President Trump
Am I the only one who suspects Trump became president solely to further his personal empire?
He openly refuses to divulge his taxes and recuse himself from his businesses. He antagonizes our allies with demands for financial parity while publicly admiring Putin: who infamously has built a personal fortune at the expense of his own country.
He schedules meetings and visiting dignitaries into his personal properties: further lining his pockets and building his brand awareness at taxpayer expense.
Although his wife won’t relocate to the White House his daughter and son-in-law benefit directly from his presidency. His son-in-law joins a staff made up of business partners and financial cronies. His daughter is given a White House office, again at taxpayer expense, from which they openly shill her fashions.
It seems that every proposal will further build income for Trump and cronies at the expense of taxpayers and future generations.
I can imagine his last Presidential tweet: “Thx America. Laughing all the way to the bank.”
— CL McMullen
In Response to, The Plant Meat Burger Coming for Your Beef (3/29)
Putting cheese on a plant based burger completely defeats the purpose of eating the plant based burger. Personal health is one reason why people go plant based but you failed to mention the impact of animal agriculture on the planet. Animal Agriculture is the leading cause of global warming, water depletion, deforestation, species extinction, and ocean dead zones. But back to the personal health approach — dairy products are a nutritional disaster on human health and there are plant based cheeses that are locally made in Oregon that are two feet from those Beyond Burgers.
— Barclay Losse, via bendsource.com
Was there suffering? A burger can’t taste good without suffering.
— Ryan Reid, via facebook.com
In Response to, Public Letters Request (4/3, on the Source’s Facebook feed)
There is no democracy without a free press. It saddens me greatly that we are seeing a case like this here in Oregon. I know our state is not perfect, but in general we usually err on the side of right. To know that this can happen here, is to realize how bad things must be in states (that are) not so level-headed.
— Jenny Riley, via facebook.com
Just returned from 2 weeks in China. Free press, free speech (and) open elections are so important.
— Peter Savage Novels,
via facebook.com
In Response to, Invasion of the Californians, (3/29)
It’s become big business. CA has about 700 breweries now and it seems like another one is popping up every week.
— Rick Moore, via facebook.com
The Modern Times Amber is amazing. Must try.
— James Dustin Parsons
via facebook.com
The United States Health Insurance System is a National Disgrace
Single payer healthcare must replace privatized for-profit schemes to guarantee a fair and just system of healthcare for everyone from womb to tomb.
Insurance companies must be totally excluded from the health care system. Insurance companies must not be allowed to insure people capitalizing on health problems to reap enormous profits. Insurance companies must be restricted exclusively to insuring property, not people. Pharmaceutical companies must be nationalized. No more obscene profits for Big Pharma.
Single payer healthcare would be available to everyone, not just the wealthy, the politicians and people rich enough to insurance.
People would not lose their homes and be forced into bankruptcy because they are unable to pay exorbitant costs of catastrophic long term illness or injury.
Corporations would lose a major bargaining chip in their efforts to bust unions by manipulating and controlling health benefits.
Veterans would receive medical care in their own communities rather than traveling long distances to veterans’ facilities. Soldiers would no longer be stockpiled away from friends and family in privatized hell holes like Walter Reed Hospital.
Politicians would no longer be owned and operated by insurance companies and Big Pharma. Businesses unable to afford insurance for their workers would not be forced into bankruptcy.
The argument against single payer is that it smacks of socialism. The U.S. already has socialism for the rich in the form of tax cuts, subsidies, corporate bailouts and other taxpayer funded programs to fatten the hogs feeding at the public trough. Capitalism with its “dog-eat-dog” credo is for the masses who should not ask what the government can do for them but what can they do for the rich.
The claim that the U.S. cannot afford health care for its people is ridiculous nonsense promoted by insurance companies and Big Pharma. Single Payer would eliminate outrageously expensive insurance plans, copays, bureaucratic nightmares, exorbitant administrative costs and obscene profits.
Close down the imperial war machine sucking up trillions in tax dollars and use that money for the benefit of the people instead of the profits of the greedy war mongers. Include the health care program in the military budget and no one will even notice its inclusion.
Single payer health care must replace the broken privatized health insurance machine. We must demand universal healthcare for everyone.
— Sue Bastian
LETTER OF THE WEEK
Sue: I really hope you’re sharing your thoughts with the authors of that weak attempt at health care reform in Washington, D.C. As for the rest of you readers: With all of her thoughtful letters (and few from the rest of you), Sue is making you look bad. Has complacency in the wake of the election set in so soon?!
This article appears in Apr 5-12, 2017.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
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Oregon has been fortunate in having had two courageous senators. Note, I said “having had” and not “having.” I am referring to Henry Lane and Wayne Morse. Both had the courage and integrity to stand in opposition to overwhelming votes in the senate.
In Henry Lane’s case he was one of six senators who refused to vote for Woodrow Wilson’s plan to have the United States enter what was supposed to be the War to End All Wars but became the First World War instead. Students of that war appreciate how disastrous that misadventure was. Others will cling to the war’s attendant myths.
Wayne Morse was part of a much smaller minority when he and Senator Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) were the only senators to refuse to vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to give Lyndon Johnson authority to engage U.S. troops in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war in response to an alleged attack on a U.S. Navy ship patrolling in the Gulf of Tonkin that proved to be more fiction then fact.
Fast forward to April 6, 2017 and we find our current senators joining all the lemmings buying into what was very likely a false flag event in Syria with the alleged chemical agent dispersed in Idlib Province in Syria despite varying theories as to the cause being available for consideration. In other words, a rush to judgment without a proper investigation to get at the facts as in the Tonkin Gulf incident when more war is a risk. Note that an earlier gas attack in 2013 was attributed to the Assad regime, but that accusation was not sustained after independent scrutiny. There was a very good debate at Consortium News (dot com) making a case for a false flag event in Khan Sheikhoun more plausible.
On the home front, our two senators do a reasonably good job, but when it comes to foreign affairs they leave much to be desired.