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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

 

 

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

 Alis Volat Propriius

[She flies with

her own wings]


     

    "...Let's cut to the chase.  Oregon is boxed in by a devastated economy, a vacuous impotent governor and a self-defeating tax system..."  Steve Duin, Oregonian, Sunday, May 24, 2009. 

    RAD:  Some very powerful interest groups in Oregon believe that taxing big business and the rich is bad public policy while at the same time they claim to support K-12 and higher ed funding.  They are supporting an initiative effort to put the $733 million in new taxes on the rich on January's ballot.  If this well financed effort succeeds the legislature in February will be faced with redoing the just ending '07-09 budget.  It will mean cuts across the board not unlike what happened yesterday in California.  If you want schools to close early, a reduction in police and fire protection and criminals on the streets sign the petition.  If not just say NO. 

    Chief lobbyist for the Oregon Home Builders Jon Chandler's op ed in a recent Oregonian is a classic case of political spin and obfuscation.  While he rightfully excoriates the governor and legislative leadership for playing games his argument that taxing the rich will lose jobs in Oregon is mind boggling.  Mr. Chandler knows that the worst recession in Oregon history began two years ago not with the end of the recent session.  To top it off he ignores the economic stimulus package passed by the legislature and the feds.  Anyone who travels highway 26 can see our tax dollars at work producing jobs! 

    What Oregon needs is tax reform not tax giveaways to the rich! 

      


   

   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!

 

      

You see things; and you say, 'Why?'

But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"

George Bernard Shaw,

"Back to Methuselah" (1921)


Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war

John Adams

 2nd President of the USA


It is intended that the study and instruction here given shall be the cultivation of the power of right thinking and grounding students in the principle of right action

Sidney Harper Marsh, President, Pacific University, 1854-1879


Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.


Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everwhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity

William Butler Yeats


    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  

 


 


 

 

  

 


  

 




 

 

 

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« THE PRICE OF FAILURE | Main | WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE GOP? »
Monday
29Jun2009

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT HERE

DateMonday, June 29, 2009 at 11:54AM

THIS IS WHAT JEFF FOXWORTHY HAS TO SAY ABOUT 'LIVING' IN OREGON

    If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don't

work there, you live in Oregon .

    If you've worn shorts, sandals and a parka at the same time, you live

in Oregon .  

    If you've had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed

the wrong number, you live in Oregon . 

    If you measure distance in hours, you live in Oregon .  

    If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you

live in Oregon .

    If you have switched from 'heat' to 'A/C' and back again in the same

day, you live in Oregon .

    If you install security lights on your house and garage but leave both

doors unlocked, you live in Oregon

    If you design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a 2 layers of

clothes or under a raincoat, you live in Oregon.  

    If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with

snow and ice, you live in Oregon .  

    If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road

construction, you live in Oregon .

    If you feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash, you

live in Oregon. 

    If you know more than 10 ways to order coffee, you live in Oregon.

    If you know more people who own boats than air conditioners, you live in

Oregon.

    If you stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the "Walk"

signal, you live in Oregon

    If you consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it

is not a real mountain, you live in Oregon.

    If you can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle's Best, and

Dutch Bros, you live in Oregon.

    If you know the difference between Chinook, Coho and Sockeye salmon, you

live in Oregon.

    If you know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Abiqua, Issaquah, Oregon,

Umpqua, Yakima and Willamette, you live in Oregon.

    If you consider swimming an indoor sport, you live in Oregon.

    If you know that Boring is a city and not just a feeling, you live in

Oregon.

    If you can tell the difference between Japanese, Chinese and Thai food,

you live in Oregon.

    If you never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho, you

live in Oregon.

    If you have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain, you live in

Oregon.

    If you think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists, you

live in Oregon.

    If you buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old

ones after such a long time, you live in Oregon. 


SOURCE:  My Canadian Connection who grew up in Portland. 

 

AuthorR.A.D. | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

Dr. Dondero,

I've been quite busy in the recent months, as you probably could tell. My work at OHSU has placed me in a fledgling leadership position and opened new opportunities for me to advance toward seeking my MBA in Healthcare Management.

You'll be pleased to know that now you have at least two former students seeking their PhDs in healthcare policy. The difference between us will be my desire toward resolving issues regarding healthcare needs in my rural roots of the SW Oregon Coast (as a model for other ares of the nation).

I would very much enjoy the chance to restart out conversations since the last time we spoke out at Pacific University. I'm still very much clinically-active, but the management aspect of my new role affords me much more time to meet with people and dvance my knowledge in healthcare aspects as I deem fit.

So, how's you handicap these days? ;)

Write soon, I miss our talks.

-Patch Adam Perryman, Everyman
July 2, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterPatch Adam Perryman

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