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Archive for the ‘women’ Category

HRC in Afghanistan

Posted in 51 Percent, Children, Feminism, Feminist Majority, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , on November 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »

An interesting Dipnote arrived today. HRC spoke yesterday to the US and International troops in Afghanistan. In the clearly elucidated message, she included the community and family based beliefs that are a foundation of her political tenets. Recognition of the effort, that community and family play when a member goes to war, is too often ignored.

The other interesting comments centered around apparent statements that newly re-elected President Karzai has made; that he hopes that within three years Afghan security forces will lead in certain areas, and within five years, throughout the country. This is not, of course, an announced US timeline. However, it might suggest a framework within which the US and International forces are considering their operations.

Imagine that.

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Clean up on Aisle —!

Posted in 51 Percent, Feminist Majority, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , , on November 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Now here I thought we might skate this year. What do you know, another piece of garbage arrived in my email this morning. This one looks to be bouncing from an email service in Germany with a possible origination or highjack from the naseej.com portal in Saudi Arabia. (See HERE for info on them.) If one comes there must be more pollution flakes on the way. FBI, where are you? (more…)

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More Info on H.R. 3962

Posted in 51 Percent, Children, Feminism, Feminist Majority, Health Care, I Own My Vote, just say no deal, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , on November 19, 2009| 2 Comments »

The one thousand and ninety page[1] HR.3962 contains the enrollment or engrossment of the following additional house bill, H.R. 903. Among other things, including a reference to the military’s CHIPS program, this bill is the vehicle for which three other bills were included.

Two page H. R. 903 directed engrossment of H. R. 3961, known as the “Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009”. This would likely be the place to start in looking for the proposed reductions. If you go to the above link on H.R. 903 the following engrossed items will show as blue links in the summary.

Five page H. R. 3961 in turn, engrossed seventeen page H. R. 2920, known as the “Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2009”. Reinstituting the “Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985”, or BBEDCA, it also mandates budget neutrality on new tax and mandatory legislation. Among other things, it imposes new guidelines on the alternative minimum tax (AMT). It also has a laundry list of exclusions.

H. R. 2920 engrossed one page H.R. 665, which agrees to consider adoption of a PayGo bill like H. R. 2920. An attendant House report “House Report 111-217”, for consideration of H.R. 2920 is available. A bill, S. 1600, with the same name as H.R 2920, was introduced in the Senate around the same time. It was referred to the budget committee in August.

The one page Hyde Amendment[2], H.AMDT.509 (A001), introduced by Representative Stupak was passed and codified into H. R. 3962 and can be seen HERE with vote counts. It says:

[AMENDMENT DESCRIPTION:
Amendment codifies the Hyde Amendment in H.R. 3962. The amendment prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option. It also prohibits individuals who receive affordability credits from purchasing a plan that provides elective abortions. However, it allows individuals, both who receive affordability credits and who do not, to separately purchase with their own funds plans that cover elective abortions. It also clarifies that private plans may still offer elective abortions.

AMENDMENT PURPOSE:
An amendment printed in Part C of House Report 111-330 to codify the Hyde Amendment in H.R. 3962. The amendment prohibits federal funds for abortion services in the public option. It also prohibits individuals who receive affordability credits from purchasing a plan that provides elective abortions. However, it allows individuals, both who receive affordability credits and who do not, to separately purchase with their own funds plans that cover elective abortions. It also clarifies that private plans may still offer elective abortions.]

Therefore, on the House side of things the total paper stack appears to be an estimated two thousand sixteen pages. Each of the sections was downloadable. As pdfs they are searchable by keyword[3]. For example, H.R. 3962 records the key word “women” 101 times. However, many of these are multiple entries on one page. In any event, if you want to start somewhere, working from the inside out in a keyword search can give you a flavor of the documents. Also keep in mind that the combining the Senate and House versions is likely to change some of the line items. These may the most useful to watch.

[1] Both the Version passed by the House and the one placed on the Senate calendar are the same at 645 pages. However, the document is printed as continuous, so each printed page may contain more than one.

[2] There already is a Hyde amendment. H.AMDT.509 (A001) includes it as part of this bill.

[3] I work on a Mac. However, I imagine it is the same for PC’s.  After opening up the document, I hit Command +F. It opens a dialogue box. Then I type in the keyword. It should make a list on the right hand side. Then you can click on each of those lines to see what they say.

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Some Basic Info on the Status of the Health Care Bill

Posted in 51 Percent, Children, Feminism, Feminist Majority, Health Care, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 19, 2009| 1 Comment »

Update 091119 5:06 PST

For more on the the number of bills and the amendment combined with H.R. 3962 go HERE.

There seems to be some confusion in bloggerland about the health care bill. Perhaps ABC gives the best general information about the status of the bill, HERE.

To synopsize:

A House bill entitled “Affordable Health Care for America Act”, H.R 3692, was passed by the House and sent to the Senate . The download pdf is 1948 appears to have been 1990 pages( I originally got it from Speaker Pelosi’s website). The Stupak amendment was passed as part of H.R. 3692. Representative Stupak’s comments are HERE.

I have been having problems, downloading some, but not all of the documents at the Senate Site. However, if you go HERE, you will see the currently active list including H.R. 3692, and the attendant Senate bills of: “Affordable Health Choices Act”, S. 1679, from the Health, Education, and Labor Committee, in 283 pages, and “America’s Healthy Future Act, 2009”, S. 1796, from the Senate Finance Committee in 346 pages.

