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Dont forget Rep Mike Ross - a report I heard on the radio was that he was a pharmacist!
The current Obstacle of the Week: Rep. Mike Ross, a conservative Democrat from small-town Arkansas who is currently leading a Blue Dog rebellion from his perch on the now-critical House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Yesterday afternoon, committee chair Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) canceled today's mark-up of the leading reform bill because Rep. Ross and six other Blue Dogs had announced they would block the legislation from leaving committee.
Read more! http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/07/meet-rep-mike-ross.html
Say- did you hear the Kucinic oh how do you spell that congressman's name! put in a provision in 'the health care bill' allowing states to form their own health care plans- expecting that states right s might be an issue and this would be a sort of safety net back fire.
People think the government shouldn't pay for health care. Well the government gave subsidies to meat and dairy industry that dwarfed subsidies to fruit and vegetable industry. Fruit and vegetables should be consumed in larger quantities than meat and dairy, why are they getting larger subsidies?
People think the government shouldn't pay for health care, the government already paid to enforce patent law for the oil companies that reduces our transportation options, and forces us to kill ourselves with refinery and car exhaust.
I heard recently that the oil companies no longer hold the patents for the batteries found in the Toyota Rav4-EV. I can't wait to see manufacturers building Nickel Metal Hydride batteries again. Over 100 miles on a charge, top speed around 70 miles per hour, no tailpipe, no cancer.
Need help on one more thing. My Congressional rep's aide gave me this link to read about 'the health care bill'.
However, it does not seem to be what I am hearing other people reading from. Can you help me with a link to 'the health care bill' - To my knowledge there are a number of them out there and so especially when dealing with the Right, I cannot even tell the origin of their spin. I would like to be citing actual language myself.
But where is 'it'?
OpenCongress Summary:
This is the House Democrats' big health care reform bill. Broadly, it seeks to expand health care coverage to the approximately 40 million Americans who are currently uninsured by lowering the cost of health care and making the system more efficient. To that end it includes a new government-run insurance plan to compete with the private companies, a requirement that all Americans have health insurance, a prohibition on denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions and, to pay for it all, a surtax on households with an income above $350,000. A more complete summary of the bill can be read here.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/show
Quark,
Please be careful, I'd hate to think of you (wo)manning the barricades and burning tires in the streets.
It seems to me that the biggest problem we have is the uninformed, misinformed and distracted state of the minds of the American people. When you hear and read the strange things that so many people believe it's not encouraging.
I loved Sara's term, "moral no-brainer," Why aren't the righty moralists in the US able to see that basic health care for all is a "moral no-brainer".
I have had several operations in the past ten years. Each time, I was asked if I had a living will which my wife and I had drawn up some 15 years ago. So what's the big deal about counseling sessions to make sure that end of life issues are addressed and understood. The opponents are grasping at straws.
I just heard the por insurance person. I have to say that these people are insincere. I worked for an insurance company as an adjuster. When I stared as a trainee, I was told that we did a service by helping to create efficiency and preventing fraud. In practice, working tword the monthly goals, it was about "closeing the file." In short, this lead to practices by many adjusters (under preasure) to delay, dismiss and deny. All this so that we can get our monthly numbers/projections in and shore up the bottom line. This system does not care about the real plight of the people for whom they claim to provide care.
Let's be clear (a phrase that Obama uses) as an adjuster, I was between the claimant and the doctor. I was there to impede the doctor's progress if it meant that she was going to spend "the companies money."
As a matter of principle, I could not continue as in that capacity and have moved on. But i n the course of things I had learned about workers comp in California. This points out a giant inefficency where resourse are redirected from thier higher purpose. The company gets to send the claimant to the companies doctor. At some point the disatisfied claimant employee will select his own doctor. There may be a dispue where the claimant gets an attrorney and then may get a Qualified Medical Examiner. Of course the employer gets an attorney and thier own QME. When they settle they will get another doctor konw as a Agreed upon Medical Examiner (AME) all the while having incurred huge cost and, perhaps preventing legitimate claimants from getting care.
