Posted in Children, Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, LGBT, Politics, War, tagged Aryan Nations, Community, John Day, Racism on February 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »
John Day, Oregon had their first of two, town hall meetings, this morning, over the Aryan Nations intent to begin a compound in their town. If you weren’t able to see the live feed, but can watch video on your computer, click the UStream link HERE.
A second meeting will be held tonight. Check HERE for info.
Posted in Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Politics, War, tagged Aryan Nations, Hwy 395, John Day, OR, Racism on February 25, 2010| 2 Comments »
Prisons, asylums, pedophiles, crooks, other felons who have completed “rehabilitation” (Whatever that might mean these days.) halfway houses, shelters: proximity to all these can change a home’s value.
I have a home. I have thought about what it might mean if someone with a criminal past takes up residence nearby. Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but confronted with the idea of these folks next door, I am undisturbed. People who have completed their sentence should be entitled to reenter the public stream. If I learned that some of these folks were still more dangerous than my other neighbors, I would become alert, but I would jump to the arguments of improper rehabilitation, inadequate understanding of the nature of human behavior, like that in pedophiles, poverty, pain, inadequate upbringing and subsequent failure of personal accountability. However, under the existing law they were entitled to try and begin anew. Rather, existing law should be rewritten to better address failures of rehabilitation, and rehabilitation, itself, should be changed.
I have great difficulty however, with the idea of a group of people moving into my neighborhood who are unrepentantly dedicated to the twin propositions of hatred and separatism. Since I choose to embrace the diversity of humanity, and I am a woman, I am a co-habitator and enemy of such groups; worthy therefore, of shooting, or maybe worse, since the bullet may have more value than me. It’s a personal conundrum, that the price of diversity means enmity, and that I would choose restriction for those who would shoot me as some form of first amendment rights, but have not yet done so. This is how I feel, and I am unable to reconcile it.
Consider then, Oregon, one of my favorite places, the home of relatives, and my husband’s childhood. Now, it is true that Eastern and Southern Oregon tends to the more conservative side. There are, as well, there are other rightist themes about. WorldNetDaily is alive and well in Roseburg. As a nest for right wing rabid bats, certain areas have found themselves over the years to be dripping in guano. Yet, it is no small thing when an Idaho Chapter of the Aryan Nations announces their intent to locate to John Day, Oregon.
From the perspective of a Californian, I also don’t like the idea that in a national emergency, Highway 395, the main backdoor road riding the spine of California and dipping into Reno, could be subject to the bottleneck of survivalist separatist antics of a racist group like the Aryan Nations. It smacks of the bad side of the TV series “Jericho”.
So though I have avoided it, finally today, I joined Facebook. HERE is why.
Don’t let this happen, John Day!!! John Day is too beautiful a place to drip in guano.
Posted in Congress, Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Justice, Politics, tagged Black History Month, Civil Rights, Height, Jealous, Morial, Nummi, Obama, Sharpton, SPLC, Unemployment on February 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »
February is Black History Month.
What does it mean to you?
There are well-known established sheroes and heroes of all sorts and stripes that might deserve mention in this month. However, I want to discuss the month from a slightly different angle.
One of the events likely to occur under rightist governments, such as the previous one we just endured, is the erosion of children’s rights. Right-sided governments are more likely to work under the premise that children’s rights are those of the parents, rather than the children themselves. One example is the constant struggle over whether to allow young people the right to privacy in their visits to doctors and their personal health choices.
We are the keepers of the largest prisoner base in the world. As is prevalent elsewhere in other age groups, minority children are still more likely to suffer the brunt of unequal treatment. In this light, The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) took particular hopeful note in January of President Obama’s stated intention over increased enforcement in his State of the Union Address.
01/28/2010
It’s Time to Step Up Enforcement of Children’s Rights
By Richard Cohen
[After a drastic decline in civil rights enforcement by the U.S. Justice Department over much of the past decade, President Obama’s declaration during last night’s State of the Union Address that his administration is “once again prosecuting civil rights violations” is a promising sign…]
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/its-time-to-step-up-enforcement-of-childrens-rights
We will have to wait and see whether the SPLC’s hope is fulfilled. In any event, one my heroes for the month would include the folks at SPLC.
