Yes, I know president Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law five years ago and the Supreme Court recently firmly solidified it in our health care system. But Obamacare was not health care reform, it was just health care change. Sure, more Americans are covered with health insurance because of it but the health care system is otherwise business as usual.
I’ve been saying since the beginning of president Obama’s term that real health care reform means a single-payer system. It’s as true today as it was then. Thanks to the ACA, health insurance companies are more entrenched in our health care system than ever. Unfortunately, they are the problem not the solution.
“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty; it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”
Excerpt from a letter by John Adams to Abigail Adams written July 3, 1776
Forgiveness means the most when it is the most difficult to give. This TED Talk reminded me of the only time I faced Leslie Karen Rush (at least consciously), the woman responsible for making me quadriplegic. It was at the hearing sentencing her for felony drunk driving and the judge permitted me to make a statement before the court. I told Leslie that, although I held her responsible for what she did, I forgave her for it. I went on to say that I wanted to address her that day because I didn’t want her to go through the remainder of her life (we were both only in our twenties at the time) thinking that I hated her.
Congress has passed the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 known colloquially as “Fast Track” or trade promotion authority. The law allows the president to submit international trade agreements to Congress for an expedited, up-or-down vote without amendments. As expected, this has raised a chorus of voices from Chicken Littles complaining that the proverbial sky is falling. Specifically, they claim that:
These are all absurd claims. As per the Constitution of the United States, president Obama cannot pass any treaty, which is what a trade agreement is, without the consent of two-thirds of the US Senate. Granted, Fast Track requires congress to make an expedited, up-or-down vote on trade agreements without allowing them to make amendments. But these conditions prevent trade agreements from becoming mired in filibustering and pork-barreling. Congress can barely pass a domestic bill. Could you imagine if the president had to not only negotiate every trade agreement with foreign countries but also negotiate the terms with congress? If congress doesn’t like the terms of a trade agreement as it’s brought to them by the president, they can simply vote it down and it will not go into effect.
The claim that the USA has lost its sovereignty is perhaps the most absurd of all. Section 108 of the law, explicitly titled “Sovereignty,” states:
No provision of any trade agreement entered into … that is inconsistent with any law of the United States, any State of the United States, or any locality of the United States shall have effect.
No provision of any trade agreement entered into … shall prevent the United States, any State of the United States, or any locality of the United States from amending or modifying any law of the United States, that State, or that locality.
This conforms with existing law which makes any treaty found to be unconstitutional null and void. Furthermore, congress can repeal any treaty they previously ratified by simple legislative action.
Finally, I’ll dispel the claim that the president can make secret treaties. The trade promotion authority requires the president to “provide, at least 90 calendar days before initiating negotiations with a country, written notice to Congress of the President’s intention to enter into the negotiations with that country.” It also says that “the President, at least 60 days before the day on which the President enters into the agreement, publishes the text of the agreement on a publicly available Internet website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”
The biggest challenge using disabled person parking spaces for drivers of wheelchair-accessible vans comes from people parking on the diagonally hatched area adjacent to the spaces. Even though it’s clearly delineated with blue stripes and marked “NO PARKING,” people frequently park there anyway. This can cause serious problems for vans with a ramp or lift on the side!
Car parked entirely on blue stripes
The area is created specifically to allow room to deploy a ramp or lift. Although it might appear like there’s a lot of room, people who use this area need the entire width of it to enter or exit their van. They need at least a couple feet of clear area beyond the end of the ramp to make the turn on or off of it. Parking just a couple of inches onto the blue stripe is often enough to make the adjacent disabled person parking space useless to the driver of the van, even if the adjacent space itself is unoccupied.
This forces the driver to find another more distant disabled person parking space (or to park diagonally across two normal spaces), when looking for parking. But it’s even worse when a wheelchair user parks in a space and returns to their van to find another car pulled into the adjacent space and partially onto the blue stripes while they were away from their van. This prevents them from even entering their van and forces them to wait until the other driver returns to move their car. This is a worst case scenario—the driver of the van could end up waiting around a mall parking structure for hours for the other driver to return if they went to see a movie or dine out.
Even partially on the stripes is a problem
Sadly, the biggest culprits are drivers of cars with a disabled person parking placard. You would think that they would be the most considerate of the special needs of other people with disabilities. Unfortunately, my experience is that cars with a disabled person parking placard park partially on the blue stripes more often than they park fully within the disabled person parking space. I’m not sure why they do—maybe it’s so their car doesn’t get scratched from the opening door of a vehicle next to it (which is a selfish excuse). But doing so to allow room to get a wheelchair out of the car is not a worthy excuse because they can use the blue hatching for that themselves.
