As anyone who knows my writing knows, I'm a big fan of SEIU and Andy Stern's leadership in fighting on behalf of working families. But count me in the skeptics camp as far as this new partnership with Wal-Mart.

The US health care system is obviously screwed up-- costing twice as much per patient as European health care systems, loaded up with useless paperwork, and pervaded by special interests like the pharmaceutical companies that pile on costs that no other country pays.

But the unique problem for the US isn't that much of the financing for health care comes from employers. I'm not even sure what Andy Stern means when he says that the US is "the only industrialized nation on earth that puts the price of healthcare on the cost of our products," since Japan and many European countries pay for health care with heavy mandated health care assessments on payrolls:

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Want to make a deal? Privatization is in the air and the multinational profiteers are circling. And the action is bipartisan and involves big money:

• The District of Columbia, Illinois and Indiana have all announced that they are looking to hand over their state lotteries to private firms for billions of dollars.
• Last year, Indiana got $3.8 billion from an Australian-led consortium for a 75-year tollway lease on the same day Virginia signed over its Pocahontas Parkway as a 99-year lease to a private company and Texas approved a $1.3 billion bid by a consortium led by Cintra to build and operate a 40-mile toll road out of Austin.
• Indiana is also planning to contract out management of part of the state's social services system in a $1.16 billion contract.

Why do these deals keep happening, despite the contractor scandals in the headlines?

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Given that the Iraq escalation is going to drain more National Guard and money resources from the states, over twenty states legislatures have now introduced resolutions condemning the escalation. I'm proud that Progressive States Network has been doing the lead organizing on this effort (you can see the campaign page at http://www.progressivestates.org/iraq) but the speed of the response by state leaders reflects the grassroots energy against this idiotic escalation across the country.

And the twenty states aren't just the usual suspects -- see here for the full listing of states but they include Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota -- but for a taste of what's happening in the states, check out this video from a legislative hearing in Kansas, where combat veteran Thomas Young testified.

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