The real invasion of Africa is not news and a licence to lie is Hollywood’s gift

Dandelion Salad, February 3, 2012

The real invasion of Africa is not news and a licence to lie is Hollywood’s gift
by John Pilger

Global Research

http://johnpilger.com

January 30, 2013

A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. Reported by Associated Press on Christmas Day, this was missing from most Anglo-American media.

The invasion has almost nothing to do with “Islamism”, and almost everything to do with the acquisition of resources, notably minerals, and an accelerating rivalry with China. Unlike China, the US and its allies are prepared to use a degree of violence demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine. As in the cold war, a division of labour requires that western journalism and popular culture provide the cover of a holy war against a “menacing arc” of Islamic extremism, no different from the bogus “red menace” of a worldwide communist conspiracy.

Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Last year, Africom staged Operation African Endeavor, with the armed forces of 34 African nations taking part, commanded by the US military. Africom’s “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.

It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose “historic mission”, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the promotion of “a capitalism rampant though camouflaged”.

A striking example is the eastern Congo, a treasure trove of strategic minerals, controlled by an atrocious rebel group known as the M23, which in turn is run by Uganda and Rwanda, the proxies of Washington.

Long planned as a “mission” for Nato, not to mention the ever-zealous French, whose colonial lost causes remain on permanent standby, the war on Africa became urgent in 2011 when the Arab world appeared to be liberating itself from the Mubaraks and other clients of Washington and Europe. The hysteria this caused in imperial capitals cannot be exaggerated. Nato bombers were dispatched not to Tunis or Cairo but Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi ruled over Africa’s largest oil reserves. With the Libyan city of Sirte reduced to rubble, the British SAS directed the “rebel” militias in what has since been exposed as a racist bloodbath.

The indigenous people of the Sahara, the Tuareg, whose Berber fighters Gaddafi had protected, fled home across Algeria to Mali, where the Tuareg have been claiming a separate state since the 1960s. As the ever watchful Patrick Cockburn points out, it is this local dispute, not al-Qaida, that the West fears most in northwest Africa… “poor though the Tuareg may be, they are often living on top of great reserves of oil, gas, uranium and other valuable minerals”.

Almost certainly the consequence of a French/US attack on Mali on 13 January, a siege at a gas complex in Algeria ended bloodily, inspiring a 9/11 moment in David Cameron. The former Carlton TV PR man raged about a “global threat” requiring “decades” of western violence. He meant implantation of the west’s business plan for Africa, together with the rape of multi-ethnic Syria and the conquest of independent Iran.

Cameron has now ordered British troops to Mali, and sent an RAF drone, while his verbose military chief, General Sir David Richards, has addressed “a very clear message to jihadists worldwide: don’t dangle and tangle with us. We will deal with it robustly” – exactly what jihadists want to hear. The trail of blood of British army terror victims, all Muslims, their “systemic” torture cases currently heading to court, add necessary irony to the general’s words. I once experienced Sir David’s “robust” ways when I asked him if he had read the courageous Afghan feminist Malalai Joya’s description of the barbaric behaviour of westerners and their clients in her country. “You are an apologist for the Taliban” was his reply. (He later apologised).

These bleak comedians are straight out of Evelyn Waugh and allow us to feel the bracing breeze of history and hypocrisy. The “Islamic terrorism” that is their excuse for the enduring theft of Africa’s riches was all but invented by them. There is no longer any excuse to swallow the BBC/CNN line and not know the truth. Read Mark Curtis’s Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (Serpent’s Tail) or John Cooley’s Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto Press) or The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski (HarperCollins) who was midwife to the birth of modern fundamentalist terror. In effect, the mujahedin of al-Qaida and the Taliban were created by the CIA, its Pakistani equivalent, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and Britain’s MI6.

Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, describes a secret presidential directive in 1979 that began what became the current “war on terror”. For 17 years, the US deliberately cultivated, bank-rolled, armed and brainwashed jihadi extremists that “steeped a generation in violence”. Code-named Operation Cyclone, this was the “great game” to bring down the Soviet Union but brought down the Twin Towers.

Since then, the news that intelligent, educated people both dispense and ingest has become a kind of Disney journalism, fortified, as ever, by Hollywood’s licence to lie, and lie. There is the coming Dreamworks movie on WikiLeaks, a fabrication inspired by a book of perfidious title-tattle by two enriched Guardian journalists; and there is Zero Dark Thirty, which promotes torture and murder, directed by the Oscar-winning Kathryn Bigelow, the Leni Riefenstahl of our time, promoting her master’s voice as did the Fuhrer’s pet film-maker. Such is the one-way mirror through which we barely glimpse what power does in our name.

Copyright © John Pilger, JohnPilger.com, 2013

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Spaniards Protest Health Care Reforms: privatization, closures of public facilities

Spaniards Protest Health Care Reforms

By HAROLD HECKLE
Associated Press

Protestors march as they carry a banner reading, “Public health care” and “24 hours strike” during a demonstration against regional government imposed austerity plans to restructure and part privatize health care sector in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. Madrid proposes selling off the management of six of 20 public hospitals and 27 of 268 health centers. Spain’s regions are struggling with a combined debt of 145 billion euro ($190 billion) as the country’s economy contracts into a double dip recession triggered by a 2008 real estate crash. Andres Kudacki / AP Photo

MADRID — Thousands of people marched in Madrid on Sunday to protest plans to privatize parts of their public health care system, with some questioning the motives behind the government’s actions.