A recent event on a different subject deserves scrutiny. As expected, the unemployment numbers, for the Nation as whole, in January looked better than previous months at 9.7%. I doubt this number truly represents the actually unemployed, since January, as will March, represented merely an end to those folks whose unemployment simply ran out. This is one of the great scams perpetrated by the cycling of employment funds, as people are dropped off the employment dole.
The DOL’s Economic News Release, dated Feb. 5, 2010 contains this tidbit:
[..In January, the number of persons unemployed due to job loss decreased by 378,000 to 9.3 million. Nearly all of this decline occurred among permanent
job losers. (See table A-11.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) continued to trend up in January, reaching 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has risen by 5.0 million. (See table A-12.)…]
Upon review of Table A-11 one learns:
[…Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in January, up from 734,000 a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.5 million people marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities…]
That means the number of discouraged workers is up by 366,000 people or 33% from a year ago. Since the long term unemployed is also trending up, and they are the next to be changed to discouraged workers and chopped off the unemployment figures, unless Congress acts, two things are likely to happen. The unemployment figures will get better shortly and most of these people will still not have found jobs.
While several other groups are higher (Black 16-19 ears old of both sexes was 43.8%!), for Black American men, January’s seasonally adjusted rate was 19.7%. The Root says “Despair has become Banal”, in their article on Black unemployment.
Today, I saw a commenter on another blog asking why there is no “White History Month”. Although, the commenter was attempting to be flip, it is a fair question from another viewpoint.
Wiki says:
[.. Some African radical/nationalist groups, including the Nation of Islam, have criticized Black History Month. Some critics, including actor Morgan Freeman, contend that Black History Month is irrelevant because it has degenerated into a shallow ritual.[6] He says that it serves to undermine the contention that black history “is” American history.[7]..]
We all need rituals and traditions. The comfort us and are shorthand touchstones for our memories and self-awareness. They remind us of the struggles we have endured and sacrifices we have made. They provide us with aspirational models of humanity. However, they can also lull us into somnambulism over our current position. So I think that Black History Month is a commemoration that can still raise our consciousness. As a shorthand symbol for a few well-known people, also can prevent our growth.
Out of the history of the Civil War, the movement of Black Americans into the industrial cities that first offered employment as a consequence of the industrial age, and then the world wars, stratifies Black Americans today in those same cities: Chicago, Oakland, Richmond, Detroit, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, etc. When we gave up our own industry to cheap land, cheap and unorganized labor, non existent safety and health standard of other countries, and greed, we did something else. We left that labor pool behind with the hazardous waste of non-modernized factories. This is just as, right on schedule, after a twenty-year depreciation valuation ends, Toyota is now doing with NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA. Another 20 years and Texas will weep for her squandered land as well.
We are not there yet. I agree that Black History is American History. I also agree with President Obama’s premise that regions SHOULD be targeted to reduce unemployment. However, this CANNOT be the only thrust. Does he really mean that little sop over being a president for ALL the people meant that he could not push for employment from a civil rights perspective? I think it showed real fear on his part.
This statement simply does not track with the recent health bill that included line items galore toward insuring that minorities, tribes, veterans and women got dispensation in the package. This is a bill he would have signed and continues to promote in some version.
Black history is being made right now. History in the making is murky and often unclear. However, here are my employment sheros and heroes for the month: Al Sharpton, Benjamin Jealous, Marc Morial, and Dorothy Height, who even though the snow prevented her attendance, had the right message to deliver to this meeting.
I hope Congress will listen to them when the time comes, as well. Civil rights is an ongoing “becoming” backed by those who are willing to demand it.
Posted in Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Politics, women, tagged Education, History, No Child Left Behind, Zinn on February 10, 2010| 3 Comments »
“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Frederick Douglass
(From the People’s History website)
Last week when Hubbie and I were out scrounging for items to put into a little shop we have begun, we ran across a copy of Howard Zinn’s time honored book, “A People’s History of the United States 1942-present”. As everyone knows, Zinn died last month at the age of 87.
