We Can’t Afford Health Care? You Lie!

From TruthOut;

Wednesday 16 September 2009

by: Tom H. Hastings, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

While $1 trillion is being spent on war, unemployment continues to rise and people continue to lose their health care. (Photo: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t)

    We see the spectacle of the US Congress unable to manage decent health care reform that will actually enable the American citizenry to join the rest of the industrialized world in having health care for all. The problems, it is clear, come from those who are lying.

    Death panels? That’s true – we already have them. Insurance companies deny care to Americans, who then die as a result. It happens every day, Sarah Palin – but ascribing that to the Obama plan is untrue. In fact, those corporate death panels would be outlawed.

    Find the language in Obama’s bill that says that illegal aliens are covered or admit it’s a canard – God forbid we should help some migrant worker who is stricken by illness or accident while laboring in service to Americans. South Carolina’s Joe Wilson is just the Tourette tip of a dissembling iceberg.

    We can’t afford the plan? That is a whopper. It’s all choice.

    If every child in America doesn’t have health care, but we own more than 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than half of them on board a fleet of 18 extremely expensive Trident submarines ready to fight the Soviets (Hey! Where’d they go?), isn’t it time to ask some fundamental questions? One is: Why spend $16.5 billion just on the Department of Energy nuclear weapons budget for FY 2010 with 50 million uninsured citizens? Does US Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) speak for us all when he calls health care a privilege (and presumably threatening life on Earth is a human right for the US military)?

    When our working poor are so often without either the money to pay for health insurance or the high costs of health care for ailing family members, and yet we somehow manage to justify spending in excess of $915 billion on the so-called War on Terror, shouldn’t we engage in some national discussion about priorities?

    $1 trillion for war while unemployment pushes ten percent in more and more states is unconscionable. Unemployment means a loss of health care for a high percentage of those who lose jobs and more foreclosures on the American dream of home ownership every month. Historically, it naturally correlates with increases in crime. The US is the last of the so-called developed countries to fail to insure the unemployed and underemployed, and we have the highest crime rates. So many thousands of us are shot each year that we more than qualify to be considered at war inside our own borders. Much of that carnage relates to social problems like unemployment, lack of health care and simple hopelessness.

    Does it not seem that when the US can afford and not question nearly 1,000 military bases on other people’s sovereign soil – 287 of them in Germany alone – that we can afford to create jobs? Rather than have our young people learning how to hurt others in the military, we could end economic conscription, lower the crime rate, drastically reduce the numbers of uninsured, reverse the home foreclosure numbers and enhance our nation’s productivity by offering minimum wage jobs to anyone willing to work. Those jobs would include housing in some cases, health care benefits in all cases and on-the-job training and supplementary education for those needing it. Closing foreign military bases until these programs were paid for would be a giant leap for the US back toward the health of our workforce, our economy, our educational system and our very citizenry.

    No one is talking about this? True. So, it’s time to start.

When a Parent’s ‘I Love You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’

By ALFIE KOHN in the New York Times

Published: September 14, 2009

More than 50 years ago, the psychologist Carl Rogers suggested that simply loving our children wasn’t enough. We have to love them unconditionally, he said — for who they are, not for what they do.

As a father, I know this is a tall order, but it becomes even more challenging now that so much of the advice we are given amounts to exactly the opposite. In effect, we’re given tips in conditional parenting, which comes in two flavors: turn up the affection when they’re good, withhold affection when they’re not.

Thus, the talk show host Phil McGraw tells us in his book “Family First” (Free Press, 2004) that what children need or enjoy should be offered contingently, turned into rewards to be doled out or withheld so they “behave according to your wishes.” And “one of the most powerful currencies for a child,” he adds, “is the parents’ acceptance and approval.”

Likewise, Jo Frost of “Supernanny,” in her book of the same name (Hyperion, 2005), says, “The best rewards are attention, praise and love,” and these should be held back “when the child behaves badly until she says she is sorry,” at which point the love is turned back on.

Conditional parenting isn’t limited to old-school authoritarians. Some people who wouldn’t dream of spanking choose instead to discipline their young children by forcibly isolating them, a tactic we prefer to call “time out.” Conversely, “positive reinforcement” teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only when they do whatever we decide is a “good job.”