The march by employees and users of the system is the year’s second large “white tide” demonstration, named after the color of the medical scrubs many protesters wear. Several similar marches took place last year.

Demonstrators thronged main boulevards in the center of the Spanish capital, carrying banners saying, “Public health care should be defended, not sold off.”

The Madrid region has proposed selling the management of six of 20 large public hospitals in its jurisdiction and 10 percent of its 268 public health centers. It says these reforms are needed to secure health services during Spain’s economic crisis.

A protestor carries a banner reading, “Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, serial fraudster” during a demonstration against regional government imposed austerity plans to restructure and part privatize health care sector in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. Madrid proposes selling off the management of six of 20 public hospitals and 27 of 268 health centers. Spain’s regions are struggling with a combined debt of 145 billion euro ($190 billion) as the country’s economy contracts into a double dip recession triggered by a 2008 real estate crash. Andres Kudacki / AP Photo

But protesters were skeptical.

“This measure is politically inspired and not financial,” said mechanical engineer Mario Sola, 47. “If public hospitals were unsustainably loss-making as we’re being told, private enterprise wouldn’t be interested.”

Health care and education are administered by Spain’s 17 semi-autonomous regions rather than by the central government.

Many regions are struggling financially as Spain’s economy has shrunk due to a double-dip recession following the 2008 implosion of the once-prosperous real estate and construction sectors.

Some regions overspent during boom years, but are now excluded from borrowing on the financial markets to repay their accumulated debts, forcing them to seek savings and even request rescue aid from the central government.

Regional health councilor Javier Fernandez-Lasquetty called the protests irresponsible and said that “everyone has their point of view, but we are all fighting to defend the same thing.”

Jose Gabriel Gonzalez Martin, president of Spain’s Independent Civil Service Trade Union Center, said many people’s suspicions were aroused when former government health officials acquired jobs with private companies lining up to take over medical analysis functions.

“It might be purely coincidental, but some coincidences are surprising,” Gonzalez said.

Protestors shout slogans during a demonstration against regional government imposed austerity plans to restructure and part privatize health care sector in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. Madrid proposes selling off the management of six of 20 public hospitals and 27 of 268 health centers. Spain’s regions are struggling with a combined debt of 145 billion euro ($190 billion) as the country’s economy contracts into a double dip recession triggered by a 2008 real estate crash. Andres Kudacki / AP Photo

 

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Can We Please Stop Pretending Obama is “Capitulating” on Social Security?

Firedoglake, Wednesday, December 19, 2010

By: Jane Hamsher

Everywhere you look, the media narrative is that President Obama is “capitulating” to Republicans by agreeing to cuts in Social Security benefits.

And I have to ask, where is this collective political amnesia coming from?

Obama has made a deliberate and concerted effort to cut Social Security benefits since the time he took office.  FDL reported on February 12, 2009 that the White House was meeting behind closed doors to consider ways to cut Social Security benefits, and that the framework they were using was the Diamond-Orszag plan, which was co-authored by OMB Director Peter Orszag when he was at the Brookings Institute.

The birth of the now-ubiquitous “catfood” meme came on February 18, 2009 with this FDL headline:

“Hedge Fund Billionaire Pete Peterson Key Speaker At Obama “Fiscal Responsibility Summit,” Will Tell Us All Why Little Old Ladies Must Eat Cat Food”

As I wrote in August of 2010, Peterson’s keynote spot was the worst kept secret in town; I knew about it because I had been on a conference call with about 40 representatives of various DC interest groups, many of whom had received written notice from the White House that Peterson was scheduled to headline the event. But nobody wanted to go on the record for fear of jeopardizing their relationship with the administration in its early days.

After FDL broke the news, Peterson was “disinvited” from the summit. Both he and the White House denied everything, but Robert Kuttner subsequently confirmed in the Washington Post that Peterson had, in fact, been scheduled as the keynote speaker that day.

The administration backed off its immediate plans for reforming Social Security. The New York Times reported that they were “running into opposition from his party’s left” who are “vehement in opposing any reductions in scheduled benefits for future retirees.” But NYT columnist David Brooks reported that shortly after the summit, “four senior members of the administration” called him to say that Obama “is extremely committed to entitlement reform and is plotting politically feasible ways to reduce Social Security.”

Undeterred, the White House began telling journalists off the record that they were interested in “establishing an independent commission (outside the congressional committee structure) to look at creating a specific reform plan.”

In January of 2010, a bill sponsored by committed Social Security slashers Judd Gregg and Kent Conrad which would have created an official commission to make recommendations about the nation’s deficit was defeated by the Senate on a bipartisan vote — 22 Democrats and 24 Republicans voted no.

After the Senate defeat, on February 18, President Obama issued an executive order creating what subsequently became known as the “Catfood Commission” anyway.

Unlike Bill Clinton’s Danforth Commission, which ended in deadlock, Obama set this commission up in such a way that it was stacked with deficit hawks who largely agreed on what needed to be done: 12 of the 18 members were to be appointed by Senate and House leaders in each party, and 6 would be appointed by the President. This virtually guaranteed that Social Security privatization fetishist Paul Ryan would be on the commission, as would Gregg and Conrad.

Among the President’s six appointments:

• Chairman Erskine Bowles, described by Business Week as “corporate America’s friend in the White House.” Bowles had negotiated the deal between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton to create “private social security accounts” where “taxpayers get some choice as to how to invest their contributions.” The deal fell through when the Monica Lewinsky episode jumped into the headlines

• As Bowles’ Republican Co-Chair, the President appointed loose cannon Alan Simpson, the former rich kid GOP Senator from Wyoming once famously said that those who were complaining that Social Security needed protection were “people who live in gated communities and drive their Lexus to the Perkins restaurant to get the AARP discount.”

