Congressmembers Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) sent a letter Thursday to the White House, demanding that health insurance reforms include a public option.The Democrats are both co-chairs of the House Progressive Caucus, which represents a sector of the U.S. electorate widely viewed as the the base of President Barack Obama’s support.
The Congressional Black Caucus -- alarmed by reports that President Obama may plan to ditch the public option and reduce the scale of health care reform -- is pre-emptively warning the president to express his "unwavering support" for the progressive provisions in his speech next week.
In the first major move by progressives against the president, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and MoveOn issued separate appeals Thursday to put pressure on Obama ahead of his joint speech to Congress next week outlining his preferences for what a bill must include.In the PCCC email, the group asked those who volunteered, staffed, voted for or donated to Obama’s campaign to sign a petition urging the president to demand the creation of a government insurance option.
Politico doesn’t give you a link to the petition, but I will: Petition for the Public Option
They have another one to the Senate to call it the Kennedy Bill. I don’t really care what they call it.
In signs that the White House might actually finally be listening (please, no breath-holding), BradBlog lists the following shifts that happened in recent days:
Late last month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced plans for a narrow investigation into torture carried out by the previous Administration. It's not enough, by a long shot, but it's a start. And it wasn't blocked by the White House, despite CIA Director Leon Panetta's best, and most shameful efforts to head it off.Yesterday, the State Dept. announced they were cutting off aid to Honduras and revoking visas for some involved in the recent ouster of President Zelaya. That, despite the bought-and-paid for lobbying to the contrary by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton's close friend Lanny Davis --- as expertly detailed by Ernie Canning here earlier this week --- and strong-arming from the wingnuts who are happy to ignore all pretensions of caring about "democracy" whenever a perceived "leftist" can be removed from power by any means possible.
Today, the White House publicly spoke out against Israel's announced plans to build new settlements, despite predictable heat sure to come from U.S. Republicanists and Israeli hardliners.
Also today, the White House agreed to make visitor logs available to the public, leading Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) to drop their lawsuit against the Obama Administration.
Michael German, ACLU: While the new policy is commendable, some vaguely worded exceptions to it do raise concerns about the potential for abuse in classifying matters under the umbrella of national security.
As I said, no breath-holding, please.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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