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San Diego Doctors, California’s Nurses Announce Support of Propositions B & C

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June 3 ballot measure saves Barrio Logan’s community plan, improves community health

By Mia Bolton

Yesterday at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest, a group of doctors, nurses and healthcare advocates announced their endorsement of the Yes on B & C campaign to protect children’s health in San Diego.

California Nurses Association members were there to support Yes on B & C that, if approved, will uphold the community and business supported, City Council approved Barrio Logan Community Plan Update.

In the first public media appearance by the campaign, the healthcare professionals reflected on Earth Day and the environmental health effects of polluting businesses next to schools, playgrounds and residences.

“Environmental health and justice in San Diego is being threatened,” said Georgette Gomez, of Environmental Health Coalition. “Kids in Barrio Logan have the same right to clean air and healthy neighborhoods as every other community in San Diego and the entire city should support Propositions B & C to protect all of our children’s health.”   [Read more…]

DA Bonnie Dumanis’ Re-Election Campaign Gets Petty

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By Doug Porter

Things must be going poorly for incumbent District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis in her re-election campaign. While she hasn’t been accused of involvement in the unfolding campaign finance scandal stemming from a foreign donor’s quest to turn our downtown waterfront into another Miami, a whiff of ‘something’s not right here’ remains in the air.

Her re-election effort is facing a stiff challenge from a well-funded opponent who’s managed to nail down endorsements from a large majority of law enforcement-related groups and nearly two dozen former assistant DAs. And her latest gaffe won’t help matters much.

Yesterday, challenger Bob Brewer announced the endorsement of Father Joe Carroll, whose high profile blessing of Kevin Faulconer was well received by voters during the recent mayoral contest. It should have been a blip on the radar of the campaign. Now it’s not.   [Read more…]

Dear Parents, You Are Being Lied To

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By Jennifer Raff / Violent Metaphors

In light of recent outbreaks of measles and other vaccine preventable illnesses, and the refusal of anti-vaccination advocates to acknowledge the problem, I thought it was past time for this post.

Dear parents,

You are being lied to. The people who claim to be acting in the best interests of your children are putting their health and even lives at risk.   [Read more…]

Happy 50th Birthday! Time for a Colonoscopy!

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Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes

I could see the light coming and it wasn’t a train in a tunnel. It was the fiber-optic luminescence of my gastroenterologist’s endoscope. I knew it was coming, years before the nurse hooked me up to the IV and flushed a cocktail of saline solution and sedatives into my arteries. I knew it because my maternal grandfather died from colon cancer before medical science had put the fiber into optic and endoscope into my rear end.

The day I turned fifty was the day I became a party pooper. “Happy Birthday” may have decorated the German-chocolate cake. It might as well have spelled out dreaded “C- word:” colonoscopy, squeezed out of a tube in brown letters.

Family and friends acted like it was just another birthday, prompting me to make a wish I knew would not come true. I blew out the candles and sat in my private hell waiting for the doctor’s minuscule beam to snake its way toward my drain pipe.   [Read more…]

And Why Shouldn’t the Government Force Corporations to Cover Abortion?

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By David Atkins / Hullabaloo

Justice Anthony Kennedy, on whose vote the Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case rests, seems very concerned about the government forcing corporations to cover abortion:

WASHINGTON, DC — Justice Anthony Kennedy thinks gay people are fabulous. All three of the Supreme Court’s most important gay rights decisions were written by Justice Kennedy. So advocates for birth control had a simple task today: convince Kennedy that allowing religious employers to exempt themselves from a federal law expanding birth control access would lead to all kinds of horrible consequences in future cases — including potentially allowing religious business owners to discriminate against gay people.

Kennedy, however, also hates abortion.   [Read more…]

We’re Finished. Now What?

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By Will Falk

I don’t know how to write this, but it looks like humanity is finished.

Many of us know it in our hearts. We watch as civilization marches us to the edge of the cliff. We look around to find most governments refusing to implement the radical shifts needed to save us and killing those who fight back against these governments. We are searching for the serious resistance movement we have needed for the last sixty years while nothing materializes. Even though we have invented a million reasons why we’ll be saved like the belief in technology or a faith in economics, we know what is happening.

Of course, this culture is suspicious of the implications of any easily observable phenomenon that is not stamped with the approval of the currently dominating priesthood – I mean – scientific community. And, even the scientists have known our doom for decades.   [Read more…]

Across America, Attacks on Pregnant Women’s Rights On the Rise

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Marlise Muñoz was removed from life support, but a growing pattern of state intervention in pregnancies threatens women from Alabama to Wisconsin.

By Michele Bratcher Goodwin / Alternet

In Texas, hospital officials refused for over two months to remove 33-year-old Marlise Muñoz, who was declared brain dead, from life support because of her pregnancy. A court ruling on Friday ordered John Peter Smith Hospital to take Munoz off life support in accordance with the family’s wishes, and her body was disconnected from machines on Sunday, Jan. 26.