To me this would be all solved and every thing could be applied to the higher purpose by Single Payer health care where doctores are independent and autonomous and can act accourding to thier oaths.
Pax Vobiscum.
B Roll,
I attended a MN healthcare forum the other evening. In our round table discussions, we discussed the "corporation-controlling-everything" problem. I made the comment that we already tried to make changes (2004 and 2008 elections) the peaceful way. The response was laughter from everyone in our group.
Too bad they didn't know I was only partly kidding.
How can Carrie Lukas argue that costs of a universal healthcare system will never go down? TWICE the amount of money we need (per costs in other industrialized countries) is already in the "system." It's just going to the wrong people!
Carrie sounds like she just puts her fingers in her ears while she sings, "I can't hear any actual facts, la-la-la-la!"
Thom,
Today isn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last time that you state that “socialism didn’t work out.” You never mention that the “socialist” countries, which emerged from poverty and crisis, were under tremendous economic, political and military pressure from the wealthy highly developed capitalist countries. There’s absolutely no nuance in your analysis of why socialism failed and you rarely acknowledge the crimes against humanity that capitalism fed and nurtured the rise of capitalism.
But since this is a capitalist world… How the hell do you like it?
It’s interesting that you have more faith in our being able to fine-tune a system that has inequality and competition as its basic premise than in our being able to fine-tune a system that has equality and cooperation as its basic premise.
Woah! you got her now, Thom We will spend less money on health care for 10 years than we have already in Iraq / Afghanistan- these righties have no right to be leaders at all- their all nuts.
THX Quark- looks like there is a book to order and entire web site stuffed with stuff from which Thom may have taken a main result. THX much- printed that main order info page.
Wow- what discussions in here today - so much work to do, so much work to do-
My focus these days is how can I be self sufficient because so much is in flux- if I were a righy- I might have to take on the term 'bunker-er' . Do buy even my cat food by the 6 month supply these days! Scary world!
Speaking of computer viruses (per Thom's comments), here's one of the best anitvirus software programs I've found to date (I've tried at least half a dozen different antivirus programs):
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/3/default.htm
There is a 90-day free trial period. You can still subscribe for at least a year, tho the program will be discontinued at the end of the year.
Recently, I tried everything short of taking my computer to a shop to be "professionally fixed" (which I was just about to do) to rid it of a particularly nasty trojan virus. As a last-ditch effort, I discovered and downloaded Windows "Live One Care." It worked like a dream! I was so relieved. There are a lot of other benefits to recommend it, too.
When I told my computer-savvy son about this amazing new program, he said, "Oh, I've been using that for 2 years!"
Apparently Windows is coming out with a new anti-virus program later this year, but I don't know how it compares.
Anyway, I was really impressed.
'Just wanted to share...(and I'm not getting a commission!)
Mark, also, you might be interested in what happened here in Portland. We had a terrible tragedy where a mentally ill man was brutally killed by police because someone had called in to say he was urinating in public, what turned out to be a false accusation. He was simply having a psychotic episode and frightened , he peed on his own pants. While the police were "subduing" him --by kicking him and beating him--they broke ribs, which harmed his organs, if I remember right, and because they neglected to take him to the hospital, he died.
The family of this man just received a huge settlement. I think it was 900,000 and the police are being forced to get more training. Porltand is also opening a much needed urgent care center for those with mental health conditions, something we've needed for a long time. An article on the issue was published in Portland's-- Mercury--
As someone with a mental health condition where I have been treated unconscionably by professionals during a few crisis this whole incident did me in. I could barely stand to read of it. I am still beyond furious but I am grateful at least little good has come of it.
DRichards,
hot article- thx for posting, I was just putting a package together for a friend of mine so paranoid he will not use email and your note here came just in time for me to run the package on over to the post office.
