The World Crisis:

“The Dragon Is Sleeping With One Eye Open”

Pestilence, famine, starvation, plagues, AIDS, chronic diarrhea, gastroenteritis, typhoid, malaria, measles, and war, the prophets said since the beginning of civilization would be the undoing of the earth. Cleansing out all beings and cleaning the gnawing sores caused by greed, gluttony, avarice, corruption and the epidemic of family forces; class warfare.

There are 100 million or more populace cities in China; forty in India, Indonesia has five, and Nigeria has eight. Nigeria is the eighth fastest growing country in the world. Lagos is going to surpass Cairo as the largest city in Africa. Have you heard of Medan, Surabaya, Semarang, Palembang or Ujung Pandang in Indonesia?

Last year the world population reached a milestone when the urban populace surpassed the rural population. In the next forty years the urban population will swell by three billion people to a total of nine billion. Nature must develop a tool for ridding the earth of its plague of locusts or be strangled.

The world is not accustomed to discussing population control. It is more likely that by sheer numbers and force that people will not produce children. The children on the other hand are dying in a record number; one every six seconds. They are the front line of population control and they are the ones who we are losing in record numbers. The Bible predicted that there would be a day of reckoning for the sins of humanity. Indeed that is the only means for making a change in the landscape short of the predicted natural disasters that will sweep away the many that are clinging to this world.

Rich people will undoubtedly plan an exit strategy and escape if there is a means. There will be many who justify their methods of survival. Governments concerned with protecting special interests will continue to spread the wealth where it suits them and rely on an every expanded military presence to demand obedience. Rebels will undoubtedly attempt to thwart the plans of the military industrialists. There are plenty of arsenals on both sides being horded for military and political despotism.

The Dalai Lama was asked whether he was angry with the Chinese regarding the occupation of Tibet? He responded, “What use would that be, it would not change anything.” Anger in itself is means of expressing helplessness and loss. When we care inordinately about circumstances we respond often in outbursts of anger. The world must develop a means of reducing reactions to events and carefully reconstruct the paradigm of sharing the world with all of its inhabitants. The stakes are forever. The dragon is us.

Foot Rubs Are Crucial to One’s Health

Stout Street Clinic offers pedicures and they go out of their way to ensure that people have clean and safe feet. They cut off and grind down the toe nail build up of fungus; they go out of their way to make a person feel welcomed and cared for, which is more than most practices provide, with the same expectation that a person is a gift and their feet are the crowning jewel.

Stout Street Clinic provides such excellent service with unimaginably caring and professional staff in every department that people reasonably do not want to go any where else. Their Substance treatment services are without a doubt the best in the United States. Their mental health services do not pressure anyone to take anything for granted. Eye care and dental health care top off the only pharmacy that provides for the needs of everyone who is homeless.

When you remove the layers upon layers of grime and soreness on the feet and the abuse that is taken by the toes and pads of the feet it is a miracle that anyone can nimbly and easily attend to the feet day in and day out like a religious ritual. Can anyone fathom the significance of feeling that someone cares for you that much that they are willing to do whatever is necessary to make your feet feel comfortable and clean?

If everywhere in America people took care of the rest of the world the way in which these people respond to patients there would be no reason for war and people would resolve to live better, do better and care for the world with more attention. Thank you Stout Street. You who are a part of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless have made us feel whole and that we belong.

Nearly $1.4 Million dollars PER DAY. That’s what health industry lobby is spending in Washington right now to defeat healthcare reform.

Make sure their dollars don’t drown out our voices.

Those of us who have insurance are seeing our premiums go up at twice the rate of wages, higher and higher deductibles, and shocking tactics by insurers to avoid paying claims. More and more employers are dropping insurance altogether because they just can’t afford it any longer, adding to the ranks of nearly 50 million Americans who have no insurance.

That’s why polls show the vast majority of Americans support healthcare reform that includes a “public option” – public health insurance that would compete fairly with private insurance companies and offer consumers greater choice, expand coverage to more Americans, an ultimately lower healthcare costs.

So why are there so many news reports that a public option is in trouble? You think maybe that has something to do with the millions of dollars that Big Insurance is throwing around in Washington?

Congress and the President are seriously focused on healthcare reform for the first in over fifteen years. We can’t afford to let Big Insurance defeat healthcare reform again. Please support the public option:

http://www.ProgressNowColorado.org/publicoption

She is celebrating on July 27 her birthday and struggling with severe cancer. Today we always exchanged blessings by saying, "rabbits." I think of her often these days as I wanderer through my daily travails and consider the tumultuous life that has been given to me.

Nancy was the daughter of a writer with the British Broad casting Association and Radio Free Europe and the daughter of a Colonel of the United States Air Force. She lived most of her life in and around Washington, D.C. and I knew her three sisters and often stayed in Washington as a young adult. I remember poignantly the way we met at Fellowship Farm in Pottsgrove, Pa. I was a counselor with a leadership training program called "Woodrock Project." She came to the farm to participate in a week long civil and human rights work camp. Dr. King had been there and the aurora of the two hundred acre farm was one of peaceful resistance to the escalating violence that surrounded us throughout the world.

We met at a dance in the barn and immediately fell in love as young children who feel possessed. As time went on we began to consider being married but Nancy was a writer and wanted to explore the world. She went abroad and she learned of other places and people.

When she returned she continued her studies at Tusculum College and graduated. She want on to work for the Free Lance Paper of a town in Virginia. She later was married and two daughters of her own. One woman followed in Nancy's footsteps as a journalist. Nancy was let go from the paper a year ago during the advent of the terrible economic crisis and she suffered. Stress is always a killer and economic hardship takes more innocent lives than almost anything else.

