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Thursday, June 30
Iowa Cities Shrinking, Suburbs Expanding
by
Chad Thompson
on Thu 30 Jun 2005 12:55 PM CDT
 Iowa Cities Shrinking, Suburbs Expanding
The U.S. Census Bureau released population estimates for Iowa towns and muncipalities, as reported in the Des Moines Register.
While
these are estimates, they do indicate that the Des Moines Metro, at
least, is undergoing a population shift from the city to the suburban
areas. The population numbers themselves can be argued (as this
is merely an estimate) - but the estimate does include factors like
school enrollment, number of people with water service, etc.
Nearly
all of Iowa's municipalities have seen population losses - Mason City
is estimated to have lost about 1,000 people over the last four
years. (An interesting note for John Drury: the population
of Swaledale has an error of "Plus or Minus One Person"...)
These
estimates are interesting in and of themselves, but they also point out
the political challenge in engaging people to be interested in
rural/urban policies, particuarly as they relate to crime and school
quality. After all - how do you mobilize people who have already
voted with their feet?
An aside for today: The Democratic Party released a new version of the Democratic Party website.
A very sharp new design (don't tell anyone that the designer is
evidently a Macintosh user), with an added emphasis on state parties.
Medicaid Crisis Generates Pilot Project in Iowa
by
Linda Thieman
on Thu 30 Jun 2005 07:43 AM CDT
 Medicaid Crisis Generates Pilot Project in Iowa
Iowa Federation of Labor
Medicaid is a state and federal program
that provides healthcare to the poor, the disabled and many seniors in
nursing homes. For every dollar Iowans put into this program, the
federal government puts in two.
The
program has faced budget shortages, which were made worse by a federal
decision to disallow the state’s use of so-called Intergovernmental
Transfers.
The
Governor, legislators and the Iowa Department of Human Services worked
with the federal government to come up with a bipartisan bill that not
only maintained the current level of funding, but also allowed the
expansion of Medicaid to some 30,000 additional Iowans.
There
is some concern about some of the requirements for the expanded plan,
such as the introduction of premiums to be paid by recipients.
There is also concern about the strong emphasis on consumer-driven
health care, privatization and other market-driven initiatives that are
very controversial. In spite of its possible shortcomings, this
bill was necessary to avoid cutting health care for many of Iowa’s
poorest residents. The pilot program, which passed both the House and
Senate unanimously, could be a model for the rest of the country.
The Iowa
Federation of Labor (IFL) also lobbied for legislation that would allow
the state to identify the employers of applicants for Medicaid and
other state-funded health care. Wal-Mart
and other low-wage employers that do not provide adequate employee
health care coverage receive a hidden subsidy because their employees
are eligible for Medicaid. These employers are not only exploiting their employees, they are also exploiting Iowa taxpayers who pay for Medicaid.
This
legislation did not pass this year, but the IFL will continue to seek
either legislative or administrative means to provide the names of
these employers, as well as a remedy to make them pay their fair share.
(Source)
Wednesday, June 29
Food Stamps: A 7 Percent Solution?
by
Linda Thieman
on Wed 29 Jun 2005 06:21 PM CDT
 Food Stamps: A 7 Percent Solution?
Iowa Fiscal Partnership
Budget
negotiations in Washington in the coming weeks may set some outlines
for the kind of cuts that may be expected from the Agriculture
committees in the House and Senate. Senators Chuck Grassley and Tom
Harkin of Iowa both serve on the Ag Committee in the Senate.
Cuts in Food Stamps are increasingly likely
– and some are calling for enormous cuts that would devastate this
safety net for nutrition for low-income working families. It may help
to review Bush’s own perception of the burden Food Stamps should bear
from Agriculture cuts: 7 percent.
Bush had
proposed that $600 million in Food Stamp cuts be part of $9 billion in
Agriculture cuts. This cut would eliminate eligibility for 300,000
people, primarily working families with children. However, if
Congress follows [Bush's] principle that only 7 percent should come
from Food Stamps, then for $3 billion in Ag cuts, Food Stamps would be
cut $200 million.
“[Bush]
has given us what we could call his ‘7 percent solution’ to the
Agriculture portion of the budget puzzle,” Iowa Policy Project
executive director David Osterberg said. “It’s fair to understand
this as his standard for the appropriate burden to place on Food Stamp
recipients as a share of the Ag cuts.
“That
amounts to $200 million. Any amount cut from Food Stamps or any
low-income service is hard to defend when taxes are being cut for the
wealthy. Any amount higher than $200 million is disproportionate even
to [Bush]’s proposal.”
Food
Stamps provide funds that help low-income families purchase food in
grocery stores throughout Iowa. As such, the program both helps
families meet their nutritional needs, while at the same time boosting
farm income and local economies.
