CAFTA Alert

The battle over the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is heating up. It was approved last May by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, together with the presidents of El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua but still needs to pass the US Congress. CAFTA  is based on the same failed neoliberal economic model as NAFTA. If CAFTA passes, it will be another step toward the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would go far beyond NAFTA in its scope and power.

Why should you oppose CAFTA? CAFTA increases the power of multinational corporations, decreases the power of national and local governments, and does not contain any meanfully enforceable worker or environmental protections. Experience with NAFTA has shown this sort of trade agreement pits workers against each other in a race to the bottom of labor and environmental standards. I’ve attached a Word file of some key points from the Ohio Conference on Fair Trade. These will be good points to bring up in calls or letters to Congress. For more detailed info, see

Yesterday's Gallup Poll Showing Bush Approval At 57% Had 9% More Republicans Than Democrats

The more things change, the more things stay the same. And Gallup is showing us that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.

On the heels of the Iraqi election, and with the White House needing a boost in Bush’s image and approval ratings as he tries to ram through a terrible budget and Social Security privatization plan to a wavering GOP, much was made yesterday about the most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll done over the weekend. This poll, bull-horned through the media and rightwing blogosphere, showed an incredible jump in Bush’s approval rating to 57%, a five-point jump from the polls done in early January. Yet even those earlier January polls it turned out were suspect because, you guessed it, they were based on a sample that had more Republicans in it than Democrats (37.2% GOP, 35.6% Democrat, and 27% Independent).

So is this recent poll, showing Bush with a growing and mandate-building approval rating of 57% a clear sign of emerging Bush strength?

Congresswoman Tubbs Jones Outraged at Blackwell's Failure to Appear During House Administration Hearing

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones spoke before the House Administration Committee during their hearing on the Implementation of the Help America Vote Act following the 2004 election.

"I am thoroughly disappointed that the Secretary of State from my home state of Ohio, Ken Blackwell, chose not to testify today before the House Administration Committee," stated Rep. Tubbs Jones. "Just as he created tremendous confusion among voters in Cuyahoga County and across the state of Ohio during this past election by issuing bizarre directives and playing partisan politics, his failure to testify before this committee today shows that he is not committed to improving our election system.

Editorial: A Cautious First Step

The northern North Americans in Canada are taking another cautious step for drug policy reform. NAOMI, the North American Opiate Maintenance Project, will shortly begin providing maintenance doses of heroin to addicts in Vancouver, moving later in the year to Toronto and Montreal as well. Drug warriors in the US and Canada alike are likely to characterize the project as reckless or wrongheaded. In reality it is a cautious first step only, but an urgently needed one.

In Vancouver's Downtown East Side, where many of the city's hard drug users congregate, the addicted each day face unnecessary levels of risk from overdose, spread of infectious diseases such as Hepatitis or HIV, marginalization from society and the health system, a wearing and time consuming search for money to pay for expensive street drugs, general destabilization of their lives, and all the obstacles to survival, recovery or prosperity these conditions present.

First North American Heroin Maintenance Study Now Underway in Vancouver

Hard-core heroin users began lining up this week in Vancouver to participate in a pioneering study where researchers will provide them with free heroin. The study, known as the North American Opiate Maintenance Project (NAOMI), won final approval Monday from Health Canada. Moving quickly, researchers this week began the process of selecting 158 participants, 88 who will receive free heroin and 70 -- the control group -- who will get methadone.

The NAOMI project is slated to expand to Toronto and Montreal later this year. In all, some 450 heroin users will participate in the one-year pilot project. At the end of the study period, the doses of heroin will tail off. The study is designed to see whether heroin is more effective than methadone in getting users who have proven resistant to other therapies to quit using. It will also examine whether providing free heroin will lead to decreases in criminality and homelessness among participants.

Bush’s Budget is at Odds With His Rhetoric

President Bush submitted a $2.57 trillion budget to Congress which eliminates or drastically cuts 150 governmental programs. The budget is an attempt to meet his goal of slashing the deficit in half by 2009, without giving up tax cuts for the wealthy which were implemented during his first term. When asked about the cuts, Bush said “Spending discipline requires difficult choices.” But much in Bush’s budget runs contrary to his administration’s rhetoric.

Bush's Budget: The War on Working People Continues

On Monday, George W. Bush launched an unprecedented attack on poor and working people in the U.S. His proposed a $2.57-trillion budget will cut domestic programs to seniors, veterans, children, and the poor by $20 billion dollars next year.

This budget proposal is an outright declaration of war on working people. It is part of a neoconservative effort to attack the welfare of working people and force working people in this country to accept third world working conditions – no health care, no pensions, no rights. These cuts are not necessary. They the intended result of tax cuts for the rich and massive military spending for a needless war. They are part of a neocon plan to “starve the beast”, to create artificial crises in order to justify slashing spending for the welfare of the people, while at the same time increasing spending for the welfare of the rich.

J20 Through my eyes

I attended the J20 inauguration protests in Washington DC. It was cold as hell that day. The sidewalks were filled with that black stuff that really isn’t snow but isn’t water either. Washington DC was a police state and made no attempts to conceal this.

The Democrats' Challenge, already lost?

Congressional Democrats are faced with a challenge, the challenge of an out-of-control fascist regime. How did the Democrats respond today?, they gave the regime what it wants, another impediment to citizens' rights in the courts. Way ta go Dems, you're doing great IF what you are trying to do is run interference for the fascists. Where are the bills of impeachment? Where are the fillibusters? where are the ten-million-person marches? Dems, are you listening? Maybe we better leave the Dems behind, and start with step one, a ten-million-person march on Washington demanding the end of the corporate-fascist regime, and the return of the government to the people.

A. Attlee

Obstructionists

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