Health And Wealth

Without health, there is no wealth is the kind of folksy saying that I sort of agree with especially after a month of being sick and confined to home. The thing I know is that the relative wealth of a white boomer retiree makes being sick a very different experience for me than for many people in my country; I've got food, secure housing, plenty of firewood, wifi, streaming movies, etc. to comfort me in my affliction. Oh and did I mention great health care? I've known my doctor and family practice for decades, it's in one wing of a teaching hospital where my family has always received excellent care, and I have both retired teacher health insurance plus, at my age, Medicare (at least for now).

If I were living in my car and eating uncooked ramen noodles, relying on the emergency room to see a doctor, I might not have survived walking pneumonia. Or the allergic reaction to one of the medicines I was prescribed. As it is I'm on the mend and can waltz in without an appointment and get a follow up chest x-ray when the appointed day arrives.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

What if I lived in another country?

I've experienced minor health challenges in a few different countries. In Australia, which has a public health system that is barely adequate buttressed by a private system that some can afford, I saw a nice doctor that my aunt knows and my out of pocket cost was not high enough to be memorable.

Tokyo street scene, March 2023 Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images

In Tokyo, where I lived for four years, I had two babies, mastitis from a staph infection, and the kids had the usual viral infections. There were doctors and midwives right in our neighborhood who charged an infinitesimal co-pay (like $2.50), and we were in the public health system by virtue of working and paying taxes (10% flat) even though we weren't Japanese. The doctors gave us prescribed medications on the spot but maybe only a couple of days worth so I would bring the baby back for follow up.

Japanese people at the time (early 1980s) did not vaccinate until age 2, but I was able to get the standard childhood vaccinations for my kids earlier than that by asking around. Whooping cough was still a thing if not measles, tetanus, diphtheria, or polio.

In India I contracted dysentery while about three weeks pregnant and was very, very sick for a long time while my husband bounced back quickly from the same ailment. I saw one of the many woman doctors trained in India and was given antibiotics and powdered electrolyte mix. Again, the out of pocket cost was so small I cannot remember it.

Now that I've lived through Covid and the anti-vax movement on steroids that it fueled, I have a few thoughts.

The body of scientific knowledge is based on data, not anecdotes. All of the above I've just shared is anecdotal. Being a boomer, I remember a time when the prevailing sentiment was that vaccines save lives and doctors usually know best. Being someone with chronic digestive problems that started at birth, I also know that Western medicine is far from the definitive authority on how to get or stay well. A G/I specialist finally diagnosed what was wrong with me, but it took a naturopath and an acupuncturist to get me back on the path to decent health.

All of that is background for me to say that the profit motive has infected health care in the U.S. and a profound lack of trust in medical authorities stems from this root cause.

After we were told that Covid vaccines would stop transmission (they don't) -- and that we were criminals if we questioned that orthodoxy -- public faith in medical authorities began to disintegrate.

After we were told that Covid couldn't possibly have originated in a lab (it could, possibly with Mossad's involvement) -- and that we were criminals if we questioned that orthodoxy -- public faith in our government's commitment to our health began to disintegrate.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images  Source: "Newly sworn-in HHS Secretary RFK Jr. vows to tackle physical, as well as spiritual 'crisis' in the country"

Enter RFK Jr.

Kennedy is easily the most bizarre Secretary of Health & Human Services that we've had in my lifetime. One of the original "vaccines cause autism" advocates, he now appears to have walked that back somewhat -- or at least that's what he told senators in his confirmation hearings.

When I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 there was a large contingent who were intent on weaponizing anti-vax sentiment against me. Either trying to falsely paint me as anti-vax (as they had successfully done to pediatrician Dr. Jill Stein in 2016) or organizing opposition because I had made clear my position that parents are free to not vaccinate their kids, but in my opinion those kids should not be admitted to public schools. 

