To be or not to be...Gay that is.

In an article published in THE UNITED-STATESIAN, Justin Sitarz comments on what Gay Rights really mean. He points out that the fight for civil rights, no matter their cause is the same and I agree. I don’t see the difference, whether it is about rights for women, rights for blacks or rights for gays. There should not exist, in our country or our world, a subset of humans who cannot take advantage of and be protected by rights enjoyed by others. 

Sitarz also mentions that the same fear tactics that were used during the civil right struggles in the 60’s are being used today to discourage politicians and constituents from granting equal rights to the LGBT communities. It is such a shame that this is even an issue that we have to fight for. It should be self-evident, and any American that can justify their desire to withhold equal opportunities from their neighbors ought to be deeply ashamed of themselves. The idea that gay marriage threatens the sanctity of straight marriage, that is a favorite statement thrown around by the fear mongers, is simply erroneous and, well, for lack of a better word, dumb! Let’s examine for a minute what that means. Sanctity; “noun- the state or quality of being holy, sacred, or saintly... Ultimate importance and inviolability: the sanctity of human life.”

I don’t know a lot about religion, but I am fairly certain that you aren’t to hold yourself to be holy or sacred and you can’t just call yourself a saint, so I don’t see how you can apply this heavy noun to your marriage, and anyway, how does your neighbors gay or straight marriage affect your admittedly, if not arrogantly, stated saintly straight union, may god forgive you. Also, if your marriage is so inviolability (never to be broken, infringed, or dishonored) I don’t see how anything could threaten it except your ignorance and hate. Okay, now that that is off my chest, let’s move on.

I like what Sitarz says about the government needing to lead this fight. He points out that in 1948 Truman desegregated the military and it still took three years for full desegregation. It took many years after this to obtain equal rights for blacks, but the government was needed to lead the way. I hope to see DADT rescinded soon and I do understand the need for a hold on the initiation of it abolishment. It would be devastating to allow those that are LGBT serving in the military to be able to come out, only to have it over turned again leading to many discharges and angry retaliations, but I too would like this to be done sooner than later.

Who’s Business is Your Health?

While we are debating the Health Care Reform bill and attempting to ascertain whether it can benefit the people and the economy, who deserves it and how much it will cost, I feel that we haven’t asked the right questions. Is your doctor making you better, are your ailments disappearing after you try the latest drug therapy? Outside of injuries and pneumonia, childbirth and infection, what is it we are looking for from our doctors?

How many loved ones have you lost to cancer, heart disease or diabetes? I’m guessing most of them had doctors, utilized hospitals and took medication. Probably many medications. I’m 33 years old and most of my friends are on medications that our parents never even considered! Blood pressure, depression, cholesterol, anxiety, thyroid, laxatives, blood thinners and on and on and none of them have a time frame to get off of these drugs. 

If you are on blood pressure medication, will you be off of them soon? Are you planning to get well or planning to take medication for the rest of your days? Have you considered what Ritalin looks like in 35 years later? Is your anxiety cured? Are you awaiting the next drug to make it all better?

What in the world is going on? This is not simply a case of being able to diagnose symptoms better and then research the drugs to make you well again, because if you haven’t noticed, people are not getting better, and big pharma is getting richer. Our deductibles increase and our benefits decrease. Has your doctor ever told you to not eat fast food and replace it with organic fruits and vegetables when you came to him/her with an illness, depression, diabetes, allergies, high blood pressure etc? Has your doctor ever inquired about your vitamin intake? Has any ever suggested you could treat yourself for the cost of food and still eat your food?

Money is being made on the backs of the chronically ill, and you can sure bet our government is getting paid. According to 60 Minutes in Prescriptions And Profit “the United States is the only industrialized country without some form of control on the prices of drugs. The U.S. also accounts for more than half of the industry's profits.”

The pharmaceutical industry has plenty to say about the out of control prices for medication in the U.S. and keeping the citizens on the drugs, and they are yelling it from the roof tops, and in our faces I might add. According to 60 Minutes, “Since 1999, the drug industry has given more than 45 million dollars in political contributions, and it's spent hundreds of millions more on an army of more than 600 lobbyists to work its will on Capitol Hill.” 

