Canadian Health Care, Part Two
Fact vs. fiction: more on Canada’s health care system from Doug Thomas.
Read More…
Archive for September, 2009
Canadian Health Care, Part Two
September 30, 2009RNC Tied To Website That Promoted Military Coup Against Obama.
September 30, 2009RNC Tied To Website That Promoted Military Coup Against Obama. When’s Michael Steele going to respond, heh?
http://tinyurl.com/y9vc5dp
Source: Pam Spaulding
Out Marine on Vandalized Billboard Speaks
September 30, 2009
A billboard featuring former U.S. marine Tim Smith was torn down Friday night in Memphis, Tenn. The ad showed Smith, 27, in uniform and read, “I’m gay and I protected your freedom.”
What I Learned About the Religious Right
September 30, 2009What I Learned About the Religious Right
A humanist goes undercover to a right wing summit. And lives to tell us about it.
By CLAYTON WHITT
For HumanistNetworkNews.org
Sept. 30, 2009
On September 18 and 19, 2009, over 1,800 religious right activists, pastors, and politicians converged upon Washington D.C, for a two day “pep rally” called the Values Voter Summit. It was a media saturated event, sponsored by FRCAction, the political wing of the Family Research Council and a veritable Who’s Who of religious right organizations.
Leading Republican politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Eric Cantor, and aspiring Republican presidential contenders Governors Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Tim Pawlenty, addressed the summit. Also speaking were Gary Bauer and William Bennett, two of the longest serving and loudest voices in the religious right movement.
As a resident of Washington D.C., who has long been fascinated by the religious right in the way that one is intrigued by one’s arch enemy, I couldn’t resist attending. After conferring with my colleagues at the American Humanist Association, I went to the Omni Shoreham Hotel, notebook in hand, to do a little field work amongst the people that are diametrically opposed to everything we humanists stand for.
By the end of the weekend, with my patience spent and my left hand cramped from prolific note taking, I walked away from the summit with these valuable lessons:
The religious right plays fast and loose with the facts.
For reasons obvious to most humanists in our movement, I had low expectations for the veracity of the speakers. Nevertheless, even I was shocked at some of the lies coming from the podium.
From Gov. Huckabee’s outrageous accusation that President Obama was “treating suspected terrorists like rock stars and giving them refuge in Bermuda” to Bill O’Reilly’s assertion that “with the technology that we have, there’s never a reason for a late abortion,” the weekend’s biggest stars plied the applauding audience with lie after lie.
In the first example, the truth is that the four former Guantanamo detainees who were sent to Bermuda had long ago been cleared of any wrongdoing and therefore, were not suspected terrorists.
O’Reilly’s spin on the abortion issue ignores the fact that late term abortions are performed under rare circumstances and mainly out of medical necessity; this article from RH Reality Check, an organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health, provides more information.
More: http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2009-09-what-i-learned-about-the-religious-right
How Many Elections Until They Have Consequences?
September 30, 2009STEVE BENEN, 9-30-09
How Many Elections Until They Have Consequences? - Democrats ran on a party platform that called for “affordable, quality health care coverage for all Americans.” The platform called this coverage “a basic right,” and positioned health care reform as the centerpiece of the Democratic domestic agenda. Voters, in turn, gave the party huge majorities in both chambers. Democrats who don’t get that are opposed to both the party’s agenda and the will of the people.
Panel Votes To Restore Abstinence-Only Education Money
September 30, 2009Panel Votes To Restore Abstinence-Only Education Money – WASHINGTON â A Senate committee voted Tuesday night to restore $50 million a year in federal funding for abstinence-only education that President Barack Obama has pushed to eliminate.
Source: Pro Choice Massachusetts
RNC Tied To Website That Promoted Military Coup Against Obama
September 30, 2009Yesterday, Newsmax columnist John L. Perry brought up the possibility of a military coup against President Obama. But more significant than a radical opinion piece is the fact that the Republican National Committee appears to provide financial support to the website that published it.
Source:
Pam Spaulding
Obama and China: Vandalism or Vision?
September 30, 2009Obama and China: Vandalism or Vision?
ROBERT BOROSAGE, 9-30-09
When the president imposed tariffs on Chinese tire imports, the free trade establishment went ballistic with warnings against the threat of surrendering to the protectionists, and for deviating from the free-trade gospel. The heavens will tremble. Trade wars impend. the apocalypse of Depression-era Smoot-Hawley tariffs will descend upon us. Nonsense. Obama isn’t descending into the old trade debate. Remarkably, he has added another explosive issue to his already crowded agenda: that of transforming America’s global economic strategy.
