Our Children, Our Future

Congress passed an excellent, bi-partisan bill to fund the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). President Bush vetoed it, claiming we can't afford it. (Any guesses about how many days' funding for the president's war for oil it would take fund this bill fully?) Congress is scheduled to vote to override this veto on October 18. I just received an automated telephone call today from the US Chamber of Commerce claiming that this bill would help too many children - not just the poor ones. Balderdash! SCHIP is intended to provide healthcare coverage for children of working poor families; they and only they will benefit from this bill. Here are a few questions and answers for your consideration:

Is this SCHIP bill really necessary?
Yes. Almost one third of our children are receiving healthcare under a program paid by our taxes. This SCHIP bill offers our best hope for healthy, productive, self-supporting families.

• Our Protection for Working Americans -- With SCHIP, parents can keep working even when their salaries and benefits can’t pay for healthcare for their children.
• * 70% of the children now enrolled in SCHIP are in families with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level (about $40,000 for a family of four).
• * This bill limits states' ability to enroll children whose family income is more than 300% of the federal poverty level. It prohibits enrolling undocumented immigrants.
• * About 45% of new enrollees will come from working families living in poverty (about $20,000 per year for a family of four).
• Our Children's Safety Net -- SCHIP helps families purchase private healthcare for their children. Four million children are eligible for SCHIP but not enrolled.
• * You do the math: aren't most, if not all, of these the 45% of expected new enrollees who are now eligible for SCHIP but for whom there is no funding? States need the federal funding this bill provides to reach out to those children, and this need is growing.
• * The percent of children younger than 18 with public health plan coverage, including SCHIP, increased from 22% in 1997 to 32% in 2006. (Source: National Health Interview Surveys, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1997 – 2006.)
• * The 2006 National Health Interview Survey results showed for children younger than 18 years are 9.3% uninsured, 59.7% with private insurance, and 32.3% with public health plan coverage at the time of interview (Source: Early release of selected estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, tables 1.1-1.2, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006.)
• Our Insurance for a Productive Future Workforce -- Regular and timely healthcare is a necessary part of development to our children's full potential as productive adults.

Is SCHIP really a good solution?
Yes. The availability of health insurance coverage continues to decline. Our children’s access to healthcare is better than for adults, but healthcare coverage for children would be worse if it were not for SCHIP.

• More than 17 million Americans younger than 65 years – almost a third of whom are middle income – have not had health insurance to help cover their medical bills for at least 4 years. (Source: “The Long-Term Uninsured in America, 2002-2005: Estimates for the U.S. Population under Age 65,” aAgency for Healthcare Research and Quality, MEPS, Statistical Brief # 183.)
• * “Had public programs such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) not enrolled more individuals, the number would have been higher.” (Source: State of the States, January 2006, Finding Their Own Way, Alice Burton, et al., Isabel Friedenzohn, ed., publication of AcademyHealth, national program office for State Coverage Initiatives, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)

Can we afford it?
We can't afford not to have SCHIP, and we can't afford to reduce funding for this critical program.

• There is no general tax increase in this bill.
• * SCHIP will be partly funded through an additional 61 cents per pack of cigarettes (federal tax).
• * Increased tobacco taxes have been shown to have the greatest impact on decreased smoking in youth.
• * The President’s Cancer Panel recently recommended imposing an excise tax on tobacco products to help discourage youth smoking.
• * This plan redirects children into privately managed plans and should increase the total number of children enrolled in private plans.
• * According to the Congressional Budget Office, this plan is “as good as it gets” when it comes to reducing the danger that families will choose SCHIP over their current health insurance program.

We owe it to our children.
Our future depends on the health and well-being of our children. Our moral and ethical values require that we help those who are working hard to help themselves. Our humanity demands that we take care of our young.

Rising Gas Prices?

Now that summer is almost officially here, we at the Trailing Edge are thinking about getting ready for it. As it turns out, thinking about it is pretty much all we can do. For instance, we thought about taking one of our periodic treks into the uncharted (by us) vastness of the US highway system. Then we thought about the three figure gas prices. Then we thought about our failure to ever attain a three-figure salary. So we turned our thoughts to the partially-charted vastness of our back yard.

And then it struck us. There is a solution to the rising gas prices, the summertime desire to get away from it all, and the failure of the US auto industry to understand the need for vehicles that are at least slightly more fuel efficient than a European half-ton pick-up truck.

Our stellar idea:

Turn your gas guzzler into functional yard art.

For example:

** Grow an environmentally sound, organic flower garden in and around your recreational, all terrain, armored tank.
The weeding alone will keep you happily occupied all summer.

