William McDonough describes a brilliant world in which a positive outlook on the environment and devolopment is a reality.
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Filed under: economics, Peace | Tags: Dr. Quentin Young, health care, health insurance, Single payer health care
When the US government holds a summit on an idea, you would think that the country that holds itself as the gatekeeper of free speech would allow all ideas to be on the menu. Not so with Obama’s summit on national health care, where single payer health care was declared a no-no before the invitations were even sent out. Dr. Quentin Young, MLK’s former personal physician, a public friend of Obama’s, and a proponent of single payer health was overtly un-invited.
The problems with the current state of health care in America are not really worth hashing here. Everyone has a story, most people I know are uninsured, and just as many have stories of being denied coverage for something they needed done.
The real problem with private health insurance is that the health insurance companies are not doing their jobs. We pay them, they are supposed to pay our health bills, they come up with ridiculous excuses for why they can’t pay, line their pockets, and then raise rates again. Forcing people to buy private health insurance, which is considered the “compromise” to progressive health care, will do nothing but give more money to an already greedy industry. It won’t lower rates by much, and more importantly, it won’t increase the quality of service the private companies are providing.
The arguments against single payer are weak and heavily funded. Our current existing single payer plan, medicare, only took a year to implement after it was made law. If people want private insurance, that will be their choice, but the rest of the country needs a choice too.
Really, if we removed health insurance from being the responsibility of the employer, everyone could have coverage regardless of being self-employed, un-employed, or like myself, employed by companies who are small enough to refuse to pay health insurance. Employers would have more money to keep jobs in the US. One of the main complaints major employers have about keeping factories and offices in the US is that the health insurance makes an employee much more expensive than one in another country.
It’s time for our ELECTED officials, who work for US to stop pandering to the insurance companies. Their fear of the insurance companies is a disgusting show of weakness and lack of innovation in a time when positive, drastic action is needed. If we can spend billions a year to kill people in other countries, I’m sure we could find some money for American health care.
Single Payer Action – an action website for people interested in single payer health care. They have links to the few news reports being done on single payer since the issue has been completely blacklisted from major media.
If you feel strongly about this issue you can find your Congress people and write to them here. It has been proven that if single payer was brought to congress, the citizen support would be overwhelming – currently hovering around 60%, but congress refuses to bring it to the table – harass them :
House of Reps
Senate
Filed under: Books | Tags: Alan Clements, Asne Seierstad, Aung San Suu Kyi, James Conaway, Jennifer Flynn Boyle, Jonathan Carroll, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kevin Brockmeier, Lucy Grealy, Mark Kurlansky, Polly Evans, Sam Lightner, Scott Hunt
Vanishing America: In Pursuit of Our Elusive Landscapes
He takes us on a road trip across America looking at some of the landscapes that are becoming history. From the coast of Maine, to the prohibitively expensive Nantucket Island, to the deserted desert of Wyoming, he takes us on a personal narrative of these areas.
The writing is a little subdued, it’s not exactly a romping travel narrative, but an important look at the way America is changing for the worse.
White Apples
I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted: A Memoir
The Brief History of the Dead
The Bookseller of Kabul
The Voice of Hope: Updated and Revised Edition
Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea
Autobiography of a Face
Quote from the author: “I spent five years of my life being treated for caner, but since then I’ve spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.”
All Elevations Unknown: An Adventure in the Heart of Borneo
The flip side to this story is a biographical account of a general sent in with a small crew during WWII with no prior contact with the locals (known to collect the heads of their enemies), and stop the Japanese. Not having any idea if they will survive or be in any way successful, they jump from a plane at the base of this mountain and try to make it known that they, too, are enemies of the Japanese. Fantastic.
When We Were Orphans: A Novel
The Future of Peace: On the Front Lines with the World’s Great Peacemakers
I almost forgot this one….
Fried Eggs with Chopsticks: One Woman’s Hilarious Adventure into a Country and a Culture Not Her Own
Kitten stimulus package.
Talk about biting the hand that feeds. Our new rescued cat, Bebek, ate my $1,000 per diem check meant to pay for the hotel I’m staying in while working in the Smokey Mountians in North Carolina. The good news is that the company has agreed to cut me a new check as long as I submit the pieces he didn’t ingest as proof of what happened.
I sure hope it tasted good buddy.
Filed under: Books, Buddhism, Peace, War | Tags: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma, Voice of Hope
Aung San Suu Kyi is a peace activist who has been under house arrest for almost two decades in Burma. Her outspoken opinions on how the Burmese government have oppressed the Burmese people have made her a threat to the totalitarian state, and luckily, rather than turning her into a martyr, the have just tried to keep her quiet by making it hard for her to communicate with the world.
One of the ideas that she presents that I find really interesting is “the questing” mind. “A questing mind is a great help towards withstanding violence or oppression, or any trend that is contrary to what you believe is right and just.” She makes a difference between a questioning mind – one that wonders – and the questing mind that actually seeks out the answers.
She argues that positive action is the first step to healing, so even though she has spent a large part of her life in seclusion and unable to see her family, she does not feel negatively about this because she has added so much positive action to the Burmese cause.
I think one of the reasons that the conservative right has such a hard time with intellectualism is that it may discover that it is wrong. Vaclav Havel stated, “The intellectual should constantly disturb, should bear witness to the misery of the world, should be provocative by being independent, should rebel against all hidden and open pressures and manipulations, should be the chief doubter of systems…he stands out as an irritant wherever he is.”
If you are being vigilant in these things, then taking the humanitarian point of view is necessary. Taking responsibility is a necessity.
These thoughts come from a book of conversations between Aung Sa Suu Kyi and an American Buddhist monk ordained in Burma Alan Clements.
I apologize to the folks who are used to me writing a travel blog about my various work locations and trips abroad. But these days I’m pretty stuck. I’ve been laid off, and rather than wallowing, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, written a couple of songs, am working a book on Buddhism and Peace, and been keeping in touch with what the hell is happening to the US economy.
There were as many jobs lost in the country in the month of January as there are jobs in the entire state of Maine. Almost 600,000 jobs were lost in one month. This is no small impact. This video is great, and I really like Tom’s idea that since the tax payers are bailing out all these companies, these companies should in return bail out consumers and negate a percentage of consumer debt. Why do all the rich people get to run off with the entirety of the US treasury while the people who paid in that money in the first place get nothing?
The Interview Show: Tom Geoghegan from Ben Chandler on Vimeo.
Just for the record. If you are a CRM archaeology field tech, never work for CRAI out of Lexington, KY. The owner has now replaced all temporary field techs with interns willing to work for free. Way to go in taking care of your employees during hard times.
I finished a fantastic book this morning. One of the central characters, Laura Byrd, who happens to be the last remaining person on earth, is surviving on Antarctica.
It struck me kind of funny that I could say, I lived IN Maine, I live IN Nashville, but it sounds completely grammatically incorrect to say I live IN Antarctica. It seems you can live ON a vast ice shelf with no infrastructure, but not in it. Does a place require human culture to live in it?
Ruby Ramblings 