More: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009094030/obama-and-china-vandalism-or-vision
Right-Wing Plan To "Take Back America": Obama Is Hitler!!
September 30, 2009Right-Wing Plan To “Take Back America”: Obama Is Hitler!!
BRIAN DOCKSTADER, 9-30-09
For six years the Campaign for America’s Future organized the annual Take Back America conference, the largest annual gathering of progressives in the country. Starting this year CAF changed the name of the conference to America’s Future Now! to reflect the promise of a new progressive era. Apparently conservatives were inspired because they quickly co-opted the name and held their own conference, this past weekend, named the How To Take Back America Conference.
More: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009094029/right-wing-plan-take-back-america-obama-hitler
Sunny Saturdays with animal friends,
September 19, 2009Sunny Saturdays with animal friends, and their friends, makes listening and reading the news seem obsolete.
Who Got Screwed by the Bailout?
September 18, 2009Who Got Screwed by the Bailout?
Bailouts Revisited: Who Got Rescued and Who Got Screwed?
And who was deemed too big to fail … and why?
By Marty Wolfson, Dollars and Sense
Marty Wolfson teaches economics at the University of Notre Dame. Previously, he was an economist with the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Financial Crises: Understanding the Postwar U.S. Experience, 2nd ed., M.E. Sharpe, 1994.
9-16-09
Bank of America got bailed out, but Lehman Brothers was allowed to fail. The insurance company American International Group (AIG) was rescued, but in July federal authorities refused to bail out a significant lender to small and medium-sized businesses, the CIT Group (not to be confused with Citigroup, which did get bailed out).
What is the logic behind these decisions? Who is being bailed out—and who should be? The AIG story offers an instructive case study, one that sheds light on these and other questions.
Last September, the Federal Reserve Board announced that it was lending AIG up to $85 billion to prevent the firm’s collapse. Unless it bailed out AIG, the Fed warned, financial markets could panic, loans could become more difficult to get, and many more businesses, jobs, and homes could be lost. To counter public anger over the bailout, the Fed argued that the ultimate beneficiaries would be the American people.
Citing proprietary information, AIG initially released few details about how it paid out the money it received. But this March, AIG’s plan to pay $165 million in bonuses to employees at its Financial Products unit hit the headlines. An angry firestorm erupted: why should public bailout money be used to pay excessive bonuses to the very people who had caused the problem? U.S. officials and AIG CEO Edward Liddy denounced the payments as outrageous, but claimed they could not rescind the bonuses because they were bound by legal contracts. As it turned out, many AIG employees returned the bonuses voluntarily. And in a rare display of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives voted 328 to 93 to enact a 90% tax on bonuses paid to executives at companies that had received at least $5 billion in bailout money.
But the AIG bailout involved billions of dollars. The Financial Products employees only got millions. Who got the rest of the money? Under mounting public pressure, and after consulting with the Federal Reserve, AIG finally revealed who the beneficiaries were.
It’s the Banks!
Yes, the money went primarily to large banks, those same banks that took their own large risks in the mortgage and derivatives markets and that are already receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout money. The banks are using AIG’s bailout money to avoid taking losses on their contracts with the company.
Why did AIG, an insurance company, have such extensive dealings with the large banks, and why did those transactions cause so much trouble for AIG?
The story begins with AIG’s London-based Financial Products unit, which issued a large volume of derivatives contracts known as credit default swaps (CDSs). These were essentially insurance contracts that provided for payments to their purchasers (known as “counterparties”) in the event of losses on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), another kind of derivative. Many of the CDOs were based in complicated ways on payments on home mortgages. When the speculative housing bubble popped, mortgages could not be repaid, the CDOs lost value, and AIG was liable for payment on its CDSs.
By September 2008, AIG’s situation had deteriorated to the point where its credit ratings were downgraded; this meant the company was required to post collateral on its CDS contracts, i.e., to make billions of dollars in cash payments to its counterparties to provide some protection for them against possible future losses. Despite its more than $1 trillion in assets, AIG did not have the cash. Without assistance it would have had to declare bankruptcy. After attempts to get the funding from private parties, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, failed, the Federal Reserve stepped in. The initial $85 billion credit line was followed by an additional $52.5 billion in credit two months later. By March 2009 the Treasury had invested $70 billion directly in the company, after which the Fed cut back its initial credit line to $25 billion.
