Will "Obamacare" Force Americans to Buy Junk Health Insurance in 2014?

The money that patients' rights advocates have to spend trying to convince the Obama administration that Americans should have decent health care benefits pales in comparison to the boatloads of cash insurers and their corporate allies have on hand to do largely the opposite. But at least the advocates are now in the game.

Bad faith insurance companiesLast week a broad coalition of patient-focused groups launched its "I Am Essential" campaign in an effort to make sure that when all of us have to buy health insurance in 2014, we will be getting good value.

California is Farmer Brown

This is the second in a two-part series by the Center for Media and Democracy's Food Rights Network (FRN) about challenges to local food sovereignty across the United States. It was originally published on Alternet. For more, see the first article, on the lawsuit against Blue Hill, Maine farmer Dan Brown brought by the State of Maine and Maine's Agriculture Commissioner, here.


Maine farmer Dan Brown, who milks one cow and sells milk to his neighbors, is being sued by the State of Maine for "unlicensed distribution and sale of milk and food products." The lawsuit has sparked protest in Maine and concern in communities around the country.

In an interview with the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Brown said, "One of these times, they're going to come after one of us, and it's going to be that Rosa Parks moment ... [for] the food system."

The "Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance" that passed in Brown's town of Blue Hill, Maine, on April 2, 2011, asserting its "citizens' right to foods of their choice" without impediment by federal and state regulations, served as a model for several counties in California. CMD spoke with three farmers and advocates about the food sovereignty movement there, and how the suit against Farmer Brown may affect their struggle.

FOX News, OWS, Banksters, and Bombs

Last week, tragedy was averted when savvy security at Deutsche Bank (DB) in Frankfurt, Germany, spotted a suspicious package and sequestered a letter bomb intended for the DB CEO. This was the second time Deutsche Bank was attacked in this manner. In 1989, their CEO was killed by a bomb later traced to violent extremists in Germany's Red Army Faction.

Scanning the horizon for someone to blame for the latest attack on Germany's largest bank, FOX news pundit Dan Gainor worked "the Internets." Did he detail Deutsche Bank's track record of making friends by ripping off consumers and foreclosing on their homes? Did he mention that Deutsche Bank stirred public ire when it was bailed out by multiple governments, including two billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve? Did he even bother to notice that it was widely reported that an Italian anarchist group had already claimed responsibility for the attack?

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