March, 31 2009, 03:03pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
With Obama in Europe: Critical Perspectives
WASHINGTON
MARTIN KHOR
Available for a limited number of interviews, Khor is executive director of the South Center, a think tank of developing countries. He recently presented a paper to the UN, which begins: "The extraordinarily serious global economic crisis has its origins in the developed countries. Developing countries are not responsible, but they are severely affected, and in ways that are worse than the developed countries, as they also lack the means to counter the effects. Developing countries are only in the past few months beginning to feel the effects of the crisis, due to the lag time in transmission. The crisis will certainly last longer than originally expected, and then it may take even more time before a full recovery. ...
"The United Nations used to play a central role in policy formulation and in reaching and implementing agreements. However in recent years, too much faith and power had been given instead to the markets and to international financial institutions which supported the drive towards 'marketization' and 'financialization.'"
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PATRICK SEALE
Seale is a British journalist now living in France and a leading expert on the Mideast. His books include "Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East."
Seale's recent articles include "Obama's Arab and Muslim Strategy," "The Impact of the Coming U.S.-Iran Detente" and "NATO's Tough Choices in Afghanistan."
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DAVID MILLER
Miller is professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and author of the book "Arguments Against G8." He said today: "[British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown said that he was confident that the demonstrator's demands would be met by his actions at the G-20. It's the same thing he said in 2005 at the G-8 meeting. People in London are demonstrating about the economy, war and climate, but the G-20 seem fundamentally to be upholding the interests of the bankers, to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are missing the chance for a global 'Green New Deal.'"
STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER
DAVID HIMMELSTEIN
Woolhandler and Himmelstein are associate professors of medicine at Harvard University and the co-founders of Physicians for a National Health Program. They have closely examined the health care systems of many European countries. Woolhandler said today: "The U.S. fails to cover 46 million people. Virtually all are covered in all European nations -- though small numbers of uninsured are creeping up in the Netherlands, which has adopted a market model of universal health care."
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Capps-Schubert deployed to Camp Victory, Baghdad from November 2005 to late September 2006. After a tour in Iraq, the former U.S. Army communications specialist refused to deploy to Afghanistan and went absent without leave (AWOL) in March 2007. Today, Capps-Schubert resides with his wife in Hanau, Germany and is the regional coordinator for Europe for the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War. The New Jersey native also counsels GIs who want to get out of the military or who have already deserted.
He spoke today about his plans to join the NATO protests in Strasbourg: "Soon after releasing a disappointing new plan for Afghanistan, U.S. President Barack Obama is traveling to Europe to solicit for more support for ISAF from his European allies. Additionally he has defended America's right to violate the sovereignty of Pakistan and has refused to give the American people what they want out of Iraq, a complete withdrawal. With someone who has not delivered on the 'change' he promised in his election campaign, I feel it is definitely appropriate and necessary to demonstrate to him and the other military advisors and politicians in Strasbourg that we will not tolerate anything less than the appropriate change he promised in his election campaign."
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A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
LATEST NEWS
Florida Republicans Ripped for Advancing Show-Me-Your-Papers Voter ID Bill
"This wave of anti-voter legislation is advancing amid ongoing abuses of power that pose unprecedented threats to American democracy," said the ACLU of Florida's executive director.
Feb 25, 2026
With 251 days until the US general election, Florida Republicans on Wednesday passed a show-me-your-papers bill that opponents warn could prevent thousands of eligible state voters from registering if they don't have a valid birth certificate or passport, or their documents don't reflect a name change.
"Midterm elections are coming later this year—and they're a crucial test of our democracy," ACLU of Florida executive director Bacardi Jackson said in a Wednesday statement. "Moments like this bring new voters into the process and give communities the power to hold leaders accountable—exactly what a healthy democracy demands. But right now, some lawmakers are pushing an anti-voter bill that could shut thousands of eligible people out of our elections and discourage the enrollment of new eligible voters."
The Florida House of Representatives on Wednesday voted 83-31 on HB 991, sponsored by Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R-78).
"The Florida House version of the bill would only go into effect in January 2027. But under a similar bill set for consideration in the Florida Senate, the new rules would take effect this July, before the November midterm elections," Democracy Docket detailed. "A House committee already gave preliminary approval to the bill earlier this month."
Jackson highlighted that "many eligible voters don't have ready access to an unexpired passport or an original or certified copy of their birth certificate because of logistical and financial barriers. More than 8 million Floridians do not have a valid passport, and because many women legally change their name upon marriage, more than 4.7 million women in Florida do not have a birth certificate reflecting their current legal name—documents this bill would require."
"At the same time, this proposal would eliminate current, valid forms of ID proving eligibility at the polls, including student IDs, retirement center IDs, and public assistance IDs," she warned. "Taken together, these changes are not neutral or harmless—they would fall hardest on low-income voters, students, seniors, women, and Black and brown Floridians."
