Stop Making Sense – House GOP: Schools Can Opt Out of Unprofitable Healthy Food Programs

GOP against healthy poor children?

House Republicans are proposing to let some schools opt out of healthier school lunch and breakfast programs if they are losing money.

A GOP spending bill for agriculture and food programs released Monday would allow schools to apply for waivers if they have a net loss on school food programs for six months in a row.

Championed by first lady Michelle Obama, the new standards have been phased in over the last two school years, with more changes coming in 2014. The rules set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on foods in the lunch line and beyond.

via House GOP: Schools Can Opt Out of Unprofitable Healthy Food Programs.

Shingles vaccination poses threat to patients with high shingles risk | Vaccine News Daily

“This study has highlighted that patients arguably most in need of protection against shingles cannot currently benefit from vaccination,” Harriet Forbes, the study’s lead researcher from the London School of Hygiene & Topical Medicine, said. “The vaccine is live and there are concerns that giving it to patients with severe immunosuppression may cause a shingles episode. Alternative risk reduction strategies among these patients, for example the use of alternative vaccines, would help those at greatest risk of this disease and its complications.”

Other conditions shown to give patients an increased risk of shingles included rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Asthma, chronic kidney disease, type 1 diabetes and depression were also shown to give patients a slight increase in shingles risk.

via Shingles vaccination poses threat to patients with high shingles risk | Vaccine News Daily.

Saudis report 8 MERS cases; 2nd US patient released | CIDRAP

Saudi Arabia reported eight more MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) cases yesterday and today, three of them causing no symptoms, and Florida officials announced today that the second US MERS patient has been released from an Orlando hospital.

The Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) said five earlier MERS patients have died. The new cases and fatalities raised the country’s MERS count to 537 cases and 173 deaths.

via Saudis report 8 MERS cases; 2nd US patient released | CIDRAP.

Army surrounds Tamil daily’s headquarters in Jaffna – Reporters Without Borders

No peace, no reconciliation, just more conquest and ethnic oppression – Members of the intelligence services were seen among the soldiers who continued to block the Kannarthiddin Road and Navalar Road access to the newspaper until this morning. Some of the intelligence officers carried guns while others noted who was entering and leaving the newspaper.

The military operation appeared to be a response to Uthayan’s publication yesterday of a supplement entitled “Mullivaikkal Thuyar Malar – May 18,” consisting of poems and accounts by survivors of the Sri Lankan army’s massacre of thousands of Tamil civilians in 2009, in the final stages of the civil war between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels.

via Army surrounds Tamil daily’s headquarters in Jaffna – Reporters Without Borders.

Mistreatment and Ignoring Veterans After the War is Over and Sometimes Before War is Over.

Many stories and this can all be easily documented with Google which in 30 minutes turned up the following:

Only about 3,000 Revolutionary War veterans ever drew any pension, and it was limited to those who had been disabled and the payments were quite low.

 

By 1868 New York Governor Reuben E. Fenton (“the soldier’s friend”) remarked that homeless veterans in New York State “numbered by the thousands.”

After the Civil War, veterans organized to seek increased benefits. The Grand Army of the Republic, consisting of Union veterans of the Civil War, was the largest veterans organization emerging from the war.

Until 1890, Civil War pensions were granted only to servicemen discharged because of illness or disability attributable to military service.

 

WW One

Colonel Charles R. Forbes, a chance acquaintance of Warren Harding, was appointed to head the recently created Veterans’ Bureau. It was later revealed that Forbes entered into corrupt arrangements with a number of contractors, particularly with those involved in the operation of hospitals, and sold government property at a fraction of its value. Charles F. Cramer, attorney for the bureau, committed suicide, which brought increased attention to the agency. In 1923, Forbes resigned his position and fled to Europe.

A Senate investigation in 1924 found that Forbes had looted more than $200 million from the government. He was subsequently indicted for bribery and corruption, and was brought back for trial in 1925. He was convicted, fined $10,000 and sentenced to two years in Leavenworth.

