We have all seen the photos and reports after a disaster when an aid truck shows up and is mobbed by people pushing and shoving to get some of the aid….but there is one place on earth that you would not expect to see such a mob action….CNN has a great report and be sure to watch the video carefully…….
These are the people that the GOP is ignoring completely in their pursuit of the almighty majority……I fear for my country and I fear for the Middle Class……
This is a re-post of one of my previous posts on Info Ink….this one is from April 2007…..
An Alternative Healthcare Proposal
For years, the most pressing problem that the US faces is that of adequate healthcare for all the American people. Leaders have toyed with the problem, the people have wanted more, presidents have given it tons of lip service, but yet no one has an idea that will work. It either would cost too much money or it would not be politically advantageous or……..and the beat goes on. To date there is still no adequate healthcare or a workable plan. My question is–how long will they debate and promise and ……?
I have had a thought on one possible path they could be taken to help the American people with adequate healthcare. And the really good part of it, it will not add much cost to the system that would needed to be funded by more taxes.
But I start I want to make it clear that this plan is for doctors and visists it will not encompass hospitalization of any kind. The easy part would be the doctor’s end of the equation, the hospital part will take a massive plan to fix it. This then is just a small part of the problem, but could be fixed with little increase to the American people.
This is a plan that I sent to my Congressman several years ago and his reply had nothing to do with what I had outlined. In other words, the pig did not read it and some low level gopher sent me a reply to my proposal. Needless to say, I have little use for my congressman, who by the way is still on my dime in Washington.
First let us start with seemingly unrelated problems; the healthcare of the American people and those who default on their student loans. Is there a connection? Well, yeah! One of the worst abusers of non-payment of student loans are those in the medical field; doctors to be more exact.
There have been many plans over the years to try an get the money out of these abusers, but most were a dismal failure. One such plan, the doctor would go where the US needed him/her and work until the loan was paid down. Not bad, but unfortunately, there were always loopholes that allowed the people to escape from this plan.
My proposal is simple, the doctor opens a clinic in Willacuchi, Ga and begins seeing patients. He would then choose a day a week that the poor would be treated. The amount of the visit, supplies and medication that he used that day would be deducted from his loan balance and this would be continued until the entire loan was paid off. NO ESCAPE CLAUSES!
The doctor, no matter what city or town, would not have to give up their private practice or their goals of riches accumulation. The Dept. of Health and Human Services would monitor the transactions, to keep them honest.
This proposal will not eliminate the need for more sweeping changes in the healthcare of Americans, but it would be a start at helping those who cannot afford to visit the doctor on regular basis. Those people who do not have insurance or money enough for doctors appointments. I realize that this is simplistic and if the government gets involved it might become a nightmare, but it is a start
It would not take DHHS long to come up with a satisfactory method of determining who is in need and who is scamming. This would not be that difficult and I say why not give it a try? Plus it would not grow the size of the bureaucracy; it is already in place. The only cost to the government would be to vote it in and then get the word out…there are agencies in every state that could handle that……
CHUQ
31/03/07
Over the years I have pointed out numerous times that some person in the South has made a complete ass of themselves by saying something that is totally inappropriate….and the beat goes on…this time it was the Lt. Governor of South Carolina….apparently the state is full of morons….we have the governor who was hiking the Appalachian Trail (wink, wink) to the idiot that yelled ‘you lie’ at the president and now yet another yo-yo that needs to have his tongue ripped out…..
Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to “feeding stray animals.”Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents.
“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better,” Bauer said.
I think that there will be those who will agree with this statement….you know those people who think that poverty is caused by laziness and not the government or possible that dislike the poor because they are poor……
It is interesting comment considering that there is high percentage of the people of South Carolina that live below the poverty level…..and many of those are African American…so were his comments slightly veiled racism or what? He sounds like a typical Southern Republican to me…..I live there and many of them feel this way about the poor….
Daily Agitator
There are always stories in the news about the shenanigans that corporations pull……some arte disgusting, more so than some of the others, but then there is one that makes me really hate these self-absord dicks…..
