News aggregator

Here is the link to Thursday's live blog. Please check the page regularly for updates.

7:45am PDT: The BBC has a disturbing first hand video report from a hospital in Port-au-Prince where, last night, injured people waiting for treatment slept amongst dead bodies.

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The debate about health care reform is finally getting serious.

How serious?

President Obama, who rarely if ever allows anything to get in the way of his international sojourning, is delaying his trip to Guam.

At the same time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, is saying finally -- and presumably definitionally -- that there will be no public option in the legislative package that reshapes the American health-care system.

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Nearly a year after Democrats introduced legislation to reform the health care industry - first by flirting with the prospect of having a government-run program to compete with private insurers and then floating a proposal to expand Medicare to a younger demographic - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that Congress is ready to vote on a final bill as early as next week that doesn't include either of those plans.

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By David Swanson

Congressman David Obey (D., Wis.) is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He's in charge of spending our money. For years he spent it on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without any resistance.  Until last October, Obey maintained that spending hundreds of billions of our dollars on wars was something he just had no choice about.

Three years ago, 180,000 people watched this Youtube video, which was also shown on tv news shows, of Obey screaming at a military mother and denouncing "idiot liberals" for suggesting that Congress use the power of the purse to end wars. Liberals debated other liberals on the question of whether we really were idiots. Now Obey has taken several steps in the direction of joining us.

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The 26-person Oregon bike advocacy team stormed Capitol Hill on Thursday, armed with cycling stats, stories, and a strong sense of purpose. It was lobbying day at the National Bike Summit and Team Oregon joined 700 bike advocates from all over the country to flood the Senate and House office buildings to make every Congressional representative aware that the bike movement is a force to be reckoned with.

The day started off with an inspirational pep rally that featured Minnesota Congressman Jim Oberstar. Oberstar said this will be a “a critical year” and reminded advocates that big things are possible and that, “It happens one member [of Congress] at a time!”

After the inspiring speech by Oberstar — who in many ways is the architect of the modern bike movement — the Oregon contingent made their way to a Congressional panel presentation.

Organized by Scott Bricker and Earl Blumenauer’s legislative aide Tyler Frisbee, the purpose of the panel was for Congressional staffers to learn how Portland got on the road to being a world-class biking city. Panelists included PBOT bike coordinator Roger Geller, Veronica Rinard from Travel Portland, Bike Gallery owner Jay Graves, Community Cycling Center executive director Alison Graves, and myself. Busy schedules on the Hill meant there wasn’t quite the turnout we’d hoped for, but the discussion was helpful nonetheless. Zack Fields, a legislative assistant for Virgina House Rep. Gerald Connolly, said the presentation by Roger Geller could help him inspire and motivate traffic engineers in Northern Virginia to be more bike-oriented.

After the presentation, the Oregon contingent split up into two teams and held a total of seven meetings with Oregon’s congressional representatives. The day started off with a bang when Senator Ron Wyden (D) spent over 20 minutes discussing bike legislation and other issues. Travel Oregon’s Scott West, a veteran of lobbying on Capitol Hill, said this amount of face-time with Sen. Wyden was unprecedented in his experience. West reported that Wyden spoke about the value of bicycle recreation and the economic impact of bicycle tourism. He also said he would take the Active Community Transportation and the Complete Streets acts into consideration.

Another highlight was a meeting with House Rep. David Wu (D) that took place on the steps of the Capitol. Wu was on his way to work on the health care bill, but stopped and talked at length with the group and seemed to enjoy the casual environment.

Rep. Greg Walden (R), Oregon’s only member of Congress not currently signed on in support of key bike legislation, wasn’t able to be at the meeting (he flew back to Oregon for Ben Westlund’s memorial service). Advocates instead had a discussion with his able assistant, Nathan Rae. Rae shared that he loves to ride and he listened and took notes about all the bills presented to him. Cycle Oregon manager Jerry Norquist led the meeting and was able to tell Rae that 2,000-plus Cycle Oregon participants will be rolling through Pendleton this fall. Pendleton is in Walden’s district and it’s home to the famous Pendleton Round-Up rodeo. Cycle Oregon has purchased 2,000 tickets to the rodeo’s 100th anniversary festivities this year.

