Jun 21, 2003

In Brattleboro, Vt., a town of 6,000, a major media union struggles is unfolding.

The local daily newspaper, the Brattleboro Reformer, with a circulation of 11,500, is owned by the Dean Singleton MediaNews Group, the seventh largest newspaper company in the U.S. It has collided head-on with the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International union (PACE) over wages, respect, and quality journalism.

CHICAGO – The Advocate hospital chain is the leading private provider of hospital services to the uninsured who live in Chicago and its Cook County suburbs. It also has the highest charges of any hospital group and overcharges the uninsured more than any other health care system in Cook County, according to “Uninsured and Overcharged,” a recent study by the Hospital Accountability Project of the Service Employees Union (SEIU).

Every Democratic Party presidential candidate is putting forward his or her ideas for national health care. Each one is calculated to look like a universal, fully accessible health care proposal. But each is also calculated to be able to withstand the assault from the Republican Party, the medical-industrial complex, and their politicians and media advocates.

After several years teaching high school, I’ve heard all the excuses. I didn’t get my homework done because my computer crashed, because my project partner didn’t do their part, because I feel sick, because I left it on the bus, because I had a dance recital, because I was abducted by aliens and viciously probed. Houdini doesn’t have as many tricks. No one on earth is more inventive than a high school sophomore backed into a corner and faced with a zero on an assignment.

UN blue helmets needed in Israel, Palestine / Another blow to civil liberties

Opinion

As the deceptions of the Bush administration hit home, anger is turning into organizing throughout the country. A new movement is being born, based on hope not fear.

Opinion

May was the 30th anniversary of the New York state legislature’s enactment of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws. Proposed by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, the “get-tough” laws were supposed to solve the burgeoning drug and crime problem by locking up significant participants in the drug trade and thus deterring others from involvement.

Opinion

In the annual “Report Card on Children’s Health” released by the American Health Foundation, the U.S. received a “D” rating for its children’s health, down from a “C” last year.

Opinion

More and more each day, the lies and deception spewed from the mouths of George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Richard Cheney, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Foreign Minister Jack Straw are now coming back to haunt them.