To really understand the concept of public health, you might have to work in a setting like public schools for a few years. Many anti-vax parents are against schools, too, and they homeschool with widely varied results. One such parent commented online, "I am only responsible for my family's health" which is a sentiment that would probably get you sent to a re-education camp in China (kidding).

China was set up to be seen as the bad guy during Covid. The virus was clearly developed with U.S. financial and logistical backing, but it "leaked" in Wuhan. Hmmm,  interesting. China went into overdrive to address the public health crisis, as did Cuba. The U.S. made sure a lot of very wealthy Big Pharma executives became even more wealthy, and withheld the patents for various early Covid vaccines.

China is not the bad guy here. Health care for profit is the bad guy. It is an oxymoron. It has eroded our faith in public health directives, and our faith in health advice from people who went to medical school.

If you haven't seen the mini-series Apple Cider Vinegar you might want to check it out. It's a recreation of the true story of an Australian health "influencer" who died of cancer after rejecting medical advice and instead attempting a fresh juice cure. Her mom also bought in and also died of a different type of cancer. Just today I learned that super model Elle Macpherson is another health "influencer" in Australia who rejected chemo for breast cancer and publicized it. 

I like fresh squeezed juice as much as the next person. But I also like my friend in town who is still alive after chemo to treat bladder cancer. In fact, they are in remission and were given a clean bill of health over a year ago. Honestly, they were the last person I expected to go the conventional route based on their lifestyle up to that point. But they have a family who loves them. So they talked it over and came to the decision to let the doctors try their best. I'm sure being so healthy heading into self-poisoning to kill the cancer cells made a difference.

In what direction will Secretary Kennedy lead us? As long as Congress fails to take the profit out of health care, it probably won't matter much. 

Am I too old to move to China?

U.S. Empire Rapidly Losing Consent Of The Governed

Let's start by admitting that the U.S. empire never had the consent of the governed in places like Okinawa, Ramstein, Managua, or Vicenza. 

What it did have: imperial servants who made possible the soft and hard coups that enabled 800+ military bases in other nations. Also, a rapidly metastisizing NATO.

Such is the nature of empires. Or, as the State Department weasel word experts would have it, "The U.S. government works to advance U.S. interests in Nicaragua by helping the country increase its prosperity, security, and democratic governance." Uh huh.

The U.S. used to have the consent of most of the white people it governed in North America. This was back when home ownership and health care were not out of reach for full time workers.

But, while WW3 looms as the military-industrial complex "solution" to eroding U.S. hegemony, the Biden administration is rapidly losing that consent on several fronts.

Losing the consent of the governed, health care dept.

For-profit health care is an oxymoron and millions have died too young as a result of the greedy medical profiteers who own and operate the U.S. government. 

The architect of U.S. failure to contain a pandemic still killing 400 people a day just announced he is retiring at 81 -- with a net worth of about $10 million. From a career in public service? Give me a break. 

A subscriber-only piece on Patreon by Jack Mirkinson, "Good Riddance to Anthony Fauci," argues convincingly that, "The worship of Fauci feels like the ultimate triumph of vibes over reality." Because all the blather about how we had to vote blue no matter who to get a bad, science-denying president out of office had Democrats rejoicing that now the U.S. would "follow the science" and, with Fauci able to lead, get our deadly pandemic mismanagement under control.

We see how well that has worked out.

Number of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths worldwide 

as of August 15, 2022, by country

Find more statistics at Statista

Or maybe you prefer to compare per capita rates, which take into account total population? The U.S. has 10.37 deaths per million residents. By contrast, Japan, another capitalist state that miraculously also maintains a robust public health system, has 0.94 covid deaths per million. Canada, with demographics and culture more comparable to the U.S., has a rate of 4.03.

But statistics can lie, so what about the anecdotal evidence my Twitter feed is chock full of? So many posts noting that, where public health and commerce are in conflict, commerce prevails. And when it comes to commerce, Weapons R U.S.!