He was a member of the “Lost Generation”. Though some are now attributing that term to the young of the current day, affected by our current economic crisis, the term was first used by to Gertrude Stein via her mechanic, and usually referred to those born in the wake of WWI.
Perhaps, only those souls remaining of that period can really understand it, but imagine what it meant growing up then. First, families were traumatized in WWI, with many who made it home broken and bent, then, the loss of financial stability and so much more of the Depression, and then the growing certainty that you were born just in time to die in WWII. So many of the writers of this period echo this kind of angst and pain, from Steinbeck to Hemingway to Wolfe.
From unfolding European events to: suffrage for women, the tent cities, and the lynchings, and the forced labor of African Americans in the aftermath of the Mississippi Flood, to the Dustbowl, hatred of the Japanese Americans on the West Coast, and the effects of Prohibition, mobsters and the FBI, the period lasted only 24 years. Even as international actors strutted their way toward the hurricane that would be WWII, it was yet, most assuredly, a period in which there was plenty of focus on the struggles of the common woman and man.
So much was experienced in a direct and visceral way by the Lost Generation. Perhaps it was a natural thing then that, as a common man himself, Howard Zinn, would develop the historical viewpoint that he did.
I thought Ralph Nader had the best idea for his commemoration. That is, we should remember him by organizing.
In deference to Ralph, however, I think too many of us don’t even know who Howard Zinn was. We must pass this knowledge forward. Knowledge is one of the critical elements of organizing. History that is not taught, is lost. Education lacking the People’s History is not full education. Read or reread, Zinn’s books. Visit the links Ralph provided in his blog:
Posted in Feminism, Humanism, Justice, Politics, War, tagged Abdulmutallab, Amsterdam, Detroit, Flight #253, London, Netherlands, Nigeria, Obama, Sudan, Terrorism, Togo, UK, Undie Bomber, USA, Yemen on December 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Is everyone else watching this media ping-pong?
We find out that:
“Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been briefed on the incident aboard Northwest Airlines flight #253 and is closely monitoring the situation.
We learn that Mr. Abdulmutallab may have boarded without a Passport? The flight originated in Amsterdam. Hello!?
We learn the system is “working”? However, Secretary Janet Napolitano sure is glad those passengers were on board and: Thanks!
By the way, she says, expect boarding delays and new screening.
To prove how competent everyone is they haul another Nigerian man with diarrhea off the same plane the very next day.( All right, two days later!)
In the mean time Congressman Peter King says he doesn’t like Napolitano’s “tone”. Does that mean she’s failed as woman? Or she didn’t have a man’s “tone”? WTF? No one questions whether the 48 hour wait was purposeful for the Prez. King displayed a great example of how to ask the wrong questions and look like a real sexist idiot.
We learn that, yes, SHS Napolitano, said something inane yesterday but gee, we only have forty screeners to prevent this kind of thing in the entire country. It’s the Republicans fault. I’m not sure why that matters, since the flight DIDN’T ORIGINATE IN THIS COUNTRY.
Mike Littwin at the Denver Post reminds us that WE are the front line on “War on Terror.” I like that sentimental reference to a Bushian statement. (Terrorism, not Terror.)
We then learn that it is the weak minded Liberals who caused this incident.
Jake Tapper had some ideas about who can claim success in a foiled bomb attack.
(Hint. It’s us; we decided to stop being sheep to 1960’s passenger protocol.)
Speaking of protocol, we learn from Carol Lee over at Politico that we are observing presidential protocol in action as to how unexpected problems are handled. I don’t know why this is news. Obama showed us how he managed problems the night of the McCain/Obama debate. He’s pretty cool all right; He lets the other chickens run around.
Then we find out that some Yemeni jihadists are claiming this schnook’s actions are a result of our bombing them. However, Obama calls them out, cuz doncha know, this guy left Yemen BEFORE the bombing occurred. This of course means we knew he was coming, we just didn’t know what for. Never mind that the Yemeni air strike was on the 17th, and Abdulmutallab didn’t show up in our flight zone until the 25th. I guess Yemen is in some sort of bubble, and once you leave there you lose all contact with everyone. However, since we have already pretty much committed to cleaning up terrorists everywhere, for the foreseeable future, I imagine this kind of incentive doesn’t hurt.
