As a service project, I collect trash from nearby BLM land and I have been doing that since January 19 when Barack asked all Americans for a day of service. I have found all of the following: a large tree stump, palm fronds, construction material, aluminum awnings, a dead dog wrapped in a hospital blanket, paper and plastic cups, auto parts, broken glass galore, empty cartridges, both printer and gun, cans and today currency. I now know that the favorite beverage of the litterer is Bud Lite. Like dogs, some litterers try to bury their trash but most don't bother.
How to prevent this mess? I have two suggestions. Prohibit the sale of beer in bottles. Cans are much easier to pick up and less glass means fewer flat tires and cuts. Secondly, make trash pickup free. I believe that some dumping is an effort to save money. Make trash pickup at home more convenient by responding to phone calls for special pickups.
Utahns want to have more of Utah under state control, rather than Federal control that now exists over much of the state. Will Utah control of our undeveloped lands lead to better care of those lands?
Like dogs, empty beer bottles travel in groups called packs, usually six in number, sometimes more. When I find an empty bottle, I usually can expect to find five more. Does someone drink six bottles at one place in the road? I think not. They just unload by throwing the empties from the window of a moving vehicle. If I am lucky, the bottle has had a soft landing. Otherwise, there are dozens of pieces that can cause potential harm. If the penalty for throwing bottles from a car were greater than for having them in the car, people would think twice before dumping their trash.
This past weekend, OFA Iowa hosted a training for our Community Organizers from across Iowa in Des Moines. Our Community Organizers are volunteer leaders that have been helping with health reform events, and other OFA events since April. Whether it was phone banks, attending public events, or hosting their own trai. You can always sign up online to attend OFA activities near you.
During our all day training, we had sections on volunteer recruitment, the basics of organizing, and work groups on how OFA will organize here in Iowa the rest of the year. These leaders were able to discuss experiences organizing their communities and hosting activities, and sit down with staff to plan what OFA should do next.
We are very lucky to have such a great group of committed leaders.Whether it is Laura, who came in all the way to Riceville, or Susan who made the drive from Council Bluffs, it is clear that health reform organizing in Iowa couldn't be in better hands.
In the first in our series of community organizer profiles, we are going to profile Gary Goldstein from Cedar Rapids, one of our newest Community Organizers. Organizing for America in Iowa is lucky to have some of the best volunteer leaders in the country. Community Organizers are popping up all over the state who are ready to take the lead organizing their local communities.Gary Goldstein has been actively volunteering with Democratic organizations for the last four years. Gary has always had an interest in politics, as a high school history teacher one of the things Gary would teach his students is about the political process. Gary has been volunteering for President Obama since 2007 after attending an event in Cedar Rapids. Shortly after that event Gary signed up to volunteer and was a precinct captain and team leader for the campaign during Caucus and General Election.
Gary believes that volunteering with OFA is a way to help make a difference, and can help create accountable government, just like he taught his students. “In order to achieve a better government we need to work for it” Gary says. By volunteering with OFA, Gary has found the opportunity to add his voice to the debate.
Gary recently became a Community Organizer on the east side of Cedar Rapids and looks forward to helping continue to build support for health insurance reform.
Yesterday my wife called a local branch of a national bank. While waiting to speak to a real live human, a recording told her that the call might be recorded for training purposes and quality control. She jokingly suggested that she was recording the call as well. Tit for tat. When the real live human finally came on the line, she questioned whether my wife was really recording the conversation. My wife admitted she was not. If she had tried to record the conversation, the bank representative indicated that the call would be immediately terminated. Small thing you say? Yes, but indicative of the non level playing field between the banks and us.
Banks were largely deregulated to foster competition that was supposed to lead to better service and lower prices for consumers. The only result of banks competing is that banks are competing in raising fees and profits so that the larger banks can merge with and swallow smaller banks. Then they are too large to fail and must be bailed out if failure is imminent. We the taxpayers pay if the banks succeed or if they fail. Interest rates used to be regulated. Now the banks can charge whatever they please and change interest rates whenever they please. I consider an interest rate above 10% as usury. Usury is condemned in the Bible and makes getting out of debt very difficult. Consumers should use debt wisely so say the lending institutions. Then why do they make it so easy to borrow and hard to get out of debt?
