The Tallgrass Activist will always ardently and vociferously support gay rights and the rights of other groups suffering discrimination.  GBLT publications should also display sensitivity to the rights of oppressed workers.

The current issue of Liberty Press features an article regarding the Kansas Indoor Clean Air Act, which took effect on July 1.  As indicated on the cover, the focus of the article was “How the Local GLBT Community Thinks the Law Will Impact Them.”  The contents were mostly about how patrons of bars felt about prohibition on indoor, public smoking.  It included the typical whining by libertarians and business owners about infringement on their rights.

The article included nothing about the ravaging effects of environmental tobacco smoke on the health of employees in the hospitality industry.  It would have been nice to see something in the article about nonsmoker heart disease, lung disease, cancers, and other maladies caused by exposure to cigarette smoke.  What right do smokers have to make other people sick?

As someone with a leading role in passage of the groundbreaking Lawrence Smoking Ordinance, which took effect in 2005, I was not primarily concerned about the comfort of bar and restaurant patrons who find cigarette smoke as offensive as I do.  I did not spend all that time on meetings, research, and lobbying so people could go out to dinner or to bars and feel more comfortable. 

The Federal government, through the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), has implemented regulations, which protect a large proportion of American workers from a host of toxic substances.  In the early 1990s, OSHA issued a set of regulations on clean indoor air.  These regulations, which included environmental tobacco smoke, were never approved.  Why?

OSHA employees who were part of the process have told me that they had never seen an assault on regulations like the one unleashed by the tobacco and restaurant industries  on the clean indoor air regs.  By the end of the Clinton Administration, the regs had not been approved and the Bush Administration just let them die.

In the meantime, we have had to fight it out from city to city and state to state.  It is hard to know how many low wage, uninsured bar and restaurant workers have suffered harmful health effects as a result of the barriers erected by neo-conservatives, libertarians, and business owners.

My message to the selfish and the greedy is this:  it’s over.  The time has come.  You can no longer make other people sick because you want to smoke at any time and place of your choosing.  You have to consider other people.

  Recently, we traveled through Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  At no time did we encounter a “smoking restaurant.”  This trip through “tobacco country” tells me that it is time for businesses who want to sue and lose to just move on.

KKFI is community radio.  Community radio is just that – radio broadcasting that comes from the community rather than corporate America.  Community in this sense is Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri, in the middle of which is KKFI 90.1 FM.  This is an important media outlet for us to hear the “the truth” from programs such as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! (8:00 AM, Monday through Friday), and FAIR’s Counterspin (9:00 AM, Monday).

Democracy Now! is produced in New York’s Chinatown in a Downtown Community Television Center.  This program includes the type of open discussions of foreign policy, war, economics/social justice, and other issues that you won’t hear on corporate-sponsored media.

Counterspin, hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall, and Peter Hart, provides an exposure of the mainstream media’s biases, inaccuracies, and witting and un-witting spin of issues that affect the lives of everyday citizens.

KKFI focuses on local issues also.  On Saturday at 3:00 PM, Sharon Lockhart’s hosts EVERY WOMAN – a show about women making a difference and the men by their side. As 52% of humanity, women are not a ‘special interest’ group and EVERY WOMAN should work for nothing less than full participation in the social, political and economic arena.

The KKFI program schedule can be found at:  http://www.kkfi.org/programschedule.php.  Check it out!

You can make a donation to this community effort at: http://www.kkfi.org/donate.php.

 On July 3rd, Sharon Lockhart hosted a gathering of progressives at her home in Leawood.  The Tallgrass Activist was there.  This “Patriot Picnic,” hosted by Sharon, is an annual 4th of July fundraiser for the American Friends Service Committee .  It was a nice opportunity for this Lawrencian to connect with some progressive Kansas City soul mates.  The backyard barbecue was a  good opportunity to not only enjoy the company of other progressive thinkers, but to also discuss some ways we can come together across a wider area of Missouri and Kansas to take action.  Believe it or not there are a lot of us.  In fact, there are, I believe, probably more people on the progressive side of the political spectrum than there are in the Tea Party movement.