Meanwhile, people in the US can't pay their rent, afford food, or get healthcare. Wake up. No one cares about some corrupt European version of a 3rd world country. The US doesn't stand with your MIC dumping ground. We want our money here.

— SJones 🌻 (@SJonesWasTaken) August 21, 2022

As the next pandemic looms, we hear that tiny and heavily sanctioned Cuba -- which has one of the most successful public health programs on the planet -- already has measures in place to protect its people from simian smallpox (aka monkey pox). The U.S. has a few vaccines and not much else.

Back to Fauci-land:

Is it true that the CDC is still working remotely because of the health risks while telling everyone else to get back in the office?

— Starbucks Unions Form Like Voltron (@TweetyMctwat) August 20, 2022

Following the $cience.

— Starbucks Unions Form Like Voltron (@TweetyMctwat) August 20, 2022

 

Most CDC staff work remotely.

White House aides are strictly tested and wear N95 masks to meet with POTUS.

Pres. Biden isolated until he tested negative.

But everyone else? Go to work without COVID safety standards; no need to isolate if exposed; take 5 days if you get sick.

— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) August 19, 2022

 

Losing the consent of the governed, economic dept.

Medical debt in the U.S. is a huge factor detrimental to personal wealth. It's part of what makes us so exceptional. You think Japanese and Canadian people lose their homes to mortgage default when they can't pay for cancer treatments?

That's been the sad case for decades now, but recently the Biden administration's sanctions on any country not helping with the proxy war on Russia have taken an ax to global economic structures. 

This has Europe reeling from double digit inflation, only kept below 10% in the U.S. by a gas tax holiday contributing mightily to the hottest northern hemisphere summer ever.

It has also led to to a stampede away from the dollar as a medium of global exchange. Maybe the warhawks who love to wield economic sanctions didn't really think this one through?

Meanwhile the Biden administration is roundly scorned for failing to pass universal health care or even Build Back Better, failing to forgive student loans as promised, and passing a climate bill that benefits fossil fuel and electric car corporations. Oh, and a rider extended the Unaffordable Care Act and will allow Medicare to negotiate prices of a paltry ten medicines several years from now. Too little, too late.

All the puff piece journalism lauding this "win" for Democrats -- who won't even protect the most basic medical rights of those of childbearing age elected them for -- exemplifies why the U.S. public is also rapidly losing the last shreds of trust in corporate media.

Losing the consent of the governed, police state dept.

Forget the FBI at Mar-a-Lago. The loss of faith in police nationwide is accelerating steadily. Evidence? Search on Twitter for the term "suspended" and see what pops up. The recent worst in a sea of brutality:

Arkansas police officers Zack King, Levi White and Thell Riddle have been suspended following the release of this video showing them brutally beating a homeless man. In the video a bystander can be heard yelling "Don't beat him! He needs his medicine!" pic.twitter.com/vBgR5AYqKd

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) August 22, 2022

People of color knew all along that this shit happened to their loved ones with little accountability. Now, because phone videos are everywhere, white people know it too.

Cue the Biden administration's budget requests for FY23: $37 billion for 100,000 additional police officers, and even more transfers of used military equipment from the Pentagon to municipal police departments.

"New York police officers beating protesters with batons on May 30 [2020]. 

Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images" Source: Vox.com

Because when you're rapidly losing the consent of the governed, who you gonna call?

Health Care Workers Who Won't Get COVID Vax To Be Out Of A Job In Maine

My status updates on spybook seldom get much attention, but lately almost anything about COVID choices gets a lot of comments and clicks (and a gratuitous offer of COVID information I can trust? I'll pass.) 

Yesterday I had a mildly shocking experience receiving health care and I posted this:

The context here in Maine is that our governor has given health care workers notice that, unless they are vaccinated, they will have to stop working in health care. 

If you think this should be a foregone conclusion, you haven't been paying attention.

There have already been two protests in Maine cities with hundreds of health care workers marching for their right to get up close and personal to administer health care without being vaccinated.

