As the Dark Clouds' Gathering at the SouthSide of the Sunset Beach

This Land Is Our Land: Inheritors of Reservation Land Fight Back
Wednesday 29 June 2011
by: Alleen Brown, In These Times | Report

Alleen Brown, In These Times: "Indians cannot sell or lease their trust land without federal approval, and the government is supposed to distribute any revenues earned from the land (through leasing to farmers, railroads, mining companies and other private interests) to the individual landowners. As soon as the first allottees died, the government began dividing property among their descendents. But heirs did not inherit pieces of land with specific boundaries. Instead, they inherited fractions of the title - a title held in trust by the federal government. This system leaves most allotment heirs with tiny, in effect unusable, fractions of ownership."

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fog's entering the setting sun

Crap-O-Ryan-Plan !!!

Dr. Rachel Z. Chatters, a pediatrician, right, sees clients, Ana Smith and her son Aidan, two, who rely on Medicaid, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, March 24, 2011. Medicaid, which is paid for jointly by the federal and state governments, is the subject of an intense debate in Washington over how to make it more efficient as Congress addresses the budget deficit and the growing national debt. (Photo: Michael Stravato / The New York Times)

Blood on the Chopping Block
Tuesday 21 June 2011
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

- Confucius

The Republican Party has spent the last several weeks receiving an education - by way of serial beatings delivered by constituents from sea to shining sea - on the awesome power of Medicare in America. When it became known that Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to turn the wildly popular program into a privatized disaster zone had been adopted as the battle standard for the GOP and its newly-muscular Tea Party bloc, seven different breeds of merry hell broke loose across the land. House member after House member climbed out of the DC bubble, went home to their districts, and were promptly set upon by furious people who deeply depend on Medicare.
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