Fire Blog

I want share this with you because it made me so happy...

Fire Is Born — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 01:13:58 EST

but I am not sure how the link will work. Let's see. fib

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"We made a holiday video just for you, Hanna. People from all around the country -- even President Obama -- helped out.

You can watch it here:

http://my.barackobama.com/holiday

It was a blast making it. Enjoy!

Happy holidays,

Mitch and the entire OFA community"

Let us all in CITA sent President Obama Holiday wishes

Fire Is Born — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:23:09 EST

I just did. I have included a personal message and even a picture of a huge redwood tree in Santa Cruz mountains with little me, fib, sitting on its roots in a red dress. That's California. Now is your turn. Thank you! FIB

From Nancy Pelosi:

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As we celebrate the holiday season, I wanted to say thank you for making 2009 a year for the history books when it comes to America's progress.

This holiday season, let's show President Obama that we support him just as strongly as we did on Inauguration Day.

Please sign our Holiday Card to President Obama and the First Family and forward it to five of your friends. You can also include a personal message and upload a photograph of your own family.

Our extraordinary progress this year would not be possible without dedicated grassroots Democrats like you. You worked every day to put Main Street first, to create millions of clean energy jobs, and to make health care affordable for the middle class.

Unfortunately, your efforts have incited the anger of our Republican opponents who prefer to return to the failed policies of the last eight years. This year, we have seen one vicious and false attack after another, calling our agenda everything from "government rationing of health care" to even hanging effigies of our Democratic Members of Congress.

Yet each day you prove that no attack by Republicans and their special interest allies can stop the change we are delivering for America's middle class families and the hope we are bringing for brighter future for our country.

Please sign our Holiday Card to President Obama and the First Family and forward it to five of your friends. You can also include a personal message and upload a photograph of your own family.

Have a happy and healthy holiday season with your families and thank you again for making 2009 a year of historic progress for our nation and the world.

Best regards,

Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House

P.S. Please sign our Holiday Card to President Obama and forward it to five of your friends. You can also upload a photograph for the President to see.

The case against Chevron in Ecuador

Fire Is Born — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:46:48 EST

Chevron Using Six Public Relations Firms to Discredit Indigenous Groups In $27.3 Billion Environmental Case In Ecuador Lobbyists – Mac McLarty, John Breaux, Trent Lott, Mickey Kantor, Carla Hills and Others – Charged With Misrepresenting Facts Amazon Defense Coalition
20 November 2009 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Hinton at 703-798-3109 or karen [at] hintoncommunications.com
Mitch Anderson at 415-342-4783 or mitch [at] amazonwatch.org

Washington, DC – Chevron has retained at least twelve public relations firms and lobbyists to discredit claims of Amazon indigenous groups on the eve of an expected multi-billion dollar judgment against the oil giant in an environmental lawsuit in Ecuador, according to representatives of the tribes in the U.S.

Although Chevron is near the top of the list of highest-spending lobbyists in Washington, the campaign seems to be backfiring. Politico, one of the most influential publications on Capitol Hill, reported this week that Chevron's lobbying was "drawing fire from environmentalists, media ethicists, state pension funds, New York's attorney general, members of Congress, and even Barack Obama when he was a Senator."

The article also quoted Rep. Linda Sanchez (D - CA) as calling Chevron's lobbying "clumsy" and "very heavy handed". Sanchez - who on Tuesday characterized the Chevron lobbying as "extortion" in testimony before Congress – said she plans to write three letters to Members of Congress, blasting what she called the oil giant's "misguided approach" to dealing with the lawsuit from the indigenous groups.

Separately, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating the company to determine if it is misleading its own shareholders about the financial risk from the Ecuador case, where damages are assessed at up to $27.3 billion, Politico reported.

An American legal advisor to the plaintiffs, Steven Donziger, criticized the public relations and lobbying effort. "Chevron is paying huge fees to lobby the U.S. government to inappropriately quash a legal case brought by indigenous tribes in the country where Chevron asked for the trial to be held," said Donziger, who has been working on the matter since it was filed in U.S. federal court in 1993.

The case, which alleges Texaco dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon from 1964 to 1990, was transferred from U.S. federal court to Ecuador in 2002 at Chevron's request. The oil giant filed 14 expert affidavits in the U.S. court praising Ecuador's court system, but later began a campaign to discredit those same courts once the evidence in the Ecuador trial pointed to its culpability.

The public relations firms working for Chevron include Hill & Knowlton, which represented the tobacco industry and – as it did in the debate over tobacco and cancer – has tried to deny a link between oil contamination and cancer; Edelman Worldwide, which is believed to be preparing a Wal-Mart-style political campaign against the indigenous groups in anticipation of an adverse court judgment; Sard Verbinnem, which handles financial press in an effort to stem a budding shareholder revolt against Chevron management for its handling of the case; Robinson Lerer Montgomery, a well-highly connected New York-based agency; Sam Singer and Associates, which handles the matter in the San Francisco area, where Chevron is located; and the Washington-based CRC Public Relations, which helped create a pro-Chevron video by former CNN correspondent Gene Randall to counteract a highly unflattering 60 Minutes segment on the legal case that broadcast earlier in the year.

The Randall video, which did not mention that it was paid for by Chevron, was blasted by the Columbia Journalism Review for "blurring the line between public relations and journalism." The President of CRC, Greg Mueller, spearheaded the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry and is a former senior aide to Pat Buchanan.

U.S. settles Indian trust account lawsuit

Fire Is Born — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:57:22 EST

atimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-indian-settlement9-2009dec09,0,6296252.story latimes.com

U.S. settles Indian trust account lawsuit

The government will pay $3.4 billion to end a battle over claims that it mismanaged tribal royalties for more than a century. The settlement is the largest Native Americans have received from the U.S.

By Nicholas Riccardi

December 9, 2009

Reporting from Denver

The Obama administration on Tuesday announced it would pay Native Americans $3.4 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit that claimed the federal government cheated tribes for more than a century of royalties for oil, mineral and other leases.

The settlement ends a 13-year legal battle that led to 3,600 filings, millions of pages of discovery documents and 11 separate appellate decisions. It is the largest settlement Native Americans have ever received from the federal government, eclipsing the sum of all previous settlements, according to the plaintiff's lawyers.

The dispute stemmed from a 19th century decision to grant parcels of land to individual Indians and place the properties in trust accounts. For more than a century, the plaintiffs contended, the account holders were cheated out of their share of revenues that the federal government collects for leasing that land.

"We are here to right a past wrong," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., news conference to announce the settlement, which still must be approved by Congress and the courts. He was joined by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit.

"I expected this settlement 10 years ago," Cobell said. "Today we have an administration that is listening to us, an administration that is willing to admit the errors of the past."

The plaintiffs had estimated they were owed as much as $47 billion. Congress had considered, but did not pass, a nearly $8-billion settlement as recently as 2006.

Cobell said she had to weigh the possibility of winning a greater sum against the tough situations faced by many of the plaintiffs.

"Time takes a toll, especially on elders living in abject poverty," Cobell said. "Many of them died as we continued our struggle to settle this suit. Many more would not survive long to see a financial gain, if we had not settled now."

President Obama had specifically directed his Cabinet to settle the matter when he took office, Salazar said. The president issued a statement Tuesday praising the deal and urging Congress to swiftly finalize it and "correct this long-standing injustice."

"As a candidate, I heard from many in Indian country that the Cobell suit remained a stain on the nation-to-nation relationship I value so much," Obama said. "I pledged my commitment to resolving this issue, and I am proud that my administration has taken this step today."

The settlement, finalized Monday night after months of intense negotiations, provides a $1,000 cash payment to every individual who has a trust account and $2 billion for the federal government to buy back the land parcels, some of which have been subdivided so much over the decades as to become almost worthless.

The government would consolidate the parcels and then return them to tribes. It would also provide up to $60 million for scholarships for Native American children.

Salazar said he was also creating a commission to recommend how to manage the trusts in the future.

The trusts date back to the 1887 Dawes Act, which attempted to erode the tribal system by granting parcels of land to individual Native Americans.

The Indians were not allowed to control their new property. Instead, the land was placed in trust and the government promised to pay the owners royalties for oil and gas, grazing or recreational leases. For more than a century, however, Indians received little or no payment.

In the 1990s, Cobell, a banker and rancher in the Blackfoot Nation in Montana, decided to do something about it and filed a class-action suit, funded partly by nonprofit groups.

Now, the government and the plaintiffs will have to determine who gets paid and whose land can be bought. The records are in such disarray it is not clear how many individuals are affected by the settlement -- estimates range from 300,000 to 500,000 people.

Those affected are mainly in the western United States, with the greatest concentration in the Great Plains and Montana, attorneys said.

In Washington, both Salazar and Cobell said they hoped the settlement could help create a more trusting relationship between tribes and the government.

Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, noted that Native American distrust of the government long predates the tough stance the Department of Justice took in litigating the lawsuit.

Still, he said, the settlement could change attitudes.

"The Obama administration has made an effort to reach out to Native Americans in a number of ways," he said. "In modern times, this is probably the biggest piece of litigation" against the government over mistreatment of Indians.

"In that way, this has a lot of symbolic impact," he said.

nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com

Viva Bolivia! Victory for indigenous people everywhere!

Fire Is Born — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:38:47 EST

AMERICAS, AMERICAS!...................................................

ps. I refuse to buy the "anti-American" verbage in some of the articles below. FIB

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Bolivia's Morales claims election victory BBC News - ‎4 hours ago‎ President Evo Morales has claimed victory in Bolivia's presidential election and appears set to serve a second five-year term. Exit polls suggest Bolivia's first indigenous leader polled at least 61%, defeating his conservative rivals. ...

Bolivia's Mor...

BBC News

Morales Headed for Re-election in Bolivia New York Times - Simon Romero, Andrés Schipani - ‎6 hours ago‎ Supporters of President Evo Morales of Bolivia celebrated his reelection at Murillo square in front of the presidential palace in La Paz on Sunday evening. By SIMON ROMERO LA PAZ, Bolivia — President Evo Morales and legislative candidates from his ...

Morales Heade...

New York Times

Bolivia's Morales claims landslide victory Press TV - ‎53 minutes ago‎ Bolivia's first indigenous president Evo Morales has claimed a landslide re-election victory in the country's presidential poll. According to the latest vote countess Morales has 'easily' won a second term in office. The victory comes as his social ...

Bolivia's Mor...

Press TV

Evo Morales claims landslide victory in Bolivian elections Times Online - ‎4 hours ago‎ Evo Morales, the Bolivian President, claimed a landslide re-election victory last night in elections seen as a referendum on his socialist reforms. Official results were not due until Monday but exit polls gave him 62 per cent of the vote to Manfred ...

Evo Morales c...

Times Online

Exit polls predict landslide victory for Morales Press TV - ‎6 hours ago‎ Three exit polls predict that Bolivian President Evo Morales has won a landslide re-election victory with an overwhelming 61 percent of the vote. His main rival, Manfred Reyes Villa, the candidate of the Progress Plan Party, trailed with around 23 ...

Exit polls pr...

Press TV

Bolivia election spectacle takes to the ring BBC News - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ As Bolivia gears up for Sunday's presidential poll, the electoral battle is being played out in a La Paz wrestling ring, as the bbc's Andres Schipani reports. In one corner - dressed in blue tights - is "Son of the People" President Evo Morales; ...

Bolivia elect...

BBC News

Morales reaches out to middle class Aljazeera.net - Teresa Bo - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ "These days some people in the middle class are saying: He is an Indian, he is indigenous but he gives us dignity. That's why I want to tell people in the middle class 'welcome to this revolutionary process'." Those were the words of Evo ...

Morales reach...

Aljazeera.net

Evo Morales on course to win second term in Bolivian elections guardian.co.uk - ‎9 hours ago‎ Bolivian president Evo Morales waves to supporters upon arrival at the polling station in Villa 14 de Septiembre. Photograph: Aizar Raldes/AFP/Getty Images Evo Morales appears on course for a big victory in the Bolivian elections tomorrow, ...

Evo Morales o...

guardian.co.uk

In Bolivia vote, Indian power a central issue The Associated Press - Frank Bajak - ‎Dec 4, 2009‎ CHARAGUA, Bolivia — In Bolivia's biggest municipality, a scrub-brush expanse of cattle ranches and hardscrabble farms, Sunday's national elections aren't all about Evo Morales. With Bolivia's first indigenous president expected to easily win ...

In Bolivia vo...

The Associated P...

Morales highly favored for re-election in Bolivia The Associated Press - Frank Bajak - ‎17 hours ago‎ LA PAZ, Bolivia — President Evo Morales, a coca-grower at odds with Washington but hugely popular at home for empowering Bolivia's long-suppressed indigenous majority, was expected to coast to re-election on Sunday. Such a victory would augur further ...

Morales highl...

The Associated P...

Bolivia's Morales talks tough on eve of election AFP - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ LA PAZ — About five million Bolivians go to the polls Sunday in an election that is likely to deliver Evo Morales another five-year term in office and consolidate the anti-American president's hold on power. On the eve of the polls, Morales slammed CNN ...

Bolivia's Mor...

AFP

Bolivia's Morales wins new presidential term AFP - ‎19 hours ago‎ LA PAZ — Bolivia's leftist President Evo Morales won a landslide reelection victory in voting that also handed him unfettered control of Congress, according to exit polls. The results mean that Morales, a fiercely anti-US leader in the mold of his ...

Bolivia's Mor...

AFP

Bolivia's anti-US leader poised for re-election AFP - ‎18 hours ago‎ LA PAZ — Bolivian President Evo Morales, a fervent anti-US leader, looked poised to easily win re-election on Sunday thanks to overwhelming support from his country's indigenous majority. Bolivia's five million voters, who started going to the polls at ...

Bolivia's ant...

AFP

Bolivia prepares for national vote Aljazeera.net - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ Voters in Bolivia are preparing to head to the polls for presidential and congressional elections with Evo Morales, the nation's first indigenous president, expected to win a second term in office. Surveys ahead of Sunday's vote indicated Morales had a ...

Bolivia prepa...

Aljazeera.net

Bolivian leader to change law to jail polls rival AFP - ‎Dec 1, 2009‎ LA PAZ — Bolivian President Evo Morales, seeking reelection in weekend elections, said Tuesday the law would be changed so a conservative opposition candidate and his running mate could be jailed for corruption. "We are going to change the law and the ...

Bolivian lead...

AFP

Morales coasting to new term Washington Times - Martin Arostegui - ‎7 hours ago‎ SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia | Bolivian President Evo Morales appeared headed for a decisive election win Sunday, a victory that opponents fear could lock the country into a socialist system modeled on that of Venezuelan ...

Morales coast...

Washington Times

Bolivia Voted for Evo Morales Hamsayeh.Net - ‎58 minutes ago‎ Dec. 07, 09 (Hamsayeh.Net) - Bolivians hit the voting stations across the country with their hope of re-electing their favorite President Evo Morales for another five-year term. Final results of the elections haven't been announced yet but it is ...

Bolivia Voted...

Hamsayeh.Net

Morales reelected as Bolivian president: exit polls AFP - ‎9 hours ago‎ LA PAZ — Bolivian President Evo Morales was handed a second term in office in elections Sunday, according to various early exit polls that suggested he won 62-63 percent of the ballots. His nearest rival, conservative former governor Manfred Reyes ...

Morales reele...

AFP

Voting begins in Bolivia elections Press TV - ‎17 hours ago‎ Polls have opened in Bolivia's general elections with incumbent President Evo Morales likely to win a second five-year term. Balloting began at 8 am (1200 GMT) amid tight security measures and was expected to continue for eight hours. ...

Voting begins...

Press TV

Landslide victory and Senate majority for Evo Morales in Bolivia MercoPress - ‎4 hours ago‎ Bolivian president Evo Morales won by a landslide majority in Sunday's general elections and according to exit polls has ensured the Senate two thirds majority needed to continue with his reforms program some of them considered controversial. ...

Landslide vic...

MercoPress

Bolivia's Morales set for re-election euronews - ‎18 hours ago‎ The following article has been retrieved from the archive and no longer contains the original video. Bolivia's President Evo Morales is expected to easily win re-election today. Opinion polls predict the leftist leader will take more than 50 percent of ...

Bolivia's Mor...

euronews

Through a Glass Darkly: The Elite Perspective on Bolivian Democracy Salem-News.Com - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ The NY Times takes cheap shots at a President whose politics may more closely resemble democracy, than our own. (EUGENE, Ore.) - In this article I must take a detour from my normal reporting and instead comment on an article written in the New York ...

Through a Gla...

Salem-News.Com

Bolivians Prepare for Sunday Presidential Vote AS/COA Online - Carin Zissis - ‎Dec 3, 2009‎ For the past few months, polls have placed Bolivia's Evo Morales ahead of rivals in the presidential race. Figures published by La Razón earlier this week showed that the gap is ever widening as the country prepares for its December 6 election. ...

Bolivians Pre...

AS/COA Online

Bolivia to see presidential elections on Sunday RIA Novosti - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ Bolivia will hold presidential elections on Sunday, with seven candidates expected to run against the incumbent president, Evo Morales. The candidates include three indigenous Americans, one woman, one former military official, a lawyer, ...

Bolivia to se...

RIA Novosti

Bolivian president on course to win second term Irish Times - ‎7 hours ago‎ Bolivian president Evo Morales, whose left-wing economic policies have made him broadly popular with Bolivia's poor but angered business leaders, was expected to win re-election yesterday, allowing him to expand state control over the economy. ...

Bolivian pres...

Irish Times

Assassination plot claim puts Morales in the driving seat Irish Times - ‎Dec 2, 2009‎ BOLIVIA'S FIRST ever indigenous president Evo Morales is set to sweep back into power in Sunday's presidential election after a campaign in which the opposition has been put on the defensive by the government's accusation that it was involved in an ...

Assassination...

Irish Times

Evo Morales Confident in Re-Election Victory on Sunday Periódico 26 - ‎Dec 5, 2009‎ According to the surveys, President Evo Morales is heading for a clear victory to secure his re-election as president of Bolivia until 2015. Surveys conducted by companies such as Ceprode, Ipsos and Mori Support, show that the Movement Towards ...

Evo Morales C...

Periódico 26

Bolivia's Morales and opposition fighting for control of Senate next Sunday MercoPress - ‎Nov 30, 2009‎ Bolivian president Evo Morales is set to win next Sunday's general election and could even manage 24 of the 36 Senate seats thus ensuring the full control of the future Pluri-national Legislative Assembly, according to the latest opinion polls. ...

Bolivia's Mor...

Colombia Reports

1 2

VICTORY!!! The CLASS act is a class act, and ...

Fire Is Born — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:22:00 EST

... means not only the dignity for seniors and people with disabilities. It means "JOBS NOW" for the poorest and most deserving workers (like me) who will spend this mony TODAY. This program is billions of dollars in savings on institutional solutions that are never as good as staying home. Why not? I've been in this business for quite a few years, and really had many reasons to think about it. Trust me! Joe, where would you like to be when you get old? Because you will one day soon...

Finally something out there that made me really happy!

Merry Season, everyone! FIB

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Senate preserves long-term care program

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR (AP) – 22 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Keeping faith with the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Senate voted Friday to preserve a new long-term care insurance program to help seniors and the disabled in its health overhaul bill.

But the vote exposed the difficulties Democratic leaders face in persuading their own moderates to stay united behind the sweeping legislation they hope to deliver to President Barack Obama. Eleven Democrats switched and voted with Republicans, warning that the program would turn into a drain on the federal budget and saddle future generations with even more debt.

Republicans fell short in a bid to strike the voluntary insurance plan on a 51-47 vote. They needed 60 votes to prevail. Two leading Democrats who shaped the health care bill, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad of North Dakota, voted with the GOP — underscoring the gravity of the fiscal concerns.

Known as the CLASS Act, short for Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, the program would help seniors and disabled people stay in their own homes and avoid going into nursing homes. It had been a long-sought priority for Kennedy, the Massachusetts lawmaker who died this summer of brain cancer.

Workers would pay a modest monthly premium during their careers. If they become disabled, they would get a cash benefit of at least $50 a day. That can help pay for a home care attendant, for supplies and equipment, to make home improvements such as new bathroom railings, or defray nursing home costs. A version of the program is also in the health care legislation passed by the House. The Obama administration supports it.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., who led the effort to cut the long-term care plan from the bill, said it would add another unaffordable commitment to a government swamped with debt — and taxpayers would eventually get the bill.

"The CLASS Act is the same old Washington, same old smoke and mirrors, same old games," said Thune. "We are locking in future generations to deficits and debts as far as the eye can see."

But Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said the program is projected to be fiscally sound for 75 years, based only on the premiums that workers would pay. As a further safeguard, the Senate voted to ensure that funds collected under the plan would only be used to pay out benefits — and not to cover other government obligations.

"This is a very creative idea of using individuals' money to contribute to their own long-term financial security if they're faced with disabilities," said Dodd. "It is a solid program that can make a huge difference for millions of Americans, allowing them to lead independent lives with dignity."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who Democrats are counting on to support the final bill, also voted to strip the long-term care program from the bill.

'Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope' by Nikki Grimes

Fire Is Born — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:03:47 EST

'Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope' by Nikki Grimes

Illustrated by Bryan Collier

$16.99

Buy From Amazon

Why give your kids yet another video game when you can open their minds? Nikki Grimes’s children’s book about President Obama comes with an educational guide and colorful illustrations. (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, $16.99)

Obama: More troops for Afghanistan, with exit plan By STEVEN R. Hurst

Fire Is Born — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:10:17 EST

Obama: More troops for Afghanistan, with exit plan By STEVEN R. HURST and DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press Writers Steven R. Hurst And Darlene Superville, Associated Press Writers 24 mins ago

WEST POINT, N.Y. – Declaring "our security is at stake," President Barack Obama ordered an additional 30,000 U.S. troops into the long war in Afghanistan Tuesday night, nearly tripling the force he inherited as commander in chief. He promised an impatient public he would begin bringing units home in 18 months.

The buildup to about 100,000 troops will begin almost immediately — the first Marines will be in place by Christmas — and will cost $30 billion for the first year alone.

In a prime-time speech at the U.S. Military Academy, the president told the nation his new policy was designed to "bring this war to a successful conclusion," though he made no mention of defeating Taliban insurgents or capturing al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

"We must deny al-Qaida a safe haven," Obama said in spelling out U.S. military goals for a war that has dragged on for eight years. "We must reverse the Taliban's momentum. ... And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan's security forces and government."

The president said the additional forces would be deployed at "the fastest pace possible so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers."

Their destination: "the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida."

"It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak," the president said.

It marked the second time in his young presidency that Obama has added to the American force in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has recently made significant advances. When he became president last January, there were roughly 34,000 troops on the ground; there now are 71,000.

After the speech, cadets in the audience — some of whom could end up in combat because of Obama's decision — climbed over chairs to shake hands with their commander in chief and take his picture.

Obama's announcement drew less-wholehearted support from congressional Democrats. Many of them favor a quick withdrawal, but others have already proposed higher taxes to pay for the fighting.

Republicans reacted warily, as well. Officials said Sen. John McCain, who was Obama's Republican opponent in last year's presidential campaign, told Obama at an early evening meeting attended by numerous lawmakers that declaring a timetable for a withdrawal would merely send the Taliban underground until the Americans began to leave.

As a candidate, Obama called Afghanistan a war worth fighting, as opposed to Iraq, a conflict he opposed and has since begun easing out of.

A new survey by the Gallup organization, released Tuesday, showed only 35 percent of Americans now approve of Obama's handling of the war; 55 percent disapprove.