It was nice to have some discussions about organizing with (amongst other people) activists such as Dee Berry (Health Care for All), Ben Kjelshus (Green Party), and Sharon Lockhart, a well know activist in JOCO.  This is a good time to begin some political action.  The current assault on Social Security, ongoing wars, environmental degradation, mean-spirited Republican attacks on  poor, middle-class, and unemployed people, and a generally corrupt, wasteful health care system have progressives angry and just plain sick and tired of being sick and tired.

In their effort to slash the safety net for the elderly, billionaires such as Peter G. Peterson and their lackies in and out of government (e.g., at the Kellogg and MacArthur Foundations, in the U.S. Congress, at Harvard University, in the media, and amongst the deficit reduction commission appointed by President Obama) will probably provide the immediate catalyst for a major “coming together” in the progressive movement.  Progressives should provide the lead in opposing the cruel and unfair safety net slashing  that will be “on the table” soon after the next election.  This is one we can win!!

Don Kosmicki, Dave "Tallgrass Activist" Kingsley, Dee Berry, & Ben Kjelshus (Standing) Candy Gray & Rev. Rob Amerine (Sitting)

NEONATAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

It has become accepted wisdom that “old people” are running up health care costs.  This widespread belief allows legislators – who are mostly beholden to big Pharma, big Insurance, and big Hospital – to ignore racism, poverty, and a corrupt health-care system. 

The metaphor “plugging in granny” would lead one to believe that the oldest patients account for costly intensive care treatment, and, hence, the largest hospital charges.  Examination of hospital discharge costs for 2007 – the latest year they are available through the Agency for Health Quality and Research – shows a far different reality.  Hospital charges of $1 million or more are heavily concentrated in the under five age category.  While 30% of these extremely large charges are for patients under five years of age, less than 10% are for patients above the age of seventy-nine.

With an infant mortality rate amongst the highest in the World, along with increasing multiple and premature births, it is no wonder that neonatal intensive care units are very busy these days.  The good news is that medical science has advanced to the point that babies weighing less than 750 grams, born after 23 weeks of gestation, have a high probability of surviving – three fourths leave the hospital.  Twenty years ago, these babies rarely survived.

The bad news is that many of these children will have a life-time health of problems.  Furthermore, many premature births could be prevented with proper prenatal care.  My analysis of the AHRQ database indicates that 60% of the $1 million NICU charges are reimbursed through Medicaid, which suggests to me they are incurred by a lower income population.  This should not surprise anyone.  As the discussion of Professor Sandra Lane’s book (previous post below), “Why Are Our Babies Dying?” indicates, neglect of inner-city, minority populations is largely responsible for the disgraceful state of infant health in the United States.

Along with housing, jobs, decent activities and programs for kids, gun control has been proven to be effective in reducing homicide.  In the late 1980s, Boston and New York had homicide rates nearly equal to that of Kansas City.  Through very smart policing, which included gun control, programs for kids, housing and jobs programs, these two cities have reduced their homicide levels to at or below the national average of 5 per 100,000 in most years.  You can read all about Boston’s approach by Goggling Boston Strategy or by finding a copy of Murder is No Accident by Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard Spivak, both of whom are physicians, and both of whom were involved in the Boston Strategy.

Since I know a lot about guns (in the Marines, I was an infantry weapons specialist), I tried to tell KCMO community leaders that I never dreamed that so many of the weapons we used in the Marines would end up in the hands of civilians.  This fell on deaf ears.  Some of the community leaders were pro-gun conservatives; others either didn’t understand weapons or were intimidated by the current widespread gun-nuttiness in the U.S.  Furthermore, Kansas City leaders haven’t shown much of an inclination to do anything for the people living on the East side.

When I left the Marines, I never had a gun in my house or in my possession.  I lived in a “rough” neighborhood in Los Angeles for years and was in just about every part of that city in my daily activities. 

I don’t think people should even have hand guns.  Hopefully, people who like to kill animals will get over that infantile behavior and we could just leave all rifles, shot guns, and hand guns totally in the hands of the military where they belong.  Furthermore, adults who like to hear things go boom, boom should grow up and get rid of their extremely hazardous toys.  In other words, let’s just get firearms off of the streets and out of the civilian population.

The problem we have is simply this:  legislators are intimidated by the nutty, goon-like, aggressive National Rifle Association.  The Democratic-controlled U.S. Congress has even exempted these nuts from a recent bill to control lobbying activities.

 

The Nutty Rifle Association