Daniel Bass, organizer from Ocean State Action, said:

“With it being over a year of the debate, and the American economy suffering, more people losing healthcare every day, we just need action right now.”

PROVIDENCE - Twelve years ago, Pawtucket resident Ed Benson's wife, Sue, went into the hospital for a simple one-hour operation to have non-cancerous fibroids removed from her uterus.

Once the surgery began, however, the doctor discovered ovarian cancer and called for additional surgeons. The surgery stretched to six hours but was successful and the doctor prescribed four to five days of hospital recuperation for what turned out to be a major procedure.

Two days later, Benson, who was a University of Connecticut profressor at the time, got a call from his wife saying, "get down here now, I've been kicked out" of the hospital.

"I arrived on the ward to hear Sue's primary care doctor pleading with, admonishing and even yelling at an insurance executive to allow her to stay in the hospital," Benson told a protest rally Wednesday called to urge Congress to pass legislation for jobs and health care. "But all of this was to no avail."

All this happened, Benson said, despite having what he called "excellent coverage."

PROVIDENCE—About 100 people rallied in downtown Providence Wednesday for health and jobs.

They called on Congress to pass health-care reform and a jobs bill that would provide billions in funding to help people get back to work.

Click here to watch full report.

Advocates for health care, fair wages and union rights gathered Wednesday afternoon to demand that Congress create jobs and to pass a sensible health insurance plan.

Their message to the Rhode Island delegation was not a new one, but it was impassioned: "No Excuses. No more politics. Congress must act to create jobs and to pass strong health-care reform."

Speakers at the Kennedy Plaza rally, which drew about 100 people, also emphasized the need to protect workers' rights and address global warming.

"We need Congress to pass a strong jobs-creation bill that will put Rhode Islanders and people across the country back to work," said Daniel Bass, organizer at the advocacy coalition Ocean State Action.

Participants urged Washington to recognize the stress that joblessness and a lack of affordable health care puts on working people who are just trying to stay afloat.

As one sign in the crowd put it: "A job is a right."

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Ocean State Action organizer Daniel Bass talks about the need for Congress to pass strong jobs creation legislation.

Click here to watch the report.

The future of Rhode Island and our communities is directly tied to how we deal with the economic downturn and the severe budget shortfalls we seem to face every year. We must be future-oriented when working to solve our budget problems to pave the path to achieve economic success and get Rhode Islanders back to work.

Over the last few years, we have seen slash-and-burn policies led by Governor Carcieri that have cut funding for the public structures we need to build a strong economy. But we can do better.

Government can and must support the public structures that we all depend on. This means funding our roads, our schools, our hospitals, and our public transit system. In addition, we need to maintain essential programs such as disability and mental health services, elder care, and affordable child care.

The practical solution to fixing Rhode Island's budgetary problems is to fix our upside-down tax structure to make it more balanced. Our tax system asks more of those with the least financial resources, and asks less of those who have more. If that doesn't sound fair, it's because it isn't!

According to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, Rhode Islanders earning less than $51,000 a year (a majority of us) pay on average between 10.0 percent and 11.9 percent of our income in state and local taxes (property, income, sales and excise). But Rhode Islanders with incomes above $419,000 pay only half that -- an average of just 5.6 percent. For every dollar you make, about a dime goes to the state or city -- while the person who makes far more is just paying a nickel.

Ocean State Action leads the Campaign for Rhode Island's Priorities, a coalition fighting to fix our upside-down tax structure by moving away from our over-reliance on the property tax (which also increases rents) towards relying on taxes that are based more on people's ability to pay. The Campaign is advocating for practical solutions to achieve this goal, like repeal of the alternative flat tax, which is a massive income tax break to less than one percent of Rhode Island's highest earners.

As families across the country continue to struggle with unemployment rates above 10%, mortgages that cost more than the homes they pay for are worth, and the anxiety of lost retirement and college savings, the biggest banks and Wall Street firms have been announcing bonus and compensation pools rivaling record breaking 2007 levels. The 6 largest firms alone – Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley – whose greed and recklessness did so much to cause the financial crisis – have planned to pay out between $140 and $150 billion. JP Morgan, for example, announced on January 15th that it is setting aside $26.9 billion in compensation this year. On a per employee basis that is up 38 percent from 2008 and 20 percent from the 2007 pre-crisis numbers. Citigroup will pay $24.9 billion.

