Check out Chris Hedge's commentary on the health care bill, "The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed," at http://www.truthdig.com/, including these comments:

"The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this reality [of the broken health care system] is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said recently: "This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?" Here is a man who once championed the public option and now has sold his soul. What is the point in supporting him or any of the other Democrats? How much more craven can they get?

The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million.

Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state to frame all discussions.

Change will come only by building movements that stand in fierce and uncompromising opposition to the Democrats and the Republicans.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz delivers a tearful ode to the Atlantic Yards boondoggle and his crony Bruce Ratner. Filmed at Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's "ceremonial groundbreaking" of Burying The Soul Of Brooklyn. 2005 Green Party Candidate for Brooklyn Borough President Gloria Mattera was in attendance, wearing the Andrew Cuomo mask. Video by Michael ONeil and the Green Party Of Brooklyn.

The venue for the party was closed due to inclement weather and we were unable to locate a replacement venue on such short notice.

By David Pechefsky

IN Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City speech on Wednesday, he spoke of the City Council as if it were an equal partner in government. Indeed, the mayor’s surprisingly close re-election, the unusual defeat of a handful of council members and some spirited races in the general election in a city where winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to victory, might lead one to expect the 51-member body to be imbued with new democratic vigor. However, the council members inaugurated this month have joined a body whose governance structure is hardly more democratic than a high school student council’s — where the principal calls the shots.

Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission shreds the fabric of our already weakened democracy by allowing corporations to more completely dominate our corrupted electoral process. It is outrageous that corporations already attempt to influence or bribe our political candidates through their political action committees (PACs), which solicit employees and shareholders for donations. With this decision, corporations can now also draw on their corporate treasuries and pour vast amounts of corporate money, through independent expenditures, into the electoral swamp already flooded with corporate campaign PAC contribution dollars.

This corporatist, anti-voter decision is so extreme that it should galvanize a grassroots effort to enact a Constitutional Amendment to once and for all end corporate personhood and curtail the corrosive impact of big money on politics. It is indeed time for a Constitutional amendment to prevent corporate campaign contributions from commercializing our elections and drowning out the civic and political voices and values of citizens and voters. It is way overdue to overthrow “King Corporation” and restore the sovereignty of “We the People”!