BOOK: Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don?t Like Religion (or Atheism)
September 18, 2009Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don?t Like Religion (or Atheism)
by Frank Schaeffer
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 27, 2009)
ISBN-10: 030681854X
Also by Author:
Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
ISBN-10: 0306817500
September 29, 2008
(information from Amazon.com)
More about the Author:
Homepage: http://www.frankschaeffer.com/
Blog: http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/
Huffington Post Editorials: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer
The Real Post-Meltdown Victors
September 18, 2009Stocks: The Real Post-Meltdown Victors
A surprising number of stocks actually have boosted their market caps in the Year from Hell. An even-bigger surprise: Many are Wall Street titans
9-17-09
A year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, many firms have seen their value decimated by the stock market.
A surprising number, however, have added billions of dollars to their worth. And, perhaps even more shocking, these companies were key players in the Wall Street meltdown of 12 months ago. According to data from Standard & Poor’s and Bloomberg, the U.S. company that increased its market capitalization the most in the past 12 months is Goldman Sachs Group (GS).
Goldman Sachs boosted its market value by $37.3 billion from Sept. 14, 2008, the day before Lehman filed for bankruptcy, to Sept. 15, 2009.
Second among U.S. firms, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) saw its market cap rise $33.8 billion in that time period.
More:
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/sep2009/pi20090917_056660.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5
The Health Insurers Have Already Won How
September 18, 2009The Health Insurers Have Already Won How
UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit
August 6, 2009, 5:00PM EST
The industry has already accomplished its main goal of at least curbing, and maybe blocking altogether, any new publicly administered insurance program that could grab market share from the corporations that dominate the business. UnitedHealth has distinguished itself by more deftly and aggressively feeding sophisticated pricing and actuarial data to information-starved congressional staff members. With its rivals, the carrier has also achieved a secondary aim of constraining the new benefits that will become available to tens of millions of people who are currently uninsured. That will make the new customers more lucrative to the industry.
More: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_33/b4143034820260.htm
New health proposal is industry’s favorite so far
September 18, 2009By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
The latest health overhaul plan circulating on Capitol Hill gives health insurers, drug makers and large employers reasons to heave sighs of relief, sparing them the higher costs and more burdensome rules included in other Democratic-written alternatives.
Industry players that have already struck bargains with President Barack Obama’s administration and leading Democrats to help pay for revamping the health system saw most of those deals left intact — and in some cases sweetened — in the $856 billion proposal unveiled Wednesday by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the Finance Committee chairman.
You won’t hear any of them cheering publicly about what they would get out of the measure, because many are still hoping for a better deal before Congress takes final action on revamping the health care system. But don’t expect to hear them coming out in opposition, since they know Baucus’ plan is the lesser of many evils being considered.
Lack of Insurance to Blame for Almost 45,000 Death
September 18, 2009Lack of Insurance to Blame for Almost 45,000 Deaths
September 17, 2009
Going without coverage greatly increases mortality, researchers conclude
The study appeared Thursday in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
Analysis included people aged 17 to 64.
The study appeared Thursday in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.
For more on health coverage and the uninsured, see The Kaiser Family Foundation: http://www.kff.org/uninsured/index.cfm
More: http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/631103.html
BOOK: Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don?t Like Religion (or Atheism)
September 18, 2009Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don?t Like Religion (or Atheism)
by Frank Schaeffer
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Da Capo Press (October 27, 2009)
ISBN-10: 030681854X
Also by Author:
Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
ISBN-10: 0306817500
September 29, 2008
(information from Amazon.com)
More about the Author:
Homepage: http://www.frankschaeffer.com/
Blog: http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/
Huffington Post Editorials: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer
75 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can’t Name the First President of the U.S.
September 18, 200975 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can’t Name the First President of the U.S.
Source: http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10827&Itemid=14
Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students’ basic civic knowledge.
The capitalist crisis and the return of history: The beginning of US economic decline, Impact of economic crisis on US corporations & The end of dollar dominance
September 18, 2009The capitalist crisis and the return of history: The beginning of US economic decline, Impact of economic crisis on US corporations & The end of dollar dominance
The one undoubtedly positive feature of the economic crisis is that it is laying bare the real social relations of modern capitalist society, exposing the irreconcilable conflict between the interests of the working class and the capitalist aristocracy, and, therefore, preparing the ground for the resurgence of the working class and the resumption of open class struggle on a scale that will eclipse by far the battles of the 1930s.
