Tag: Health

Protests Outside of Bush Potemkin Rally in Canandaigua

I was especially proud to see my father’s cousin, Nancy (a very cool person with a track record of protest) holding a sign in the picture for this article.  I wish I could have been there myself. 

13WHAM-TV || Rochester – Not Your Average Protesters

Jon Greenbaum of Metro Justice said, “We’re going to ask people to write letters to their president. We’ll take the letters back to our office and send copies to our congressmen, because people like Kuhl and Reynolds need to hear from their constituents that this bill needs to be fixed.”

Bird Flu: A Case for Good Government

The Bird Flu worries might not worry us so much with more rational and competent people in the Bush Administration.  They tell us that the Bird Flu is coming, and as a solution, we’d better stock up on tuna fish.

What about stocking up on retro-viruses?  What about building a national infrastructure of health care that can help minimize the impact?  How about any rational response from the government we elected and we pay for than for them to tell us we’re on our own?

ABC News: Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America

March 13, 2006 ? – In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States. Ready or not, here it comes.

This is preposterous.

Continue reading “Bird Flu: A Case for Good Government”

Bush in Canandaigua: Metro Justice to Greet Him

If you’re looking for a protest to Bush’s arrival in Canandaigua, Metro Jusice has your answer. For myself, sadly, the drive is a bit much and I have to work. I will not be attending, but here’s the information for the good of the blogosphere:

Massive Rally to Fix Bush’s Part D Disaster
Real Medicare RX Now!
Tuesday
March 14
10:30am
158 Lakeshore Drive
Canandaigua
Buses will be arriving from around the state. Thousands of phone calls are being made.
We expect hundreds of people.
This rally is being held before Bush’s arrival to maximize press coverage. Our experience from Bush’s Social Security Privatization visit to Rochester is that grassroots groups can get their message across best by holding events in the days leading up to the President’s arrival and at a different time and separate place from the President’s event.
Last year, before Bush’s arrival in Greece to tout his Social Security privatization plan, several press conferences were held and the headlines were dominated by criticisms of Bush’s plan.
On the day of Bush’s trip, although the local media offered only fleeting glimpses of the massive rally to defend Social Security (over 1,200 people turned out- more than turned out for Bush’s event), USA Today’s article focused on the depth of the opposition displayed at the Universalist Church.
That was the article read by the decisionmakers in Washington DC.
-Jon Greenbaum, Metro Justice Organizer
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More on Cadaver-Gate

OK, so in how many ways is the below-linked article headline amusing in a very sick way?

13WHAM-TV || Rochester – Recipient Of Questionable Bone Donation Reacts To Recall

“I don’t know whose it is, I know someone else was violated without permission? I didn’t want it under those conditions,” he said.

I remember once a few years ago I was at Club Marcella and almost became the recipient of a questionable bone donation, but fortunately, it was recalled.

All kidding aside, this is but one of the very serious concerns propagated by this most disgusting of stories. For those of you not following the story, a New Jersey company called Biomedical Tissue Services has been shut down for illegally harvesting body parts. Some of that harvesting and some of the grafting has been happening in the good ‘ol Greater Rochester Area.

Continue reading “More on Cadaver-Gate”

Medicare and the Lobbyists

I’m reading through Louise Slaughter’s report (PDF) on the record-setting period of corruption we find ourselves in, specifically through the Medicare portion at the moment, and running through the list of denied amendments to the bill. If ever there was a damning case for corruption, this list should suffice:

  1. An amendment by Rep Brown of Ohio requiring the Medicare subcontractors to abide by the same regulations as every other government subcontractor.
  2. A revision of the reimportation clauses that would require the Secretary (presumably of HHS?) to provide specific reasons for each denial in writing.
  3. A mandated report on the effects of foreign markets on our own drug costs
  4. A provision to allow seniors to pay a monthly copay option in exchange for free generic drugs, assuming they suffer one or more of five major ailments that commonly affect seniors. NOTE: this would have created *the only* generic drug option in the plan.

