Senator Tom Harkin reminded those at the meeting that while it’s easy to get caught up in the debate over numbers and policy details, it’s ultimately about making progress to help ordinary folks across the country struggling under today’s broken system. Senator Harkin said, “I keep thinking we have got to bring it back home to what this is all about. We all have our stories. I got a letter yesterday from a farmer in Iowa that really encapsulates it. [He said] ‘I’m a 57-year-old Iowa farmer. I’m writing to voice my concern regarding my family’s rapidly escalating health care costs. On Saturday, February 20th, I received a noticeinforming me that our health insurance premium will be increasing $193.90 per month to a monthly total of $1,516.20. This is a 14.6% increase.'”
Elink 8 :: Who's Paying The Politicians??
pointer from here: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2010/02/25/what-you-see-is-what-they-buy/
this is nice , hope we advance enough to be able to do this!! Manny Villar (Vista Land) , Noynoy Aquino (ABS-CBN, Ayala Group of Companies), Gilbert Teodoro (Government???), Eddie Villanueva ( His followers?) , Jamby (Meron ba?)
rePost::Grameen Bank – Response to Wall Street Journal article
Excellent read. This was a letter written by Yunus defending his bank on accusations of below board practices. Loved reading this.
A Counter-Culture
Grameen had to create a banking counter-culture of its own. Grameen's central focus is to help poor borrower move out of poverty, not making money. Making profit is always recognised as a necessary condition of success to show that we are covering costs. Volume of profit is not important in Grameen in money-making sense, but important as an indicator of efficiency. We would like to make more profit so that we can reduce interest rate — and pass on the benefits to the borrowers. In Grameen system when a borrower cannot pay back we try to activate our system to help her overcome her problems, rather than go in a punishing mode.
We consider credit as a human right. We built our system on the faith that the poor always pay back. Some times they take longer than the originally scheduled time period, sometimes natural disasters like flood, drought, cyclone, etc and political unrest, rules and procedures of the bank, make it difficult or impossible to pay back; but given the opportunity they pay back. Non-repayment is not a problem created by the borrowers, it is created by factors external to them.
We have always carefully avoided the practices of the conventional banks to make sure we do not fall into the same logical loop which kept the poor out from financial institutions. Grameen had to create new systems to balance financial and human considerations. For example, it presents loan information separately for women and men, lists meticulously every single business of the borrowers in its annual report, and recognizes that a house is not just a house, but a workplace for the poor women, something that is categorised as a 'consumption' loan by the conventional banks is actually a 'production' loan for the poor. Grameen is a system based on human-relationships, not on threats of penalty imposed by legal system or any other agency. Grameen required new style of business, new banking culture of its own.
Sometimes people who are used to conventional banking become suspicious of Grameen because it is different. It is a conflict of two different banking cultures. Just because they do not understand us, they think we are wrong. When they spend some time with us with patience they start enjoying the exciting world of Grameen banking.
via Grameen Bank – Response to Wall Street Journal article.
Elink Video :: Tim Wise: On White Privilege (Clip)
Watch this video.
http://www.MediaEd.org From the DVD: The Pathology of Privilege Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality For years, acclaimed author and speaker Tim Wise has been electrifying audiences on…
http://www.MediaEd.org
From the DVD:
The Pathology of Privilege
Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality
From the DVD:
The Pathology of Privilege
Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality
from Experimental Theology
For years, acclaimed author and speaker Tim Wise has been electrifying audiences on the college lecture circuit with his deeply personal take on whiteness and white privilege. In this spellbinding lecture, the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son offers a unique, inside-out view of race and racism in America. Expertly overcoming the defensiveness that often surrounds these issues, Wise provides a non-confrontational explanation of white privilege and the damage it does not only to people of color, but to white people as well. This is an invaluable classroom resource: an ideal introduction to the social construction of racial identities, and a critical new tool for exploring the often invoked – but seldom explained – concept of white privilege.
rePost::Mall security guard accuses shopper of being a paedophile for photographing his own son Boing Boing
The paranoioa that is British Security Over Reaction. I use to not understand a clock work orange , v for vendetta and most apocalyptic british works. I’m suspecting that this is because I never imagined a britain that is like the one we are seeing now.
According to his blog, Kevin visited the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland with his son to spend the £10 his father gave the boy on a family visit. While there, he seated his son on a coin-operated train ride and snapped a photo of him with his cameraphone. At this point, a Bridges security guard came by and ordered him to stop taking pictures. He said that it was mall policy, and implied that Kevin was taking pictures because he was a paedophile. Kevin told him that this was ridiculous and took his son to find his wife and get out of the mall. He also took a picture of the security guard “so that if I later wanted to make a complaint to the centre I would be able to identify him.”
Outside of the mall, Kevin was stopped by a police constable who had received a complaint from mall security that a suspicious potential paedophile had been taking pictures on its premises. The PC threatened to arrest Kevin “for creating a public disturbance” and ordered him to delete the photo of his son. The PC also averred that the Bridges Shopping Centre is a hotbed of paedophile assaults.
via Mall security guard accuses shopper of being a paedophile for photographing his own son Boing Boing.
rePost:: Her Facebook status changed to "single?" Ur dumped | ABS-CBN News Online Beta
Nice, social norms are changing fast!
