Part 1 – Don’t Let Washington Limit Your Healthcare Choices

We thank you for following along with the evolution of the Transpartisan Review. We believe strongly in this project by CFH President and Board Chair James S. Turner and colleague A. Lawrence Chickering – an effort to free the issues of the day from the shackles of partisan politics as a means of finding common ground for a solution-oriented dialogue…

Progressive critics of President-Elect Trump are producing a blizzard of warnings about authoritarianism both in the President-Elect and in many of his followers. They are right to be concerned about anti-democratic sentiment from any source. Similar authoritarianism can be part of mass demonstrations against the new administration. We need to worry about this.

Terrence M. Cunningham, President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and Chief of the Wellesley, MA police force offered and apology for historic mistreatment of minorities by police. To a standing ovation of 16,000 assembled police officials he decried the fact that police had become the ‘face of oppression for far too many of our fellow citizens’.

By James Gormley via www.thegormleyfiles.blogspot.com If retailers ask their customers about dietary supplement safety, they’re bound to get a variety of responses, especially considering that quality and safety often go hand-in-hand. In terms of quality, Vitamin Retailer magazine’s 2007 Annual Retailer Survey showed that the percentage of retailers who identify “high quality” as the most important element of their store’s…

Senators McCain and Dorgan Let Down Dietary Supplement Consumers On Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) introduced The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) of 2010. This bill would amend DSHEA, undermining, if not entirely eliminating, consumer access to valuable dietary supplements, according to Jim Turner, Citizens for Health Board Chair. Over the next week,…

Transpartisan Tax Time by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner Now Tax Reform arrives on the Congressional agenda. Congress sees the problem as not enough money to pay for all the projects, programs and material that everyone wants. The budget remains unbalanced. Lawmakers feel pressured by constituents, who they feel want all kinds of services but balk at paying…

September 13, 2011 By James J. Gormley, Vice President and Senior Policy Advisor, Citizens for Health According to a July 7, 2011 report from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality, government spending on healthcare has been on the rise since at least 1990 in the world’s leading economies. U.S. Medicare spending is…

Matrix: Broadening the Left/Right Spectrum Transpartisan Note #52 by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner New York Times columnist Ross Douthat usefully introduces a matrix into his analysis of American politics (“In Search of the American Center,” NYT 6/21/17). He reports on a study by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group and a report by Lee Drutman assessing voter…

called “Of Consuming Interest” – Friday’s at 2pm EST on www.progressivereadionetwork.com

Submitted as a guest editorial by Suzanne Jenkins, November 20, 2011 What happened to the media that investigates and reports both sides of the story? The practice of denigrating dietary supplements and raising public concern over “safety” has been elevated to an art form by the media. Sound bites and articles with such titles as, “Vitamins May Kill Elderly Americans,”…

Bill Thomas, 09.01.09, 12:01 AM EDT link to original article www.forbes.com Health care is big business, over one-sixth of the U.S. economy. Health care reform is big news this summer, as President Barack Obama’s reform agenda has hit the skids. The blame lies not with Republicans’ lack of support but with Democrats avoiding the opportunity to use their political momentum…

October 31, 2016, 499 years to the date after Martin Luther challenged the Catholic Church, Pope Francis traveled to Lutheran Sweden, to recognize Luther and lead off a yearlong acknowledgement of the Protestant Reformation that divided Christianity into feuding sects.

Glimpses of a Transpartisan Foreign Policy by A. Lawrence Chickering and James S. Turner U.S. policy experts widely believe that the world order requires strong American engagement. When American engagement becomes weak or uncertain, the order weakens, and aggression and disorder start to become visible and grow. The Cold War underscored this belief. ‘Containment’ of Soviet expansion won bipartisan support…

Twelve days ago Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California governor, released a video attack on gerrymandering called ‘Why Congress Is Worse Than Herpes’. Since then the video, released on ATTN: (pronounced ‘attention’), has received 22,237,520 views. The people are interested.

America has a representative government. Voters elect leaders who appoint civil servants, and they implement ‘public policy’. This works for much public business, but in areas involving social services—school reform, drug rehabilitation, criminal justice, race relations, poverty and even security policy, results fall far short of aspirations.