The American working class is being drawn into an international maelstrom of revolutionary class struggle.
It is in this sense that the world crisis has set the stage for the “return of history.”
More: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/dnor-m26.shtml
What is the AFL-CIO? (NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS!!!)
September 18, 2009What is the AFL-CIO?
(NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS!!!)
At its convention this week, the AFL-CIO chose a new president to replace the retiring John Sweeney, who had headed the organization for 14 years. One measure of the decrepitude of the trade union federation is the fact that the leadership change barely registered on the public consciousness, least of all among workers, including the small minority who are AFL-CIO members.
Another measure is the person chosen to succeed Sweeney—Richard Trumka. Like the man he replaces, Trumka personifies the petty entrepreneurs and corporatists of the American trade union apparatus. His claim to fame is that as president of the United Mine Workers from 1982 to 1995 he presided over major defeats of the miners, givebacks and concessions to the mine owners, and the virtual destruction of what had been one of the most militant of American unions. By the time he left to take a job as Sweeney’s lieutenant, the United Mineworkers’ active membership had been halved from its level when he became union president.
More: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/pers-s18.shtml
All is well on Friday!@
September 18, 2009All is well on Friday!@
UN reports 1 billion of the world’s people going hungry
September 18, 2009UN reports 1 billion of the world’s people going hungry
By Jerry White, 18 September 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/hngr-s18.shtml
For the first time in history, more than one billion people, or nearly one in every 6 inhabitants of the planet, are going hungry this year, according to a new report from the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP). Chronic poverty, still high food prices and the impact of the world economic crisis have led to a sharp increase in the number of hungry people, now larger than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.
The total number of hungry people has shot up by nearly 200 million over the last decade. After a small decline between 2007 and 2008, world hunger rose sharply as the impact of the economic crisis hit, rising from 915 million in 2008 to an estimated 1.02 billion this year. [See graph on webpage]
While disasters, such as floods or droughts, cause temporary food shortages, these emergencies accounted for only 8 percent of the world’s hungry population, the WFP said. Nor is the problem caused by a shortage of food production, which at current levels is sufficient to feed the world’s population.
The source of the catastrophe is the capitalist profit system and, in particular, the continued oppression of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Sixty-five percent of the world’s hungry people live in just six countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.
The various IMF-dictated “development” programs imposed on these countries have chiefly benefited the banks in London, New York and Tokyo—which have sucked out hundreds of billions in interest payments—as well as the native ruling elites. Falling commodity prices for raw materials have also reduced revenues, while speculation on food has also driven up costs.
According to an article on the WFP report on Livescience.com, aid programs had made certain inroads in fighting hunger at the end of the 20th century. However, rising food prices have all but negated those efforts, causing the number of hungry to rise again everywhere except in Latin America and the Caribbean. The rising cost of food caused the number of hungry to jump by 75 million in 2007 and 40 million in 2008.
“The double whammy of the financial crisis and the still record high food prices around the world is delivering a devastating blow to the world’s most vulnerable,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran told a London press conference Wednesday. “They have been squeezed so much that many have lost what few assets they owned, further exposing them to hunger. Now, it only takes a drought or storm to provoke a disaster.”
The present crisis also underscores the criminal misallocation of financial resources by governments around the world. Sheeren noted that the $3 billion the agency needed to cover its budget shortfall and continue providing food to 108 million people around the world was less than 0.01 percent—or one-hundredth of one percent—the amount spent by world governments on the bailout of the banks and other financial institutions.
While hunger has reached record levels, she said, food aid has fallen to a 20-year low. The WFP said it would have to drastically cut food aid by October because it had only raised less than half of its $6.7 billion budget.
In Kenya, where drought and high food prices have pushed nearly 4 million people into hunger, the WFP said it was preparing to reduce rations.
In Guatemala, its program to provide food supplements to 100,000 children and 50,000 pregnant and lactating women was “hanging by a thread.” Almost half of the children in the Central American country are chronically malnourished—the sixth highest level in the world—and the government has recently declared a “State of National Calamity” due to a shortage of food to feed hungry rural communities.