This raises the intriguing possibility that the problem with praise isn’t that it is done the wrong way — or handed out too easily, as social conservatives insist. Rather, it might be just another method of control, analogous to punishment. The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that children must earn a parent’s love. A steady diet of that, Rogers warned, and children might eventually need a therapist to provide the unconditional acceptance they didn’t get when it counted.

But was Rogers right? Before we toss out mainstream discipline, it would be nice to have some evidence. And now we do.

In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci, a leading American expert on the psychology of motivation, in asking more than 100 college students whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear.

It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.

In a companion study, Dr. Assor and his colleagues interviewed mothers of grown children. With this generation, too, conditional parenting proved damaging. Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional affection with their own children.

This July, the same researchers, now joined by two of Dr. Deci’s colleagues at the University of Rochester, published two replications and extensions of the 2004 study. This time the subjects were ninth graders, and this time giving more approval when children did what parents wanted was carefully distinguished from giving less when they did not.

The studies found that both positive and negative conditional parenting were harmful, but in slightly different ways. The positive kind sometimes succeeded in getting children to work harder on academic tasks, but at the cost of unhealthy feelings of “internal compulsion.” Negative conditional parenting didn’t even work in the short run; it just increased the teenagers’ negative feelings about their parents.

What these and other studies tell us, if we’re able to hear the news, is that praising children for doing something right isn’t a meaningful alternative to pulling back or punishing when they do something wrong. Both are examples of conditional parenting, and both are counterproductive.

The child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who readily acknowledged that the version of negative conditional parenting known as time-out can cause “deep feelings of anxiety,” nevertheless endorsed it for that very reason. “When our words are not enough,” he said, “the threat of the withdrawal of our love and affection is the only sound method to impress on him that he had better conform to our request.”

But the data suggest that love withdrawal isn’t particularly effective at getting compliance, much less at promoting moral development. Even if we did succeed in making children obey us, though — say, by using positive reinforcement — is obedience worth the possible long-term psychological harm? Should parental love be used as a tool for controlling children?

Deeper issues also underlie a different sort of criticism. Albert Bandura, the father of the branch of psychology known as social learning theory, declared that unconditional love “would make children directionless and quite unlovable” — an assertion entirely unsupported by empirical studies. The idea that children accepted for who they are would lack direction or appeal is most informative for what it tells us about the dark view of human nature held by those who issue such warnings.

In practice, according to an impressive collection of data by Dr. Deci and others, unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.

The last of these features is important with respect to unconditional parenting itself. Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children — whether they feel just as loved when they mess up or fall short.

Rogers didn’t say so, but I’ll bet he would have been glad to see less demand for skillful therapists if that meant more people were growing into adulthood having already felt unconditionally accepted.

Alfie Kohn is the author of 11 books about human behavior and education, including “Unconditional Parenting” and “Punished by Rewards.”

Depression lesson: Play nice

Always a big fan of Psych Central (I get thier newsletters), here is a great article by one of my favorite writers on that site.

By Christine Stapleton
September 12, 2009

I do not like to make sweeping generalizations but after this week, I am comfortable saying this:

We are not nice. We are not tolerant. We do not play well together.

• I had to sign a permission slip to allow my 17-year-old daughter to listen to the President of the United States at the conservative Christian school she attends.
• Someone seeded a road beloved by local cyclists – which cuts through one of the richest towns on the planet – with small carpet tacks. The town, Jupiter Island, doesn’t want groups of riders on its beautiful roads.
• I listened to a grown man with a few beers in his belly use the “N” word indiscriminately in front of his 10-year-old son.

What the heck is going on? For some reason, people assume that because my daughter attends a conservative Christian school that I am a Limbaugh-lovin’ dittohead. Others assume that because I am a journalist at a left-leaning newspaper that I am a Jane Fonda wannabe. I wear preppy clothes, but underneath I have a tattoo. I was born in Gerald Ford’s Republican hometown, but I live in the gayest neighborhood in town. I have no bumper stickers and I am registered as an independent voter.

I am not what people think I am but because they mistakenly assume I am, I get to hear and see people in their most honest state, when their guard is down. My liberal friends are as pedantic and self-righteous as the conservatives they bash. My conservative friends send me horrible emails and jokes about liberals and minorities.

