Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Look what these sleazy Democrats and their shills call the road to single-payer...

Here it is--- hot off the press, maybe the calls are doing some good, at least a little light is being shined; does anyone call this the path to "single-payer universal health care?"

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/07/16/vermont-releases-final-health-insurance-rates/


Vermont Releases Final Health Insurance Rates

By Julie Edgar


Reviewed by Katherine Swartz, PhD


July 12, 2013 — Vermonters can expect to pay slightly lower premiums than those initially proposed by the two insurance carriers approved to sell plans on the state’s new health insurance Marketplace, called Vermont Health Connect.


The Green Mountain Care Board — the regulatory authority for insurance and hospital rates in Vermont — announced this week that it negotiated 4.3% to 5.3% rate cuts in individual and small-group plans offered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont and MVP Health Care. The rates go into effect Jan. 1.


Vermont approved six “metal” plans in its health insurance Marketplace, also called an Exchange. There are two bronze, two silver, one gold, and one platinum plan, each with different combinations of copayments, coinsurance rates, and limits on annual out-of-pocket spending.


Every plan must cover the same services, but the companies pay a bigger share of costs going from the bronze to platinum. Bronze plans pay about 60% of the average person’s health costs. Silver plans pay 70%, gold plans 80%, and platinum plans 90%. Customers pay the remaining costs. (For example, customers pay 40% of the costs under a bronze plan.) Bronze plans have the lowest premiums, while the platinum plans have the highest. 


In Vermont, final rates for mid-range silver plans are from $395 (BCBS) to $410 (MVP) per month for a single person. Family plans range from $1,111 (BCBS) to $1,151 (MVP) per month. About 100,000 state residents are expected to buy insurance through Vermont Health Connect.


Lower-income Vermonters can expect to pay 0.5% to 8% of their income on health insurance premiums, according to Robin Lunge, Vermont’s director of health care reform. Financial aid in the form of state subsidies and federal tax credits are available to ease the financial burden for about 49,500 residents.


Under the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010, each state must have a health insurance Marketplace in place by Oct. 1 for coverage starting Jan. 1, 2014. Most Americans will be required to have health insurance starting Jan. 1. Vermont is one of 17 states, along with the District of Columbia, that will run its own Marketplace.


SOURCES:News release, Green Mountain Care Board.Robin Lunge, director of health care reform, state of Vermont.Anya Wallack, chair, Green Mountain Care Board.Emily Yahr, education and outreach manager, Vermont Health Benefit Exchange-Vermont Health Connect.
© 2013 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

Vermont "single-payer;" one more Democratic Party hoax and a fraud just like Barack Obama.

The Vermont "Single Payer Legislation" is a hoax.

It is not based on the Canadian model and the Canada Health Act.

Tommy Douglas did not view single-payer as the ultimate goal; in fact, Tommy Douglas was creating a public health care system in Saskatchewan--- socialized health care--- when it began to rapidly catch on and support for socialized health care spread like a prairie fire across Canada which struck fear into the profit-mongers, and a reform agreement was reached resulting in single-payer which is financed mainly through a payroll tax on employers and employees just like Social Security is paid for.

The Vermont "single-payer" will cost families hundreds of dollars a month--- probably well over $700.00 a month. I have called the office of the Vermont governor to ask how much this will cost the people. They refuse to say. I then called 10 members of the Vermont legislature at random--- no one would answer this question.

PNHP dishonestly promotes single-payer as the "ultimate solution" while backing this hoax in Vermont just like they backed the legislation by Minnesota State Senator John Marty which was a hoax--- not single -payer.

The "ultimate solution" is a national public health care system--- socialized health care.

What is real single-payer?

No-fees/no-premiums, comprehensive, all-inclusive, pre-natal through burial; publicly financed, publicly administered and privately delivered.

What is a national public health care system?

No-fees/no-premiums, comprehensive, all-inclusive, pre-natal through burial; publicly financed, publicly administered and PUBLIC DELIVERY.

Doctors should be placed on the public payroll just like public school teachers and health care should be modeled on the same system as public education.

PNHP is looking out for the doctors not for the well-being of the rest of us in promoting these phoney "single-payer" schemes like in Vermont.