During the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover orders the U.S. Army under General Douglas MacArthur to evict by force the Bonus Marchers from the nation’s capital.

Two months before, the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” a group of some 1,000World War I veterans seeking cash payments for their veterans’ bonus certificates, had arrived in Washington, D.C. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits. In June, other veteran groups spontaneously made their way to the nation’s capital, swelling the Bonus Marchers to nearly 20,000 strong. Camping in vacant government buildings and in open fields made available by District of Columbia Police Chief Pelham D. Glassford, they demanded passage of the veterans’ payment bill introduced by Representative Wright Patman.

While awaiting a vote on the issue, the veterans conducted themselves in an orderly and peaceful fashion, and on June 15 the Patman bill passed in the House of Representatives. However, two days later, its defeat in the Senate infuriated the marchers, who refused to return home. In an increasingly tense situation, the federal government provided money for the protesters’ trip home, but 2,000 refused the offer and continued to protest. On July 28, President Herbert Hoover ordered the army to evict them forcibly. General MacArthur’s men set their camps on fire, and the veterans were driven from the city. Hoover, increasingly regarded as insensitive to the needs of the nation’s many poor, was much criticized by the public and press for the severity of his response.

World War Two

In 1946, the VA had beds for about 82,000 patients but the VA rolls swelled to 15 million in just a few months and the hospitals were virtually all swamped.  There were 26,000 non service related cases also on the waiting list. The VA was building new hospitals but had money for only 12,000 more beds.  They came too few too late.

 

Health problems associated with atomic radiation also have received belated attention. The Radiation-Exposed Veterans Compensation Act of 1988 authorized disability compensation for veterans suffering from a number of diseases associated with radiation, 42 years after the exposure!

Korea

The Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1952, called the Korean GI Bill, provided unemployment insurance, job placement, home loans and mustering-out benefits similar to those offered World War II veterans. The Korean GI Bill made several changes, however, in education benefits, reducing financial benefits generally and imposing new restrictions.

The effect of the changes was that the benefit no longer completely covered the cost of the veteran’s education.

 

Vietnam

A major difference of Vietnam-era veterans from those of earlier wars was the larger percentage of disabled.  Advances in airlift and medical treatment saved the lives of many who would have died in earlier wars.   There were issues of Agent Orange which took many years to address.  At first, the only allowable claims related to Agent Orange were for a skin rash, chloracne.  The VA waited until 1991 to recognize for claim purposes two other ailments, soft-tissue sarcoma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  (Photo Courtesy erokCom (Creative Commons License)

Vientnam veterans make up the preponderance of homeless veterans.   42% of the homeless veterans served in Vietnam.  Many more served during the conflict but in non combat areas.

Many of these suffer from PTSD, alcohol and drug related illnesses that have not been properly addressed by the VA.  The VA still claims that PTSD has no relationship to military service.

 

Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan

Three individuals – including a former top aide to Gov. Scott Walker – were charged Thursday with felonies as part of the ongoing John Doe investigation into Walker staffers.

Tim Russell, a longtime Walker campaign and county staffer, was charged with two felonies and one misdemeanor count of embezzlement. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said the charges are tied to Operation Freedom, an annual military appreciation day held at the zoo.

The complaint says that Russell diverted to his personal bank account more than $21,000 intended for Operation Freedom, using some of those dollars to go on Hawaiian and Caribbean vacations with his domestic partner.

Other funds were used, the complaint says, for Russell to attend a weekend political strategy session in December 2010 with Herman Cain and his chief of staff, Mark Block, to discuss Cain’s now-defunct presidential campaign.

 Chisholm said some of the stolen money was intended for the families of Wisconsin soldiers who were killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funds also were used for wounded veterans of the war in Iraq. In 2010, Walker’s county administration had asked prosecutors to investigate what had happened to $11,000 raised in 2007 for the event.