The biggest advocacy breakthrough of the day came during a meeting with Senator Jeff Merkley (D). Merkley told the group he would introduce a companion bill to Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s Active Community Transportation Act and he also said he’d join the Congressional Bike Caucus (full story here).

After a fitting conclusion to the official National Bike Summit’s official agenda that included US Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood jumping up on a table and shouting a thank-filled speech, the Oregon advocacy team hosted a dinner for Congressman Blumenauer.

The dinner, funded by Cycle Oregon, was held in a stately, private banquet room just steps from the Capitol. The night was an opportunity to thank Mr. Blumenauer for his hard work on behalf of bicycling. Prior to eating, we enjoyed a candid Q and A session where Blumenauer spoke candidly about the state of transportation politics (I took only a few notes out of respect the evening’s informal nature). He remarked at one point that the presence of bike advocates had lifted spirits on the Capitol. “You might not have signed everyone up,” he said, “But no one is negative about the bike issue.” He also offered some sage advice for advocates: “In Washington, you create your own reality.”

As conversation continued among attendees after dinner, Blumenauer walked around to each of us, wanting to hear our questions and taking time to offer answers. It was a very special evening, and it will stand in my mind as something of a coming-of-age moment for the bike movement in Oregon. Thanks in large part to the leadership of veteran advocates like Jerry Norquist and Jay Graves, we have assembled and trained-up an impressive standing army of advocates ready to make the Oregon bike dream into a reality.

Bike Summit coverage sponsored by Planet Bike. More stories on ">our special coverage page.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what seemed to be a glaring (and quite typical) scam perpetrated by Congressional Democrats:  all year long, they insisted that the White House and a majority of Democratic Senators vigorously supported a public option, but the only thing oh-so-unfortunately preventing its enactment was the

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If you were not already convinced by the blossoming trees, this week’s job listings are another sign that Spring is here and Summer is near.

If you know your way around a bike repair stand, one of these opportunities as a bike mechanic may be for you. Good luck!

For detailed information including duties and how to apply, here are the links:

• Bicycle Mechanic — Lakeside Bicycles, Lake Oswego
• Bicycle Mechanic — The Bike Gallery
For a complete list of available jobs, click here. If you’d like more information about the BikePortland Job Listings, contact us, or visit the Job Listings page.

You can sign up for the all the latest job listings via RSS, email, or by following us on Twitter.

These are paid listings, so when you apply, please remember to tell them you saw the ad on BikePortland.

By David Swanson

Would the United States military lie about how four Marines were killed? Would abuse continue at Abu Ghraib after the scandal exploded? Any soldier you talk to has a story you may not want to hear. I recently had occasion to speak with two that were particularly troubling.

Part I: Snipers Dead in Ramadi:

Here's a military report from August 2006 on how four Marines died in Iraq in 2004. Christian Lowe, a Marine Corps Times staff writer, tells us:

"It was supposed to be a mission like many they had done in Iraq. Ride the Humvees to a position at a building abutting a busy street in Ramadi. Relieve the four Marines on the roof there. . . .

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Bill Moyers Journal featured a discussion with Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and first woman editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. She is now a Harvard professor in the Department of Social Medicine. In this clear and concise discussion, Dr. Angell explains what is wrong with the proposed health insurance reform legislation and the coming consequences.