If you go to the section entitled “Popular Documents”  in the above Senate link, you will see a selection of many health related materials. Majority Leader Reid’s amendment would not download for me at this time. I am wondering if some documents are being withheld until the Senate has a cloture vote on whether to debate the bill(s).

I want to empathize that, I think like many of us, I am struggling through the effort to understand. There may be other bills involved that have been, or will be attached to the health care bill.  ABC has reported that the bills from the two entities combined are more than 4000 pages. As I find them I will include them as updates. Or perhaps the missing pages are the supporting documents in the Senate Popular Documents section.

Senator Boxer has released a statement today, 11/19/09, HERE. In part, she says:

[…Senator Reid also has crafted language that will keep women from being discriminated against when it comes to their reproductive health care.   The Senate bill maintains the compromise that has been in place for decades that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion, but allows a woman to use her own private funds.



There are many issues that I am still working on, including ensuring that California is not hurt by cuts to the Disproportionate Share Hospital Program, which helps our hospitals that serve the neediest among us.
 


I am also working to ensure that the bill includes better preventative health care coverage for women…. ]

Senator Feinstein has not yet released a new comment on her site, but had done one on Oct 23, HERE, expressing her thoughts and reservations about it.

For your Info,

Representative Speier’s Statement has two statements, one against the Stupak Amendment, HERE, and one here on the passage of the House bill, HERE.

Representative Kucinich’s statement on the House Bill is HERE.

Ralph Nader’s comment is HERE.

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Fatal Attraction

Posted in 51 Percent, Election, Feminism, Feminist Majority, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Gateway Pundit is noting in Bill O’Reilly’s media report HERE, that the media has run 37 negative and 2 positive reports on Sarah Palin in recent weeks, as well AP fact checkers for her book and a dubious CNN forum held without Palin supporters.

It’s just amazing what a woman in a health wear outfit, (more…)

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2009 World Food Day

Posted in 51 Percent, Children, Feminism, Feminist Majority, I Own My Vote, just say no deal, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 18, 2009| 1 Comment »

Oct 16th was World Food Day. On this day “The World Summit on Food Security” convened in Rome and will conclude today, November 18th.  Part of a three pronged series of events, these meetings are being held to address the additional burden that the global economic crisis has placed on world hunger.

The Food and Agriculture of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that the number of hungry people worldwide, will pass the one billion mark this year. This means that one sixth of the world is suffering from persistent hunger.

The agenda of these meetings is to provide an action plan on how to boost agricultural productivity. The FAO states:

[The gravity of the current food crisis is the result of 20 years of under-investment in agriculture and neglect of the sector. Directly or indirectly, agriculture provides the livelihood for 70 percent of the world’s poor.]

As you can see, global warming is not mentioned. (more…)

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Healthy Posturing

Posted in 51 Percent, Feminism, Feminist Majority, NOW, Politics, women, tagged , , on November 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The Iowa Independent reports that The GOP is threatening a filibuster of the health bill, by reading the entire thing. It makes me wish I could get C-Span all over again. Senator Tom Harkin is promising that if they do the Dems will maneuver to delay Thanksgiving break.  How many 24 hr. days to you need to read 2000 odd pages?

Harkin thinks they have the 60 votes, expects a motion to proceed by Friday and have it all over but the shouting by  the Christmas Holiday. Lovely. Read the link:

Harkin promises long nights of health care debate

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A Nice Calendar

Posted in 51 Percent, Feminism, Feminist Majority, Media, NOW, photography, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , on November 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »

My ethnobotany calendar arrived today from WaterTurtleWeaver and it’s great!! The photos are sharp and luscious. They are placed around a smallish black calendar page that is without holidays and such. I think that was a wise choice, because it reinforces the idea of the rhythm of seasonality of the plants and activities shown in each month.

I was always interested in plants, I think, from the time Mom first started carting my brother and me around to the various landscaping centers in Southern California. (There were some pretty amazing ones there in the late fifties.) Later in an Oregon college, I studied botany with an interest in native plants.

Little did I know that my brother would be the one to experience a botanical life, with my sister-in-law. Her exploration and development of her heritage as a weaver, and teacher are admirable.

In any event, based on the acknowledgements at the back of the calendar, it’s clear that it was the result of a huge collaboration of people and organizations, dedicated to the idea presenting native plants and indigenous peoples’ use of them.

If you want a calendar, or to see some of her projects go to the WaterTurtleWeaver website HERE. If you are interested learning more about ethnobotany, especially in Southern California,  try Deborah Small HERE.

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2009: This Year’s Selected Crop of Spam and Viruses

Posted in 51 Percent, Feminism, Feminist Majority, Media, NOW, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Last year around this time I was sending out a post on holiday email viruses. While I haven’t seen any outstanding holiday items yet, I did have one possible scam in relation to a just completed online bank transaction. Their email displayed the bank’s logo and looked pretty official. (more…)

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My, How Times Have Changed!

Posted in 51 Percent, Politics, The New Agenda, women, tagged , , , on November 15, 2009| 2 Comments »

When they arrested the San Francisco Pipe Bomber living next door to me in the mid eighties, there wasn’t peep in local neighborhood newspaper the next day. I recall the Chronicle said a few things, but not the location of his arrest, the blocking of our street, or the hauling out of his garage next to mine all those bomb parts.

So I get a kind of rueful giggle when SacBee sends me an email like THIS.

 

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