Nancy's other daughter is the reason we reconnected. Her daughter has the manic depressive disorder with which I suffer. Nancy was googling me and discovered my history and wanted some advise.

I am thankful that Nancy reconnected with me and I am thankful for her role in my life as a young free spirit learning from Nancy was one of the most important times of my life. I can never thank her for her devotion and love. I can never repay her for her trust in me. I do know that what we have is always in our heart and the spirit of that is always present whatever and wherever we end up.

Go well stay well, always; for as long as this is possible.

The 2009 legislative session ended in May. During the course of the legislative session more than 40 bills were a successfully passed or defeated, which had a negative impact.
Bills signed into law:
Ø Senate Bill 228, the “6% Elimination” bill – This bill eliminates the 6% ceiling for General Fund appropriation and authorizes the state legislature to transfer money into the fund. This is an important first step towards fixing the TABOR law which economically cripples the state in many ways. Signed into law by Gov. Ritter on June 6. (Poverty)

Ø Senate Bill 33, the “School Lunch” bill – Allows children in subsidized early education programs to receive free lunches under the Child Nutrition School Lunch Protection Program. Signed into law by Gov. Ritter on March 25. (Hunger)

Ø House Bill 1064, the “Economic Opportunity Task Force” – This bill creates a legislative task force to study comprehensive, state-wide poverty reduction strategies for children and families. Signed by Gov. Ritter on June 1. (Poverty)

Ø House Bill 1103, the “Presumptive Eligibility” bill - Gives the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing approval to assume that people requiring long-term medical care are eligible for medical assistance program benefits. Signed into law by Gov. Ritter on April 22.(Poverty/Healthcare)

Ø House Bill 1111, the “Healthcare for Underserved Areas” bill – Creates a primary care office in the state Department of Public Health that will identify underserved areas of the state. It also coordinates federal and state programs for reimbursements, grants and the placement of other health care providers. Signed into law by Gov. Ritter on June 2. (Poverty/Healthcare)

Ø House Bill 1293, the “Hospital Provider Fee” bill - Allows the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to collect fees from hospitals to supplement Medicaid, Indigent Care Program, and Children's Basic Health Plan (CHP+) reimbursements. Signed into law by Gov. Ritter on April 21. (Healthcare)

Bills prevented from being signed:

Ø House Bill 1115, the “Voter ID” bill – This bill would have required persons to show a government issued ID in order to register to vote. (Poverty)

Ø House Bill 1146, the Proof of Citizenship” bill – This bill would have required persons to show proof of US citizenship in order to vote. (Poverty)

Ø House Bill 1147, the “No Bail” bill – This bill would have made it virtually impossible for undocumented persons to get bail after any arrest, no matter how minor the alleged offense. (Poverty/Criminal Justice)

There are two other bills that fell short of success: Senate Bill 170, the “In State Tuition” bill and House Bill 1274, the “Death Penalty Repeal” bill. SB 170 would have granted an in-state college tuition rate to undocumented high school graduates and HB 1274 would have repealed the Colorado death penalty and using the savings to fund a “cold case” unit that would investigate more than 1,400 unsolved Colorado murder cases. Both of these bills create a high degree of media visibility.

In the spirit of improving healthcare, I offer the following prose poem:

Like the two ends of a seesaw, health and sickness have an inverse
relationship. As health goes up, sickness goes down. As health goes
down, sickness goes up. By balancing the seesaw in favor of health, we
can avoid sickness and the merry-go-round of endless doctors. Sadly,
most doctors focus on sickness, but ignore health. Doctors define
health as the absence of sickness. But health is more than the absence
of sickness, just as life is more than the absence of death. Health is
our most important goal, just as life is our most important possession.

Hugh Mann
http://organicMD.org
http://www.organicmd.org/prosepoetry.html#HEALTH

For years, candidates for Congress and elected members of Congress told you they needed to be elected and re-elected so they could lower health insurance costs and provide universal coverage. Along the way, you kept working for and voting for those candidates and members of Congress until, at long last, after the 2008 elections they formed wide majorities.

Now, as that new, wide majority drafts legislation designed to lower health care costs and provide universal coverage, you deserve to know if their campaign promises were real, or just empty rhetoric. Will your Senators support a meaningful public health insurance option--the minimum requirement to lowering health care costs and providing insurance to all Americans--or not?

It is up to us to find out.

Email your Senators the following five, short, specific questions on where they stand on a public option. The link below takes you to a page that allows you to do just that:

http://www.healthcareforamericanow.org/WhipCount

Many members of Congress have given vague, open-ended answers when asked about their support for the public option. Many others have avoided these questions altogether. Some have even signed statements in support of a public option, and then flip-flopped under pressure from corporate interests.

We need to get to the bottom of this. No more vague answers. No more hiding behind process. No more talking a good game to progressive activists, but making deals with insurance companies behind closed doors.

We need clear, written responses from every Senator on where they stand on the public option. As a citizen and as an activist, you are entitled to answers. If they don’t respond, keep asking. If they respond, but continue to be vague, keep asking them.

http://www.healthcareforamericanow.org/WhipCount

You elected this Congress. They answer to you. They might be able to dodge the media, but as a constituent, they have to give you answers. Email your Senators the following five, short, specific questions on where they stand on a public option. Don’t stop until you receive a clear, written response from them:

http://www.healthcareforamericanow.org/WhipCount

Let’s get to the bottom of this. We need to know Congress is standing with us on the public health insurance option, so we can continue to stand with them when they are up for re-election.

In solidarity.

It is the spirit that soars, soars above the rafters and envelopes the night wind sailing aloft on silver streams of magic, transforming and transporting us afar.