If you think for a minute these drugs are safe, you are dangerously mistaken. The same companies pay for the research, fund the universities, the manufacturing and advertising of prescriptions and the safety of said drugs. According to Over Dose: The Case Against the Drug Companies “Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine: "To rely on the drug companies for unbiased evaluations of their products makes about as much sense as relying on beer companies to teach us about alcoholism."

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1998), 106,000 people die annually from the expected side effects of medication (300 people a day!) and more than 2 million people had severe reactions to medications in hospitals every year. Severe reactions being disability, hospitalization or death. These are reactions to drugs taken properly, with a prescription, not abused drugs.  According to Jay Cohen, M.D “the intense, fast-paced competition of the medication marketplace frequently spurs drug companies to conduct small, brief, insufficiently extensive studies on the dosages of new drugs - dosages that will be taken by millions of people.”

So the drugs we are taking are not safe, and seemingly not effective. Perhaps it isn’t health care we should be debating, but why we are so dependent on it and what it is that is making us so sick.

Here’s a good place to start.

Woe is the Republicans

A fellow student posted a commentary named Republicans Want Change. She points out that America was promised hope and it has not been received. It brings to mind a few questions, do only republicans want change? Is the hope promised up to the president alone? Can the executive branch make changes without the help of congress? Was it intended that the president would single handedly change our government while the house and senate engaged in childish power struggles and slander? Where are the people? I can’t seem to hear their defeated sighs over the tea parties anger.

In case it isn’t evident, I am very frustrated by this idea that the president hasn’t done what he promised. We are a democracy, which means the citizens participation is crucial. We have a unique power system designed WITHOUT political parties in mind. If we had a reality TV show about congress I bet we’d be rapt with awe at all the drama.

When a political parties main agenda is getting a president out of office and reversing any progress that has been made, openly pushing this agenda, how does an individual look at that and say “Yeah, let’s screw em, that’ll help!” Wouldn’t you rather see your government bodies focusing on the issues and working together to make changes that benefit the population and not their own financial or political gains?

Can you “force” a president to have a working relationship when all you want is to oust him? How does the GOP taking over congress allow us to work together when they have continued to be the whiny toddler on the floor not getting it’s way? 

Health care...should’ve known. I am sure we would all like to choose whether we have health care. I also want to know that a wart I had removed when I was 12 didn’t stop me from using my insurance because it is deemed a pre existing condition, and you can’t have both. Most importantly, how many Americans don’t want health care? Those on medicare? Medicaid? Congress? That is all government run health care, it is much needed and I can name quite a few citizens who would be lost without it, and guess what, you don’t have a choice how to use your medicare. Does it make sense that that we are okay with insuring our young and our elderly but not our working citizens who we rely on for our economy? I wish the republicans got this worked up when it became mandatory to carry auto insurance, no one complains about that! Or when they allowed credit history to determine your premium.

Oh the republicans have plans alright, how far do you think they will get if the president and the senate blocks their every move? They don’t want to spend, they don’t want to tax, they want a small government, they want it all and they want to stamp their collective foot until they get it and guess who is going to be at fault if they can’t deliver? You. Us. We the people.

Do you really want change? Then be like Ghandi, be the change you wish to see! 

We Don't Want Your Tea or Your Forced Abortions

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Well, it wasn’t good for tea anyway or the people who wanted to drink it after the British won the French and Indian war. King George III, decided that the American colonies, who had gained a measurable amount of independence during the war, would be taxed to offset the costly war he won. A series of taxes were levied against the colonies beginning in 1765.

These Acts were imposed on the colonies and stated that payment of said taxes is agreement to be ruled by Britain. The colonies refused and the British pushed harder and passed more tax acts. The colonists continued to refuse based on their recently claimed “no taxation without representation.”

So, to take this slowly, the American colonists refused to pay taxes imposed by a body of government they did not elect. Britain did not want to lose control of the colonies and still had the issue of troops in America that were the British’s responsibility to pay for, so emerged the Townshend Acts of 1767.

The Townshend Act imposed a tax on glass. paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea to raise money for administration positions in the colonies. It also tightened and imposed new laws about trade and customs. If the Stamp Act upset the colonies, then this act simply electrified them. It may not have been the simple act of the tax, but the relentless pursuit of control the king was trying to enforce over the colonies.

Not only will you pay, your very act of payment guarantees your submission. This really wasn’t sitting well with the colonists and I have to assume at this point King George III was not the brightest of men given his repeated issue and rescind technique.. After he rescinded all the taxes except the tax on tea due to the colonists boycotting of British goods, a fairly clever plan emerged.