• Alice Rivlin was appointed by Obama to be chief wonk of the Catfood Commission, a Brookings Institute fellow who had been funded by Pete Peterson and a strong supporter of raising the retirement age to 70 — resulting in a 20% benefit cut to Social Security recipients.

•  David M. Cote, the Republican CEO of defense contractor Honeywell

The composition of the Commission was conveniently stacked with 14 of the 18 members committed deficit hawks looking to start balancing the federal budget on the backs of old people.

And who supplied the staff to the commission? Why, Pete Peterson.

Are we to believe that the President was blissfully ignorant of the agendas of the people he appointed to this commission, created with the goal of bypassing Congressional process?

With the exception of a few public dog and pony shows, the Commission conducted its deliberations in secret.  But on June 16 of 2010, Alex Lawson of Social Security Works blew a hole in that secrecy on the front page of FDL when he caught Alan Simpson on live streaming video as he was exiting a meeting of the Catfood Commission.   In real time, Alex got Alan Simpson to say what everyone in the room was thinking but wouldn’t say publicly. Simpson told Alex that the commission was “really working on solvency”:

“We’re trying to take care of the lesser people in society and do that in a way without getting into all the flash words you love dig up, like cutting Social Security, which is bullshit. We’re not cutting anything, we’re trying to make it solvent.”

The Catfood Commission ultimately failed it is mission, due in no small part to the work of people like Alex, Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson of Social Security Works who have consistently been out there informing and uniting interest groups and educating the public to the fact that, yes, the White House has an agenda of cutting Social Security benefits.

I don’t know why Obama wants to cut Social Security benefits. I do know that Obama has been honest about it from the start. In January of 2009, even before he took office, he told the Washington Post that he believed Social Security was a broken system and that “entitlement reform” was something he wanted to achieve during his tenure in office:

“Obama said that he has made clear to his advisers that some of the difficult choices–particularly in regards to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare – should be made on his watch. “We’ve kicked this can down the road and now we are at the end of the road,” he said.”

Perhaps Obama wants to do what Bill Clinton couldn’t do.  It’s clear the oligarch class has decided that this is what must happen, and that in order to be considered a “serious” person, this is what a President must do.  Perhaps Obama simply wants to be considered a “serious person” by those in the ruling class.

But it’s clear that he did not arrive at the decision to “reform” Social Security and cut benefits because he is a poor negotiator, or because of Republican arm twisting.  It defies all logic and reason to look at his actions over the years and think that the President is now “capitulating” on Social Security.

The President has been very forthcoming about the fact that cutting Social Security benefits is something he wants to do.  When he said during the debate that he didn’t differ from Mitt Romney on entitlement reform, he meant it.   It’s time for people to remove the rose-colored glasses and stop projecting their own feelings on to the man.  It’s time to take him at his word.

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Fight Foreclosures and Evictions: Take Your Money Out of Wells Fargo

Indybay Media, December 18, 2012

Take Your Money Out of Wells Fargo

by Patricia Jackson

Gray Panthers leaving WF Bank after closing account

On Tuesday, December 18, two senior organizations took their money out of Wells Fargo and joined a protest rally outside at Grant and Market in San Francisco. James Chionsini of Senior Disability Action and Michael Lyon of Gray Panthers addressed the rally after they had closed their organizations’ accounts and called on other organizations to also take their money out of predatory banks. Prior to the rally and while members of Gray Panthers and Senior and Disability Action were inside closing their accounts, a Wells “undercover spy” approached several protesters and took our pictures. He then tried to pass himself off as “one of us.” All morning Wells Fargo customers had to show ID and Wells ATM cards before guards would allow them into the bank. Protesters engaged in conversations with customers and passersby to talk about alternative ways of banking, local credit unions. Speakers educated them about Wells Fargo’s foreclosures.

Senior & Disability Action is welcomed by WF Bank undercover men

Setting up for the protest

Tony Robles, a member of Senior and Disability Action and a 4th generation San Franciscan, started the rally citing case after case of folks who are in foreclosure, forced out of homes they have lived in for decades. Like Larry Fox being thrown out of his home he has lived since as a child when his father took him watch as it was being built.And Robert Moses, 92. year old WWII Veteran, refinanced his nearly paid-off loan with Deutsche Bank to bring his home up to city code. Deutsche raised his interest rate and payment to $3,400 a month. Many seniors living on Social Security and/or fortunate enough to have a pension usually average far less that that amount a month to live on.

Foreclosure Fighters speaking out

Another Foreclosure Fighter

Wells Fargo has been fraudulently processing mortgage documents with a practice called robo-signing for years. Placing quotas on employees and forcing them to sign a certain number of foreclosure files each day. While other documents required for homeowners to avoid foreclosure were ignored, left sitting on unattended fax machines. Wells Fargo has double the number of foreclosures of other banks- a despicable record of evicting record numbers of seniors, disabled and people of color with a $4.8 billion profit. Protesters call for them to negotiate with the 27 families who are in foreclosures.

Archbishop Franzo King, of St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church and NAACP told us that Wells Fargo made money off trading slaves and now it is foreclosing on the African American decedents of slaves. These banksters have no morality if they continue to put seniors and poor people out of their homes and on to the streets!