President Obama gets HIS tone in gear and says: “His Administration ‘Will Not Rest’ After Attempted Terror Attack”.
Then we find out that just maybe, but we aren’t sure, there is a Guantanamo link. Is it real or is it incentive? Hmm. Hey, I’ll tell you what, the Prez is ON IT!
He’s gonna get those plane bomb plotters. Not only that, US terrorism databases and air travel screening are gonna get checked.
While we are pondering this, over at the Secretary of State’s office Mr. Ian Kelly is telling the press that they did everything right. Yes, they could have pulled Mr. Abdulmutallab’s visa, but in June when they issued it, there was no reason to. They put the father’s concerns into the database, but it wasn’t their job to kick the Undie Bomber off the plane. He was flagged on November 20th. It was someone else’s job to watch him, (National Counterterrorism Center) and no, Nigeria has said they have nothing to do with this.
Then we find out that systemic failures are the Republican’s entire fault, and especially DeMints! (Or maybe the Unions!?)
Today, we get the official grand update from the Prez. Yep, it’s systemic failure all right, it was there before he was Prez, (So sure as shootin’ it’s the Republican’s fault.) and we are ON IT!
In the mean time we get to ponder to possible mind meanderings of another lost soul and his possible relationship to Stockholm syndrome, a life confined by the strictures of expectation, perfectionism and naivety. He was on the Internet telling the world that he was lonely. He was 23, trying not to have sex and rebelling against his parents’ meat choices. He essentially runs away from the Dubai school his father wanted him to attend and winds up on a plane to it’s sister city with a bomb. Why go on that plane?
Great balls of fire! The symbolism just reeks.
Assuming anyone else in Yemen really planned this, as opposed to just sending a schnook to his probable death, I’m wondering why he or she picked a Detroit flight. With 44,000 empty homes and a still floundering economy, it seems an odd choice to make a show.
It’s the reality. There are schnooks everywhere. 300 or more could have died. And didn’t.
Thank you, crew, passengers, and especially, Jasper Shuringa!
Posted in Congress, Finance, Humanism, Justice, Nature, Politics, tagged BLM, conservation, Depo-Provera, FDA, Feinstein, Joshua Tree, Kaiser Eagle Mountain, Landfill, Leasing, Mojave Desert, National Park, Oil and Gas, Renewable Energy, Tylenol on December 29, 2009| 2 Comments »
I’m a little bemused by this. Is the smell and thus chemical, in the bottle, outside the bottle, permeating the bottle? Never mind, I just answered my own question. Chlorophenol + Fungi= 2,4,6-trichloroanisole. 2,4,6-tribromoanisole is a by-product of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole. It’s called “tainted cork odor” in wines and it loooves to attach to poly plastics. Click the link to get the lot numbers and check your bottles out before New Years! This is an expanded recall from November.
Mcneil Consumer Healthcare Announces A Voluntary Nationwide Recall Of All Lots Of Tylenol® Arthritis Pain 100 Count With Ez-Open Cap
Company Contact: Marc Boston 215-273-7649 (office) 215-429-7034 (mobile)
Bonnie Jacobs 215-273-8994 (office) 856-912-9965 (mobile)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – December 18, 2009 – Fort Washington, PA – In consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc., is expanding its voluntary recall to include all available product lots of TYLENOL® Arthritis Pain Caplet 100 count bottles, with the distinctive red EZ-OPEN CAP (Full list of lot numbers provided below). In November 2009, 5 lots of this product were recalled due to consumer reports of an unusual moldy, musty, or mildew-like odor that was associated with nausea, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea. The recall is being expanded, as a precaution, to include all TYLENOL® Arthritis Pain Caplet 100 count bottles with the distinctive red EZ-OPEN CAP.
