Tag: policy

The bottom ten states by ranking are

    We need a public option in health care reform, preferably a single payer plan, and we need it now.

    We have to fight for quality public health care as if our lives depend on it. Literally. Lives depend on it.

    Sadly, the District of Columbia has the highest percentage of Infant Mortality, with 14.1/1000

    Infant mortality is defined as the number of deaths of infants (one year of age or less) per 1000 live births.  

    If the best indicator of the policies followed by our political leaders is the quality of health, education and prosperity that their constituents enjoy, we can safely say that our nations private health care system and Republican leadership have failed miserably.

    Many factors effect the infant mortality rate. First and foremost among these factors are the availability of medicine and health care to the public itself, and the amount of wealthy or poverty in which that population lives.

    In instances like this many issues seem to converge. Racism, empathy, health care reform, poverty, the economy, all these issues add up to this sad fact; the same people who fear empathy, reverse racism, health care reform and all the strawmen they can raise do not care one bit about the fact that American infants die at a higher rate than any other nation of our stature that has a single payer public health care system and a strong social safety net for those who are less fortunate than others.

    In this case, personal responsibility literally translates into “if you wanted to have a better chance at survival you should have been born into a family that wasn’t as disadvantaged. I am not responsible for your problems. ”

    The nearly 10-year decline in U.S. infant mortality rates has stalled and disparities between black and white infant mortality persist, according to CDC data, the Wall Street Journal reports. According to the data, black infants are 2.4 times more likely to die before age one than white infants.

    In 2005, 13.26 black infants died per 1,000 live births, which is similar to the rate in some developing nations, the Journal reports. Among white infants, the mortality rate increased slightly to 5.73 deaths per 1,000 live births, up from 5.66 deaths in 2004, according to the data. Overall, the U.S. infant mortality rate increased from 6.78 deaths per 1,000 births in 2004 to 6.86 deaths per 1,000 births in 2005. According to the Journal, infant mortality rates had “steady declines” in the 1990s and early 2000s, particularly among white infants.

    CDC officials say the higher rates in large part can be attributed to low birthweights, shorter gestation periods and premature births. Experts say that it is difficult to identify a link between race and higher infant mortality but noted that higher rates of poverty, limited access to health care and dietary differences are possible contributors (Abkowitz, Wall Street Journal, 7/30).

medicalnewstoday.com

    More often than not, those of us who lack basic health care and preventative medicine are those people who are poor and disadvantaged. Often, those same people are minorities, women and people who are not born into the wealth that gives people greater opportunity. It should be telling that, as a society, we have failed to provide for the majority of our citizens as well as other nations that are not as profit hungry.

    The divide between the rich and poor in America can be plainly seen here.

There are times for ideological fights, this the Dog believes with his entire heart. The issue is when to pick these fights. There is an argument that it is the best time when things are in crisis. The thinking on this, such as it is, is that when things are bad you need to be most correct in your actions. Of course this is what we are seeing from the Republican Party in general right now, and from anti-stimulus Governors in particular. It is also a complete fallacy. In times of crisis you need to have already decided the plan of action and act on it. If you are wise you will have planed and thought and argued prior to the crisis, but that is a rare trait in the America of the early 21st Century.  

Okay, let’s talk Solar Power for a little bit. The Dog knows what immediately jumps to your mind, huge, flat black panels atop the house of that local hippie couple, that either generate enough electricity to run a 12 inch  black and white TV, or barely give you enough hot water for a single shower.  

No one likes to admit that they were wrong. This seems doubly true on here on the great inter-toobs, but the fact is that the Dog was wrong. It is only in one case (at least he is only going to cop to one case right now!) but it is a pretty major issue that we face right now. What is this issue? It is the case for nationalizing failing Banks. When this was first discussed, the Dog perhaps like a lot of others, assumed that we were talking about a complete and total take over of the banking system by the Federal Government. That would be something akin to the Venezuelan government taking over their oil industry.  

There are many on the Dog’s side of the political spectrum who want to end our war in Afghanistan right away. They are not cold or heartless; in fact they make their arguments from good, sound humanitarian principals. They will tell you that we have, through our neglect of Afghanistan gone too far down the road to ever get back. They will ask, and to the Dog’s point of view, really want to know what it is we can “win” there if we can indeed win. They will point to the fact that we are broke as a country and that these foreign wars are taking money that could be spent in places where Americans are suffering, in Detroit, in Florida, in California and Nevada.  

The Obama Test:  Personnel is Policy

Forget the election. With November 4 just days away and Barack Obama positioned to become the nation’s first African American president, the question has begun to turn to: Who gets what?  

While I don’t think we should forget the election just yet, I do agree that “who is going to get what” is a looming question on the minds of many.  

Lets see Saddam, even though we installed and supported him, Had To Go. Because he Arrested the Innocent and his ‘Henchmen’ Tortured and Killed many of those arrested, as well as Killing and Maiming Tens of Thousands of Iraqi’s. Those are only a Couple of the many ‘Nobel Cause’ Reasons for the Righteousness of Invading, Destroying, and Occupying Iraq for our National Security!

Assuming our patented circular firing squad doesn’t wipe out too many of those who would otherwise cast a progressive-leaning vote in the general elections, we Democrats will win the White House come November.  While this is indeed fantastic – and probably the only outcome that will allow for the survival of an intact democracy – in assuming the reins of power, we’ll have only taken the first step in undoing the vast damage that The Decider and his cronies have visited upon our land over the past eight years.

If “change” is to be “the economy, stupid” of this election cycle, then now is the time for us to talk about the changes we’ll need to implement in order to restore our democracy to pre-Bushian levels of functionality.  We must ask ourselves: What putrid laws need to be undone, what emasculated institutions resurrected, which Manchurian Wingnuts fired, so that our nation might leave the 19th century and rejoin our allies in the 21st?

In short, what should be our next president’s priorities as s/he leads the citizenry in its efforts to De-Bushify our mangled government?