I have persistently shared my theory that the underlying purpose of COVID was to divide the 99% against one another so that the 1% can continue their reign of austerity for us and obscene wealth for them. That, too, has gotten a lot of clicks and shares so it will probably be taken down as misinformation soon (read it here while you can).

Many of the comments I cannot agree with, but I let the debates rage on because

I'm genuinely curious to know how other people understand this health crisis and the optimum ways to respond.

Both right wingers and liberals tend to be really nasty with the name-calling, insults, and generalized lack of respect for other people. I think that's sad and I never "like" that kind of language. Every genocide and civil war begins with dehumanizing language aimed at "others."

I am reminded of a theory I encountered recently: holding demonstrably false ideas in public is a way of signaling loyalty to your group, thus conferring an evolutionary advantage. If true, this explains a lot. Especially how 45 became more popular with his fan base for tweeting lies that everyone knew were lies. If you want to check out this theory, you can read about it here.

A ubiquitous comment from both sides wonders how the others could be so stupid.

This is an ableist comment unless what they really mean is ignorant. No, stupid and ignorant aren't synonyms. One means unable to use reasoning well and the other means lacking information. People with developmental delays in cognition are not uneducated but they are differently abled. As for what happened with public education in the U.S., don't get me started.

An anecdote from pre-COVID days:

I once learned how to use an app for making online quizzes. Another learner and I took a sample quiz where one of the math questions depended on knowing the order of operations i.e. PEMDAS. The other learner doubted the answer and it bugged them enough that they brought it up to me later. I explained why I thought it was the right answer using PEMDAS and then added, "______ was a math major and is our IT director so I'm pretty sure if he and I disagree about the answer to a math problem, he's gonna be correct." I could tell that this did not resolve the other learner's skepticism. They trusted my answer -- I was a literacy coach -- more than his! Possibly because they had a closer relationship with me than with the IT director? Who really knows.

Distrust of experts -- even in an education setting -- has been with us for a while.

And it can be deadly. 

Maine legislator Rep. Chris Johansen continues to go into crowds unmasked and to fight vaccines and masking requirements for large gatherings despite the fact that both he and his wife contracted COVID. His wife died.

Then there's the fact that the No Child Behind Act, passed with bipartisan support during George W. Bush's adminstration, took an ax to both science and social studies education. It did this by preferencing reading and math for the test-and-punish regime that enriched for-profit testing corporations. Science clawed its way back via STEM and other intitiatives from the outside world, but much damage had  been done. And social studies has never really recovered. 

That explains a lot, too, doesn't it? It's clear how even many elected officials really don't know the structures of government or understand their role in that structure. Once big money controlled all three branches of government at the federal level, and many if not all state legislatures, the old civics lesson on "how a bill becomes a law" became a lie anyway.

It would probably be elitist of me to point out that it isn't doctors or registered nurses (RN) refusing to get vaccinated for the most part. 

Here in Maine it's the much less educated health care providers who are the refuseniks e.g. certified nursing assistants (CNAs), lab technicians, hospital kitchen workers, group home attendants, and the like.

My sister works at the leading research hospital in northern California as an RN and has for years. I value her information and advice because so far it has been ahead of the curve i.e. the intel that she passes on from the epidemiologists at her hospital anticipates what eventually the CDC gets around to recommending. I'm guessing this is because UCSF researchers care about health rather than about commerce, while the CDC must serve two masters.

Meanwhile, every school district in Maine -- and there are a lot of them -- has been thrown to the wolves to hold the line for science amid shouts, threats, and jeers of uneducated and/or ignorant parents.

Then there's the big picture context.

Source: https://twitter.com/OpinionatedLab/status/1426296638654619648

Lies are the currency of the day. Big lies, ones that can kill you.

Well, after all this gloom and doom I feel moved to end on a lighter note. No idea who created this gem:

Source: https://www.facebook.com/snarkavenue/photos/a.397515703684731/3517531905016413/

Evidence That Bath Legislator Colludes With Corporation To Rob Poor, Enrich Wealthy

Battleships versus health care -- which side are you on? Banner by ARRT!