This reveals more than simply hubris. It shows that Wall Street believes that nothing has changed. The terrible truth is that so far, thanks to their own continued success in lobbying for their narrow interests, even as they have benefited from trillions in public support, they are right. As it stands now, they are free to continue the heads they win, tails we lose gouging and gambling that brought on the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And free to pay their senior executives obscene sums to continue in that direction.

There is a way to change this. President Obama is calling for financial reform, and last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that took steps in the right direction. But the financial industry is opposing real change every step of the way. They weakened the House bill in key areas, for example undermining rules to bring the trading of derivatives – key sources of the financial meltdown (and of billions of dollars in profits for the very largest Wall Street banks) – out into the open. The financial services industry spent $344 million on lobbying in the first three quarters of 2009, and they have more than 1,500 lobbyists registered to protect their interests.

Now it’s the U.S. Senate’s turn to act, and the industry is redoubling their efforts to prevent or fatally water down the change we need. Because Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed has a key position on the Senate Banking Committee, he can play a major role in ensuring that the Senate passes strong reform that truly protects consumers and changes the rules of the game for the industry. Senator Reed has made very strong statements in support of a bank tax and a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but to pass meaningful reform, he will also have to convince some of his colleagues – who seem less inclined to challenge the banks – to take a strong stand.

We need financial reform to rein in the greedy and reckless behavior of big banks on Wall Street that cost millions of jobs, and to crack down on abuses committed by credit card companies and the mortgage lending industry. These reforms will strengthen our financial system and will help to prevent another financial crisis.

The banks were rescued in order to restore the health to the financial system. Sadly, the financial system remains in trouble with record banks failures and a continuing dearth of lending, while the bailed out big banks shower themselves with subsidy-enriched bonuses and fund an army of lobbyists to work against the interests of the American public.

People are angry – and rightly so – about these outsize bonuses, and about the impunity and lack of accountability they represent in the wake of the financial crisis and the bailout of the biggest banks.

Rhode Islanders who want Senator Reed to stand with them and hold the financial industry accountable should call his office at 401-943-3100 and let him know. There is no doubt they are hearing quite a bit from the banks.

Read column here.

Rhode Island's fiscal challenges are expected this evening to dominate Governor Carcieri's final State of the State address.

Tonight's speech comes amidst grim economic times in the Ocean State, including an unemployment rate just shy of 13 percent. The governor's office says Carcieri plans to address these daunting economic challenges. . .

The governor's proposals are also under fire from people like Dan Bass, an activist with the liberal advocacy group Ocean State Action.

"His proposals are making our tax system more upside-down," Bass said. "We're already over-reliant on the property tax, which is squeezing middle class families the most. Property taxes were raised in all 39 municipalities last year, and we need honest leadership right now that's going to address that."

Read or listen to the entire report here.

PAWTUCKET –– Union hat on, Jay Burdick stood outside the Winter Farmers’ Market in Pawtucket Saturday morning handing out fliers asking people to contact their legislators in support of health care reform.

“We still need to … Finish Health Care Right,” the leaflets read. “We Voted For Change! We Demand Lawmakers Follow Through!”

In the wake of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown’s surprise victory in the Senate election Tuesday, which snatched Democrats of their 60-vote supermajority in Congress — and captured the seat held for 47 years by Ted Kennedy, long a health-care reform champion — local advocates took to the streets to ensure support for President Obama’s proposed health care overhaul won’t fizzle.

“We can’t afford to wait and stick with the status quo that we have,” said Peter Asen, executive director of Ocean State Action, a social advocacy coalition and local organizer of the Health Care for America Now campaign.

Read entire article here.

The vote came first thing in the morning on Christmas Eve: After long and heated debates, the U.S. Senate passed its version of health care reform – far different from the House version, but still accomplishing, supporters say, the same goals of expanding coverage and containing health care costs in the long term.

Peter Asen, executive director of Ocean State Action and coordinator of the Health Care for America Now coalition in Rhode Island, has been one of the most vocal advocates for reform in the state in the last few months. He answered questions about the Senate vote.