What does any of this have to do with my mental illnesses? Plenty. One of the first tools I was given when I got sober was this: Identify, don’t compare. I did not know what it meant. I had trained my brain to cop to the negative, to look for differences rather than what we have in common. This kind of thinking breeds anger, resentment and intolerance – ingredients for a perfect batch of depression or mania. I convince myself that I am either better than you or not as good as you. I am holier than thou or not worthy of a scratch behind the ear.

The solution: find something in common, even if it is just an anatomical or geographical similarity: “I live in Palm Beach county, Rush Limbaugh lives in Palm Beach county” or “I have a nose and my religion-bashing atheist co-worker has a nose.” It sounds silly, but it works. Just approaching a person or situation with the intent of finding common ground has made a huge difference in my mental health.

This tool, and others I have learned in therapy, are as important as my medications. Antidepressants alone will not make me well. I have had to change – rewire -the way I think. It isn’t easy, but it works. Now, what do that N-word slinging father and I have in common?

A Fast Look at Slow Food: How to Eat Slower and Greener Every Day

A big part of green eating is slowing down the entire process.

One of the most visible examples of any green lifestyle is eating. What we choose to eat can serve as the motivating power of example. The same can be said for how we choose to eat: fast or slow. Fast food has been around so long that a full generation of humans can’t remember life without it. I’d say the time is long overdue for a major slow food comeback.

"The slow food movement works to reconnect people to the food they eat. Local food, and local food traditions are central to reclaiming our relationship with nature," declare the good folks at TreeHugger.com. And there’s nothing slow about this movement with over 83,000 members in 122 countries. Some of the objectives sought by those 83,000 slowpokes include lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy, lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering, and lobbying against the use of pesticides.
When we shorten the distance–both literal and figurative–that our food travels to get to our bellies, we are participating in the Slow Food movement. (And it can all start with nice slow breakfast.)

5 Ways to Be a Slow Eater

1. Say no to fast food.-  For starters, fast food cooking alone is worse for the air than all the trucks on the road. How’s that for an apropos statistic?

So passing that greasy burger joint by means sparing the air.

Fast food restaurants also contribute to reckless consumption and destruction of resources—check out this article that follows the chain from rainforest destruction to chicken nuggets ending up in the UK. And then there’s the poor animal treatment, the immense shipping programs emitting harmful gases, the millions of tons of waste generated annually, and the total lack of nutritional value in fast food restaurant’s most popular menu items.

Of course some of this is null and void if you happen to pass by an organic fast food joint. In which case, eat organically away, I say. But until the day when we see these organic outposts right off the highway regularly—drive on by, friend. Just drive on by, even if you’re hungry.

How about packing a picnic? That what I always did when my children and I took road trips. That way you can eat in the car or stop at a rest stop and let the kids run around and eat outdoors.

2. Eat locally grown food whenever possible. Again, local food traditions help reclaim our relationship with nature.

3. Choose organic. It’s good for the farmers, the soil, the local food tradition, and the health of all involved.

4. Avoid GMOs. Slow food is all about reconnecting people to the food they eat. That’s food, not frankenfood.

5. Find time to slowly savor your meals.-  One of the problems in our daily lives is that many of us rush through the day, with no time for anything … and when we have time to get a bite to eat, we gobble it down.  That leads to stressful, unhealthy living.  And with the simple but powerful act of eating slower, we can begin to reverse that lifestyle immediately. How hard is it? You take smaller bites, you chew each bite slower and longer, and you enjoy your meal longer.

It takes a few minutes extra each meal, and yet it can have profound effects.

If you read the Slow Food Manifesto, you’ll see that it’s not just about health — it’s about a lifestyle. And whether you want to adopt that lifestyle or not, there are some reasons you should consider the simple act of eating slower:

1. Lose weight. A growing number of studies confirm that just by eating slower, you’ll consume fewer calories — in fact, enough to lose 20 pounds a year without doing anything different or eating anything different. The reason is that it takes about 20 minutes for our brains to register that we’re full. If we eat fast, we can continue eating past the point where we’re full. If we eat slowly, we have time to realize we’re full, and stop on time. Now, I would still recommend that you eat healthier foods, but if you’re looking to lose weight, eating slowly should be a part of your new lifestyle.
2. Enjoy your food. This reason is just as powerful, in my opinion. It’s hard to enjoy your food if it goes by too quickly. In fact, I think it’s fine to eat sinful foods, if you eat a small amount slowly. Think about it: you want to eat sinful foods (desserts, fried foods, pizza, etc.) because they taste good. But if you eat them fast, what’s the point? If you eat them slowly, you can get the same amount of great taste, but with less going into your stomach. That’s math that works for me. And that argument aside, I think you are just happier by tasting great food and enjoying it fully, by eating slowly. Make your meals a gastronomic pleasure, not a thing you do rushed, between stressful events.
3. Better digestion. If you eat slower, you’ll chew your food better, which leads to better digestion. Digestion actually starts in the mouth, so the more work you do up there, the less you’ll have to do in your stomach. This can help lead to fewer digestive problems.
4. Less stress. Eating slowly, and paying attention to our eating, can be a great form of mindfulness exercise. Be in the moment, rather than rushing through a meal thinking about what you need to do next. When you eat, you should eat. This kind of mindfulness, I believe, will lead to a less stressful life, and long-term happiness. Give it a try.
5. Rebel against fast food and fast life. Our hectic, fast-paced, stressful, chaotic lives — the Fast Life — leads to eating Fast Food, and eating it quickly. This is a lifestyle that is dehumanizing us, making us unhealthy, stressed out, and unhappy. We rush through our day, doing one mindless task after another, without taking the time to live life, to enjoy life, to relate to each other, to be human. That’s not a good thing in my book. Instead, rebel against that entire lifestyle and philosophy … with the small act of eating slower. Don’t eat Fast Food. Eat at a good restaurant, or better yet, cook your own food and enjoy it fully. Taste life itself.

Top Green Coffee & Tea Tips

From Planet Green

1. The local brew-  Seek out the coffee and tea that have traveled the least distance to reach you and also aim at supporting local, independent farms, cafés, and roasters.
2. Mug Shots
   Go ahead, find that perfect mug and make the investment. Not only is a reusable mug more pleasurable to sip out of than a paper cup, but it will replace an untold number of disposable cups, plastic sippy tops, “java jackets,” and other disposable paraphernalia. If you’ve got a thing for paper cups and Greek art, try a more durable "We Are Happy to Serve You", the handy-work of TreeHugger founder Graham Hill. Make a quick tally of how many disposable coffee or tea cups you use in a month…yeah, it’s probably a lot.
3. Organic
   Coffee and tea that bear organic certification are more eco-friendly because they are grown and processed without toxic chemicals, are cultivated and harvested in ways that protect sensitive ecosystems, and spare workers from exposure to harmful pesticides and herbicides. Shade grown coffee is another important category that preserves habitats for migratory birds on coffee farms, also letting beans mature more slowly and creating richer flavors.
4. Fair Trade
   Not only does certified fair trade coffee and tea help ensure living wages and safe working conditions for farmers, but TransFair and Rainforest Alliance both include rigorous environmental standards in their certification criteria.
5. Home brew
   The local café is great. It’s got your friends, good food, free wireless. But if you think you can be greener in your own kitchen, give it a try. When you do it at home you know where the beans and leaves are coming from and also where they go when they’re spent. Plus, you can’t forget your mug, you can choose organic milk, and never toss out another paper sugar packet. Try a bit of quick math on the cost savings of making your morning cup-o-joe at home.
6. Loosen up
   Tea bags and coffee filters can be useful but are mostly unnecessary. Great coffee can be made at home with a reusable filter or a stovetop espresso maker. A quality tea infuser can last a lifetime and replace an untold number of (questionably compostable) tea bags. If you do use filters and bags, look for biodegradable and unbleached ones.
7. Milk and sugar
   Most people put one thing or another in their hot beverage of choice. Don’t foul up your organic, fair trade, bird friendly, solar roasted brew with chemical and hormone-laden milk and sugar from a little paper packet. If you don’t do the cow thing, look for organic rice, soy, or almond milk to yin up your yang. In the US, TransFair also certifies sugar, so even your sugar can be fair trade. (Maple syrup in coffee is another well-kept secret.)
8. Compost the roast
   Tea leaves and especially coffee grounds make outstanding compost. Coffee’s high nitrogen content has made it a fertilizer of choice since days of yore. Composting leaves and grounds helps keep organic waste out of landfills, makes great soil, and keeps waste baskets dry. If you don’t have a heap to toss it on, just spread coffee grounds on the top of your plants’ soil.
9. Gift the good stuff
   Organic coffee and tea make superb gifts for friends and coworkers, as well as effective peace offerings for estranged family members and ex-lovers. It’s also a great way to get people appreciating the many benefits of a “greener” coffee or tea habit.