The British Parliament gave the tea industry over to the East Indian Company, which reduced the cost of tea greatly and they reduced the duties attached to tea import hoping that the colonies love for tea would win out over there reluctance to be governed by the monarch.  No such luck. The colonists refused to pay. In fact they refused tea to even enter into their harbors. In 1773 three ships carrying tea arrived in the Boston harbor and it was agreed that the ships would be turned away and no duties would be paid. The Collector of Customs in turn, refused to release the ships without payment. So some 200 men stormed the ships and dumped the cargo into the harbor. 

The colonists for the most part were thrilled, Parliament, not so much. In a now predictable fashion the Intolerable Acts were passed and with it begins the American independence.

I was originally trying to draw a connection between the Tea Party Patriots and the Boston Tea Party revolution without much success. 

The colonists did not feel comfortable abiding by a distant government when they were not involved in electing officials or participating in laws being passed. It started a revolution, and I love the idea, but it scares me. All I hear from the current tea party is fear and intolerance. Fear of government health care, though I am sure a large percentage utilizes medicare, fear of a socialized government, but I imagine that a percentage if "patriots" collect or will collect soon, their social security, that I pay taxes on. Don't get me wrong here, I like paying social security tax, I really do. It might be one of the few I'm okay with because it supports my elders and I think that's a terrific thing to do. Income tax is a whole other story, maybe next post.


So who makes up the Tea Party Patriots today?  A study done at the University of Washington found that 19 percent of Tea Party content involved “attacks on illegal immigrants, criticism of the gay community, racially derogatory commentary, or personal criticism of President Barack Obama.” 24 percent of the content talked of socialism or communism plots to take over America and other conspiracy theories. There are differing numbers when it comes to demographics, but it is consistently reported that there are more males than females, more whites than blacks, and more money than not.

I find the tea party who dumped the tea to be far more inspiring than our supposed current revolutionary movement.  The members of the Tea Party can and do vote. They are represented and taxed. They have more money than the general population. They claim to uphold the “personal liberty of the individual, within the rule of law,” except when it come to gay marriage and abortion. Apparently that's why they have "within...the law." so we wouldn't expect ALL of our personal liberties. They are fairly vague in their mission statement throwing around the words “liberty” and “constitution” a great deal and require you to sign up to read further. They don’t affiliate with any political party, are a grassroots organization that claim as their core values, fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government and free markets. They oppose government intervention into the operations of private business, like OTC derivatives, that leads to recession 2008 and bailout after bailout and TARP and a fight for control of the House and a unbelievable distain for our President Obama. I don't get it folks. I do not get it.


Rumors fly about forced abortions (not possible), in school prayer (go to private school or pray at home) and loss of equal rights (well woman and gays still don't have theirs)  and I for one do not want these tea partiers speaking for me.

This is not the type of revolution I was expecting. 

Who's Bailout?

Yes, we are talking about the bailout again. This time I would like to examine the lingering effects of negative attention. Today Chris Good wrote about TARP, my new favorite topic. In Bailout Politics, Then and Now, Chris Good, a staff editor at TheAtlantic.com, noted some of the hardships our current political parties might face due to their support of TARP in 2008. TARP is more commonly known as the Wall Street Bailout, or the Big Bank Bailout but either way it was a program that designated $700 billion of taxpayer dollars to banks and Wall Street in an effort to stabilize the economy, or get them out of the mess they created. However you want to look at it, it does appear to have been a success, with the taxpayers making $25.5 billion according to the article.

What still remains unclear, now that TARP has ended, is why those who voted for it will now be punished. Good notes that according to Pew, those who voted for the bailout will be "less likely to receive support in the coming midterms" and that 47% of respondents to Pew reported that the bailout was passed under Obama's administration! It was not. That was Bush, and that should be a good thing. That should be an issue that the Republicrats could hold up on either side of the aisle and say "See! It worked and it was our idea!" Instead we seem to hear very little. How long has it been since we heard about what has been done and done well?

I guess it is safer to not bring up the issue, as opinions have been formed and the most attention this bailout gets is the amount of zero's coming off it's 7.

