RUSSDONDEROWEB.COM

CANADA INVESTS IN RAIL: 

    The above picture is a Via RR skier train at Jaspar Station in the Canadian Rockies in Alberta.  Check out what our friends to the north are investing in by reading the link below.  The Canadian government and private sector are making major long term investments in updating rail equipment and infrastructure for metro mass transit, long haul freight and transcontinental passenger service.  This is viewed as a strategy to produce high wage jobs, good environmental stewardship and good land use planning.        

    The Obama administration through its economic stimulus policy has targeted money in this same direction.  However, after that process has run its course over the next two years what happens then?  If we insist on being the policeman of the Middle East we know the answer.  As in the Vietnam War era we will see home land investments diminish as the insatiable demands from the Pentagon continue and diminish money available for domestic programs as happened to LBJ's Great Society programs in the '60s.  Remember the promise of community mental health clinics?  Gone with the wind.  We can't have both guns and butter.  We must make a choice. 

https://docs.google.com/a/easystreet.net/gview?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=1248c7ad8766a225&mt=application%2Fpdf&url=http

HEADLINE COMMENTARY: 

Paul Krugman - "The Defining Moment" - in the health care debate

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/opinion/30krugman.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1257012515-VF6MS5T1Z4P5UjkOoRGyS

 

Bill Moyers on bringing back the draft!

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10302009/watch3.html

 

Not again?  Can this generation's "best & brightest" win a four front war against the evils of terrorism?  Be careful what you wish for!  We might end up with a loss in Afghanistan, the breakup of Iraq, the destablization of Pakistan & the erosion of civil liberties on the home front.  After all no president, especially a Dem, wants to be considered "soft" on "evil doers" - commies in the '50s, terrorists now! 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/in-iraq-security-is-only-surface-deep/article1328566

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/sanchez

Source of article links:  The Canadian Connection

 

MD's for Health Care Reform at the White House

Sign the petition below:

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/obama_up_or_down_vote/?r_by=-2276355-tquYRrx&rc=confemail1

 

 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/10/06/public_option/?source=newsletter

 

Big Lies about ACCORN, Socialized Medicine & Poor Little Rich People

• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092303679.html
• http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/22/nhs/?source=newsletter
• http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/25/sirota/index.html

 

 

A must see at the Gerding! 

 

 

    Given the results from the Oregon Report Card on school District #15, Forest Grove/Corneilus area, District #15 doesn't merit the plaudits State Superintendant Susan Castillo (a former TV journalist) offered recently in the local paper.  Just for the record my two sons are grads of the local school system, my taxes support the system, we've donated money to it beyond taxes and I was a leader in two levy campaigns. 

    Here's data from the 2007-2009 years giving the % of students "meeting standards".  I'll let the reader make their own conclusions:

    Third grade reading & math % of passing scores - 82/73; 73/73;  Fourth grade reading, math & writing scores - 73/74; 71/75; 40/41; Fifth grade - reading & math scores - 63/65; 69/70; Sixth grade - reading & math scores - 74/79; 69/74; Seventh grade reading, math & writing scores - 62/68; 66/67; 40/38; Eight grade reading & math scores - 54/59; 55/61; and last but not least Tenth grade reading, math & writing scores - 75/75; 74/81; 59/52.. 

    Experts on statistics will tell you such raw data is meaningless because there is no standard deviation listed.  Minus that we don't know what these scores mean.  But in the era of "simple political math" the results tell us something - somewhere between 18 to 52% of students fail these tests!  In the key skill - writing - the results are alarming!  Finally except for the sixth and tenth graders District 15 students score lower than the state average... 

    In my own grading system I used in college teaching for 40 years scoring in the low 80s was a B-, scoring in the 70s was a C, scoring in the 60s was a D and below that an "F"...  And you wonder why President Barack Obama implores students to work hard at school?  Silly him...  When "meeting standards" is a minimum score of 49% on a reading, math or writing test we know what the "soft bigotry of lowered expectations" has become under NCLB... 

    Source:  Oregonian, Sept. 3, 2009 Washington County Weekly section.  For the report card on every school in Oregon go to -

    schools..oregonlive.com

  

     

    Why does the richest nation in the world have the moral blight of homeless people?  If we can put a man on the moon, we can get every American a "home of their own."

http://www.ahomeoftheirown.com/  

    Connecting the dots between homelessness, hunger & health care disparities in Oregon and Washington County: 

Homelessness:  

•    The faces of the homeless are families with children, single men and women, vets, and many who are impaired. It is estimated that in Washington County up to 56% of homelessness occurs to families.

•    In Washington County more than 43,000 of our neighbors are one catastrophic illness or lost job away from becoming homeless.

•    The Washington County One Night Count conducted in January counted 1262 homeless people in 2009. The actual number is much higher. Since the 2009 January count, estimates indicate those numbers have gone up at least 35% based on nationwide data.

Hunger:

•    In 2008 over 79,000 households or 198,000 people in Oregon experienced serious difficulty putting enough food on the table for everyone in the house.  

•    This means that around 27,720 residents of Washington County found themselves hungry at some point in time during the year; 

•    Hunger is highest among single mother households (10%) and poor families (15%) as well as renters, unemployed workers and minority households. 

Heath Care Disparities: 

•    Adults in Oregon without insurance represent 22.3% of the state’s population compared to 19.7% of the nation. 

•    With 85,000 previously not insured children covered in 2010 under the newly passed legislation along with 35,000 more adults that leaves us with 521,980 Oregonians still with no health insurance! 

•    Translated to Washington County with over 14% of the state’s population that means approximately 73,000 county residents have no health care insurance hence their most likely option facing a medical emergency is the local ER. 

  Oregon

   

   For the those who think single payer is not the way to health care reform read this account:  

   My Canadian friend played golf with a fellow and his wife from Edmonton, Alberta Canada.  The husband had a case of the flesh-eating disease, but they caught it early enough that despite two surgeries, etc he lived, even though it was close. 

    Five months of paid leave from his company, two serious surgeries, intensive care unit for a week, home care to change dressings and all the rest and it didn't cost him a penny because of Canadian health care.  He was treated immediately because it was serious. 

    RAD:  In the US who knows what would happen to this fellow and his family?  They would probably be part of the over 50% of Americans who lose their homes because of catastrophic illness. 

    The current debate in DC over health care pool "exchanges" is a clone of the '92 Billary plan.  Why go there?  The "hockey puck" logic of the solonic six, the Wyden-Bennett option or a bi-partisan Daschle/Dole deal fail to get at the systemic problem - the bloated bureaucracy of the medical industrial complex. 

   

   

    Barack on health care reform: "...If private insurers say that the markeplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us they are offering a good deal...  then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of buiness?  That's not logical..." 

    RAD:  Barack it's not about logic it's about power.  The health care industrial complex of Big Insurance, Big Pharma and Big Hospital are not going to give up their power and perks without a fight.  Stay the course, Barack - keep the faith by including a "public option" in health care reform!

 

    Why … should we have government? Why not each individual take to himself the whole fruit of his labor, without having any of it taxed away?”  

    “The legitimate object of government, is to do for the people whatever they need to have done, but which they can not do, at all, or can not do, so well, for themselves – in their separate and individual capacities … There are many such things … roads, bridges and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools … the criminal and civil [justice] departments.

    Abraham Lincoln

     When leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.  They will become flatterers instead of legislators -- the instruments, not the guiders of the people..

    Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests, which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates, but Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole... 

Edmund Burke

    “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

George Santayana (1863–1952)

 

    “It is a maxim among these lawyers that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again, and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.  These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions.” 

Jonathan Swift