Congress has been rushing to pass Save The Economy bills this past week (see article, this issue), including a huge anti-terrorism funding bill (even more money for even more surveillance!) and a "bankruptcy reform" bill to keep you and me from doing what Enron and Worldcom can do so easily. But one bill has fallen by the wayside: prescription drug reform. Thousands of Medicare recipients have been making the trek to Canada for reasonably priced medicine, while Congress dithers. The sticking point is whether to allow the government to administer the plan (Democrats) or allow private insurance companies to also gouge senior citizens, just like the pharmaceutical companies are already doing (Republicans). So far, neither plan has the necessary majority of 60 votes in the Senate, although the Democrat's plan has a slight lead. The stalemate means neither will pass this year. Meanwhile, 34 million grandmas and grandpas count their pills, ration their drugs, curb their lifestyles, and go without food in order to buy their prescriptions. Write your Senators and tell them to stop dinking around and support the Democrat's plan.--Maria Tomchick

Congress succeeded in earning the pharmaceutical company's campaign contributions, by once again failing to pass funding to cover escalating drug costs for Medicare patients. Civilized countries, like Canada, make essential medicines accessible by regulating drug costs, while the US only ensures the health of insurance companies and drug companies. And for the millions of people on the wrong end of US foreign and economic policy, access to life-saving drugs is impossible. Humanitarian organizations like Medicines Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) struggle to heal the carnage of medicine infected by greed. MSF practices guerrilla medicine, treating the victims of US military and economic policies in Afghanistan, Israeli-occupied Palestine, or Columbia.

Many critical drugs are either too expensive or no longer available; malaria and tuberculosis are primarily Third World diseases, and drug companies would rather target life-threatening illnesses like baldness, infertility, and heartburn. Public outrage shamed drug companies into dropping opposition to affordable and generic AIDS drugs for South Africans with HIV -- now MSF's "Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines" is touring the US, generating public pressure for accessible, affordable medicines for real life-threatening diseases.

The Campaign is coming to Seattle Aug 1-4, on the waterfront along Alaskan Way, north of the aquarium. Tourists and locals, flocking to the weekend's Seafair military shamefest, can learn instead about preventable or treatable diseases, and the struggle to treat people who suffer from conditions more serious than cellulite. See the Calendar for details; check the website (www.doctorswithoutborders.org) for the Campaign's schedule of visits to other US cities. If you have medical training, and are sick of taking care of insurance companies and drug-company shareholders, check out MSF's volunteer opportunities. Imagine, instead of requiring military "service," the US required healing service -- maybe then "they wouldn't hate us" so much. --Valerie Rose

More money for public health clinics should be good news -- but it's only a cheap photo-op for the federally-appointed Bush administration. Health & Human Services destructor Tommy Thompson recently made an appearance at Seattle's Pike Market Clinic, giving them a paltry $42,000 in federal aid -- with the expectation that they will double their patient load by 2006. This insult comes at a time when the clinic is trying to overcome a sharp decline in private donations since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; they desperately need real federal aid to continue serving their current patients, let alone hundreds more. According to the Seattle Times, Thompson noted, "It's absolutely amazing how much you can do with such small space." The clinic has less room than Thompson's own doctor uses to store his golf clubs. But the Pike Market Clinic serves low-income and homeless people in downtown Seattle, not federally-funded cretins -- if they renamed it the Pike Market Stadium, at least they could get plenty of state funding. --Valerie Rose

Referendum 51--the state transportation package headed for the ballot this November--is in trouble. The pro-51 campaign is finally getting into gear, but they have an uphill battle. In March, an Elway poll showed that a bare 50% of voters would support the plan, while 45% would vote against it. Another poll taken in June showed an astounding reversal: 36% in favor and 60% opposed, with only 4% undecided. Pro-51 folks think this has to do with rural voters hating the nine cent-per-gallon gas tax increase, coupled with a lack of support from environmental groups who want more money spent on transit. That's crap. Environmental groups don't have that much influence over Seattle voters; it would be nice if they did, but they don't. Voters all over the state are simply looking at the economy, at their own bank accounts, and at the fuel gauges on their SUVs. It hasn't helped that the pro-51 folks have been sitting on their butts all this time, instead of telling Washingtonians what they'll get from this package. (Of course, that might be a good thing. A close look at R-51 shows that there's simply not much in it for folks who live outside of the I-405 corridor.)--M.T.

An editorial cartoon in Sunday's Focus section of the Seattle Times (the P-I editorial pages) shows a cartoon entitled "Homicide Bombers." Leaving aside the idiocy of the term "homicide bomber," the cartoon itself is interesting. The left panel, entitled "Suspect A," shows a Hamas member seated on an Israeli public bus with a bomb in his hand. The right panel, entitled "Suspect B," shows an Israeli F-15 labeled "Sharon" dropping a 1-ton bomb on a heavily residential section of Gaza City. That's not quite accurate. The Hamas member is a suicide bomber--somebody who is going to die for what he or she is doing. Ariel Sharon, on the other hand, does his killing from a distance and survives to gloat about it. Remarkably, there's little condemnation in the US press of Sharon's psychotic actions or his cynical move to end the negotiations for a ceasefire that were occurring at the very moment he authorized the bombing. Likewise, George W.'s wimpy "heavy-handed" comment has left me with a nausea I simply can't shake. Bush has to go. I have two words for him: impeachment hearing. The sooner, the better.--M.T.

