9/6 MON: non-profit & single-payer healthcare leafleting

Please join the Coalition Against Privatization at the Labor Day Parade, Saturday September 6, 2008 at 9:30am.

CAP members will be using the Labor Day Parade as an outreach opportunity to distribute leaflets to marchers and on-lookers about the for-profit conversion of GHI and HIP, as well as healthcare as a human right and single-payer bill HR 676. Join us for the festivities!

To help with this action, join CAP at 9:30am at the corner of 44th St. and 5th Ave. Parade begins at 10:00 am.

If you are able to go to this, please post about your experience.

So, sadly, the growing season is winding down and harvest time will soon be here. I expect many of us will be very busy. But after the last of the cans and dried herbs have been put up, it’ll be time for me to return to the indoor project list. This year’s first job: putting a proper floor on a 10x12 concrete basement surface. It’s my office, and it’s damn cold in the winter. I’d like to change that.

Consider this an open flooring thread, I want to hear any stories and suggestions and environmental correctness concerns you have, as well as ideas about how to do it cheaply. Let’s assume I’ve got a budget of $500.  Read more 

Why not single-payer?

HR676 is a publicly financed, privately delivered, improved and expanded Medicare for all. It provides comprehensive health care services, including preventive, dental, vision, mental health, prescription drugs, long term care, among others. No deductibles, no co-pays. Your choice of physicians and hospitals. Comprehensive coverage would certainly “fit all.” Out-of-control increases in premiums fit nobody.

Have you written a letter to your local newspaper explaining Medicare for All? Clearly letters to the editor will be the only way we get this into the larger press.

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Via Jay Livingston at Montclair Socioblog, a beautiful short film that won in Cannes.

Consider the case for a national health program

The words “socialized medicine” are like stink bombs. Drop them into a discussion of health care reform, and everyone runs for the door.

So let’s try another phrase. How about “Medicare for all”?

Leon Zoghlin and Peter Mott have been members of Physicians for a National Health Program for decades. And when they talk about reform, they mean Medicare for all. It’s been working well for senior citizens since the 1960s. Why not share the good?  Read more 

Sometimes we win one:

AUSTIN, Texas - Affirming that “every person deserves access to affordable, quality health care” and noting that area residents are not getting it, the Austin City Council called today for the enactment of a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance program.

At its regular Thursday meeting, the Council voted to endorse the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and 91 other members of Congress. The vote was six in favor and one abstention.

On Saturday, September 13, 2008, single payer advocates from across New York will meet in Albany to form a new statewide organization.

Our aim: to build an unbeatable movement for a single payer public system that would fully fund comprehensive health care, including prescription drugs, for all. We invite all single-payer supporters to join us!  Read more 

The Austin City Council today will consider a resolution in support of the United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676).

That bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, sponsored by John Conyers (D-Michigan), would create a nation-wide single-payer health care system.  Read more 

Raising awareness about single-payer health care

On Sept. 20, we will be holding a silent art auction at Seaman’s Lodge, Nevada City, in conjunction with the South Yuba River Citizens League’s 25th anniversary celebration. All the fine art is being donated by California artists both locally and statewide. All the funds generated will go toward informing and making the general public aware concerning a single-payer health care system. Please come and support this effort.

Steelworkers Endorse Single Payer

Colorado State Building & Construction Trades Council Endorses HR 676

NJSIUC Position Paper For HR 676 One Plan, One Nation Campaign And regarding Health Care for America Now The Trojan Horse

Report from the Progressive Democrats of America Convention  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Things that suck:  Read more 

• Having one’s flight delayed for 2 hours because of a big time thunderstorm in Chicago

• Being seated on the plane next to a big guy (so, no armrest separation possible) who progressively opens his legs wider and wider… guys, keep your goddamn legs together and stop encroaching on women’s already drastically limited legspace, ok?

• Being surrounded by people who must think their disgusting habits have to be shared in public (picking one’s nose, chewing gum with one’s goddamn mouth open and making a lot of slushy noise, manicuring oneself by opening one’s mouth really wide and shoving half one’s big finger in there)… seriously, I wish there were 2 economy cabins: one of normal people like me, who just read, rest and have their Ipods on. And then one for families with kids and people with gross habits… a sealed and soundproof cabin for them… heck, different flights altogether.

Three cheers for the Philadelphia Democrats who took up Obama’s invitation to help write the platform:

The Democratic Party should support HR 676 (Conyers Bill), which advocates a single-payer healthcare system that would provide coverage for all Americans. HR 676 has already been endorsed by the US Conference of Mayors, several thousand Union Locals, and is supported by 84% of the physicians in the United States. It is our belief that no one should be left at the mercy of the insurance industry and pharmaceutical companies where profit is more important than the welfare of the patient.

Well done!

Birthday Party for Medicare 30JUL2008

You are invited to join me, Barabra DeVane, at Congressman Boyd’s office at 11AM on Wednesday, July 30 for a birthday party complete with cake and noisemakers (that would be our Healthcare coalition calling for Boyd to sign on to HR 676).

We will celebrate the 43rd birthday of Medicare and ask Congressman Boyd for his support in extending Medicare to All through Universal Single Payer Healthcare—HR 676.

Boyd is very conservative, so they have their work cut out for them.

Letter: Universal health coverage within reach

We feel that one of the prominent issues to be discussed among many in the presidential elections should be our health-care system. The only real solution is a universal, single-payer system.

HR 676 is a perfect answer to the mess our present system is in with regard to the uninsured and underinsured. It is backed by many counties, the National Conference of Mayors (very recently), nursing organizations, business coalitions and doctors’ groups. Three Florida congressmen have endorsed it.  Read more 

Jesse Helms died today, on the fourth of July.