 

The Washington Post published a series of articles beginning February 18, 2007, outlining cases of neglect at Walter Reed reported by wounded soldiers and their family members.[1] Although the article focused primarily on Building 18, a former hotel building just outside the post’s main gates, authors Dana Priest and Anne Hull also included complaints about “disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked managers” that make navigating the already complicated bureaucracy to obtain medical care at WRAMC even more daunting. Although Army officials claimed to be surprised at these conditions, a Salon.com series beginning in January 2005 had previously exposed them.[2] In 2004 and 2005, articles appeared in the Post and in Salon interviewing First Lt. Julian Goodrum about his court martial for seeking medical care elsewhere due to poor conditions at WRAMC

 

Though he has since dodged the question in a television interview, the officer in charge of medical care for the U.S. Army was told more than two months ago that the Army’s outpatient medical care program was dysfunctional, yet he apparently took no action in response. The Army’s outpatient services include the substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that has been the subject of a number of recent articles in the Washington Post and a series of stories in Salon in 2005.

At a meeting last Dec. 20, a group of veterans advocates informed Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, former commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and now the Army surgeon general, that soldiers returning from Iraq were routinely struggling for outpatient treatment and getting tangled in the military’s byzantine disability compensation system — and that their families were suffering along with them.

On July 30, 2009, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., introduced the “Zero Tolerance for Veterans Homelessness Act of 2009.” The bill would authorize a major increase in the number of vouchers available annually for homeless veterans through the VA Supported Housing Program. Specifically, the bill would increase the number of vouchers available to 30,000 in 2010, and then 10,000 more a year until 2014, when 60,000 vouchers would be available. The bill now sits in the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

On Nov. 3, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki convened the first-ever Homeless Veteran Summit in Washington, during which he unveiled an ambitious plan to establish new programs and enhance existing ones with the goal of ending homelessness among veterans over the next five years.

And now various hospitals misreporting what they have or have not been doing.

Lots of huffing and puffing of anger from every quarter is now being heard – and I expect will be heard again in another 10 years or less.

 

The Monuments Men Recognition Act: H.R. 3658: Monuments Men Recognition Act of 2013 – POPVOX.com

One of the honorees is a woman – so she is going to be given medal recognizing Monuments “Men”?

H.R. 3658: Monuments Men Recognition Act of 2013

Summary: To grant the Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the Monuments Men, in recognition of their heroic role in the preservation, protection, and restitution of monuments, works of art, and artifacts of cultural importance during and following World War II.

via The Monuments Men Recognition Act: H.R. 3658: Monuments Men Recognition Act of 2013 – POPVOX.com.

Divide grows between Israeli, Palestinian journalists – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

The situation of Palestinian journalists has created anger toward their Israeli counterparts for a number of reasons. For instance, Israel continues to restrict Palestinian journalists’ movements, while Israeli journalists are freely granted access to Palestinian areas.

While the Palestinian Journalists’ Association has denounced all acts of violence against journalists, including the attacks against the two Israelis in Beitunia, their Israeli counterparts rarely speak out about the travel restrictions on Palestinian journalists and regular Israeli army attacks on Palestinian journalists. Of note, on May 15, Palestinian cameramen Issam Rimawi and Abdul Kareem Mestaif were injured by rubber bullets that Palestinians believe were directed at them specifically because they were carrying cameras. The Foreign Press Association in Israel, currently headed for the first time by a Palestinian, Samer Shalabi, issued a statement that “condemns in the strongest terms” the incident and called on everyone to “respect the right of journalists on assignment to work unharmed to freely and unhindered pursue their profession.”

via Divide grows between Israeli, Palestinian journalists – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Everyone Has Advice for an Afghan Girl

As a girl in Afghanistan I get a lot of advice from different kinds of people about how to behave. Everyone has different opinions because they grew up in different families. When I was in school, my teachers told me to study hard, wear your uniform, be clean, respect your family and teachers. This advice was very good and I follow it always. But I live in a part of Kabul where people have different ideas about how to be a good girl.

One day while I was going to my English class I met a neighbor woman who was out getting some water. She asked me where I was going. “I’m going to my English Center,” I said.