** Put your SUV up on blocks, run electricity from the house, and convert it over to a rec room for the kids.
Gone are the day camp fees and the “turn that thing off and go outside” fights.

** Remove the body, invert it, set it in the ground, and use it for a kiddie pool.
Think of it as your mechanical/hydro-electric engineering project for the summer.

** Set the chassis, engine block and seats intact, in the sunniest spot in the yard.
Your cats can sun themselves and use the seats for scratching and nesting.

We’ve just thought of these few applications, but we’re sure you can come up with many, many more. Post your ideas here! Your property line is the limit! (Together with any structure, height, and size restrictions.)

Maybe we should have a contest…

The Trailing Edge will accept decommissioned recreational tanks for use as consolation prizes, but can not be responsible for transportation costs.

If you think our energy use isn't funny, check out some sustainable living ideas, with historical perspective, here. Or look up "THE DENIAL INDUSTRY," published in The Guardian on Tuesday September 19, 2006. The article gives an edited extract from Heat, by George Monbiot, published by Allen Lane. Whatever you do, don't read about what's happening to the Kyoto accord. It will just depress you.

Thinking Positive

Today’s Frank & Ernest cartoon pointed out that blogs focus on the negative. Sad but true. However, back here at the Trailing Edge, we don’t have to follow the pack – at least not too closely. So we can focus on the positive:

Positively reported in today’s news:

Responding to the crisis in temporary (i.e., 18 months, for some) (and counting) child care for women in temporary (i.e., less than 19 months – so far) custody, Massachusetts, one of the states involved, sent social workers to interview incarcerated women in Texas to find out whether their children have appropriate care. These women are being held on suspicion of being in the U.S.A. illegally (remember the Swift Sweeps on December 12, 2006?), and, presumably, are up-to-date on the care status of their children.

[Oops, that was pretty negative and sarcastic – I’m just getting used to this positive stuff. Better start providing links to the news, too.]

Nearing the end of his five-day, multi-nation tour south of the border, President Bush had a favorable reception today in Guatamala City.

“The earlier-than-usual arrival of daylight-saving time confused only the odd computer and annoyed only the occasional human,” which is – I think we can all agree – far better than confusing the normal computer or annoying the frequent human.

Science News picked up the Reuters report on the use of discarded cooking oil to run your car or heat your home. The article describes “a small industry of conversion kit installers, [including]some [who] also supply the oil for their customers.”

And last, but not least, in an attempt to change its image as an uncaring and greedy giant, Wal-Mart plans to sell sustainable electronics – built and sold, no doubt, by persons enjoying the benefits of sustainable employment practices.

Which brings us back to the sweeps, doesn’t it? And to me being snide. Ah, so much of our existence is circular. In the noble (translated) words of Eugene Ionesco, “Take a circle, pet it, and it will become vicious.”

Coming soon: New Definitions for the Trailing Edge Dictionary - Reader Survey...


In keeping with today’s positive theme, I’m asking for positive feedback on this blog. I think you can now post comments without revealing personal information or joining any group (I’m almost positive about that).

Take care. Write if you get work (as they used to say during the Great Depression) that has health insurance benefits (as we say now).

Global Warming – Are We Too Late?

Back here at the Trailing Edge, our guidestones for new ideas may not be what one might hope and expect. Be that as it may, since President Bush has acknowledged global warming, maybe we should start thinking about it.

Oddly enough, what started this line of thought was some good news – at least I hope it is. It seems there may be a cancer treatment in the wings. Check out:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.h

An effective, cheap cancer treatment? Hooray! Does this mean we can all start eating like hogs, drinking like fish, and smoking like chimneys? You bet it does, except that no self-respecting hogs, fish, or – for that matter – chimneys are likely to be as self destructive as we delight in being. (Well, maybe not you, but me for sure.)

Anyway, I guess thinking about my self-destructive behavior – and the opportunity to engage in it – got me thinking about global warming. It appears that mostly all scientists in the know think that global warming is a fact. Seems they have thought so for some time. And pretty much all of them think it’s our fault. (Well, again, maybe not yours, but mine for sure.)

Released this week:
An Associated Press article by Angela Charlton, World scientists meet to finish up long-awaited global warming report, 6:30 a.m. January 29, 2007, quotes one of the report authors:
" 'We're hoping that it will convince people that climate change is real and that we have a responsibility for much of it, and that we really do have to make changes in how we live,' said Kenneth Denman, one of the report's authors and senior scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis."
However, the article goes on to say that…
"Some critics worry that the IPCC scientists did not take into account shifts in Greenland and Antarctica."
http://go.sosd.com/servlet/nrp?cmd=sty&cid=RIM&pgn=1&ino=957129&cat=Science&lno=1

So what, I ask myself (and both of you), is this about Greenland and Antarctica that didn't figure into this comprehensive report?

