San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

What Winning Looks Like in Reproductive Rights

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The fight for Women’s Reproductive Freedom has been going on in every country around the world. Jane Cawthorne has been a long-time advocate for women’s rights in Canada. She is the writer of the play “The Abortion Monologues”. The play, according to Vicki Saporta, President and CEO of the National Abortion Federation,“…gives a voice to the perspectives of real women who are all too often missing from the public debate. These powerful monologues have the potential to change the way people talk about abortion.”

In the following article, Jane asks us to take a moment to appreciate what our work can accomplish.

By Jane Cawthorne

Calgary, Alberta – These days with women’s reproductive rights under constant attack, especially in the United States, it’s sometimes hard to remember our true goals are in the reproductive justice movement. While we are busy trying to explain what’s wrong with legislating mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, or explaining why it’s unacceptable and unethical for doctors to be forced to lie to women about their pregnancies so they won’t consider abortion, or fighting to make sure women facing poverty can access contraception, we might need a reminder of what winning really looks like when it comes to reproductive rights.

In Canada, a recent report describes how teen pregnancy and abortion rates in Canada dropped 36.9% between 1996 and 2006. This is an incredible achievement. The study is from the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada and Alexander McKay, one of the reports’ authors, credits this incredible decline to Canada’s “balanced, sensible approach to adolescent sexual health.”   [Read more…]

Corporate Profits at All-Time High; Wages at All-Time Low: Can We Call it Class War Yet?

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The middle class is being hollowed out; increasingly, there are the super-super-rich, and there are the rest of us.

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe

June 29, 2012 | This week, David Segal at the New York Times broke the news to America that not only was Apple — the computer and gadget manufacturer formerly seen as a symbol of good old American ingenuity — making its profits on the backs of abused factory workers in China, but also on poorly paid store employees here in the US.

Apple store workers, he wrote, make up a large majority of Apple’s US workforce—30,000 out of 43,000 employees in this country—and they make about $25,000 a year, or about $12 an hour.

Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute notes that that’s just a dollar above the federal poverty level. This for a company that paid nine of its top executives a total of $441 million in 2011.

“The discrepancy between Apple’s profits/executive pay and its compensation to its workers is a particularly glaring example of what is occurring in the wider economy,” Mishel writes.   [Read more…]

Letter from a Doctor: The Supreme Court’s (grudging) Endorsement of the ACA

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First of all, this is a good step because so much is in action already. Second, it is clear that the US has a fiscal problem. It can be solved in two ways: one is to copy what is done in countries like Germany, which have a host of private insurers, but they are severely regulated by the government. This would reduce their overhead and profiteering at the expense of the sick. If this won’t sit too well with the Congress, which it may well not, the other way may be even more controversial: proceed to a Single Payer alternative by extending Medicare. Clearly, Medicare has not broken the bank yet, nor has it failed to protect the elderly. If it were extended, say, five years at a time, per year, it would be easily accomplished. The private insurance industry, seeing the handwriting on the wall, would begin to cut its overhead and ridiculous executive pay, and switch to “supplemental” policies.   [Read more…]

Power Plant Hearing Draws Strong Opposition from Community and Environmental Groups

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Community and environmental protection groups including the Sierra Club and Save Mission Trails lauded the results of an over-five-hour San Diego Planning Commission hearing held Thursday, June 28. Commissioners were being asked to begin a process to convert land designated as open space near theMissionTrailsRegionalParkto an industrial site for a fossil fuel burning electric power plant.

The power plant applicant Cogentrix, LLC, a subsidiary of the banking giant Goldman Sachs, has already initiated a process with the California Energy Commission to license a 100 MW plant that would require eleven 100 foot tall smokestacks on lands that have been designated as open space for decades in what is known as the East Elliot Community Plan area north of the park.

Over 150 opponents of the proposed power plant including energy engineer Bill Powers, Santee Councilmember John Minto, health professionals and parents provided testimony as to why the power plant is not necessary to meet San Diego’s energy needs, how it increases greenhouse gas emissions and is a highly inappropriate use for the proposed site.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – STOP! Calling the Health Care Law “Obamacare” – Don’t Do the Right’s Job for Them

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June 29, 2012—The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding most of the Affordable Health Act dominates today’s newspapers and internet chatter around the country. There’s no escaping it. The Attorney General of the United States was held in contempt of Congress yesterday, Europe’s leaders may have finally found a way to salvage the Euro, and scientists have finally figured out why modern tomatoes have no flavor, but today none of that matters so much. The significance and the potential benefits/consequences of the high court’s decision rules the news world.