The Atlantic is a blog for those leaning to the Left and though intended for that audience, I think this could speak to the Right as well. Good notes that TARP is still as toxic as it ever was in some political circles and the original supporters are shy to speak of it as the Tea Partiers and the far right continue to oppose it. Maybe it is time to take a step back, and reassess what it is we truly want for our country.

   There is no more destructive force in human affairs -- not greed, not hatred -- than the desire to have been right. Non-attachment to possessions is of trivial value in comparison with non-attachment to opinions.
       -Mark Kleiman

Our Green Defenses

Ten years ago today the U.S. destroyer Cole was refueling in the harbor of Aden, Yemen when a small boat filled with explosives sidled up along side it and detonated. This suicide mission killed 17 U.S. Navy sailors and injured another 39. In this article Remember the Cole author Jim Arkedis, the director of the National Security Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, points out how our dependency on fossil fuels adds to our struggles in the war with Al Qaeda in ways many of us may not have considered. 

The U.S. military in Afghanistan receives its fossil fuels by truck and according to Arkedis the "Taliban has executed seven attacks against fuel supplies traveling to NATO troops in Afghanistan, torching more than 75 fuel trucks in the process." The results of these attacks? Increased cost to buying fuel, $13 -$400  a gallon, according to Secretary Ray Mabus, along with increased military to protect the fuel. All of these attacks have occurred within the last eleven days and Arkedis suggests that the attack on the Cole, so quickly forgotten, along with the continued attacks on fuel transports, is a clear cry out to allocate funds to green energy and that this should start with the military. 

Quoting Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway: "Energy choices can save lives on the battlefield." Personally I cannot agree with them more, however this editorial does leave a gapping hole. The very fact that our war in Afghanistan very likely is being fought over oil. Never mind the refined gold that we are trying to get to our troops, but the actual fields of oil we are presently camping on. At this point it is fairly undeniable the role oil is playing in our current wars, so I find this article strangely wanting. Yes, I agree it is tragic that the gas we are trying to get to our troops, for basic necessities, is a prime target for Al Qaeda. Could this be a classic example of criminalizing the symptoms while condemning the cure?

Arkedis continues with an  idea I enjoy. Renewable energy. Then avoids the very reasons our troops are being attacked for fuel. He relates some of the difficulties and successes behind the military greens. The Marines have reportedly begun using "solar panels, energy-efficient lights and tent shields for insulation." Remember the Cole goes on to report on  green-power projects and mobile nuclear reactors and Secretary Mabus's plans for an "energy-independent" military. By 2020 Mabus wants half of the Navy to use alternative energy reports Arkedis.  It is pointed out in this editorial that most of our current technological innovations have come from funds allocated to the Pentagon and tested within our military. From radar to the internet we have funded our military and have gloried in the results.

I would like to see military funding go toward advancements in the realm of sustainable energy, however, I can't help but wonder, what wars will there be to fight if we are free of our love affair with fossil fuels? 

Which Bailout?

I don’t know how many of us can explain what TARP is, or what is was for, but I bet we are all familiar with the 2008 Bank Bailout that was allocated 700 billion dollars.

 Well it turns out that was called TARP. Treasury Asset Relief Program. It was designed by the Treasury Department and Congress in an effort to prevent the collapse of the American economy by giving money to the banks and Wall Street. There was a dire concern that these institutions would fail without government support and if they went down then Americans would shoulder the consequences.  It was initiated as small and large banks across the country started to stumble with the weight of the mortgage crisis and with an air of genuine fear, the Treasury Department went to work and devised a program that would last two years and would hopefully save the American Public from financial ruin.  It took months of 20 hour days and seven day weeks. This proposal was forecast to fail, to cause incredible debt and lay the ground work for continued support to the financial institutions from our government. It lent money to more than 700 banks but wasn’t devised to prevent the recession, this was pushed to prevent a full blown depression. 

The two year TARP expired on Monday and it looks as if it just may have worked. According to National Public Radio it may have cost only 50 billion and after the Government collects returns on the investments made we as a country just might make some dough. Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire stated "This is one of the few programs in the history of this country where the taxpayers made an investment, it did what it was supposed to do — which was stabilize the financial industry — and they got their money back with interest," but the end of TARP did not receive very much new attention, a few national newspapers printed the story and then buried it inside. 

I wanted to share this story as it got me thinking about how a program that received so much negative attention at its inception could hardly garner a mention when it appears that it turned out to be a success.

Another great article about TARP and it's relationship with the media can be found here.