“What is English?” she asked.

“It’s a language like Dari,” I said.

“You want to learn English?”

“Yes. If we can talk in more languages, we might solve more of our problems. English is an international language so I want to learn it. Also I love the English language.

“Who teaches you this English?” my neighbor asked.

“A boy,” I answered. “He is very intelligent and teaches us well.”

I have answered these questions many times from my neighbors. I always tell them that I love studying. It is my passion to learn new things. Studying is very important, I tell them. You will know your rights. You can solve your problems by yourself and also help other people. You can bring peace to your country. You can do all this, but you need to be an educated person.

My neighbor was surprised that day and she started to give advice.

“You want to learn a language, you are going outside, and a boy is teaching you? That is very bad for a girl! First, you should leave your English Center and don’t go outside. If it’s really so important to go, you should wear a big scarf that covers all your body. You should help your mother, work at home, listen to your family, especially your father and brother, because they are the men in your family. How old are you?”

“I am sixteen.”

“You should be married,” she said, “that is important. But you are going outside and studying. That is enough studying for you.” And then she left.

Her advice surprised me. Her ideas were so different from mine and from my family. My parents also give me advice about how to be a good girl. They tell me to respect my family, teachers, and all adults, to help people, study hard, and be strong and patient. They also tell me not to be close friends with boys, not to go out after 5 pm, to wear my scarf when I do go outside and to pray five times a day. Above all, they tell me to be honest and kind, and not to escape from problems but confront them. Don’t run away but try to solve them and learn from the experience. My parents believe that if you follow this advice, you will be successful in your life. My teachers’ advice is the same. Don’t do anything taboo in Islam.

If I have children, I will pass on their advice. But I don’t like it when my neighbors tell me I should stop learning. I don’t want to listen to this advice. Education is like sunshine in life, it lets us see a better way to live.

By Lailoma

via Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Everyone Has Advice for an Afghan Girl.

Israeli forces uproot trees, level land near Bethlehem | Maan News Agency

Israeli bulldozers leveled large tracts of Palestinian land in the Bethlehem-area village of Nahalin on Monday, locals said.

Head of the village council, Majid Ghayatha, told Ma’an that Israeli bulldozers uprooted dozens of olive and almond trees in the Wad Salem area.

Several grapevines were also destroyed.

Israeli military forces deployed on hilltops above the village to prevent land owners from accessing their fields.

Locals told Ma’an that they believe Israeli forces are clearing land for a new road connecting the Neve Daniel and Beitar Ilit settlements.

via Israeli forces uproot trees, level land near Bethlehem | Maan News Agency.

Stuffed dead polar bears: Another luxury craze for wealthy Chinese: Shanghaiist

The latest accessory of choice and a “must-have” item that has emerged amongst wealthy Chinese for decorating their homes, offices and clubs is none-other than the cuddly, lovable and endangered polar bear. Stuffed.

Shanghai Daily reports:

Sales of legally imported mounted specimens of polar bears and other animals are booming in a Beijing exhibition hall, reported Beijing Youth Daily.

“Business is going well,” a saleswoman at the hall, outside of the capital’s northern Fifth Ring Road, told the newspaper.

“One company boss came and bought a 3.3-meter-tall stuffed polar bear for 600,000 yuan (US$96,238) without any bargaining,” she added.

For those who can’t actually afford a polar bear (or probably fit one in their house), all other things fuzzy and sourced from a blisteringly cold destination will do, with a stuffed arctic fox fetching a humble 80,000 yuan.

Other furry friends such as elk and lions are also high in demand as well as the heads of elephants, deer and zebras.

But don’t worry. “The animals for sale died of natural causes,” the saleswoman said.

Because with the world’s impeccable record with “exotic” animals and the absolute non-existence of animal poaching in history, we can be sure that with statements such as “Prices reflect their endangered status” (as uttered by the saleswoman) will under no circumstance trigger a spike in the black market.

via Stuffed dead polar bears: Another luxury craze for wealthy Chinese: Shanghaiist.