Whatever their crime or sentence, prisoners should not be legitimately fearful of choking to death on their own vomit every time they climb onto their prison bunks. But this is a daily worry for federal prisoner Paul Shook. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, known colloqui­ally as the BOP, has devolved from its small, exclusive “Club Fed” country club reputation of 30 years ago to become the largest penal system in the country. Its size and the traditional governmental practice of funding bureaucracies over services leaves the Bureau of Prisons unable to provide even basic requirements daily living for many of its prisoners.

This disgraceful treatment has caused 49-year-old Mr. Shook, a former adjunct professor of computer sci­ence in his state’s community college system and a first-time felon, to remark, “some nights I wish I would die (during one of my vomiting episodes).”

It is not unusual for members of the diminishing upper middle class to drop $20,000 or $30,000 on a big wedding. But for celebrities this large sum wouldn’t cover the wedding dress or the flowers.

When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Don­ald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000.

The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.

Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon, Marc Rich.

Once in a while the US Supreme Court gets things right. It did so recently regarding Healthy San Francisco, the city’s local “public option” now giving more than 50,000 residents access to health care. The court declined to hear a lawsuit that might have derailed the entire pro­gram.

A local restaurant association had sued to stop this program soon after it was developed in 2007. Employers of more than 20 people are required to provide some kind of health benefits, using Healthy San Francisco, or otherwise. Restaurants are able to have others pay if they wish; As noted in the San Francisco Chronicle last year, “most owners pass along the costs of city-mandated health care coverage to their customers — and say they’re delighted to finally be able to afford it. Most din­ers say they’re OK with paying extra.” As for the very small number of customers who have complained, noted one eatery owner in the same story, “they were the 1% we didn’t want to come back anyway.”

In our latest newsletter, hot off the press — What do the W.R. Grace Company, the Trade Towers, Libby Montana and asbestos have in common? Andrea Peacock weaves the fatal threads together in a brilliant investigation. The terrible bottom line:

“If asbestos-related diseases begin showing up in rescue workers and others exposed at Ground Zero in the next few years, there’s little doctors can do about it. There’s medication to ease the symptoms of asbestosis — in which scar tissue caused by asbestos fibers gradually suffocates victims — but no cure. Those with lung disease can forestall the inevitable decline by taking care of themselves: quit smoking, get plenty of exercise to keep their lung capacity as high as possible. It could take another 30 years for mesothelioma cases to manifest — an asbestos-related lung cancer that kills fast once it hits. The full legacy of that day, for which W.R. Grace now bears some responsibility, will be unfolding for decades. ”

Also in this powerful latest edition: After a mine disaster in western Siberia Russian workers rise up. Boris Kagarlitsky describes the social explosion. Jeffrey Blankfort reviews Quicksand, the book the Israel lobby doesn’t want you to read.

(Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com.)

]]> http://theava.com/archives/7032/feed 0 http://theava.com/archives/4900 http://theava.com/archives/4900#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:11:06 +0000 Alastair Bland http://theava.com/?p=4900 A current controversial federal law allows product manufacturers to withhold the identity of untested chemicals from the public if the manufacturer has rea­son to believe that such public knowledge could harm business — and even if the manufacturer and the feds know that a chemical poses a considerable risk to public health. It’s crazy, and it’s backward, but it’s business. While the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 is designed to assure public safety in a world heavily saturated with chemicals, including anti-stain agents, non-stick frying pan coatings and flame retardants, the law clearly places big business interests over public safety and the environment.

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The late comedian George Carlin did a bit about Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (back then it wasn’t called a Disorder). During WW1, Carlin reminded us, we called it “shell shock.” Now those two words pack some punch, don’t they? It’s shocking language, really. So during WW2 we started calling it “combat fatigue.” As if war makes a soldier sleepy and, after a nap, milk and cookies, he’s as good as new. During Vietnam we started calling it Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Has a nice ring, doesn’t it? You’re given a choice between “trauma” and “post-trauma” — which are you going to take? Experiencing “stress” is something we can all sympathize with. Getting stuck in traffic is stressful. And who knows what a “Syndrome” is? Yet it’s a pretty word that rolls off the tongue… Carlin’s riff was a lot more elaborate and entertaining, but — if memory serves me right — that was the gist of it.

America's "socialist" senator, Bernie Sanders

Vermont’s Senator Bernie Sanders spoke for months about his “historic” efforts to get a vote on a single-payer health care bill in the Senate. While we all knew the outcome was going to be a rather miserable failure, it was a tiny crumb being flicked to those of us who still believe in both real solutions to the health care crisis AND the possibilities of democracy.

Bernie was correct to intuit that this kind of vote is essential to keep a movement alive, offer some hope, and simply record the moment in history. The entire effort is about seeing where we stand, knowing how far we have to go, and putting both the general public and the electoral elite on notice that we know where we’re going.

