more jobs and send more family members into the workforce just to keep up.
The heroes who rushed to Ground Zero to save lives and who dug and sweated and struggled for months after Sept. 11, 2001, are suffering today from neglect and indifference. Neglect and indifference left thousands stranded on rooftops and in a dark convention center after Hurricane Katrina. Neglect, and indifference meant deplorable conditions for veterans recovering at Walter Reed.
As on Firedoglake, our commentors at the AFL-CIO Now blog often hit home with their remarks. Writes Catbear955 in response to the possibility the Utah miners never will be found:
Corporate greed is corporate greed—the human cost doesn’t matter. The families pay the price. God bless the miners and their families; Lord have mercy on those murderers who sent the miners into harm’s way for a dollar.
Mercy from the Lord and a commitment from us lesser beings to heal the wretched body Bush and his followers have bequeathed us.
******************************
Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will
See You Now, By Paul Craig Roberts
"
ICH "
--- - Early this morning China let the idiots in Washington, and on Wall
Street, know that it has them by the short hairs. Two senior spokesmen for
the Chinese government observed that China's considerable holdings of US
dollars and Treasury bonds "contributes a great deal to maintaining the
position of the dollar as a reserve currency."
Should the US proceed with sanctions intended to cause the Chinese currency
to appreciate, "the Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars,
which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar."
If Western financial markets are sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the
message, US interest rates will rise regardless of any further action by
China. At this point, China does not need to sell a single bond. In an
instant, China has made it clear that US interest rates depend on China, not
on the Federal Reserve.
Strategic thinkers, if any remain who have not been purged by neocons, will
quickly conclude that China's power over the value of the dollar and US
interest rates also gives China power over US foreign policy. The US was
able to attack Afghanistan and Iraq only because China provided the largest
part of the financing for Bush's wars.
If China ceased to buy US Treasuries, Bush's wars would end. The savings
rate of US consumers is essentially zero, and several million are afflicted
with mortgages that they cannot afford. With Bush's budget in deficit and
with no room in the US consumer's budget for a tax increase, Bush's wars can
only be financed by foreigners.
No country on earth, except for Israel, supports the Bush regimes' desire to
attack Iran. It is China's decision whether it calls in the US ambassador,
and delivers the message that there will be no attack on Iran or further war
unless the US is prepared to buy back $900 billion in US Treasury bonds and
other dollar assets.
The US, of course, has no foreign reserves with which to make the purchase.
The impact of such a large sale on US interest rates would wreck the US
economy and effectively end Bush's war-making capability. Moreover, other
governments would likely follow the Chinese lead, as the main support for
the US dollar has been China's willingness to accumulate them. If the
largest holder dumped the dollar, other countries would dump dollars, too.
The value and purchasing power of the US dollar would fall. When
hard-pressed Americans went to Wal-Mart to make their purchases, the new
prices would make them think they had wandered into Nieman Marcus. Americans
would not be able to maintain their current living standard.
Simultaneously, Americans would be hit either with tax increases in order to
close a budget deficit that foreigners will no longer finance or with large
cuts in income security programs. The only other source of budgetary finance
would be for the government to print money to pay its bills. In this event,
Americans would experience inflation in addition to higher prices from
dollar devaluation.
This is a grim outlook. We got in this position because our leaders are
ignorant fools. So are our economists, many of whom are paid shills for some
interest group. So are our corporate leaders whose greed gave China power
over the US by offshoring the US production of goods and services to China.
It was the corporate fat cats who turned US Gross Domestic Product into
Chinese imports, and it was the "free trade, free market economists" who
egged it on.
How did a people as stupid as Americans get so full of hubris?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial
page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions
******************************
VIDEOS
A Web Ad To Pass On
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a group called Freedom’s Watch that has started running ads in support of the Iraq war. It’s funded by former Bush aides and donors, and is led by none other than Ari Fleischer. They give you a number to call to tell Congress what you think about the war — but get this, the phone number comes to them, and they only patch you through if you support the war.
So, another group called AmericansUnitedForChange has put out their own ad, showing what happens when you call, and sharing the real phone number for the Congressional switchboard. Give it a look, and then pass it on — good ad – Source
CLICK HERE FOR LATEST ISSUE OF THE "FRIDAY ALERT"
If you plan to change your e-mail address, please let me know at rcrider@louisvilledem.com
Your contributions of news, comments and/or events are invited. Please e-mail such items to
Ray Crider at rcrider@louisvilledem.com . If you know someone who would like to be on the newsletter e-mail list, please have him or her supply the following information to the same
e-mail address: Name, address, phone numbers ( home , work, fax, cell), and e-mail address.
|
TOP
Not authorized by any candidate
or candidate's committee.
Contributions or gifts to the Louisville/Jefferson County Democratic Party
are not tax deductible.
About Us | Events Calendar | The Candidates | Local Clubs | Local Officials
Vote Here | Get Involved | Did You Know | Contact Us | Home
640 Barret Avenue | Louisville, KY 40204 | Tel: 502 582-1999 - Fax: 502 582-9933
Copyright ©2009 The Louisville Jefferson County Democratic Party
"Paid for and Authorized by the Louisville and Jefferson County
Democratic Party."
Charles Horton, Treasurer - Tim Longmeyer, Chairman