The 2002 Canadian scientific report "Air pollution induces heritable DNA mutations" finds "Integrated steel production generates chemical pollution containing compounds that can induce genetic damage." And, the 2009 German report "Long-term exposure to traffic-related particulate matter impairs cognitive function in the elderly" finds "chronic exposure to traffic-related PM (particulate matter) may be involved in the pathogenesis of AD (Alzheimer's Disease)". 

So, who thought it was a good idea to spend $43 million of scarce government and quasi-public funding to build Tremont Pointe government-subsidized housing, located within scent and fallout of the Mittal Cleveland Works Steel mill, and other highly polluting industry of the Cleveland Flats, and directly adjacent to the I-490 freeway, planned to have increased polluting traffic through expansion as the "Opportunity Corridor"?

Donna Smith @ Common Dreams - Could we make this stuff up? We cannot get healthcare as a basic human right for one another. But we sure can make sure gun ownership protections are tucked into the Senate health reform bill that is so celebrated as historic by the White House. 

Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of the National Nurses United - After all the fanfare and high expectations that accompanied the prospect of national health care reform at the outset of this year, the legislation is staggering to a particularly inglorious end.

While noting that the Senate bill includes some "salutary provisions" like an expansion of Medicaid, increased funding for community clinics and the curbing of some

Max Eternity - Ever since Senator Obama announced his support for a Single-Payer, Medicare-for-all, style of Universal Healthcare--while campaigning to be President--Progressives have heeded the call and lent their support.

Shahien Nasiripour @ The Huffington Post - Investors are seeing the Senate's version of health care reform as a massive public subsidy for insurance companies -- and as a result, are sending the sector's stock prices shooting up, up, up. Stripped of a government-run insurance plan, the bill would give tens of millions of Americans no option but to start paying hefty premiums to private companies.

Robert Cruickshank @ Fire Dog Lake - As progressives on and offline continue to debate the future of the health care reform bill, attention is finally shifting to the underlying factors that have gotten us into this mess in the first place: namely, the mistakes of the White House. Meteor Blades at Daily Kos asks the right question – why is it that progressives are getting blamed for this?

Click here to read article and watch video.

The Daily Beast - Democrats are steaming over the White House’s capitulation to liberal nemesis Joe Lieberman’s demands to remove a public option and Medicare buy-in from the Senate’s heath-care bill. Progressive figures including Howard Dean and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas have gone so far as to suggest scrapping the bill entirely and starting over, sparking rebukes from White House officials like David Axelrod, who called such a move “insane” in a Morning Joe interview on MSNBC on Thursday.

Max Eternity - Fed up with Joe, the "Senatorial Prostitute" Leiberman, progressive filmmaker Michael Moore says "Boycott Connicticut."  Read more.

Seth Michaels @ AFL-CIO blog - The health care bill being considered by the U.S. Senate is inadequate and too tilted toward the insurance industry, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said today. In recent days, as the Senate has debated health care reform, small numbers of senators have held health care hostage by threatening to block a vote. The new proposal by the Senate puts the interests of insurance companies—and senators who would rather look out for the insurance companies—ahead of real reform.

"I believe this is the moment when we must stand as one and say enough," Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern wrote in a