The ACLU leader also argued that "context matters. This wave of anti-voter legislation is advancing amid ongoing abuses of power that pose unprecedented threats to American democracy." She specifically pointed to the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act that the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives passed earlier this month.
"We're seeing parallel efforts nationally to make it harder for eligible voters to cast their ballots—including the SAVE Act being debated in Congress right now—and Florida is leading the way down this authoritarian path," she said. The federal bill is less likely to get through the US Senate, whose filibuster rule requires the GOP to get some Democratic support to advance most legislation.
"What makes this even more galling is that lawmakers don't have to do any of this at all—they are choosing to," said Jackson. "They could enact reforms making it easier for eligible Floridians to vote and have their voices be heard, like the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Florida Voting Rights Act, HB 1419/SB 1598. Instead, they are fast-tracking legislation that would make voting harder for eligible Floridians and silence communities that deserve to be heard."
"We will not stand by while politicians in power seek to entrench their power at the expense of the people's rights," she vowed. "We will keep organizing and fighting to reclaim and defend our democracy—because every eligible Floridian deserves to vote."
Meanwhile, at the federal level, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) plans to hold a vote on the SAVE America Act this week. President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to increase pressure on Congress to send the bill to his desk.
"I'm asking you to approve the SAVE America Act to stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections—that cheating is rampant in our elections," Trump said. "It's very simple: All voters must show voter ID. All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote. And no more crooked mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. None."
Experts have long countered such GOP claims by emphasizing that, as the Brennan Center for Justice put it in a pair of blog posts, "noncitizen voting is already illegal" and "extensive research reveals that fraud is very rare."
Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel for the national voting rights group Fair Elections Center, told Democracy Docket on Wednesday that Florida's voter suppression bill "would do a lot of the same things," as the SAVE America Act, "in terms of preventing American citizens from voting who don't have access to documentary proof of citizenship documents."
"The last thing someone who is on a path to citizenship would want to do is to jeopardize their naturalization by voting illegally," Kanter Cohen said. "And so people don't do that. That's not something that's happening because it has such dire consequences."
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'Despicable': Vance, Oz Announce Freeze on Some Medicaid Funding for Minnesota
"The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to spend taxpayer funds, and no law allows the president to halt if he feels some US states aren’t being 'good stewards' of the money," said one critic.
Feb 25, 2026
US Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Trump administration will pause some Medicaid funding for Minnesota over fraud concerns—without offering any guarantees that the suspension will not adversely impact the more than 1 million Minnesotans who depend upon the key healthcare program.
"We're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that is going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money," Vance said at a White House press conference with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz.
"Now what is this gonna mean?" Vance continued. "What this means is that, first of all, the providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid... What we're doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes it obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated."
They already targeted SNAP in Minnesota. They’ve killed two Minnesotans and injured or kidnapped hundreds more. Now they’re stealing their Medicaid. They’re going to deny people healthcare because of a YouTube video about a Somali daycare scam that wasn’t even true.
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— Kelly (@broadwaybabyto.bsky.social) February 25, 2026 at 3:05 PM
Oz demanded that Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz determine "who these providers are; make sure they're not already in trouble for doing bad stuff, and then reevaluate all the current providers to make sure they're supposed to be able to provide these services."
Responding to Oz's remarks, Gaia Leadership Project founder Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin said on Bluesky, "So Minnesota is supposed to review every appointment by a Medicaid recipient with every doctor to get funds already lawfully allocated to the state?"
Asked by a reporter how he intends to ensure that the funding pause "doesn't impact the people who are enrolled in Medicaid," Vance said he is "worried about the justice of it all."
"I think it's offensive that American taxpayers pay into these programs and they're defrauded... and it's really sad that American children who need these services are unable to get them, because they're going to fraudsters," Vance replied.
"Look, we're certainly gonna make sure that our anti-fraud efforts go after the fraudsters and not after anybody who actually benefits from these services," he continued. "But I actually think the question is a little off, in a way, because the problem is not going after the fraud, the problem is that these programs are being defrauded to begin with."
"Our social safety net will disappear unless we take fraud more seriously," added the vice president, whose boss, President Donald Trump, last year signed into law the biggest cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in the nation's history as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Medicaid is the primary healthcare safety net for lower-income Americans, with nearly 70 million people enrolled nationwide at the end of last year.
While federal prosecutors are investigating Minnesota’s Medicaid system—specifically, 14 high-risk service programs such as housing support and personal-care services—on suspicion of billions of dollars in fraudulent billings since 2018, and dozens of people have been convicted of stealing public money through the state’s social services system, critics noted that Congress, not the president, has the power of the purse.