Tommi Avicolli Mecca told us to come to a rally Wednesday, December 19th, at 8th & Castro to protest the evictions caused by the Ellis Act- currently 25 buildings in the Mission are being “Ellised”, throwing out people with AIDS, parents and children.

Henne Kelly of California Alliance of Retired Americans (CARA) warned us about the ads Wells Fargo is running in the SF Chronicle offering $20,000 loans, which would not have to be paid back if people stay in a home for 5 years. “Do we trust Wells Fargo?” We roared back, “No!” Chants followed- “Wells Fargo’s impunity Destroys Community!”

It feels good to fight back!

Speaking out against the Grinch that stole our homes.

All groups should take their money out of Wells Fargo!

John Stumpf, Wells Fargo CEO

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Drug Companies Refuse to Produce Generic, Less-Profitable Anti-Cancer Drug, Leading to Recurrence of Lymphoma.

Drug Companies Refuse to Produce Generic, Less-Profitable Anti-Cancer Drug, Leading to Recurrence of Lymphoma. This is a particularly eloquent illustration of the deadly effects of production for profits, rather than production for our needs. It also illustrates how the capitalists’ ownership of intellectual property (drug patents, in this case) is as toxic as their ownership of the factories, farms, hospitals etc, where we have to work to earn the money to buy back what we make in these places of employment. Bear in mind that the government pays for 80% of the research on drugs which the pharmacy companies then get patents on.

SF Chronicle, Thursday, December 27, 2012

Drug shortage, cancer recurrence linked

A drug given to lymphoma patients as a substitute for a chemotherapy medication that is in short supply has been linked in a study to an early recurrence of the cancer, according to a report released Wednesday that provides the first actual evidence of patient harm caused by a national shortage of drugs.

The shortage specifically includes older, generic medications needed for a wide range of uses such as cancer, surgery and pain management, say authors of the report, which involved Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto.

“These are drugs that have gone off patent a long time ago. They are drugs that are all generic and they are quite cheap, so there’s not much incentive for the manufacturers to make them,” said Dr. Michael Link, professor of pediatrics at Stanford’s School of Medicine and senior author of the report.

Drug shortages throughout the country have been attributed to various factors, including problems in production, difficulties in getting raw materials, federal recalls and enforcement actions, and corporate decisions to discontinue making certain medications for lack of profit or other reasons.

From 2006 to 2011, the number of pharmaceutical drugs considered in short supply by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration jumped from 70 to 250. Some reports show that the drug shortage rate has slowed, but some drugs that at one point came off the short-supply list are in short supply once again, and many drugs have consistently remained scarce.

Behind the report

Wednesday’s report, led by researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at more than 200 children, teenagers and young adults who had been enrolled in an ongoing national clinical trial to treat intermediate or high-risk Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This type of cancer, which accounts for about 6 percent of childhood cancers, originates from white blood cells called lymphocytes.

The trial focused on tailoring radiation therapy for patients, but had to be modified when one of the drugs used in the trial – an injectable drug called mechlorethamine, also known as Mustargen or nitrogen mustard – became unavailable in 2009. The shortage, brought on when production was moved to a new plant, forced researchers to replace mechlorethamine with a decades-old chemotherapy drug called cyclophosphamide, or Cytoxan.

Because cyclophosphamide is used almost interchangeably with mechlorethamine, researchers were not expecting much of a difference in outcomes for the patients, but while none of the patients died, the percentage of patients who remained cancer free two years after treatment fell from 88 to 75 percent.

“We were totally blindsided by the results,” Link said.

Study results end trial

Those who relapsed had to receive additional intensive therapy, which is associated with higher odds for infertility and other health problems. Researchers stopped enrolling new patients in the trials once the negative results from the substitute became apparent. The drug shortage was resolved in early November.

Hospital administrators, pharmacists and doctors have routinely found alternative medications when a preferred drug became hard to come by. But Link said his fellow physicians have long suspected that patients were being harmed by these substitutions.

The national drug shortage prompted new federal legislation this summer that requires drug manufacturers to report production interruptions and gives the FDA authority to speed approval of applications for drugs in short supply.

Maria Serpa, senior pharmacist at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento and former president of the California Society of Health-System Pharmacists who was not involved in the St. Jude study, wasn’t surprised that the results showed patients were being harmed by the inability to get certain drugs. She said she regularly sees shortages of various drugs such as those used in anesthesia and to control pain.

“I don’t think the list is getting any smaller,” Serpa said, referring to the FDA’s shortage list. “What’s frustrating is the re-emergence of some of the older shortages from two or three years ago. This just seems to keep coming back.”

More information

For more information about the drugs in short supply, visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s website: http://www.fda.gov/drugs/drugsafety/drugshortages/default.htm.

Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Drug-shortage-cancer-recurrence-linked-4147866.php#ixzz2GGqG9Qaf

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Senior and Disability Groups Protest Wells Fargo Evictions, Shutter Accounts

Fog City Journal, December 18, 2012

Senior and Disability Groups Protest Wells Fargo Evictions, Shutter Accounts

By Christopher D. Cook

A fiery crowd of as many as 50 seniors and their supporters including green-clad, Doctor Seuss-styled grinches, rallied this afternoon in front of Wells Fargo Bank at the intersection of Market and Grant streets, calling on the national bank to halt its evictions of struggling homeowners and to change its foreclosure practices.

