@Cassiodorus

and even those of us without, might consider taking action to secure our local water supply. Or, more realistically, take actions that will make it more likely our water supply will be secure. By which I mean, present, drinkable, and not owned by Nestle.

My mom recently gave some money to an effort by a local conservation group to buy up the headwaters of a creek and a couple of springs. Florida has, I think, the largest number of freshwater springs in the world.

In my alternate universe, very few people live in Florida year-round, and large swaths of it are set aside as, to put it in capitalist terms (sorta) a water production facility for the nation. Because water is automatically profitable, whether you make money by selling it or not.

include them below.

@Fishtroller 02 would be great, try pointing out to them that freedom of religion will be lost if that happens. You might also point out that many of the first immigrants to this country came here because they wanted to be free to worship as they chose. Catholics came from Protestant countries. Protestants came from Catholic countries, etc. To the best of my knowledge, we have had Muslims, Jews, atheists, agnostics and others from the earliest days of immigration to this country.

and become active with one or more of the separation of church and state; atheist/agnostic; humanistic and/or secular groups that are on the rise in this country.

Until we put a stop to the creeping theocracy (heck, not even creeping anymore- it is HERE) that is rampant in our government and military, many of the categories of concern about our world will get mired in superstition and chained to decision making based upon god belief rather than science and reason. Religious belief in this country is what runs our dangerous support of Israel and involvement in middle eastern wars, hampers our movement forward in questions of the environment, squashes human and civil rights, etc.

Just check out the Military Religious Freedom Foundation if you want to have your eyes opened to the insidious take over of our military forces, Pentagon, etc.

The Freedom of Religion Foundation gets thousands of complaints every year about religious incursions into our public schools. Americans United for Separation of church and state does too The Secular Student Society works hard on college campuses and in high schools to protect the rights of unbelievers. Here is a partial list of organizations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Atheist_organizations

Just as a glaring example of how religious organizations are increasing their influence in our government, look at the distribution of PPP funds. Religious organizations received 7.3 billion in funding from taxpayers, More than 1.4 billion went to Catholic churches, many of which were in bankruptcy because of their involvement in the molestation of children by priests. 655,000 ministers were sent tax dollars to keep them in the pulpit. The Small Business Administration altered its own rules against loans to religious organizations in order to get money to institutions which do not have to fill out 990 tax forms or open their books in any way to allow taxpayer to see how their money was spent. These institutions also are allow to discriminate in their hiring, which used to be a prohibitory condition for receiving tax dollars.

All of this has happened under the watch an with the encouragement of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump and a Congress run by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.

With all the major issues we are facing now and have faced over the last 50 years, very few people have realized that the wall of separation of religion and government has been all but destroyed (SCOTUS has played a major part in this). And if anyone knows anything about world history when it comes to religion, they should be majorly alarmed.

@The Wizard

i'd been amazed no one had offered that alternative, Wizard. who cares if they won't win? it's at least a way to start to break the duopoly. in their newsletter, i admit to being frustrated that they're running more against Trump, not Biden, but i don't know who creates their newsletter either. angela's on fire, howie, it's hard to tell.

Platform Summary with drop-down menus for each item.

Ballot access.

Yeah, I just contributed to H2O, Howie in 2020. His politics are very good. Voting for Biden affirms the diabolical shenanigans of Obama in co opting the primary process, and all the spineless "Progressives" who gave in. Biden is one evil dude, he is not your nice grandpa! I'm reading The Untold History of the United States, by Kuznick and Stone. Biden is featured over and over again. He enabled the Iraq war by rounding up enough Democrat votes, the rest is terrible history. He's a neocon, neoliberal and totally sold out to corporate america and the MIC and personally corrupt, e.g. Ukraine and Hunter. Reinforcing this behaviour will guarantee another 20 years of this crap, and more dead people from third world countries all around the world. And the rich open their bottles of champagne and celebrate another victory over the people, while people suffer from no health care and incomes insufficient to survive. To me there is no argument whatsoever to vote for Biden.

@snoopydawg

I thought it was interesting but would like to hear what others think about it. Come on give it your best shot...

To see what really was set up that's preventing any kind of public healthcare system, read this article.

Interpreting the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the WTO Instruments Relevant to
the International Trade of Financial Services: The Lawyer’s Perspective

J. Steven Jarreau

~http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1664&context=...

