Category Archives: Health Care

Fighting gangs by legalizing pot

Just like alcohol prohibition produced gansters such as Al Capone, drug prohibition doesn’t prevent crime: it causes it. Legalize, tax, and regulate, end that crime, reduce drug use, and fund government services. While massively reducing the prison population and removing any excuse for private prisons. Sweden is pioneering the way.

Richard Orange wrote for GlobalPost yesterday, A win-win on drugs? Fighting gangs by legalizing pot,

Copenhagen’s city municipality voted in recent weeks, 39 votes to 9, to empower its social affairs committee to draw up a detailed plan to legalize cannabis.

If that plan is approved by Denmark’s new left-of-centre parliament next year, the city could become the first to legalize marijuana, rather than simply tolerate it, as police do in the Netherlands.

“We are thinking of perhaps 30 to 40 public sales houses, where the people aren’t interested in selling you more, they’re interested in you,” Mikkel Warming, the mayor in charge of social affairs at Copenhagen City Council told GlobalPost. “Who is it better for youngsters to buy marijuana from? A drug pusher, who wants them to use more, who wants them to buy hard drugs, or a civil servant?”

Not just drug toleration. Legalization: Continue reading →

Don’t we still need farmers to feed us? —Gretchen Quarterman @ GLPC 28 November 2011

What was it that the Lowndes County government didn’t want its citizens to see in the draft it didn’t publish and didn’t provide in response to an open records request, and the hearing it didn’t hold about its updates to the Comprehensive Plan? Could it be the many items the county is deleting, having to do with feeding seniors, health care, transportation, work ethics and life skills, environmental impacts, agriculture, wells, wetlands, and many other topics, some of which Gretchen Quarterman detailed to the Greater Lowndes Planning Commission yesterday?

After Valdosta and Hahira City Planner Matt Martin explained how all the local city governments had or were going to have hearings about their Comprehensive Plan Short Term Work Program updates, the GLPC Chairman asked if any citizens wanted to speak on that topic. One citizen did, Gretchen Quarterman. She apologized for missing the September GLPC meeting because she would have raised some of these issues then.

I have an appointment with [Lowndes County Planner] Jason [Davenport] tomorrow to address some of my questions.

But I want to let you know that at the County Commission did not hold a public hearing after the changes. I was at the [Valdosta] City Council meeting, and the City Council did hold a public hearing, but the County Commission did not.

And I believe that is in violation of DCA’s guidelines. They sent a transmission letter that said they followed DCA’s guidelines. DCA’s guidelines say hold a public hearing. It was on the agenda, the public hearing, but no public hearing was held. So I didn’t have an opportunity to see the document, or to comment, before the county sent it.

She said she would provide written comments to Jason the next morning, and asked if GLPC would like to hear some of them. They said they would, so she read some of them. For example:
In Section 1.3 it was struck from the document:
Ensure supporting senior services such as health care,
Continue reading →

SGMC Hospital Bonds go for sale this week

The bonds the Lowndes County Commission is guaranteeing for South Georgia Medical Center (SGMC) are up for public auction this week.

According to the NYTimes yesterday, Treasury Auctions Set for This Week

The following tax-exempt fixed-income issues are scheduled for pricing this week:

…

ONE DAY DURING THE WEEK

…

Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County, Ga., $148.5 million of revenue anticipation certificates. Morgan Keegan

-gretchen

Baltimore’s place-based model

Growth isn’t everything, and vacant lots can be leveraged to deal with food disparity and obesity, Baltimore is demonstrating.

Vanessa Barrington wrote for Grist 21 November 2011, Baltimore’s can-do approach to food justice

…43 percent of the residents in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods had little access to healthy foods, compared to 4 percent in predominantly white neighborhoods. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of the city’s adults and almost 40 percent of high school students are overweight or obese.
That’s the problem.

There are solutions:

Speaking on a panel at the recent Community Food Security Coalition Conference in Oakland, Calif., Abby Cocke, of Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, and Laura Fox, of the city health department’s Virtual Supermarket Program, outlined two approaches to address the city’s food deserts. Both were presenting programs that have launched since Grist last reported on Baltimore’s efforts to address food justice. And both programs come under the auspices of The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, a rare intergovernmental collaboration between the city’s Department of Planning, Office of Sustainability, and Health Department. They also show how an active, involved city government and a willingness to try new ideas can change the urban food landscape for the better.

According to Cocke, Baltimore’s Planning Department has a new mindset. She calls it a “place-based” model. “In the past,” she says, “growth was seen as the only way to improve the city, but we’re starting to look at ways to make our neighborhoods stronger, healthier, and more vibrant places at the low density that they’re at now.”