Poverty in the US is reaching fantastic percentages, especially with the recession and all the jobs loses……..close to 20 million people live below the poverty line in the US….there is NOT enough money for them to have food or clothing or shelter…….this story is all the more reason to be disgusted, especially because of the severe weather that is gripping the nation…..
This week the New York Times reported a disheartening story about two of the largest retail chains. You see, instead of taking unsold items to sample sales or donating them to people in need, H&M and Wal-Mart have been throwing them out in giant trash bags. And in the case that someone may stumble on these bags and try to keep or re-sell the items, these companies have gone ahead and slashed up garments, cut off the sleeves of coats, and sliced holes in shoes so they are unwearable.
This unsettling discovery was made by graduate student Cynthia Magnus outside the back entrance of H&M on 35th street in New York City. Just a few doors down, she also found hundreds of Wal-Mart tagged items with holes made in them that were dumped by a contractor. On December 7, she spotted 20 bags of clothing outside of H&M including, “gloves with the fingers cut off, warm socks, cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor, men’s jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy fiber fill was coming out in big white cotton balls.”
I am sorry but this is disgusting…..you mean to tell me that with all the tax advantages these companies get that they could not have donated the clothing? Every day there is a news story of people dying because of the weather and yet these people, who could have helped, did not assist and yet they still get advantages of their position in society. Sorry but this is criminal and there should be some apparatus in place to deal with this situation…..heavy fines or loss of a status or something that would penalize them for turning their backs on the American people.
The next time Wal-Mart makes a commercial that talks of their record in helping society…I want this story to follow it….the people need to stop throwing money at these types of businesses….I know that is a lot to ask during a recession when we have to get all we can for our dollar….but keep in mind….YOU may need something and these companies will turn their back on you…….hold these people responsible for their actions….if you do not….then WHO?
I can hear the screams from my house……
I am always looking for constitutional stuff……stuff that flies in the face of all those people whop stand on the US Constitution as a defense of their opposition to an issue……also those people that have NOT read the document before they spout crap or try to manipulate an occurrence…..
This one ought to get all the right wing nuts salivating:
This report came from the NY Times:
The federal government must continue to provide grant money to the national community organizing group Acorn, a federal court ruled Friday, saying that the House violated the Constitution when it passed a resolution barring the group from receiving federal dollars.
A judge at the United States District Court in Brooklyn issued a preliminary injunction that nullifies the resolution and requires the government to honor existing contracts with the group and review its applications for new grants unless the Obama administration appeals the decision.
The court ruled that the resolution amounted to a “bill of attainder,” a legislative determination of guilt without trial, because it specifically punishes one group.
Oh darn! I can just hear all those who have been demonizing ACORN for decades revving up their engines to attack the ruling. There shoulkd be the usual suspects that attack any ruling like this…the call to end “Activist” judges….you know those judges that are doing what they are suppose to do according to the Constitution….acting as the umpire in the legislative game…..but since it is not a ruling the Right will like…they will be “Activist” judges that are setting policy…..
This would be the SAME Right that would have NOTHING to say if the ruling went in their favor….after many many years of trying to kill ACORN….for no other reason than it has been successful at registering Dem voters….the Right has suffered a set back….it will be interesting what new technique they will find to attack the organization……
This fight IS NOT over…not by a long shot…..
Since I do so much reading I find stories all the time and just cannot find time or space for a post, but this story I saw in Al Jazeera and made room for it. There are so many consequences of war, the creation of massive poverty, being one such consequence.
Abject poverty across Iraq is fuelling an illegal trade in human organs.
Hundreds of people are believed to have sold kidneys and other organs through dealers in the capital, Baghdad, over the last year.
About 23 per cent of Iraqis live in poverty, meaning that they are forced to survive on $2.2 a day or less, according to government figures.
Unemployment is also high, with at least 18 per cent of the population out of work, UN and government reports suggest. Unofficial estimates have put the figure as high as 30 per cent.
The organ brokers who arrange the deals between the desperately poor and those desperate enough to pay to save the life of a loved one, typically congregate around the hospitals.
Although Iraqi law allows people to donate their organs, their sale is illegal.
