Three
Stories
 What
the GOP Has Planned For America.
Michael
Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee,
this week revealed a secret Republican plan that
would end up eliminating all federal farm subsidies;
closing down Yellowstone and Yosemite national
parks; selling off the interstate highway system;
and canceling Head Start, subsidized school lunches
and the entire college loan program.
Read the rest
of the story here.
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 A Change of Heart On Health Care
Wendell Potter was an executive
in the health insurance industry for nearly 20
years
before his conscience
got the better of him. He served as head of corporate
communications for Humana and then for Cigna.
He flew in corporate jets to industry meetings
to plan how to block health reform, he says. He
rode in limousines to confabs to concoct messaging
to scare the public about reform. But in his heart,
he began to have doubts as the business model for
insurance evolved in recent years from spreading
risk to dumping the risky.
Then in 2007 Mr. Potter attended a premiere of “Sicko,” Michael
Moore’s excoriating film about the American
health care system. Mr. Potter was taking notes
so that he could prepare a propaganda counterblast — but
he found himself agreeing with a great deal of
the film.
A month later, Mr. Potter was back home in Tennessee,
visiting his parents, and dropped in on a three-day
charity program at a county fairgrounds to provide
medical care for patients who could not afford
doctors. Long lines of people were waiting in the
rain, and patients were being examined and treated
in public in stalls intended for livestock.
“It was a life-changing event to witness
that,” he
remembered. Increasingly, he found himself despising
himself for helping block health reforms. “It
sounds hokey, but I would look in the mirror and
think, how did I get into this?”
Read the rest of this story here.
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 The Other Side of Robert McDonnell
At age 34, two years before his first election
and two decades before he would run for governor
of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's
thesis to the evangelical school he was attending
in Virginia Beach in which he described working
women and feminists as "detrimental" to
the family. He said government policy should favor
married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals
or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a
1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use
of contraception by unmarried couples.
The 93-page document, which is publicly available
at the Regent University library, culminates with
a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the
Republican Party should follow to protect American
families -- a vision that he started to put into
action soon after he was elected to the Virginia
House of Delegates.
During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell
pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid
out in that research paper, including abortion
restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers
and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional
family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution
in support of ending wage discrimination between
men and women.
Read
the rest of this story here.
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=Lefty=
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