Historically, similar “failed” measures were introduced to end slavery, to give women the right to vote, to provide equal rights to minorities and — yes — to end wrong-headed wars. An effective movement must know which side everyone is on, and such votes — albeit failures — provide that organizational and motivational insight.

Bernie had all of this in mind while he talked the talk in the months preceding the historic single-payer health care vote. Because Bernie knows his history, and he also knows — like the rest of us who utilize common sense know — that a single-payer health care system provides the only path to justice.

“The upcoming vote on my single-payer health care bill will be an historic moment in the halls of Congress,” Bernie declared recently on a national radio talk show. “While I know it will fail, it is essential to bring it forward, have the debate, and record the vote so that we can continue to build the movement and move toward single-payer as our ultimate goal.”

Well, Bernie had his moment earlier this week. And, as we all know now, he quit on us.

Specifically, Bernie pulled his single-payer initiative from consideration after the Republicans went grade school on us by demanding that the 700-page amendment be read in its entirety. It was estimated that the reading would take about 12 hours of the Senate’s time. After about three hours, Bernie came to the floor of the Senate and announced that he was withdrawing his single-payer initiative and, thus, killing the “historic” vote.

Why? Because, as Bernie explained, he didn’t want to hold up the business of the Senate. And what, exactly, was the next item on the Senate’s agenda? Yet another Defense Department appropriations bill. Hmm, sounds like a good reason to stall to me…

But the real reason, of coarse, is that Bernie was getting his arm twisted by the spineless Democratic leadership, a group of sheep who seem only interested in perfecting the not-so-fine art of losing.

When Bernie took the floor to announce his decision to pull his amendment he was “outraged,” and then spilled forth with some fine rhetoric about all the ills of our political system, the obstructive nature of the Republicans, and then some more outrage piled upon the outrage.

But it was Bernie’s — and only Bernie’s — decision to kill his initiative and, as a result, the “historic” moment that he had been promoting. So, sorry, if there was outrage to be had, it should have been spread evenly amongst the childish Republicans and Bernie-the-quitter.

Sadly, the whole affair could be chalked up to yet another example of the Democratic Party’s (yes, Bernie caucuses with the Dems) willingness to lead its followers to political slaughter. Obama’s done it with the Wall Street bailouts, his refusal to close Gitmo, his foot-dragging on Iraq, his surge in Afghanistan and his near-complete failure of leadership on the health care issue (to name a few). And the Democratically-controlled Congress has followed suit with its own bait and switch nonsense like the one perpetrated by Bernie: “Come, my followers, let’s make history. Oh, nevermind.”

They don’t want a movement. They want a nice, pliable butch of donors willing to get giddy during campaign season long enough to “hope” and vote for change. And if you dare to call their bluff, they’ll scream “Nader!” and/or “Palin!” until their own failures get lost in the rhetorical haze.

Shame on Bernie for so perfectly joining the quitters (once again). Because a real “independent” wouldn’t have so blatantly betrayed the moment of history he dangled in front of the single-payer movement. All for — what!? — saving a few hours of the Senate’s time? So they could rush to throw more money at the Pentagon? Good grief.

With apologies to “The Who,” we were, indeed, fooled again.

Damn.

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Michael Colby works with draft horses in Vermont and is the editor of Broadsides.org. He welcomes your comments at mcolby@broadsides.org.

The doctor’s resolution was sprinkled with “whereases” stating what anyone with even a remote awareness of the situation already knows: Mendocino County maintains “an absence of treatment programs and facilities” and “a crowded county jail in which a significant number of inmates are suffering from serious mental illness.”

“Incarceration does not improve the condition of people with serious mental illness,” the whereases said. “The correctional system is not designed to treat mental illness.” … “What is needed is additional services from peers and professionals that will prevent, avert, or minimize crisis and create options to divert mentally ill persons from correctional involvement and increase their capacity for recovery.”

If crazy people were placed in hospitals where they belong, crime would be reduced and the jail population greatly diminished.

“Current services … are underfunded and diminishing.” Klein said that “mental health courts, assertive community treatment, supported housing for people with mental illness, housing-first initiatives, and supported vocational programs” would help and would reduce current costs for dealing with the mentally incompetent.

In a September 2 event that saw standing-room-only conditions a half-hour before it began, Thompson told an audience of hundreds at a building in Eureka’s Redwood Acres Fairgrounds that health care reform won’t dismantle the private insurance industry.

It could regulate it in various ways, he said, including disallowing rejection due to pre-existing conditions. But Thompson repeatedly told the audience that an unshakable principle in health care reform is that “If you like what you have, you get to keep it.”