The guns or butter conflict seldom comes to such a clear head as it did this week in Maine Rep. Jennifer DeChant's emails with General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works executive John Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald is the same guy who guided DeChant through her bumbling presentation this week of the $60 million corporate welfare bill she is sponsoring. My husband who attended the Committee on Taxation's work session on LD1781 February 8 said it was clear DeChant barely understood her own bill or the amendments that have been crafted to respond to public outcry against the tax giveaway. She fumbled through questions from committee members and deferred often to Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald does know what he wants and he knows how to sell it, by alternately playing the victim and threatening Maine with job loss if they don't vote his way.

DeChant and Fiztgerald's email exchanges, obtained via a public access request by investigative journalist Alex Nunes, included this gem:

Hi Jon- Have you see the LTE by Bruce Gagnon. Is there a communications plan around responding, etc.? I hope this bill is run early. Jennifer 

Fitzgerald responded: I agree earlier in session the better, I have no illusions about the difficulty we may have amidst the Medicaid expansion debate. [emphasis mine]

Former state legislator Jeff Evangelos explains the connection:

"..the state's Medicaid expansion local matching money is $54 million, which will unlock a $550 million federal grant to Maine. Ironic that the State share of $54 million for health care is almost identical to the $60 million bailout, something the Bath fellow seems to have taken notice of."

Medicaid expansion has been refused to date in Maine despite glaring need. The result is that my low income students who have health services through MaineCare have parents who lack health care. Mom and dad's teeth may be rotting, they may need mental health care, insulin, or a myriad of other things that wealthy nations provide for their citizens.

Banner by ARRT!

But if Democrat DeChant gets her way, low income adults in Maine will continue to go without so that a corporation that paid its CEO $21 million last year can get a tax giveaway.


Go without, or go to the emergency room -- if they can find one. This fall a town about an hour north of us closed its 24 hour emergency services facility. Folks who are injured logging, white water rafting or snowmobiling now have to travel about 70 miles to reach the nearest emergency care. This is in a region with an economy heavily dependent on tourism. 

I find government in service to corporations not only disgusting but dangerous.

I'm not surprised that it took DeChant several weeks to comply with the request for her emails with General Dynamics' BIW executives. I suspect she likes the free lunch but knows she is on dangerous footing with any claim to be representing the actual people, her constituents in Bath.

Stay tuned for more gems from DeChant and Fitzgerald's email exchanges.

For-Profit Health Care As The Engine Of Poverty In The USA

Birthing simulator in use at a U.S. Air Force hospital. What's wrong with this picture?

It's been a couple of years since I wrote the satirical novella Your Health Is Important To Us, and I've been thinking on the need to add a new chapter.

I wanted to express how for-profit health "care" has been the engine of poverty for my generation and those that followed.

Mine was the last cohort who could cling to middle class comfort by means of jobs that buffered the effects of exploitative health insurance. Many of us have lost or are losing our grip, and many younger than us never had any health care or full benefits employment to hold onto.

That sense was what I was trying to express in my novella, which owes much to the tragicomedy of life under Zionism, The Secret Life of Saeed the pessoptimist by Emile Habiby. And to Voltaire's Candide, which inspired Habiby. And to The Good Soldier Schweik by Jaroslav Hašek, about a little man ground down by inexorable historical and cultural forces. Today's little man would be, I feel certain, a woman. Thus I created the anti-heroine Candida Albicans Smedley.

An actual heroine of the health care battles is Dr. Margaret Flowers. She has been on the front lines of the fight for universal health care in the richest nation on the planet, and I've blogged about her efforts to lead us in this direction a few times before.

