published by Cheryl Grossman on Sun, 05/05/2013 - 00:00
The Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") is still being rolled out. As more people gain access to health insurance and health care improves, UAPA would like to gather stories about how you or your family have benefited.
Have you been able to get insurance when you previously were unable because of a preexisting condition? Were you able to keep your 23- or 24-year-old son or daughter on your policy?
I see that Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine wants to allow private employers to deny their workers access to birth control based on the bosses’ religious beliefs (“DeWine backs wider religious exemption,” Dispatch article, Saturday).
published by Cheryl Grossman on Fri, 02/22/2013 - 22:33
Who will forget that moment during President Obama’s State of the Union when his voice rang out, over and over: “They deserve a vote. They deserve a vote. They deserve a vote.” Now it is time for our progressive voices to ring out. Here is how you can join in the righteous chorus:
"...nearly all of the residents who were interested submitted their [Library Board of Trustees] applications by the deadline published by the city -- except for the three who were actually appointed, all of whom prepared their applications nearly two months late and within a few days of each other." Click on the newspaper image to see the full story with the chart.
During his effort to censor gay periodicals in the Upper Arlington Public Library in 2005, then UA Council member Tim Rankin said,
"If we have to put people on this [Library] board who reflect the values of the community, we'll do that."
According to a story in the February 4th, 2010 edition of ThisWeek [PDF] [JPG], it would seem that UA's new mayor, Frank Ciotola, has made good on Rankin's threat.
Within a few days of being elected Council President, Ciotola made it one of his first acts to appoint three hand-picked recruits to the Library Board. All 3 appointees:
delivered their applications directly to the current Council President, Frank Ciotola, not to the City Clerks Office (source: UA Clerk's Office)
submitted applications a month and a half after the posted November 16, 2009 deadline
completed their applications within 4 days of each other on Jan 6, 8 and 9th, 2010
Ciotola's appointees to the Library Board of Trustees had a fast track outside the normal process, which typically includes a review of applicants with other Council members.
Ciotola: "I wish the deadline had not been published"
And now Ciotola wants to remove what little transparency remains in the current Library Board appointment process. In the ThisWeek story, Ciotola said he wishes the Library Board application deadline had not been published at all!
The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.
Why the high cost? The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”
"We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified... For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
This is an excellent response to the furious and unfounded assertions of the right-wing denialists that have followed from the release of private email by climate change scientists.
Popular Mechanics has a good review of Climategate. The final page sums up what we know about global warming.
And here's a concise explanation of what the scientists at East Anglia were grappling with.
By January, he will have accomplished more than any first-year president since Franklin Roosevelt.
Nov 28, 2009
"There's mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression. Should the stimulus have been larger? Should it have been more weighted to short-term spending, as opposed to long-term tax cuts? Would a second round be a good idea? Pundits and policymakers will argue these questions for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama's decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter. The New York Times recently quoted Mark Zandi, who was one of candidate John McCain's economic advisers, on this point: "The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession," he said. "In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent.""
Our American system of health care is put under a dramatic spotlight in a new play having a three-week run in Columbus.
:
By January, he will have accomplished more than any first-year president since Franklin Roosevelt.