An Unfinished Debt: Agent Orange

During the ten years (1961-1971) of aerial chemical warfare in Vietnam, US warplanes sprayed more than 20 million gallons of herbicide defoliants in an operation code-named Ranch Hand to destroy enemy plant cover and crops, and to clear vegetation around US bases. Agent Orange, the dioxin-contaminated and exceedingly toxic herbicide manufactured by seven chemical companies for the US Department of Defense, constituted about 61 percent of the total herbicides sprayed in the war.

By the end of the war, nearly five million Vietnamese had been exposed to Agent Orange, an exposure that has resulted in "400,000 deaths and disabilities and a half-million children born with birth defects," according to the 2008-2009 President's Cancer Panel Report. Agent Orange was so extensively sprayed that all of the two million Americans who served in Vietnam are presumed exposed. The Veterans Administration now associates a multitude of cancers, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, neuropathy, Parkinson's disease, and birth defects - including spina bifida - suffered by veterans and their children with Agent Orange exposure.

However, it took veterans' advocates, their lawyers and concerned scientists decades of confronting inept and corrupt government health studies to overcome expedient myths and achieve this governmental acknowledgment of the human health harm of Agent Orange. Vietnam veterans continue to eke out needed health services from a reluctant government, which still contends it used the deadly chemicals to protect the soldiers and refuses to accept any responsibility for multi-generations of Agent Orange victims in Vietnam.

The war persists in the dioxin residues accumulated in the Vietnamese environment and food chain and in the pollution of millions of human bodies, by now transmitted to three generations of Vietnamese. Despite compelling science on the harm of dioxin exposure, the Vietnamese victims have received nothing by way of compensation, cleanup or services from the US government or Agent Orange manufacturers. That is, until 2007 when the US Congress appropriated $9 million for cleanup of contaminated sites and health-related activities. In 2011, US AID joined the Vietnamese government in the first phase of a $32 million dioxin-contaminated soil removal program at a former US air base in Da Nang. "It's a big step," said Ngo Quang Xuan, a former Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations. "But in the eyes of those who suffered the consequences, it's not enough."
Not nearly enough, given more than three million victims of chemical poisoning and more than two dozen contaminated sites in need of remediation.

TOM HARKIN'S FIVE-POINT PLAN FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH

1. End George Bush's supply-side, trickle-down, tax-breaks-for-the-rich economics.

2. Use Tom Harkin's INVESTMENT BASED ECONOMICS to invest in America -- our workers, our schools, health care and our infrastructure.

3. Stop subsidizing the defense of our allies. And use that money here at home. Invest in America.

4. Get tough on trade and stop exporting American jobs to foreign countries.

5. Help America's working families with national health care, parental leave, child care and pay equity.

The nation’s top drug cop advocated a “different approach” to narcotics enforcement — and stressed that there is no “war on drugs” — but had stern words Monday for the San Francisco-bred medical marijuana movement.

Drug users need treatment and education rather than jail terms, according to Gil Kerlikowske, the former Seattle police chief who now heads President Barack Obama’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Speaking at a gathering of law enforcement officers at the University of San Francisco, Kerlikowske also said that calling cannabis medicine “sends a terrible message” to the nation’s teens. High school students are more likely to smoke marijuana than tobacco due to the growing “perception” that marijuana is less harmful, he said.

...President Obama should be putting progressive solutions on the table. Things like a financial transaction tax, which could reduce the debt by $1.8 trillion over the next decade.

Or, cutting off taxpayer subsidies to big oil, which total $40 billion over ten years.

Or, ending the massive "capital gains" loophole which sets income taxes on hedge fund managers and vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney at a maximum 15 percent, less than half of what working people can pay.

Or, common sense cuts to our bloated and wasteful Defense Budget.

Or, raising the minimum wage to stimulate the economy and, thus, over the long haul, reduce our debt.

Or, breaking up the big banks to prevent more costly, deficit-expanding bailouts in the future.

Or, creating a single-payer healthcare system to reduce deficit-inducing healthcare costs.

If all of these were on the table, then this would be a robust debate that reflects the political leanings of a center-left nation.
But, they're not, which shows not just of the weakness of President Obama, but also the weakness of the progressive movement when compared with the hard-right movement funded by cranky billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.

Submitted by louisehartmann on 11. January 2013 - 8:16
All around us, people are coming down with the flu – and the Centers for Disease Control warn that it could be the worst flu season in ten years. And to make matters worse, our national workplace policies are helping to spread the flu. Despite the CDC recommending people “stay home and avoid contact with other people,” most workers don’t have that option, as the United States is the only developed country that doesn’t guaranteed paid sick days to its workers.

As a result, 40% of private sector workers and 80% of low-income workers don’t get any paid sick days. In the food industry, where the chances of the flu spreading are highest, 79% of workers say they receive no paid sick leave. Our lack of protections for workers is directly responsible for more flu illnesses around the nation. As a 2009 study in the American Journal of Public Health found, there were as many as 5 million additional cases of the H1N1 flu in 2009, due to a lack of paid sick time.

Giving workers what they have earned – which is paid sick days – isn’t about workers rights. It’s about national security, and saving millions of Americans from needlessly contracting the flu when they dine out or go to the grocery store. Unfortunately, the billionaire class running Corporate America has squeezed every bit of profit they can from their workers – denying them union representation, healthcare, and paid vacations and sick leave.

This is insanity – and we should protest with our wallets and pocketbooks. Before dining out, call the restaurant and ask if they offer paid sick days to their employees. If not, then eat there at your own risk.