(Source: Iowa Fiscal Partnership)
For more information about Food Stamps, food security and/or the federal budget, check the following links:
http://www.iowafiscal.org
http://www.iowapolicyproject.org
http://www.cbpp.org/
State of Iowa
http://www.dhs.state.ia.us/dhs2005/dhs_homepage/index.html
Nonprofit Food Provider Agencies
http://www2.northeastiowafoodbank.org/managed/index.asp
http://www.foodbankofiowa.org/alliance.html
http://www.secondharvest.org/
Hunger and Food Security Issues
http://www.frac.org/
Tuesday, June 28
Are the Parties Over?
by
Linda Thieman
on Tue 28 Jun 2005 05:35 PM CDT
 Are the Parties Over?
by Gary Hart, AlterNet.org
Political parties as we know them are disintegrating. But what happens next?
...Except
for the ideologically devout, voters likewise are shaking loose the
bonds of party loyalty and more and more joining the third party, the
independents, either figuratively or literally. To a degree, the
process becomes self-fulfilling. As voters less and less need the party
to tell them what to think and whom to vote for, the parties more and
more retreat to their hardcore ideological bases, thus further
alienating mainstream voters who are less doctrinaire partisans and
more eclectic individuals.
Finally,
the information revolution disintegrates old media and political
structures. Virtually anyone in America today can organize his or her
own individual information network tailored to his or her increasingly
individual concerns. Nothing symbolizes this stunning fact more than
the explosion of personal blog sites. Now everyone has opinions and a
forum, the Internet, for expressing them. We are all consumers and
producers of opinions if not also "news." You can choose to focus your
attention on defense and foreign policy, or fiscal and monetary policy,
or health care and education, or the environment, or anyone of hundreds
of individual areas of interest, or any collection of them. You don't
have to adopt an entire party platform, in any case a kind of 19th
Century exercise that has become basically meaningless. You can write
your own platform. You can be a party of one. And that is increasingly
what millions of Americans are becoming.
Out of
power, the watchword among Democrats, and many independents, is: "I
don't know what the Democrats stands for." That's because the Party's
old coalition -- traditional liberals, labor, minorities, women,
environmentalists, and internationalists -- is in the process of
disappearing and a new one has yet to be formed. Millions of people
wait to hear what the 21st Century Democratic Party stands for, and
Democratic Party "leaders" are not saying until they see what the new
coalition is going to look like. They are afraid of taking principled
stands for fear of alienating some group they think they need. So there
is a kind of stand-off. Voters afloat want to hear what the Party has
to say, and the Party is trying to find out what they want to hear.
But many
traditional Republicans don't know what their Party stands for either.
It used to stand for balanced budgets, resistance to foreign
entanglement, laissez faire economics, smaller government, and
individual freedom. Not any more. That old coalition has disappeared as
well. The new Republican Party stands for big government, huge
deficits, pre-emptive warfare, massive nation-building, neo-imperialism
in the Middle East, intrusion on your privacy, and a semi-official
state religion dictated by fundamentalist ministers.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Submitted by Mark Brooks in Carlisle, Iowa.
Vilsack To Chair DLC
by
Chad Thompson
on Tue 28 Jun 2005 12:44 PM CDT
 Vilsack To Chair DLC
The Des Moines Register is reporting today that Tom Vilsack has been chosen to become chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.
The
interesting item in the story, however, was the backing that Tom
Vilsack is receiving from Al From, the council chief executive.
More
recently, From has been a strong advocate of Vilsack, having quietly
supported the governor a year ago to become the 2004 vice presidential
nominee. Vilsack was a finalist for the No. 2 position on the
Democratic ticket, but Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts selected Sen.
John Edwards of North Carolina.
For those not familiar with Al From, you can take a look at some of his writings in a pamphlet titled "What We Stand For".
From and the DLC can have some outstanding ideas, and produce some very good writing with much to think about.
What
seems to be missing, however - is a clear vision of where the DLC
stands on basic economic issues. Does "economic growth" mean
actually working to expand opportunity for middle and lower class
workers - or does it mean handing over tax dollars to corporations for
new buildings?
The
notion of "Building An Opportunity Society" is a good one - but actions
must match words when we ask "Build An Opportunity Society For Whom?"
Monday, June 27
KISS YOUR VITAMINS GOODBYE!
by
Linda Thieman
on Mon 27 Jun 2005 05:32 PM CDT
 KISS YOUR VITAMINS GOODBYE!
by Dr. Carolyn Dean, NewsWithViews.com
The
U.S. Delegation to Codex has just issued a formal written statement to
the Codex Alimentarius Commission that the United States, during the
July 4-9, 2005, meeting in Rome, will
support compulsory rules created by this international organization
directly overruling U.S. law regarding access to vitamins.