He made no direct reference to public opinion Tuesday night, although he seemed to touch on it when he said, "The American people are understandably focused on rebuilding our economy and putting people to work here at home."

"After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home," he said flatly.

In eight years of war, 849 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan and neighboring Uzbekistan, according to the Pentagon.

In addition to beefing up the U.S. presence, Obama has asked NATO allies to commit between 5,000 and 10,000 additional troops. The war has even less support in Europe than in the United States, and the NATO allies and other countries currently have about 40,000 troops on the ground.

He said he was counting on Afghanistan eventually taking over its own security, and he warned, "The days of providing a blank check are over." He said the United States would support Afghan ministries that combat corruption and "deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable."

As for neighboring Pakistan, the president said that country and the United States "share a common enemy" in Islamic terrorists. "We are in Afghanistan to prevent a cancer from once again spreading through that country. But this same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. That is why we need a strategy that works on both sides of the border."

The speech before an audience of cadets at the military academy ended a three-month review of the war, triggered by a request from the commanding general, Stanley McChrystal, for as many as 40,000 more troops. Without them, he warned, the U.S. risked failure.

The speech was still under way when the general issued a statement from Kabul. "The Afghanistan-Pakistan review led by the president has provided me with a clear military mission and the resources to accomplish our task," it said. McChrystal is expected to testify before congressional committees in the next several days.

Obama referred to a deteriorating military environment, but said, "Afghanistan is not lost."

The length of the presidential review drew mild rebukes from normally amiable NATO allies. There was sharper criticism from Republicans led by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the president was dithering rather than deciding.

Obama rebutted forcefully.

"Let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war," he told his audience of more than 4,000 cadets seated in Eisenhower Hall.

Most of the new forces will be combat troops. Military officials said the Army brigades were most likely to be sent from Fort Drum in New York and Fort Campbell in Kentucky; and Marines primarily from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Officials said the additional 30,000 troops included about 5,000 dedicated trainers, underscoring the president's emphasis on preparing Afghans to take over their own security.

These aides said that by announcing a date for beginning a withdrawal, the president was not setting an end date for the war.

But that was a point on which McCain chose to engage the president at a pre-speech meeting with lawmakers before Obama departed for West Point. "The way that you win wars is to break the enemy's will, not to announce dates that you are leaving," McCain said later.

Obama's address represents the beginning of a sales job to restore support for the war effort among an American public grown increasingly pessimistic about success — and among some fellow Democrats in Congress wary of or even opposed to spending billions more dollars and putting tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers and Marines in harm's way.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and liberal House Democrats threatened to try to block funding for the troop increase.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs a military oversight panel, said he didn't think Democrats would yank funding for the troops or try to force Obama's hand to pull them out faster. But Democrats will be looking for ways to pay for the additional troops, he said, including a tax increase on the wealthy although that hike is already being eyed to pay for health care costs. Another possibility is imposing a small gasoline tax that would be phased out if gas prices go up, he said.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden and key members of the terrorist organization were headquartered in Afghanistan at the time, taking advantage of sanctuary afforded by the Taliban government that ran the mountainous and isolated country.

Taliban forces were quickly driven from power, while bin Laden and his top deputies were believed to have fled through towering mountains into neighboring Pakistan. While the al-Qaida leadership appears to be bottled up in Pakistan's largely ungoverned tribal regions, the U.S. military strategy of targeted missile attacks from unmanned drone aircraft has yet to flush bin Laden and his cohorts from hiding.

___

Steven R. Hurst reported from Washington. AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven and National Security Writer Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

Live Blogging Obama’s Afghan Speech

Fire Is Born — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:45:25 EST

December 1, 2009, 6:47 pm

Live Blogging Obama’s Afghan Speech

By JEFF ZELENY

Ruth Fremson/

The New York Times West Point cadets waited for President Obama to speak on Tuesday.

Setting the Scene | 7:11 p.m. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who is on site at West Point, reports:

Many speeches have been delivered at the military academy, but never before have cadets heard orders directly from a commander-in-chief who could send them into a war zone.

There is a sense of anticipation in the air. A West Point official brought a handful of carefully selected cadets – seniors with impressive resumes – to speak to reporters.

Alexandra Rosenberg, 22, of Manhattan, is a Rhodes and Truman Scholar with plans of becoming a doctor. Eric Bernau, 21, of Rochester Minn., is the cadet public affairs officer, who spent a semester studying in China. And Tyler Gordy, 26, came to West Point after serving as an infantryman and getting wounded in Iraq. He is First Captain, supervising 4,000 cadets.

Ruth Fremson/

The New York Times One cadet was reading “The Kite Runner,” a novel set in Afghanistan, while he waited for the president to speak.

The three will be among those seated behind the secretary of state and secretary of defense for Mr. Obama’s speech, which Mr. Bernau described as “the most momentous day in our four years of the academy.”

“I mean, he’s the commander in chief, he’s our boss,” Mr. Bernau said. “It’s kind of like a shareholders meeting where you hear the strategy of the company.”

These cadets will graduate as second lieutenants and platoon leaders.

While Ms. Rosenberg will go to Oxford in the fall, the other two fully expect to be deployed, and have chosen the infantry as where they want to serve.

“This doesn’t make me nervous, it doesn’t scare me or anything,” Mr. Gordy said. “I have known this for five years now. What it does is give me a sense of direction.”

Speech Preparations | 6:47 p.m. President Obama’s address to the nation from the United States Military Academy at West Point will begin at 8 p.m. He left the White House after a daylong series of calls to foreign leaders, followed by a late-afternoon briefing to Congressional leaders.

By now, broad outlines of the speech are known: 30,000 more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan; the goal for beginning to withdraw the first wave of forces will be July 2011; the strategy is aimed at preventing Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, where the Sept. 11 attacks were planned.

It is the president’s burden, of course, to explain why he believes the war in Afghanistan should be escalated.(...)"

...and this is now, not then...

Fire Is Born — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:23:07 EST

It's been a while that I watched BMJ. When I began watching tonight in the middle of the program I entered into President Johnson's conversation in 1965 with McNamara on escalation of the war, when the troops there were in the range of 45 thousands. I sat pinned down to my chair till the end of the program.

That "while" wiyhout BMJ was a wasted while. God bless Bill Moyers of the USA! fib

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A Tale of Two Quagmires

This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers looked back some four decades to his experience as a member of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration. At the time, Johnson made a series of fateful decisions to escalate the war in Vietnam, where eventually over two million American military personnel would serve. Estimates indicate that nearly 60,000 U.S. troops – and more than a million Vietnamese – were killed during the course of the conflict.

With an eye on President Obama’s deliberations on whether to deploy more U.S. troops in addition to the 68,000 already in Afghanistan, Moyers presented a montage of recorded conversations and his personal memories of President Lyndon Johnson’s decisions to escalate the war in Vietnam. He said:

“Our country wonders this weekend what is on President Obama’s mind. He is apparently about to bring months of deliberation to a close and answer General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops in Afghanistan. When he finally announces how many, why, and at what cost, he will most likely have defined his presidency, for the consequences will be far-reaching and unpredictable. As I read and listen and wait with all of you for answers, I have been thinking about the mind of another President – Lyndon B. Johnson. I was 30 years old, a White House assistant, working on politics and domestic policy. I watched and listened as LBJ made his fateful decisions about Vietnam... Barack Obama is not Lyndon Johnson, Afghanistan is not Vietnam and this is now, not then. The situation is different. But listen – and you will hear echoes and refrains that resonate today.”

The nation is divided about America’s mission in Afghanistan. In a new WASHINGTON POST – ABC News poll, 55% of respondents expressed confidence that President Obama will pick a strategy that will work, but 52% said that the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting given the costs versus the benefits.

What do you think?

How does the history of the Vietnam War compare to the present situation in Afghanistan?

What decisions do you think Obama should make regarding Afghanistan? What do you think he's actually going to do? Explain.

U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

Fire Is Born — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:53:38 EST

I say hang'em!

It is human, silent and unobtrusive. I say, ban the mow-blow-and-go "gardeners"- they are not. One of the special pleasures of travel in Central America are the old fashioned loundry rituals. There, it is not question of choice. Laundry is done by women's hands and is hang outside, watched carefuly, hastily carried inside when rain comes. For many women it is the only source of income. These women, I once thought, should also be awarded all those big green prizes that go to somebody else.

I think more hanging laundry would make our USA neighborhoods safer. Perhaps the sight of children playing ouside would return with it. fib

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November 18, 2009 | 1 comments

U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

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U.S. residents fight for the right to hang laundry

Carin Froehlich has help from her granddaughter Ava as they hang some laundry in the front yard of her residence in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, November 12, 2009. REUTERS/Tim Shaffer

By Jon Hurdle

PERKASIE, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.

Froehlich is among the growing number of people across America fighting for the right to dry their laundry outside against a rising tide of housing associations who oppose the practice despite its energy-saving green appeal.

Although there are no formal laws in this southeast Pennsylvania town against drying laundry outside, a town official called Froehlich to ask her to stop drying clothes in the sun. And she received two anonymous notes from neighbors saying they did not want to see her underwear flapping about.

"They said it made the place look like trailer trash," she said, in her yard across the street from a row of neat, suburban houses. "They said they didn't want to look at my 'unmentionables.'"

Froehlich says she hangs her underwear inside. The effervescent 54-year-old is one of a growing number of Americans demanding the right to dry laundry on clotheslines despite local rules and a culture that frowns on it.

Their interests are represented by Project Laundry List, a group that argues people can save money and reduce carbon emissions by not using their electric or gas dryers, according to the group's executive director, Alexander Lee.

Widespread adoption of clotheslines could significantly reduce U.S. energy consumption, argued Lee, who said dryer use accounts for about 6 percent of U.S. residential electricity use.

Florida, Utah, Maine, Vermont, Colorado, and Hawaii have passed laws restricting the rights of local authorities to stop residents using clotheslines. Another five states are considering similar measures, said Lee, 35, a former lawyer who quit to run the non-profit group.

'RIGHT TO HANG'

His principal opponents are the housing associations such as condominiums and townhouse communities that are home to an estimated 60 million Americans, or about 20 percent of the population. About half of those organizations have 'no hanging' rules, Lee said, and enforce them with fines.

Carl Weiner, a lawyer for about 50 homeowners associations in suburban Philadelphia, said the no-hanging rules are usually included by the communities' developers along with regulations such as a ban on sheds or commercial vehicles.

The no-hanging rules are an aesthetic issue, Weiner said.

"The consensus in most communities is that people don't want to see everybody else's laundry."

He said opposition to clotheslines may ease as more people understand it can save energy and reduce greenhouse gases.

"There is more awareness of impact on the environment," he said. "I would not be surprised to see people questioning these restrictions."

For Froehlich, the "right to hang" is the embodiment of the American tradition of freedom.

"If my husband has a right to have guns in the house, I have a right to hang laundry," said Froehlich, who is writing a book on the subject.

Besides, it saves money. Line-drying laundry for a family of five saves $83 a month in electric bills, she said.

Kevin Firth, who owns a two-bedroom condominium in a Dublin, Pennsylvania housing association, said he was fined $100 by the association for putting up a clothesline in a common area.

"It made me angry and upset," said Firth, a 27-year-old carpenter. "I like having the laundry drying in the sun. It's something I have always done since I was a little kid."

(Editing by Mark Egan and Paul Simao)

Read Comments (1) | Post a comment

Sez Me at 05:41 PM on 11/18/09
Has it occurred to anyone that when your neighbours can tell you that you can't hang your laundry out to dry, you might be getting a little short on that "freedom" we are all supposed to enjoy in our "free countries" here in North America?Reply | Report Abuse

A letter from a friend in Kabul

Fire Is Born — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:24:41 EST

Some time ago we said good bye to Duston who told us he would be going back to Kabul. So he went. Usually when incidents like the most recent Kabul bombing happen, one thinks of one's friends that could be there, in danger. And so I did as well, thinking he must be well anyway, most likely. Kabul is big (I thought). Not so. It is a small world after all. This is what came yesterday. fib

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Hibiscus Tea and Honey in Berlin

"Dear Friends,

At first, I should offer a quick explanation of this letter: I have not yet read any email replies you may have sent me since my last correspondence back around mid October or so. I am currently drinking Hibiscus Tea sweetened with a little honey in an Army Hospital in Berlin Germany. My Laptop Computer has not had internet for two weeks:

October 28th, 2009 began with a loud bang at exactly 6 AM Kabul time. Actually an explosion at the front gate to the Guesthouse where I was living. I don’t know if it was an RPG or Suicide Bomber, and will truly never know for a fact which one it was. The first explosion was followed by machine gun firing and then an RPG hit the front of the building. The Taleban killed the exterior gate residence guards, entered the front house and proceeded to kill as many UN Election Employees as possible before the Police arrived. A long and intense gun-battle ensued over the next hour and a half and the attackers were eventually killed around 7:30 AM. Some of my friends, and some employees, of the Guesthouse were also killed and many wounded during this incident.

I escaped physically unharmed within 90 seconds of the first sound of the attack.

The media incorrectly portrayed the building as the “UN Guesthouse” whereas technically it was a privately run guesthouse, and I referred to it in earlier email to you as the “Zoo”, because it had lots of animals and birds on the property. I do not know who survived other than I have a “story” of the massacre as I experienced it. I ended up with a large group of UN Election Employees who also survived as we hid together in the neighboring courtyard while the Taleban shot it out with the surviving guards, burned down the place and then shot it out again with the Police.

Around 7:40 AM , I was transferred by the Police to a temporary safe location, and then the Bank security man found me and I was taken to the big famous Hotel ( The Serena ) which is heavily guarded in downtown Kabul. Immediately after I arrived, I was standing in the Hotel Lobby , on the cell phone, calling the Germans who I work for, when a mortar round or RPG hit the Lobby. The glass exploded , and once again, I was not injured and everyone ran to the Hotel bunker to wait for the All Clear sign. The Hotel suffered nothing but broken glass and some jittered nerves, but for me, it was the second attack in less than two hours and I withdrew into my own little brain…..telling myself that no place was safe as it seemed like the terror was following me around that morning in Kabul.

Since then, I have stayed in German Army Hospitals except for the plane rides to Germany where I am now. I am receiving treatment for Psychological Trauma and am getting better quickly. I hope to be released to Outpatient within about 4 days. And then about a month more of Outpatient therapy and then final release back into the employment world when I will be able to totally navigate on my own. The goal is to prevent and reduce the long term possibility or impact of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ( “PTSB”) which we all heard of with the Korean and Vietnam War Veterans and other traumatic incident survivors.

I shall not assign my survival that day to my training, skills, experience and quick thinking ( although I am told by many that it was a critical part of my actions and movement within the first minute of the attack ). I have been given yet another chance on the Planet by my Higher Power. I am no more “religious” today than I was a minute before 6 AM on October 28th; however I have grown substantially. My spirituality is stronger now than ever; and I am convinced that God has a Plan for me, I just need to follow the Steps and listen for His guidance on a daily basis.

Only once since then have I wanted or seriously thought of taking a drink, and I asked to be relieved of that notion, and it was granted. I take some light weight sleeping medication and hope to reduce the strength soon, then be totally free of it within two more weeks or so depending on what the Doctors say. I am receiving excellent medical care here in Germany, with three Doctors and a bevy of Nurses. I see a Trauma Specialist MD every other day and I am recuperating well.

My employment contracts ends in February so money is temporarily not a problem, and I have good insurance for the hospital expenses. So, for today, all I ask for is another chance to be free of my Weaknesses and Character Defects and look for the next path I am to take.

I totally and unconditionally TRUST.

Work the Steps. Turn it over to God. Clean House. Help Others.

With ALL my Love,

Duston"

World Cup bid unites Hondurans divided by coup

Fire Is Born — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:30:58 EDT

Photo 7 of 11

Honduras' Carlos Pavon, right, and Donis Escuber hug after defeating El Salvador 1-0 and classifying for the 2010 World Cup at the end of a qualifying soccer match in San Salvador, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009. (AP Photo/Claudio Cruz)

s ago

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A soccer victory that clinched Honduras' first trip to the World Cup in almost 30 years is giving its people an exhilarating distraction from the divisive political crisis that has gripped the country for the last 3 1/2 months.

Negotiators are continuing talks on whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya. But right now Hondurans are more interested in celebrating Wednesday night's 1-0 defeat of neighboring El Salvador.

Thursday was declared a national holiday and hundreds of thousands of people celebrated outside, many welcoming the team at the airport and others lining the streets to a church where the players attended Mass.

Next year's World Cup in South Africa will be Honduras' first since 1982.

(This version CORRECTS that it will be Honduras' first trip to World Cup in almost 30 years, sted 30 years)

Medicare spending $1,023 higher for the previously uninsured,

Fire Is Born — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:51:07 EDT

Expanded Health Coverage Could Save Money LaterAfter 65, previously uninsured have more annual Medicare spending than continuously insured
Oct 6, 2009

TUESDAY, Oct. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Expanding health coverage to adults may result in later savings from reduced Medicare spending on these individuals after they turn 65, especially for the uninsured with cardiovascular disease, diabetes or severe arthritis, according to research published online Oct. 6 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
J. Michael McWilliams, M.D., of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues analyzed data from 2,951 adults who were continuously insured before the age of 65, and another 1,616 who were continuously or sometimes uninsured before this age. They assessed annual Medicare spending after age 65 for each participant.
The researchers found that total annual Medicare spending was $1,023 higher for the previously uninsured, which was a significant difference. The previously uninsured had higher annual hospitalization rates for complications related to cardiovascular disease or diabetes (9.1 versus 6.4 percent) and joint replacement (2.5 versus 1.3 percent).
"There are good reasons to believe that insurance coverage in the pre-Medicare years would reduce expenditures during the Medicare years, and health reform advocates will certainly take heart from the authors' conclusions. Unfortunately, because the data and methods used in this study are not capable of supporting causal interpretations, the savings to Medicare are unlikely to be as large as this study suggests," writes the author of an accompanying editorial.
The study was supported by the Commonwealth Fund. Several co-authors reported relevant consulting work and legislative testimony.
Abstract
Full Text
Editorial
Copyright © 2009 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

Capitalist Case For Nonprofit Health Insurance

Fire Is Born — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:51:06 EDT

Adviser Soapbox

Capitalist Case For Nonprofit Health Insurance

John E. Girouard 10.12.09, 7:09 PM ET

If you want to know what went wrong with our health care system and the best way to fix it, all you have to do is look back a few decades to a time when health care was a community concern, considered as essential as any public utility. It should be again, not just because it makes sense but also because it's the most profitable way to go.

The irony in the current debate over a "public option" health plan is that we once had a form of socialized medicine. Blue Cross, the most recognizable name, began in 1929 as a tax-exempt insurer covering a community of teachers in Dallas. Blue Shield was started as a tax-exempt insurer to cover employees of mining and lumber companies in the Pacific Northwest, with a group of local doctors providing care through a service bureau.

IPOs have been rare in 2009. LogMeIn, Inc. (LOGM) went public in July at $15. Shares are near $19 now. Click here for Jim Oberweis' guidance on LOGM in the October issue of the Oberweis Report.

We lost the positive aspects of affiliation health insurance starting in the 1960s and through the 1980s when Wall Street discovered there was money to be made turning nonprofit health insurers, hospitals and nursing homes into investor-owned companies. What we got was a massive conflict-of-interest--profit vs. public good--that has culminated in a dysfunctional health delivery system that has undermined our economy, reduced our national wealth and torn our social fabric.

One might argue whether our estimated 47 million uninsured is a moral shame, but there is no argument that millions of people clogging our emergency rooms and other social services because it's their only option is a crime against our economy, both in direct costs and loss of productivity.

A solution that would have something for everyone and meets the test of minimum government intervention would have three tiers of coverage:

1. Primary Care Community Nonprofits: States, regional groups, hospital consortiums and communities would be encouraged to form nonprofit health insurance companies guaranteeing at reduced premiums a primary level of care--ambulatory, emergency room, routine physicals, and so on. Every citizen would be required to be covered.

This would immediately add 47 million new customers generating premium payments into the pool of available revenue. There would be no qualifying exam nor any discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.

Those who paid their mandatory premiums could deduct them on their income- tax returns. Those who failed to pay their premiums might be subject to a minimum tax penalty or some other mechanism to encourage compliance.

These nonprofits might then, like municipalities, be able to turn to the financial markets to raise capital for building projects and other needs, perhaps issuing tax-exempt bonds.

2. Reinsure Catastrophic Risk: Community nonprofits would be required to do what large companies do when self-insuring. They set aside enough reserves to cover their employees up to a set threshold above which they reinsure themselves. Nonprofits could do the same thing, passing risk on to for-profit companies against a financial disaster from big-ticket losses that could result from a single disaster, a disease outbreak, or just having a high percentage of elderly patients needing extensive care.

The for-profit reinsurance business ought to be highly profitable if well-managed. The number of transactions they would have to handle would be vastly reduced, driving down costs. But for this to work, these companies would need to be reinsured as well, much as banks are. That's where government steps in, just as it does in the banking industry.

3. Create a Federal Health Insurance Corporation: Just as we regulate the banking industry because it is essential, requiring banks to pay insurance premiums to guarantee deposits, the role of the federal government would be to act as the insurer of last resort. Such an agency would guarantee claims above a set amount, allowing private reinsurers to calculate their risks more accurately and set competitive, profitable premium rates.

This is not a public option, it is a public imperative. It is what we expect from government after a hurricane or other natural disaster. It seems logical that in the event of a health insurance disaster, Uncle Sam should be ready to step in for the public good. And it seems equally logical that the federal government should be in the business of setting standards and regulating an industry that provides a public service, just as we regulate water, power and public transportation companies.

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This three-tiered approach contains elements that should appeal to most interest groups. The nonprofit primary care level eliminates the conflict of interest that currently exists between profit and the rendering of a crucial public service. Insurance companies would go back to doing what they are supposed to, managing risk instead of managing care.

This system is close to what members of Congress refer to as "the same health insurance we have." Once a year federal employees get to choose who their health insurer is from a list of a dozen or so approved providers. A covered employee with a chronic disease can switch insurers if he or she decides a different company offers a better plan, without an exam and regardless of pre-existing conditions.

This system should appeal to both sides of the "public option" argument.

Liberals who want to see everyone covered and the profit motive taken out of medical decisions would see their aims met as more citizens would likely seek out and receive preventive care instead of waiting until they need to be rushed to an emergency room at enormous expense.

Conservatives who want government to spend less and do more to stimulate the flow of capital and the creation of wealth would achieve their goals in the form of the private financing of nonprofit insurers and in the presumed net reduction in the cost to taxpayers of providing emergency and social services to the uninsured.

John E. Girouard of Washington, D.C., is a financial writer and the author of "The Ten Truths of Wealth Creation."

Cubans on President Obama's Nobel Prize

Fire Is Born — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:13:01 EDT

No comment. fib

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Leading Cuban dissidents cheer Obama's Nobel prize (AP) – 8 hours ago HAVANA

— Many of the 75 activists jailed in a 2003 Cuban government crackdown on political dissent are congratulating Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter released Monday to international journalists, 29 of those imprisoned six years ago said Obama "has become a global symbol, especially for us who, under difficult conditions, are defending Cubans' right to democracy."

In another letter, 21 of their wives, mothers and other female relatives also cheered Obama. Fifty-four dissidents remain imprisoned on allegations they conspired with the U.S. to topple Cuba's government. Those freed were granted medical parole or forced into exile in Spain. One was released after completing a six-year sentence.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOSU7Ew6j4vlEn0d_L0eXG0A1w1gD9B9M09G0

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Fidel Castro congratulates Obama on Nobel win

Zimbabwe News.Net

Sunday 11th October, 2009

Former Cuban president, Fidel Castro, has said he was obliged to acknowledge the Nobel Prize given to US President, Barack Obama, was a "positive measure," and especially important considering the "genocidal policies" of some former US presidents.