No one in Vermont will provide any specifics about cost or what the role of insurance companies will be--- in fact, Vermont Blue Cross/Blue Shield welcomes the Vermont legislation and the only thing people have to look at is their monthly premium they are now paying to them for insurance and by 2017 they will be paying about 30% more under this fraudulent "Vermont Single-Payer" legislation which is titled:

"Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Single-payer is not even in the legislation's title.

Again, this is nothing but modified Obamacare with a board stipulating that doctors will continue robbing people just like the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industries.

No Canadian would view the Vermont legislation as anything similar to Canadian single-payer; so why would we?

Don't fall for this hoax.

Don't believe me? Just sit by and think that you will be getting single-payer as a result of the Vermont hoax which does absolutely nothing for you and me but enshrines continued high fees for doctors.

I challenge anyone who disputes my assessment of this Vermont legislation to post here:

What a family of four will continue to pay out of their pocket for health care.

At best, single-payer should be supported as a step towards a national public health care system.

Public education works because it is public; privatize education and it ceases to work. Same thing with health care--- privatized health care does not work.

What do we want in health care?

Publicly Financed. Publicly Administered. Publicly Delivered.

When do we want it? NOW!

Fund health care not these dirty imperialist wars.

A National Public Health Care System has the added bonus in that it would create some 12-million to 15-million new jobs putting people to work providing the American people with FREE health care for a small fraction of the price Obama's dirty imperialist wars are costing us.

Instead of over 800 U.S. military bases dotting the globe on foreign soil--- put a health care center in ever neighborhood.

Of course, just like in Canada, clinging to this rotten and corrupt two-party trap isn't going to get us anywhere near real single-payer or a national public health care system--- it was Tommy Douglas and his socialist New Democratic Party (then called the CCF) that won single-payer and on his deathbed Tommy Douglas told Canadians that the struggle for health care reform would not be over until socialized health care was finally realized.

The peddlers of this Vermont hoax are also trying to pervert where Tommy Douglas stood on health care reform and how this reform in Canada came about.

Again, I say, bring forward the specifics of the Vermont legislation and let's see how much it will cost and who will pay and how it will be paid for. Very simple. Just give us these facts of what will be and not what some Democratic Party shill would "like to see happen."

Don't fall for this hoax; it is just like Obama--- a Democratic Party fraud.

It isn't even an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny baby step towards real health care reform--- it is another big step backwards just like Obamacare--- the "Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical Industry Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010."

Our goal should be to get us closer to a national public health care system--- anything that doesn't put us on this path should be rejected.

Hungry Canadian aboriginal children were used in government experiments during 1940s, researcher says

Just received this from a friend in Canada.

There is no end to the crimes against Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the United States.

I suppose the Canadian government "will make everything right" with one more "apology" to Aboriginal people:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/16/hungry_aboriginal_kids_used_unwittingly_in_nutrition_experiments_researcher_says.html

A very good friend of mine, Nelson Scribe--- a former Chief of the Norway House Cree Nation explained, back in 1994 at a gathering of Cree eleders--- what it will take to right the wrongs of the past and put an end to the ongoing injustices:

The Elders took up the first part of the gathering. They met for three days trying to come up with a direction for the renewed Cree Confederacy.

They expressed concerns about injustice, poverty and struggles in their community. All across Cree country, the problems were the same.

The Cree Nation was once a strong and powerful nation according to what the Elders say. It was only when government divided them that they lost that unity and strength.

Nelson Scribe is an Elder and former chief of the Norway House First Nation in northern Manitoba. He says with the creation of a Cree Confederacy, they'll be able to speak with one voice.

"It'll be easier to get government to move on our concerns when we talk to them as one. It will also eliminate the provinces from telling each nation different things because we'll be one nation dealing with one government," Scribe said.

Scribe added the Cree Confederacy will return to the largest and once-powerful nation in North America.

"We are powerful. We just don't know it yet," Scribe said.

- See more at: http://www.ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/gathering-renews-cree-confederacy#sthash.hsjjIJVb.dpuf

The article in The Star:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/16/hungry_aboriginal_kids_used_unwittingly_in_nutrition_experiments_researcher_says.html

News / Canada

Hungry Canadian aboriginal children were used in government experiments during 1940s, researcher says

New historical research says hungry aboriginal children and adults were once used as unwitting subjects in nutritional experiments by the Canadian government.



