pbmus
pbmus's Journal“The Battle for VA Healthcare and Its Funding"
VA healthcare has its faults; but, it still is one of the more successful examples of publicly funded healthcare even while hampered by a lack of funding to provide more capacity in strategic places for new Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and aging Vietnam veterans like myself. Libertarian Pete Hegseth, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq and the CVA, both sponsored by the Koch Brothers, are hawking a dismantling of the VA hospitals in favor of higher cost and less result-oriented commercial healthcare and their own ideological interests. invisible hand
The history of the VA has always included struggles with ideological, political, and commercial (healthcare providers, pharma and hospital supply) interests. In the seventies, activists went as far as to stage scenes (Life Magazine picture depicting care for Vietnam veterans) to make the care look worst than what it was. For commercial interests, it is all about selling more services, healthcare procedures, and pharma as compared to the evidence based treatments received at the VA. For the Kochs, Libertarians, and Pete; it is all about a Randian ideology, an ideology which Ayn Rand could not live up to and forsook to accept Social Security and Medicare.
As you may remember the Koch Brothers are also buying their way on to college campuses such as Western Carolina University by funding Centers for Free Enterprise A Slippery Slope Indeed. The selling of Public Choice and Libertarian ideology under the guise of Economics courses is paramount and they staff these centers accordingly by selecting those who view it favorably. The centers are not a free range of salt water and fresh water economics or intellect as one might find at typical universities. The American Legion and other VSOs have shown similar support for the dismantling of VA Healthcare the same as the Western Carolina University administration showing support for the Free Enterprise Centers. The VSOs have bought into the Koch funded CVA push to do so in favor of commercial healthcare and giving veterans healthcare vouchers.
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I am also a disabled veteran that wants the VA to remain independent . Our military is independent and healthcare of veterans should always remain independent .
- See more at: http://angrybearblog.com/2016/03/the-battle-for-va-healthcare-and-its-
funding.html#.dpuf
Thank God for Donald J Trump !!!!
He has single handedly brought about the destruction of the modern Republican conservative movement like no other one individual in its pathetic history. Not Rush nor Glenn nor Laura or any other lame brain in my lifetime.
I can only say, GO Donald .....
The Patriot: How Philanthropist David Rubenstein Helped Save a Tax Break Billionaires Love
ON AUG. 23, 2011, a magnitude-5.8 earthquake shook the Washington Monument for about 20 seconds, sending tourists on the observation deck down eight hundred and ninety-seven steps. One of the two strongest quakes ever recorded east of the Rockies, it fractured two dozen of the stone protrusions that hold up the marble slabs at the monument’s peak. That December, Congress appropriated half of the $15 million required to repair the obelisk, saying that the rest would have to be raised from private citizens.
Within weeks, David Rubenstein, the co-founder of the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, announced that he would provide the funds. On June 2, 2013, Rubenstein joined the Secretary of the Interior and the head of the National Park Service to inspect the progress, atop the scaffolding. In public appearances, he often tells what happened next, in a deadpan manner that he says is joking. As he recalled last year in a talk at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he decided, while his hosts were looking away, to leave his mark: “I took a pen out and I wrote my initials at the very top.”
Rubenstein, with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion, is one of the wealthiest people in Washington. He is an American-history buff, and practices what he calls “patriotic philanthropy,” on behalf of the national heritage. In 2007, he spent $21.3 million on a 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta. He loaned it to the National Archives and, four years later, financed the construction of a new, $13.5-million gallery to house the document. He has bought two copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, and loaned one to President Obama, who displayed it for a time in the Oval Office. He has made substantial gifts to Monticello, to James Madison’s estate at Montpelier, to Robert E. Lee’s mansion, to the Iwo Jima Memorial, and, last month, to the Lincoln Memorial. (Although he has also donated generously to hospitals, universities, and other traditional beneficiaries, more than half of the several hundred million dollars he has given away fits the “patriotic” theme.)
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-david-rubenstein-helped-save-the-carried-interest-tax-loophole
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The only way to change this behavior is thru very large government wielding a very large stick.
ISIS Day to Day since 2013
A Town Demands Protection from Monsanto Pesticides
The dramatic photograph brought attention to the problems of Avia Terai, giving its residents the courage to speak out about their concerns. Now conditions have improved in the town. Residents have sought advance notice of aerial pesticide spraying and are lodging complaints. Farm workers are demanding better on-the-job protections, says Alejandra Gomez, a lawyer and co-founder of Red Salud, a volunteer network of doctors, lawyers, and scientists. And authorities have taken some action, so pesticides are no longer sprayed in Aixa’s neighborhood or close to schools on weekdays.
But while some things have changed for the better for Aixa and others living in Avia Terai, pesticide use has not stopped altogether, so worries continue. The community also is without running water, which exacerbates the health concerns.
What Avia Terai has been dealing with is not an isolated problem for those living and working in Argentina’s agricultural regions, where pesticides are used extensively. Argentina grows more soybeans than any other country except the United States and Brazil. It also is the world’s third largest grower of genetically engineered crops, primarily soybeans engineered to resist the herbicide glyphosate. This engineering allows farms to spray the herbicide to kill weeds without damaging their crops.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160223-photograph-aixa-argentina-avia-terai-pesticides-glyphosate/
Missing on GOP debate stage: A future president
(CNN)This was no presidential debate.
It was a verbal cage fight. There was no winner -- only a loser, the American people.
Fox News' Bret Baier started the debate by asking the audience to behave as if they were sitting between a library and Red Wings game.
It was a request the audience ignored by hooting, jeering, cheering and booing throughout the entire debate.
Is Mitt Romney a hypocrite on Donald Trump?
It went downhill from there, fast.
As the first question went to Trump, my husband said, "He says the same thing every time." I answered: "Yes because it works and he's winning."
In less than seven minutes, Trump was making a reference to his own penis size.
"
Rubio) referred to my hands, if they're small, something else must be small," he said. "I guarantee you, there's no problem."
This debate was somewhere between a cage fight and a reality show. It had plenty of insults, bickering, private parts and bad spray tans. But it lacked what America needs,!
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/opinions/republican-debate-opinion-mel-robbins/index.html
Zika virus can be carried by more common mosquito, scientists say
Source: Guardian
Research by scientists in Brazil indicates that a mosquito more common than the one primarily known to transmit Zika infections may possibly be able to carry the virus, a development that could further complicate efforts to limit its spread.
The mosquito species Aedes aegypti has been identified as the main transmitter of Zika infections, which have been linked to thousands of birth defects as the virus spreads rapidly in Brazil and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
But the scientists in Brazil announced on Wednesday that they were able to infect another species, Culex quinquefasciatus, with the virus in a laboratory, raising concerns that Zika could be carried by a species more prevalent than Aedes aegypti. They said much more research is needed to learn whether the Culex mosquitoes can transmit Zika infections
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/zika-virus-carried-more-common-mosquito-scientists-say?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
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