The U.S.
law that is about to be vanquished is the Dietary Supplement, Health
and Education Act of 1994. Codex is a joint venture between the United
Nation’s World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture
Organization. (WHO/FAO) The World Trade Organization (WTO) has already
stated that it will enforce Codex “guidelines” as the world standard
for trade in dietary supplements. This will mean that gradually,
pill-by-pill, our access to the dietary supplements we depend on will
disappear.
For
those not familiar with the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act
of 1994, it was passed because 2.5 million ordinary citizens wanted to
make sure dietary supplements such as herbs, vitamins, minerals and
other food-based supplements could stay on the over-the-counter market.
Movement to create this law, known as DSHEA, started when a 1992 FDA
task force published a report announcing the FDA’s desire to remove
these products from the shelves as they represented a “disincentive for patented drug research”.
***ACT NOW!***
www.friendsoffreedominternational.org
Click through on the homepage and you'll find contact information to write Bush and our U.S. Senators and Representatives.
Tell them you DO NOT want your FREEDOM of choice taken away by these
international organizations!
Immediately
following this announcement, millions of Americans learned about how
famed vitamin doctor, Jonathan Wright’s patient-filled medical office
was raided the same month by nearly two-dozen gun-toting, flak-jacketed
FDA agents in the name of regulating supplements. Battering down an
unlocked office door, these agents, backed by burly sheriff’s
department deputies, lined up staff and patients against the wall,
pulled IVs from patients arms in middle of treatments, confiscated
patient records, and took the hard drive from the office computer - all
because Dr. Jonathan Wright was using nutritional supplements to heal
very sick people who could not get help from standard allopathic
medical care.
As the
story developed, it turned out that this Gestapo-style raid was
standard operating procedure for the FDA and as the general public
became aware of just how many doctors’ offices, manufacturing
companies, distributors and health food stores had been assaulted by
similar raids, the horror of all this forged a mighty health freedom
army that resulted in unanimous passage of DSHEA. [And props go to our own Senator Harkin for leading that battle to victory.]
The idea of the law was two-fold:
1. DSHEA
was to make a clear distinction between FOOD, which is considered
generally safe and did not need to have permission from the FDA to be
allowed on the market and DRUGS, which are generally toxic, potentially
deadly and in need of lengthy evaluation before they were available to
the public under prescription from a doctor.
2. DSHEA
provides the FDA with plenty of legal authority to remove herbs or
dietary supplements from the market providing the agency has plenty of
REAL evidence of REAL harm to the public. The FDA also has the
authority to limit the amount of a supplement to low levels IF the
agency has plenty of REAL evidence to prove higher levels ARE ACTUALLY
dangerous.
The
FDA and its Big Pharma backers have never liked DSHEA because these
products and the related natural healing arts services often related to
them are putting the allopathic drug/surgical/chemical medical industry
to shame.
In my
book, Death by Modern Medicine, using the allopathic medical industry’s
own official reports, I document how 784,000 people die every year in
the American medical system while following doctors’ orders in a
highly-regulated allopathic system. The proof that dietary supplements
and the practitioners who promote them are safe and work as expected is
evidenced everywhere. Studies conducted all over the world have shown
that supplements are actually safer than food and there is simply no
hard evidence to show there is ANY risk factor worthy of discussion,
much less needing universal “risk assessment”.
Yet, the
U.S. Delegation, along with its Big Pharma backers are bound and
determined that Codex force “risk analysis assessments” upon the
American dietary supplement industry so they can bypass the expressed
will of the American people.
The REAL
reason for promotion of “risk assessment” is based on two agendas.
First, to be able to strip the over-the-counter marketplace of
everything but low quality, low dose-level products that won’t do much
to support or improve health. Second, to set up the framework to allow
Big Pharma to take over the supplement market as a new form of drugs
where prices can be jacked up outrageously and doled out by doctors for
a fee.
UNDERSTAND
THIS: If you do not ACT NOW, you and everyone you love, will be
condemned to living under an international law that denies your basic
right to maintain your health. WITHOUT HEALTH, YOU HAVE NO FREEDOM!
ACT NOW! www.friendsoffreedominternational.org
Click through on the homepage and you'll find contact information to write Bush and our U.S. Senators and Representatives.
Tell them you DO NOT want your FREEDOM of choice taken away by these
international organizations!
Related Article:
Codex Alimentaris Ends US Supplements in June 2005
Submitted by Larry Hanus of Waterloo
A Whole 'Nother Approach to Media Reform: Newsbreakers
by
Trish Nelson
on Mon 27 Jun 2005 08:49 AM CDT
 A Whole 'Nother Approach to Media Reform: Newsbreakers
New York Times
Contributed by Charles Miller, IBLTV
Sunday's NYTimes.com features an article about an outfit that attacks local news from a whole different perspective. Read about the Cheese Ninja, Egg Man, etc.