He also said the decision was good compensation for the fact that the US had been defeated in Copenhagen when Rio de Janeiro was picked as a site for 2016 Olympic Games.

In an article titled "Reflections," published on the Internet, 83-year-old Castro said while he did not always share the views of those who award the Nobel, Obama’s prize was "an appeal for peace and a search for solutions that lead to the survival of species."

In his comments, he said: "Many will say that Obama has not yet earned the right to receive such a distinction. We prefer to see the decision as not so much a prize for the president of the US, but as a criticism of the genocidal policies pursued by a few presidents of that country, who led the world to the crossroads it is at today."

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http://www.zimbabwenews.net/story/553184

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Hope for a Restored Native America

Fire Is Born — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:39:17 EDT

"Dedicated to the seven generations that came before us
and the children of Indian Country today,
so their innocence and laughter may develop into wisdom
as they become the leaders of tomorrow."

Introduction

American Indian and Alaska Native cultures
hold children in a special place of honor. Children
are the gift of the Creator. The birth of a child is
celebrated and honored. Each tribe has its own
world view that tells the children their place
in the cosmos through stories and ceremonies.
The community has a sacred obligation to
instill in them the traditional knowledge of past
generations so their innocence and laughter may
develop into wisdom as they become the leaders
of the future.

For countless generations cradleboards were
used by Indian mothers to keep their infants
secure. Most cradleboards carry an umbilical
cord amulet to connect the child with past and
future generations throughout their life. We
know that in the same way, safe and nurturing
Indian communities enable Native children to
fully achieve their potential so we can honor and
continue the culture and traditions of the past
seven generations.

Unfortunately, all too often Native children
are born into circumstances that may be rich
in culture and love, but fail to meet their basic
needs of health, shelter, safety and education.
Every Indian child should have the right to
community-based, culturally appropriate
services that help them grow up safe, healthy,
and spiritually strong – free from abuse, neglect
and poverty. Our communities – tribal leaders,
parents, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts,
uncles and families – have a vision of a restored,
safer, healthier Indian Country for our children.
Creating safe and supportive tribal communities
for our children today honors our ancestors as
well as the generations to come.

This FY 2009 Tribal Budget Request highlights key
aspects of the vision tribal leaders have expressed
to create a safe and healthy Indian Country for our
children. In developing these recommendations, we
recognize that addressing the years of under-funding
and backlogs that plague Indian Country will be
accomplished over time. The requests that follow do
not reflect the full need in Indian Country, but rather
are achievable first steps that we believe Congress
and the President should be able to support this year.

From Senator Clair McCaskill

Fire Is Born — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:06:18 EDT

I always liked Senator Clair McCaskill. fib

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The Twilight Zone

I feel that I’m in an alternative universe. For eight years some people called anyone who disagreed with the President’s foreign policy or war in Iraq unpatriotic. Then in the course of two weeks, those same people cheer when the United States does not get selected for the Olympics and boo when our President is the unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Go figure.

Congratulations Mr. President for standing up to the scorn and derision of your opponents in the election when you firmly stood for the proposition that strength meant being willing to talk to your enemies, not just your allies. Thank you for the confidence and wisdom to say that a hand will be extended when their fist is unclenched. And thank you for understanding that our national security rests on our principles, the example we set for the world, and our alliances along with the excellence and strength of our military, rather than exclusively the latter. God Bless America.

http://clairecmc.tumblr.com/post/208582433/the-twilight-zone

Link to OrganizingforHealthCareBlog

Fire Is Born — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:52:34 EDT

I notice that the entire site has problems. There is no access to blogs of ANY group.

Hope it is some re-organization. Below is an URL to Chris Hass. fib

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http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/group/OrganizingforHealthCareBlog

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President Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

Fire Is Born — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:15:02 EDT

I am craying with tears of happiness. Can't say more now. Can you? fib

ps. It is "thick" today!!! Rejoyce!

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President Barack Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

Play Video AP – 2009 Nobel Peace Prize goes to President Obama

AP – President Barack Obama speaks about winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Friday, Oct. 9, 2009, in the … By KARL RITTER and MATT MOORE, Associated Press Writers Karl Ritter And Matt Moore, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 30 mins ago

OSLO – President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to build momentum behind his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

Obama said he was surprised and deeply humbled by the honor, and planned to travel to Oslo to accept the prize, which he said he does not see "as a recognition of my own accomplishments," but rather as a recognition of goals he has set for the United States and the world.

"I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize," Obama said.

Many observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency, which began less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline and has yet to yield concrete achievements in peacemaking.

Some around the world objected to the choice of Obama, who still oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has launched deadly counter-terror strikes in Pakistan and Somalia.

Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said their choice could be seen as an early vote of confidence in Obama intended to build global support for his policies. They lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation, and praised his pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen the U.S. role in combating climate change.

Aagot Valle, a lawmaker for the Socialist Left party who joined the committee this year, said she hoped the selection would be viewed as "support and a commitment for Obama."

"And I hope it will be an inspiration for all those that work with nuclear disarmament and disarmament," she told The Associated Press in a rare interview. Members of the Nobel peace committee usually speak only through its chairman.

The peace prize was created partly to encourage ongoing peace efforts but Obama's efforts are at far earlier stages than past winners'. The Nobel committee acknowledged that they may not bear fruit at all.

"He got the prize because he has been able to change the international climate," Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. "Some people say, and I understand it, isn't it premature? Too early? Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us."

After the prize was announced, Jagland compared the decision to give it to Obama to the prize was given to German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1971 for his "Ostpolitik" policy of trying to find common ground with Eastern Europe, which was under Communist sway.

He said the same thing was true when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev got the prize in 1990 after he had launched perestroika and glasnost, and allowed Eastern Europe to emerge from Kremlin control.

The selection to some extent reflects a trans-Atlantic divergence on Obama. In Europe and much of the world he is lionized for bringing the United States closer to mainstream global thinking on issues like climate change and multilateralism. At home, the picture is more complicated. As president, Obama is often criticized as he attempts to carry out his agenda — drawing fire over a host of issues from government spending to health care to the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.

U.S. Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele contended that Obama won the prize as a result of his "star power" rather than meaningful accomplishments.

"The real question Americans are asking is, What has President Obama actually accomplished?" Steele said.

Obama's election and foreign policy moves caused a dramatic improvement in the image of the U.S. around the world. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S. favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged across the world under President George W. Bush.

Asked whether the prize could be seen as praising Obama's reversal of Bush administration policies, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, a senior political adviser to the right-wing populist Progress Party told the AP that: "I guess you could read it like that."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made no secret of his admiration for Obama, called the decision the embodiment of the "return of America into the hearts of the people of the world."

But Obama's work is far from done, on numerous fronts.

He said he would end the Iraq war but has been slow to bring the troops home and the real end of the U.S. military presence there won't come until at least 2012.

He's running a second war in the Muslim world, in Afghanistan — and is seriously considering ramping up the number of U.S. troops on the ground and asking for help from others, too.

"I don't think Obama deserves this. I don't know who's making all these decisions. The prize should go to someone who has done something for peace and humanity," said Ahmad Shabir, 18-year-old student in Kabul. "Since he is the president, I don't see any change in U.S. strategy in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Obama has said that battling climate change is a priority. But the U.S. seems likely to head into crucial international negotiations set for Copenhagen in December with Obama-backed legislation still stalled in Congress.

Former Polish President Lech Walesa, who won the prize in 1983, questioned whether Obama deserved it now.

"So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far. He is still at an early stage. He is only beginning to act," Walesa said.

"This is probably an encouragement for him to act. Let's see if he perseveres. Let's give him time to act," Walesa said.

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, the peace prize is given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Like the Parliament, the committee has a leftist slant, with three members elected by left-of-center parties. Jagland said the decision to honor Obama was unanimous.

The award appeared to be at least partly a slap at Bush from a committee that harshly criticized Obama's predecessor for his largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"Those who were in support of Bush in his belief in war solving problems, on rearmament, and that nuclear weapons play an important role ... probably won't be happy," said Valle, the Nobel Committee member.

The Nobel committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the U.N. to the center of the world stage.

"You have to remember that the world has been in a pretty dangerous phase," Jagland said. "And anybody who can contribute to getting the world out of this situation deserves a Nobel Peace Prize."

Until seconds before the award, speculation had focused on a wide variety of candidates besides Obama: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator, a Chinese dissident and an Afghan woman's rights activist, among others. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize, though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award: President Theodore Roosevelt won in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize in 1919.

Wilson received the prize for his role in founding the League of Nations, the hopeful but ultimately failed precursor to the contemporary United Nations.

The Nobel committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

In July talks in Moscow, Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed that their negotiators would work out a new limit on delivery vehicles for nuclear warheads of between 500 and 1,100. They also agreed that warhead limits would be reduced from the current range of 1,700-2,200 to as low as 1,500. The United States now has about 2,200 such warheads, compared to about 2,800 for the Russians.

But there has been no word on whether either side has started to act on the reductions.

Former Peace Prize winner Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, said Obama has already provided outstanding leadership in the effort to prevent nuclear proliferation.

"In less than a year in office, he has transformed the way we look at ourselves and the world we live in and rekindled hope for a world at peace with itself," ElBaradei said. "He has shown an unshakable commitment to diplomacy, mutual respect and dialogue as the best means of resolving conflicts."

Obama also has attempted to restart stalled talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, but just a day after Obama hosted the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York, Israeli officials boasted that they had fended off U.S. pressure to halt settlement construction. Moderate Palestinians said they felt undermined by Obama's failure to back up his demand for a freeze.

Obama was to meet with his top advisers on the Afghan war on Friday to consider a request by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to send as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan as the U.S war there enters its ninth year.

Obama ordered 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan earlier this year and has continued the use of unmanned drones for attacks on militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a strategy devised by the Bush administration. The attacks often kill or injure civilians living in the area.

Nominators for the prize include former laureates; current and former members of the committee and their staff; members of national governments and legislatures; university professors of law, theology, social sciences, history and philosophy; leaders of peace research and foreign affairs institutes; and members of international courts of law.

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

___

Associated Press writers Ian MacDougall in Oslo, Rahim Faiez in Kabul, Celean Jacobson in Johannesburg, George Jahn in Vienna, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

http://www.nobelpeaceprize.org

Free Thursday at the CITA art gallery

Fire Is Born — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:22:00 EDT

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OAS leaders in Honduras

Fire Is Born — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:46:00 EDT

Honduras talks start, police break up protest

By Frank Jack Daniel Frank Jack Daniel – 2 hrs 17 mins ago

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Talks between representatives of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the country's de facto leader began on Wednesday as top envoys insisted the ousted leftist be reinstated and police used tear gas on a protest.

Foreign ministers and diplomats including the head of the Organization of American States are overseeing the highest-level dialogue to take place in the coffee-growing nation since Zelaya was exiled at gunpoint three months ago.

Shortly before the meeting began, police fired volleys of tear gas to clear several hundred people marching past the U.S. Embassy in support of the logging magnate.

Police and soldiers armed with clubs and automatic weapons chased away demonstrators who shouted "Help us, OAS." Two people were injured, one by a rubber bullet and another by a gas canister, a local hospital said.

Zelaya and the OAS mission insist the president's return to power is a non-negotiable demand. De facto leader Roberto Micheletti previously ruled out that option but in recent days has not mentioned it, in a possible softening of his position.

"Those who thought it was possible to depose a president and normalize life in the country before starting an election campaign should realize that this has not been possible," OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza said, flanked by the envoys.

A representative of Micheletti called for an end to the international isolation Honduras has suffered since the putsch and said sanctions had cost the poor country $400 million.

Honduras has a presidential election scheduled for November 29 but critics say curbs on media and public gatherings imposed by Micheletti mean the campaign will not be fair. The results may not be recognized without a prior agreement ending the crisis.

Zelaya said Micheletti only agreed to the talks to fend off international criticism and keep the de facto government going.

"They do not have the least intention of reverting the coup, they are just playing for time," he told the Telesur television channel from the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he has been holed up surrounded by troops since slipping back into Honduras two weeks ago.

ZELAYA ON CAMPING MATTRESS

Zelaya was toppled after drawing close to Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, whom powerful conservatives in Honduras say was advising Zelaya to extend his presidential term.

Micheletti took power after the June 28 putsch and wants his rival jailed. On Tuesday he said political amnesty was on the table but did not mention a return to office for Zelaya.

Peter Kent, Canada's junior foreign minister, said the OAS mission was pushing to have Zelaya live somewhere other than the embassy, where he sleeps on an inflatable camping mattress.

"We are realistic," Kent said. "This is not going to be achieved in a day or two days or perhaps even a week. But we believe there is room for progress."

The de facto government says the ouster of Zelaya, forced from his bed into exile by armed soldiers, is legal because he had violated the constitution.

Pro-Zelaya protests since his return to Honduras have led to clashes with security forces that caused dozens of injuries and the death of at least one protester.

Honduran rights group Cofadeh says 10 Zelaya supporters have been killed since June in violence linked to the coup.

Coups and military governments were common in Honduras for most of the 20th century. U.S. banana importer Sam Zemurray helped bring President Manuel Bonilla back to power in 1912 in return for favorable business conditions.

(Additional reporting by Gustavo Palencia, Miguel Angel Gutierrez and Ignacio Badal in Tegucigalpa and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Tonight at the White House (for James)

Fire Is Born — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:36:56 EDT

I hope for all of us that the president's job, one day, will include mostly this sort of events. Wouldn't that be a wonderful and normal world? Peace!. fib

ps. Warning: the comments below are from the Earth. Educational, too.

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Obama stargazes from the South Lawn

14 Comments

Recommend

After a three-hour meeting on Afghanistan, President Obama gets to have some fun tonight by stargazing with kids and astronauts.

It's Astronomy Night on the South Lawn, and our Oval colleague Traci Watson describes tonight's proceedings (as well as budget challenges facing NASA):

The president will spend this evening not curled up with briefing books but instead studying the heavens through telescopes. This "star party" on the White House lawn is meant to encourage kids to take an interest in science, and to that end Obama and the first lady have invited 150 local middle-school students to stargaze, too.

Unusually in Washington, Wednesday evening was shaping up to be crystal-clear and cloudless -- perfect for viewing the universe.

Much murkier is what's in store for any students who are inspired to become astronauts. In the next few weeks, Obama will have to decide whether to plow billions of extra dollars into NASA's budget. Without that infusion of cash, America's manned space program could not "continue in any meaningful way," according to a September report by space experts convened by the White House.

At the end of the star party, all 21 telescopes scattered across the backyard of the White House will be trained on the moon. That was where astronauts were headed in 2020 in the space plan announced by President Bush in 2004. Now Obama is rethinking that idea.

"We will certainly go back to the moon at some point," John Holdren, the president's science adviser, said as he toured the star party facilities a few hours before sunset. But he couldn't say when.

If Holdren wanted more expert advice, it was easily available. Also on hand for Obama's astronomy night was Sally Ride, the first U.S. woman in space and one of the experts who warned the administration that without significant new funding NASA's human space program is doomed to irrelevance.

Ride, who said she hadn't been at the White House for at least a decade, was enthusiastic about Obama's initiatives.

"There's not very much doubt about the value of science again" in this administration, she said

Ride, an astrophysicist, won't be the only one at the event who knows her way around a telescope. Amateur observers from the Washington area and professional astronomers will be operating the equipment for the first family and students.

Also on hand will be two high school teachers dressed as Galileo and Newton, operating replicas of the telescopes used by those early stargazers.

"We're either really cool or really crazy," said Dean Howarth, a teacher at McLean High School in McLean, Va., who gets to play Newton. "If we're not here this evening, it's because the people at the front gate wouldn't let us in.

(Posted by Traci Watson and David Jackson; photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais, The Associated Press)

United Cerebral Palsy Association advocates for the universal coverage

Fire Is Born — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:02:26 EDT

I assure you it is very difficult putting yourself in the shoes of someone with cerebral palsy. fib

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Video about history of the Associaition:

http://www.overstream.net/view.php?oid=ruarngm0uusx

Help fight the Right-wingers with me:

Fire Is Born — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:31:11 EDT

*** DEADLINE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT -- ONLY $83,231 TO GO. CONTRIBUTE NOW. ***
They rant. Right wingers all over the country spent much of this summer trying to intimidate us by turning open forums into ugly shout-fests. Republican leaders were perfectly happy to encourage this, and while conservative politicians did not themselves exactly rant, they did distort the same, and yes, lie.

I gave my response to these ridiculous tactics at a public meeting in August, and I have since thought that I might have been too harsh -- on dining room tables.

Now you can reinforce the message I gave and send an even stronger one.

With the media closely watching both parties' third quarter fundraising totals, nothing would put fear in the hearts of the right wing extremists who are propagating this kind of nonsense than for us to out-raise them online. Right now we're just $83,231 away from our Million Dollar Goal.

Show your support for President Obama's health insurance reform. Help us raise just $83,231 more by our Midnight Deadline. For every dollar you give, a group of Democrats will match with two dollars of their own.

The lunacy we saw this summer by the right-wing fringe isn't letting up. Following his contemptible outburst at President Obama, Republican Congressman Joe Wilson raised over $2 million in contributions.

But even worse, Wilson's now taking his act on the road, traveling the country to raise money for Republican House Members and candidates. We have to respond.

This is make-or-break time for health insurance reform. With the media closely watching, President Obama needs grassroots Democrats to stand strong. Your support will help us gain the momentum we need to finish the job on health insurance reform.

Contribute $35, $50 or more by MIDNIGHT tonight and your gift will be triple matched by other Democrats.

Thank you,

Barney Frank

P.S. This is make-or-break time for health insurance reform. The media is closely watching to see which side has the momentum. Please give generously.

*A group of Democrats will match your donation today. For every dollar that you donate, these Democrats will donate two dollars of their own.
If you are having trouble with any of the links, cut and paste the following into your browser:
http://www.dccc.org/barneyfrank1

Honduras: Day 86

Fire Is Born — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 14:51:05 EDT

I pray for all Honduran people and for the just peace in Central America. fib

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The Road to Zelaya’s Return: Money, Guns and Social Movements in Honduras

Written by Benjamin Dangl

Monday, 21 September 2009

Nearly three months after being overthrown in a violent military coup, ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has returned to Honduras. "I am here in Tegucigalpa. I am here for the restoration of democracy, to call for dialogue," he told reporters. The embattled road to his return tested regional diplomacy, challenged Washington and galvanized Honduran social movements.

THERE ARE BLACK MEXICANS!

Fire Is Born — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:45:39 EDT

TALKING OF RACISM... fib

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2009 Blacks in Mexico: A Forgotten Minority By Alexis Okeowo / Yanga

The first town of freed African slaves in the Americas is not exactly where you would expect to find it — and it isn't exactly what you'd expect to find either. First, it's not in the United States. Yanga, on Mexico's Gulf Coast, is a sleepy pueblito founded by its namesake, Gaspar Yanga, an African slave who led a rebellion against his Spanish colonial masters in the late 16th century and fought off attempts to retake the settlement. The second thing that is immediately evident to vistors who reach the town's rustic central plaza: there are virtually no blacks among the few hundred residents milling around the center of town.

Mirroring Mexico's history itself, most of Yanga's Afro-Mexican population has been pushed to neighboring rural villages that are notable primarily for their deep poverty and the strikingly dark skin of their inhabitants. Mexico's independence from Spain and new focus on building a national identity on the idea of mestizaje, or mixed race, drove African Mexicans into invisibility as leaders chose not to count them or assess their needs. Now many blacks want to fight back by improving the shoddy education and social services available to them and are petitioning for the constitution to recognize Afro-Mexicans as a separate ethnic group worthy of special consideration. (See graphics of slavery and the Americas.)

"The two races that are most discriminated against here are the blacks and the indigenous — but it is more accepted against blacks," says Hemeregildo Fernandez, a doctor in Yanga and one of the few blacks still living in town. His office is tucked on a narrow street that juts off the main square, where the rotund man with warm brown skin and salt-and-pepper hair receives a fluctuating stream of patients. The majority of the black Mexican population works in agriculture, fishing or construction, and while, like Fernandez, some have achieved notable positions in coastal towns, he says, "Most blacks have no economic power." (Read a story about the indigenous custom of bride-selling.)

Many of the country's mexicanos negros (black Mexicans), as they are called, know that their ancestors arrived in chains on boats that docked at ports in the sultry, steamy state of Veracruz. But they don't know much else. Indeed, Afro-Mexicans say that much of the history of los mexicanos negros is untaught or ignored by the rest of the country. Apart from Yanga, Afro-Mexicans claim Vicente Guerrero, who served briefly as President in the early 19th century and gave his name to the state of Guerrero, as one of their own, as well as revolutionary José María Morelos, who was executed by the Spaniards in 1815. (Read a story about an indigenous mother who might lose her child because she doesn't speak English.)

Black Mexican activists estimate the population of Afro-Mexicans at about 1 million, but there are no official figures. Earlier this year, they petitioned the National Institute of Statistics and Geography to include the Afro-Mexican population as a separate category in the next census, in 2010. Official statistics do not recognize blacks as a separate ethnic group (56 indigenous groups are officially accredited, the largest ones being the Nahuatl and the Maya, numbering more than 2 million each). As a result, Afro-Mexicans say they have been left out of institutional programs and are without a cultural identity. The group Mexico Negro A.C. is linking with similar Afro-descendant organizations in Latin America that have achieved success in securing better treatment. "We no longer want to be detained by security agents in our own country who say that in Mexico there are no blacks," says Rodolfo Prudente Dominguez, an activist with Mexico Negro.

The Afro-Mexicans face considerable hurdles. Prevailing stereotypes paint the group as happy to live the simple life apart from the rest of society, with no interest in education. The all-black shantytowns near Yanga lack schools, and eager young migrants who move to bigger cities for work complain of blatant discrimination. A report released late last year by Mexico's Congress said that roughly 200,000 black Mexicans who reside in the rural areas of Veracruz and Oaxaca and in tourist cities like Acapulco are out of the reach of social programs like employment support, health coverage, public education and food assistance.

Afro-Mexican culture expert Luz Maria Montiel acknowledges that blacks are particularly marginalized and excluded, to the point that it is impossible to find any mention of them in official records. Yet she argues that it is impractical for blacks to seek constitutional recognition. "It would be impossible to make a law for each of the populations that make up our multicultural nation," she says. Dominguez disagrees: "We are a totally different cultural group from indigenous groups and mestizos of our country, with a particular lifestyle and characteristics that do not respond to public policies that are designed for indigenous grouPS.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1922192,00.html

I've had it!

Fire Is Born — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:51:26 EDT

END WAR ON DRUGS! BASTA. NO SOCIAL REFORMS WILL HELP AS LONG AS THIS GOES ON. fib

ps. as a recovering addict of alcoholic preference, i know how tough it has been to recover from my legal addiction. what hope am i going to offer to my active adict friends? this?! fib

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Gunmen kill 10 at Mexico drug treatment center By ALICIA A. CALDWELL,

Associated Press Writer Alicia A. Caldwell,

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Gunmen burst into a drug treatment center in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and shot to death 10 people, the second such mass killing this month.

Police say nine men and one woman were killed in the attack just before midnight Tuesday at the Anexo de Vida center in Mexico's most violent city. Two people were seriously wounded.

Enrique Torres, a spokesman for Chihuahua state police, said Wednesday the identities of the gunmen and the motive for the attack have not yet been established.

But officials have said in the past that drug gangs may be using treatment centers to recruit dealers, or may be targeting them to eliminate rivals.

