ThinkFast: February 20, 2009
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on February 21st, 2009 5:32 am by HL
ThinkFast: February 20, 2009
Writing in Time, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) lays out “the case for a truth commission.” “People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments but to assemble the facts,” he writes. “If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers and even the authority […]
Writing in Time, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) lays out “the case for a truth commission.” “People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments but to assemble the facts,” he writes. “If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecution in order to get to the whole truth.”
Health care reps — “from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies” — are “inching toward a consensus.” They agree that “comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.” The various groups have been secretly meeting in a Senate room for months, with the blessing of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
“I’m excited because this president is taking urban America out of the desert it’s been in for eight years,” said Adolfo Carrion, Jr., the new head of the White House Office of Urban Affairs. Derek Douglas, formerly of the Center for American Progress, is headed to the new office as well.
For the budget he will present next week, President Obama “has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller.” The move away from budget gimmicks, one of which used to be not including the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will create “a budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear.”
“Demand at food banks across the country increased by 30 percent in 2008 from the previous year,” according to a survey by Feeding America. Even food pantries in upscale communities are seeing an uptick in demand. “These are people who never really had to ask for help before,” said Brenda Beavers of the Salvation Army.