However, one of their customers said that he had paid more than $15,000 to one of the dealers outside the hospital.
The majority of customers buying the organs are other Iraqis, but with news of the growing market spreading across the region, there have been reports of people travelling from across the Middle East to secure an organ.
Or Watch What You Eat.
A Daily Agitation
Before I begin I want to inform those that are not political junkies such as myself…..Sotomayor will be confirmed…the CIA has been carrying out covert ops since its inception…..now you can give your mind a break from the cable catnip that is playing daily.
The health care issue is being hotly debated…both sides are trying desperately to be heard. The Repubs have offered up their special plan for health care it is called ” The People’s Choice Act”, in case you would like to check it out.
I read it and since I have plenty of time to comtemplate the stuff that was put into it…I would like to talk about the part that got my attention over most of the other stuff. It is the part on food stamps and nutrition. Paragraph 1 in this section reads:
(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Agriculture shall, based on scientific, peer-reviewed recommendations provided by a Commission that includes public health, medical, and nutrition experts and the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, develop lists of foods that do not meet science-based standards for proper nutrition and that may not be purchased under the food stamp program. Such list shall be updated on an annual basis to ensure the most current science-based recommendations are applied to the food stamp program.
Okay with that posted it sounds like the “Food police” will be looking into your eating habits. According to this, unhealthy foods could be bought with food stamps…that will mean that since the healthy foods are more expensive that the poor’s food dollar will not go as far in feeding their family. I have written posts stating that healthy foods should be made more attractive to the poor by making them less expensive than the unhealthy varieties. But just making it illegal to buy certain foods will not make them healthier. Just like making drugs illegal did not make their use go away.
One of my more avid readers, Sue, had a good point….let the ones making these outrageous acts, have to live on the same amount that the people getting food stamps would have to do…..then these millionaires might learn some humility, by learning that they are morons for even attempt such crap.
The debate rages on over the amount of obesity there is in the US…I have heard that it is 6 out of 10 people are overweight.
Back in the day when I was employed as an electrician for a local housing authority, I was always encountering huge damn cockroaches….they seemed much larger than the ones I encountered elsewhere…I thought it was just my imagination….but I was mistaken.
I read an article on livescience.com:
Cockroaches may be tiny enough to slip through the smallest of cracks, but just like humans, these eternal pests can get fat on an unhealthy diet.
As part of a decade’s worth of research on cockroaches, Patricia Moore of the University of Exeter studied how female cockroaches change their mating behavior in response to their diet, specifically what they eat when they are young.
To find out, Moore and her colleagues picked young female cockroach nymphs and divided them into two dietary groups. Half were fed a good-quality balanced diet of protein-rich fish food and high-carbohydrate oatmeal, while the rest were raised on fish food only.
After the last molt, when the nymphs became adults, the team switched the diets of some animals. Half of the cockroaches raised with good quality diet lost their oatmeal, while half of the bugs fed poorly were promoted to a good-quality diet.
Eighteen days after the switch, the diet control ended and some of the surviving cockroaches were dissected. The rest were allowed to live on and reproduce.
The results: While the lifespan of the members of both groups was about the same, the cockroaches on the poor diet were fatter and took longer to mature.
Moore suggests that the poorly fed bugs were storing up excess fat at the expense of their growth in case their dietary options got even worse.
The effects of unbalanced meals continued throughout the cockroaches’ lives, even for the few that were switched to good-quality food.
Females that ate a poor-quality diet were less willing to mate and less likely to produce offspring. They were also more picky and spent more time considering possible mates.
I was relieved to see that I was not hallucinating while employed by low income housing. Since most poor people have unhealthy diets, then the roaches would also.
Maybe this will help those in power come up with a way to see that the poor eat more healthy. But I am not holding my breath.
As the TARPs and TALFs do their thing to try and stabilize the economy other fears surface.
Wall Street got theirs ….to the tune of about $1 trillion…..The Auto Industry got theirs…..billions…Banks got rescues and now some want to repay their loans from the government.