Most of the victims are believed to have been recovering addicts staying at the facility.

"Why? Why them?" said Pilar Macias, weeping after she identified the body of her brother, Juan Carlos Macias, 39. "He was recovering, he wanted to get back on the right track and they didn't let him, they didn't give him a chance."

"This is going to kill my mother," Macias said. "She's very sick and this is going to kill her."

Macias said the mother had encouraged her son to enter the facility for treatment of his cocaine addiction three months ago.

Maria Hernandez also had come to the state prosecutor's office to identify the body of her 25-year son.

"He was good, he didn't hang out with gangs, he didn't have 'narco' friends," she said. "He just began with marijuana, and then ... they killed him."

Pools of dry blood and bloodied footprints were visible Wednesday in the courtyard of the drug and alcohol rehab center where the shooting occurred.

The center is located in a poor neighborhood with dirt streets, some of which were impassable due to recent rains.

On Sept. 2, gunmen lined patients against a wall at another rehabilitation center in Ciudad Juarez and then riddled them with bullets, killing 18.

Five men were killed at another rehabilitation center in June, and in August 2008, gunmen barged into a pastor's sermon at a rehabilitation center and opened fire, killing eight people. Authorities have not said if any of the attacks are related.

Ciudad Juarez has seen the worst of the nation's drug violence, with more than 1,300 deaths this year. The bloodshed has continued despite a buildup in troops since March.

Early Wednesday, gunmen burst into a bar in Ciudad Juarez and shot to death five men, police said. They said they knew of no motive for the attack.

Surging gang violence has claimed 13,500 lives since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and deployed extra soldiers across the country to fight cartels.

Also Wednesday, police in the southern state of Guerrero reported they had found the decomposed bodies of four men by the side of a highway. Because of their poor condition, the cause of death and identity of the bodies has not yet been established.

Union membership in California increases despite recession

Fire Is Born — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:37:17 EDT

"It's quite amazing that the recession hasn't caused a decline in unionization," said Lauren Appelbaum, lead author of the study.

Recessions tend to batter union jobs, particularly in the manufacturing sector, experts say. In the current recession, however, California manufacturing has fared somewhat better than elsewhere in the nation. Appelbaum said the residential-construction sector, which is relatively nonunion, was hit hard.

Union growth in California has been driven by the state's emergence as a hub of grass-roots organization, especially among low-wage employees like janitors, healthcare workers and security guards, said Appelbaum and Chris Tilly, the institute's director and a professor of urban planning at UCLA.

"Unions have developed strategies that seem to be much more successful, and they're adding members," Tilly said.(...)"

How to Watch the Speech

Fire Is Born — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:07:26 EDT

How to Watch the Speech

By David M. Herszenhorn

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

A meeting on health care reform in Reston, Va.

In his speech to Congress on Wednesday night, President Obama will press his case for major health care legislation, not just with lawmakers in the audience, but also with a deeply wary public watching at home.

And while Mr. Obama will probably talk in clear, plain-spoken terms, decoding his remarks and the reaction he gets will require both a careful ear and a keen eye. Here are some of the main things to listen and look for:

Will he reiterate his support for a government-run insurance plan — or finally state outright that he can accept a compromise that might disappoint liberals?

Will the president give a shout-out to influential Republicans like Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa — or threaten to barrel over opponents?

Will centrist lawmakers sit on their hands — or give him a big ovation?

Will Mr. Obama reassure elderly voters worried about Medicare cuts? Can he do that even while explaining how the country can afford to subsidize health coverage for more than 40 million Americans who currently have none?

Beyond those big questions, here’s an armchair guide to watching the president’s big speech at home.(...)"

THE NEW SLAVERY

Fire Is Born — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:01:07 EDT

A must see. fib

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http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=visit&lid=152

Imagine, the world without the drug war..

Fire Is Born — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:35:50 EDT

"Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die."

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

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Now, digg this:

http://digg.com/d312kVB

A Radical Solution to End the Drug War: Legalize Everything

One cop straight out of The Wire crunches the numbers with Esquire.com's political columnist to discover that America's prohibition of narcotics may be costing more lives than Mexico's — and nearly enough dollars for universal health care. So why not repeal our drug laws? Because cops are making money off them, too.

Killing addicts in rehabilitation centers - recent strategies in the "war on drugs"

Fire Is Born — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 11:08:38 EDT

This has been the fifth attack on a rehabilitaion center in Ciudad Juarez. fib

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Arrest over Mexican drug murders

A senior member of a Mexican drug cartel has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murders of 17 people at a rehab centre, reports say.

Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, a suspected hitman and drug smuggler, was held in connection with the murders in the city of Juarez, near the border with Texas.

He has long been on wanted lists held by both the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

Meanwhile, a state politician and his family were killed in Tabasco state.

The bodies of Jose Francisco Fuentes - a state congressional candidate - his wife and two young sons were found with many bullet wounds at their house in the state capital, Villahermosa, according to state Attorney General Rafael Gonzalez Lastra.

Authorities in the state have in recent days arrested gunmen suspected of working for Mexico's notorious Gulf drug cartel

Turf wars

According to Mexican media reports, Mr Escajeda was arrested by Mexican troops on Friday.

Thought to be a senior figure in the Juarez cartel, he is suspected of involvement in the attack last week in which gunmen stormed into a drug treatment clinic, lined patients up against a wall and killed at least 17 of them.

The BBC's Stephen Gibbs, in Mexico, says the attack shocked even the violence-weary residents of Ciudad Juarez, where there have been an average of 10 murders every day this year.

Juarez is the setting of a vicious turf war, principally between two gangs - the Juarez cartel, and the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Mexico's most wanted man and reported billionaire, Joaquin Guzman.

The gangs are fighting for control of the local drug market, and smuggling routes into the United States.

About 1,400 people have died in Juarez's drug violence this year.

Thousands of extra police and troops have been deployed in Ciudad Juarez to try to stem the violence.

More than 13,000 people have been killed since the Mexican government ordered the military to take the offensive against the drug gangs in 2006.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8240213.stm

Published: 2009/09/06 04:17:07 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Speaking of "socialism"..

Fire Is Born — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:48:12 EDT

Capitalism: A Love Story

(Documentary) An Overture Films release of a Paramount Vantage, Overture Films presentation in association with the Weinstein Co., of a Dog Eat Dog production. (International sales: Paramount Vantage, Los Angeles.) Produced by Michael Moore, Anne Moore. Executive producers, Kathleen Glynn, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein. Co-producers, Rod Birleson, John Hardesty. Directed, written by Michael Moore.

With: Michael Moore, Frank Moore.

By LESLIE FELPERIN

By returning to his roots, professional gadfly Michael Moore turns in one of his best films with "Capitalism: A Love Story." Pic’s target is less capitalism qua capitalism than the banking industry, which Moore skewers ruthlessly, explaining last year’s economic meltdown in terms a sixth-grader could understand. That said, there’s still plenty here to annoy right-wingers, as well as those who, however much they agree with Moore’s politics, just can’t stomach his oversimplification, on-the-nose sentimentality and goofball japery. Whether "Capitalism" matches "Fahrenheit 9/11" or underperforms like Sicko" will depend on how much workers of the world are ready to unite behind the message.

Pic reaped mostly ecstatic applause at its first press screening in Venice — no great surprise, given the largely leftist persuasion of film-fest auds, especially in Europe. Still, "Capitalism’s" worldview is resolutely U.S.-centric, apart from the odd approving mention of some foreign nation. Nevertheless, pic is likely to make considerably more offshore, where "socialism" isn’t considered a cuss word, than at home.(...)"

Have Mexican Dishwashers Brought California to Its Knees?

Fire Is Born — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:40:25 EDT

Have Mexican Dishwashers Brought California to Its Knees?

Posted by Daniel Griswold

An article published this week by National Review magazine blames the many problems of California on—take a guess—high taxes, over-regulation of business, runaway state spending, an expansive welfare state? Try none of the above. The article, by Alex Alexiev of the Hudson Institute, puts the blame on the backs of low-skilled, illegal immigrants from Mexico and the federal government for not keeping them out.

Titled “Catching Up to Mexico: Illegal immigration is depleting California’s human capital and ravaging its economy,” the article endorses high-skilled immigration to the state while rejecting the influx of “the poorly educated, the unskilled, and the illiterate” immigrants that enter illegally from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.

Before swallowing the article’s thesis, consider two thoughts:

One, if low-skilled, illegal immigration is the single greatest cause of California’s woes, how does the author explain the relative success of Texas? As a survey in the July 11 issue of The Economist magazine explained, smaller-government Texas has avoided many of the problems of California while outperforming most of the rest of the country in job creation and economic growth. And Texas has managed to do this with an illegal immigrant population that rivals California’s as a share of its population.

Two, low-skilled immigrants actually enhance the human capital of native-born Americans by allowing us to move up the occupational ladder to jobs that are more productive and better paying. In a new study from the Cato Institute, titled “Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform,” this phenomenon is called the “occupational mix effect” and it translates into tens of billions of dollars of benefits to U.S. households.

Our new study, authored by economists Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer, found that legalization of low-skilled immigration would boost the incomes of American households by $180 billion, while further restricting such immigration would reduce the incomes of U.S. families by $80 billion.

That is a quarter of a trillion dollar difference between following the policy advice of National Review and that of the Cato Institute. Last time I checked, that is still real money, even in Washington.

Daniel Griswold • August 26, 2009 @ 11:34 am

Filed under: Immigration and Labor Markets; Trade

Tags: California, Cato, economic benefits, economic growth, economists, economy, federal government, government, growth, hud, illegal immigration, immigrants, immigration, jobs, latin america, legalization, Mexico, money, National Review, regulation, spending, tax, taxes, Texas, the economist, Trade, undocumented workers, washington, welfare, welfare state

Mexico now has one of the world's most liberal laws for drug users

Fire Is Born — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:10:06 EDT

Gracias a Dios! Thanks Obama Adminstration for not messing up with the neighbor's business.

Yes we can - too! fib

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Mexico's new drug use law worries US police By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press Writer Julie Watson, Associated Press Writer 47 mins ago MEXICO CITY – Mexico now has one of the world's most liberal laws for drug users after eliminating jail time for small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and even heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.

"All right!" said a grinning Ivan Rojas, a rail-thin 20-year-old addict who endured police harassment during the decade he has spent sleeping in Mexico City's gritty streets and subway stations.

But stunned police on the U.S. side of the border say the law contradicts President Felipe Calderon's drug war, and some fear it could make Mexico a destination for drug-fueled spring breaks and tourism.

Tens of thousands of American college students flock to Cancun and Acapulco each year to party at beachside discos offering wet T-shirt contests and all-you-can-drink deals.

"Now they will go because they can get drugs," said San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne. "For a country that has experienced thousands of deaths from warring drug cartels for many years, it defies logic why they would pass a law that will clearly encourage drug use."

Enacted last week, the Mexican law is part of a growing trend across Latin America to treat drug use as a public health problem and make room in overcrowded prisons for violent traffickers rather than small-time users.

Brazil and Uruguay have already eliminated jail time for people carrying small amounts of drugs for personal use, although possession is still considered a crime in Brazil. Argentina's Supreme Court ruled out prison for pot possession on Tuesday and officials say they plan to propose a law keeping drug consumers out of the justice system.

Colombia has decriminalized marijuana and cocaine for personal use, but kept penalties for other drugs.

Officials in those countries say they are not legalizing drugs — just drawing a line between users, dealers and traffickers amid a fierce drug war. Mexico's law toughens penalties for selling drugs even as it relaxes the law against using them.

"Latin America is disappointed with the results of the current drug policies and is exploring alternatives," said Ricardo Soberon, director of the Drug Research and Human Rights Center in Lima, Peru.

As Mexico ratcheted up its fight against cartels, drug use jumped more than 50 percent between 2002 and 2008, according to the government, and today prisons are filled with addicts, many under the age of 25.

Rojas has spent half his life snorting cocaine and sniffing paint thinner as he roamed Mexico City's streets in a daze. Most days he was roused awake by police demanding a bribe and forcing him to move along, he said.

"It's good they have this law so police don't grab you," said Rojas, whose name, I-V-A-N, is tattooed across his knuckles.

Rojas hit bottom three weeks ago when he could not score enough money for drugs by begging and found himself shaking uncontrollably. He accepted an offer for help from workers from a drug rehabilitation center who approached him on the street.

"Drugs were finishing me off," said Rojas, whose 13-year-old brother died of an overdose eight years ago. "I lost my brother. I lost my youth."

Juan Martin Perez, who runs Caracol, the nonprofit center helping Rojas, said the government has poured millions of dollars into the drug war but has done little to treat addicts. His group relies on grants from foundations.

The new law requires officials to encourage drug users to seek treatment in lieu of jail, but the government has not allocated more money for organizations like Caracol that are supposed to help them.

Treatment is mandatory for third-time offenders, but the law does not specify penalties for noncompliance.

"This was passed quickly and quietly but it's going to have to be adjusted to match reality," Perez said.

Supporters of the change point to Portugal, which removed jail terms for drug possession for personal use in 2001 and still has one of the lowest rates of cocaine use in Europe.

Portugal's law defines personal use as the equivalent of what one person would consume over 10 days. Police confiscate the drugs and the suspect must appear before a government commission, which reviews the person's drug consumption patterns. Users may be fined, sent for treatment or put on probation.

Foreigners caught with drugs still face arrest in Portugal, a measure to prevent drug tourism.

The same is not true for Mexico, where there is no jail time for anyone caught with roughly four marijuana cigarettes, four lines of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams of methamphetamine or 0.015 milligrams of LSD.

That's what concerns U.S. law enforcement at the border.

"It provides an officially sanctioned market for the consumption of the world's most dangerous drugs," San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said. "For the people of San Diego the risk is direct and lethal. There are those who will drive to Mexico to use drugs and return to the U.S. under their influence."

Don Thornhill, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor who investigated Mexican cartels for 25 years, said Mexico's rampant drug violence will likely deter most U.S. drug users, and the new law will allow Mexican police to focus on "the bigger fish."

The Bush administration criticized a similar bill proposed in Mexico in 2006, prompting then-President Vicente Fox to send it back to Congress. But Washington has stayed quiet this time, praising Calderon for his fight against drug cartels — a struggle that has seen some 11,000 people killed since Calderon took office in 2006.

"We work with Mexico every day to combat illegal drugs and cartel violence," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said when asked about the law. "And we look forward to continuing that cooperation."

_____

Associated Press writers Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Vivian Sequera in Bogota, Harold Heckle in Madrid, Elliot Spagat in San Diego, Olga Rodriguez in Mexico City and Matt Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Sen. Feinstein on private coverage of preventative services for reproductive care in health reform legislation

Fire Is Born — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:28:26 EDT

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Thank you for writing to express your opposition to proposed restrictions on private coverage of preventative services for reproductive care in health reform legislation. I appreciate the time you took to write to me on this important issue, and I welcome this opportunity to respond.

The Senate Finance Committee is currently debating health care reform proposals. One proposal would create a Health Insurance Exchange through which individuals and small businesses could purchase health insurance. In order to assist those not able to afford health insurance, some individuals and families would receive subsidies to help pay for the health insurance. Insurers would provide an essential benefits package, which would be determined by the Department of Health and Human Services after receiving recommendations from a federal advisory committee. The Senate Finance Committee is currently considering restrictions on the insurance packages offered in the Exchange, specifically restricting preventative services for reproductive care, including abortion.

I share your concerns about the proposed restrictions, and I have contacted Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to express these concerns. These restrictions would leave many American women worse off than they are today. I believe that reproductive health services should be treated no differently than any other health care service or benefit in the current health care reform discussions. While I understand that many individuals may not want to purchase health insurance that covers reproductive services, everyone should have the opportunity to select health insurance without those services restricted.

I support preventative reproductive care because I believe that services such as family planning are incredibly valuable. Please know that I will keep your comments in mind as I continue to review health care reform legislation in the 111th Congress.

Again, thank you for writing. If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington D.C. office at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours, Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

Further information about my position on issues of concern to California and the Nation are available at my website http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/. You can also receive electronic e-mail updates by subscribing to my e-mail list at http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ENewsletterSignup.Signup.

From Time: 5 truths about health care in America

Fire Is Born — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:27:30 EDT

Very interesting and well presented. I wish we learned this much and this way watching television. fib

http://www.time.com/time/2008/health_care/index.html

In 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000

Fire Is Born — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:20:26 EDT

I found this article on a trail of reads that started with CR's post below on the First Family Western touring.That's web browsing for you! Doug, thank you for your passionate posts advocating for the bottom 4% of US to get health insurance too. Here we learn about the TOP "decile". fib

"Though income inequality has been growing for some time, the paper paints a stark, disturbing portrait of wealth distribution in America. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. "

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Income Inequality Is At An All-Time High: STUDY

huffingtonpost.com — Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. The paper, which covers data through 2007, points to a staggering, unprecedented disparity in American incomes.

http://digg.com/politics/Income_Inequality_Is_At_An_All_Time_High_STUDY

It's a War!

Fire Is Born — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:59:51 EDT

http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war

Trust my doctor? When?

Fire Is Born — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:09:08 EDT

"(...) Oftentimes breast cancer survivors were told to steer clear of weight lifting -- or even carrying their children or heavy grocery bags, because doctors thought it could worsen the swelling. The new study, the largest to date, seems to contradict that recommendation.

Don't Miss

In fact, the research team led by Kathryn Schmitz, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and a member of the university's Abramson Cancer Center, found that weight lifting increased muscle strength, decreased the number and severity of arm and hand symptoms, and reduced lymphedema exacerbations.(..)"

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/13/weight.lifting.breast.cancer/

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It would also help to know that removing the lymph nodes is not always necessary, that it is a mere biopsy and not a cure (only 60% of cancer spreads via nodes), and that there are less invasive surgical technics invented in Italy in the 1990s that extract only one crucial lymph node at the entrance to the delta of connections instead of all fourty or so. Then already being performed in my own hospital affiliated to my oncologist.

In 2000 I was not told about it by my very renown oncologist - I was immediately told about the new surgery when I visited Breast Health Center in Palo Alto. They simply handed me a copy of a medical paper. I found about the Center after an AA meeting when I mentioned I was diagnosed with cancer. It pays to be a drunk.Women should inform themselves before hand in such centers. That one in Palo Alto CA was crucial to my well being - and it has nothing to do with the entire money brouhaha of insurance and doctors. It is a .org. Be well, my friends! fib

"Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?"

Fire Is Born — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:33:09 EDT

No verbal comment. FIB

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August 9, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

By BARBARA EHRENREICH

IT’S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s. “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.

The report lists America’s 10 “meanest” cities — the largest of which are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but new contestants are springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.

That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it’s definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington — the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants.

It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant — for not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing” (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail. “Can you imagine?” asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Mr. Szekely. “They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless.”

The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.

If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by committing a significant crime — by participating in the armed robbery of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.

For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with a regimen of frantic scratching.

For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization — one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors’ prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can’t afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to “sit out their tickets” in jail.

Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now you’re in contempt of court. Or suppose you miss a payment and, before you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you’re stopped for something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have your car impounded or face a steep fine — again, exposing you to a possible summons. “There’s just no end to it once the cycle starts,” said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. “It just keeps accelerating.”

By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been effectively “profiled” for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.

Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you’re littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect, according to “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice,” an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is like looking “overly anxious” in an airport, Mr. Butler writes, the police “can force you to stop just to investigate why you don’t want to talk to them.” And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting arrest.”

There’s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children’s Defense Fund calls “the cradle-to-prison pipeline.” In New York City, a teenager caught in public housing without an ID — say, while visiting a friend or relative — can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice programs for the Children’s Defense Fund of New York, told me. In just the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing and sometimes handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school hours.

In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as much as $500 — crushing amounts for people living near the poverty level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group, 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.

Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent of the “truants,” especially those who are black or Latino, are merely late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep their children home if there’s the slightest chance of their being late. It’s an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from sending their youngsters to school.

The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks.

And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief marijuana-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing.

Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police sweeps. The safety net, or what’s left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

Some of the community organizers I’ve talked to around the country think they know why “zero tolerance” policing has ratcheted up since the recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that “poor people have become a source of revenue” for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly demented fund-raising strategy. At a Congressional hearing in June, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers testified about the pervasive “overcriminalization of crimes that are not a risk to public safety,” like sleeping in a cardboard box or jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.

A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record $51.7 billion on corrections, an amount that the center judged, with an excess of moderation, to be “too much.”

But will it be enough — the collision of rising prison populations that we can’t afford and the criminalization of poverty — to force us to break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people in poverty increasing (some estimates suggest it’s up to 45 million to 50 million, from 37 million in 2007) several states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty — for example, by sending drug offenders to treatment rather than jail, shortening probation and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missed court appointments. But others are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of “crimes” but also charging prisoners for their room and board — assuring that they’ll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.

Maybe we can’t afford the measures that would begin to alleviate America’s growing poverty — affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation and so forth. I would argue otherwise, but for now I’d be content with a consensus that, if we can’t afford to truly help the poor, neither can we afford to go on tormenting them."

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of “This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation.”

“Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why.”

Fire Is Born — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:58:35 EDT

Dr. Welch's essay touches upon the uneasy grounds of our health business that I have known from my own experience. I am glad somebody elso wrote it first, and is a physician. FIB

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July 28, 2009

Essay

To Overhaul the System, ‘Health’ Needs Redefining

By H. GILBERT WELCH, M.D.

"The Canadians haven’t figured it out. Neither have the Japanese, the French or the British. No health care system has seriously grappled with the question most fundamental to its task: what constitutes health?

As the United States contemplates an overhaul of its system, maybe we should take a stab at it.

For years the question has been deferred to those with a financial interest in the answer — health professionals entwined with pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic technologies, free-standing diagnostic centers, surgical centers, hospitals and academic medical centers — a group aptly labeled some 30 years ago by the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine as the “medical-industrial complex.”

It’s an industry that has learned a lot over those years. I know, because I’ve been part of it. And increasingly it has settled on a most convenient answer: health is the absence of abnormality.

In the past, people sought health care because they were sick. Now the medical-industrial complex seeks patients. It encourages those with minor symptoms to be evaluated and urges those who feel well to get “checked” — just to make sure nothing is wrong.

So, if health is the absence of abnormality, the only way to know you are healthy is to become a customer.

But healthy people aren’t great customers; they’re like the people who pay off their entire credit card balance each month. The money is in those in whom an abnormality can be found.

The medical-industrial complex has made that relatively easy to do.

It develops diagnostic technologies able to find smaller and smaller abnormalities. So more and more of us are found to have damaged cartilage in our knees, bulging discs in our backs, and narrowed blood vessels throughout our bodies. And far too many are also found to have “spots” or “shadows” that are seldom significant but are said to be “worrisome.” So more and more of us have knee surgery, back surgery, angioplasty and more diagnostic investigation.

And the medical-industrial complex has another way to find more abnormalities: it simply narrows the definition of normal. Take blood pressure. In the past, relatively few were said to have abnormal blood pressure. Now a normal blood pressure is said to be below 120/80. This means that well over half the adult population of the United States is abnormal. The same is true for cholesterol. And although it involves a smaller portion of the population, narrower definitions of normal are expanding the number of people said to have diabetes and osteoporosis. So more and more of us are treated for these conditions.

Finding more abnormalities has been a great strategy for our industry. But it has been a disaster for health-care costs.

Some believe that finding more abnormalities is the right strategy to improve the nation’s health, but how much it reduces death and disability is open to debate. The new abnormalities being found are generally not severe, but mild: they are not life-threatening, and in many patients they won’t ever produce symptoms. When the benefit of treatment is known, it is known to be small — so small that many people, sometimes hundreds, must be treated for one person to benefit. But more often than not, the value of treating these mild abnormalities is simply not known.