The list continues, but you get my point. Not only did Big Phara write this bill, but they did so in a way that would ensure the highest possible profit for them, right down to striking the generic drugs market right out of the loop. Don’t miss the big picture, here: by forcing the generic market out of the seniors rackett, they effectively strangle the generic drugs industry, thus paving the way for increased profit margins in perpetuity.

Representative Slaughter’s “America For Sale”

I’m barely 20 pages into Congresswoman Slaughter’s “America For Sale“(PDF) report, and if I thought I knew what sleazy business went on during the passing of the Medicare bill, I was sorely mistaken. I’m making a quick pass through to check what there is to offer in the report, but for now I would recommend anyone with any interest in salvaging democracy in the US take a gander.

So is Congresswoman Louise Slaughter in favour of Clean Money, Clean Elections? No word yet, but the folks over at MetroJustice.org are looking into it, and perhaps DFE will get a taste. We shall see. . .

The World-Wide Dad Web

About three months ago or so, I was exploring my options for a future stay-at-home career that might facilitate both my employment and that of future wife when it comes time for us to have children. In doing so, I posted a discusssion column at TPMCafe.com looking for others with experience. I got more than a few interesting responses and a few pointless ones, but all in all, I was glad I posted.

Since then, I’ve kept the Stay At Home Dad (or SAHD, as it is so often abbreviated) thing in the back of my mind whilst I busied myself picking up certifications and such, but I was surprised just recently to learn that RebelDad.com linked to that same article. This is a blogger putting the whole concept of SAHD’s “under the microscope,” and it’s an awesome site. In this recent post, he takes Darla Shine of DarlaShine.com to task for “balkanization” of the traditional roles.

There is no question that this site carries with it an unmistakably traditional gyno-centric theme, right down to selecting your favourite color as part of the registration process. In fact, it’s not even traditional, it’s just a cynically low-balled concept of women, where the color you pick could mean that you are a “wild thing,” a “flirt,” or “good with animals.” Oh, boy.

But then, who am I to criticize? Cosmo has been selling off the stands for many more years than I have been alive, so there must be women who respond to this. Some people need to wrap themselves in exclusivity in order to feel comfortable, I supose. In the end, I suspect that most of the advice and counciling women recieve from this DarlaShine.com site is just silly in the first place, and to the extent that she does not help erase the lines of traditional roles, she probably doesn’t really move the goal posts in the other direction either.

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Another Dead-End Job. . .

The Democrat and Chronicle reports today that as many as 50 bodies in the Rochester have been harvested illegally for skin and bones. Of course, Rochester is in the news again, and once again it’s for some truly disgusting shit. According to Forbes.com, indictments are already being handed out to the New Jersey owners of the company.

And who was it that did the deed here in Rochester? Wouldn’t you know it? A guy from Honeoye: a guy by the name of Vickers. Kinda sounds a bit Dickensian, don’t you think? Or dare I say it, Poe-like.

Continue reading “Another Dead-End Job. . .”

Cracking Down on Minnesotans

You just cannot trust people from Minnesota, especially seniors, not to start importing drugs from Canada. These hell-on-wheels octogenarians have no respect for the rule of law, no concern for the welfare of drug companies, and if you get to close to them, they’ll whack you with thier steely canes of doom. So much the better, then, that US Customs is finally starting to crack down on these blue-haired ne’er-do-wells:

Charlotte Bystrom of Crane Lake, Minn., was expecting a package of six medications in mid-January. Instead, the 69-year-old got a letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection telling her the $600 shipment had been “intercepted.”

The letter gave her two options: She could voluntarily “abandon” the drugs and waive any rights to the property; or she could request that they be sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for testing and disposal. Either way, she wasn’t getting her medications back.

In fact, the situation keeps improving, with the Canadan drug cartel ~ known as a “pharmacy association” in the Great White Northern Satan ~ that deals with these miscreants reporting as much as 10 percent of thier illicit trade being stopped on the borders.

Your tax dollars at work: keeping kids off drugs.