The WFP reported these stark statistics:
• An estimated 146 million children in developing countries are underweight
• Every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes
• More than 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women
A host of irreversible physical ailments can be caused by undernourishment—the insufficient intake of calories to meet minimum physiological needs—and malnutrition—the lack of sufficient levels of proteins, vitamins and other nutrients.
The most common form of malnutrition is iron deficiency, Livescience.com noted, which affects billions worldwide and can impede brain development. Vitamin A deficiency affects 140 million preschool children in 118 countries and is the leading cause of child blindness. It also kills one million infants a year, according to UNICEF.
Iodine deficiency affects 780 million people worldwide. Babies born to iodine deficient mothers can have mental impairments, the web site noted. Zinc deficiency results in the deaths of about 800,000 children each year and weakens the immune system of young children.
The desperation facing millions produced tragedy Monday when a stampede of people seeking free food in the southern Pakistan port city of Karachi left up to 20 impoverished women and children dead. Officials said they were crushed in a stairwell and alley, as hundreds lined up to get free flour from charity workers.
Police and other witnesses told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) that a private security guard in charge of making sure the women stayed in line charged them with a baton when they became impatient with the long wait. An injured woman, Salma Qadir, 40, said the women wanted to get their rations quickly but were beaten by the guard. “The women got scared and tried to turn back, which scared others and resulted in a stampede,” she told the AFP.
The narrow streets of the market area were reportedly teeming with hundreds of poor people seeking scarce wheat and sugar. Poverty levels in the city of 14 million people have been on the rise along with food prices, which government officials blame on hoarding by mills and large wholesalers. The BBC reported that Pakistan’s government had recently ordered a crackdown against such hoarding, “[b]ut this failed to materialize thus far due to the lobby’s massive influence in Pakistan’s parliament.”
According to the World Food Program, 85 percent of the South Asian country’s 173 million people live on less than US$2 a day. Hunger in the country has been exacerbated by world financial breakdown, skyrocketing food prices and the US-backed war in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and tribal areas, which has driven millions from their homes. Currently the WFP is trying to provide daily food rations to 100,000 displaced people in the war-torn area.
UN reports 1 billion of the world’s people going hungry
September 18, 2009UN reports 1 billion of the world’s people going hungry
By Jerry White, 18 September 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/hngr-s18.shtml
For the first time in history, more than one billion people, or nearly one in every 6 inhabitants of the planet, are going hungry this year, according to a new report from the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP). Chronic poverty, still high food prices and the impact of the world economic crisis have led to a sharp increase in the number of hungry people, now larger than the combined populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union.
The total number of hungry people has shot up by nearly 200 million over the last decade. After a small decline between 2007 and 2008, world hunger rose sharply as the impact of the economic crisis hit, rising from 915 million in 2008 to an estimated 1.02 billion this year. [See graph]
PIC HUNGRY:
While disasters, such as floods or droughts, cause temporary food shortages, these emergencies accounted for only 8 percent of the world’s hungry population, the WFP said. Nor is the problem caused by a shortage of food production, which at current levels is sufficient to feed the world’s population.
The source of the catastrophe is the capitalist profit system and, in particular, the continued oppression of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Sixty-five percent of the world’s hungry people live in just six countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.
The various IMF-dictated “development” programs imposed on these countries have chiefly benefited the banks in London, New York and Tokyo—which have sucked out hundreds of billions in interest payments—as well as the native ruling elites. Falling commodity prices for raw materials have also reduced revenues, while speculation on food has also driven up costs.
According to an article on the WFP report on Livescience.com, aid programs had made certain inroads in fighting hunger at the end of the 20th century. However, rising food prices have all but negated those efforts, causing the number of hungry to rise again everywhere except in Latin America and the Caribbean. The rising cost of food caused the number of hungry to jump by 75 million in 2007 and 40 million in 2008.
“The double whammy of the financial crisis and the still record high food prices around the world is delivering a devastating blow to the world’s most vulnerable,” WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran told a London press conference Wednesday. “They have been squeezed so much that many have lost what few assets they owned, further exposing them to hunger. Now, it only takes a drought or storm to provoke a disaster.”
The present crisis also underscores the criminal misallocation of financial resources by governments around the world. Sheeren noted that the $3 billion the agency needed to cover its budget shortfall and continue providing food to 108 million people around the world was less than 0.01 percent—or one-hundredth of one percent—the amount spent by world governments on the bailout of the banks and other financial institutions.