Her Facebook status changed to “single?” Ur dumped
Reuters | 02/24/2010 5:40 PM
LONDON – Digital dumping is on the rise, according to a survey, with growing numbers of people preferring to use email and social networking Web sites to break up with their partners.
Over one third of 2,000 people polled (34 percent) said they had ended a relationship by email, 13 percent had changed their status on Facebook without telling their partners and six percent had released the news unilaterally on Twitter.
By contrast, only two percent had broken up via a mobile phone text.
The rest had split up the old-fashioned way by face-to-face conversation (38 percent) and by telephone (eight percent).
via Her Facebook status changed to “single?” Ur dumped | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.
rePost::What we can learn from Nepali orphans Boing Boing
Nice read although it ended in a note too happy note.
In January, I spent two weeks with the kids at Ama Ghar, a home for underprivileged children* in Kathmandu Valley. It’s a narrow four-story red brick building off of a busy two-lane road, and it houses 38 children whose parents are dead or debilitated from physical and mental illness. Many of them come from remote villages that are a full day’s walk from the nearest road; communities without electricity that have high illiteracy rates.
Materially, the kids at Ama Ghar have little beyond bare necessities. Their toys are soccer balls made of rubber bands and old car tires. In the mornings they wash their hair and brush their teeth at a cold water tap outdoors, and after school they play with their half-exploded imitation Mizuno volleyball near the neighbor’s pigsty until the sun goes down. Most nights, they do their homework under a single solar-powered backup lightbulb because of scheduled electrical outages, before going to sleep in tiny rooms crammed with second-hand bunk beds.
The most surprising thing about these kids, though, is not their living conditions. It’s their attitude. These are really good kids. Generally speaking, they don’t cheat, steal, complain, sneak off, or flake on their chores. During an eight-hour field trip to a Hindu temple on the other side of the Valley, the children kept tabs on each other without being told to do so, waiting patiently for the adults as they bargained for potatoes on the side of the street. Not one child complained about being hungry or needing to use the bathroom. Like a tight-knit family, they hugged each other often and shared everything without selfishness. The children all studied hard at school, like their lives depended on it — probably because their lives really do depend on it. As Bonnie Ellison, the resident manager, told me: “It’s not easy out there.” Hers is the epitome of tough love; an American who herself grew up in Kathmandu, she is arming them with the skills and attitude they need to survive and thrive in Nepali society. I left Ama Ghar with the strong conviction that these spirited, bilingual, ambitious kids could very well shape the future of this beautiful, struggling nation.
via What we can learn from Nepali orphans Boing Boing.
Better Press Corp Please::Covering Washington like Kabul | FP Passport
This post should be titled better press corp and better electorate please. This is because the two sides are at fault for how lousy the coverage of elections has been. The blame goes to the people who now thinks of politicians as entertainers and vice versa (if I hear another question about Noy and Shalani I’m going to puke.)
Where are we really. Let’s see.
We have the world’s longest ballot, with electronic elections that is unprecedented. We have 7.1 % unemployment rate. a 19.1% underemployment rate, we have what thousands of OFW in some of the most hostile social environments in the world, we have an education system in rambles, our general populace is scared whenever we see a check point. Our policemen/military can’t seem to understand that belonging to a political/ideological party is not a crime (bearing arms is). We have a few dozen warlords in the poorest provinces whose people are locked in a cycle of poverty , corruption and abuse.
And the question you would like to ask Villar is “Nakaligo ka na ba sa dagat ng basura?”. Fuck, you people have no right to claim being the Fourth Estate or rather it is sad that maybe this is what or how the fourth estate should be if left to the devices of people who do not have any noble belief towards their profession.
In a better world media should be asking Gibo what he has done as Department of Defense? What Gordon did with the ZTE-NBN deal investigation ? Executive success of Noy? and the Peace and Order understanding of Manny Villar?
PS :: Mild Migraines again so grain of salt guys.
PS1: Prior to the C5 road scams my problems with Villar is that our economy may do well with his stewardship but that the Ampatuans and other rumored warlord families would only strengthen their grasp.
Covering Washington like Kabul
Posted By Annie Lowrey
Tuesday, February 16, 2010 – 11:31 PM
On his New Yorker blog, George Packer takes aim at the “devastatingly unremarkable” bloviation of Beltway journos. He cites Washington Post columnist (and “dean” of the Washington press corps) David Broder’s analysis of a recent Sarah Palin speech as “[showing] off a public figure at the top of her game — a politician who knows who she is and how to sell herself.” He also offers up the New York Times‘ Adam Nagourney’s coverage of a recent Republican leadership conference: “Here in Honolulu, the strains within the party over conservative principles versus political pragmatism played out in a sharp and public way.”