The article outlines the specific solutions, such as: Continue reading →

Bicyclists at Valdosta City Council 10 November 2011

Courtesy of the camera of George Rhynes, here are the Citizens to Be Heard at Thursday’s Valdosta City Council meeting. Most of them are frequent cyclists, with a surprise ally speaking first. I think that’s all of them.

-jsq

Health and safety through bicycles —Roy Taylor @ VCC 10 Nov 2011

Roy Taylor spoke first in Citizens to Be Heard at Thursday’s Valdosta City Council meeting:
We need bicycle paths in this community, very very badly. I travel to Europe… and they have bicycle paths all over, and it helps our children as they are growing up. It helps us as adults…. It helps all of us…. It is good for our children, our community.

I want you to think about the health care cost that those bicycles can save. In the health care we have to pay, the hospitalization, the medical costs, if we keep our bodies in good shape.

You have a grant in here now of about $75,000 to $100,000 … school money. I can think of no finer way for those children than to walk the sidewalk and to ride a bicycle.

That’s right: Roy Taylor spoke in favor of a grant, and for bicycles. Bicyclers listened from the back before some of them spoke: Continue reading →

Double Lowndes County Commission tonight: Work 4:30 PM Regular 5:30 PM

Alcohol, rezoning, hospital, debt, and an election! Because Tuesday is Election Day, the Lowndes County Commission changed its regular meeting to Monday. Work sessions are usually Monday in the morning; today the Work Session is at 4:30 PM, just before the Regular Session at 5:30 PM. It’s a busy agenda, including two alcohol licenses, two rezonings, and an appointment to the Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County (VLCHA); that’s the body that authorized South Georgia Medical Center (SGMC) buying Smith Northview Hospital, after which SGMC got the County Commission to have we the taxpayers guarantee $100 million in bonds for expansion. Hm, and “SGMC Revenue Certificates” is on this agenda, too.

Here’s the agenda:

LOWNDES COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
PROPOSED AGENDA
WORK SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2011, 4:30 p.m.
REGULAR SESSION, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2011, 5:30 p.m.
327 N. Ashley Street – 2nd Floor
Continue reading →

The Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs in public safety net use by low-paid employees

Interesting study from California whose results probably also apply to Georgia, showing that Wal-Mart pays about a third less than other retail companies, so little that Wal-Mart employees tend to use food stamps and public medical assistance and housing to stay afloat, which thus “creates a hidden cost to the state’s taxpayers.”

Arindrajit Dube and Ken Jacobs wrote for UC Berkeley Labor Center, August 2004, Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs: Use of Safety Net Programs by Wal-Mart Workers in California. According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center:

This widely publicized report finds Wal-Mart’s wage and health benefits packages for its California workers to be below average as compared to the overall retail sector in California. The authors also find a greater reliance upon public assistance programs among Wal-Mart workers as compared to other California retail workers. Finally, the authors estimate the additional costs to taxpayers of “Wal-Martization”—the adoption of Wal-Mart’s wage and health benefits standards by retailers throughout California.
Here is an extract from the study: Continue reading →

Imprisonment rates are higher in more unequal countries

Here’s yet another reason the 1% owning and controling everything is bad for everyone. Guess which country is the most unequal in income of big countries? That’s right, the one with by far the most prisoners: the U.S.A. Prisoners are shown on a log scale, so that’s not just a little bit higher, it’s about three times higher than Canada or UK.

Why is the USA so high? It’s not more crime, of the violent homicide and robbery variety. It’s harsher sentencing, especially for drug-related crimes. That’s one of many points Richard Wilkinson makes in this TED Talk from July 2011, in which he uses hard data to tie income inequality not only to imprisonment, also to child conflict, drug abuse, infant mortality, life expectancy, mental illness, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, and social mobility. The most socially mobile country? Denmark. The least? The USA.

I got his slides from The Equality Trust.

Oh yes: we don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia to make a few CCA executives and shareholders richer at the expense of the rest of us. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.

-jsq

Lowndes County Commissioners approve intergovernmental agreement with SGMC

Without discussion, the Lowndes County Commissioners at their regular meeting two weeks ago on 11 October 2011. approved an intergovernmental agreement with South Georgia Medical Center to guarantee more than $100 million in bonds, for expansion of SGMC facilities, to include 96 new private rooms in the Dasher Heart Center, the 5 story parking deck, now under construction and due to be completed in early 2012, and Life Safety and Generator Equipment updates.

If one had not been at the work session and heard the presentation at their work session the day before, one would have no idea what this agenda item was about, since the Commission does not post such presentations anywhere the public can see them. Fortunately, LAKE was there and videoed it.

Here’s the video:


Lowndes County Commissioners approve intergovernmental agreement with SGMC
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 11 October 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-gretchen