My wife feels about banks the same way I do about insurance companies. Her solution is for the consumer to boycott the banks until such time as the banks start treating the consumer with respect. Not a bad idea if it were possible. My approach would be through our Congressional representatives. Through deregulation, they got us in this situation, and now it is time for them to get us out.
Last week OFA Iowa hosted a “Week of Action”. We had over 40 events across the state, all designed to let our Members of Congress know the support behind President Obama’s plan for real health insurance reform. We want to thank our Neighborhood Team Leaders and Community Organizers that held potlucks, phone banks, canvasses, coffees, discussions, phone booths, and other events.
With every event we host, we aim to learn about reform, plan next steps, and most importantly get supporters to commit to contacting their members of congress through a phone call, letter, or visiting their local office.
Our next series of events will be on October 20th. Sign up for your local event.
OFA Iowa has had a great start to our Week of Action. Across the state we have seen volunteers host events at their homes, local libraries, on campus, or at local businesses all in an effort to contact members of Congress and let them know that the time for reform is now.
Thank you to those that have participated so far. There is still time to sign up for our remaining events this week!
Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity was published in 2002. This is the first in an occasional series of reviews of the writing of Barack's critics. Sean Hannity is co-host of Hannity and Colmes on Fox. It is not a show I watch regularly but I might give it a sampling now and then. Hannity considers his life a success and he says that if he can do it with hard work, anyone can. Apparently he has been lucky so far but then we'll see if he changes his tune if life deals him a reverse or two.
Hannity is a conservative who believes what he says. Some of his opinions are flat out wrong in my opinion, and he shows that he has given little thought and done little research on some topics that he offers opinions on. Religion plays a big role in his life and his world view. The US is the greatest country and can do no serious wrong. Criticism that could lead to improvement is not welcome. He worries that Congressional hearings into national security could become political circuses. Certainly there is an ample supply of clowns in Washington. Less government is better; least is best. Liberals who disagree with him are against freedom and democracy. We owe it to our children to support a strong military so that no other country or group of countries can challenge US hegemony.
I believe that he subscribes to the conservative ethic that the husband dominated family is the strength of the country. Straying from that model leads to all kinds of evil that weaken the country's morale and morals. The liberal view of the family is a partnership between two adults, usually of differing genders, but not exclusively. The liberal family lives a moral life that is not dictated solely by someone else's interpretation of the Bible. It is possible to live a moral life with a different or no religious belief. That is anathema to the religious Right.
Hannity began his broadcasting career at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He says that he offended the powers that be with his conservative views and was asked to move on. I lived in Santa Barbara at that time and I was not aware of his presence. I was also conservative in my earlier years and I was disturbed by the lopsided liberal voting pattern at UCSB. I thought then that the students and other residents of the university community should think for themselves. 90% versus 10% results, to my mind, did not represent independent thought. Thinking for oneself and being willing to accept new evidence are the mark of the truly educated.
