New Report Says U.S. Health Care Violates U.N. Convention on Racism

Miriam Zoila Pérez ColorLines
Recent policy developments, primarily the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion, have the potential to improve access to health care for women who aren't eligible for Medicaid under current requirements. But 19 states, including most in the South where maternal mortality rates are higher, have opted out of Medicaid expansion. Georgia, for example, has 838,000 uninsured women, more than 25 percent of whom are African American.

On Labor Day, A Working Families Party Strategy

By Julie Kushner and Rafael Navar In These Times
Our aim is to build an independent base of political power that can put forward our progressive, populist values and mean it. America actually needs a political movement that can say that increasing union density is a good thing, without blushing. One that knows that declining wages and eroding retirement security are not a “new normal” we must adjust to; that market solutions are not always wise; and that an increasingly financialized economy only benefits the top.

Justice Dept. to Probe Ferguson Police Force

By Sari Horwitz, Carol D. Leonnig and Kimberly Kindy The Washington Post
The number of police department reviews the Justice Department has initiated under Holder for possible constitutional violations is twice that of any of his predecessors. At least 34 other departments are under investigation for alleged civil rights violations.

What the Twin Plagues of ISIS and Ebola Have in Common

John Feffer and Foreign Policy in Focus The Nation
Today’s headlines are filled with similar stories of the spread of death and destruction in the Middle East and Africa. American commentators worry that these plagues will burst their borders and somehow spread to these shores. And, as in Camus’ novel, these diseases point to something larger, not the imposition of a new malignant system but the breakdown of the existing order.