Excerpts:

• What this bill does is not only permit the commercial insurance industry to remain in place, but it actually expands and cements their position as the lynchpin of health care reform.
• Not only does it keep them in place, but it pours about 500 billion dollars of public money into these companies over 10 years. And it mandates that people buy these companies' products for whatever they charge.
• It will take money out of Medicare and put it into the private sector. Medicare is the source for a lot of the funds that are going to go to subsidize the private health insurance industry.
• ...we have chosen, alone among all advanced countries, to leave health care to for-profit industries, to leave health care to businesses that then distribute health care as a market commodity according to the ability to pay and not according to medical need.
• Senator Rockefeller referred to the private insurance companies as rapacious, rapacious, and said, "Like sharks, they swim under the water, and you don't know they're there until you feel their teeth." Now there are not many people in America who would disagree with that description and so what this plan does is says, "This is a terrible industry, so let's force people to buy their commercial products. And let's subsidize it and put a lot of money into it." Read or watch entire interview.

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Graduating from college is a great feeling. Not so great: being saddled with $23,200 in student loans, the average debt owed by graduates of the class of 2008, according to the Project on Student Debt.

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One reason people despair so easily these days is that we often have little sense of how change has occurred in times past, and of what it took for ordinary people to persist until they prevailed. The Rosa Parks story offers an example that we all think we know, but where the story as usually told omits the key context and blurs the key lessons.

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Participants at an otherwise informative discussion on "Iran at a Crossroads" at the Senate on Wednesday seemed at pains to barricade the doors against the proverbial elephant being admitted into the room - in this case, Israel.

This, despite the fact that the agenda virtually dictated that the elephant be allowed in - the cavernous hearing room also could have accommodated it - however awkward and untidy the atmosphere might have become.

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Days before torture memo architect John Yoo speaks at University of Virginia (protest plans), two New York artists are to present a new composition in Charlottesville built around excerpts of poetry written by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Composer Annea Lockwood and new music baritone Thomas Buckner will perform their latest collaboration, In Our Name, in a concert at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative on Saturday March 13, 8pm.

In Our Name draws upon poetry by three prisoners, Jumah Al Dossari, Emad Abdullah Hassan and Osama Abu Kabir, whose work first came to prominence through the publication of 2007 anthology, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, edited by Marc Falkoff, University of Iowa Press.

Forbidden access to pen or paper, some of the Guantanamo prisoners wrote poetry using toothpaste or by scratching onto styrophone cups with pebbles. The US military has declared that poetry coming from Guantanamo "presents a special risk", and that allegorical imagery might convey coded messages to outside militants. But speaking to the Independent, Falkoff argued that the poems' real potency lies in the "power of words to make people outside realize that these are human beings who have not had their day in court."

Annea Lockwood is a composer and sound artist known for her use of environmental sound and life narratives, from her infamous piano burnings of the 60s and 70s to her recordings of volcanoes, earthquakes and the Hudson and Danube rivers. In 2000 Lockwood was included in the Whitney Museum's major sound art retrospective, I Am Sitting in a Room: Sound Works by American Artists 1950-2000. Her numerous compositions include Jitterbug, commissioned by Merce Cunningham Dance Company for the dance eyeSpace.

Thomas Buckner, a former student of legendary Metropolitan Opera baritone Martial Singher, and trained in the classical tradition, has for the last forty years dedicated himself to the world of new and improvised music. Along the way, Buckner has performed with many of the world's top musicians, including Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Gerald Oshita, Borah Bergman, Wu Man and Earl Howard. More than 70 composers have created works for him, including Robert Ashley, Morton Subotnick, Annea Lockwood and Alvin Lucier.

To request more information or arrange interviews, please contact Raymond Beegle at booking@thomasbuckner.com.

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The good news is that Democrats might have to include some form of student loan reform in the reconciliation bill to meet the cost-saving requirements of their reconciliation instructions. From Politico:

The Senate parliamentarian notified Democratic leaders that, in order to meet the reconciliation requirements, both the Senate health and finance committees would need to produce $1 billion in deficit savings each over the next 10 years, Conrad said.

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Southeast Portland-based apparel company Retro, has inked a licensing deal with The New Yorker to release two cycling jerseys based on the magazine’s iconic cover art. It’s just the latest licensing deal for Retro, a company that has found success by designing and marketing bike jerseys to a global market.