More health stuff:
Women’s’ eNews reports that in the January issue of “Obstetrics and Gynecology”, that a small study involving 95 women with an injection of Depo-Provera, 45 suffered bone loss in their lower backs and hips. Go HERE for their blurb. Then go HERE if you want to purchase the article from Obstetrics and Gynecology. If I were on it, I’d think about buying a copy of the report and discussing it with my doctor. Also, why not think about a bone density test? It doesn’t hurt to have a baseline to compare against.
This is a victory for now. However, as the article states, Kaiser Eagle Mountain has not given up on trying to important parts of the Mojave Desert into landfill. I can’t believe they have really given full thought to the discharge implications in the quickly saturating sandy soil either. This is a gorgeous special place, and it must not be allowed to happen, ever.
Joshua Tree Landfill Victory
Seth Shteir | Dec 24, 2009 12:00 AM
Joshua Tree National Park’s Eagle Mountains conjure up images of remote desert peaks, a boundless blue sky and the namesake bird of prey that soars above pristine canyons. But for many of us, Eagle Mountain brings to mind the ongoing battle over the proposed Eagle Mountain Landfill, to be located on lands belonging to Kaiser Eagle Mountain, Inc. and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which also happens to be surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park wilderness.
http://www.hcn.org/blogs/grange/eagle-mountain-landfill-victory
I don’t know what’s with the BLM. I thought at first this stuff was leftover from BushCo. Now I think it might be some new Democrat horror. Under Bush deals for land and leases were made right and left. I’m starting to get a stomach knot looking at this Auction Schedule.
Then there is this:
[…Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and BLM Director Bob Abbey are featured in a new video prepared for BLM’s Renewable Energy Summit, held in Las Vegas, NV, in late August. Secretary Salazar describes how the “vast stretches of public lands we manage…give our Department, and particularly the Bureau of Land Management, a leading role in realizing the vision of this program.” …
…The BLM received $305 million to help stimulate the economy through investments in the National System of Public Lands. A total of $41 million for 65 projects will be used to facilitate a rapid and responsible move to large-scale production of solar, wind, and geothermal energy, as well as the siting of transmission infrastructure on public lands to support renewable energy development….]
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/renewable_energy.html
(Bolds mine.) This is beginning to sound like another kind of horrible land grab.
Senator Feinstein has the right idea.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, December 21, 2009
Senator Feinstein Introduces Legislation to Balance Conservation, Recreation and Renewable Energy Development in the Mojave Desert
-Measure would designate new desert conservation lands; streamline and improve permitting process for large-scale wind and solar development on suitable desert lands; and enhance recreational opportunities-
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the author of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act, today introduced a comprehensive bill to designate new lands in the Mojave Desert for conservation, enhance recreational opportunities, and streamline and improve the federal permitting process to advance large-scale wind and solar development on suitable lands. The carefully crafted legislation, titled the California Desert Protection Act of 2010, is the product of discussions with key stakeholders in Southern California.
Posted in 51 Percent, Congress, Election, ERA, Feminism, Feminist Majority, Finance, Health Care, Humanism, Justice, NOW, Politics, PUMA PAC on December 28, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Part 8, the continuing saga of H.R.3590.
We’ve traveled a sad road from health reform hyperbole and buzzwords, in the Ohio debate, in 2008, to feeding and electing a lot of scalawag Blue Dog Democrats at any cost this year. We have had to learn all over again that presidential candidates DO often avoid saying what they mean, and not what we think, or want to hear. We had to learn again that media interjects it’s own desire for ratings over what the candidates are attempting to communicate. WE are the losers in this interchange.
Candidate Obama offered “universal health coverage“. Clinton disputed his term.
Perhaps this is part of the learning experience for us. When a lawyer or other skilled wordsmith uses a term like “universal” we must think critically about what the person really means and how the words are parsed. This IS a universal coverage bill. It applies to all of the United States, her territories, and her protectorates. It is NOT a universally applicable bill.
In fact, despite the benefits of the Mikulski amendment, 51% of the population will be treated differently under this bill, and this is not a good thing. When this bill becomes an act, much of what women need in health insurance will be subject to line item scrutiny. Native Americans, children, the homeless, and veterans will also be subject to line item scrutiny, while that of men will not. Women are still a special interest group, born out of recognition in the 60’s of their treatment as second-class citizens. The struggles to achieve equality for women have been left moldering at the gate of the ERA, shut by society’s errant deadline in 1982.