He did a very good thing in working on increasing aid—America’s “historic $5bn aid package for the world’s poorest countries”—through Jubilee 2000.

“As the president put it in his speech: “Dick Cheney walked into the Oval office, he said, ’Jesse Helms wants us to listen to Bono’s idea.’”  Read more 

“WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.”

Rest of NYTimes article here -

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/pol…

As for having a place to go, it’s not a destination, but it’s a damn good starting point.

(Source: O’Fallon, IL Progress.)

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

(Via Le Monde) Today, the Council of Europe launched a campaign against most forms of corporal punishment, including slapping, spanking, hitting, mistreating, humiliating and any other practice that damage the dignity of a child. The campaign will consist in TV ads , the publication of a manual for parents on violence-free parenting as well as materials for parliamentarians of the Council’s 47 member countries.  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog

It is detrimental, says Thilo Thielke in Der Spiegel, because it creates unfairness and dependency in many different ways. First, using the case of Kenya, Thielke invokes a classical concept of formal organizational behavior: self-perpetuation.

"The roads are in horrid disrepair, and they’ll stay that way for a while. As a result, it would take days or even weeks to get the corn from the west to the northern parts of the country. But why would they need it there anyway? There’s a shortage in the north because the World Food Program is usually there to hand out food for free. The UN’s employees are paid to fight hunger, and that’s why they usually write reports in which they dramatically portray the situation in Africa and which they usually end with appeals demanding more donated food.

These developmental aid workers, whose reports largely shape our image of Africa, behave this way to a certain extent out of an instinct for self-preservation that they believe the Africans don’t have. Without help, they say, all the Africans will starve. And, indeed, without aid, all the helpers would also be out of a job."

A first problem then is that the persistent handing out of free food (largely surplus from Western countries) eliminates any incentives to be locally self-sufficient. And there is also the idea that the WFP needs people to be hungry in order to justify its existence and work (and some well-paying jobs for UN consultants). Even if some adventurous local entrepreneur tried to start local food production in an area with a numerous malnourished or under-nourished population, the results would likely be disastrous:  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Elizabeth Pisani’s The Wisdom of Whores - Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS is a great book (along with a great website). Elizabeth Pisani is an epidemiologist with years of experience working on HIV/AIDS (or sex and drugs, as she puts, which sounds a lot, well, sexier) at a variety of agencies, including UNAIDS. The book is the story of her frustrations at the way the international community, national governments, NGOS and AIDS activists have dealt with the epidemics, as well as her hopes in some of the progress made.

I got interested in the book when I read an interview Pisani gave to the Guardian. The interview kinda billed the book as a controversial work where Pisani would be the mean lady who said people got AIDS because of their stupid behavior and not enough was being done because of political correctness. So, I was ready to get really pissed off with the book. That has not been the case at all.  Read more 

From Shakespeare’s Sister:

Donate, everyone. Please. Whatever you can manage. And tell others.

The plainest way to say it is that everything, every last fucking thing, is “constructed” in the SCLM product/discourse/fairy tale. Someone thinks about what it is in it, and what is not, and how, one word at a time. So when this happens, people should remember it’s a feature, and not a bug. What is funniest to me is that the WaPo, and the District, are queer havens, places where queer culture and thought and activity are open, vibrant. I guess I’ve just never been a part of that group of self-hating types who want to play these games.

But guys: trust me when I say, str8 America is over all this silliness. I look forward to the day, and indeed I believe it will come in my lifetime, when this sort of stunt is uncommon and quickly forgotten.

As the Blade reported last week, Maj. Alan Rogers, by all accounts a hero for his brave acts while serving in Iraq, was killed in January and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Rogers lived as openly gay a life as he could, given the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. He had many gay friends in D.C., patronized gay businesses and even worked as treasurer for the D.C. chapter of American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group working to overturn the military’s gay ban.

But the mainstream media accounts of his death omitted any reference to his sexual orientation. These were not benign omissions. The Washington Post, in particular, worked overtime to excise any mention of Rogers’ sexual orientation. It did not even report his work for AVER. Several of Rogers’ gay friends told the Blade that they were interviewed by a Post reporter at the funeral, but their memories were not included in the paper’s coverage.

I say this as only one of my age and “race” can: there comes a time when people decide to hate others for different reasons. No construct lasts forever, and nothing cannot be changed. Yes, blah, I know it works ’both ways,’ but in this case, working with younger people and knowing what they tell me about sex and sexuality and gender, I’m confident that this country is on the verge of finally shedding our particularly vulgar and unimaginative form of homophobia. And that’s a good thing.

Feh, I’ll chalk it up to yet another example in which the WaPo reminds me that I’m not sorry I don’t read them. /tosses hair/ So tired, they are.

On September, 23, 2003, Senator Hillary Clinton was interviewed for the great PBS program Wide Angle on the topic of human trafficking (2003, folks, that was 5 years ago, ok… and yes, that was the year of the beginning of the war in Iraq but that was not the only thing going on in the world. I, for one, am glad somebody was paying attention to these other crucial issues even though I disagree with her - heck, ANYONE’s vote for the war). Let me excerpt a few chosen quote (full transcript at the link above, so YES, I’m picking and choosing).

“Hillary Clinton: Well. Jamie, the fact that this is a modern-day form of slavery was shocking to me. When I realized, because of my travels and exposure as First Lady, how prevalent it was, I determined that we should do something about it. I went to Beijing to the UN Conference on Women in September of 1995, and spoke out against a long series of abuses that were human rights violations of women’s rights and among those, of course, was trafficking. And then, in the time after the conference, when it did become an item that was of higher interest on the national and international agenda, we followed up. In 1996, I went with my husband to Thailand for a state visit. I went to the north where I met with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], trying to help young girls who had been sold by their families into prostitution, trafficked into the brothels, mostly in Bangkok.  Read more