How Long?

.
My gentle snowflakes, I first started screaming about Medicare for All in June 2009, linking to an article about how to implement it in a reasonable fashion. It seemed then, to me, to be the only fiscally sustainable answer.

Then, in December of that year, I actually began to link to the original bill calling for Medicare for All.

Now, a real economist (Gerald Friedman, University of Massachusetts-Amherst) has put pencil to paper--well, probably keystrokes into a spreadsheet template. (As an aside, I really hope some vocabularist is devising words & phrases to describe current activities as well as some of the old words & phrases.)

His conclusions? It's cheaper!

Medicare for All

.

Just What Is Feminism?

.

.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

This is Becky, sneaking a post in today to wish Mom a very Happy Birthday!

Here's a piece of tres leches birthday cake for you!

Next Question--

.

"'Cause there is no war on women." Rush Limbaugh 6 March 2012. 

Really? 

.

One Question---

.
How can it be that the Republican candidates want us to believe that they have the cojones to face down the Mullahs in Iran as fronted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, the Taliban and what’s left of al-Qaida, and yet they cower in fear before a nincompoop of a talk-radio bully who chooses to pick on a school girl?
.

You Don't Own Me!

.
With many thanks to Mark Sumner who has managed to say most of the things I have been struggling for some time now to get into some sort of reasonable order. So, here it is.

There's a basic, historical misunderstanding at the root of modern Republican philosophy. A little fact that seems to get overlooked. It's not their insistence that the road to fascism begins with good health care. It's not even the pretense that President Obama somehow masterminded an economic collapse, bank bailout, and massive deficit weeks, months or years before he came into office. No, the incident that the GOP has let slip is a little more basic:  The South lost.

See, Republicans seem to have mistaken "wage slavery" for ... that other kind of slavery. They must have, because anyone who understood that workers are employees, and not property, would recognize that workers have rights.  Not just some rights, not a neatly restricted little subset of rights, but the same rights as the people who employ them. They would recognize that the rights of an employer do not include the ability to abridge the rights of an employee.

Only they don't. When you see Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum or John Boehner railing against government overstep on religion, conscience, what-have-you, you can be 100 percent certain that their concern is that somewhere, somehow an employer might have to allow his employees to do something that, you know, miffs them. That millions of employees might be forced to do without needed health care ... doesn't enter into the equation. 

It's easy to see how employers might be confused, considering all the love being lavished on them by both parties, and with the paeans being sung to them as magical "job creators." And hey, we already pretty much handed over that fourth amendment to them, what with peeing in a cup or being able to fire people because of an old photo on Facebook. Republicans have been busy reinforcing that lesson by insisting that anyone who collects so much as an unemployment check should be subject to any rules they want to set. It's no wonder that the line between handing someone a paycheck, and holding someone's title, should have gotten blurred.

So consider this a primer to the confused American business owners and executives who might have listened just a little to long to all that sweet praise. 

As an employer, you have the absolute right to religious freedom. Attend any church, temple, synagogue or reading room you like. Give as you feel obligated. Worship as you please. Place on yourself any restriction in diet, activity or anything else that you feel is in keeping with your beliefs ... but only on yourself. You don't get to impose these restrictions on your employees.

Your employees are separate from you. Not only that, they are equal to you in rights, no matter how unequal you may be in income. You do not get to tell them who to vote for. You do not get to tell them who they can love. You do not get to use your religious beliefs as an excuse to limit their health care.

No matter how strong your personal faith, your employees are not obligated to live according to those beliefs, expressly because they are personal. You may find it frustrating, but your employees have just as much right to their own beliefs as you do to yours, and whether you pay them pittance on an assembly line or six figures as a manager, you have zero right to carve off a slice of their freedom. The direction of the pay arrow has no effect on who gets to dictate to who.

If the government was telling you, as an individual, that you had to use birth control, that would be a violation of your rights. That's not happening. They're just saying that you don't get to make that decision for the people who work for your company. Because, really, you don't own them.

If you're still mad; if you're upset that healthcare has to be funneled through employers at all ... there's a cure for that. It's called "single payer."

Medicare for All!

Time to Eat a Little Crow :(

Ouch, my gentle snowflakes, I may have to eat crow, bite the bullet, swallow my pride, go against my ideals even. I will have to shop at Walmart. I will have to shop at Walmart to get sustainable fish. And let me tell you this, it makes me mad. I quit shopping at Walmart several years ago for various reasons--political differences, treatment of their employees, the fact that the Walton clan just does not need anymore money! Now, I will have to go to Walmart because it is near 100 miles to a Target.

I have quit buying frozen fish from my local market because all that is stocked there comes from China. Besides taking jobs from Americans, it seems stupid to ship the fish all the way across the ocean and half-way across the US to get to me. I know cat fish are farmed in Alabama and Mississippi; trout in Colorado; tilapia surely somewhere on this continent.

No Fish Tale: Sustainable Seafood At Target, Walmart
Lesley KennedyWho needs to make the extra trip to a pricey gourmet market when you can get your sustainable seafood at Target, Costco, or Walmart?

NPR reports many of the big box stores are now selling seafood with the blue Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) label, meaning it “comes from a fishery that’s met a rigorous set of standards aimed at promoting responsible, sustainable catches.”

According to the media organization, Target stores have gotten rid of unsustainable seafood (think Chilean sea bass) and farmed salmon (due to environmental concerns—wild salmon is available, instead), and are currently stocking 50-plus frozen and fresh seafood options that are MSC-certified or Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP)-certified.

At Walmart stores, some 73 percent of fish was sustainable-certified as of last January, and all seafood will come from certified fisheries by June, NPR adds.

Prices could potentially rise if demand becomes greater than the supply, but so far, a Target spokesperson tells NPR, prices have remained the same.

Sustainable seafood that won’t empty our wallets? And that we can buy at the same time we stock up on paper towels, frozen waffles and Qtips? There’s nothing fishy about that.

Walmart, here I come. Fish only. Nothing else. Cripes, I already have a headache just thinking about it.
.