What is known is that others are invariably harmed in the process. Admittedly, the harms are often mild — lightheadedness or fainting from too much blood pressure medication, for example. But occasionally they are more severe, even fatal; last year, for instance, a major study of intensive diabetes treatment was stopped because it caused more deaths.

But while these harms are rare, so are the benefits— if they exist at all. Nevertheless, the medical-industrial complex has systematically exaggerated the benefits and minimized or ignored the harms. The reality is more nuanced: whether a strategy does more good than harm is often a much closer call than is ever advertised.

And then there is a larger question. How does “absence of abnormality” affect our perception of health? This construct is both too narrow and too broad. It’s too narrow because there is more to being healthy than striving to avoid death and disease. Health is more than a physical state of being; it’s also a state of mind.

And it’s too broad because all of us harbor abnormalities. The construct drives the system to look for things to be wrong — a search that will be successful in most of us. We then feel more vulnerable. This induced vulnerability undermines the very sense of well-being and resilience that in many ways defines health itself. Viewing health as the absence of abnormality thus conflicts with the desire for a healthier society.

Furthermore, the strategy has created a host of other problems: doctors who are overwhelmed by the number of ailments their patients allegedly have (and who are often distracted from the most important ones); doctors in training who are increasingly confused about who is really sick and who is not; lawyers who increasingly have a field day with the charge of “failure to diagnose”; patients who get too much treatment or lose health insurance because they been given a new diagnosis; and a frazzled, fearful public adrift in a culture of disease. Oh, and did I mention that it has been a disaster for health-care costs?

If you are one of the millions of Americans adversely affected by the unrelenting growth of health costs — an employer that can’t afford insurance or a patient who can’t afford prescription drugs or can’t find insurance at all — you have to take back responsibility for deciding what health really means, not surrender that decision to “experts” with strong financial incentives.

And even if you are one of the few who doesn’t need to worry about money, you still need to take back this responsibility. Your health may depend on it."

H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Hanover, N.H., is the author of “Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why.”

Food for your thought: Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

Fire Is Born — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 22:34:44 EDT

Since I have been on the move this last decade I have done a lot of medical tourism - in Poland, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Very helpful, as I was without insurance in this country for a good couple of years. I could not efford to buy COBRA - and Keiser did not want to give it to me in the first place. And I was in a "Let's go!" mood again. Why not globalization? Business is business, after all. FIB

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Why Don't We Globalize Health Care?

By DEAN BAKER

With the rising cost of healthcare now atop the national agenda, one theme rings like a frustrating refrain: healthcare is special, so the tools we use to fix normal economic problems don’t apply. What good is mass production in confronting the complexities of the body? How can cost-benefit analysis grasp the unfixable value of a human life?

There is at least one tenet of modern economic policy, however, that we are excluding from the healthcare debate at our peril: globalization.

It may seem bizarre to suggest that globalization could somehow improve healthcare. After all, the practice of medicine is not only deeply individual, but tightly tied to time and place. Apart from possibly buying drugs from Canada, most people have probably never given any thought to the idea that globalization could have a meaningful impact on healthcare in the United States. But globalization, carefully applied, could reduce costs in the short term and create pressure for the bigger changes our system desperately needs.

There are clear ways to take advantage of lower costs in other countries, making our own system more affordable without diminishing the quality. We could allow more foreign-born doctors to work in the United States, for instance. We could encourage the “medical tourism” that allows Americans to have major procedures performed in other countries, and we could permit Medicare beneficiaries to buy into the lower-cost healthcare systems of other wealthy countries.

From Quinnipac: There is still strong support for critical elements of the Obama/Democratic plan

Fire Is Born — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:40:57 EDT

"There is still strong support for critical elements of the Obama/Democratic plan:

* 62 - 32 percent in favor of giving people the option of a government insurance plan;

* 61 - 36 percent for higher taxes on high income earners to pay for health care reform;

* 60 - 32 percent in favor of insurance subsidies for individuals making up to $43,000 and families of four making up to $88,000;

* 54 - 38 percent for requiring businesses to provide insurance or pay the government.

Voters oppose 68 - 26 percent requiring people to have health insurance or pay a fine and oppose 68 - 27 percent taxing employees for health care benefits from employers. Independent voters, perhaps the key voting group, are more worried about the deficit rising than congressional inaction, 54 - 37 percent. These voters say 59 - 36 percent that overhaul should not occur if it would "significantly" increase the deficit. Independents oppose 63 - 33 percent passing a bill with only Democratic votes."

Big Oil moves into Peruvian Amazon

Fire Is Born — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:41:48 EDT

Weeks after bloodshed, American oil moves into Peruvian Amazon, putting rainforest, possible archeological site at risk

(08/03/2009) "Barely six weeks after a dozen Amazon natives were gunned down by the Peruvian Army in the oil town of Bagua for protesting the cozy relationship between Big Oil and the government of President Alan Garcia, I find myself on the banks of the Mother of God River in Salvacion, Peru, wondering if all those folks died in vain. Any day now, the bulldozers will be moving in as Texas-based Hunt Oil Company – with the full go-ahead of the Peruvian government -- fires its first salvo in its assault against the million-acre pristine rainforest wilderness of the little-known and largely unexplored Amarakaeri Communal Reserve."

Unions To Take On Conservative Groups Health Care Town Halls

Fire Is Born — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:22:42 EDT

huffingtonposthttp://bit.ly/VZVd2 - Unions To Take On Conservative Groups Health Care Town Hallsabout 3 hours ago from API

World Breastfeeding Week has begun August 1st

Fire Is Born — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:30:52 EDT

A baby girl born on 1 August, the first day of the World Breastfeeding Week, in Malali Hospital, Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan.

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We talk too much about health insurance and not enough about health. I know we need to settle the first issue first, and we are going to win this battle! If we help these coming weeks.

Now, about health - I think that anything that separates Mothers from their infants and babies is the scourge of the modern times, including work outside home and powdered milk. I am serious. What's good for Afghanistan is as good for the United States.

I run upon this issue today because I was also struck couple days ago by the infant mortality rates for Afghanistan (I was looking for Honduras statistics and then swayed elsewhere) - which remain cataclysmic.

here they are:

Under-5 mortality rank

Under-5 mortality rate, 1990

260

Under-5 mortality rate, 2007

257

Infant mortality rate (under 1), 1990

168

Infant mortality rate (under 1), 2007

165

Neonatal mortality rate, 2004

Total population (thousands), 2007

27145

Annual no. of births (thousands), 2007

1314

Annual no. of under-5 deaths (thousands), 2007

338

GNI per capita (US$), 2007

250

Life expectancy at birth (years), 2007

Total adult literacy rate (%), 2000–2007*

Primary school net enrolment/ attendance (%), 2000–2007*

% share of household income 1995–2005*, lowest 40%

% share of household income 1995–2005*, highest 20%

Definitions and data sources

total: 151.95 deaths/1,000 live births

country comparison to the world: 3
male: 156.01 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 147.7 deaths/1,000 live births

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Afghanistan#Infant_mortality_rate

U.S. Can Do More For Honduras

Fire Is Born — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:09:14 EDT

As predicted, Barbara Lee D-CA had already signed the letter. I have this telepathic Rep.

How about yours? fib

ps. Honduras needs your opinion! Put your e-pen where your mind and heart is.

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U.S. Can Do More For Honduras

Rep. Grijalva is asking fellow members of Congress to sign a letter to President Obama urging him to increase the pressure on the coup regime in Honduras.

Ask your Representative to sign Rep. Grijalva's letter »

Action Spotlight

Urge Your Rep to Sign Grijalva Letter for More US Pressure on Coup Regime in Honduras

Talks between President Zelaya and the coup regime in Honduras broke down over the coup regime's refusal to accept the international demand for President Zelaya's return. The U.S. has so far failed to sufficiently pressure the coup regime.

Rep. Raul Grijalva is circulating a letter to President Obama, calling on him to denounce the repression in Honduras by the coup regime, and to freeze U.S. assets and suspend U.S. visas of coup leaders. Signers of the letter include Reps. McGovern, Conyers, and Serrano.

Urge your Representative to sign the Grijalva letter calling for more U.S. pressure on the coup regime.

57 progressive leaders stood up for a real public health insurance option. Sign the card to say thanks!

Fire Is Born — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 11:11:59 EDT

I have just thanked my Rep. Barbara Lee, CA. She is precious to have. I don't even have to call her. She knows what people want. fib

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57 progressive leaders stood up for a real public health insurance option. Sign the card to say thanks!

Lynn Woolsey, Raul Grijalva, Carolyn Kilpatrick, Jerry Nadler, Phil Hare, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Keith Ellison, Earl Blumenauer, Mel Watt, Donna Edwards, John Olver, Dennis Kucinich, Laura Richardson, Maxine Waters, John Conyers, Judy Chu, Maurice Hinchey, Hank Johnson, Diane Watson, Jackie Speier, Bill Pascrell, Lloyd Doggett, Marcy Kaptur, Mazie Hirono, Bob Filner, Linda Sanchez, Marcia Fudge, Barbara Lee, Andre Carson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Michael Honda, Jim McDermott, William Lacy Clay, Jim McGovern, Yvette Clarke, Eric Massa, Chellie Pingree, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Elijah Cummings, Bennie Thompson, Gwen Moore, Donald Payne, Fortney "Pete" Stark, Ed Towns, Corrine Brown, Alcee Hastings, Nydia Valezquez, Luis Gutierrez, Grace Napolitano, Albio Sires, John Tierney, Mike Capuano, Chaka Fattah, Jose Serrano, Sam Farr, Bill Delahunt, and Eddie Bernice Johnson.

Single Payer Gets A Vote!!

Fire Is Born — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 02:02:53 EDT

Single Payer Gets A Vote (Updated)

July 31, 2009

"Anthony Weiner is about to be the new hero of the progressive crowd after getting a promise from Nancy Pelosi to debate — and vote — on a single-payer plan to solve health care reform.

Weiner got that promise after he agreed to withdraw an amendment to essentially create Medicare for the whole nation in the Energy and Commerce Committee health care markup session this evening.

The Brooklyn-Queens Rep. looked a little surprised when Chairman Henry Waxman said Pelosi would allow that vote, and made Waxman repeat the deal to be sure it was clear and on the record.

It’s an especially big deal for advocates of a single health care system — who see it as cheaper and simpler than the complicated measure being drawn up — because they have been complaining that they have not even been able to get an airing of their position.

And having the vote of the floor of the House will force members to declare a position, and bring much more attention to the idea.

Update: Weiner, who high-fived Tammy Baldwin after getting the deal, crows in a quick press release:

“It’s a Better Plan and now it’s on Center Stage,” says Weiner

Washington, DC - Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee announced today that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has pledged to give Single-Payer an up or down vote when healthcare reform is considered before year’s end.

Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Co-Chair of the Middle Class Caucus and member of the Energy & Commerce Committee who led the effort with Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA); Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY); Rep. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL); Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-IL); and Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), released the following statement:

“Single-payer is a better plan and now it is on center stage. Americans have a clear choice. Their Member of Congress will have a simpler, less expensive and smarter bill to choose. I am thrilled that the Speaker is giving us that choice.”

- Michael McAuliff"

from my friend Kiki: Time to get FIRED UP about Health Care Reform

Fire Is Born — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:52:47 EDT

Sender: Cactus Wren from Tucson
Subject: Time to get FIRED UP about Health Care Reform
Received: 7/28/09 12:59PM EDT

It is a critical time for all of us who voted for change in the country...no matter how discouraged or frustrated you may be, activism is what works. Go to your mybarackobama and sign the pledge to support healthcare, contribute any amount you can to counter the Rs planned million dollar anti health care reform media blitz planned for August.

We can't lose the Public Option!

Use the Women's Law Center (https://secure2.convio.net/...) site to write to your representatives, and get everyone you know back in gear.

This is what we voted for, campaigned for and worked for so hard. Obama can't get this done without us! We can do this if we all come together.

Still working, praying, believing in change - Kiki A.

Please sign the letter on health care to senators!

Fire Is Born — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:42:28 EDT

I like the ad too. fib

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http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5649/t/4772/content.jsp?content_KEY=2697&tag=pob_pob_tw1

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Senators,

Some of your colleagues, such as Ben Nelson, are delaying action on President Obama's public health insurance option -- which would force private insurers to compete and lower health care costs for your constituents.

This is the latest tactic from an insurance industry that fears competition: Stop reform by stalling it. Kill momentum at all costs.

While 76% of Americans support the public option, sitting Democratic Senators have received $80 million from the health and insurance interests that oppose it.

Senators, which side will you choose? If you side with your constituents, don't delay reform. Keep working until the public option is passed.

We can't afford to wait.

Sincerely,

Crucial vote on single-payer Medicare for All ( H.R.676 ) today!

Fire Is Born — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:49:19 EDT

crucial vote on single-payer Medicare for All ( H.R.676 ) - please call

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One week ago, we eagerly anticipated a crucial vote on single-payer Medicare for All ( H.R.676 ) in the House Energy & Commerce Committee, sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). But then seven BlueDogs waged a highly-publicized war against a "robust public option" and the vote was delayed for a full week.

We just learned the vote will be tomorrow ( Friday ). Based on all of your calls, we have nine single-payer Democrats: Tammy Baldwin, Michael Doyle, Eliot Engel, Anna Eshoo, Gene Green, Edward Markey, Janice Schakowsky, Anthony Weiner, and Peter Welch.

Lean Yes
Diana DeGette CO01 202-225-4431
Jane Harman CA36 202-225-8220
Christopher Murphy CT05 202-225-4476
Frank Pallone NJ06 202-225-4671 @FrankPallone
Bobby Rush IL01 202-225-4372 Five more Democrats are leaning single-payer but still uncommitted. Please call each one and give them one crucial reason to support single-payer from our petition:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-petition?cid=ZGVtczU0MTkyNWRlbXM=
(Be sure to sign our petition and forward it if you haven't already.)

Be concise and practice in advance so you can speak quickly (or leave a voicemail) because they are getting swamped. Report the results of your calls here:
http://www.democrats.com/single-payer-committee-whip

Public Option Only (or Won't Say)
Rick Boucher VA09 202-225-3861
Bruce Braley IA01 202-225-2911
G.K. Butterfield NC01 202-225-3101
Lois Capps CA23 202-225-3601
Kathy Castor FL11 202-225-3376
John Dingell MI15 202-225-4071
Charles Gonzalez TX20 202-225-3236
Jay Inslee WA01 202-225-6311 @RepInsleeNews
Doris Matsui CA05 202-225-7163
Jerry McNerney CA11 202-225-1947
John Sarbanes MD03 202-225-4016
Bart Stupak MI01 202-225-4735
Betty Sutton OH13 202-225-3401
Henry Waxman (Chair) CA30 202-225-3976 If you have more time, these 14 Democrats support a "public option" at best. But that "public option" (a new government program to compete with private insurance) was disastrously weakened this week by the BlueDogs. They banned the use of Medicare pricing to reduce costs and thereby expand availability. Try to persuade these 14 to vote for single-payer instead of a worthless BlueDog "public option."

Don't let anyone tell you single-payer can't pass: the Kucinich Amendment for a single-payer "state option" passed by a shocking 25-19 bi-partisan majority in the House Education and Labor Committee on July 17. The Weiner Amendment will pass on Friday if enough Democrats vote for it!

A victory on the Weiner Amendment would make a huge difference. Please call as soon as you get this - night or day.

Thanks for all you do!

Bob Fertik

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Canadians cry foul over U.S. healthcare attacks

Fire Is Born — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:05:07 EDT

"Canadians cry foul over U.S. healthcare attacks By Allan Dowd Allan Dowd Wed Jul 29, 8:52 am ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Canadian physician Robert Ouellet is tired of hearing Canada's healthcare system cast as the boogeyman in the vitriolic U.S. political debate over healthcare reform.

Critics of President Barack Obama's reform drive have accused him of trying to adopt the Canadian system of public healthcare funding, which they say endangers patients with lengthy waits for medical care.

Some advertisements feature Canadian citizens who say they were denied needed medical care or forced to seek treatment at their own expense in the United States because Canada's system was too slow to respond.

While Ouellet, president of the Canadian Medical Association, admits that Canada's system has its flaws, including excessive wait times for some medical services, he denies the accusation that it puts lives at risk.

"To say that the system is a complete failure is not fair. When people go to the hospital they get good quality medical care. ... People are not dying on the street," said Ouellet, who practices medicine in the French-speaking province of Quebec.

Canada's "national" system is actually a set of provincial and territorial insurance systems governed by a federal law that says coverage is universal, and ensures that taxpayers, not patient fees, pay for primary medical services so everyone can afford them..

"It's 14 systems," Ouellet said.

CULTURAL GAPS

Canadians are quick to cite healthcare as a cultural difference with their southern neighbor, describing it as inconceivable that 47 million Americans -- more than Canada's population -- live without health insurance.

"It's seen as something that separates us from the United States," said Mike Luff, a spokesman for the National Union of Public and General Employees.

The attacks on Canada's healthcare are also "ironic" because "Obama's plan doesn't come close to what the system is in Canada," Luff said.

White House-backed Bills now making their way through the U.S. House and Senate would overhaul rules for private health insurers, and offer them competition in the form of a government-run health program.

Private health insurance is also available in Canada, as a supplement to the government-funded insurance system, and Canadians face the same television advertisements as Americans about the risks of not having it.

Canadians can also pay private clinics for some procedures to avoid waiting, but major medical treatments must be done through the government-funded system.

Ouellet says each country has something to learn from the other about health care, and should also take lessons from European countries that provide universal care while reducing both costs and wait times.

Dr. Brian Day, a past CMA president who has advocated for a bigger private-sector role in Canada, is also dismayed that Americans and Canadians focus on one another and ignore the rest of the world when discussing healthcare reform.

"Clearly the Canadian system has problems, but the United States has more problems. ... Neither country is giving value for money," Day said.

The Canadian government has stayed quiet on the U.S. debate, but it may have no choice but to speak out if the Canadian public grows more upset at what it sees as unfair U.S. attacks on a source of national pride, said Mario Canseco, of the polling firm Angus Reid Strategies.

"Sooner or later someone from the federal government is going to have to stand up and say leave us out of this," said Canseco.

Canadian politicians may also be leery of involvement in the U.S. debate because they recognize if the Americans reform their system it could force Canada to address its own healthcare problems, according to Ouellet.

"It's good to have someone like President Obama who wants to fix things," Ouellet said.

(Reporting by Allan Dowd; editing by Janet Guttsman)

Good night! with a video of the eclipse

Fire Is Born — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 03:25:49 EDT

July 22, 2009—See what you probably couldn't view earlier today, unless you were in Asia: The longest total solar eclipse of the entire 21st century. Other eclipses may be longer, but none will see the sun totally eclipsed for so long. Video.

© 2009 National Geographic (AP)

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090722-eclipse-video-ap.html

Military in Honduras Backs San Jose Accord

Fire Is Born — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:14:41 EDT

July 26, 2009 Military in Honduras Backs Plan on Zelaya By GINGER THOMPSON and BLAKE SCHMIDT

WASHINGTON — The Honduran armed forces issued a communiqué on Saturday indicating that they would not stand in the way of an agreement to return Manuel Zelaya, the country’s ousted president, to power.

Meanwhile, in Las Manos, a town along the border between Nicaragua and Honduras, Mr. Zelaya made his second symbolic appearance in two days, defying calls from foreign leaders to avoid any moves that might provoke violence in his politically polarized country.

The communiqué was drafted in Washington after days of talks between mid-level Honduran officers and American Congressional aides. Posted on the Honduran Armed Forces Web site, it endorsed the so-called San José Accord that was forged in Costa Rica by delegates representing President Zelaya and the man who heads the de facto Honduran government, Roberto Micheletti.

The accord, supported by most governments in the hemisphere, would allow Mr. Zelaya to return as president, although with significantly limited executive powers. Mr. Micheletti has steadfastly rejected Mr. Zelaya’s return as president.

In its communiqué, the Honduran military added its support to the proposal. Officials involved said it was meant to dispel any perceptions that the military would block civilian efforts to resolve the crisis.

The officials said the military communiqué was significant because it was the first sign of support for the San José Accord by a powerful sector of the de facto government. And the officials said it could make it more difficult for the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court to reject the accord when they consider it.

American officials who met here with the Hondurans said that they were two colonels who were concerned about the tensions generated by the political conflict.

Joy Olson, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit human rights group, said she was told that the officers were showing Congressional aides a recording of the day Mr. Zelaya was detained, as evidence that no abuses had been committed against him.

In the meantime, however, thousands of troops had been deployed to tighten security along the border to prevent Mr. Zelaya from returning. And thousands of his supporters defied government curfews and military roadblocks, by abandoning their cars and hiking for hours to reach the remote border post to see him.

Mr. Zelaya vowed to try a third time to re-enter Honduras. "We are ready to take this to its final consequences," he told his supporters. "We are not afraid.”

Ginger Thompson reported from Washington, and Blake Schmidt from Las Manos, Nicaragua.

I liked this comment on Bill Moyers interview with Trudy Lieberman and Marcia Angell on the health care reform

Fire Is Born — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:00:19 EDT

"If you don't believe Moyers and my conclusion that Single Payer is the only way to fix our problems, then read "Why must health reform be isolationist?" at Slate.com and then watch PBS's "Sick Around the World." After that, maybe we can get some sanity in the debate.

Some say ours is the best system in the world. It isn't, we rank 37th in the world.

Taiwan looked & rejected our system: "American health care is not really a system at all. It's a market. In a market, people with money can buy what they want & many people are left out. So we thought, no, we don't want market-driven health care. We want a real system, something that covers everybody & doesn't depend on how much money you have. "

Over 50% of bankruptcies & many foreclosures are caused because of health care.

Art Finley, a West Virginian & TV & radio host living in Vancouver, writes:

"I'm 82, & in excellent health. It costs me all of $57 a month for health care, & it's excellent. I'm so tired of all the lies & b.s. I hear about the system up here in the U.S. media. I now have 20/20 vision thanks to Canadian eye doctors. & I haven't had to wait for my surgeries, either. I read a Canadian Doctor's Wall Street Journal op-ed that said 'Everyone in Canada is covered by a single payer -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.' That's sheer b.s."

Posted by: Gregory Mann | July 25, 2009 11:14 AM

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I also liked the idea of Maria Angell to introduce the truly universal program incrementally, and start with expanding the Medicare on everyone above fifty five. Well, that would cover me fore sure. I also remember that until I was fifty I often did not know if was insured or not. At 48 my private insurance lowered my premium! because i made no use of the plan. What happened between 50 and 55 is another story, that would fall in the comments to James's post today, but I will tell it another time. I am afraid I get upset and will get migraine (never heard of them before 50, unless badly hangovered).

And I believe in Bill Moyers.fib

Thursday, July 23, 2009 by CommonDreams.org Spinning Healthcare: A Bad Case of Vertigo by Norman Solomon

Fire Is Born — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:48:59 EDT

"(...)

Media accounts keep telling us that the current political debate on healthcare is unprecedented and groundbreaking. But an article in the latest edition of the Columbia Journalism Review, by seasoned healthcare reporter Trudy Lieberman, makes a convincing case that little has changed within the frames of media parameters.

The press "has mostly passed along the pronouncements of politicians and the major stakeholders who have the most to lose from wholesale reform," Lieberman writes. "By not challenging the status quo, the press has so far foreclosed a vibrant discussion of the full range of options, and also has not dug deeply into the few that are being discussed, thereby leaving citizens largely uninformed about an issue that will affect us all."