While hunger has reached record levels, she said, food aid has fallen to a 20-year low. The WFP said it would have to drastically cut food aid by October because it had only raised less than half of its $6.7 billion budget.
In Kenya, where drought and high food prices have pushed nearly 4 million people into hunger, the WFP said it was preparing to reduce rations.
In Guatemala, its program to provide food supplements to 100,000 children and 50,000 pregnant and lactating women was “hanging by a thread.” Almost half of the children in the Central American country are chronically malnourished—the sixth highest level in the world—and the government has recently declared a “State of National Calamity” due to a shortage of food to feed hungry rural communities.
The WFP reported these stark statistics:
• An estimated 146 million children in developing countries are underweight
• Every six seconds a child dies because of hunger and related causes
• More than 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women
A host of irreversible physical ailments can be caused by undernourishment—the insufficient intake of calories to meet minimum physiological needs—and malnutrition—the lack of sufficient levels of proteins, vitamins and other nutrients.
The most common form of malnutrition is iron deficiency, Livescience.com noted, which affects billions worldwide and can impede brain development. Vitamin A deficiency affects 140 million preschool children in 118 countries and is the leading cause of child blindness. It also kills one million infants a year, according to UNICEF.
Iodine deficiency affects 780 million people worldwide. Babies born to iodine deficient mothers can have mental impairments, the web site noted. Zinc deficiency results in the deaths of about 800,000 children each year and weakens the immune system of young children.
The desperation facing millions produced tragedy Monday when a stampede of people seeking free food in the southern Pakistan port city of Karachi left up to 20 impoverished women and children dead. Officials said they were crushed in a stairwell and alley, as hundreds lined up to get free flour from charity workers.
Police and other witnesses told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) that a private security guard in charge of making sure the women stayed in line charged them with a baton when they became impatient with the long wait. An injured woman, Salma Qadir, 40, said the women wanted to get their rations quickly but were beaten by the guard. “The women got scared and tried to turn back, which scared others and resulted in a stampede,” she told the AFP.
The narrow streets of the market area were reportedly teeming with hundreds of poor people seeking scarce wheat and sugar. Poverty levels in the city of 14 million people have been on the rise along with food prices, which government officials blame on hoarding by mills and large wholesalers. The BBC reported that Pakistan’s government had recently ordered a crackdown against such hoarding, “[b]ut this failed to materialize thus far due to the lobby’s massive influence in Pakistan’s parliament.”
According to the World Food Program, 85 percent of the South Asian country’s 173 million people live on less than US$2 a day. Hunger in the country has been exacerbated by world financial breakdown, skyrocketing food prices and the US-backed war in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and tribal areas, which has driven millions from their homes. Currently the WFP is trying to provide daily food rations to 100,000 displaced people in the war-torn area.
The Strikes of 1934
September 18, 2009The Strikes of 1934
LABOR’S BREAKTHROUGH IN TOLEDO
The 1934 Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, Ohio showed how workers could unite, employed with unemployed, to defeat the power of the bosses.
http://socialistworker.org/2009/09/15/labor-breakthrough-in-toledo
Secretive Spending On US Intelligence Disclosed
September 18, 2009Secretive Spending On US Intelligence Disclosed
Posted: 16 Sep 2009 05:46 PM PDT
From Reuters By Adam Entous Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation’s top intelligence official disclosed on Tuesday, revealing publicly for the first time an overall number long shrouded in secrecy.
More: http://www.trueblueliberal.com/2009/09/16/secretive-spending-on-us-intelligence-disclosed/
American children fare worse than their European peers in areas like health, education and living standard….
September 7, 2009American children fare worse than their European peers in areas like health, education and living standard….
EXCERPT:
“America spends more than the average of $126,000 per child (excluding health) but its children fare worse than their European peers in areas like health, education and living standard, in part because the poorest American children are considerably more likely than are their European counterparts to stay poor”.
Child welfare in rich countries – Rating child welfare in rich countries
Report card, Sep 4th 2009
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14391474
MANY governments these days feel that the path to happiness for society as a whole lies through spending on the welfare of its children.
A report this week from the OECD, (1) a rich-country think-tank, scrutinises these efforts and asks if this aim is being achieved.
Researchers ranked countries on variables in six categories: material well-being; housing and environment; educational well-being; health and safety; risky behaviour; and quality of school life.
Government spending per child varies a lot, as do outcomes; but the correlation is not strong.
No country gets it all right, though some, like the Nordic ones, do better in general than others, notably America.