The tragedy of Muñoz’s case is that it fits a terrible pattern of state interventions in women’s pregnancies.   [Read more…]

What Will Happen to Pumbaa, the Shar Pei?

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By Judi Curry

Sometimes one hears a story that is so sad that you don’t even want to know the details because you know that you are helpless to do anything about it. Sometimes you hear a story that might have a happy ending if only the right set of circumstances happen in the right amount of time.  Such is the sad tale of Pumbaa.

Just a little background information:  I have a 13 year old Golden Retriever – 91 in adult years – older than me!  He has been having severe hip problems in the last year or so and he is having acupuncture once a week and swim therapy twice a week.

I wrote an earlier article about Trish Penick and her “Cutting Edge K-9 Rehab.”  Because I have a large pool that is now heated, Trish has been working with other dogs, along with Buddy, on a weekly basis.  Some of the dogs that come for therapy come often; some come once in a while.  “Pumbaa”  and his human mother Daisy started coming a few weeks ago.   [Read more…]

Increasing San Diego’s Minimum Wage: If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu

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By Doug Porter

The ‘Improving Wages and Working Conditions’ measure is set to be introduced at the City Council Economic Development and Intergovernmental Relations (EDIR) Committee on Monday morning. In addition to calling for an increase in the minimum wage, the proposed initiative would also guarantee workers up to five earned sick days.

While serving as iMayor, Councilman Todd Gloria made a bold pledge to get a measure before the voters that would raise local minimum wages. He’s now softened that pledge a bit making it clear that the actual amount of any increase is negotiable. And the opening negotiating position for the Chamber of Commerce (and their as yet silent allies) is: Zero.

While advocates and opponents of increasing the minimum wage each have studies that purport to back up their claims, there can be no doubt about the realities that the value of dollars earned by low wage workers has decreased and the unsustainability of trying to eke out a living on the lower end of the payscale in San Diego.   [Read more…]

There is Still Time to Enroll in Covered California Health Insurance in San Diego

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By Staff

The March 31st enrollment deadline for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is approaching. The state of California is handling the insurance exchange and enrollment through Covered California. According to the state’s enrollment statistics in February, San Diego has already surpassed its target, reaching 105% of its goal by the end of December.

That doesn’t mean that everyone who is eligible has enrolled. Kaiser Permanente is hosting two events in San Diego, one on Saturday March 22 and the other on Saturday March 29 to assist people who want to enroll.   [Read more…]

Hundreds of Tribal Representatives Join Huge Rally to Oppose Fracking

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“We’re here to stop fracking and the rape of Mother Earth. Water is the life blood of Mother Earth.” 

By Dan Bacher 

Hundreds of indigenous people from California and across the country gathered with a crowd of over 4000 activists at the State Capitol in Sacramento on March 15 to send a clear message to Governor Jerry Brown: ban fracking, an environmentally destructive oil extraction practice that pollutes groundwater, rivers and the oceans. 

The large Tribal contingent included members of the Miwok, Maidu, Winnemem Wintu, Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa Valley, Ohlone, Pit River, Cahto, Round Valley, Pomo and Chumash Nations and other Tribes from throughout the state, as well as members of the Dakota, Lakota Sioux, indigenous communities, native organizations and activists in the Idle No More Movement and Klamath Justice Coalitions. Many Tribal representatives emphasized the direct connection between fracking and the Shasta Dam raise and the Governor’s peripheral tunnels plan, which will provide water for fracking. 

“We should call the Governor ‘Westlands’ Brown,” said Chook Chook Hillman, a member of the Karuk Tribe and the Klamath Justice Coalition, a group that has organized many direct action protests to remove the Klamath dams, halt the violation of tribal gathering rights under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative to create so-called “marine protected areas,” and to stop the Westlands Water District legal attempt to raid Trinity River water.    [Read more…]

More Emphatically Pro-Choice With Every Pregnancy

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By Molly Westerman / First the Egg

Safe, legal, affordable abortion access is something I’ve felt strongly about since I was a child. I don’t remember quite what brought twelve-year-old, southern, Catholic me to feel that way: it was not exactly taught at my school! But it felt big in my heart, a revulsion at the idea of forced pregnancy and at the rhetoric of the “pro-life” movement around me.

Many years later, I have had two babies. I have held my breath hoping not to miscarry two very-much-wanted pregnancies, hoping to have healthy little humans join our family, and I have been so lucky to avoid unwanted pregnancies and to have unambiguously healthy planned ones. I have felt two beloved fetuses moving inside my body.

It’s interesting to me to hear how individuals’ gut feelings and beliefs about reproductive justice–and specifically about abortion and fetuses–are affected by personal experiences of pregnancy. People seem to expect for folks who’ve birthed babies to question whether terminating a pregnancy is acceptable, at least at an emotional level, as a reaction to All the Love and All the Cute (of which, certainly, there is a great deal).   [Read more…]

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