Dr. Flowers was arrested in the Senate protesting the absence of voices for single payer in the hearings that led to the Affordable [sic] Care Act aka Obamacare. (Full disclosure: Subsequently, Dr. Flowers and I and my husband were arrested at the Obama White House protesting the ongoing slaughter of innocents in Iraq.) She has skin in the game of bringing health care to the masses, retiring from her career as a pediatrician to pursue social justice.

I usually keep up with Flowers' work by reading Popular Resistance, the website she helped found before "resistance" was a word co-opted by the Democratic Party branch of corporate government.


You know, the branch that brought us the insurance company giveaway called the Affordable Care Act.

This morning I read her critique of half measures like the ACA in her article for Counterpunch, "Improved Medicare For All Is The Answer." It shouldn't take someone with a medical degree to figure out what's wrong with the ACA, or to conclude that abolishing it without a replacement would be even more cruel and impoverishing to millions. Some of Dr. Flowers' clear thinking:

Most people who purchase health insurance have no idea which plan is best for them because nobody can anticipate what their healthcare needs will be in the future. A study of the Massachusetts health exchange plans done by the Center for American Progress showed that some plans were best for patients with cancer and other plans were best for people with heart disease or diabetes, but that isn’t something that can be advertised up front. Even if it were, people can’t predict if they will be diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or diabetes in the future. HR 676: The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act solves this problem by creating a single public plan designed to cover whatever our healthcare needs will be.

Dr. Flowers doesn't need me to explain that the goal of HR 676, i.e. covering "whatever our healthcare needs will be" is not the goal of federal health care policy.

That goal is the same whether we're talking about health policy, foreign policy or evironmental policy: protect profits for the corporations that put politicians in office.

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror

Because of the exorbinant costs of health procedures and pharmaceutical drugs, health care is an important driver of growing poverty and wealth inequality. It's a racist issue because it falls most heavily on people of color whose health outcomes and longevity are worse than the white majority. It's a class issue because, as depicted in Your Health Is Important To Us, health care is a constant drag on the economically depressed. 

A normal health crisis such as an automobile accident, a heart attack, cancer or, increasingly often, opioid addiction, can easily cause bankruptcy and the loss of one's home. And if you die early from lack of health care? "Americans are dying younger, saving corporations billions."

Be scared, be very scared, says our corporate government. Time and tide wait for no woman -- mostly everyone needs some form of health care in the end.

Medically induced poverty will be the great equalizer of the 21st century USA, sparing only the very, very wealthy. Unless there's a revolution soon, and Dr. Flowers' ideas prevail. Here's a final quote from her article:

I refer to a saying used by my now-deceased mentor Dr. Quentin Young: “You can’t cross an abyss in two jumps.” The only way we can get to a universal single payer healthcare system in the United States is by creating a universal single payer healthcare system in the United States. Anything less than that will fail because it will not achieve the savings on administration and prices needed to cover everyone and it will not compete with the powerful private insurance industry.

Penny Poll Results: Money For Health And Education, Not For Wars And Occupations

A young busker raising money for a trip to study in Japan took time to do our penny poll.
She put all ten of her pennies in the jar for education, and so did her sister.

As part of our war tax resistance my husband and I tabled with other resisters in central Maine on a blustery spring Saturday. Set up next to the Waterville Opera House where a matinee of The Little Mermaid was being presented, our penny poll drew 51 responses from passersby on the main street of this former mill town now home to two small colleges. 

Each participant had ten pennies to spend representing one year of federal discretionary spending, and ten possible categories to spend them on.

A wide range of ages including children, elders and millenials participated over the course of four hours. A man toting a giant bag of retunables found a bottle under one of the shrubs near our table after stopping to do the poll. He, like the violin students, put all ten of the pennies provided into the jar marked EDUCATION. His explanation: "If you take care of that area, it takes care of all the rest."

