Month: November 2012

A Generation Destroyed Before Adulthood

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Posted by Bob Lord

While the world has watched and with the assistance of the United States, Israel has effectively destroyed the better part of a generation of Palestinians in Gaza, as Erin Cunningham reports here. No, they're not dead, but over half the children of Gaza suffer from PTSD as a result of Israel's attacks over the years. No surprise there. Children, by the way, comprise about half of Gaza's 1.7 Million people. Factor in the huge numbers of Gaza children who are malnourished because of the limited food supply, and it's clear we've lost the better part of a generation. They may live, but their brains will never function quite right. And those who were malnourished? Their brains won't reach full development either. Cunningham relays this story:

Fatima Qortoum was just 9 years old when she saw the brains of her brother, 7-year-old Ahmed, fall out of his head. He was struck with shrapnel after an Israeli airstrike. That was 2008.

Last week, another one of Fatima’s brothers, 6-year-old Mahmoud, was critically injured when an Israeli attack knocked him to the ground, leaving a nearly three-inch-long gash in his torso and damaging his lungs.

And so it comes as little surprise that Fatima, now 13, like thousands of other children in the Gaza Strip, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Democratic Party reorganization: Anti-Grijalva shake-up in LD3

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Grijalvaby Pamela Powers Hannley

Reorganization of state and county political parties is one of the more arcane processes of our political system. 

Every two years, new and incumbent precinct committee (PCs) people are elected in August, during the primary. New and incumbent politicians are elected in November. Between the November election and February 1, legislative districts (LDs), then the county political parties, and lastly the state political parties reorganize and elect new officers. (Both the Democrats and Republicans do this.)  

Many of the same people volunteer to be PCs, officers, and State Committee representatives. Sometimes there is a bit of drama – like when the Three Sonorans tried to get me to run for county part chair against Jeff Rogers or when the state party bent the rules to elect Andrei Cherny– but generally, there are few real surprises– until now.   

On Monday, while the eyes of Tucson were on the TUSD desegregation public forum, a coup took place on the west side. As a representative of Congressman Raul Grijalva read the Congressman's statement in favor of the restoration of Mexican American Studies, anti-Grijalva forces took the chair of LD3 and key positions on the county Executive Committee. Details after the jump.

K12 Inc. spent $21.5 million on ads in 2012

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by David Safier USA Today has an article about the amount of money for-profit online schools spend on advertising to lure in new students. The USA TODAY analysis finds that 10 of the largest for-profit operators have spent an estimated $94.4 million on ads since 2007. The largest, Virginia-based K12 Inc., has spent about $21.5 … Read more

GOP clings to positions rejected by the American people

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie: On the same day that the top campaign advisor to Willard "Mittens" Romney, Stuart Stevens, penned an op-ed in in the Washington Post saying that Romney can take solace in the fact that he won the right kind of voters — “On Nov. 6, Mitt Romney carried the majority of every economic … Read more

FAQ: What you need to know about ACA coverage options

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Sarah Kliff at Ezra Klein's Wonkblog has followed up last week's post, Millions will qualify for new options under the healthcare law, the vast majority have no idea, by answering the challenge, “So, since nobody knows what benefits are in the bill, shouldn’t you be ‘Reporting’ what they are?” FAQ: Everything you need to know about Obamacare’s coverage options, in one post:

Without any further delay, I thought now would be a good time for a
short primer on what the Affordable Care Act will change about insurance
benefits come 2014. If there are other questions that seem to be
missing from this list, feel free to leave them in comments and I’ll do
my best to answer them.

Who qualifies for new benefits? There are a lot of
benefits that anyone with insurance coverage will be qualified to
receive: Contraceptive coverage without co-pay, for example, or an end
to lifetime limits on benefits. The biggest new benefits, however,
arguably will go to those who earn less than 400 percent of the federal
poverty line. These are the people who will either qualify for insurance
subsidies or, in some states, Medicaid coverage (the health-care law
extended Medicaid to cover everyone below 133 percent of the poverty
line, but the Supreme Court made that expansion optional).