Though the ERA did not die, except for a few soldiers, most of us just didn’t know how to continue fighting for it. We walked away, defeated in our ignorance, or we tried to gain bits and pieces of equality through more line items in other bills. We had yet to learn to “never, never, never, give up”. Now, though our understanding of the ERA’s role and absence is reawakening, it does not yet inform our lawmaking in Congress. There are ways to again take up it’s banner, to fight the deadline, to start anew if need be, but not enough of us know that yet.
It is the recognition of the conundrum that the line items designed for us, and to protect us, are weak sisters as compared to full equality, and the privileges, responsibilities and authorities that equality bring.
In this regard, over at the Confluence, Riverdaughter has written clearly about the blow to Griswold and Roe that this bill will inflict.
After the 2008 presidential election of a thousand cuts, we have become more attuned. We have found a voice and we are gathering strength.
Congress has struggled mightily to achieve what our President put forth as his health agenda, and they are almost there. As he said, every criterion has been met. He is telling us that this was the health agenda for which we voted him into office. Someone gave him and Congress the green light to proceed.
This Congress and President were not sent to DC to get us single payer health insurance. Even as an option, is was a toss off. Refresh your memory. Forget the YouTube, the Websites, the pundits who may have told you what a candidate did or did not say. Read the debate transcripts again.
[Editor’s note: This is part two of the transcript for the Democratic presidential debate sponsored by CNN and the Congressional Black Caucus Institute on January 21, 2008….
(Clinton)….: Well, first of all, if you don’t start out trying to get universal health care, we know — and our members of Congress know — you’ll never get there.
If a Democrat doesn’t stand for universal health care that includes every single American, you can see the consequences of what that will mean. I think it is imperative that we have plans, as both John and I do, that from the very beginning say, “You know what? Everybody has got to be covered.”
There’s only three ways of doing it. You can have a single-payer system, you can require employers, or you can have individual responsibility. My plan combines employers and individual responsibility, while maintaining Medicare and Medicaid.
I think that the whole idea of universal health care is such a core Democratic principle that I am willing to go to the mat for it. I’ve been there before. I will be there again. I am not giving in; I am not giving up; and I’m not going to start out leaving 15 million Americans out of health care.
Secondly, we have seen once again a kind of evolution here. When Senator Obama ran for the Senate, he was for single-payer and said he was for single-payer if we could get a Democratic president and Democratic Congress. As time went on, the last four or so years…
CLINTON: As time went on, the last four or so years, he said he was for single payer in principle, then he was for universal health care. And then his policy is not, it is not universal. And this is kind of like the present vote thing, because the Chicago Tribune, his hometown paper, said that all of those present votes was taking a pass. It was for political reasons.
Well, when you come up with a universal health care plan and you don’t have any wiggle room left, you know that you’re going to draw a lot of political heat. I am not running for president to put Band- Aids on our problems. I want to get to universal health care for every single American….
(Obama)….“Now, it’s fine for us to have a debate about how the best way to get there is, but to suggest somehow that I’m not interested in having anybody covered, or to suggest, as Hillary just did, that I was in favor of single payer — I never said that we should try to go ahead and get single payer. What I said was that if I were starting from scratch, if we didn’t have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go with a single-payer system.”
What’s evolved, Hillary, is your presentation of my positions, which is what’s happened frequently during the course of this campaign.]
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/21/debate.transcript2/index.html
(Bolds above mine.) Well. We were never starting from scratch.
Dennis Kucinich said it best in June 2007:
New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate
Aired June 3, 2007 – 19:00 ET
[THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED….
…KUCINICH: I reject this whole approach.
And the American people should know that with half the bankruptcies in the country connected to people not being able to pay their doctor bills or hospital bills, premiums, co-pays and deductibles are going so far through the roof, 46 million Americans with no health care, another 50 million underinsured, there is only one way to get health care coverage for all Americans. And that is to have a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system, Medicare for all.