Some observers noted that Trump has already targeted Minnesota—which voted against him all three times he ran for president—with his deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their defenders and racist attacks on Somali immigrants, including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
The Medicaid freeze follows the Trump administration's $10 billion cut in federal childcare funding to five Democrat-led states, including Minnesota, last month—a move that opponents argue punishes working families who committed no fraud.
University of Illinois professor Nicholas Grossman called the Medicaid pause "taxation without representation."
"The Constitution clearly gives Congress the power to spend taxpayer funds, and no law allows the president to halt if he feels some US states aren’t being 'good stewards' of the money," he said on Bluesky. "In case there’s any confusion on this, the Impoundment Control Act forbids it."
"The people of Minnesota vote for representatives to Congress," Grossman added. "Minnesota representatives and senators were in DC, representing their constituents, when Congress passed laws using proper procedure that allocated Medicaid funding. The president breaking those laws violates the fundamental compact of the republic."
Oz on Wednesday also announced "a six-month national moratorium blocking all new enrollments for durable medical equipment—prosthesis, orthotics—supplies across the board" in the name of fighting fraud. The move targets suppliers, not individual Medicaid beneficiaries.
This from Oz, a promoter of privatized Medicare Advantage programs, which are notorious for overcharging taxpayers and denying patients necessary care. The CMS under Oz increased federal funding for Medicare Advantage plans by more than $25 billion for 2026.
As Common Dreams recently reported, United Health Group (UHG), one of the country's largest for-profit health insurance companies, has been the leading beneficiary of a long-running Medicare Advantage fraud scheme that the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission—an independent, nonpartisan legislative branch agency—warned could cost US taxpayers $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
Some critics said that if Trump really cared about fraud, he'd go after companies like UHG—and stop pardoning so many convicted criminals who committed billions of dollars worth of fraud.
"These guys are despicable," Michigan State University professor Brendan Cantwell said Wednesday in response to Vance and Oz's announcement.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement Wednesday that “Medicaid fraud is a serious problem that requires cracking down on fraudsters—not patients."
Weissman continued:
This administration’s anti-fraud rhetoric is itself a fraud. In fact, the administration has gutted anti-fraud government agencies and programs and let fraudsters off the hook. It has issued record-breaking pardons to fraudsters; sought to eliminate the most important anti-consumer fraud agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; eviscerated the corps of inspectors general whose job is to root out waste, fraud, and abuses; and dropped dozens of fraud and fraud-related investigations against large corporations.
“The Trump administration suspension of Medicaid funding in Minnesota is a bad-faith, punitive, and shameful measure that will punish people in Minnesota as part of the same deceptive story that the Trump administration has told to justify the outrageous [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] invasion of the state," Weissman added.
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Former Brazilian Political Officials Found Guilty of Plotting Murder of Marielle Franco
"What the killers did not expect is that her legacy would become greater than all of this," said Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Carmen Lúcia.
Feb 25, 2026
A five-judge panel on Brazil's Supreme Court on Wednesday voted unanimously to convict former Congressman Chiquinho Brazão and his brother, politician Domingos Brazão, of ordering the 2018 murder of Rio de Janeiro City Councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver, Anderson Gomes.
As reported by Reuters, the court sentenced the Brazão brothers to each serve 76 years in prison for plotting to assassinate the 38-year-old Franco because they feared she and her allies in the Socialism and Liberty Party would be an impediment to their illegal scheme that involved taking public lands to develop private real estate projects.
Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who oversaw the trial of the brothers, said that the two men did not think they would be held accountable for killing Franco because she was a Black woman who represented a poor neighborhood in Rio.
"Inside the misogynistic, prejudiced minds of those who ordered and carried out the crime, who would care about that?" Moraes said. “They did not expect such wide repercussions."
Justice Carmen Lúcia also said that the Brazão brothers seemed to believe that they would be allowed to get away with murder.
"What the killers did not expect," said Lúcia, "is that her legacy would become greater than all of this."
The court also sentenced former Rio de Janeiro Police Chief Rivaldo Barbosa to an 18-year prison sentence for obstructing the investigation into Franco's murder.
Franco's widow, current Rio City Councilwoman Mônica Benício, told Payday Report that the court's conviction of the plotters was a landmark decision for Brazilian democracy.
"For the country, this is an opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to break with the selective penal system that protects criminal structures and their political ties," Benício said. "We must learn a lesson from what the assassination of Marielle and Anderson reveals about Brazil: the obscure connections between crime, politics, and the police."
Anielle Franco, a sister of Marielle Franco who currently serves as Brazil's Minister of Racial Equality, hailed the verdict as "justice" in a social media post, vowing that "our fight continues for all victims of violence."
Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said that justice for Franco and Gomes was "a long time coming," and added that "their killings are emblematic of the broader and highly alarming trend of lethal violence and structural racism against human rights defenders in Brazil."
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