Retro, formerly known as Retro Image Apparel, says the jerseys will be available June 1st as part of The New Yorker’s 85th anniversary celebration. The two designs are based on art by American artist Theodore G. Haupt and Spanish artist Ana Juan. Check out the designs below:

Retro set up shop in Portland in early 2009, after moving here from Seattle Washington. CEO Roger Mallette started the company in 2002 and has grown it from a home-based operation to a major concern. Retro has secured licensing deals with many microbreweries (including Portland’s Lucky Lab) and other brands including Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, JetBlue Airways, and more. Their jerseys are available in 450 stores across the country.

Check them out at RetroImageApparel.com.

Health Reform Myths
By Paul Krugman | NY Times

So what’s the reality of the proposed reform? Compared with the Platonic ideal of reform, Obamacare comes up short. If the votes were there, I would much prefer to see Medicare for all.

Health reform is back from the dead. Many Democrats have realized that their electoral prospects will be better if they can point to a real accomplishment. Polling on reform — which was never as negative as portrayed — shows signs of improving. And I’ve been really impressed by the passion and energy of this guy Barack Obama. Where was he last year?

But reform still has to run a gantlet of misinformation and outright lies. So let me address three big myths about the proposed reform, myths that are believed by many people who consider themselves well-informed, but who have actually fallen for deceptive spin.

The first of these myths, which has been all over the airwaves lately, is the claim that President Obama is proposing a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, the share of G.D.P. currently spent on health.

Well, if having the government regulate and subsidize health insurance is a “takeover,” that takeover happened long ago. Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses). And the great bulk of that private insurance is provided via employee plans, which are both subsidized with tax exemptions and tightly regulated. Read more.

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AFRICOM's First War: U.S. Directs Large-Scale Offensive In Somalia
Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO | Blog site

Over 43 people have been killed in the Somali capital of Mogadishu in the past two days in fighting between Shabab (al-Shabaab) insurgent forces, who on March 10 advanced to within one mile of the nation's presidential palace, and troops of the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government. The fighting has just begun.

The last ambassador of the United States to Somalia (1994-1995), Daniel H. Simpson, penned a column for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on March 10 in which which he posed the question "why, apart from the only lightly documented charge of Islamic extremism among the Shabab, is the United States reengaging in Somalia at this time?"

He answered it in stating "Part of the reason is because the United States has its only base in Africa up the coast from Mogadishu, in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland. The U.S. Africa Command was established there in 2008, and, absent the willingness of other African countries to host it, the base in Djibouti became the headquarters for U.S. troops and fighter bombers in Africa.

"Flush with money, in spite of the expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense obviously feels itself in a position to undertake military action in Africa, in Somalia." [1]

Fulfilling its appointed role, the New York Times leaked U.S. military plans for the current offensive in Somalia on March 5 in a report titled "U.S. Aiding Somalia in Its Plan to Retake Its Capital." (Note that the Transitional Federal Government is presented as Somalia itself and Mogadishu as its capital.)

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Falluja's birth defects
By Riz Kahn | Al Jazeera

Joining the conversation will be Dr Muhamad Tareq al-Darraji who authored the report Prohibited Weapons Crisis about the impact of the US military assault on the Falluja population, and Dahr Jamail, an American journalist who reported extensively from Iraq on the US invasion and its aftermath.

Doctors in the Iraqi city of Falluja are handling up to 15 times as many birth defects as they were one year ago.

The chronic deformities include multiple tumours, heart problems, nervous system anomalies and eye deficiencies.

Residents of the city blame the surge in chronic deformities on controversial weapons used by US forces against Sunni fighters in 2004.

White phosphorus and depleted uranium shells were allegedly among the munitions used.

Most doctors are unsure about the reasons for the surge in birth deformities over the past year but say it could be a result of the chemicals left over from the fighting.

Send us your views and get your voice on the air

The US military has dismissed those allegations. Read more.

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By David Swanson

Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 or anything else.

I'm not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a helpful message. I'm not against ending the war in a way that leaves the president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war -- even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I don't think we're especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding next month.

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