Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich is taking a legal stand against olive pits. (Photo Credit: CC BY-ND/VictoryNH/Flickr)

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich on April 17, 2008, while dining in a U.S. House of Representatives cafeteria, bit into a sandwich that contained an olive pit. This olive pit caused Kucinich dental damage. The damage was so immediate and intense that it prompted Dennis Kucinich to file a lawsuit in District of Columbia Superior Court on Jan. 3, 2011. Kucinich seeks $150,000 in damages.

Kucinich bills himself ‘America’s most courageous congressman’

According to court documents filed by Dennis Kucinich, it was a sandwich wrap “unwholesome and unfit for human consumption” that caused $150,000 worth of injuries, pain and suffering. Rep. Kucinich’s congressional office filed the lawsuit, which seeks compensatory damages for “future dental and medical expenses” as well as “pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment,” reports The Cleveland Plain Dealer.  All producers and suppliers of the wrapped vegan sandwiches in question are accused of multiple counts of negligence and breach of implied warranty.

Dennis Kucinich raises sandwich negligence counts

Two counts of negligence and two counts of breach of implied warranty are named in the Dennis Kucinich sandwich lawsuit. Rep. Kucinich’s legal team seeks to prove before a jury that these companies were negligent in “serving unwholesome food unfit for human consumption,” particularly because the sandwich in question contained a “dangerous substance that a consumer would not reasonably expect to find in the final product served.”

This alleged negligence, which will necessitate a Kucinich olive pit defense, is supposedly responsible for the congressman’s “serious and permanent” injuries. Dennis Kucinich, according to his lawyers, is entitled to but shall not be limited to past and future dental and medical expenses, plus pain and suffering.

Breach of warranty also filed

The food production and distribution companies named above are also being slapped with allegations of breach of warranty. This is because once such food is served, Dennis Kucinich’s legal team asserts that it is implied that the food is fit for human consumption.

Sources

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Dennis Kucinich: America’s Most Courageous Congressman

Kucinich v. Restaurant Associates, Inc., et al

Sports Comet

Dennis Kucinich is a vegan

The health care bill vote will likely take place Sunday. From Wikimedia Commons

The fight over the health care bill in the House of Representatives continues, and the bill is set for a vote on Sunday. The current bill was sent to the House by the Senate, and the House will require 216 votes in order to pass it, and that is what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – CA) is gunning for. Ohio Rep. John Boccieri (D) has crossed the aisle and pledged to vote for the bill. House and Senate Republicans are bound and determined to keep the bill from passing either house, despite CBO estimates that the bill will save a lot of payday cash for consumers and the government alike.

John Boccieri says ‘Yes’ to health care bill

A freshman legislator, Rep. John Boccieri (D-OH) has, according to the Washington Post, decided to support the legislation and vote in favor of the health care bill in order to pass it through the House and send it back to the Senate.  If the bill clears the Senate without further alteration, it will be sent to the president.

Falling into line

Several other House Democrats who had previously held the bill in dubious esteem, including Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Betsy Markely (D-CO), and Bart Gordon (D-TN) have recently also committed to voting for the bill. The bill has likely appeared more palatable because of recent Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill, with a price tag of more than $940 billion – that’s a heck of a cash advance – will trim up to $138 billion from the deficit over the next 10 years.

Possibly not the end of the line

The success of the bill on Sunday depends entirely on getting enough votes to pass the House, and the House revised bill passing the Senate, and of course, for the President to sign it.  President Obama is deeply committed to health care reform, as health care costs are the cause of more than 60 percent of all bankruptcy filings. Medical debt has the potential to become a far greater problem in the next 30 years, as the baby boomers begin to retire.

President Obama urges action

In a recent speech, President Obama urged Congress to pass the bill as soon as possible.  The specter of health care reform is looming large over Washington, as many want something to be done and just as many oppose intrusion by government into a business as important as the health care industry.  It has become a cornerstone issue of the Obama presidency, and regardless of the outcome, it will likely be one of, if the not the, defining issue for his administration.

I'm not looking at Dennis Kucinich in this photo, either.

The battle for health care reform may be nearing a vote in the House, as President Obama has predicted. Now a major stumbling block has been removed, as Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich has changed his stance on the current version of the health care bill, which brings to mind credit repair – for his image.

It remains to be seen what it was that swayed the former critic of the bill, but the New York Daily News reports that pressure from the president and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have had a lot to do with it. They apparently put the screws to him in his home state of Ohio this week.

Dennis Kucinich says yes, but with reservations

While his vote brings Nancy Pelosi one closer to the 216 needed to pass health care reform, Dennis Kucinich won’t say that the version of the health care bill that’s on the table is perfect.