Wolf, I have written the bill. It is H.R. 676, with John Conyers, supported by 14,000 physicians.
And you know what? What Senator Clinton, Senator Edwards, Senator Obama are talking about, they’re talking about letting the insurance companies stay in charge. They’re talking about continuing a for-profit health care system. And I think…]
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0706/03/se.01.html
Not Obama, nor Clinton, nor Edwards thought single payer could be achieved now, even if they did believe in it. Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand, was willing to fight for it.
Due to the corporate structure of the media, a whole lot of us never even saw or read the debates, because of the recession-based loss of financing for extras like newspapers, cable and dish. A bunch of us have never yet had access to broadband. We are awaiting the “Obama Version” of rural broadband access. That meant out of the many democratic debates, many of us had the potential to see only two. Those of us in this condition did our best, but how were we to clearly evaluate the candidates’ words as spoken from the mouths of others? In reading the transcripts every debate said pretty much the same. Obama says 95% of his plan is like Clinton’s. No one should be surprised, who was more connected, like for example, NetRoots.
If I believed that our vote had truly counted, I would have said so be it. This is what most of you wanted. The Congress we have is doing our job. However, I don’t think that. Someone took away electoral votes, Convention balloting, the right to present complaints in a court of law. Besides, someone paid 747.8 million dollars to elect the candidate of choice, 140.9 million more than all the Republican presidential candidates put together. Someone else paid the running tab of all those “congress critters”, as Blue Lyon likes to call them, along with River City Mud, FireDogLake and Corrente who articulated many of the deficits of the Senate bill.
At the last several came out against this bill; Naral, Now, Women Count: and others. These folks also:
“Physicians for a National Health Program” (PNHP) came out against the health reform bill, H.R.3590.
[Pro-single-payer physicians call for defeat of Senate health bill
Posted by Mark Almberg on Tuesday, Dec 22, 2009
Legislation ‘would bring more harm than good,’ group says
For Immediate Release
Dec. 22, 2009
Contact:
David Himmelstein, M.D.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H.
Oliver Fein, M.D.
Mark Almberg, PNHP, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org
A national organization of 17,000 physicians who favor a single-payer health care system called on the U.S. Senate today to defeat the health care legislation presently before it and to immediately consider the ad..]
The AFL-CIO and SEIU said they were disappointed but sticking to it.
AARP, when I checked had maintained their position, stated on the 16th, in favor of the bill. They are most concerned about closing the “Doughnut Hole” that the last Medicare fiasco produced. This bill, reportedly, will do that.
Plus, AARP does carry it’s own health insurance company.
Money is God. Money is power. We choose to support corporations, the least transparent of all, or we choose to support government organizations and single payer systems subject to scrutiny. Someone championed the former. Someone voted for the former. Had either Clinton or Edwards won the presidency, we would have still had some version of what we now are getting – a combination employer/private insurance system articulating with Medicare and Medicaid. Though the debate details might haven been different, they still would have been over line items. I struggle to imagine whether we would have had a better line item presidential advocate for women. I hope so. I think so.
The Republicans are equally to blame in this debacle. Disingenuous arguments about the quality of these bills are no recourse, when they would not have voted for a single payer system either. Nor does it profit them to be so obsessed with controlling women’s genitals. Ridiculous stuff about death panels hardly helps. 39 Senators voted against H.R. 3950, all Republican. Thirty years from now when this bill/act is finally acceptable, that vote will look stupid. The political left swing that will come will cast those votes in a different light. Despite the bill’s horrible faults, Democrats still have eleven months to make it work for the benefit of the party. Clinton’s primary debate comment is right in that Universal Health Care is a core Democratic value.
It was never going to be easy to get back in balance so quickly, much less that left swing, that some say our country does on a fifty-year pendulum. The ravages of “rightness” are yet too great, too raw and open. We have been off balance to the right for so long this time, we have raised forty years worth of youngun’s to live with one short leg. Understandable leftist desperation of this system has made us grasp for an untenable coalition with DINOs and worse, while we let the oligarchs gain even more power.