Here are the results of our April 8, 2017 penny poll of 51 people in Waterville, Maine:

EDUCATION          26%

HEALTHCARE       19%

ENV / ENERGY      18%

FOOD/FARMS        10%
VETERANS               7 %

HOUSING                  6%

MILITARY                 6%

TRANSPORT.            3%

DEBT                           3%

GOVERNMENT        2%

I compared our results yesterday with a similar poll we helped conduct in 2011 across every county in Maine. As reported in "Mainers Want Their Federal Income Taxes Spent on Education, Health Care" on the National Priorities Project website:

Education, health care, and veterans’ benefits were the top choices for federal spending among the 1,552 Mainers participating in polls conducted in each of Maine's 16 counties. Results showed that education (21%), health care (19%) and veterans’ benefits (12%) were the top choices among the people who participated. Those were followed by environment/science (11%), food/agriculture (9%), both transportation and interest on the national debt (7%), housing (6%), defense (5%), and general government (2%).

Overall, we see similar priorities in 2011 and 2017; education remains at the top of the list along with health care in second place. The environment and energy have a more prominent spot now after six years of climate chaos, while concern with benefits for veterans and servicing the debt dropped a bit. The military -- which actually receives well over half the discretionary budget year after year -- climbed one point from 5% to 6%.

It is also the biggest carbon polluter on the planet so no amount of spending on sustainable energy solutions will halt global warming without addressing the Pentagon's contribution to the problem.

Here's a graph of the actual way our taxes were spent for fiscal year 2015.

Milennials who came to help shared that they avoid war taxes by avoiding income. They can't afford to own a home or start a family, and they worry about the chilling effect this has on relationships. Many work multiple jobs just to pay their student loans and barely get by.

Milennials have been creative about finding ways to not end up in this situation:

Follow up interviews with those polled would be necessary to determine, case by case, why they vote with their pennies as they do. One theory I have about why they allocate so little funding to essential areas like food or housing is that they do not consider feeding or housing people a proper function of national government; whereas education and healthcare are seen as proper functions of national government.

Have central Mainers lived so long without any meaningful public transportation systems that they've forgotten the role of governments in providing this?

The train lines that used to run north from Waterville were torn up in favor of better paved highways a couple of generations ago. Those highways now have potholes the size of small cars mostly caused by the overloaded pulp trucks busily carrying away Maine's forests. Low income people can't get to most jobs because they can't maintain a car in legal working condition what with inspections and insurance costs, and there are no busses they could use to commute.

rural bus service in India  https://c2.staticflickr.com

A family of newly settled refugees near Waterville pays people to drive them to and from their jobs in an indoor tomato farm 20 miles from where they live. In any country I've ever visited -- Canada, Mexico, England, France, Greece, Italy, Japan, Afghanistan, India -- there would be bus service even in rural areas. 

But if all you've ever known is the U.S. drunk on exceptionalism and imperial hubris, it can be hard to realize what we're missing in order to fund endless war and obscene profits for weapons manufacturers or "security" providers like Blackwater was in Iraq. The latter's CEO Erik Prince is now said to be a chief advisor to the new regime in the White House. Things are not likely to move in the direction of giving people what they actually want in exchange for their federal taxes anytime soon. 

It's taxation without representation, folks. And you know where that sort of thing leads.

ARRT Says: Universal Health Care Is A Human Right!

The Union of Maine Visual Artists "Art Rapid Response Team" (AART) has produced several banners for communicating the message that health care is a human right. Share them, wear them, and let our collective voices cry out that we are both literally sick and sick at heart from spending $3-5 TRILLION attacking and occupying Iraq -- while people go without health care.

The lady who does my hair was limping when I saw her last time. She had been kicked in the knee by a horse back in the fall, and then missed the last step on the stairs causing her knee to go out. She was wearing a knee brace and planning to spend the entire day standing and working on people's hair.

"You must have been tempted to call in sick," I said, and she agreed, but said she needed to earn money. She is middle aged, and as a self-employed hairdresser she cannot afford health insurance. Obamacare did not fix that. The doctor she consulted advised a "mega expensive test" and probably surgery, neither of which she can afford.