America spends more than the average of $126,000 per child (excluding health) but its children fare worse than their European peers in areas like health, education and living standard, in part because the poorest American children are considerably more likely than are their European counterparts to stay poor.
NOTE:
1.
Doing Better for Children
Please cite as: OECD (2009), Doing Better for Children
http://www.oecd.org/els/social/childwellbeing
The well-being of children is high on the policy agenda across the OECD. But what is the actual state of child well-being today? How much are governments spending on children and are they spending it at the right times? What social and family policies have the most impact during children’s earliest years? Is growing up in a single-parent household detrimental to children? Is inequality that persists across generations a threat to child well-being? Doing Better for Children addresses these questions and more.
US Military Presence Worldwide
September 7, 2009US Military Presence Worldwide
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/25/mother-jones-interac.html
Mother Jones launched an interactive map that shows US military presence around the world from 1950 to 2007. It’s based on worldwide troop data from the Pentagon. From Mother Jones:
These numbers are often fuzzy: Some deployments are classified, others are temporary, and just because the Defense Department claims 30 US troops in Indonesia last year doesn’t mean 1,500 didn’t pass through on training missions. Even so, the map, and the associated research, should give you a good feel for what the Pentagon is up to around the world.
More:
Mission Creep: US Military Presence Worldwide http://www.motherjones.com/military-maps/
Republican Louisiana Governor Piyush "Bobby" Jindal Uses State Funds to Travel to and Speak at Churches
September 7, 2009Republican Louisiana Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal Uses State Funds to Travel to and Speak at Churches
September 4th, 2009
http://friendlyatheist.com/2009/09/04/bobby-jindal-uses-state-funds-to-travel-to-and-speak-at-churches/
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has been visiting churches across the state on the taxpayers’ dime. Actually, it’s worse than a dime. His trips have cost around $45,000,(1):
“Between March 2 and July 20, Jindal traveled to churches, mostly in north Louisiana, on a state helicopter at a cost to the taxpayers of about $45,000, according to State Police records.
In May, June and July, there was rarely a Sunday when Jindal did not fly a taxpayer-funded helicopter to church services in a remote part of the state. Two aides usually accompanied him along with his security detail and pilots.
The Governor’s Office refuses to tell the media ahead of time about Jindal’s church visits.
A video of one of the visits — posted on YouTube — shows that Jindal talks about the military, his family, his values and his conversion to Christianity.”
This is entanglement of church and state. Jindal is not visiting churches on his own as a worshiper. He is making political speeches using government money — it’s illegal, pure and simple.
A few days ago, Rev. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister and head of the Interfaith Alliance, wrote Jindal a letter urging him to pay the state back,(2):
“If you were traveling to these churches to worship with the various congregations, you should have paid your own expenses to get there as did the other worshippers. If you were traveling to these churches for the purpose of sharing your personal faith and encouraging faith in others, state funds absolutely should not have been used to pay your expenses. Indeed, in that instance, your state-funded actions were a violation of the United States Constitution’s promise of religious freedom which has been a critical contributor to the vitality of religion in our nation. If you were traveling to these churches for political purposes, you should not have been there in the first place, regardless of who funded the travel.”
…
“Governor Jindal, it appears that you owe the people of Louisiana an apology and the treasurer of the state a reimbursement of at least $45,000 in addition to whatever money was spent in the period not covered by the Advocate’s investigation. No taxpayer money should have been used for your travel.”
So how did Jindal’s spokesperson respond?
“This political group [the Interfaith Alliance] opposes putting crosses up in honor of fallen policemen, has attacked the National Day of Prayer and advocates for same-sex marriage, so it’s not surprising that they are attacking the governor for accepting invitations to speak at Louisiana churches.”
And that should settle the matter…
Or not, since it doesn’t even address the issue.
The Interfaith Alliance was against the Religious Right hijacking of the Day of Prayer, not that people shouldn’t pray. Their stance on gay marriage is that gay couples should be eligible for the same rights as straight couples, not that churches should be forced to perform gay marriage ceremonies. And no one is upset that Jindal accepted invitations to speak at churches. The issues are that he only seems to speak at churches and he used state funds to do it.
Rachel Maddow had Gaddy on her show last night to talk about the issue:
Video on webpage and YouTube,(3)
I doubt Jindal has any intention to pay the money back, and in his mind, he thinks what he did was perfectly fine.