Aboriginal children were deliberately starved in the 1940s and ’50s by government researchers in the name of science.
Milk rations were halved for years at residential schools across the country.
Essential vitamins were kept from people who needed them.
Dental services were withheld because gum health was a measuring tool for scientists and dental care would distort research.
For over a decade, aboriginal children and adults were unknowingly subjected to nutritional experiments by Canadian government bureaucrats.
This disturbing look into government policy toward aboriginals after World War II comes to light in recently published historical research.
Photos View gallery
  • A nurse takes a blood sample from a boy at the Indian School, Port Alberni, B.C., in 1948, during the time when nutritional experiments were being conducted on students there and five other residential schools. zoom
When Canadian researchers went to a number of northern Manitoba reserves in 1942 they found rampant malnourishment. But instead of recommending increased federal support to improve the health of hundreds of aboriginals suffering from a collapsing fur trade and already limited government aid, they decided against it. Nutritionally deprived aboriginals would be the perfect test subjects, researchers thought.
The details come from Ian Mosby, a post-doctorate at the University of Guelph, whose research focused on one of the most horrific aspects of government policy toward aboriginals during a time when rules for research on humans were just being adopted by the scientific community.

Researching the development of health policy for a different research project, Mosby uncovered “vague references to studies conducted on ‘Indians’ ” and began to investigate.
Government documents eventually revealed a long-standing, government-run experiment that came to span the entire country and involved at least 1,300 aboriginals, most of them children.
These experiments aren’t surprising to Justice Murray Sinclair, chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission became aware of the experiments during their collection of documents relating to the treatment and abuse of native children at residential schools across Canada from the 1870s to the 1990s.
It’s a disturbing piece of research, he said, and the experiments are entrenched with the racism of the time.
“This discovery, it’s indicative of the attitude toward aboriginals,” Sinclair said. “They thought aboriginals shouldn’t be consulted and their consent shouldn’t be asked for. They looked at it as a right to do what they wanted then.”
In the research paper, published in May, Mosby wrote, “the experiment seems to have been driven, at least in part, by the nutrition experts’ desire to test their theories on a ready-made ‘laboratory’ populated with already malnourished human experimental subjects.”
Researchers visited The Pas and Norway House in northern Manitoba in 1942 and found a demoralized population marked by, in their words, “shiftlessness, indolence, improvidence and inertia.”
They decided that isolated, dependent, hungry people would be ideal subjects for tests on the effects of different diets.
“In the 1940s, there were a lot of questions about what are human requirements for vitamins,” Mosby said. “Malnourished aboriginal people became viewed as possible means of testing these theories.”
These experiments are “abhorrent and completely unacceptable,” said Andrea Richer, spokesperson for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Minister Bernard Valcourt.
The first experiment began in 1942 on 300 Norway House Cree. Of that group, 125 were selected to receive vitamin supplements, which were withheld from the rest.
At the time, researchers calculated the local people were living on less than 1,500 calories a day. Normal, healthy adults generally require at least 2,000.
In 1947, plans were developed for research on about 1,000 hungry aboriginal children in six residential schools in Port Alberni, B.C., Kenora, Ont., Schubenacadie, N.S., and Lethbridge, Alta.
One school for two years deliberately held milk rations to less than half the recommended amount to get a ‘baseline’ reading for when the allowance was increased. At another school, children were divided into one group that received vitamin, iron and iodine supplements and one that didn’t.
One school depressed levels of vitamin B1 to create another baseline before levels were boosted.
And, so that all the results could be properly measured, one school was allowed none of those supplements.
The experiments, repugnant today, would probably have been considered ethically dubious even at the time, said Mosby.
“I think they really did think they were helping people. Whether they thought they were helping the people that were actually involved in the studies — that’s a different question.”

People Over Profits! Help stop the harassment the Marcus family is being subjected to by the Humboldt Greenway Townhome Association.

I have called Michelle Boeck and so far I have received no response. I encourage everyone to call and write to protest this malicious unethical harassment of Marcus Harcus and his family...

Call the property manager, Michelle Boeck:
--> 612.381.8600
--> michelleb@citiesmanagement.com
Humboldt Greenway Townhome Association



Buying a townhome for my family has been one of the worst mistakes of my life. I like our first family home and the location, but I dislike my association board.

