Set up like a bowlin' pin

Went to a county General Plan Citizens Advisory Committee meeting tonight. First presentation was on sustainability. What it means, how it should impact planning considerations, and so on. No information or ideas that were new to me but I knew as soon as I saw a particular powerpoint slide that the presenter, a geology professor from CSU Chico, was likely to catch hell from somebody for it. Little grumbles of concern and disapproval rose from various corners of the room. The offensive comment was "Capitalism concentrates wealth and power." Other than that I didn't hear anything I thought would be controversial. Wrong!

Several times in her presentation I was pleased to hear her talk about poverty as an environmental as well as a social problem, and that racial and economic equity (thank heavens she didn't suggest gender) are key components of sustainability...that environmental justice issues (i.e. the historical tendency for heavily polluting industry and poor people / people of color to be sited together) must be addressed in sustainable development. Yep. She even talked about affordable housing and ways of increasing the supply of it, such as by adopting inclusionary zoning ordinances. I love it when people use those words in public places of their own free will. Hmm. I suppose I wondered if somebody would take exception to the inclusionary zoning reference too, as I've been in other public meetings where it was an inflammatory idea, but she didn't dwell on it very long.

Listening to all this I felt like I should try to think of a question to stand up and ask her, or some way of saying "Hear hear! Jolly good!" when she was done, or some relevant comment that would galvanize all this in public consciousness and make the Committee to go out and demand affordable housing or something. I was having a hard time formulating a question, and a couple other people had already stood up mostly to comment, not to inquire. Then a gentleman stood up and said, "In all your talk about protecting minorities I didn't hear you say anything about protecting religious groups." Ah, here we go, I thought. Because medical waste incinerators are so often opened next door to white people's churches. He had taken many notes and was going over them point by point. "And illegal aliens? Are we going to protect THEM too??" My eyes started rolling uncontrollably. "And you said Capitalism concentrates wealth and power! Capitalism is what made our country great!" Duh. Absolutely great, in wealth and power. That's why slavery was / is a hard habit to break. "Our traditional values are being destroyed by all the liberalism!" (Dang, no more slavery.) "There's no such thing as affordable housing because somebody always has to subsidize it! Doesn't equity just mean SOCIALISM?" Oh please, don't let it mean that. Etc. etc.

He was just on a roll, all but accusing the poor geology professor of advancing a godless Communist agenda, and I felt it was my duty as the legal aid lawyer with the little ACLU button on my bag to stand up and at least express some support for the speaker. I don't feel good about impromptu speaking. I had a few things I was rehearsing in my head, and hopefully they came out making more sense to other people than they did to me. I got up and said I found her presentation quite timely because it happened that I would be attending a summit in New Orleans next week on Regional EQUITY and SOCIAL justice. (Hmm...) That regardless of one's political views or preferred coping strategy, poverty is an environmental and social problem that we have to address. I recommended some books on the synthesis of capitalism and sustainability. I misspoke, though, by saying that capitalism and sustainability can "coexist." It would have been more correct to say that since capitalism is the economic reality of the world, it has to adopt the principles of sustainability or it will put the world out of business. All the externalized costs (such as the inner city kids with asthma from the medical waste incinerator) are really bad accounting in the long run. Maybe he'll read Paul Hawken's books and learn all that anyway. Ha.

And I realized that all my buttons, including the ACLU button, had been pushed by some ignorant fool, and I was annoyed that it was so easy to do. But it was a good exercise for me to stand up and try to say something, and I might not have done that if I hadn't been all riled up and eye-rollin'. At a Buddhist retreat center I visited a couple years ago, a sign said that the person who is the most irritating / difficult for you is your greatest teacher. So many great teachers in the world.

Bad thoughts

It's really not nice to imagine running over someone with my bike, and I surely want Karla (and myself) to use our powers (generally) for good, but I'm wondering if it wouldn't ultimately help this woman change her perspective for the good of our nation. I think something that can run your dumb a** down in addition to taking people to work and school every day merits the label "transportation." This article is more than a month old and has probably already been thoroughly discussed in numerous other fora, but my profound hostility feels quite fresh. Who hired this imbecile? hmm. Well that probably explains it. GRRRRRRRR. They are so lucky that I can't ride right now.

Okay. For the sake of good research I looked up the original PBS article from whence came the obviously "spun" Treehugger.com piece. However, I think it's a fair spin. While she didn't utter the words "bicycles are not transportation," she twice stated that a good chunk of transportation funds are spent on non-transportation uses, including, inter alia, "...bike paths..." Maybe I shouldn't be too ruffled about this after all. When the oil empire crumbles and almost nobody can afford to drive, there will suddenly be bike paths all over the place, with clever names like Main Street, Broadway, Route 66, I-5, I-80, I-15...

Child-hating congressman

Whoa, Em, that's some strong rhetoric there...wasn't Rep. Nathan Deal, R-GA just trying to protect innocent taxpayers from spending their money on illegal aliens when he and the late Rep. Charlie Norwood created the Deficit Reduction Act of 2006? Some excerpts from an update on CaliforniaHealthline.org:

Proof-of-Citizenship Rule Pushes Drop in Medicaid Enrollment

March 12, 2007

Medicaid programs in seven states have reported declines in enrollment during the past year that they attribute to new federal rules requiring beneficiaries and applicants to provide documentation proving their U.S. citizenship, the New York Times reports.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2006 includes a provision that most people who seek Medicaid enrollment must provide "satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship," such as a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and driver's license. Applicants are required to submit original documents or copies that have been certified by the issuing agency, some state officials say.

The law, written by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) and the late Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.), is intended to prevent undocumented immigrants from enrolling in Medicaid. However, it "has instead shut out tens of thousands of United States citizens," the Times reports. Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia have attributed declines in Medicaid enrollment to the new requirements.

In Florida, the number of children enrolled in Medicaid declined by 63,000, to 1.2 million, from July 2006 to January. Florida Department of Children and Families spokesperson Albert Zimmerman said, "Nearly all of these people are American citizens." In Iowa, the number of Medicaid beneficiaries declined by 5,700, to 92,880, during the second half of 2006 after increasing for five years.

Iowa Department of Human Services Director Kevin Concannon said, "The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens. We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa."

So now that Rep. Deal knows that his law is keeping real live U.S. citizens and their kids from accessing health care benefits such as befit real live U.S. citizens, is he trying to fix it?

Chris Riley, chief of staff for Deal, said Deal believes that the law "has saved taxpayers money," adding that Deal "will vigorously fight repeal of that provision." Riley added that Deal will try to extend a similar provision to SCHIP. Riley also said that the requirement could be applied flexibly to minimize hardship for citizens (Pear, New York Times, 3/12).

Assuming there's genuine interest in minimizing hardship. Some states, not to name names (FLORIDA) thrive on it. So many vivid cliches come to mind...babies and bathwater...noses and faces...guns and feet...

So, I assert, either Rep. Deal hates children, or he just really hates non-citizens & non-citizen children and doesn't believe that people who need Medicaid are really citizens because he thinks there's an income requirement in the Constitution (hint: there's not). Or maybe in the war on illegal immigration, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens are OK collateral damage especially if it frees up our sacred tax dollars for other uses. Last I checked Georgia was not one of those states where nobody needs Medicaid so I reckon he's not doing such a great job of "Representing" y'all.