“I have taken this fight farther than many in Congress have been willing to take it,” Kucinich said in a statement to the media. “In the past week, it’s become clear that the vote on the final health bill will be very close.”

Then he said he didn’t want to be the one to deep-six the bill

That sounds like Dennis Kucinich doesn’t want to draw someone’s wrath. Who might that be? President Obama? Speaker Pelosi? His wife Elizabeth could also be a culprit.

The big question is – how will we pay for this health care bill?

Depending upon who you ask, we could either have it covered AND reduce the deficit or continue to pay for this many generations later, saddling them with tax debt. Dennis Kucinich hasn’t forgotten this part of the equation, which is most likely why he said that he has “taken a detour through supporting this bill,” and that he will continue to seek more “robust” reform. Whatever scores points with the English rose, Dennis.

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/65235746@N00/ / CC BY 2.0)

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(Photo: flickr.com)

Stop the presses. There is a connection between the racist, inflammatory Obama Joker socialism posters used to protest the president’s plans for the necessary overhaul of the health care system and the lost presidential candidacy of Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich. I rather liked the man and would have voted for him if he’d stuck around, but he’s wistful and thinks outside the box. Apparently that makes him an easy target for being labeled “crazy” or “unbalanced,” which is an unjust spin game in itself. As I see it, any politician who would propose the Baseball Fan Protection Act has interesting things to say. Unfortunately he supports squeezing legitimate lenders of payday loans and installment loans via “tightening up” the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), but nobody’s perfect.

First the Obama Joker poster

According to the Examiner, the poster was created by a 20-year-old college student from Chicago, Firas Alkhateeb. He is of Palestinian decent and – interestingly enough – is rather liberal in his politics. But here’s the Dennis Kucinich connection: Alkhateeb says he would have preferred him to Obama. As time goes on, I begin to agree.

“After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ,” he said. “From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

Which is the same problem I have

The more Obama talks, the more it seems that he’s a promise maker with less drive to make those promises a reality. How can he let the single-payer option go, claiming it is “not the most important thing?” It’s ridiculous. Plus, his recent stance on the Defense of Marriage Act flies in the face of his support for gay and lesbian couples. And what about the wars in the Middle East? Shouldn’t we be close to withdrawing from that quagmire by now?

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Alkhateeb is frustrated with Obama, as are many others. That’s why he fired up Photoshop and made a Joker out of the president. Then he posted it to his Flickr page. At that point, someone else unrevealed stole the work and gave it the socialism tag. In Alkhateeb’s assessment (and mine), that’s an “immature” take on what Obama is trying to accomplish with health care reform. But it’s a convenient buzz word that the right can use to frighten the uninformed masses.

So who is Dennis Kucinich?

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio’s 10^th District has been praised by Ralph Nader as being a “genuine progressive.” He firmly is in support of a single-payer health care system, one for which all Americans have a right to qualify for care. Like President Obama, he recognizes that the current system in place works for only a minority of consumers and a majority of large insurance corporations. As there are far too many who lack coverage altogether and costs continue to rise as corporate greed goes unchecked and Medicare fraud continues to run rampant, Dennis Kucinich is one of those who believe that Americans deserve something he likes to call “Medicare For All.”

Medicare for All

Kucinich, along with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), introduced Medicare For All as HR 676. This bill would provide citizens necessary care at a high standard of quality, as well as free choice of provider. There would be no co-payments, premiums or deductibles.

Where would the money come from?

Because we know it doesn’t grow on trees. Customers of payday loans and installment loans know this all too well. Funds come from a variety of sources, according to Dennis Kucinich. From Congressman Kucinich’s Web site, they are as follows:

• Savings from a vast reduction of paperwork
• Existing government spending on healthcare
• Savings from rational bulk procurement of medications
• Tax on the top 5 percent of income earners
• A small tax on stock and bond transfers
• A phased-in payroll tax that is less than what employers currently pay on average for less complete employee health coverage

How has this bill been doing?

Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich (Photo: commons.wikimedia.org)

HR 676 (aka the Conyers/Kucinich bill) “is the signature national health insurance bill currently before Congress,” according to Kucinich’s Web site. The number of political co-sponsors is growing, and there are at least 14,000 physicians and several thousand more nurses who support the measure. Its supporters include 14,000 physicians, several thousand nurses and many others. When Congress considered the most recent national budget resolution, Medicare For All was included among those bills that made up the Progressive Caucus’ “Alternative Budget” resolution. It is very real and could become the driving force behind real health care reform.

Unpopular decisions? He’d make them and make them work

That’s what I think. Check out Dennis Kucinich and see what you think. I have to hand it to him, however. After marrying someone like Elizabeth, surely he could become the President of the United States (see the video). Perhaps she has a soft spot for payday loans and installment loans on the legitimate side of the TILA blind.

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