This week OFA Iowa will be organizing a “Week of Action” all across Iowa to show support for health insurance reform. Each community in the state will have letter writing parties, reunion events, phone banks, and other events that will show Congress the support that President Obama has here in Iowa. Sign up for your local events
Last week in Iowa we had organizing workshops in Sioux City, Marion, Dubuque, Bettendorf, and Des Moines and our volunteers are organized and motivated to help finally pass real reform and to plan our “Week of Action”. The picture below is from our Des Moines Workshop last weekend:
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock, 177 pages, is subtitled Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. The author is a British citizen and scientist who believes that the most logical source of power to run our civilization in the near term is nuclear. He makes a case that our reluctance to more fully use nuclear power is related to our fears of cancer and of nuclear bombs. The fear of cancer is groundless since the data show no increase in cancer rates from nuclear radiation. Most cancers in humans are caused by the oxidation of food in our body by atmospheric oxygen and by smoking. The smoking we can control with healthful practices but breathing oxygen for life is a process we cannot alter. Other forms of energy generation, such as wind, are unreliable or cannot generate the tremendous amounts of energy that are necessary. In addition, generating power from carbon based sources will add to the amount of greenhouse gasses in the sea and the atmosphere and those gasses must be decreased, rather than increased. They contribute to global warming in the atmosphere and alter the sea’s chemistry affecting the food chain all of us depend on to sustain life. The Gaia hypothesis regards the earth as a closed system where changes in one area potentially can affect many others. Before we take any large scale actions, we must understand how those actions will affect the earth, Gaia, on which all life depends. “…Gaia theory* is provisional and likely to be displaced by a larger and more complete view of the Earth. But for now I see it as the seed from which an instinctive environmentalism can grow; one that would instantly reveal planetary health or disease and help sustain a healthy world.” Possibly the most important paragraph in the book is in the glossary. It reads as follows:
“Algae are photosynthetic organisms that use sunlight to make organic matter and oxygen. The ocean plants are almost all algae; some are single cells, others, like kelp, can exist as huge assemblies of cells as long as sixty metres. The first algae on Earth appeared soon after life started over three billion years ago. Their form was bacterial and these microscopic organisms are still abundant: they are found either in living organisms or, importantly, as inclusions within the more complex cells of plants, called chloroplasts. Algae are unusually influential in the Earth’s climate: they remove carbon dioxide from the air, and they are the source of the gas dimethyl sulphide (DMS) which oxidizes in the air to become the tiny nuclei that seed the droplets of clouds. Their growth in the surface waters of the sea is sensitively dependent upon its temperature, and if this is above 10 to 12 degrees C the physical properties of the ocean prevent them from receiving nutrients and they do not flourish. Fossilized algae are the source of petroleum.”
*Gaia theory
“A view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating system made up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system. The theory see the system as having a goal-the regulation of surface conditions so as always to be favorable as possible for contemporary life. It is based on observations and theoretical models; it is fruitful and has made ten successful predictions.”
I am reading Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity and I could not wait until I had finished the book to write the following. I am sure I will have more to say when I finish the book.
Hannity blames the Clinton administration for not preventing 9-11. I am sure that with 20-20 hindsight anyone would have tried harder to capture bin Laden. Hannity does not blame the Bush administration for their 8 months of neglect of the terrorism issue. I would assign blame to both Clinton and Bush. Remember that this is a nation of laws and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty to a judge and jury. This is not Orwell's 1984 with thought police. We do not have preventive detention in this country nor do we assassinate our enemies without overwhelming cause. If you follow Hannity's logic, you would blame FDR for WW2 because he did not order Hitler's death before the war began.
About one month ago I had my first bout of vertigo and I didn't know what was happening. I had difficulty walking a straight line and I felt like I might fall on my face. I have osteoporosis and a fear of falling. After resisting it for 4 days, on the fifth day while at work in a hospital ER taking xrays, I asked an ER doctor what I should do. He wanted to run some tests sooner rather later. I punched out on the time clock and checked into the ER.
Two and a half hours later, I had a diagnosis and a prescription for some medication. I was told to go home and rest and that I could work the following day. I felt much better knowing that my condition was not serious. That is I felt better until I received the bill about one week later, $2600.00.
$2600.00 oh my! $2600.00 oh MY! $2600,00 OH MY!
Something new to worry about. I have both Medicare, the public option, and a Medicare supplement insurance, the private option. Medicare costs about $100 per month and the Medicare supplement which is private insurance about $50 per month. How much would they pay and how much must I pay? About 3 weeks later, I learned from the hospital that Medicare was paying about $2200.00, leaving $450 on the table still owing. We have yet to hear from the Medicare supplement insurer. Based on past performance, I estimate they will pay $10 to $100. That will leave me owing $350 plus.
If you watch TV at all, you have seen the glowing ads for Medicare supplement insurance. Sign me up they say and claim you MAY save thousands of dollars on the 20% of charges not covered by Medicare. The operative word is MAY. I MAY be struck by lighting while in a bathtub, but is it likely? NO to both. I expect to hear from the Medicare supplement insurer in the next 30 days. I am not holding my breath.