Nationwide “eat-ins” show way to a revived National School Lunch Program

Though I in now way agree with the statement this write makes when he says, “Thus a diet that puts more emphasis on whole grains and fresh vegetables, with meat as a side dish or condiment rather than the center of the plate is, as ever, the only healthy, viable alternative”….  at least our awful school lunches are coming under fire.

Chowing down for better school lunches in Iowa City.Photo: Kurt Michael Friese

All across the country this past Labor Day, folks gathered for picnics.  That’s no surprise, of course. After all, it was a holiday, and the weather was grand across nearly the whole continent.  But there was something unique about one group of picnics; 307 of them to be exact, in all 50 states.  They were dubbed “Eat-Ins” (modeled on the sit-ins of the ‘60s), and they were a call to action by Slow Food USA

At those picnics, including one right here in Iowa City, more than 20,000 people gathered around tables in parks and farms and school grounds to tell Congress to fix the School Lunch Program. Most of the discussions at these events and in the press afterwards centered on improving the food itself through increased Federal spending and local food initiatives. But there was another topic directly relevant to Labor Day: the call to create green jobs with a “School Lunch Corps.”

As the platform promoted by Slow Food states:

We can’t serve real food in schools without investing in school kitchens and the people who prepare and serve lunch. This spring, President Obama signed the Serve America Act, which expanded Americorps and reinforced his call for Americans to serve their country. Right now, our nation has an opportunity to train young and unemployed Americans to be the teachers, farmers, cooks and administrators we need to ensure the National School Lunch Program is protecting children’s health.  President Obama has called for an end to childhood hunger by 2015; let’s answer that call by putting Americans to work building and working in school kitchens nationwide.

It bears emphasizing that the School Lunch Corps idea is not an attempt to vilify today’s lunch ladies—or squeeze them out of a job.  No one at Slow Food is devaluing the hard work of the thousands of people who work in school kitchens, commissaries, and cafeterias.  These folks are dedicated laborers, many of them Union members, whose hands are tied by sometimes outlandishly picayune regulations.

For example, to be permitted to serve a simple but healthy dish of red beans and rice in a school cafeteria—according to Iowa City Schools food service director Diane Duncan-Goldsmith—kitchen workers must add meat or cheese.  Doesn’t matter that the dish is already a complete protein.  Regulations, serving no one but dairy and beef interests, insist that main dishes must contain meat or cheese.  This raises the cost and the calorie count, but adds little to the nutritional value of the meal.

Most of the food served in school cafeterias comes packaged in paper or plastic or cans, and is shipped in from an average of 1500 miles.  Multiply that by the 30 million meals served in schools everyday and the impact on greenhouse gasses and the waste stream become readily apparent.

All this doesn’t even touch on the potential health effects of the food our children are eating.  The keynote address at our Eat-In was delivered by Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-IA), who sits on the House Education and Labor Committee, the panel with jurisdiction over the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization.  Mr. Loebsack emphasized the connection between healthy kids and the future of our entire health care system, noting that one in three kids born after 2000 will contract diabetes before they’re old enough to vote; among minorities that number rises to one in two.

Thus a diet that puts more emphasis on whole grains and fresh vegetables, with meat as a side dish or condiment rather than the center of the plate is, as ever, the only healthy, viable alternative.  As an example, the dish I brought to our Eat-In was a slight twist on classic tabouleh, with everything but the grain coming from my restaurant’s garden (I haven’t tried to grow quinoa yet).

Kurt Michael Friese is chef/owner of Devotay in Iowa City, serves on the Slow Food USA Board of Directors, and is editor-in-chief of the magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. His new book, A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland, was published in August 2008. He lives with his wife Kim in rural Johnson County.

Benefits of a Bicycle

Now  that the heinous hot weather is over…it was all I could do to keep up with the garden this year, yesterday I got the bike out, cleaned it and got new tubes….ahh, great weather…beautiful ride again today…I love my bike!   I vow to not use the car for anything closer to my house than 2 miles…