The problem is particularly severe because health insurance is a financial service.

The same deal and the same traps in it that threaten Medicare and Social Security here are also gradually dismantling the UK’s NHS.

If the UK had gotten rid of its for profit insurance before joining the WTO things would be different now. You cannot have a public service alongside of a commercial one and have the public one be sustainable anymore since the establishment of the WTO.

Anybody who tells you public services that compete with commercial ones in any way can exist as an option outside of some temporary emergency situation is LYING.

Ady, I am sorry, you’ve made a huge mistake if you think any of these proposals can extend the ACA which was an emergency measure in response to the 2008 financial emergency. WTO rules limit them to I think ten years. The only way out is to get out of this agreement which has already led to an incredible number of needless deaths.

Someone should ask the USTR, seriously. “How does the ACA avoid the standstill in the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services” - If you follow the above link you'll find a bit about the creation of the Understanding on Financial Services and its “standstill clause” Also on the creation of the mess we’re in with the WTO. with regard to healthcare. The jobs and business has been turned into a bargaining chip in international negotiations.

Yes, they put profit over peoples health. In an emergency they can do things to address that emergency as long as they do not serve as a way to evade a country’s commitments under GATS.

So the kinds of things that people want a “public option for” (to prevent them of being milked of all their income by insurance firms, especially families with sick members) ARE NOT POSSIBLE UNDER GATS because that's where the profits are. Those profits and jobs - potentially- are (for foreign countries) one of the benefits of joining the WTO. Particularly because Americans remain so financially unsophisticated.

This will become a hug problem as Americans jobs are offshored and inevitably, US families sink deeper and deeper into unpayable debt. However it will be extraordinarily profitable for banks and insurance companies.

That is the problem, we have a parasitic class who now is entitled to take the profits that are needed to make healthcare available to our people. Why weren't people on top of this situation while the WTO was being established? the only Senator I can find who made a stink about it was Bernie Sanders but the things he said were all so vague and inaccurate - Here he says that the GATT would continue current policies, which was untrue, it represents a creation of a totally new organization to take over the running of services which are 80% of a modern economy. If people wonder why our elected leaders are powerless to fix things like health care that is it.

~[video:https://youtu.be/7ggcU09ww5g]

Watching that video today, its clear that one would have never figured out what the hell he was talking about.

Nor did he make it clear in any way that it blocked all the things progressives need, explicitly. Than and now. It blocks Bernie’s entire platform.

Thats the ugly reality. So Biden wont and cant do anything that violates those rules, nor can Trump.

It takes a literal extreme emergency to get any flexibility and on healthcare it seems to me our flexibility has likely been used up. (Because the financial emergency it was attached to was 12 years ago.

We need to get clarification on this. Instead, people are in some kind of la-la land.

I don't remember much from formation of the WTO but if it's like other trade agreements that allow corporations to sue the US if our laws prevent their profits then it how does it makes sense for this one to not allow universal health care here? I'd think companies would gladly give up paying for our health insurance. But I also think that any company that doesn't pay a living wage should have to contribute to our social programs. This seems to be a no brainer except that they have told congress not to do it. I would cut into their profits and that cannot happen here anymore if it ever did. We are an oligarchy period and I have no idea how to fix that.

@Anja Geitz

i'm working on part of that story for tomorrow:

...as long as both political parties continue to support defense spending

although it should rightfully be called the 'Offensive War Military Budget', especially given it's all about Dying Imperial Western Hegemony by now. ha; Pindar's Revenge called them 'Imaginary Enemies' on one of my threads.

Tell me that I’m the problem with what’s wrong with our electoral politics after I told him that as long as both political parties continue to support defense spending that never requires producing a balanced budget for the public to view that it really doesn’t matter what happens in this election since between climate change and continuous wars, the earth for us regular folk will be uninhabitable in a few decades. At which point, I assured him not to worry about who votes and who doesn’t, because unless Trump cheats better than the Dems do, the blue team will probably “win” the rigging contest this time. He was not amused. But at least his tedious commentary on politics in the break room when I’m around has ended.

@WoodsDweller

It will be a senile old white guy who won't nationalize the banks, won't cut the military budget, won't downsize the police, won't do a damned thing to address climate change, won't assure a food supply when agriculture fails, won't build hardened cities to house the survivors, won't defuel and decomission the nuke plants, and won't relocate the population away from the coasts.