“Wells Fargo, I had a home but you took it back and sold it—you’re a grinch!” activists from the San Francisco Grey Panthers and Senior & Disability Action yelled under crisp clear winter skies. “I’m a kid who had a warm house to live in but you took that away from me—you’re a Grinch!”

An hour earlier, representatives from the two groups entered the bank and closed their Wells Fargo accounts to protest home foreclosures that have “disproportionately shuttered the homes of seniors, people with disabilities, and people of color,” the groups stated.

“Too many families have lost their homes due to predatory lending, dual tracking, and simple greed,” the groups said in a media release. Dual tracking involves the selling of a house even while the current homeowners are negotiating a new loan to try to keep their home. “Wells Fargo is at the center of the foreclosure crisis in San Francisco.  They have more foreclosures in their name than any of the other banks.”

Grinch-clad protesters.

Evelyn Luluquisen, Executive Director of Manilatown Heritage Foundation, admonishes Wells Fargo over its foreclosure and eviction practices.

According to their research, Wells Fargo has held 92 auctions on foreclosed homes in San Francisco—more than double the combined total of JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America.

The groups demand “immediate action to stop the holiday foreclosures and evictions,” listing 27 San Francisco families who are at risk of eviction over the holidays.

“We’re encouraging all other organizations” to close their Wells Fargo Accounts, said James Chionsini, director of healthcare advocacy for Senior & Disability Action (SDA). “We can’t in good conscience support an organization that’s displacing our members, it’s just unethical.”

The rally was supported by an array of local labor and social justice groups including Occupy Bernal, Causa Justa: Just Cause, Housing Rights Committee, California Alliance for Retired Americans, Jobs with Justice, the Coalition on Homelessness, OPEIU Local 3, Poor Magazine/Prensa Pobre, Occupy Action Council of SF, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the Manilatown Heritage Foundation.

The groups are joining forces for a “Happy Holidays, Now Get the Hell Out!” press conference and rally tomorrow at noon at 18th and Castro to share their stories about people facing evictions during the holidays. Learn more at http://www.ellishurtsseniors.org.

Christopher D. Cook is a San Francisco author and journalist who has written for Harper’s, The Economist, The Nation, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. He is the author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. You can find more of his work at www.christopherdcook.com.

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Obama! HANDS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE, AND MEDICAID

On July 24, President Obama was twisting arms to get Congress to agree to huge debt reductions that would cripple Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Angry defenders of these programs responded by staging a noisy demonstration outside the Obama Campaign’s Oakland California headquarters, where a training session was under way to organize volunteers into the 2012 campaign machine.

We tried to get inside to speak to the volunteers and explain that 80% of the people say they don’t want our programs cut, and that corporations and the rich should be taxed to solve the debt.  During the standoff, we got many leaflets inside. You can read the leaflet here. After we went outside and began our demonstration, one volunteer came out and said we were right, that she’d tried to talk with the people inside, and she was disgusted that the Campaign was determined to go ahead with their agenda and wasn’t willing to listen to why our programs need to be saved.

Fighting to save Social Security has been much harder this year than in 2005 when Bush tried to privatize it. A big reason is that now the proposed cuts, which are much worse, are being pushed by a Democratic president, causing many to be reluctant to fight back. We need to get over this hesitation, not only in word, but also in deed. Today’s small demonstration was a start.

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“Everybody In! Nobody out!” Means No Exclusion of Undocumented Immigrants

Since its inception, Single-Payer healthcare’s most enduring rallying theme has been “Everybody In!  Nobody Out!”  This vision, which resonates with our most basic striving for equality, is being challenged now, as progressives and sections of labor rally behind Bernie Sanders’ new single-payer law, S.915, which contains the fatal flaw of excluding undocumented immigrants.  (Section 102, Universal Entitlement)  Single Payer has always been about EQUAL, comprehensive, accessible, affordable, economical healthcare for EVERYONE.  The damage the working class would suffer from passing this bill as is, and splitting us into “legal” and “not legal” groupings, would negate any advances that would be made by getting rid of  insurance companies.

I would like to present a resolution that was submitted to the American Public Health Association in response to the Obama Health Plan’s exclusion of undocumented immigrants.  In the year before the American Public Health Association (APHA) had its 2010 annual meeting on the theme of “Social Justice,” a massive health reform law had passed which totally excluded some 12 million undocumented immigrants. And while immigrants had been hoping for far-reaching reforms and a measure of long-delayed justice, harassment and deportation of undocumented immigrants had markedly increased.  In response, members of the Health-Not-War group at APHA proposed the following resolution to send an unequivocal message that this is intolerable to us as human beings and as public health workers.

Opposing the Exclusion of Undocumented Immigrants from Health Care Reform

November 5, 2010

The American Public Health Association,

Noting that this March, 2010, Congress passed and the President signed a massive Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which not only leaves at least 23 million uninsured¹, but explicitly excludes ALL undocumented immigrants,¹ and,

Noting that the PPACA even forbids undocumented immigrants from using their own money to buy health insurance at discounted prices through the exchanges,² and,

Noting that, of all groups, undocumented immigrants have arguably the greatest need of having healthcare expanded to them because:

FIRST: Undocumented immigrants are twice as likely to be uninsured as documented immigrants,³ and,

SECOND: Undocumented immigrants are generally excluded from Medicaid and SCHIP by federal law, and state-funded exceptions to this pattern will become rarer as state budgets languish. Moreover, most undocumented immigrants must wait five years after gaining legal residency to apply for Medicaid and SCHIP.⁴