These two characterizations from two top writers for the United States’ two leading papers, Packer argues, are but purple guff — in the words of Michael Kelly, examples of how the “idea of image” is “faith in Washington.” The journalists follow the same, strange, well-worn routine. They take the mundane comings and goings of major political figures, interpret them according to prevailing partisan winds, and write them up in the overheated, undercooked language of a harlequin novel. The result is airy nonsense that fervently insists on its trenchancy.
Packer further demonstrates the absurdity of this journalistic convention by satirically recasting the Palin passage about Afghan President Hamid Karzai: “Speaking at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr. Karzai showed himself to be at the top of his game. He skillfully co-opted his Pashtun base while making a powerful appeal to the technocrats.”
The point is that Washington coverage of major political figures is not just bizarre stylistically, but dead substantively. To discuss for hundreds of words how Palin is at the top of her game is to spend hundreds of words not discussing her actual relevance to the fractured conservative scene. Foreign correspondence on major political figures needs to be more explanatory than illlustrative — and it would be better if coverage of Washington were more like the clear-eyed, clean-written analysis of Kabul.
via Covering Washington like Kabul | FP Passport.
rePost::Tortured doc to speak for all ‘Morong 43’ – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos
A society is judeged by how it treats its elders and children. We are failing.
MANILA, Philippines—The 60-year-old doctor who was allegedly tortured by the military will speak in behalf of the 42 other health workers about their ordeal in the hands of the military when they are presented to the public for the first time Monday.
Dr. Alex Montes, a member of the non-government organization Community Medicine Development Foundation (Commed), will narrate his experiences while under military detention before the Court of Appeals at 2:30 p.m., according to human rights lawyer Romeo Capulong, lead counsel of the health workers.
Last Friday, the Supreme Court ordered the Armed Forces of the Philippines to present the detainees to the CA’s First Division for their writ of habeas corpus hearing. But the military asked for deferment and said it would present them Monday.
Capulong, head of the Public Interest Law Center, said the 43 health workers would submit their sworn affidavits to the court.
via Tortured doc to speak for all ‘Morong 43’ – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.
Better Electorate Please!!!!::Kung Fu Monkey: Farm Fetish
One of the more fun rants that I’ve read this month! read the whole thing.
Let’s see a few things that are tangential but I believe relevant.
-The social safety net of the USA and probably the world was started by FDR an US elite who traces his ancestry to early US Presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never knew hunger and or poverty as a state yet he has done more than but a handful of people to establish most of what US citizens know as the social safety net.
-The Civil Rights Act although was a bill that was to be sponsored by John F Kennedy but was made into law during LBJ Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency. LBJ and JFK have never been black/african american. Yet the Civil Rights Act has been one of the landmark bills to have helped african americans.
-In the same vein Abe Lincoln has never been an african american yet…(tinatamad na akong ipagpatuloy)
If the only reason you are going to vote Manny Villar over Perlas, Gordon, Gibo , Aquino is that he used to be poor , fuck democracy. I’m beginning to be convinced that a democracy not anchored by an educated middle class is untenable. I know it’s hard to believe but look at it this way. Your doctor has probably never had a brain tumor yet you believe your doctor when he/she advises your treatment. Same with your lawyer (Sorry lawyer friends I had to take a dig, well nobody actually trust their lawyers some lawyers are just less bad as others).
I know this might bite me in the ass in May but we were given a brain to override the emotions that would make us do irrational things or short circuit decision making that is really not that good for us. Think responsibly. My god just think please! (I think there is a possibility that I will vote for Villar)
You know, I just realized how many errant Google hits that title is going to bring. Creepy.
This will just break Neil’s heart, as he does see me as a champion of fighting regionalism, but this CNN piece (from over at Atrios) is the sort of thing that, Jesus H*. Christ on a crutch, gives me a headache. They send a reporter to literally Middle America, and surprise, discover that they don’t much care for them Hollywood movies. Suuuurrr-prise!
But one chunk of this report, to me, is symptomatic of a larger issue that grinds my molars.
ANDERSON: We stopped by the Lebanon [Kansas — ed.] hotspot, Ladow’s Market, where one local told us Hollywood just can’t relate to a farming way of life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They’ve never been back in here to know what it’s like to actually have to make a living doing this.
You know what, Unidentified Male? You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to have to make a living farming. NOBODY DOES.
For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures). Hell, only ten percent of the average farm family’s income even comes from farming anymore (did you know that? I didn’t. Funky). The median age of the United States is 37. I am more than willing to point out that the agriculture industry is a crucial, nay vital part of the American economic infrastructure generating a sizable amount of the GDP. But why in the name of John Deere’s Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what “real Americans” think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else’s?
This is only half-rant. The honest question is, what in the American character keeps us returning to this completely false self-image? Seriously, how did we get to a point where this report may as well have started: “Hi there, Carol, we’re about to talk to people twenty years older than the average American living a lifestyle less than one in five average Americans live … to find out what the average American thinks” and somehow nobody blinks an eye?
There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these “What does America think about culture” pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30’s software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of “The IT Crowd”? Fuck and no.
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
via Kung Fu Monkey: Farm Fetish.