What we're seeing now is a slightly freshened version of a timeworn tap dance that ranges across a constricted media stage. As Lieberman notes: "Absent from the debate are not only single-payer systems like the ones in England and Canada, but other systems with multiple payers, like ones in Germany and Japan -- or, for that matter, any discussion of why a system that relies on competition among private insurers in The Netherlands hasn't resulted in lower prices for consumers, as advocates claimed."

The variety of healthcare delivery systems abroad, in industrialized countries, spans a common assumption -- healthcare as a human right -- an assumption that doesn't cut the mass-media mustard in the United States. "What's common to all these systems," Lieberman points out, "is that everyone is entitled to healthcare and pays taxes to support the system, and medical costs are controlled by limits on spending. The specter of a system that takes a significant bite out of stakeholder profits in the U.S. is the real reason the debate is so restricted."

As Trudy Lieberman puts it, "Reform efforts have danced around this impasse for decades."

That helps to explain why so much media coverage of healthcare reform proposals is apt to be so baffling to most readers, listeners and viewers. When the big elephant (or, if you will, donkey) in the national newsroom is dependent on the insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital industries for financing, there's a distinct shortage of candor about the consequences of such ongoing intrusions. Newsgathering, media debate -- and, of course, healthcare -- suffer the consequences.(...)"

War and peace through the bravest eyes

Fire Is Born — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:23:13 EDT

Natalia Estemirova on Chechnya

War and peace through the bravest eyes

Jul 23rd 2009

From The Economist print edition

The testimony of a murdered human-rights campaigner
EPA

IT WAS the kind of scene she had described many times. On July 15th at 8.30am, as she left her flat in Grozny, Natalia Estemirova was forced into a white Lada. She shouted that she was being kidnapped, but those who heard were too scared to report it. By the time her colleagues had found out, she was dead, murdered by three bullets in her chest and a control shot in the head.(...)

"Can communism reform itself?" - Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009.

Fire Is Born — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:10:05 EDT

Hitchens writes from my native city in my native country and it is tough not to be proud again. fib

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A Sense of Historical Irony

Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 12:26 PM ET

WROCLAW, Poland—It was distinctly eerie to learn of the death of professor Leszek Kolakowski just 15 minutes before entering a room in which I was to give a short lecture on his influence. But it was also rather inspiring to be in a country that made the passing of a public intellectual into the front-page headline of every national daily paper the following day.

Meet Russell Means

Fire Is Born — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:19:16 EDT

http://www.russellmeans.com/

NOBODY is going to "Bury My Heart at Walmart"

Fire Is Born — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:36:36 EDT

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"A 1,500 year old Native American stone mound was about to be bulldozed near Oxford, Alabama, and the earth used for a landfill to build a Sam's Club, a BIG BOX discount store owned by Walmart.
Protesters there have managed to stop the shovels temporarily but 320 acres of Sacred burial grounds, temples and sanctuaries are at risk.
An Oxford City council member reportedly said, "it ain't no sacred site, it was just used to blow smoke signals"!! Me thinks me smells the whiff of Colonialism in the forms of ignorance, Consumerism and Globalization...

JOIN US - both virtually via facebook and twitter for social media protests as well as live for the scheduled protest on-site for those few of you who can travel there in person. (10am 7/18/2009) "

Honduras is in the semifinals and the Costa Rica talks WILL continue on Wednesday

Fire Is Born — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:54:13 EDT

Copa Oro

Foto Agencias Honduras está en semifinales a puro coraje

Honduras 1-0 Canadá

http://www.laprensahn.com/

Negociations in Costa Rica are continiung today, Sunday July 19

Fire Is Born — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:51:32 EDT

President Arias had proposed certain points of resolutions to be discussed. In the end, however, it will be the two Honduran delegations to give the final proposal of agreement. Arias said he feels that after yesterday's talks the parties became more flexible. In particular Arias hopes that the agreement will contain the clause that Zelaya would regain power as president but will form a cabinet of reconciliation and unity that would offer security to all Honduran people (“un Gabinete de unidad y reconciliación que le da seguridad al pueblo hondureño”).

The two Honduran parties arived yestarday at 10 a.m. And from the airport directly proceded to the house of Arias.

“The delegation of Manuel Zelaya has in it: Arístides Mejía, the ex-minister of Defense; Milton Jiménez, designated for the Vice-presidency and the ex-chancellor, as well as Enrique Flores Lanza, secretary of the Presidency.

The delegation of mister Roberto Micheletti constitutes of Carlos López, chancellor of the Republic; Arturo Corrales, the president of the Party of Unity and Change (Partido Innovación y Unidad - PINU); Mauricio Villeda, a candidate for the Vice-presidency of the Partido Liberal, and Vilma Cecilia Morales, the ex-president of the Supreme Court of Justice.”

Translation from La Prensa edition Costa Rica by fib

Pic from El Tiempo, Honduran edition:

"PETITION IN SUPPORT OF PAROLE OF LEONARD PELTIER"

Fire Is Born — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:44:46 EDT

I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:

"PETITION IN SUPPORT OF PAROLE OF LEONARD PELTIER"

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/parole2008?e

I really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes less than a minute of your time.

Thanks!

I simply hope he will be free during Obama presidency.

Fire Is Born

Hondurans have something to celebrate today! Let's hope for still more

Fire Is Born — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:27:45 EDT

Honduras captain Walter Martinez celebrates his goal against Canada to lift his team to a 1-0 victory in the quarter-final on Saturday. (Mel Evans/Associated Press)

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PHILADELPHIA — Walter Martinez converted a penalty kick in the 36th minute for Honduras to defeat Canada 1-0 in the Gold Cup quarterfinals on Saturday.

Martinez was trying a bicycle kick when Paul Staltieri was caught pulling on his jersey by referee Joel Aguilar.

Honduras will play the winner of the late game between the United States and Panama at Lincoln Financial Field.

With the state of their country's leadership in flux, the Honduran faithful came out by the thousands to cheer on their team. The fans waved the flag or draped it over the railing in several sections of the stadium, and greatly outnumbered the Canadian fans.

The team gave the Hondurans something to celebrate.

Ousted Honduras President Manuel Zelaya was hoping mediators would reach an agreement that would restore him to power. Zelaya was ousted in a June 28 military coup.

The chief mediator in the Honduras crisis talks has proposed to resolve the conflict by reinstating Zelaya as head of a national unity government, holding early elections and issuing a general amnesty.

Far from home, Martinez and Honduras did enough to advance to the semifinals for the first time since 2005. The fans erupted at the end of the gams as Honduras mobbed each other at midfield, then clapped and waved to their supports as they left the field.

The semifinals are next Thursday in Chicago with the final set for the following Sunday at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

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From "Intercontinental Cry": Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmy) Culture

Fire Is Born — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:43:20 EDT

Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmy) Culture

July 18, 2009 at 9:18am |

143 views and

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“The Abatwa are an example of the phenomenon feared by Subcomandante Marcos and the indigenous communities of the Chiapas region of Mexico, that of being so marginalized as a people that you just don’t matter any more.”

The Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmie) Culture, produced for the 28-minute weekly cable public access program Indymedia Presents, takes a look at the largely-unnoticed struggle of the Abatwa People, more commonly known as the Pygmies.

Modern Abatwa life is a far cry from the past, when they were respected for being highly skilled traditional hunters. Today the Abatwa they have been so completely marginalized it’s like they do not exist.

This has been especially the case since 1973, when the Abatwa were thrown off their lands for an animal preserve. “The unintended consequence of the environmental victory was great destruction to Abatwa culture, and the loss of many lives.”

21 years later, the British Empire’s historical interference in Rwandan culture triggered a genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu. As we watched on in terror, as many as 1,000,000 people were killed.

Nobody ever seemed to notice that the Abatwa were among them. Even now, few have ever reported that they were also targeted by the Hutu. The few reports that do exist, estimate between 10,000 and 30,000 Abatwa died during the months-long genocide. These are the forgotten victims.

Not much has changed since then. With fears occasionally rising that the genocide could happen again, the Abatwa find themselves being dragged to extinction. They are losing one percent of their population each year, and miscarriages are frequent because the Abatwa’s health is so extremely low and they have little or no access to aid, medicine, or social supports.

Some groups doing their best to help, like Caurwa and the Health Development Initiative – but even so, the Abatwa’s struggle for life is a losing one.

The Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmie) Culture is the second in a series of films by Patricia Boiko from Pepperspray Productions. The first program examined the genocide in Rwanda, and how people can heal from such wanton horror.

Filed Under Abatwa • Africa • genocide • indigenous • Rwanda • video

We are all related

Fire Is Born — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:49:47 EDT

Jacqueline Novogratz Invests in Innovations for World's Poor

By Anne Malinee
Washington, D.C.
13 July 2009

Jacqueline Novogratz was a 25-year-old aid worker in Kigali, Rwanda, when she saw something that stopped her in her tracks - a young boy wearing a blue sweater with zebras and a mountain embroidered across the chest.

Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of Acumen Fund, recalls how her early work in Rwanda and a simple sweater influenced her outlook on the worldThis wasn't just any sweater. It was HER sweater, a childhood favorite she had given away to an American charity 10 years earlier. Sure enough, when she stopped the boy, she found her name printed on the sweater's tag.

"And I have kept that sweater and held it as metaphor for how interconnected we are in the world and how our action - and our inaction - can impact people we might never meet, never know, all around the world," she says.

Bridging cultural, economic gaps

Novogratz came to Rwanda by a circuitous path. The oldest of seven children in a military family, she grew up with a strong desire to serve others.

"With a dad in Vietnam, a family that talked about social justice, I was interested in the world, and I wanted somehow to be a bridge," she explains.

With a degree in economics and international relations, Novogratz reviewed corporate financing in Latin America and later in West Africa tried to apply microfinancing to build businesses in low-income areas. But as she recalls in her memoir, The Blue Sweater, she realized the people she was trying to help wanted to solve their own problems.

"I learned that if we were going to make any change, we had to start by listening and not needing to be the leader, but learning how to support extraordinary leaders who exist," she says.

Lessons from Rwanda

Jacqueline Novagratz (second from right) and a group of Rwandan women built a bakery business and cornered the snack food market in Kigali in the late 1980s
Novogratz thought she had found a way to do that in Rwanda, where she partnered with six women to set up the country's first microfinance bank in 1987. She also worked with 20 unwed mothers to build a thriving bakery.

"I don't think I ever felt more alive than I did then," she recalls.

Seven years later, back in the United States, Novogratz read with horror accounts of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed. She realized the women she had worked with had played every conceivable role in the carnage - from victim, to bystander, to perpetrator.

"It was a time of having to confront that angels and monsters exist in every single one of us and that what we need in the world are systems that really bring out our better angels and suppress those monsters."

A new kind of philanthropy

A to Z Textile Mills produces long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets that are protecting millions of families from malariaNovogratz came up with a system she felt could do that.

"I have seen that traditional approaches to charity and aid don't solve problems of poverty. In fact, too often the create dependence. And on the other hand, the markets alone don't solve problems of poverty. Too often they ignore the poor, don't see them at all."

In 2001, Novogratz founded Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund, which takes a long-term approach - what she calls "patient capitalism."

Jacqueline Novogratz visits a man whose life has been improved because of his anti-malarial bed net"This idea that you can invest in extraordinary entrepreneurs that are trying to determine how to bring water, health care, housing, alternative energy to low-income people, not seeing them as passive recipients of charity, but as active consumers who want to make change in their own lives."

Acumen Fund has invested about $40 million in 40 different business ventures in Pakistan, India, and East and South Africa.

Those investments include a bed net factory in Tanzania that employs 7,000 women and makes 20 million bed nets every year and a business that sells drip irrigation systems to smallholder farmers in India, allowing the average farmer to double or triple his income.

Moving forward - together

The use of drip irrigation distributed by companies like GEWP allows smallholder farmers in India to increase their harvests and their incomesNovogratz says she would like to see a greater focus on providing alternative energy to low-income people.

"Finding solutions that bring affordable solar power, LED lights to low-income families can help them increase their productivity, increase their income and far improve their health."

Jacqueline Novogratz says poverty can be alleviated by working with innovators around the world and empowering the poor to make their own decisions, treating them with dignity and respect. Despite the challenges facing the world, Novogratz insists we are well-prepared to face them together.

"I couldn't feel more optimistic about the path that the world has in front of it, if only we choose to take it."

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...whatever works for peace!

Fire Is Born — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:55:44 EDT

(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Thu Jul 16, 7:19 PM ET Prev 1 of 168 Next

A supporter of Honduras' ousted President Manuel Zelaya, from the Garifuna Indian community, burns incense in a bucket near soldiers during a road blockade protest in Tegucigalpa, Thursday, July 16, 2009. The incense is believed to expel bad spirits.

(AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

El Niño arrives in the Pacific Ocean

Fire Is Born — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:28:57 EDT

Published online 15 July 2009 | Nature 460, 317 (2009) | doi:10.1038/460317c

News in Brief

El Niño arrives in the Pacific Ocean

US climate scientists last week announced the arrival of El Niño, a cyclical rise in sea-surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. The event is known to influence fisheries and global weather patterns.

El Niños, which are associated with a weakening in the easterly trade wind, occur every two to five years and typically last for about a year. The current one is expected to continue developing over the next several months and to last through the winter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington DC.

Previous El Niños have seen more rainfall over the central tropical Pacific, drought in Indonesia and powerful winter storms in California as well as flooding and mudslides in Central and South America. The phenomenon has also been linked to less hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean and additional winter precipitation in the arid southwestern United States.

Canada looks to beat Honduras, advance to second straight Gold Cup semifinal

Fire Is Born — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:20:26 EDT

Americas, Americas! How socker you are... Forgive me, Friends, but I will be screamin' for the Blue guys to win this Saturday. Many of their most famous players are Garifuna "my people", Black Indians of the Central American Coast. And that is not a surprise to me - who knows that their 25% Carib-Arawak genes have socker in their blood. Or, something very close to socker. Very entartaining and not at all bloody ball games WERE played on the little Antilles when the Spaniards arrived, where Garifuna come from. And yes, it was the South American Indians who invented rubber. How on earth can you play ball without RUBBER. The civilized Maya also had to get it all from somwhere, n'est pas? fib

ps. Do Obama girls play socker?

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Canada looks to beat Honduras, advance to second straight Gold Cup semifinal

By THE CANADIAN PRESS – 16 hours ago

PHILADELPHIA — Canada can advance to its second straight CONCACAF Gold Cup semifinal on Saturday, and help erase the sting of another disappointing World Cup qualifying campaign in the process.

Canada faces Honduras this weekend in quarter-final action at the soccer championship for North and Central America and the Caribbean.

The surprising Canadians were undefeated in group play, winning Group A with a 2-0-1 record for seven points. Canada defeated Jamaica and El Salvador by scores of 1-0, then tied Costa Rica 2-2.

To advance further, however, Canada will need to defeat a team that has provided no shortage of trouble to them recently.

Canada lost to Honduras twice during its failed attempt to qualify for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, including a 2-1 home defeat at Montreal's Saputo Stadium. Canada finished 0-4-2 overall in the third round of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying, a result that led to the dismissal of manager Dale Mitchell.

Canada's interim manager, Stephen Hart, said at a press conference Tuesday that his squad will need a balanced attack to defeat its recent nemesis. He also praised the quality of the Honduran team.

"I've seen the team play in this tournament," Hart said. "They are blessed with good players technically who understand what was being asked (by) their coach, and physically as well. They will prove to be very difficult."

Canada has had success at the Gold Cup before, winning the tournament in 2000 and advancing to the semifinals in 2002 and 2007. But they have never been able to translate these results into greater success on the international level.

Canada has only qualified for the World Cup once, in 1986, where it failed to score in losing three games.

Hart is hoping success in this tournament, along with the ability to develop talent through Canadian teams in Major League Soccer, will usher in a more successful era for Canada's men's national team.

"It's no secret we have very limited success in the sport at the international level and we're trying to grow with the help of MLS," Hart said.

"Any success that the team has, gives some sort of silver lining to the fans who desperately want the program to grow."

The United States meets Panama in Saturday's other semifinal. The defending champion Americans defeated Panama in the quarter-finals of the 2005 Gold Cup en route to their fourth title.

"Our preparation is the same and we have great respect for Panama," U.S. coach Bob Bradley said. "Many of their players are the same. We will take the same approach as we do with the national team in preparation for Saturday's game."

In the other quarter-finals, Mexico meets Haiti and Guadeloupe meets Costa Rica on Sunday in Dallas.

The semifinals will be held July 23 in Chicago, with the championship game set for Sunday, July 26 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

With files from The Associated Press

Link to OAS.org Organization of American States

Fire Is Born — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:02:04 EDT

http://www.oas.org/newsclips/default.asp

2007 declaration of the major indigenous organizations in Honduras - why there is food shortage

Fire Is Born — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:54:15 EDT

These organizations totally support the return of Zelaya and condemn the coup. They were critical of certain policies of Zelaya in the past (however short his rule was), especially of his endorsement of the Plan Puebla Panama. However I record reading in the local press when in Honduras that Zelaya just have met with some indigenous leaders in June and promissed his support of their rights to land. The Garifuna leaders were also first to indicate certain rightist American organizations and individuals (Reich) as having hand in the coup, two days after the coup of June 28. OFRANEH found it also telling that the American Ambassador left the country the day prior to the coup.

fib

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DECLARATION FROM DURUGUBUTI

[transalated for RA by Rosalind Gil]

Garífuna, Lenca and Vía Campesina representatives have come together as part of the Foro de Biodiversidad: Territorio y Cultura (Forum on Biodiversity:
Lands and Culture) to declare that we honour the spirits of our ancestors who were massacred seventy years ago during the dictatorship of Tiburcio Crías and we declare that:

Faced with the offensive of the neo-liberal Plan Puebla-Panamá, a plan to reinforce neocolonialism amongst our peoples and to spread the powerful neo-liberal transport and maquila network, we raise our voices once again against the sacking of our lands and the breaking up of our social and political organizations; all of which is designed to expand the domination of the industrialized countries and their multi-national companies in Central America.

Destructive projects for so-called “integration and development” implemented by international financial organizations such as the FMI, BM, BID, USAID, UE, etc. are endangering the life and the cultures of our peoples. The “development” they put forth is based on economic profits that cause an imbalance to nature, which is an intimate part of our cosmology and from which many of us sustain ourselves.

The grave food shortage crisis in our country stems from a policy of agricultural production that is for export only. There is no existing plan for agricultural reform that guarantees a right to the land and to Food Sovereignty for Honduran campesinos.

The appropriation of biodiversity by the trans-nationals seriously endangers our survival. Biodiversity includes water, flora, and fauna, as well as our people’s traditional knowledge concerning conservation and rational use of resources.

The colonial policies put forth by Plan Puebla-Panamá are causing social conflicts that have led to repressive actions on the part of state security forces. These forces have adopted terror as a social-control strategy. The only ones who benefit from this strategy are the powerful elite, the transnational companies and financial organizations that put together the plan for economic domination.

Global warming and the need to satisfy the ferocious appetite of industry have grave consequences for the planet. Industry is responsible for climate change and is affecting us negatively in many ways.

Faced with the large number of totally asymmetrical Free Trade Agreements favouring a system based on exploitation and out of control consumerism that has caused the destruction of the planet:

WE DEMAND:

* Suspension of mega-projects in highly fragile ecological areas such as the Tigre and Patuca Dams (The MesoAmerican Biological Corridor), the Bahia de Tela where tourism is being developed and plans are in place to fill in the Laguna de Micos (RAMSAR 722). As well, efforts should be made to stop the destruction of many rivers and streams throughout the country.

* Immediate suspension of the existing Mining and Forestry law and of attempts to reform the law by trans-nationals and by members of the Congress who are being paid off. Immediate cancellation of the 300 mining concessions that have been granted (the equivalent of 30,000 square kilometers of the country). This will allow us to regain our national sovereignty, environmental balance, as well as respect for the land and cultural rights of the indigenous, black and campesino peoples of Honduras.

* Comprehensive agricultural reform, as well as a strategy for ensuring food supplies for the whole country. This strategy should respond to the needs of the people and not be designed to suit the needs of international financial organizations or the up and downs of the market.

* An indefinite moratorium on exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons.
As well, a strategy should be developed and put in place to preserve energy.
The litigation process must, in the end, ensure that commitments to the Honduran people are kept. Our sovereignty and dignity must be put ahead of those of the trans-nationals and of the US Proconsul.

* Immediate ratification of the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol to stop the loss of our native seeds, especially corn seeds. Measures must be taken to save our native corn by identifying products made from genetically modified food. And in this way, with the reactivation of corn production, we will stop the massive importation of genetically modified seeds and cereals, and stop the importation and production of genetically modified varieties.

* Faced with global warming and the situation we have had to endure in Honduras since Hurricane Mitch, an increase in the intensity and number of storms, an increase in temperature and long periods of drought, we demand that a strategy be put in place for dealing with global warming and its effects on highly vulnerable areas such as the Caribbean coast, the southern area of the country, and in fact, the whole country.

* Rejection of the Ley Indigena (Indigenous Law) which was put together for the PAPIN-BID consortium and was created behind the backs of the indigenous peoples, violating OIT 169, which, we insist, must be enforced, beginning with the amendment of the Property Law which tries to do away with communal property.

* Faced with the systematic repression that we have had to endure, we, the indigenous peoples, black people, campesinos and environmental activists demand total respect for the human rights of the Honduran people and we demand that criminals be brought to justice.

Despite the on-going aggressions against our people, we are committed to intensifying our resistance. We will continue organizing, spreading information and training, as well as seeking ways of constructing a just and equitable society.

With the spirit of those who were massacred in Durgubuti, Talanquera, Astillero, Horcones and the spirits of Lempira, Etempica, Iselaca, Mota, Barauda and Satuye, we will continue our struggle with dignity.

San Juan Tela, Durugubuti
March 18, 2007.

OFRANEH (Honduran Black People’s Fraternal Organization) COPINH (The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
Honduras)
Vía Campesina
Grito de los Excluidos – Honduras

Brothers and Sisters, we invite you to join us by signing up at ofraneh@laceiba.com, copinhonduras@yahoo.es

http://www.rightsaction.org/urgent_com/Garifuna_Alert_042907.html

New monkey Species - the Mura's saddleback tamarin

Fire Is Born — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:40:48 EDT

I am simply glad that an indogenious tribe's name was used to name a species. I bet though the Muras had their own name for the animal - their language is now apparently extinct. I once read a Carib-English dictinary, and half of the text were zoological and botanical items. (I used to do such things before the Obama era.)

The Muras of Brasil, like the Caribs (Caripuna) of the Caribbean Islands and their Carin'a cousins in Venezuela were very powerful tribes and the fiersest fighters for their freedom. They were not much liked by the invaders, being the bad Indians, and accused of all forms of savagery.

So, we found the Mura monkey. Pity the language is lost.

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New monkey discovered in Brazilian Amazon

Tue Jul 7, 2009 2:50pm EDT

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Researchers have discovered a new sub-species of monkey in a remote part of the Amazon rain forest, a U.S.-based wildlife conservation group said on Tuesday.

The newly found monkey was first spotted by scientists in 2007 in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and is related to the saddleback tamarin monkeys, known for their distinctively marked backs, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said.

The small monkey, which is mostly gray and brown and weighs 213 grams (0.47 pound), has been named the Mura's saddleback tamarin after the Mura Indian tribe of the Purus and Madeira river basins where the new sub-species was found.

It is 240 millimeters (9.4 inches) tall with a 320 millimeter (12.6 inch) tail.