THIRD: Undocumented immigrants’ future access to healthcare will be more challenging because  (1) increasing raids⁵ and deportations⁶, Arizona’s SB 1070⁷, and the Secure Communities Initiative⁸ are likely to make undocumented immigrants more fearful of registering at health facilities and traveling to them, (2) State and County budget cuts are eliminating health services for  undocumented immigrants⁹, (3) Anti-immigrant groups are pressing jurisdictions to withdraw health services from undocumented immigrants¹⁰, and (4) Legislators are considering withdrawing citizenship from US-born children of undocumented immigrants, compromising their children’s access to healthcare as well as overturning a 150-year old constitutional right,¹¹ and,

FOURTH:  Many of the factors contributing to poor access to healthcare for immigrants in general are worse for undocumented immigrants, such as immigrants’ fears of presenting at health institutions, immigrants’ increasing unemployment rates combined with the higher cost of buying individual insurance, and health institutions’ fear of losing funding for treating immigrants.   Even among the insured, immigrants’ and their children’s access to ambulatory and emergency care is worse than that of citizens,¹² and,

FIFTH: Future funds for hospitalization of the uninsured, including undocumented immigrants, will be reduced, as PPACA reduces Medicare and Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital payments to hospitals serving the uninsured. Though these hospitals’ burden of uninsured will drop over time, PPACA specifies DSH payments must drop faster¹³, and Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services Chief Actuary estimated that the combined reductions at $64 billion over ten years.¹⁴

SIXTH: Reducing undocumented immigrants’ already poor access to healthcare is particularly dangerous and morally indefensible in light of their increased rates of injury, illness¹⁵, and death¹⁶ from hazardous  occupations¹⁷ and housing¹⁸, compounded with their vulnerability to deportation if they report dangerous conditions or seek treatment.

Noting that measures taken to deny healthcare to undocumented immigrants often result in citizens losing healthcare also, as exemplified by the 2004 cancellation of Colorado’s Presumptive (Medicaid) Eligibility program, which had allowed pregnant women to receive prenatal care while their Medicaid applications were being processed. The entire program was eliminated because about half of the women were found to be ineligible by immigration status. Citizen and immigrant women alike were put at risk, as well as their unborn children.¹⁹

Noting that  APHA has taken a clear positions against withholding medical care from undocumented immigrants in its resolution 2001-23, which “Urges the President and the Congress to oppose denial of eligibility for programs providing nutritional, prenatal, public health, medical care, and behavioral health benefits and services to any person residing in the United States on the basis of her or his immigration status”;²⁰  its resolution 9501, which “Opposes any mandates and initiatives that would limit access to public health interventions and health services for undocumented and documented immigrants and their children;”²¹ and its resolution LB04-07, which “Deplores and warns against measures curtailing, eliminating, or disrupting health care to undocumented immigrants.”²²

And finally, noting that the recent passage of this massive Health Reform law that explicitly and categorically excludes the grossly underserved undocumented immigrant population presents public health advocates with a grave challenge,

Therefore, the American Public Health Association

1.  Calls on the President, and Congress to end the exclusion of healthcare for undocumented immigrants from Health Reform, and

2.  Calls on the President and Congress to support health reform that provides equal, comprehensive, affordable, accessible healthcare for every person, regardless of their status of health, employment, income, or legalization,  and

3.  Calls on the President and Congress to assure that community health centers receiving $11 billion of dollars of federal aid over the next five years through the PPACA²³ continue to give undocumented immigrants comprehensive health care, and

4.  Encourages public health advocates to attend future events on immigration reform (public rallies, demonstrations, press conferences and the like) with the demand of comprehensive, affordable, accessible medical care for all immigrants, regardless of legalization status.

References:

1.  Kaiser Health News. Some Will Remain Uninsured After Reform. Available at: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2010/March/24/Some-Will-Remain-Uninsured.aspx.   Accessed October 3, 2010.

2.  Lewin Group.  Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA): Long Term Costs for Governments, Employers, Families and Providers.   Available at: http://www.lewin.com/content/publications/LewinGroupAnalysis-PatientProtectionandAffordableCareAct2010.pdf.  p. 22.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

3.    Pew Hispanic Center.  Hispanics, Health Insurance and Health Care Access.   Available at: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1356/hispanics-health-insurance-health-care-access.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

Working Immigrants.  Health uninsured rates among immigrants: far higher.  Available at: http://www.workingimmigrants.com/2009/08/health_uninsured_rates_among_i.html.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

4.   Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured,  Summary: Five Basic Facts on Immigrants and Their Health Care.   Available at: http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/7761.pdf.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

5.   Coalicion de Derechos Humanos.  Massive ICE sweep terrorizes Arizona communities following state passage of anti-immigrant profiling law.   Available at: http://www.derechoshumanosaz.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=166&Itemid=1.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

6.   Common Dreams.  Obama Administration Immigration Deportations Exceed Bush’s Record.   Available at: http://www.commondreams.org/print/56327.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

7.   Arizona Daily Star, National Physician Groups Condemn Arizona SB 1070.  Available at: http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/health/article_ca3a8c46-62c6-11df-9a0a-001cc4c002e0.html.  Accessed November 3, 2010.

8.   San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network.   San Francisco Immigrant Legal And Education Network Opposes The Implementation Of The Dangerous Secure Communities Program In San Francisco.   Available at: http://www.sfimmigrantnetwork.org/comments/sfilen_opposes_implementation_of_secure_communities_program_in_san_francisc, Accessed October 3, 2010.