This ARRT banner is for her:

And this one:

Absence of Fear

Thanks to Chuck Vonderae on Facebook for this image.

The most hopeful thing about the surging wave of global protests is the repudiation of fear. Granted this is much, much easier if you're white, young, and live in the U.S.A. (at least for now) than it is if you are, for instance, a medical worker in Bahrain. But Egyptians rising up against a brutal security state dictatorship caused millions watching to throw off their own chains of fear: fear of not being cool, fear of Pentagon drone-based face recognition software, fear of admitting that you're financially broken for the forseeable future.

Still, intimidation will continue, and fear will lurk in the shadows where it thrives. Check out the crowd sourced testimony at We Are the 99% showing the most common fear in this country is lack of health care. Once you've faced that and still gotten back up to continue the struggle, you become much harder to intimidate.

Social media like Twitter and Facebook fuel the success of the world rising up because they are public, and require one to overcome fear in order to participate. (CODEPINK is all about using public displays, including humor, to rise above fear.) I overheard a young organizer in Portland last Saturday being challenged as to why he wore a Guy Fawkes mask. He said he was protecting his identity for fear of being targeted. He acknowledged that his disguise referred to the movie V for Vendetta, but said that for him the mask was not a symbol of violence, but instead referred to thousands of people pouring into Parliament at the end of the film.

An hour later the mask was off and he was speaking at #OccupyMaine's first General Assembly in Portland. His dad was there, too, supporting him. A day later and he was organizing #OccupyAugusta (Maine), which begins Oct 15. Going public allowed him to report an attempt at intimidation by the Capitol police, and allowed me to connect him with a leading civil rights lawyer in our state.

What will you rise up against? A decade of war on terror, decades of war on the working poor, or centuries of war on the indigenous stewards of the earth?

If you're not occupying Wash DC or another place near you, join us in Augusta on Sun Oct 9 to observe Indigenous People's Day and celebrate the finale of our 30 Day Care-a-Van to Bring Our War $$ Home in Maine. It's at UMaine Augusta's Holocaust and Human Rights Center from noon to 3pm. Bring finger food to share, and bring your stories. Here's one from the Care-a-Van that I'll leave you with:

A young man in the audience at the Afghanistan teach-in at Bowdoin College last week said: My parents lost their house because my sister has leukemia, and her medical care has been so expensive. Both my parents have law degrees. I stood outside the bank that repossessed our home with a protest sign and was told by police I couldn't be there without a permit from the town (in Massachusetts) that costs $50.

I told him: If 500 people had been standing there with you, I'll bet you wouldn't have needed a permit.

He said: We sit around at school and talk about it all the time, kids from all over. We know something is broken, but we don't know what to do about it.

http://www.indypendent.org

Who's Representing You In Washington?

CODEPINK  in action today 9/13/11!

Medea Benjamin and others hold signs of our times as General Petraeus testifies to Congress in a joint intelligence hearing.

As a major assault on the U.S. embassy, the Afghan national security ministry, and NATO headquarters among other places had Kabul in chaos, here is what your government was doing: listening to the Pentagon.
 

Alli & Jim crashing the Super Committee meeting today.

That is, when they weren't listening to the boy billionaires club, the so-called Super Committee that was formed to raid the big enchilada of pension funds, Social Security. And order up austerity for you. Bring our war $$ home!

War Criminal enabler, lawyer John Yoo was seeing PINK today too!

The Heritage Foundation appearance by the man who wrote the torture memos during the Bush administration attracted Gael and other activists with messages: SHAME ON YOO.

All three of these men represent what is dangerously wrong with our country and the globe it tries to dominate. Endless war on "terror" as if such a thing were even possible. Pretend crisis in order to raid a fat pension fund to keep buying massive amounts of weapons. Pseudo-intellectuals who pervert their education to construct rationalizations for the darkest kind of human behavior. For-profit.

Grateful to my PINK sisters & brothers for being there.