Senator Sanders

Health Care - Public Option "The overwhelming majority of the American people want a public option,' Sen. Bernie Sanders told Howard Dean on MSNBC. "They want a choice other than a private health insurance company whose function in life is to rip them off and to make as much money as possible...It is wrong that a handful of conservative Democrats and all of the Republicans are stopping that." VIDEO

Health Care - Filibuster? "I would be very reluctant to go forward, Ed, with a program that provides hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to the insurance companies without a public option, without strong cost containment," Sen. Sanders told Ed Schultz on MSNBC. Sanders "won't vote for a bill that weakens the public option," The Christian Science Monitor reported. "This is going to be a very difficult...process which I hope...will...succeed," he told The Burlington Free Press. LINK, LINK and VIDEO

Health Care - Vermont Gov. Douglas, in his weekly press conference Tuesday, worried that Vermont could be penalized for being ahead of the rest of the country in reforms. The version in the U.S. Senate would penalize two states - Vermont and Massachusetts - by not giving the states matching federal funds for Medicaid expansion. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Sanders are aware of the issue and have been working to address it, according to the Vermont Press Bureau. LINK

Too Big Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said Tuesday a proposal from Rep. Paul Kanjorski is "a well-intentioned," but cautioned lawmakers to be careful about breaking up the largest financial institutions. Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed similar legislation in the Senate, Reuters reported. Writing in The Austin Chronicle, Jim Hightower said "the socialist senator from Vermont ironically has introduced a bill that is the essence of classic capitalism." LINK and LINK

Trade Secrets Two senators asked the Obama administration to allow the public to review and comment on a controversial international copyright treaty being negotiated largely in secret. The public has a right to know what's being negotiated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Sens. Sherrod Brown and Sanders said in a letter, PC World reported. A London trade publication, The Inquirer, said the deal "will give sweeping powers to the movie and music businesses." LINK and LINK

Green Jobs Eight Northeast states will undertake a study of "green jobs" in the region thanks to a $4 million research grant announced by Sen. Sanders, who said "good environmental policy is good economic policy," the Providence Business News reported. "We've still got a long way to go as we pursue our goal of combating global warming, moving toward energy independence and creating millions of good jobs in the process," Sanders wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in the Rutland Herald. LINK and LINK

International

Afghanistan In declaring Tuesday that he would "finish the job" in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long conflict to an end. But offering that reassuring if somewhat contradictory signal is just the first of a set of tricky messages he will have to deliver as he rolls out his strategy publicly, The New York Times reported. LINK

National

Medical Bankruptcy Statistics are elusive, but there is a general sense among bankruptcy lawyers that the share of personal bankruptcies caused by illness is growing. In the campaign to broaden support for the overhaul of American health care, few arguments have packed as much rhetorical punch as the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God notion that average families, through no fault of their own, are going bankrupt because of medical debt, The New York Times reported. LINK

Limping Economy The unemployment rate will remain elevated for years to come, according to a forecast released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve that addresses for the first time economic conditions at the time of the next presidential election.  It paints a grim picture. Top Fed officials expect the unemployment rate to remain in the 6.8 to 7.5 percent range at the end of 2012 and said it could take "about five or six years" from now for economic activity to return to normal, according to The Washington Post. LINK

Global Warming Controversy over leaked e-mails exchanged among global warming scientists is part of a "smear campaign" to derail next month's United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen, one of the scientists, meteorologist Michael Mann, said Tuesday. Unknown hackers illegally broke into a server last week at the climate institute at Britain's University of East Anglia. Sen. James Inhofe called for a congressional investigation, USA Today reported. LINK

Vermont

Holiday Homecoming Organizers of Operation Holiday Homecoming say they've raised enough money to bring 700 Vermont National Guard Troops home for the holidays before they deploy to Afghanistan. The effort has raised more than $175,000, The Associated Press reported. LINK