9.   New York Times.  Reprieve Eases Medical Crisis for Illegal Immigrants.   Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/us/06grady.html.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report.  Economic Recession Forcing Local Health Departments To Reduce Services to Undocumented Immigrants.   Available at: http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=57497.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

New York Times,   Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals.   Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/us/03deport.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

10.   Washington Independent.   Anti-Immigration Activists See Opportunity in Health Care Debate.  Available at: http://washingtonindependent.com/55044/anti-immigration-activists-see-opportunity-in-health-care-debate.   Accessed October 3, 2010.

11.   Newsweek Magazine.  The Next Front on Immigration.   Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/01/the-next-front-on-immigration.html.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

Politico.  John McCain backs citizenship hearings.  Available at: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40589.html.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

12.   Health Affairs.  Left Out: Immigrants’ Access to Health Care and Insurance January/February 2001.   Available at: http://www.projectshine.org/files/shared_images/Left_Out.pdf ,   Accessed October 20, 2010.

13.   The Hospital & Healthcare Association of Pennsylvania.  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

(PPACA) of 2010 and the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act (HCEARA) of 2010. Available at: http://www.haponline.org/downloads/HAP_Summary_2010_PPACA_HCEARA_April2010.pdf.  Accessed November 4, 2010.

14.  Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Estimated Financial Effects of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” as Amended.  Available at https://www.cms.gov/ActuarialStudies/Downloads/PPACA_2010-04-22.pdf.  Accessed November 4, 2010.

15.  Moure-Eraso R,  Friedman-Jimenez G.  (2004) Occupational health among Latino workers: a needs assessment and recommended interventions.  New Solutions. 14/4:319-47.  Available at: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10641&page=129.  Accessed November 4, 2010.

16.   Richardson, S. Fatal work injuries among foreign-born Hispanic Workers. Monthly Labor Review, October, 2005.   Available at:  http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/10/ressum.pdf.   Accessed on November 4, 2010.

17.   APHA Policy Statement 2005-4: Occupational Health and Safety Protections for Immigrant Workers.  December 14, 2005.  Especially see Richardson S, Ruser J, Suarez P. Hispanic Workers in the United States: An Analysis of Employment Distributions, Fatal Occupational Injuries, and Non-fatal Occupational Injuries and Illnesses in National Research Council: Safety is Seguridad. Washington, D.C., National Academies Press, 2003.  Available at: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10641&page=48  and http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10641&page=57.  Accessed November 4, 2010.

18.   Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Living in America: Challenges Facing New Immigrants and Refugees.  Available at: http://www.rwjf.org/files/publications/other/Immigration_Report.pdf.  Accessed November 4, 2010.

19.   Wall Street Journal.   Prenatal Care Is Latest State Cut In Services for Illegal Immigrants.   Available at: http://www.uniset.ca/naty/maternity/wsj_imm_med.htm.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

20.   APHA Policy Statement 2001-23: Protection of the Health of Resident Immigrants in the United States.  Available at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=262.   Accessed October 3, 2010.

21.   APHA Policy Statement 9501: Opposition To Anti-Immigrant Statutes.   Available at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=96.   Accessed October3, 2010.

22.   APHA Policy Statement LB04-07: Responding to Threats to Health Care for Immigrants.  November 9, 2004.

23.   PPACA Health Care Reform Timeline.   Available at: http://stabenow.senate.gov/healthcare/Health_Care_Timeline.pdf.  Accessed October 3, 2010.

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How the Imposed MUNI Contract Would Hurt Drivers And the Public

Collective Bargaining:  According to Prop G, if drivers reject a contract, it goes to binding arbitration.

• Proposition G specifies the arbitrator must consider the good of the system but says nothing about the good of the drivers or the public.    For example, MUNI drivers rejected the recent contract by a 2-1 vote, yet within days the Arbitrator imposed the very same contract on the drivers.  This is negotiating with a gun at your back.

• Prop G is San Francisco’s version of Wisconsin, effectively eliminating collective bargaining.  Prop G was paid for by the same business interests that cause MUNI’s ongoing financial crisis by avoiding paying taxes or fees to support MUNI operations.

 

Part Timers: 7.5% of MUNI’s 2,200 full-time drivers can be replaced with part-time drivers.

• This would give MUNI the flexibility to cut 3,300 driving hours each week in mid-day, night, and weekend runs, while still supplying downtown business’s demand for peak-hour downtown corridor service. 80% of MUNI operations already serve downtown business’ interests, bringing in customers and workers.

• The loss of mid-day, night and weekend service would affect seniors, people with disabilities, school kids, and low-wage service workers.  Many are minority and immigrant.   Seniors, people with disabilities, and kids need this service to shop, go to doctor appointments, go to senior centers, and visit family and friends.  Workers in hotels and restaurants typically start or end work early in the morning or late in the evening.  They cannot afford taxis.

Health and Safety:

• Drivers would have no more say in how MUNI runs on health and safety issues.  Drivers would loose their right to protest overly stressful schedules on health and safety grounds, a right they had for 40 years.   This is in spite of years of world-recognized research by SF General doctors showing stress causes high blood pressure in MUNI drivers. Drivers could also no longer protest use of unsafe equipment.  This puts the public, especially seniors, in danger, particularly in cases of unreliable or grabby brakes, or malfunctioning chair lifts or fatigued drivers.  MUNI is trying to fire drivers who complain about unsafe equipment, showing MUNI’s determination to continue using it.

