Dead last: health care quality in the U.S.
Among the six nations studied — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States — the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2006 and 2004 editions of the Commonwealth Fund report.
New Yorkers rally for affordable housing
NEW YORK — “When I left New York City in the early ’80s, I paid only $150 a month in rent,” said a cabdriver who participated in last week’s demonstration here against the city’s growing crisis of affordable housing. After living in Florida for 15 years, he recently returned, finding that “the same kind of apartment in the same neighborhood is maybe $1,000.”
Conference aims to grow civil rights/labor alliance
The Communist Party’s African American Equality Commission will hold a conference in St. Louis on June 8-10.
When the market god isnt worshipped
The Republicans, the neocons, the fundamentalist right wing, all make a god of “the market.” The market is the be-all and end-all, the ultimate trump card. The market is the solution they propose for everything — oops, wait a moment, not quite everything.
Faith-based emergency preparedness
With Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the Walter Reed hospital scandal — maybe you thought that the incompetence of the White House had bottomed out.
About those gas prices
The most recent round of exorbitant gasoline price hikes is hurting working Americans directly in the pocketbook and indirectly by feeding inflation. It is high time to seek alternatives.
Harlem on my mind
In this historic center of African American cultural life, Harlem, the main issue today is the lack of affordable housing. Right now in Harlem, the prices of all forms of housing — from public projects to affordable rental and coop apartments for middle-income families under the city-state-federal Mitchell-Lama program, to condos — are going sky high.
Release of terrorist Posada sparks outrage
On May 8, Federal Judge Kathleen Carbone cancelled the trial of Luis Posada Carriles on immigration fraud, set for May 11 in El Paso, Texas. She ruled that the government’s handling of the case had major flaws. As a result, Posada, a self-admitted terrorist who some call “the bin Laden of the Americas,” is again walking free.
Battle over legal rights of Guantanamo detainees continues
The tug of war over the due process rights of the 385 prisoners still detained by the Bush administration at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, goes on, in and out of Congress.
Hunger spreads across U.S.
Oregon Gov. Tom Kulongoski lived on $21 worth of food for a week — the average weekly food stamp budget for his state’s residents — during Hunger Awareness Week, April 20-27. Oregon Food Bank spokesperson Jean Kemp-Ware said the governor’s initiative dramatized the plight of 425,000 Oregonians who rely on food stamps to stave off hunger each month.