This is not a rare occurrence. I encounter this problem almost every time I use a public parking lot. People driving cars with a disabled person parking placard often have a feeling of entitlement to park on the blue stripes but it’s just as much a violation for them as it is for a vehicle without a placard. I usually get push-back when I alert a driver with a disabled person placard to the challenge they have created for me, even though the hatched area is clearly marked that parking on it is prohibited.
Parking on stripes is prohibited for cars with a placard too
So let’s spread the word about this problem. Please tell able-bodied people as well as drivers with a disability how much of a problem they can cause when they park on the blue stripes. Explain that they don’t have to park entirely within the hatching (as in this photo) to be a problem, even parking slightly onto the blue border stripes is enough to be problematic. It’s critical to park a vehicle directly in the middle of any disabled person parking space that has another space next to it.
I went to the store today and asked an employee to reach an item off a high shelf for me. She grabbed it and held it out to me. But she only held her arm out at about 45°, so it was still far out of my reach.
Bear in mind that she was standing directly in front of me. I had my arms outstretched as far as I could but my hands were still a couple inches short of my knees because I was seated. In addition, my toes are at least another six inches farther forward than my knees.
So I asked her to “reach further.” She raised her arm another few degrees which brought the item a couple inches closer to me but still beyond my reach. It was as if she were taunting me, dangling it in front of me but keeping the item just beyond my reach. So I rolled my wheelchair a few inches towards her so I could grab the item but, as I moved towards her, she backed away.
Since I was getting nowhere (figuratively), I stopped and held my arms out again and asked her yet again to “reach further.” She continued holding it out towards me but no closer with this look on her face as if to say, “I’m doing it.” I must have repeated “reach further” at least three times before she finally held it out close enough for me to grab it.
Then I went to the other side of the store to get another item. I asked a different employee to grab it for me. He did it and held it out towards me but still out of my reach. He and I proceeded to go through the same dance I had just danced with his coworker all over again!
Mind you, this trip to the store wasn’t unusual. This happens to me all the time. Do people not know what the words “reach further” mean? Do any of my wheelchair-riding friends encounter the same issue?
You know hashtag-mania has gotten out of hand when an organization hashtags everything in their message. But when they do it on a printed poster, the hashtags have gone completely wild!
Printed poster
Let me say first that I’ve never attended this church and I am not affiliated with it in any way, so this is not a criticism of the church. It’s just a random poster I saw at the local mall that is exemplary of hashtags gone wild and I’m only criticizing the way they were used.
There are two reasons for using hashtags in a promotional message:
To help a tweet appear in a Twitter search on the tagged topic
To uniquely identify a tweet as relating to the specific organization (or campaign, event, etc.)
How well do the hashtags in this photo achieve those objectives? Let’s forget the fact that they’re on a printed poster to start out and consider it as if it were an online tweet.
Do a search in Twitter for #riskitandcome (the last hashtag in the photo) and you get “No results.” If the organization is not using the hashtag in their own tweets, what’s the point of publicizing the hashtag? Furthermore, it’s doubtful that a Twitter user is using #riskitandcome in any search anyway. On the other hand, it’s very likely there are many users searching for #god on Twitter. But when you search Twitter for #god, you’ll find that it results in millions of tweets and it would be a miracle to find one by this particular organization in the proverbial haystack of tweets. So neither of those hashtags help the organization accomplish the first purpose for a hashtag. The only hashtag in this photo that might be good for appearing in a search is #tustinchurch (Tustin being the name of the city the church is in).
The most effective way to uniquely identify a tweet as relating to the specific organization is to use its username. This organization failed to do it in the first hashtag in the photo. They should have printed their username, @ConvergenceOC, rather than using a hashtag. If you search Twitter for @ConvergenceOC, it displays all tweets by or about the organization. However, a hashtag could be a good way to uniquely identify a specific event. The organization should first search Twitter for a prospective hashtag to see how many tweets it appears in. Then they should choose a hashtag that is tweeted infrequently and is easy to remember, such as #theaterChurch, to uniquely identify an event.
Finally, let’s consider using hashtags in a printed medium. This photo was taken outside at a mall, so they should use a hashtag that is easy to remember because the person seeing the poster might not search Twitter for the hashtag until they get home. They should also minimize the number of hashtags in the poster to make the most important hashtag stand out. People will not want to search a dozen different hashtags on their cell phone while standing in front of the poster. For this poster, the only Twitter-related content it should have is the username @ConvergenceOC and just one hashtag like #tustinChurch or #theaterChurch.
Facebook now also supports hashtags. But the same principles apply as do for Twitter. Use hashtags that are meaningful and will help accomplish one of the two reasons for using them. Be especially judicious about which hashtag to use in print. Don’t let your hashtags go wild!
