Global

In a rare OpEd in the New York Times, David Stockman, former Republican Office of Management and Budget Director under the Reagan Administration, lambasts the Republican party for its irresponsible stand on maintaining the Bush tax cuts during a time of ballooning Federal deficit. -- An important read. By DAVID STOCKMAN Published: July 31, 2010 IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too.

This article states that the social ecology of the Gulf region has evolved into accepting environmental abuse and a passive resignation that the petrochemical industry in the Gulf Region is intertwined with its political and economic systems. The Deepwater Horizon oil/natural gas spill crisis, as perhaps the United States worst environmental catastrophe, according to this article is only one act of many over a 50 year period that has caused the Gulf of Mexico to become an accepted dumping group for environmental pollutants. If so, what will bring the Gulf back to a having a healthy environment and a resilient and sustainable social ecology? The following excerpt from this New York Times article provides the reader with a sense of the resignation, apathy, and lack of education within the Gulf coast citizenry of what they can do to be a part of bringing the Gulf back from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON Published: July 29, 2010 "...The gulf has changed, Mr. Pitre said: “I think it’s too far gone to salvage.” The BP oil spill has sent millions of barrels gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, focusing international attention on America’s third coast and prompting questions about whether it will ever fully recover from the spill.

Dear Friend,

I recently began work as the Director of the HHS Office of Health Reform, and I wanted to share President Obama's weekly address with all of you.

This weekend the President's address focuses on the urgent need for comprehensive health reform. The President noted:
"...We know that our families, our economy, and our nation itself will not succeed in the 21st century if we continue to be held down by the weight of rapidly rising health care costs and a broken health care system."

You can watch the President's address now by visiting www.whitehouse.gov.