Readers' Comments

Dear Mr. Potter:

I write this comment as a member of AWHLICWUHCS-ARAHCAWTACJ, meaning: Americans Who Have Lived In Countries With Universal Health Care Systems - And Regard American Health Care As Worse Than A Cruel Joke. I was disappointed not to find any executive from this organization named to the NAIC Consumer Liaison Committee.

Our organization wishes to remind you of the 1995 novel by John Grisham entitled "The Rainmaker". Surely, you and everyone reading here has enjoyed reading that book about the health care insurance industry. One of our members who lives in Memphis comes up with the following suggestions. I think she has an excellent proposal.

1. Establish a new television channel called INS-SPAN.
2. Center a podium which contains nothing but a pitcher of water, a glass, and a Large Print copy of THE RAINMAKER.
3. When any health care insurance carrier has been found guilty of law breaking in effort to cheat those persons insured, and by extension the American public, the judicial sentence should oblige the appearance of that firm's CEO at the podium for a minimum of one eight-hour day, time increased by factors of calumny.
4. This CEO will pick up THE RAINMAKER and continue reading the book aloud to the American People from where the last-sentenced s.o.b. left off. If the end of the book is reached, it is started over from the beginning. The audience physically present for the reading should be limited to this executive's immediate family.

Since we have no member on the committee, we ask you to champion this proposal with your colleagues. Thank you. Naturally, we wonder if any of those chosen have lived outside the United States and received health care under a =universal= system, but we do not demand the answer.
--Trylon

The MEK is the same terrorist cult which has so far killed, as they assumed, over 12000 innocent Iranian civilians. They have killed our president, prime minister, judiciary chief and many members of parliament as well as ordinary people. They set fire on buses, planted roadside bombs, launched mortar attacks on residential compounds and staged arm struggle against the Islamic republic in which they opened fire at anyone who left bear without asking why. They sided with Saddam Hussein and fought alongside the Iraqi dictator against their own people. They also helped the vampire in the massacre of Iraqi Kurds and suppression of Shiites in Iraq. MEK has killed over 25000 people in Iraq and is now followed by the Iraq’s judicial system for the crimes they have committed so far. But what is important now is the sever mental as well of physical conditions of those MEK members in camp Ashraf ; those who are a different type of Rajavi’s cult victims. Being isolated from the outside world in a remote Iraqi desert for years, the MEK ranks and file members are kept in a semi-garrison place with no access to the free media and merely receive what the leaders like them to receive without knowing what really goes on beyond the tall walls of the camp now for decades. Iran has offered the dissident MEK members amnesty as a result of which many have escaped the camp and returned home and are now leading ordinary lives like other Iranian citizens. Lets hope the rest of enslaved MEK members be released from the chains of Rajavis’ prison and return to their home and families….
www.habilian.com
www.iran-interlink.org
www.nejatngo.org

Thank you for your comment. Our materials accurately describe the Federal Reserve funds as loans. The funding is not directly from tax coffers, but it is the taxpayer's money, and taxpayers will be ultimately responsible for the Fed's actions. In this instance, the Fed is making a lot of risky loans and is not revealing publicly what it is has accepted as collateral for these loans (this is what the Bloomberg News Freedom of Information Act suit is about), nor is it saying much about the $1 trillion in (toxic?) mortgage backed securities it has purchased. Fortunately, Bloomberg is winning is case in the federal courts and taxpayers may soon learn more about our chances of ever being paid back for this extraordinary effort to prop up the financial sector.

Brent Morehouse:

Good post. I like your ideas and thoughts. Email me your email address...I would like to ask additional questions. thx

jmc1007@mac.com
Mike

I really hope everyone has done their homework and have researched this thing to the fullest. The one thing Americans suffer from the most is hearsay that leads to accusations that in turn leads to the breakdown of our social strength. We can sit here, and I assume we are all sitting, we can read this and instinctually say to ourselves that we would like to believe that no one in their right minds would be supportive of this toxic sludge. I would go ahead and bet lots of things that I probably shouldn't, and say that Chef Waters probably thinks like most humans and has no intent of harming anyone and certainly has more to do than to watch over government officials. People, we are being screwed by a much bigger villain than Chef Waters. I know that you think that you have to start at the bottom to reach the top, but crap runs downhill. The next time you decide to picket someones business make sure you research the company that made the paper you wrote your tiff on and you may want to research the wood that's holding that sign up in the air so proudly. Then make sure that the person you attack was given all the information you have and vice versa. Otherwise we're just making enemies rather than unifying an already failing network of humanity. Exercise every rational attempt to communicate before you attack someone, that way you're not just two poles on opposite ends, but humans using the power of communication, compassion, and commonsense. I hope this helps everyone.