An article on Antarctica published in Earth Island Journal’s Summer 1998 issue (Vol. 13, No. 3), Antarctica's "Deep Impact" Threat, by Andy Caffrey, covers the ice melting at both the North and South Poles (pun intended only a little bit):
"On April 17, US government scientists reported that a 75-square-mile chunk of the Larsen ice shelf had broken loose and blamed the break-up on global warming. 'This may be the beginning of the end for the Larsen ice shelf,' said US National Snow and Ice Data Center research associate Ted Scambos….
"Meanwhile the mile-thick sheet of ice covering 85 percent of Greenland is vanishing at the rate of 2.5 centimeters a year and the Bering Glacier, the world's largest temperate glacier, has been retreating at a rate of 1 kilometer per year since 1990. Over the past 30 years, Western Arctic temperatures have risen 1 degree C….
"In the August 1995 Scientific American, Christina Stock reported how 'for a geologic nanosecond - a century, in other words - some 120,000 years ago, the earth underwent climatic havoc.' New findings show that sea level records, imprinted in limestone of the Bahama Islands, rose 20 feet above that of today and then plunged to at least 30 feet below modern levels. These erratic 100 years came at the close of the last interglacial era, a time when the climate was somewhat similar to ours.”
http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/summer98/wr_sum98d.htm

Two other online articles, written this month by Catherine Brahic for the NewScientist, present a pretty exciting – and accurate as far as I know – discussion of both ice melting and global warming:
Major climate change report looks set to alarm, published 11:54 29 January 2007
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11049-major-climate-change-report-looks-set-to-alarm.html
Melting of mountain glaciers is accelerating, published 18:36 30 January 2007 http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11064-melting-of-mountain-glaciers-is-accelerating.html

So maybe we shouldn’t just turn over and go back to sleep – which is surely the right thing to do when it comes to most scientific reports.

What should we do instead, I ask you (or myself, if you’ve both gone on to more interesting blogs)? Should we actually think about changing the way we think about energy consumption. Should I - right now before it's too late - turn off my comput…(session interrupted)

Politically Confused

January 10, 2007.
OK (which, by the way, was how an earlier president abbreviated "all correct"), am I the only one here who didn't see any sensible statements of position this evening from anyone currently holding a political office in the federal government?
I started to use "clear" instead of "sensible," but that wasn't accurate. Democrats, Republicans, even our Commander in Chief, were frequently clear in what they said. So that's Oll more or less Korrect, as far as it goes.
However, clarity, while necessary, isn't sufficient. Foreign policy should also be sensible. Otherwise, foreign powers (like, say, European ones) might all go off and start something without us (like, say, an economic and political union that shows signs of working better than ours). (To be clear, I am not happy to worry that the US will someday soon be a lesser power, just trying to be sensible. Although I may be straying from the point a bit. Excuse me, please.)
To be sensible, the various positions of our newly and previously elected leaders' would have had to be grounded in reality - at least to some extent. So let's test that:

Position A: We should get out of Iraq as soon as feasible and commit no more troups or funds to the effort of bringing peace and democracy to that region, because that's what the Iraq government wants and what will safeguard American lives.
This position is OK, except that there doesn't seem to be a general political will in Iraq with a clear "want" when it comes to American troups. The people in Iraq seem to want the mass killings and chaos to diminish, which only happens when American troups are around. The government in Iraq wants to be left alone to run things. Each faction and sect appears to want that.
Also, it could be that refusing to send troups to help the troups currently in Iraq may not be the best way to protect the Americans there. Being understaffed, underfunded, and underprotected is a difficult position from which to succeed at pretty much anything. Even getting out alive.

Position B: We should increase our efforts to bring peace and democracy to Iraq by increasing troups and costs, because that's what the government of Iraq wants and what will secure a lasting peace in the region.
That position is OK except that the government in Iraq doesn't want us there, nor does pretty much anyone in power in that region. That may be the single thing that all the many factions and sects agree on. Oh, and the lasting peace thing. Well, really. Anyone know how to erase the last 40 years or so and handle the whole thing sensibly?

Now, I've said before that, back here on the trailing edge, we're used to being confused, but this is a new high (low?). We may not have the answers back here, in fact, we rarely do. But at least we can recognize when no one is asking the right questions. That's probably why our version of PC is "politically confused."