Category: Society

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Healthy Body Empty Pockets

The healthcare debate seems to have quieted some since the holidays. I understand the Senate and House are trying to reconcile the two bills passed, however, based on the diverse versions either has introduced I’m concerned the end result will be too weak of a bill to amount to any real reform. As someone that currently doesn’t have proper health coverage (Cobra is quite expensive for what I actually receive), I’m again distraught with the modern political process to get anything meaningful passed for the people of this country.

The National Geographic Blog had an interesting graph posted on the difference in just costs of healthcare vs. life expectancy for many world countries (FiveThirtyEight.com also posted a similar graph today but the NG one is clearer to me). Most countries have some form of universal healthcare coverage which can’t be said for the US. Regardless of quality, if you live in another country you’re going to get some help without the fear of having to loose your house to get patched up.

The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”

T.R. Reid a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. had a good discussion with NPR on Fresh Air about the differences between what’s offered here in America verses other countries such as France, Japan, Britain, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and other western countries as compared to what’s offered in communist countries or other less industrialized countries. A big reason why our healthcare is so expensive is that we have all 4 types of healthcare vs. these countries only offer one type of healthcare. Having a system that requires four types of services (4 types of forms etc.) which alone is an administrative nightmare.

I recommend going to the NPR site and downloading this 30 minute podcast to listen to on the way to work or at the gym to just get a brief idea of what’s actually offered in the world. To get more, read the full book.

photo365_2010_004
Central Park NY during the fall 2009

Operation Ivy – Healthy Body
[audio:https://austinvegas.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/25-Healthy-Body.mp3]

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Festival of Lights

Northern California, for the most part, is predominately Christian, but there’s a larger populous believing in some version of Eastern or New Age ideas (with regards to the Bay Area it’s surprising low to hear “about 1 in 4 Americans believe in Eastern or New Age ideas” from Pew Forum survey). It wasn’t until moving to NY that I was exposed to any Jewish culture that wasn’t read in books. It’s been a welcome education to be immersed in the culture, philosophy, events, art and food of the diverse people of NY and the Jews are a huge part of that here.

The festival of Lights starts today and lasts 8 days where an additional candle is placed in the Menorah from right to left on each night, and then lit from left to right. On the last night, all the candles are lit. Here are a few more trivia bits I’ve picked up.

I ^ Jew York

Chanukah begins four days before the new moon, which is the darkest night of the Kislev month.

Chanukah celebrates the victory of the Maccabees or Israelites over the Greek-Syrian ruler, Antiochus about 2200 years ago. Chanukah story is not written about in the Torah. It happened several hundred years after the Torah is believed to have been given to the Jewish people, on Mount Sinai.

It takes 44 candles all together to observe all the eight nights of the Chanukah festival. The candles used for lighting Hanukah Menorah are supposed to burn for at least half an hour after the stars come out.

For most of its history, Hanukkah was a minor holiday. It gained popularity in the late 1800s, eventually becoming one of the most celebrated Jewish holidays in the calendar.

Photo by me in a LES bathroom

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The Media Can Legally Lie Contributing Directly to the Demise of TV Morality and Accuracy

I suppose I’m in the minority these days thinking that national media have not only a major role but an obligation to broadcast content under the name NEWS to be unbiased and beneficial for the audience it covets. Unfortunately it’s become increasingly clear national televised news has become increasingly competitive where ratings, advertising dollars and revenue are king to any type of editorial accuracy in content delivery.

Not only that, corporations have the power to influence the media reporting, even at the expense of the truth and unfortunately for the viewer, there’s no disclaimer as to who’s really providing the message these days – is it the anchor, the news media group, or is it a person, organization or corporation sponsoring the content being broadcast, with their personal bias, as news….

FOX News, in my mind, has completely moved away from relevancy in providing useful content to its viewership, and is now a media outlet of yellow journalism and a propaganda soap box for what ever corporation or political agenda they are backing or getting paid to front. Their journalistic credibility went out the window years ago for me, however, they’ve become increasingly brazen in their falsification efforts as of late. First it was their blatant reporting of a Republican congressman as Democrat while reporting on that Rep’s scandal (examples 1, 2), through to today as FOX regurgitates old coverage to paint a picture of wider acceptance of principle that is in reality prevalent, like in this replacement of rally footage for the latest healthcare protests championed by the network:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck’s Protest Footage
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Health Care Crisis

The last “slip” of this caliber was much more blatant in the replacement of footage during Palin’s book campaign with that from an old McCain-Palin rally last year, and claiming it to be “Happening Now” (source). Is it any wonder that the cable networks have jumped on this story that the White House has openly decided not to contribute news, comments or work with Fox News. Of course Fox takes both sides of this claiming on one side they are being censored by the white house but at the same time Fox openly announces that most of their OWN programing is NOT NEWS but “opinion journalism”. But as Stwert points out, the only people you think of when someone says Fox News are those people splashed around on “Fair and Balanced” ads and should hold no more news credibility than say Heidi Klum of project runway or Tyra Banks on her talk show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
For Fox Sake!
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes		 Political Humor Health Care Crisis

When you do get around to watching the hours of Fox that actually broadcast… you know, the NEWS… they actually do some proper reporting. Here’s one where the news achor fact checks Palin:

I don’t want to spend this whole post on Fox, even if they are the easiest target today (next week, there will be a story on MSNBC making up something), but the real point is the media outlets have generally ALL moved away from being beacons of truth to whores for capital. This Pew Research Center article points out that the public trust of the Press accuracy has hit an all time low in the last 20 years. “Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.” and “only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased.” Oddly though was that it was the Fox News viewers that are the only audience in which a majority (51%) says news organizations are immoral rather than moral.

There’s a lot in that article but a few network stats – Network TV followed by CNN have the most favorable ratings of those surveyed and Fox News has the highest unfavorable rating among respondents. Republicans favor reading the Wall Street Journal where Democrats favor reading the New York Times.

So why is this all happening, what’s the culprit? It would take more than this blog post to review and theorize but one such factor was in February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States (Mike Gaddy has an excellent write up on the full details of this-you should read). Since then, FOX has expanded on this principle to disregard the factual reporting for sensationalism, scare tactics and anything that would generate more eyeballs and revenue for their “News” stations. Not wanting to fall out of favor with their audiences, many of the major networks took this queue and have followed suit, creating a horrible environment for watching news on cable tv, with any hope of accuracy that is.

It’s my hope that people will be smart, and make informed decisions on their own but sometimes old habits die hard. It’s refreshing to see the trend of news being shifted to the Internet where you’re content options are limitless (unlike the 130+ channels you only get on cable). To me, the decline in morality and accuracy of national news coverage is just another contributing factor to the demise of television in general. We’re all going to be getting our content online but that day can’t come soon enough for the future education of our country and accuracy of national news reporting.