By MARK LASSWELL
A group devoted to monkey-wrenching live reports on local news, the
Newsbreakers have a standing interest in media mishaps. Since Jan. 6, when the five-member Rochester-based group executed its
first bust, as it calls them, of a live remote in their hometown,
viewers in Boston, New York City, Manchester, N.H., Columbus, Ohio, and
several other cities have seen their local news briefly hijacked by
elaborately planned vignettes that are more likely to baffle or alarm
reporters than make them curse on the air.
The Newsbreakers' repertory of characters includes Cheese Ninja, who
cavorts in the background of live news broadcasts, derisively tossing
slices of processed cheese, and Jiminy Diz, a supposed newspaper
reporter, wearing a loud jacket and a hat with a "Press" card in the
band, who is angry with local television news for lifting reports from
the morning paper, [and] Invisible Suit Guy, appearing live and
unbidden behind a reporter.
During the busts, one Newsbreaker watches and records the newscast,
telling the Newsbreaker provocateur through a hands-free cellphone
earpiece when he is in the camera frame and when to make himself scarce
for a while if the report switches over to a taped segment. The group
sends its own cameraman to record a Newsbreakers'-eye view of the bust,
tape that is then mixed into the actual newscast tape, along with music
and graphics. The results are then posted online at newsbreakers.org.
...The Newsbreakers idea was born of what [Chris] Landon described as his
disillusionment with television news while working as a part-time
assignment-desk assistant for Time Warner Cable's R News operation in
Rochester. The blurred lines between the cable company's business
concerns and its news side - as when management asked to be notified by
the news staff when local officials were being interviewed on the
premises, Mr. Landon said, so the company could lobby them - prompted
misgivings about media consolidation and "vapid and banal" local
television news. "I said: 'You know what? I'm not going to take part in
this beast any longer,' " Mr. Landon said.
(click here to read the entire article)
Mark Lasswell is an editor at Broadcasting & Cable magazine.
You can help with media reform in Iowa - Join these groups.
 Click here to receive action alerts from Rapid Response -
Iowa
Contact: Iowans for Better Local TV (IBLTV)
Sunday, June 26
THE 10 WORST CORPORATIONS IN 2004
by
Molly Regan
on Sun 26 Jun 2005 01:56 PM CDT
 THE 10 WORST CORPORATIONS OF 2004
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Multinational Monitor
Today
I have borrowed an extremely important article to provide you with
information with which to make good ENVIRONMENTAL DECISIONS.
The
no-repeat rule [from the previous year] helps limit the field a
bit. Of the remaining pool of price gougers, polluters,
union-busters, dictator-coddlers, fraudsters, poisoners, deceivers and
general miscreants, we chose the following -- presented in alphabetical
order -- as THE 10 WORST CORPORATIONS OF 2004.
Abbott Laboratories:
Abbott makes the list for raising the price of Norvir, an important
AIDS drug, developed with a major infusion of U.S. government funds, by
400 percent. The price increase doesn't apply if Norvir is purchased in
conjunction with another Abbott drug, giving Abbott an unfair advantage
over competitors and tilting consumers to use the Abbott products on
the basis of price.
AIG:
The world's largest insurer, American International Group Inc. (AIG)
was charged in October with aiding and abetting PNC Financial Services
in a fraudulent transaction to transfer $750 million in mostly troubled
loans and venture capital investments from subsidiaries off of its
books.
GlaxoSmithKline:
Following revelations and regulatory action in the UK in 2003 and 2004,
the story of the severe side effects from Glaxo's Paxil (as well as
other drugs in the same family) -- notably that they are addictive and
lead to increased suicidality in youth -- finally broke in the United
States in 2004.
In June,
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against Glaxo,
charging the giant drug maker with suppressing evidence of Paxil's harm
to children, and misleading physicians.
Hardee's:
The fast-food maker is bragging about how unhealthy is its latest
culinary invention, the Monster Thickburger: Weighing in at two-thirds
of a pound, this 100 percent Angus beef burger is a monument to
decadence. [It’s] a 1,420-calorie sandwich.
Merck:
Dr. David Graham, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) drug safety
official, calls it maybe the single greatest drug-safety catastrophe in
the history of this country.
Testifying
before a Senate committee in November, Dr. David Graham put the number
in the United States who had suffered heart attacks or stroke as result
of taking the arthritis drug Vioxx in the range of 88,000 to 139,000.
As many as 40 percent of these people, or about 35,000-55,000, died as
a result, Graham said. The unacceptable cardiovascular risks of Vioxx
were evident as early as 2000.
(Click here to read the complete article.)
Please once again I suggest you check what you can do in your personal
life to become less dependent on large corporations.
SUSTAINABILITY or using only what you need is a tough space to put
yourself into. But if we don't all strive for it, we may all
someday be suddenly forced into it.
Don't forget CPR: CONSERVE/PARTICIPATE/RECYCLE
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