On the other hand, it was fascinating, in the hours after Israel's latest killing of large numbers of Palestinian civilians -- this time, for a change, in the full glare of TV cameras -- to watch how the power of video, and of the Sharon government's expression of "regret" for their intentional assassination of 15 civilians, somehow gradually gave US media permission, over the course of the news cycle, to state the obvious. Viewers saw powerful video images of the rubble that once housed Palestinian families -- before a one-ton bomb, probably about the size of the explosion that leveled the federal building in Oklahoma City, changed the cityscape. Coverage also showed the highly emotional funerals and crowds of wailing, bereaved, furious Palestinians. Americans aren't used to seeing scenes like that, even though they've been a constant in the West Bank and Gaza for the last 20 months. The acknowledgment that Palestinians are real people who actually suffer -- and, to top it off, the occasional mention of American weaponry being used -- constitutes progress, of a sort, for our abysmal media coverage of "those people who are always fighting." --Geov Parrish

Another nauseating story this month is the arrest of James Ujaama, a man whose family members, friends, local members of the black community, local activists, and even a P-I newspaper editorialist say is innocent of terrorism charges. That hasn't stopped the Seattle Times from crucifying him without evidence or the FBI from holding him without charges. I tell you, Ashcroft has got to go. Right now. He was confirmed as Attorney General with a bare majority of votes--the Democrats let him squeak through in the name of building consensus with the Republicans on future votes (much good that did them!). Ashcroft has not only ripped up the bill of rights, he has politicized the Attorney General's office, lied to the American people about Jose Padilla, and exaggerated the existence of Al Qaeda cells in the US. Out with him!--M.T.

I agree. It's time for progressives to mount a concerted, noisy "Dump Ashcroft" campaign -- and make common cause with libertarians and conservatives also alarmed by his grandstanding, overstatement of terrorist threats, and contempt for basic civil liberties (not to mention the other nine Amendments the NRA is due to rally around). Over 40 Democrats voted against confirming this guy even in the glow of Bush's entry into office; the subsequent 20 months have confirmed the worst fears of Ashcroft's critics, and then some. He needs to be a focus, before everyone reading this gets picked off, one by one, by his political police.--G.P.

And, two notes on the Ujaama case -- one, that the lead Seattle Times polemicist convicting him on page one, Mike Carter, is said by several sources to be tight with Ashcroft's DoJ, and is probably getting his quotes from "high-ranking federal sources" straight from the Dubya Political Police. Second: the case came to the attention of the FBI because of the alert reporting of the local sheriff, who told the G-men, even before September 11 -- I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP -- that "We had our suspicions" and "There were reports of gunfire, and of a large group of suspicious, or unusual, people here."

Ahh. People shooting guns -- no problem. Brown people shooting guns -- call the FBI. Pronto. Now, natch, there's a secret (except for Carter) grand jury empanelled and newspaper stories that refer to a seemingly innocuous Islamic worship group as a "cell." That's how Operation TIPS will work, too. You can get used to it, or you can work to dump Ashcroft, NOW.--G.P.

One more media note: the fascinating combination of market cheerleading/hand-holding and barely concealed glee accompanying high-profile coverage of recent corporate criminals. To be sure, the chances that these (alleged) crooks will spend hard time at some federal country club are minimal, but what's really interesting is the very notion that despite two full decades of media and political glorification of the rich, there can still be very real class resentment in this country -- in this case, resentment by the poor and middle and upper middle classes alike that while we worked our asses off and played by the rules, these creeps cheated and made money at will. It's the story of capitalism, of course, and in a few weeks all will be back to normal on the cheating and fortune-making fronts. The resentment, however, especially in a bum economy, with retirement savings disappearing, and a president so closely associated with our oligarchy that he cannot, ala Edgar Allan Poe, scrub it off no matter how he tries. Net effect: Dubya is vulnerable, and will become more so as the "scandals" deepen. Class war: another good reason to go after Ashcroft now. --G.P.

On July 21, Worldcom filed for bankruptcy--the largest filing in US history. Now the US economy has to deal with the fallout. When one company goes down, others are dragged low with it; after all, somebody used Worldcom's services, somebody loaned them all that money, somebody sold services and products to Worldcom, and lots of somebodies were employed by the company. The effect ripples outwards. Mellon Bank and JP Morgan are the largest lenders, but they will make out okay, because they packaged the loans into smaller pieces and sold them to investors, who will take a big hit. Nevertheless, JP Morgan still owns $17 billion in unsecured loans to Worldcom. Local phone companies like Qwest (often referred to as "Baby Bells") will also take a hit, because Worldcom purchased access to their local phone lines, owing them millions of dollars in unpaid bills. In fact, once Worldcom announced that it was in trouble, most of the Baby Bells put Worldcom on a "pay-as-you-go" plan that worsened its cash flow troubles and hastened its bankruptcy. Now the Baby Bells are looking at a situation where they might not have Worldcom as a customer anymore, which is putting them into a financial fix. And while Worldcom claims it has $107 billion in assets, it's not clear if its assets are really worth that much. In this environment of many sellers and few buyers, its assets may be worth only pennies on the dollar. How quickly the bubble deflates! --M.T.