from GRITtv with Laura Flanders
Former managing director at JP Morgan John Fullerton wants to see a complete re-imagining of the world of investments. If we don’t, Fullerton argues in this conversation with Laura Flanders, our grandchildren will ask us, “What were you thinking?”
It was early in the morning and I was late for an appointment. But it was my brother calling, so I answered my cell.
“Hey Ellen,” he said, “You know that piece you wrote about Hultgren being unconcerned about all those people who don’t have medical insurance?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “The one where the man asked Hultgren why he opted to take federal health insurance for himself and his family, but didn’t want the rest of us to have it?”
“Yeah, that one,” he responded. “I sent that piece to my neighbor who voted for Hultgren because he is a Christian. I thought she would see this as the betrayal of Christian morals it actually is.”
“But she didn’t see it that way, Ellen. I don’t get it,” he continued. “Didn’t we learn the Golden Rule? You know, do onto others as you would have them do onto you?”
Nor is it an earthquake, or a series of lethal tornados, or any other sudden disaster. It is rather a natural disaster in slow motion, creeping and steady and relentless, and apparently not photogenic enough to merit your standard-issue disaster-type media coverage. 
They’ve got maps – along with a twelve week history rolling history of this drought unfolding – right here.
Along with juicy tidbits like “Looking Ahead: In general, July 4 – 8, 2012 doesn’t look promising in terms of relief, though the intense heat should subside somewhat.”
Here’s what intense heat subsiding somewhat looks like where I’m at:
Today Jul 5
101°F
77°F
Mostly Sunny
Chance of rain:20%Wind: W at 12 mph
Fri Jul 6
102°
74°
Mostly Sunny
Chance of rain:10%Wind: WSW at 7 mph
Sat Jul 7
95°
67°
Isolated T-Storms
Chance of rain:30%Wind: N at 15 mph
Sun Jul 8
83°
63°
Partly Cloudy
Chance of rain:20%Wind: NNE at 12 mph
Mon Jul 9
83°
60°
Sunny
Chance of rain:0%Wind: NE at 8 mph
Tue Jul 10
84°
63°
Sunny
Chance of rain:0%Wind: NE at 8 mph
Wed Jul 11
86°
68°
Sunny
Chance of rain:0%Wind: SE at 8 mph
Thu Jul 12
89°
66°
Sunny
Chance of rain:0%Wind: S at 8 mph
Fri Jul 13
89°
68°
Sunny
Chance of rain:0%Wind: SW at 9 mph
Sat Jul 14
90°
71°
Sunny
Chance of rain:0%Wind: SSW at 9 mph
In an attempt to differentiate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, the Obama campaign is working hard to draw attention to Mitt Romney and Bain Capital’s agenda to offshore and outsource jobs.
While not necessarily connected to the Obama campaign, there is a new push inside labor circles to draw attention to a small company based in Freeport, IL named Sensata. The company is owned by Bain Capital and is preparing to move 170 Illinois jobs to China. Factory workers are calling on Mitt Romney to step in and stop the plant closure.
I support the move to target Romney on this issue and I hope that national pressure causes Bain Capital to keep those jobs in Illinois and sign a union contract with the workers.
At the same time, I can’t help but call out the hypocrisy of the Obama Administration for blasting Romney in public while secretly (and I mean very secretly) holding closed-door meetings with 600 corporate advisors to write another free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that will result in more off shoring and outsourcing of U.S. jobs. TPP is expected to be the largest and worst free trade agreement in global history.
In a recent RT article titled, “TPP secrets: Obama covertly granting more power to multinational corporations,” a doctor chastizes the president.
“Bush was better than Obama on this,” Judit Rius of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign tells HuffPo. “It’s pathetic, but it is what it is. The world’s upside-down.”
So, who do we blame?
“I have a job and I have health insurance,” Representative Hultgren (R IL-14) said, and then paused for a moment proudly emphasizing the Republican spin talking point that when one has a job, one automatically has health insurance. It’s as if life is that simple. If you work, the spin goes, you have insurance. He was attempting to say that if we have jobs, we don’t need a national health insurance plan. We don’t need “Obamacare.”
The subtle part of this ‘argument’ is that not only is it flawed logically, it blames the victim. If you don’t have insurance, it’s because you don’t have a job. A job will furnish good insurance. And if you don’t have a job, it’s because you’re either not looking, or—to serve the Republican spin even further—it’s because Obama won’t do what the Republicans want so people can have jobs. So therefore, we can all blame Obama.
But this time his audience at the Oswego Town Hall meeting was not buying it as I noticed they have in the past. No one applauded. No one said, “Yeah!” There was silence as Hultgren paused and looked around for support he did not get.
Representative Randy Hultgren (R IL-14) showed typical Republican spin at his Oswego Town Hall meeting recently. When asked direct questions regarding taxes, healthcare, social security, and Citizens United, he was long on spin, wrong on facts, and empty of solutions.
One frustrated attendant who tried to get a direct answer on healthcare, commented after the meeting that Hultgren “…seemed detached and unfeeling. His voice was just so syrupy and sweet he appeared unbelievable and unconcerned.”
His comments on Social Security were a surprise but shouldn’t have been, given the Republican Party’s relationship to corporate money and financial companies wanting to gamble with social security investment money.
“I’m not planning on Social Security,” Hultgren said. “Most people my age aren’t planning on Social Security.”
from Democracy Now!
With extreme weather fueling wildfires in Colorado and record rainfall in Florida, the Obama administration has moved closer to approving construction of the southern section of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. We’re joined by environmentalist, educator and author Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org. “Today is one of those days when you understand what the early parts of the global warming era are going to look like,” McKibben says. “For the first time in history, we managed to get the fourth tropical storm of the year before July … These are the most destructive fires in Colorado history and they come after the warmest weather ever recorded there … This is what it looks like as the planet begins to warm. Nothing that happened [at the United Nations Rio+20 summit] will even begin to slow down that trajectory.”
from GRITtv with Laura Flanders
Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program sees one major flaw in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act: It did not go far enough. The only solution, Flowers argues in this conversation with Laura Flanders, is to push for universal healthcare by expanding medicare so that it covers all Americans.
from the Center for American Progress
Angela Kelley and Marshall Fitz of the Center for American Progress’s Immigration Policy team, discuss what the Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration law, S.B. 1070, means for Arizonans, other states and Latino voters.
from Current TV’s The War Room
Van talks about the importance of having two forms of power: a President willing to be moved, and a movement in the streets willing to do the moving.
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