This Congress and this President have produced something entitled “Universal Health Care”, whatever that might mean. While some us are telling the benefits of this bill, we know as Democrats it could be much, much better. We are about to be stuck with it. If we want single payer we are going to have to work some more. If we want equality for women, it doesn’t come in this bill. We have to beat at it’s line items and sections until they are forged into something more acceptable. Then we have to work for equality elsewhere, so that it may someday apply.
Though the House is in Holiday Recess, some few are working on the Reconciliation of the House and Senate bills now. H.R. 3590 and H.R 3962 are about to merge, travel to the President, and become law of the land, sometime next year, five days after the President signs it. So, for those of you who do have insurance, think about sitting down with your companies and getting some direction.
The next health care battles are here.
Never, never, never give up!
Posted in Feminism, Humanism, Politics, tagged Holiday on December 25, 2009| 2 Comments »
We started our morning with Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” and are proceeding with some Gregorian chanting. I don’t know anything that slows my brain down better than that and puts order into the day’s cooking complexities. Hubby likes the chants too.
I have lovely new neighbors, with a younger daughter that plays football, a “new” vintage front door on my 50’s house, terrific construction help, and a kind of rebirthing in a place I thought fallow. If not peace, then at least, resolve, has come this season.
Thank you to all, who have stopped this way. May your days be merry and bright!
Posted in Children, Feminism, Health Care, Humanism, Justice, LGBT, Politics, tagged Abortion, Birthers, Christian Fundimentalist, Iran, Joe McCarthy, King, McCarthy Era, Nelson, Prop 8, Same Sex Marriage, School Board, Texas, Uruguay on December 22, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Things are hopping in Iran:
Funeral for Iranian Cleric Turns Into a Vast Protest
By ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI
Published: December 21, 2009
[BEIRUT, Lebanon — The funeral of a prominent dissident cleric in the holy Iranian city of Qum turned into a huge and furious antigovernment rally on Monday, raising the possibility that the cleric’s death could serve as a catalyst for an opposition movement that has been locked in a stalemate with the authorities…]
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/world/middleeast/22cleric.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
In California we are playing these games as we work to unscramble the mess of Prop 8. Human rights are possible to achieve, as this article indicates! In addition to Mexico City, this article says Uruguay has managed to legalize same sex marriage for the whole country.
Mexico City Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 21, 2009
Filed at 5:50 p.m. ET
[MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children….]
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/21/world/AP-LT-Mexico-GayMarriag.html?ref=global-home
Ahh, the new pragmatism, even the birthers are screaming:
King: Nelson sold out anti-abortion movement
By JASON HANCOCK 12/21/09 8:35 AM
[Two days after praising U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., to Des Moines Register columnist Kathie Obradovich, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, released a statement attacking the lawmaker for an abortion compromise in health care reform.
In order to garner Nelson’s support, Senate Democratic leaders included a provision in their version of health care reform that would allow states to ban abortion coverage for women receiving federal subsidies on proposed government-organized private insurance marketplaces, dubbed exchanges….]
This is article is an example of one of the darker and more serious sides of the education of young people. Don’t let this happen to your school board.
Revisionist History Dept
McCarthy 101.
DAVE MANN | DECEMBER 11, 2009 | POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE
[It takes serious revisionist thinking to believe that history has “vindicated” Joseph McCarthy, but that’s what some members of the State Board of Education contend. If they get their way, that’s how Texas schools will portray the late red-baiting U.S. Senator in social studies classes….]
Posted in Feminism, Health Care, Humanism, Justice, Politics, tagged Boxer, H.R. 3590, Health Care Reform on December 21, 2009| 11 Comments »
Update. Fixed link.
I think the way everyone has been flooding her email the last few days, Barbara Boxer wanted the chance to speak about the health reform bill we may be about to embark upon. As many of you know, I remain on dial-up, and try to keep my formating for others using the same method. In dial-up format, watching uTube is a lot like watching paint dry. However, For those of you with something faster:
Boxer Speaks on Historic Health Care Bill
If she does a text print of it I’ll send it around later. Otherwise, for those of you with something faster, let me know what she says.
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Grab and Keel 