These unethical, unscrupulous neighbors are suing me for $701 in past due monthly townhome association fees. For nearly two years, I have suffered with a household deficit due to a significant loss of household income. This means I have not earned enough income to cover all of my basic living expenses, even with as many cuts and deprivations as I can manage. Having to prioritize survival needs like food, shelter, education, childcare, health care, and transportation expenses for my young family, many of my monthly $200 association fees have been late. I'm behind $701, but still making payments to the best of my ability. I have paid several thousand dollars in association fees since we moved here nearly 5 years ago. During my time of financial hardship, when I am down, my white gentrifier neighbors are kicking and stomping me and my young family...

The association board has cruelly SUED my family after threatening us this year and last year. These people lack humanity and cannot fathom ethical considerations - these inhumane neighbors have PILED UP late fees and legal fees that amount to more than $2,400! They have refused to agree to a fair and reasonable payment plan. They're so zealous about $701 that we can't afford to pay at once, that they're trying to artificially inflate this debt to FINANCIALLY RUIN MY FAMILY and make us HOMELESS! This is unscrupulous and usurious like a muthafuka!

I am going to protest my unscrupulous townhome association board and I need your help! I want to organize a press conference in the coming weeks, prior to the next Humboldt Greenway Townhome Association board meeting on July 15 and before my court date on July 18. I need all of the organizers and activists and friends that I have to join me in stopping this madness. I intend to engage in nonviolent direct actions to publicly shame my unethical neighbors, to create enough tension to compel them to change their dirty ways and comply with my demands justice. I have attempted to negotiate with these people in earnest, but they were completely devoid of reason or compassion from the very beginning. Who needs enemies with neighbors like these?

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

Call the property manager, Michelle Boeck:
--> 612.381.8600
--> michelleb@citiesmanagement.com

Please deliver this message to her:

"Hi Michelle,

"I am a neighbor/friend of Marcus Harcus. What you're doing to his family is wrong. Where is your humanity? Drop the frivolous and unscrupulous lawsuit against them now! Drop the fees and change the unethical policies and practices of the Humboldt Greenway Townhome Association board!

"Thx."

Please leave her a voice message and send her an email anytime that you can, but the best time to flood her phone would be on Tuesdays between 9:00am-12:00pm.

If you are able to make the call, which takes no time and will make you feel good, and it might even make you laugh, please let me know that you did call and/or email. Please do both, lol! I'm serious as hell though.

SAVE the DATE:
I will organize a press conference, rally and direct action on July 15, 2013

At this event I will address my fight for justice against the Humboldt Greenway Townhome Association, but I also want to invite a powerful roster of HOUSING JUSTICE activists/advocates isto address housing justice for all. We'll recognize the many efforts and opportunities for the people to get involved and help organize to stop foreclosures. We'll discuss the MN Homeowner's Bill of Rights legislation that was passed and what more needs to be done. I'll also propose some legislative remedies to the widespread problem of so-called "common interest communities" like mine, and the commonality of unethical homeowners association boards cruelly mistreating the association members.

Although I haven't received official endorsement, I know people and I'll be calling on grassroots organizations like the Neighborhoods Organizing for Change, Occupy Homes MN, the Northside Community Reinvestment Coalition and other grassroots organizations and people who stand for housing justice to stand with me now. I hope and believe they will. I hope I can count on YOU!

Please call and email Michelle Boeck. Let's overwhelm her voicemail and inbox! This is the first step, to begin sending a dramatic and resounding message of protest from my community against this HOUSING INJUSTICE!

For more information, please contact me: marcus(at)marcusharcus(dot)org

Thx!

mh
612.226.4093 - My cell is temporarily disconnected (I'm broke, ok?), but it'll eventually get reconnected.

***

I must reiterate that I did attempt to negotiate with the Humboldt Greenway Townhome Association board many times, mostly through writing because they refused for a long time to even meet with me and they only communicate through Michelle Boeck, the property manager. When I did negotiate with them and their attorney face to face, they could not understand and refused to make reasonable moves to accommodate my poverty to resolve this ultimately PETTY debt. They are completely unfair, unreasonable and unintelligent. Common sense ain't common!

I want to publicly shame my association board and shine a bright light on a common issue of homeowner association boards suing their neighbors who suffer hardships, threatening (and actually causing) financial ruin and homelessness. The association board has the power to place a foreclosure lien on my first family home, but I will not let it happen! No justice, no peace!

4830 N. Humboldt Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55430