"This newly described monkey shows that even today there are major wildlife discoveries to be made," Fabio Rohe, the lead author of a study confirming the new discovery, said in a statement released by the WCS.

The study found that the monkey is threatened by development projects in the region, including a major highway through the forest that is being paved and which could fuel deforestation.

"This discovery should serve as a wake-up call that there is still so much to learn from the world's wild places, yet humans continue to threaten these areas with destruction," Rohe said.

(Reporting by Stuart Grudgings; Editing by Philip Barbara)

Summer with MO

Fire Is Born — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:43:44 EDT

I need some lightness today and will share it with you:

http://www.nydailynews.com

Michelle Obama's smashing summer style

The First Lady likes to wear colors and show off her arms year-round, but she's finding other ways to spice up her summer wardrobe. Above, Michelle Obama wore a floral reconstructed dress with lace embellishments and orange trim around the neck to a White House luau this past weekend. And what better summer accessory than a lei!The First Lady likes to wear colors and show off her arms year-round, but she's finding other ways to spice up her summer wardrobe.

Credits: NGAN/AFP/GettyPublished: 07/02/2009 16:25:41* Email*http://www.nydailynews.com

/lifestyle/fashion/galleries/michelle_obamas_summer_style

/michelle_obamas_summer_style.html#ph0#ixzz0KWA9D4Ac&D/lifestyle/fashion/galleries

/michelle_obamas_summer_style/michelle_obamas_summer_style.html#ph0

link to the official OFA blog of Christopher Hass:

Fire Is Born — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:08:02 EDT

This is the link to the official OFA blog of Christopher Hass:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/obamaforamerica

Has the main Community blog been not accessible since May 26?

Let's regroup and continue our service. fib

When people are standing and police bullets killing - WE SHALL NEVER FORGET!

Fire Is Born — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:24:52 EDT

Thank you for the tears and the sunflowers, Obama Doug, my dear Friend!

fib

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PRESS RELEASE

N° 35/09

IACHR CONDEMNS ACTS OF VIOLENCE IN PERU

Washington, D.C., June 8, 2009—The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) strongly condemns the acts of violence that took place on June 5 in Bagua, in northern Peru, which have caused a number of deaths.

According to the information received, at least 30 people have died and others have been wounded, including indigenous leaders and members of the security forces, as a result of an operation by the National Police of Peru to break up a blockade that indigenous groups had maintained on the highway leading to the city of Bagua. The act of protest had been organized by indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon region in response to legislative decrees affecting their property rights over their lands and territories. The Inter-American Commission reminds the State of its obligation to conduct a judicial inquiry into these acts of violence and repair the consequences.

The information received indicates that health centers in Bagua were not equipped to treat the large number of people injured. The IACHR calls on the Peruvian State to take the steps that are necessary to guarantee access to health care for all the injured.

The IACHR also calls on the parties to promote a process of dialogue to seek a solution that respects human rights. It is important to adopt mechanisms to prevent excessive use of force on the part of public agents in marches and protest demonstrations. As the IACHR has stated previously, “Criminalizing legitimate social mobilization and social protest, whether through direct repression of the demonstrators or through an investigation and criminal prosecution, is incompatible with a democratic society in which persons have the right to express their opinion.”

Finally, the IACHR has learned that on May 9 the government had declared a state of emergency. The Commission offers a reminder that Article 27 of the American Convention on Human Rights and Advisory Opinion 9/87 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights specify the rights that cannot be suspended; these include, among others, the right to life, to physical integrity, and to the essential judicial guarantees necessary for these rights to be protected. In light of information received indicating that a number of people were arrested during the incidents with no report as to their identity or whereabouts, the IACHR calls on the Peruvian State to respect their right to physical integrity and to judicial guarantees.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Inter-American Commission has the mandate to promote respect for human rights in the region and acts as a consultative body to the OAS in this matter. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who act in a personal capacity, without representing a particular country, and who are elected by the OAS General Assembly.

Useful Links

Read this press release in Spanish / Lea este comunicado de prensa en español

Press contact: María Isabel Rivero
Tel. (202) 458-3867
Cell: (202) 215-4142
E-mail: mrivero @oas.org

To subscribe to the IACHR press release mailing list, please type your e-mail address in this form.

From "Indian Country Today": Indigenous governor assassinated in Colombia

Fire Is Born — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:33:28 EDT

Our support for the Columbian government was forged in the eight years of Bush administration.

President Obama's administration should closely monitor all human rights abuses south of our border. Only then our south border will be safeand crime will stop "percolating"al Norte. fib

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Indian Country Today

Print this article

Indigenous governor assassinated in Colombia

Originally printed at http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/48607197.html

"Indigenous Colombian leader Robert DeJesus Gaucheta was beaten to death by unidentified assailants near his home in the southwestern territory of Cauca May 18, several months after he and other officials had requested protection due to receiving numerous death threats.

Gaucheta was the vice governor of the Nasa Reservation of Honduras which extends more than 93,860 acres and includes approximately 7,000 Nasa people. His predecessor, Vice Governor Jose Goyes Santa Cruz, survived an assassination attempt June 8, 2008 in Gaucheta’s home town of Morales. Gaucheta was well-known for his leadership during the large scale national protests called the Minga, or commotion of the peoples in Colombia last year.

According to press statements sent by Vicente Otero, press liaison for the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, Gaucheta had long been a vocal critic of the government’s plans to hand over indigenous land to mining interests, and recently spoke out against attempts by unnamed groups to start growing illicit crops.

Sources in CRIC and in the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia reported that since December 2008, Gaucheta and other indigenous leaders had been receiving threats through text messages and phone calls, and they were attributing the threats to the “Black Eagles,” famous in Colombia for being ex-paramilitaries with ties to the drug trade. Otero said indigenous broadcasters, including Alfredo Campo of the “Our Stereo Voice of Morales” radio show, have been and continue to be threatened.

CRIC and other indigenous officials approached the Colombian Interior Ministry and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the threats in September 2008. IACHR also approached Colombian authorities to request protection for Gaucheta and 20 other indigenous leaders. According to all of the indigenous sources no protection plans were ever realized.

Indigenous and allied organizations throughout Colombia are renewing their calls for protection, focusing not only on the unsolved beating death of Gaucheta, but also the killing of indigenous resident Nilvany Cruz Zambrano who also lived in Morales. Zambrano was shot to death the day after Gaucheta’s funeral; indigenous sources reported that she was caught in the crossfire between national police and “illegal actors.”

“The Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca joins in the mourning by all indigenous communities of the death of the traditional indigenous leader, Robert DeJesus Gaucheta,” the release said. “…and reiterates its call to the national and international community on behalf of the indigenous communities of Agua Negra, Chimborazo and Honduras. … to urge the cessation of threats by paramilitary groups and to urge the Colombian government to stop avoiding its responsibility and provide sufficient guarantees that are needed to defend the lives and human rights of traditional indigenous authorities and their families, many of whom find themselves in a situation of forced displacement.”

Counting Zambrano’s murder, ONIC says 1,255 indigenous were killed by paramilitaries, drug traffickers and official forces since January 2002, although the Colombian government refuses to acknowledge that official forces have ever assassinated any of the victims. According to the official government tally, 40 indigenous were killed in 2007 and 66 in 2008."

Dying and indigenous: languages

Fire Is Born — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:53:24 EDT

SCIENCE MAY ONE DAY, NOT TOO SOON, BE ABLE TO CLONE AN EXTINCT BIRD FROM PLIABLE PRESERVED GENES IN A SPECIMEN.

NO EXTINCT LANGUAGE HAS SUCH A HOPE - IF THE DATA AND A SUFFICIENT DESCRIPTION ARE LACKING. THOUSANDS OF NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES ARE ALREADY GONE FOREVER! WITHOUT TRACE, OR A RECORD OF A FEW WORDS. GONE WITH THEIR PEOPLE.

THE LANGUAGES STILL LIVING ARE SLOWLY GOING AWAY WITH EVERY ELDER PERSON WHO PASSES AWAY WITHOUT BEING RECORDED. I HAVE WITNESSED SUCH DEATHS AMONG THE GARIFUNA IN DIASPORA IN CENTRAL AMERICA'S CARIBBEAN COAST. THESE DEATHS ARE DOUBLY PAINFUL WITH LOSS.

LET'S MAKE THE WORLD AWARE THAT DYING HUMAN LANGUAGES DESERVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF COMPASSION, ADVOCACY AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT AS ALL THE ENDANGERED ANIMAL SPECIES WE ALL KNOW ABOUT. fib
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http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=545

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"Having Their Say

By Kari Lydersen

Young marvels at the words that don’t have translations in English, like a word meaning “descending through forest to the sea.”

UNESCO lists almost 2,500 languages worldwide as “endangered,” meaning they are at risk of falling out of use and even disappearing as fluent native speakers die and younger generations fail to take up the language. A bulk of endangered languages are the tongues of indigenous groups who have been colonized or encroached upon by a dominant culture and forced or coerced to give up their native language. In the past, students were beaten for speaking their language in strict boarding schools in the United States and Australia. More recently in parts of the U.S. and countless other regions worldwide, people feel cultural and economic pressure to switch to the dominant language, seeing it as a means of opportunity and feeling a sense of shame in their indigenous identity.

But recent years have also seen a resurgence in the interest to preserve indigenous languages among academics, nongovernmental organizations and indigenous communities. In many cases, young people, who did not grow up speaking their native language, are now studying and embracing it as a way to understand and celebrate their heritage and connect with their elders.

Benjamin Young is a perfect example.(...)"

President Barack Obama has fulfilled his promise to appoint a high-level White House advisor on Indian affairs.

Fire Is Born — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:42:19 EDT

Photo courtesy Congressman Dale Kildee’s office

Kimberly Teehee, a member of the Cherokee Nation, has been appointed senior policy advisor by President Barack Obama. As a member of the Domestic Policy Council, Teehee will advise the president on issues affecting Indian country.

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Indian Country Today

Print this article

‘Elated and excited’

Originally printed at http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/48250207.html

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has fulfilled his promise to appoint a high-level White House advisor on Indian affairs.

On June 15, Obama announced his selection of Kimberly Teehee for the newly created position of senior policy advisor for Native American Affairs. As a member of the Domestic Policy Council, Teehee will advise the president on issues affecting Indian country.

Obama announced Teehee’s appointment in videotaped remarks during the mid-year conference of the National Congress of American Indians, which took place June 14 – 17 at the Seneca Niagara Casino in Niagara Falls, N.Y.

“She is rightly recognized as an outstanding advocate for Indian country, and she will provide a direct interface at the highest level of my administration, assuring a voice for Native Americans during policy making decisions,” said Obama.

Teehee is expected to begin on July 1.

“I was elated and excited when I received the news of my appointment last week,” she said. “I am truly humbled and honored by this appointment. I look forward to joining the White House Domestic Policy Council and advising President Obama on issues impacting Indian country.”

Along with the announcement of Teehee’s appointment, Obama also said the White House would hold a Tribal Nations Conference in the fall – the fulfillment of another promise he made on the campaign trail.

“President Obama is committed to strengthening and building on the nation-to-nation relationship between the United States and tribal nations,” Teehee said. The fall conference will give “tribal leaders an opportunity to assist the president in developing an agenda for Indian country.”

A member of the Cherokee Nation, she has a sturdy resume of experience as an advocate for Indian country during her student years and in her work in Washington.

She received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Okla., and a Juris Doctor from the University of Iowa – College of Law. While in law school, Teehee was honored with the Bureau of National Affairs Award and served in leadership positions in the National Native American Law Student Association and the Iowa Native American Law Student Association.

Teehee worked for the Democratic National Committee as deputy director of Native American Outreach for the committee’s first Indian desk. She also has held various positions with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, including law clerk in the Division of Law and Justice. She served as director of Native American outreach for the Presidential Inaugural Committee for President Clinton’s second inauguration.

Since January 1998, Teehee has been senior adviser to Congressman Dale Kildee, D-Mich., co-chair of the House of Representatives’ Native American Caucus.

“President Obama has made an excellent choice in Kim Teehee. I have worked with Kim for over a decade, and I have always found her to be a thoughtful, dedicated and passionate advocate for our Native American population,” Kildee said. “The president has made it clear that he is committed to strengthening the relationship between the United States and tribal nations and I am confident that Kim will be instrumental in achieving that goal. I congratulate Kim on this exciting opportunity and I commend the president on his choice.”

National Indian Gaming Association Chairman Ernie Stevens Jr. also had high praise for her.

“Kimberly is the right choice. She has her feet fully planted in Indian country and knows the critical domestic issues our Indian people face today. I am confident she will represent the best interests of all of Indian country in the White House.”

As Kildee’s senior advisor, Teehee advised more than 100 members of the bi-partisan Native American Caucus. She wrote speeches, testimony and legislation relating to Native American issues and works closely with House leadership, committee and Senate staff. She also coordinated with tribal leaders and organizations from across the country.

Teehee was born in Chicago, but grew up in Claremore, Okla., where her parents moved as part of a federal relocation assistance program for American Indians. Teehee and her family speak fluent Cherokee.

“My parents are very proud of me,” she said. “Most of my family lives in northeastern Oklahoma and most are public servants working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Service, or tribal government, as school teachers or in law enforcement. Like many Native families, they know what it feels like to struggle, especially in these challenging times. They are thrilled that President Obama is committed to improving the lives of Native Americans.”

Teehee’s appointment does not require Senate approval.

She joins a number of American Indians that Obama has chosen for high profile positions in his administration.

Jodi Gillette, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, is the deputy associate director for White House intergovernmental affairs office; Larry EchoHawk, Pawnee of Oklahoma, was recently confirmed as head of the BIA; and Yvette Roubideaux, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, is director of IHS. Additionally, Mary Smith, Cherokee, is assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice; and Hilary Tompkins, a member of the Navajo Nation, has been nominated as solicitor of the Department of the Interior but has not yet been confirmed.

Teehee’s appointment comes at a time when the Obama administration is launching a new initiative to improve law enforcement efforts in Indian country.

Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli announced the plan in his address to the more than 500 attendees at the NCAI conference and in a press release on the Justice Department Web site.

Later this year, Attorney General Eric Holder will convene a Tribal Nations Listening Conference to confer with tribal leaders on how to address the chronic problems of public safety in Indian country and other important issues affecting tribal communities, Perrelli said.

A series of regional summits to seek tribal representatives’ input in setting the agenda will be held before the conference.

Among the issues to be discussed are law enforcement policy and personnel; communications and consultation; grants and technical assistance; detention facilities; federal prosecution in Indian country; tribal court development; domestic violence; drug courts and substance abuse; federal litigation involving tribes; and civil rights. No locations or dates have been announced.

From the "Hill": A tale of two speches

Fire Is Born — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:38:41 EDT

A tale of two speeches

By John Del Cecato

Posted: 05/21/09 05:27 PM [ET]

On Thursday, the two parties’ most visible spokesmen — President Obama and former Vice President Cheney — offered very different models for keeping America safe.

Obama’s vision was rooted in a respect for our country’s constitutional values, declaring those principles to be not an impediment to national security, but rather the bedrock of it.

“We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and keeps us safe. Time and again, our values have been our best national security asset — in war and peace; in times of ease and in eras of upheaval,” he said.

Cheney’s remarks, by contrast, touched on a familiar Republican theme: that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, could be used to justify just about any action a president — or vice president — chooses to take. In his 5,500-word address, the former vice president cited 9/11 no fewer than 27 times in defending the Bush administration’s policies, in areas spanning from torture to the war in Iraq.

For his part, President Obama chose not to question the motives of the previous administration. And while he took issue with the Bush team for cherry-picking intelligence to support its ideological objectives, Obama said we all shared some responsibility for executive-branch excess.

“Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. And I believe that those decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people,” said Obama. “But I also believe that — too often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens — fell silent.”

Cheney was less generous in assessing the intentions of his critics. “Over on the left wing of the president’s party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists,” he said. Of President Obama’s belief that torturing detainees fueled the recruitment of terrorists, Cheney charged: “This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the president himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the left: ‘We brought it on ourselves.’ ”

But nowhere was the contrast in visions more clear than in the debate over ideological rigidity versus shared American values.

“The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism,” Cheney groused.

“The American people are not absolutist, and they don’t elect us to impose a rigid ideology on our problems,” said Obama. “They know that we need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty, and care, and a dose of common sense.”

It wasn’t a debate, or even a joint appearance. But for average Americans watching these back-to-back speeches, one thing should be clear.

Real change has come to Washington. And the old guard doesn’t like it a bit.

Del Cecato is a partner at AKPD Message and Media, the political consulting firm founded by David Axelrod in 1985. He served as media adviser and admaker for Obama for America and Obama-Biden 2008.

Vote in California today in the budget ballot! Do your duty!

Fire Is Born — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:32:25 EDT

Do your duty! My quick suggestions:

On May 19 ballot

Proposition Description

Proposition 1A Prop 1A combines a 4-year tax hike of about $16 billion with a state spending cap

OK. I wil give YES, this time. But they better legalize that marijuan soon, and tax pot, not "sales". I agree with taxing gas and vehicles. I use public transport. Plus, 1B needs this YES. fib

Proposition 1B Modification of California Proposition 98 (1998) to free up money for state's budget overruns.

possibly YES! fib

YES!

Proposition 1C Sell rights to future lottery proceeds as a way of raising some cash now for state budget.

NO! the public is against it. fib

Proposition 1D Asks voters to approve taking money from Prop 10 in 1998 for purposes not allowed in that 1998 vote.

my big NO! on 1D. We need early childhood develpment and tobacco free kids! fib

Proposition 1E Asks voters to take money from Prop 63 for purposes not allowed in that 2004 vote.

my absolutelely NO on 1E!- see below in read more. don't steel money from mental health actions! fib

Proposition 1F No pay raises for state legislators in years when there is a state budget deficit

my simple YES!

California votes today!

Fire Is Born — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:19:59 EDT

I almost forgot! Let's get to the polls, O people! fib

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On May 19 ballot

Proposition Description

Proposition 1A Prop 1A combines a 4-year tax hike of about $16 billion with a state spending cap

OK. I wil give YES, this time. But they better legalize that marijuan soon, and tax pot, not "sales". I agree with taxing gas and vehicles. I use public transport. Plus, 1B needs this YES. fib

Proposition 1B Modification of California Proposition 98 (1998) to free up money for state's budget overruns.

possibly YES! fib

Proposition 1C Sell rights to future lottery proceeds as a way of raising some cash now for state budget.

NO! the public is against it. fib

Proposition 1D Asks voters to approve taking money from Prop 10 in 1998 for purposes not allowed in that 1998 vote.

my big NO! on 1D. We need early childhood develpment and tobacco free kids! fib

Proposition 1E Asks voters to take money from Prop 63 for purposes not allowed in that 2004 vote.

my absolutelely NO on 1E!- see below in read more. don't steel money from mental health actions! fib

Proposition 1F No pay raises for state legislators in years when there is a state budget deficit

my simple YES!

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Every election is a critical election, whether choice is on the ballot or not. We encourage you to vote in the special election on Tuesday, May 19, 2009.

NARAL Pro-Choice California does not have an official position on the ballot measures, but here are some web sites that may help you sort through the rhetoric:

http://www.votingwisely.com/ provides a quick overview of where statewide elected officials stand on each measure and where the top 10 newspapers stand as well. It is one click to the Secretary of State’s website and Voter Guide.
www.BallotPedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_2009_ballot_propositions provides objective history and purpose of the initiatives as well as links to more information.

For information about your polling place, please call (800) 345-VOTE (8683) or go to http://www.vote411.org/pollfinder.php?source=pp.

Happy Voting!

Amy, Alexa, Aleena, Meghan & Lindsday
NARAL Pro-Choice California Team

Health Care Facts and Figures

Fire Is Born — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:30:15 EDT

Health Care Facts and Figures

Universal Health Care

Recent Fact and Figures on Health Care in the U.S.

116 million people in the U.S. were uninsured, underinsured, struggled to pay medical bills, or went without needed care because of cost in 2007. That number represents nearly two-thirds of all adults in the country.

Nearly 9 million Americans have lost their health insurance since 2000.

Taking On Debt

72 million people reported a problem paying their medical bills or had accrued medical debt. That's roughly forty-one percent of adults under age 65. This number is up from 34 percent, or 58 million, in 2005.

7 million adults 65 and older also reported bill or debt problems.

More than half of adults with incomes under $40,000 reported problems with their medical bills in 2007.

More and More Americans Lack Health Insurance Coverage

In 2007, 28% of American adults, an estimated 50 million people,were uninsured for some time during the previous year. This is up from24% of adults, or 38 million people who were uninsured for part of 2001.

Half of all American families with an annual income less than $20,000 went without health insurance coverage for at least part of the year.

41 percent of adults in families earning between $20,000 and $40,000 reported they were uninsured for part of the year, up from 28 percent of those in families earning between $20,000 and $35,000 in 2001.

Americans Are Spending Large Shares of Income on Health Care

One-third of adults spent 10 percent or more of their income on health insurance and health care, up from 21 percent in 2001.

More than half of adults in families with incomes under $20,000 and more than one-third of adults earning between $20,000 and $60,000 spent 10 percent or more of their income on health care.

The number of adults under age 65 whose out-of-pocket health care costs are so high that they areeffectively underinsured increased from 9 percent to 14 percent, or to 25 million people, between 2003 and 2007.

Source: “Losing Ground: How the Loss of Adequate Health
Insurance is Burdening Working Families,” Report by The Commonwealth
Fund (Published August 2008)

Single payer is good for American people and American businesses - large and small

Fire Is Born — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:00:46 EDT

H.R. 676 FAQ

Universal Health Care

What is H.R. 676?

H.R. 676, also called the United States National Health Insurance Act, is a bill to create a single-payer, publicly-financed, privately-delivered universal health care program that would cover all Americans without charging co-pays or deductibles. It guarantees access to the highest quality and most affordable health care services regardless of employment, ability to pay or pre-existing health conditions.

What is "single-payer"?

The term single-payer describes the kind of financing system that H.R. 676 uses. It means that one entity--in this case, established by the government--handles all billing and payment for health care services. Right now, there are thousands upon thousands of "payers"-- HMOs, PPOs, bill collection agencies, etc. The sheer volume of paperwork required by our current system means that administrative waste accounts for roughly 31% of the money spent on health care. The single-payer system would eliminate the wasteful paperwork and administrative costs, redirecting more of our health care dollars to providing care.

Medicare is perhaps the best known single-payer system. Essentially, H.R. 676 would improve Medicare and expand it, so that it covers all Americans, regardless of their income.

Who will be eligible for health care coverage under H.R. 676?

All Americans will be eligible for health care coverage. Every person who enrolls in the program and receive a United States National Health Insurance Card and individual ID number, and that is all anyone will need to receive care.

What health care services are covered?

The program established by H.R. 676 will cover all medically-necessary services without charging co-pays or deductibles. The services covered will include: primary care; inpatient, outpatient and emergency hospital care; prescription drugs; durable medical equipment; hearing, dental and vision care; chiropratic treatment; mental health services; and long-term care.

What about "catastrophic" care? Will I ever reach a limit for coverage?

No. There are no limits on coverage. Just as you will never pay a co-pay or a deductible under the universal national health care program, you will never reach a ceiling on your coverage.

Will I be able to choose my doctor?

Yes. Patients will have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals and clinics. The financing will be public, but the providers will all remain private.

No co-pays or deductibles-- what's the catch? Will I actually pay less for health care?

There is no catch. Both families and employers will pay significantly less for health care.