I unfollowed quite a few profiles in Twitter today. I know a few profiles that consistently make tweets I consider interesting or entertaining but my tweet stream has been full of tweets I don’t care about lately. I took a closer look at some of the profiles I followed and found that most of their tweets didn’t get my attention. Those are the profiles I unfollowed.
Now I’m left following only 116 profiles and my tweet stream is much more interesting. Sometimes less actually is more. What really surprises me are the users that follow thousands of profiles. That means any individual profile that tweets content of interest to one of those users will almost never be seen in their tweet stream because their tweets will get drowned out by the thousands of other profiles tweeting. Overall, the tweet stream of a user who follows thousands of profiles could not possibly have much interest to the user.
To overcome this effect, some Twitter profiles tweet every few minutes. Many times, they simply tweet the same exact tweet over and over again. This does not help matters. The more prolific the tweets, the lower the quality of the tweets by that profile because they’re grasping at straws to continually come up with interesting content. And repetitive tweets might be more likely to be seen by followers but they’ll just dominate the tweet stream of all the followers who find it uninteresting, drowning out the tweets the follower would find interesting.
I recommend everyone cull the profiles they follow. The only reason to follow a profile is so it will show up in the tweet stream but there’s no point in viewing the tweet stream if it’s not interesting or entertaining. After unfollowing the profiles, their tweet stream will be much more interesting. And with fewer tweets in their followers’ stream, users can stop repeatedly tweeting the same tweet every few minutes just to try to be seen.
My brother makes a spiced tea (“masala chai” is the Indian term for “spiced tea”) that is unrivaled anywhere around here, in spite of the fact that there’s a substantial Indian population in the neighborhood. It’s not only delicious but also has an energy kick that belies the fact that it’s just tea. I suspect that there must be some extra caffeine hiding out in one of the spices he grinds fresh for this drink.
I watched Daniel making chai this weekend so I could get his recipe. Note that these ingredients are all whole spices when he makes the chai and grinding them fresh is probably half the secret to what makes it so delicious. So get your mortar and pestle out if you want it to be the best it can be and let’s make some chai.
Ingredients (per cup):
5 allspice corns
6 cardomom seed pods
1 clove
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg seed
1 grind black pepper corn
1 tablespoon orange pekoe Indian tea
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar
10 ounces 2%-fat milk
Pour the milk into a sauce pan. Pull the seeds out of the cardomom pods and put them into the mortar with the other spices, including just one grind from the pepper grinder. Grind the spices course with the pestle then add the tea and grind it fine. Add the contents of the mortar to the milk then put the sugar into the mortar. Grind the sugar with the pestle enough to pull the spices’ oils off of it and the wall of the mortar and incorporate the oils into the sugar. Then add the sugar to the milk and turn it on medium heat. Stir constantly to prevent the milk from scorching on the pan. As soon as it comes to a boil, remove the pan from the heat and strain the drink into a cup.
Last month, I blogged about the Egyptian “revolution.” The big news this month is the struggle for liberation from totalitarianism in Libya, which bears many resemblances to what preceded it in Egypt. So why am I not referring to it as a “revolution”? The conflict in Libya bears one fundamental difference from that in Egypt.
In Egypt, the revolutionaries were entirely peaceful—no one raised arms against Mubarak. In fact, that’s what made it so interesting to me. In Libya, on the other hand, an armed rebel force is leading the charge against Moammar Gadhafi. The Libyan rebels are inexperienced but they are anything but peaceful.
This makes the recent events in Libya essentially a civil war. For that reason, I have grave concerns for the United States’ involvement in it under the authority of the UN Security Council resolution. While I am empathetic for the Libyan peoples’ fight for freedom from Gadhafi, it in no way is a national security issue. Gadhafi poses no imminent threat to the US…as long as we take no military action in Libya. The conflict in Libya is just one of a number of civil wars around the world and the US should no more be involved in it than it should be involved in any of the others.
All I can see in the future for this is a quagmire. The UN has not laid out an end game for their resolution. Without UN occupation forces on the ground in Libya, victory is far from certain for the rebels. Pro-Gadhafi forces could make themselves very difficult to target from the air and sea yet still exact damage on the rebels. Gadhafi could conceivably retain power for a long time under a no-fly zone.
And what if Gadhafi is killed or driven out of power? The rebel forces are barely a cohesive unit. In the power vacuum that would result from the defeat of their common enemy, they would most likely splinter into fractious tribal alliances battling each other for power. The UN could potentially be creating another Somalia-like region in Africa. It’s arguable that the Libyan people would be any better off without Gadhafi than it is with him.
Granted: Gadhafi would likely kill many of his own civilian people absent UN intervention. But Omar al-Bashir has been doing the same in Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur have been killed by the Janjaweed, yet the US never intervened. These are tragic states of affair that all decent people wish would never occur. But it’s not grounds for the US to get involved in a foreign country’s civil war.
The Progressive Zone 