 So we’ll join the chattering mediaoids right after this unpaid political announcement: By characterizing the health care law as “Obamacare” the news media (and even some politicos who ought to know better) are carrying water for the right wingers who have used every dirty trick in the book to defeat, undermine or repeal the Affordable Health Care Act.  Even just saying the “Health Care Act” is fine. The right has spent twenty years fighting any semblance of a national policy on health care for one good reason: once people see the benefits of a rational care system (and the one under discussion here barely qualifies), they are less inclined to buy into the meme that all government is bad that is at the core of the right wing’s philosophy. So. Just. Don’t. Do. It. Don’t say or write the world. It’s lazy. And it’s wrong. Got it? Thank you!   [Read more…]

Looking at a Beautiful Sunset …and …Contemplating a Mayor – Bob Filner – Who Loves the Arts

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Looking at a beautiful San Diego sunset I thought of how there’s so much about our city that lends itself to art. A clip of a radio show on KPBS that a friend of mine, Seema Sueko, a leader in the San Diego arts scene, shared with me played a major part in my thinking.

On the show she expressed that she felt Carl DeMaio was a “little unfriendly” to arts and culture in our city. That really resonated in my mind because the arts, to me, is what life is all about as the arts let us explore who we are and who we might become. It could do the same for a city.

I realized just how essential the arts are to our well being as a society back when I was a beginning classroom teacher in Room B5 at Perry Elementary in the Bayview Naval Housing area.
  [Read more…]

Field of View: An Alaskan Adventure

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My trip to Alaska was the result of a year of planning and not-so-patiently waiting. I knew it would be wonderful, especially to see old family friends after such a long time, but I never imagined it would become an experience of a lifetime.   [Read more…]

Dissecting the Supreme Court’s “Obamacare” Decision

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In writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts is careful to note that upholding the act is not the same as endorsing it.

The Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the signature legislative accomplishment of the Obama Administration in a 5-4 decision, a majority that included conservative Chief Justice John Roberts. This is a big day for the Obama Administration, and for Democrats nationwide. This was the day that the Affordable Care Act—an imperfect law with definite shortcomings, but a good start toward healthcare reform nonetheless—was ratified as the law of the land once and for all.   [Read more…]

July 2 – 7: Week of Protest of Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks Being Held in San Diego

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No to NAFTA on Steroids

Coalition to STOP TPP Announces Week of Protest

and an International Community-Based Conference

From June 30 to July 8, the secret, super-treaty negotiations known as the 13th Round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations are being held here in San Diego at the Hilton Bayfront Hotel. The Coalition to STOP TPP hereby announces a week with rallies, a march, various other protests, and a week-long international community-based People’s Conference: A Better World Is Possible!

The 11 nations involved in the talks are the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Canada. Japan has indicated a desire to join. The economic power of this group is more than 40% larger than the 27-nation European Union. The claimed purpose of TPP is to promote development and create jobs. But their reality is different. Though the contents of these negotiations are secret, what is not a secret is that the impacts of the TPP on these Pacific Rim nations, on peasants, on farmers, on workers, on their natural resources, on the environment, will be devastating. Some people describe the TPP as “NAFTA on Steroids.”
  [Read more…]

“And let there be light!” – a Tale of Recovery from Cataract Surgery

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Seven years ago I was told that I had the beginning of cataracts. When they became “ripe” I could have them removed. I wanted to think of myself as a bottle of wine, aging gracefully, and reaping the benefits later. People I knew that had had the surgery were pleased with the results: no more prescription glasses, unless they were needed for reading; waking up in the morning and seeing everything around them.

I could hardly wait. And that is what I did: I waited, and waited, and waited for the damn things to “ripen.” I no longer thought of myself as a “bottle of wine”; rather I thought of myself as an aging old woman. I found myself not willing to drive at night because of the halo’s of oncoming headlights; I couldn’t see the street signs in the dark and I was afraid that I might not see the bike riders along the streets in Ocean Beach.
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The Starting Line—Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Healthcare Act: Fox News, CNN Blow the Call

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June 28, 2012—It’s a great day for millions of American families and children who will have certainty of health care benefits and affordable care under a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that substantially upheld President Obama’s healthcare plan. The majority agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance (the individual mandate)  is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court didn’t decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.  Here’s a (pdf) copy of the court’s ruling.

It wasn’t such a great day for CNN and Fox News. CNN was first out of the box as the decision was being announced and they got it wrong, claiming that the court had ruled to overturn the Affordable Care Act. Over at Fox, the silence was deafening—perhaps it was technical difficulties—as their streaming on-line coverage was replaced by a color test pattern and a scheduled chat room feature failed to start on time. As one wag  put it, “It’s a good thing they have health insurance over at Fox, there’s gotta be a bunch of heart attacks happening now.” None-the-less, the Fox News website persisted in using the term “Obamacare” which has developed into conserv-speak for “our healthcare program is ‘don’t get sick’”.   [Read more…]

Supreme Court Upholds ‘Obamacare’

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In a stunning turn of events, the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, the signature legislative accomplishment of the Obama Administration.

In a 5-4 decision (more on that in a minute), the Court upheld the contentious individual mandate, determining that it was indeed constitutional under the commerce clause, and justifying the fines to be levied against those who fail to purchase health insurance as a tax and therefore within the purview of Congress to enact.   [Read more…]

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