Currently, the average family of four covered by an employer-provided health care plan spends roughly $4,225 on health care each year, including premiums, services, prescription drugs and supplies. This figure does not include the annual Medicare payroll tax, currently at 1.45%. Under the plan created by H.R. 676, a family of four making the median income of $56,200 would pay about $2,700 in payroll tax for all health care costs. No deductibles, no co-pays, no worrying about catastrophic coverage.

Employers who provide health insurance currently pay, on average, 74% of employee health premiums. For a family of four, the average employer share is $8,510 per year. Under H.R. 676, the employer pays a 4.75% payroll tax, not a premium to health insurance companies. For an employee making the median family income of $56,200 annually, the employer would pay roughly $2,700.
Estimates taken from: Employer Health Benefits 2006 Annual Survey, Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust; Consumer Expenditure Survey, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; and Study by the Center for Economic Research and Policy.

How will the transition to the new system work?

The full conversion to a non-profit, single-payer universal health care program will not take place overnight once the bill is passed. The total transition time will be roughly a 15-year period. Important elements of the transition will include:

• Private health insurance companies will be prohibited from selling coverage that duplicates any benefits included in the universal national health care program. The private companies will, however, still be able to sell coverage for services that are not deemed medically necessary, such as many cosmetic surgery procedures. • Private insurance company workers who are displaced as a result of the transition will be the first to be hired and retained by the new single-payer entity. Any of the displaced workers who are not rehired will receive two years of unemployment benefits.

How will the universal program be paid for?

First, switching to a single-payer system will lead to billions of dollars saved in reduced administrative costs. Those savings will be passed on through the system and allow coverage for all Americans. Additional savings in the overall cost of health care will come from annual reimbursement rate negotiations with physicians and negotiated prices for prescription drugs, medical supplies and equipment.
Second, a "Medicare For All Trust Fund" will be created to ensure a dedicated source of funding in addition to annual appropriations. Sources of funding will include:

• Maintain current federal and state funding for existing health care programs
• Closing corporate tax loopholes
• Repealing the Bush tax cuts for the highest income earners
• Establish employer/employee payroll tax of 4.75% (includes present 1.45% Medicare tax)
• Establish a 5% health tax on the top 5% of income earners; a 10% tax on top 1% of wage earners
• One quarter of one percent stock transaction tax

Home

First Lady Delivers a Charge to Graduates

Fire Is Born — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:34:26 EDT

First Lady Delivers a Charge to Graduates

Jim Wilson/The New York Times First Lady Michelle Obama waves to the first full four year graduates of the Univ of California at Merced on Saturday.

Hey, O girls and O guys! Michelle Obama will now speak at Merced University commencement! Watch CNN now!

Fire Is Born — Sat, 16 May 2009 17:02:40 EDT

IT REALLY MADE MY DAY!

i LOVE MICHELLE WITH ALL MY HEART, AND HER ENTIRE FAMILY.

DO NOT MISS IT.

MERCED IS A VERY NEW CAMPUS IN CALIFORNIA, AND ALREADY

SO MUCH AHEAD OF THE VENERABLE NOTRE DAME.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Solution to Photo puzzle of the night - guess what is that:

Fire Is Born — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:32:07 EDT

Please give your answer in the comments.

Hope you too are inspired by the poetry evening in the White House tonight.

The answer will be provided tomorrow in the CITA group's blog.

i dedicate this puzzle to our friend jfkfan lost to twitter. twit! twit! fib

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DA ANSER IZ HYA!:

OoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090506-bird-smuggling-picture.html

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How to prevent illegal imigration? Here's AGROS....

Fire Is Born — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:17:22 EDT

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How does Agros’s model affect the problem of illegal immigration into the United States?

There are many reasons why immigrants leave the rural countryside and come to the United States. Among them are the conditions of extreme poverty in which people live and the lack of opportunities that enable families to overcome their poverty. Many of the people coming to the U.S. illegally are “economic migrants” - people who come in search of work. Poverty conditions and lack of work opportunities at home mean that these economic migrants are willing to leave their families, risk their lives, and find work in some of the least desirable conditions - often as menial laborers and minimum wage workers. Steady work is better than no work, and minimum wage in the U.S. is often more than they can earn in an entire day in their native country.

Throughout Central America, political and economic conditions are such that no matter how hard people work, 60 percent are earning less than $1 per day and 40 percent are living below the poverty line. Unemployment and underemployment are rampant in the rural areas. There are simply not enough jobs to go around and no hope that circumstances will change any time soon.

By helping rural families purchase land and build thriving communities, Agros provides an alternative for people who believe their only option is to migrate into the city or into another country, such as the U.S. Agros enables families to stay together and to generate income within their own countries and communities. Agros helps families create a livelihood for themselves that can be passed on to their children. As conditions improve, the motivation for becoming an economic migrant disappears. Families stay together, communities are strengthened, and lives are transformed.

How do Agros projects help women?

Women in developing countries and across Central America face grave challenges. As the primary caretakers of families and children, they are on the front lines of hunger, malnutrition and death in their families. Agros’ programs cannot be successful or have a lasting impact if the health of women is in jeopardy.

Many women in rural Central America:

Lack access to prenatal care and are isolated from modern health facilities
Get married as adolescents, start families at a young age, and don’t know how to plan the size of their families
Have a difficult time keeping their children healthy and well-nourished because they don’t know how, or don’t have the resources to prepare a well-balanced meal and lack knowledge of basic sanitation
Are of poor health themselves because they sacrifice food and other resources for their children and are continuously breast feeding due to multiple consecutive births

Agros’ programs address the needs of women and children by creating a positive cycle of change. We help women achieve:

Education: For young girls who would otherwise marry young and start families when they are little older than children themselves, Agros provides opportunities for them to go to school. Educated girls tend to marry later and their children tend to be healthier.
Literacy training: Agros offers literacy training to adults, giving both men and women who were not able to go to school the opportunity to learn how to read and write.
Financial independence: Agros trains women to manage a savings account and family finances because women tend to invest in their families.
Business expertise: Through microenterprise development, Agros teaches women skills they can use to start their own businesses. Agros also teaches women (and their children) how to raise small animals close to home to generate income.
Family planning and health care: Many women have had more than 5 children and have never received a gynecological exam or had access to prenatal care.
Through the women’s health initiative:
- Women learn about their bodies in a way that promotes self-esteem. Women with greater self-esteem become active in community organization. They get involved in village decision-making and develop leadership skills.
- Women receive regular physical exams, many for the first time in their lives.
- Agros works within the local culture to provide education about birth spacing and birth control so that women and their husbands can make informed decisions about family planning.

People talk a lot about the importance of “sustainable development.”

How are Agros’ methods sustainable?

Sustainable development is an important element of Agros’ work. Agros works to create sustainability in three primary areas: in the environment, in family economics, and in community organizations.

Environmental sustainability begins by providing families with land. People take better care of and are more concerned about a resource over which they have ownership. Agros then provides training and technical assistance regarding the use and stewardship of this land. This includes the construction of composting latrines, improved wood burning stoves, and education on soil conservation, organic composting, and agro-forestry techniques.
Economic sustainability begins with improved production of basic grains. When a family produces more food on less land, they become more confident in their ability to feed themselves. With food security established, they begin to try things they’ve never done before, for instance, growing foods that they can sell in the market and use to generate income. Once families begin to generate a stable income, they can begin to pay back their land loans. And once their loans have been repaid (typically within 10 years), they become self-sustaining owners of their own land. From this land, they are able to generate an on-going, stable income and provide an environment in which their children can thrive.
Community sustainability is attained in two ways. First, we help give rural families the training to create a local community government that looks to the entire community for participation and decision-making. This becomes the backbone for civic responsibility and participation. It also becomes the primary way communities continue to thrive long after Agros has departed. The second way is through the Noemí Fund.

Hope has many names - one of them is AGROS

Fire Is Born — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:58:52 EDT

This site is just too beautiful for you to miss! Thanks, Pam! fib

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http://www.agros.org/ag/index.php?page_id=85

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In California: VOTE NO on Tuesday on all the State propositions

Fire Is Born — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:31:30 EDT

What is your opinion? fib

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May 15, 2009
Commentary:
Poor People and California’s Propositions

By Herman Baca, President
Committee on Chicano Right

With Tuesday’s special election, California voters will vote whether or not to raise taxes to supposedly address the state’s $42 billion dollar hemorrhaging deficit. With California being the most heavily taxed state in the U.S. with one of the highest unemployment rate (over 10%), the question for voters and especially poor people is: how should we vote?

Our organization that has dealt with issues affecting poor people for over 40 years, has taken the position that voters cast an unequivocal NO VOTE on all of the propositions on Tuesday’s special election.

In urging a NO VOTE the issue to our organization is the lack of accountability from political elected representatives, and the need for them to begin meeting the needs of residents, small businesses, poor people, instead of the vested interests in Sacramento.

The strongest politic argument for a NO VOTE is that voters take note as to what has happened in National City (NC) after a similar proposition was railroaded by vested interest politicians and supporters that saddled the city with one of the highest sales tax rate (9 3/4%) in California.

NC a blue color worker community comprised of so-called minority residents; 65% of Mexican ancestry, 16% Filipinos, 7% others and 12% Anglo with 19% of its residents living under the poverty line is the poorest city in San Diego County, and the 3rd poorest in California. For voters who want to know what will happen to California communities and especially poor people if Governor Schwarzenegger and state politicians succeed in convincing voters to vote yes, then NC is the perfect political case study.

Before California had a deficit, NC politicians created (from a surplus) a $6 million dollar deficit. The reasons for the deficit was that like drunken teenagers with dad’s credit card NC politicians over spent during the worst economic crisis since the 1930 depression on non-essentials such as:

· Bonuses for top management, salary increase for public employees, and a golden parachute pension fund employees that allows police, firemen, and city employees (political contributors) to retire after 30 years of service with 90% of their pay while contributing zero into the fund!

· $70,000 statues, 2.5 million dollar loans to out of the country developers, $25,000 for a Charger survey, etc.

· A number of raises to the Mayor’s “personal” secretary,

· Contracting a lobbyist for Sacramento.

With unemployment increasing, car dealer-ships closing, house foreclosures, etc. NC’s Mayor and City Council have added insult to financial injury just two short weeks after Chula Vista voters defeated a similar tax proposition (A), and right before Tuesday’s special election by arrogantly voted again to dole out raises and “bonuses” to NC executives and managers.

· The above is aside from the mayor and council granting $145,00.00 in 2008 to the same city’s executives and managers as a “one-time” retention incentive and bonuses of 5% to 6% and,

· In 2007, $20,000 bonuses, also to the highest paid city administrators and $22,000 and a $750 car allowance to NC do nothing City Attorney George Eiser III.

The above bonuses and raises were granted to bureaucrats, most who earn over $100,000 while NC residents, the poorest in SD County struggle daily to put food on their tables, clothes on their children’s backs, pay rent, and pay for the basic essentials of life.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s and his vested interested groupies will spend millions up until election day using “scare tactics,” that police, fire will be cut back, gangs will take over, houses will burn down etc. to frighten and convince voters to vote yes, like NC politicians did.

As NC politicians have proven, after levying the highest tax on the poorest people in California; politicians will never, ever be accountable to residents, taxpayers or voters, once they get your money.

Don’t be mislead, send a message to all politicians, VOTE NO on Tuesday on all the State propositions.

Letters to the Editor Return to the Frontpage

twit twit! from Nat Geo

Fire Is Born — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:54:42 EDT

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NatGeoSociety#Greendex Did you know: 58% of Americans drive alone daily. 11% of Chinese consumers do. http://tinyurl.com/qysmx about 1 hour ago from HootSuite

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SPENDING ON DRUGS

Fire Is Born — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:26:29 EDT

"(...) Apart from these big-picture analyses, it is important to catalogue all of the differences on a more specific level, as well. For example, yesterday, the Huffington Post took a look at the differences between spending on the "drug war" from 2009 to 2010. Again, the results were minimal (more in the extended entry):

Chris Bowers :: Quantifying Change

In the 2010 budget, prevention takes a 10.6 percent hit while domestic law enforcement gets a boost of 2.3 percent, with "interdiction" (military and police actions designed to stem the flow of drugs into and about the country) gaining 4.4 percent. On the positive side of the ledger, treatment shows a 4.4 percent increase. And what of the never-ending seesaw battle between supply and demand initiatives? Unfortunately, demand reduction efforts (education, prevention) are down 0.8 percent, while (generally futile) supply reduction initiatives (enforcement, burning or poisoning crops) gets a 2.7 percent bump.

In terms of actual spending figures, here is the breakdown from the Obama administration itself:

Interdiction: $4.004 billion (2010) vs. $3.836 billion (2009)
Domestic Law Enforcement: $3.737 billion (2010) vs. $3.654 billion (2009)
Drug Treatment: $3.566 billion (2010) vs. $3.416 billion (2009)
Drug Prevention: $1.602 billion (2010) vs. $1.791 billion (2009)
International Enforcement: $2.160 billion (2010) vs. $2.174 billion (2009)

Fighting Cancer Requires Health Care Reform

Fire Is Born — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:20:38 EDT

Fighting Cancer Requires Health Care Reform Target: U.S. Congress
Sponsored by: ACS CAN
Every year 1.4 millions Americans -- 3,800 each day -- will hear the words "You have cancer." At the same time, approximately 46 million Americans are without health insurance, and many more do not have coverage that will protect them if they are diagnosed with a chronic disease such as cancer. Fighting cancer means fixing our health care system.

Specifically we need legislation that:

* Is affordable and available to all Americans
* Puts prevention at the forefront of our nation's health care system
* Ensures the people with serious medical conditions like cancer are fully covered, without exemptions for pre-existing conditions
* Is simple to understand and manage for consumers.

We must not delay health care reform for even another year, both for our families' health and because growing health care costs continue to impair our county's economic recovery. Our health care system costs too much, delivers too little, and is a looming threat to our financial future. The need for reform is urgent. Please act today. addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'jackodog'; deadline: Ongoing...
goal: 10,000 5,249
signatures!

Equality is healthy

Fire Is Born — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:21:39 EDT

By Gary on May 13, 2009 3:53 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

writes Bob Holman

Countries where there is stark inequality, such as the UK and US, place all their citizens under greater threat of poor mental health

The experts proclaim how to improve the practice of social workers and the lives of service users. Now the government is recruiting 60 highly qualified social workers from abroad to advise on residential care.

This is all important. But the experts rarely mention two words - inequality and equality. This is strange given that Professor Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have recently published The Spirit Level, which has won a good deal of coverage.

The authors draw upon 200 research studies to study income in developed countries. They conclude that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone in them. Very unequal countries like the US and the UK, where the top 20% earn seven to nine times more than the lowest 20%, scored much higher on social problems than places like Sweden and Japan where the differential is only two to three times higher at the top. Those on the lowest incomes suffered most but also the highest earners in unequal countries fared worse than their counterparts in more equal places.

What kind of problems? Mental and physical ill-health, violence, imprisonment, educational performance, poor parenting, teenage pregnancies, child unhappiness, drug use etc. All factors associated with dysfunctional families.

Wilkinson and Pickett put forward two explanations of why inequality is so devastating. In unequal societies, material gain is at a premium. This creates enormous pressure even on the affluent to get more. Those at the bottom cannot do so and turn to withdrawal or anger.

Further, the long hierarchies in unequal societies emphasise social status and class differences. Many working class young men, for instance, cannot gain social status and, instead, find esteem in violence or drug-taking.

In places, The Spirit Level overstates the effects of inequality and underestimates other causes. But their overwhelming evidence convincingly makes the case for greater equality.

The implication is not that social workers should cease their present practice but rather that they should see it in the context of inequality. Certainly, the British Association of Social Workers should campaign for more equality.

It is not sufficient to call for less poverty. Raising incomes for the poor has to be in conjunction with lowering those of the rich. This may be a step too far for some of the very affluent leaders of the Poverty Lobby.

Bob Holman is an author and voluntary neighbourhood worker in Glasgow. *R Wilkinson and K Pickett, The Spirit Level. Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, Allen Lane, 2009.

Single payer - inform your representatives - call them or e-mail or write

Fire Is Born — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:39:14 EDT

AMERICANS MUST BE ALL COVERED - FROM CRIB TO GRAVE!

Single-payer is like numero uno for me, life or death. I will judge any politician on their stance about it and you guess who will get my vote.

yes or no.

no middle grounds here.

I am done being enslaved to my jobs because they give me some semi-lousy insurance. And my small business employer is not happy they need to give me one. So they now prefer to hire folks that get insurance from some other source. Or are much younger than my 59 - with respective coverage cost from Keiser.

SEPARATE HEALTH COVERAGE FROM EMPLOYMENT NOW!!!

SINGLE PAYER for all Americans!! fib

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

H.R. 676 FAQ

Universal Health Care

What is H.R. 676?

H.R. 676, also called the United States National Health Insurance Act, is a bill to create a single-payer, publicly-financed, privately-delivered universal health care program that would cover all Americans without charging co-pays or deductibles. It guarantees access to the highest quality and most affordable health care services regardless of employment, ability to pay or pre-existing health conditions.

What is "single-payer"?

The term single-payer describes the kind of financing system that H.R. 676 uses. It means that one entity--in this case, established by the government--handles all billing and payment for health care services. Right now, there are thousands upon thousands of "payers"-- HMOs, PPOs, bill collection agencies, etc. The sheer volume of paperwork required by our current system means that administrative waste accounts for roughly 31% of the money spent on health care. The single-payer system would eliminate the wasteful paperwork and administrative costs, redirecting more of our health care dollars to providing care.

Medicare is perhaps the best known single-payer system. Essentially, H.R. 676 would improve Medicare and expand it, so that it covers all Americans, regardless of their income.

Who will be eligible for health care coverage under H.R. 676?

All Americans will be eligible for health care coverage. Every person who enrolls in the program and receive a United States National Health Insurance Card and individual ID number, and that is all anyone will need to receive care.

What health care services are covered?

The program established by H.R. 676 will cover all medically-necessary services without charging co-pays or deductibles. The services covered will include: primary care; inpatient, outpatient and emergency hospital care; prescription drugs; durable medical equipment; hearing, dental and vision care; chiropratic treatment; mental health services; and long-term care.

What about "catastrophic" care? Will I ever reach a limit for coverage?

No. There are no limits on coverage. Just as you will never pay a co-pay or a deductible under the universal national health care program, you will never reach a ceiling on your coverage.

Will I be able to choose my doctor?

Yes. Patients will have their choice of physicians, providers, hospitals and clinics. The financing will be public, but the providers will all remain private.

No co-pays or deductibles-- what's the catch? Will I actually pay less for health care?

There is no catch. Both families and employers will pay significantly less for health care.

Currently, the average family of four covered by an employer-provided health care plan spends roughly $4,225 on health care each year, including premiums, services, prescription drugs and supplies. This figure does not include the annual Medicare payroll tax, currently at 1.45%. Under the plan created by H.R. 676, a family of four making the median income of $56,200 would pay about $2,700 in payroll tax for all health care costs. No deductibles, no co-pays, no worrying about catastrophic coverage.

Employers who provide health insurance currently pay, on average, 74% of employee health premiums. For a family of four, the average employer share is $8,510 per year. Under H.R. 676, the employer pays a 4.75% payroll tax, not a premium to health insurance companies. For an employee making the median family income of $56,200 annually, the employer would pay roughly $2,700.
Estimates taken from: Employer Health Benefits 2006 Annual Survey, Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research and Educational Trust; Consumer Expenditure Survey, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics; and Study by the Center for Economic Research and Policy.

How will the transition to the new system work?

The full conversion to a non-profit, single-payer universal health care program will not take place overnight once the bill is passed. The total transition time will be roughly a 15-year period. Important elements of the transition will include:

• Private health insurance companies will be prohibited from selling coverage that duplicates any benefits included in the universal national health care program. The private companies will, however, still be able to sell coverage for services that are not deemed medically necessary, such as many cosmetic surgery procedures. • Private insurance company workers who are displaced as a result of the transition will be the first to be hired and retained by the new single-payer entity. Any of the displaced workers who are not rehired will receive two years of unemployment benefits.

How will the universal program be paid for?

First, switching to a single-payer system will lead to billions of dollars saved in reduced administrative costs. Those savings will be passed on through the system and allow coverage for all Americans. Additional savings in the overall cost of health care will come from annual reimbursement rate negotiations with physicians and negotiated prices for prescription drugs, medical supplies and equipment.
Second, a "Medicare For All Trust Fund" will be created to ensure a dedicated source of funding in addition to annual appropriations. Sources of funding will include:

• Maintain current federal and state funding for existing health care programs
• Closing corporate tax loopholes
• Repealing the Bush tax cuts for the highest income earners
• Establish employer/employee payroll tax of 4.75% (includes present 1.45% Medicare tax)
• Establish a 5% health tax on the top 5% of income earners; a 10% tax on top 1% of wage earners
• One quarter of one percent stock transaction tax

Home

http://www.johnconyers.com/hr676faq
Reader Comments

Many Swine Flu Cases Have No Fever

Fire Is Born — Wed, 13 May 2009 03:27:31 EDT

Off course! fib

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

May 13, 2009 Many Swine Flu Cases Have No Fever By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

Many people suffering from swine influenza, even those who are severely ill, do not have fever, an odd feature of the new virus that could increase the difficulty of controlling the epidemic, said a leading American infectious-disease expert who examined cases in Mexico last week.

Fever is a hallmark of influenza, often rising abruptly to 104 degrees at the onset of illness. Because many infectious-disease experts consider fever the most important sign of the disease, the presence of fever is a critical part of screening patients.

But about a third of the patients at two hospitals in Mexico City where the American expert, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, consulted for four days last week had no fever when screened, he said.

“It surprised me and my Mexican colleagues, because the textbooks say that in an influenza outbreak the predictive value of fever and cough is 90 percent,” Dr. Wenzel said by telephone from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he is chairman of the department of internal medicine.

While many people with severe cases went on to develop fever after they were admitted, about half of the milder cases did not; nearly all patients had coughing and malaise, Dr. Wenzel said.

Also, about 12 percent of patients at the two Mexican hospitals had severe diarrhea in addition to respiratory symptoms like coughing and breathing difficulty, said Dr. Wenzel, who is also a former president of the International Society for Infectious Diseases. He said many such patients had six bowel movements a day for three days.

Dr. Wenzel said he had urged his Mexican colleagues to test the stools for the presence of the swine virus, named A(H1N1). “If the A(H1N1) virus goes from person to person and there is virus in the stool, infection control will be much more difficult,” particularly if it spreads in poor countries, he said.

The doctor said he had also urged his Mexican colleagues to perform tests to determine whether some people without symptoms still carried the virus.

He also said he had examined patients and data at the invitation of Dr. Samuel Ponce de León, who directs Mexico’s national vaccination program.

Dr. Wenzel said that an unusual feature of the Mexican epidemic, which complicates the understanding of it, was that “in recent months five different influenza viruses have been circulating in Mexico simultaneously.”

Pneumonia rates at one of the hospitals Dr. Wenzel visited, the National Institute for Respiratory Diseases, reached 120 per week recently compared with 20 per week during the past two years, suggesting a possible relation to the swine flu.

The pneumonias that the flu patients developed did not resemble the staphylococcal lung infections that were believed to be a common complication in the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, Dr. Wenzel said.

He said the two Mexican hospitals were well prepared for an outbreak of respiratory disease. Mexican doctors activated a program to allay anxiety among staff members, offering the staff information, a hot line, psychological support and medical examinations.

“This aspect of epidemic response is not well appreciated in the United States in my estimation, yet is critical for success,” Dr. Wenzel said. “We haven’t put nearly enough into managing fear among health workers.”

Photo puzzle of the night - guess what is that:

Fire Is Born — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:25:27 EDT

Fire Blog

I want share this with you because it made me so happy...

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