But recently the Fed chairman has said as reported by the AP:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday urged Congress and the Obama administration to cut record-high budget deficits, warning that they could erode investor confidence and endanger the economy’s long-term health.
Bernanke’s comments came as concerns grow at home and overseas about the United States’ mounting red ink.
“Even as we take steps to address the recession and threats to financial stability, maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance,” Bernanke told the House Budget Committee.
The White House estimates that the government will rack up an unprecedented $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year. That would be more than four times last year’s all-time high.
Now that all the speculators have gotten their pound of flesh, Bernanke is concerned with the control of the growing deficit. You know what that means, right?
Where will the government cut to help in this control? Stim money…nope. Nowhere but entitlements…you know those programs for the elderly and the poor….like Social Security and Medicare come to mind readily. Fiscal conservatives, both Repub and Dem, will be screa,ming for some sort of deficit cutting measures and soon.
Wrting for wsws.org, Barry Grey analyzed Bernake as such:
The phrase “confidence of the financial markets” is a euphemism for the interests of Wall Street and major international banks and investors. In demanding the preparation of austerity measures to be imposed on the American people, Bernanke was speaking in behalf of the financial elite whose massive taxpayer subsidies have been the major cause of the explosive growth over the past year of the federal deficit and the US national debt.
Warning that a continuation of such levels of debt could drive up the cost of government borrowing—a disastrous prospect for an economy dependent on a continuous stream of loans from China, Japan and other countries—Bernanke said that the deficits would have to be reduced substantially either through tax increases or budget cuts. “The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt,” he declared.
He made clear that his prescription for “fiscal balance” was dramatic cuts in what remains of social programs, rather than tax increases. He zeroed in on the basic programs upon which tens of millions of Americans depend—Social Security and Medicare.
Of course these programs will be on the chomping block…why?….reps have a great retirement and medical and such and their programs will not be effected.
Once again Main Street will be the victim of the government, while Wall Street gets all the consideration and perks. When will we ever learn?
It was the ambitious program started by LBJ in 1964. From his speech before the joint session of Congress:
Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it. No single piece of legislation, however, is going to suffice.
We will launch a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of Appalachia.
We must expand our small but our successful area redevelopment program.
We must enact youth employment legislation to put jobless, aimless, hopeless youngsters to work on useful projects.
We must distribute more food to the needy through a broader food stamp program.
We must create a National Service Corps to help the economically handicapped of our own country as the Peace Corps now helps those abroad.
We must modernize our unemployment insurance and establish a high-level commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon and not a bane to humanity.
We must extend the coverage of our minimum wage laws to more than 2 million workers now lacking this basic protection of purchasing power.
We must, by including special school aid funds as part of our education program, improve the quality of teaching, training, and counseling in our hardest hit areas.
We must build more libraries in every area and more hospitals and nursing homes under the Hill-Burton Act, and train more nurses to staff them.
We must provide hospital insurance for our older citizens financed by every worker and his employer under Social Security, contributing no more than $1 a month during the employee’s working career to protect him in his old age in a dignified manner without cost to the Treasury, against the devastating hardship of prolonged or reapeated illness.
We must, as a part of a revised housing and urban renewal program, give more help to those displaced by slum clearance, provide more housing for our poor and our elderly, and seek as our ultimate goal in our free enterprise system a decent home for every American family.
We must help obtain more modern mass transit within our communities as well as low-cost transportation between them.
Above all, we must relase $11 billion of tax reduction into the private spending stream to create new jobs and new markets in every area of this land. . . .
As I have said, an ambitious program indeed, but over the years many have called it a failure…….well it was! Not because of the program itself, but rather because before it had a chance to show signs of success it was systematically dismmantle by every incoming president from 1964 to the present.
You see the American voter bought into the con job of a smaller government was a better government. How has that worked out so far? The country can spend billions on foreign aid but the mere mention of helping Americans is taboo. And the only answer that Washington can give is…Tax Cuts. And we see just how well that piece of crap has worked out, haven’t we?
The War On Poverty can NEVER be successful…as long as we ignore the existence of poverty and its causes. (Read page entitled, “Why Poverty”)