That’s a problem.
This is why Jindal has no right aspiring to higher office as a potential Republican presidential candidate.
This is why residents of the state should be demanding his resignation. It’s disgusting that any politician would be doing anything like this.
(Thanks to Hector for the link!)
NOTES:
1. http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/57160422.html
3. Governor Bobby Jindal Using Taxpayer Money for Helicopter Rides to Church – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVZABjOFuBE (see below for info)
Governor Bobby Jindal Using Taxpayer Money for Helicopter Rides to Church
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVZABjOFuBE
September 3, 2009 on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow
(The Advocate) In May, June and July, there was rarely a Sunday when the governor didnt board a taxpayer-funded helicopter to attend church services in far-flung parts of the state. He traveled by helicopter to churches less frequently in March and April.
Over five months, Jindal took more than three dozen helicopter trips. Fourteen were to attend church services, according to state records.
He worshipped in Hornbeck, Many, Logansport, Angie, Elizabeth, Harrisonburg, Columbia, Winnsboro, Coushatta, Robeline and Anacoco.
At least two aides usually accompanied him along with his security detail and State Police pilots. The public pays their salaries as well as the fuel and upkeep for the helicopter.
The helicopter that the governor uses the most costs $1,200 an hour to operate — about $45,000 for five months of church visits.
The Governors Office refuses to disclose to the media ahead of time where Jindal will attend services. But a video posted on the Internet last year gives a glimpse into the Catholic governors visits to Protestant churches in North Louisiana.
Read more:
Governor’s Sunday helicopter travels have come at taxpayers’ expense
Saturday, September 5, 2009
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/56139902.html?showAll=y&c=y
Obama Bows to His Masters Again…The Republican Parties Rhetoric
September 7, 2009Obama Bows to His Masters Again…The Republican Parties Rhetoric
Story:
Obama ‘green jobs’ adviser quits amid controversy
9-6-09, Associated Press Writer Will Lester
President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090906/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_adviser_resigns
We shouldn’t forget Katrina lessons
September 7, 2009Commentary: We shouldn’t forget Katrina lessons
By Linda Taaffe, Editor of the Sunnyvale Sun.
Sunnyvale Sun
Posted: 09/04/2009 11:00:00 PM PDT
http://www.mercurynews.com/community/ci_13273633?source=rss
Aug. 29 marked four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and parts of the Gulf Coast. I know much time has passed, and there are pressing issues here at home — dog parks, unemployment, stalled construction projects — but still, I can’t help but think about the enormity of that day and the civic response it elicited from those watching events unfold live on television and the internet.
For me, it is the only disaster that has made me feel ashamed while an upwards of 60,000 people waited and waited for government help that took too many days to come.
When I look at photos of flooded neighborhoods in New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward or people lined up outside the Louisiana Superdome waiting for help, I get the same sick feeling I did when I first saw those images on television.
Following the hurricane, what amazed me was the response of everyday citizens, who stepped up and took responsibility. The disaster ultimately prompted thousands — including me — to get off the couch, go down there and help.
An unorganized group of residents was the first to lend help, even though the area was officially closed off. Law enforcement agencies, including those from our area, also joined the effort and aided local agencies from New Orleans.
Those days following Katrina, as horrible as they were, exposed flaws in the government’s “coordinated” emergency efforts and created change in the way people think about disaster response.
Since Katrina, communities have worked to become better prepared for natural disasters, with many areas incorporating pets in their emergency plans (since it was learned that many Katrina victims stayed behind to be with their pets).
While Katrina itself was not the strongest hurricane to hit the United States, it stands among the worst natural disasters in American history. The hurricane led to the failure of local levees which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, reportedly killed 1,836 victims and caused more than $1 billion in estimated damages.
Many neighborhoods remain in shambles waiting to be rebuilt, and the Army Corps has recommended that others not be rebuilt I hope as the years pass, people will remember the lessons of Katrina, and any unnecessary suffering won’t happen again.
While staying in a shelter in Northern Louisiana with the American Red Cross, I was asked on several occasions, “Why are you helping us? Why?” For many, they couldn’t understand why people would come from all parts of the United States to hand out food or give them bedding. They were so overwhelmed, they just couldn’t understand.
I would respond, “I’m from California, and I hope when the next big`quake hits, someone will do the same for us.” And then, they understood.
This October marks the 20-year anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake — be prepared and don’t forget about Katrina.