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/clinton-sludge-ruining-obama-garden

Michelle Obama’s toxic veggie nightmare: White House organic garden polluted with sludge

Alex Salkever
Jul 30th 2009

When First Lady Michelle Obama planted an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn in March 2009, she hoped to both set an example of healthy eating and to grow tasty edibles for her daughters and husband. But Michelle’s organic dream has been dashed by a nasty toxic legacy lurking in the soils of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It turns out that a previous Presidential gardening team had used sewage sludge for fertilizer.

This is a fairly common practice with one huge problem. Sewage sludge tends to be laced with anything that people pour down the drain and often contains heavy metals. Not surprisingly, the National Park Service tested the dirt beneath Michelle’s garden and found the plot has highly elevated levels of lead averaging 93 parts per million. That’s below the 400 ppm that the Environmental Protection Agency says is a threat to human health. But I’d wager that Sasha, Malia and Barack won’t be getting arugula or tomatoes from this garden any time soon.

The likely source of the toxic sludge that has ruined Michelle’s garden? The Clinton White House apparently used a sludge-based product to fertilize the lawn during the 1990s! Aside from casting a shadow on the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt resided there, the sludge ensures that Michelle’s garden will never attain organic status. Organic certification processes strictly prohibit the use of sludge as a fertilizer substitute.

The White House has sought to downplay the issue, and a number of experts have pointed out that 93 ppm of sludge in soil is somewhat normal for older urban locales. However, the EPA recommends not growing food in soil that has 100 ppm. Several major food producers, including H.J. Heinz and Del Monte, won’t accept produce grown in sludge. That’s despite decades of U.S. government efforts to encourage farmers to use solid sewage wastes in lieu of traditional fertilizer products.

What a surprise it is to see that it’s the Clintons who are to blame?

Did you ever think you would hear ‘the Clintons’ and ‘sludge’ mentioned in the same sentence?

Great, eye-opening article on sludge and the toxic events that take place under the radar of the average American. If sludge is not okay for organic produce, why is it okay for regular produce? It all has to do with what the industry is able to get away with while no one is paying attention. A strong argument for buying organic, and investigating your own soil.

One lobbyist against another, fact is, human, hospital and industrial waste all mixed together and put on the garden. Tha's fine for roses and grass but not for vegetables. The white house is a reflection of the nation, seems to me a nation of mushrooms kept in the dark and fed on poo funded by the big corporations all packaged up in something called "democracy".

i happened to see the article about biosolds being sold to SF literally THE day after reading "toxis sludge is good for you". the worst part of it was a quote by gavin newsom that said something like "i would definatly eat food grown in these biosolids" followed im sure by a shiny white grin, which just made the BS alarm ring so loud in my head. whats even worse is that he wants to tax soda cause its "bad for you", but willing smiles a shit-eating grin (literally) when it comes to something as potentially dangerous to a huge swath of people as toxic sludge on our "organically grown" food. ESPECIALLY since its also for schools. who KNOWS what will happen to the kids who eat these vegetable from pre-k to senior year. its scary when even SF is so easiy duped! we ban plastic bags and smoking basically everywhere but dont notice whyneout toxic waste is being sold to us as "organic". maybe its not that we dont notice, its just that we fight the little pointless fights cause those in charge know it will let them do whatever they want with the bigger picture (money and control, anyone?)

Many, many decades ago, before the age of McCarron/Ferguson, state insurance commissioners put into effect uniform regulations that provided a two year contestibility period (one year in Missouri and possibly other states) the made the law that a life insurance policy after which a policy cannot be yanked on the basis of minor errors on the application except in the case of gross fraud. Why, oh, why the same model of regulation have not be applied to health insurance products in which after a year or so contestibility period coverage could not be yanked. Also, state insurance commissioners did a splendid job many years later in cleaning up the fraud and confusion that permeated the Medicare supplement insurance products with the alphabet soup of standardized choices. As far as insurance companies delaying and denying coverage to the point of causing death, I believe that a national emergency adjudication board be instituted with the power to force coverage in the case of iminent death or permanent morbility and disability if the full extent of the treatmen is denied by insurance company bureaucrats. I would also like the board to have the power to petition the courts to have repeat offending companies placed into receivership as the ultimate "death penilty" (considering the the Supreme Court, packed with ideological 'crackpots' have ruled that a corporation is a 'person') with investor equity being canceled. This would change behavioral pressure that investors subject insurance company bureaucrats balance of placing bottom line returns ahead of life!

It is disappointing that this site can condemn every corporation and leave (Rockefeller family-funded through their Chase Bank) Planned Parenthood out of their condemnations.

Nothing more conclusively demonstrates the lack of corporate ethics than their willingness to dismantle fetuses for profit...they will literally do anything for money!

Btw, read up on how abortions are performed. It's not pleasant conversation to say the least.

We regret the initial error in the headline. The government contract awarded to Ketchum is worth $25.8 million, and the government announced $1.2 billion (with a "b") in grants to help transition to electronic medical records.

Anne Landman