• Drivers would no longer have input into investigation of accidents. Instead of fixing unsafe schedules or equipment, MUNI can just blame the driver, and go on as before.  The decision of the management-appointed “Transit Safety Professional” cannot be appealed or reviewed, and drivers can be fired after a second accident judged preventable.

• Drivers could no longer take health or safety issues to an outside arbitrator.

Make Downtown Business Pay:

Despite MUNI’s decades-long financial crisis, downtown businesses pays nothing to MUNI for having their customers and workers brought to them.

• They pay no annual tax or fee to help support MUNI.

• Newly constructed commercial buildings are supposed to be charged a one-time Transit Impact Development Fee, but this fee is limited to downtown buildings, the fee has not been raised in years, it applies only to certain kinds of buildings, and there a frequent waivers.

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Obama shields states cutting Medicaid doctor payments

Bipartisan attack on Medicaid, healthcare for low-income children, seniors and workers.

• The GOP’s justly-hated Ryan Plan puts states’ Medicaid programs on an ice floe, because it caps federal payments to states regardless of states’ needs (“block-granting”), and also gives states the rights to cut their Medicaid programs in defiance of federal standards of of who must be eligible and what services must be covered. 
• But Democrats have also attacked Medicaid, beginning with the Clinton administration, which granted states huge numbers of waivers to the federal requirements.  Now the Obama administration is shielding states that are cutting their Medicaid programs by saying Medicaid patients and doctors cannot sue states for reducing doctor payments, even if such cuts cause a reduction in the number of doctors serving Medicaid patients to the point where patients cannot access care.
• California has among the lowest Medicaid payments to doctors and pharmacies in the nation, and among lowest Medicaid doctor-to-patient ratios in the country.  Doctors, pharmacies, and patient advocates, including San Francisco and Sacramento Gray Panthers, sued California in response to Schwarzenegger’s 10% cuts to Medi-Cal.  Brown’s budget includes and additional 10% cut.  The suit has worked its way up to the Supreme Court, and it is this context that the Obama administration has submitted a brief saying states cannot be sued for cutting their Medicaid programs.
• Democrats and Republicans are unified in their determination to cut our programs.  Medicare and Medicaid were won in the in the streets in the 1960s, and that is where they must be defended now.

New York Times, May 28, 2011
Administration Opposes Challenges to Medicaid Cuts

By Robert Pear

WASHINGTON — Medicaid recipients and health care providers cannot sue state officials to challenge cuts in Medicaid payments, even if such cuts compromise access to health care for poor people, the Obama administration has told the Supreme Court.

States around the country, faced with severe budget problems, have been reducing Medicaid rates for doctors, dentists, hospitals, pharmacies, nursing homes and other providers.

Federal law says Medicaid rates must be “sufficient to enlist enough providers” so that Medicaid recipients have access to care to the same extent as the general population in an area.

In a friend-of-the court brief filed Thursday in the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said that no federal law allowed private individuals to sue states to enforce this standard.

Such lawsuits “would not be compatible” with the means of enforcement envisioned by Congress, which relies on the secretary of health and human services to make sure states comply, the administration said in the brief, by the acting solicitor general, Neal K. Katyal.

In many parts of the country, payment rates are so low that Medicaid recipients have difficulty finding doctors to take them.

But, the Justice Department said, the Medicaid law’s promise of equal access to care is “broad and nonspecific,” and federal health officials are better equipped than judges to balance that goal with other policy objectives, like holding down costs.

The administration expressed its views in a set of cases consolidated under the name Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California, No. 09-958.

In 2008 and 2009, the California Legislature passed several laws reducing Medicaid payment rates. Recipients and providers challenged the cuts in court, arguing that the California plan violated — and was pre-empted by — the federal Medicaid statute.

The law does not explicitly allow such lawsuits. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, said beneficiaries and providers could sue under the supremacy clause of the Constitution, which makes federal law “the supreme law of the land.” In reducing payment rates, the appeals court said, California violated the requirements of federal Medicaid law and threatened access to “much-needed medical care.”

California appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to hear oral arguments in the fall, with a decision by next spring.

Consumer advocates were dismayed by the administration’s position, which they said undermined Medicaid recipients’ rights and access to the courts.

“I find it appalling that the solicitor general in a Democratic administration would assert in a Supreme Court brief that businesses can challenge state regulation under the supremacy clause, but that poor recipients of Medicaid cannot challenge state violations of federal law,” said Prof. Timothy S. Jost, an expert on health law at Washington and Lee University, who is usually sympathetic to the administration.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee and an architect of Medicaid, said the administration’s brief was “wrong on the law and bad policy.”

“I am bitterly disappointed that President Obama would accept the position of the acting solicitor general to file a brief that is contrary to the decades-long practice of giving Medicaid beneficiaries and providers the ability to turn to the courts to enforce their rights under federal law,” Mr. Waxman said. He said that he and other Democratic lawmakers planned to file a brief opposing the administration’s view.

By contrast, many state officials agree with California and the Obama administration.

The National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures filed a friend-of-the-court brief endorsing California’s position that Medicaid recipients and providers could not sue.

In a separate friend-of-the-court brief, Michigan and 30 other states went further. “Allowing ‘supremacy clause lawsuits’ to enforce federal Medicaid laws will be a financial catastrophe for states,” they said.

Medicaid is financed jointly by the federal government and the states. The number of recipients and the costs increased sharply in the recent recession and will increase further with the expected addition of 16 million people to the rolls under the new federal health care law.

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