Food Fascist,
I wrote it down, but haven't checked it yet:
www.equalitytrust.org.uk
Mark,
I completely agreed with you until I heard the police officer explain what goes on in his mind when approaching a possible crime scene. Because of the call that had been put in and the fact that Gates lived there, he asked Gates to step outside because he was worried there was another man in the house that could have put Gates in danger.
Gates complete outrage is entirely understandable because of racial profiling and the horribly unfair treatment police officers consistently wield out to people who don't look like they do, but in this case, the police officer was trying to protect Gates by getting him out of the way of possible harm. And when Gates wouldn't do that, he felt both he and Gates were in danger and things escalated.
At that point the adrenalin level in both men seemed to cause the rest of the events, and The Police have the guns by God so they need to have complete control of themselves in that way, but what Obama said was brilliant and wonderful. The larger issue is that of-course race relations are still very volatile and in this instance it seems that two very good men were suffering from this fact not necessarily by their own fault.
The police have way too much power and act in despicable, racist ways but in this case I was really surprised by the police officer's description of what he thought was taking place at Gate's home..Like most sound bite news reports, they hadmissed a very large piece of the picture.
Spitzer: Federal Reserve is 'a Ponzi Scheme, an Inside Job'
The Federal Reserve - The quasi-autonomous body that controls the US's money supply - is a "Ponzi scheme" that created "bubble after bubble" in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23142.htm
help- what is the link for the report Thom is discussing. I know he mentioned it twice and twice I did not get it.
The science of self sufficiency versus the legislation that allows for self sufficiency are two different things. I speak of say rain water, Colorado had to pass a law so that their own citizens could harvest rain water. I would be more self sufficient if the kings and queens of America would ease up on the regulations - even the raw milk argument started above- regulators here are trying to making milking a cow illegal. We are on our way to a third world country for sure if we are now allowed access to our natural resources. BTW - thx Thom Hartmann for turning us all onto this site http://www.celdf.org/
Jared,
I study Ayurvedic medicine, as well as food of course, as I am the Food Fascist. I am also a member of PETA and have been as long as they have been in existence. I would like to ask you what your position is on farms like http://www.organicpastures.com/ and http://www.cornucopia.org/. Organic raw dairy and smaller organic milk farms have an entire thousands of years of good food health behind them as protein and as a form of calcium that does not leach from the body due to too high a protein base in the milk and another chemistry I would have to look up but that is addressed on the organic pastures site.
Making Progress,
'Sounds suspisciously like a movie that has already been made --- The Arrival:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zptdkXbGG48&feature=related
Or can this be a chicken-and-egg situation? Scary, kids! (LOL)
Wow Mark- this is horrid!
I wonder how many “progressive” listeners know that this ad campaign is being financed with one million dollars from the American Chemistry Council, some plastics industry group.
Worse yet in total, I am finding a lot of 'environmental' groups really aren't that well educated or even have what I would consider the best positions on matters. More and more, I distance myself from these 'groups' and have been speaking out at a Private Citizen, especially when the legislators ask me when I call them on matters.
I would not be so quick to disavow 1090 however. At green960, the station was 'forced' to air the yes on prop 8 issue re gay marriage because of the way the media is configured. In fact after writing a nasty letter to them, it was answered sincerely by one of their reporters over there and announcers whom himself said that he was gay and was an advocate for gay marriage, and how horrible his situation was because he had to read these announcements or face dire consequences.
I always worry about advertisements on AM1090. I am friends with Bernie Sanders on Facebook. He recently had a thing on Facebook about the "poor dairy farmers" losing their jobs. I don't care if Dairy farmers lose there job, they can learn how to do something that doesn't destroy the planet. LEARN HOW TO WORK WITH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES!!!
Help us out if you can. Go to twitter and type 'health care' into the subject box. Be prepared to have flames fawning out of your nostrils immediately because the insurance executives and lobbyists are all there. Many of us are calling them out but we need your help.