Monthly Archives: February 2008
Obama Will: Barack Obama’s Agenda for Health Care
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The following are verbatim Barack Obama positions on health care drawn from the ISSUES area of the official Obama site. They consist of positions with the keyword “health” in almost every case. They tell us what we might reasonably expect to be Barack Obama’s health care agenda if he becomes President. The numbers of the positions below refer to two master lists: 92 Obama Positions and 102 Obama Positions. I intend to create thematic pages drawn from these lists to show that Barack Obama has a definite and detailed agenda for constructive change.
Obama Will: Barack Obama’s Positions on Health Care
3. Obama will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society.
10. Obama will encourage the deployment of the most modern communications infrastructure to reduce the costs of health care, help solve our energy crisis, create new jobs, and fuel our economic growth.
71. Obama will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal. He will help the world’s weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.
87. Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress.
88. Obama will require that all children have health care coverage. Obama will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage, including allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents’ plans.
89. Obama will expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function.
90. Obama will strengthen antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for their malpractice insurance and will promote new models for addressing errors that improve patient safety, strengthen the doctor-patient relationship and reduce the need for malpractice suits.
90a. Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records, and will phase in requirements for full implementation of health IT. Obama will ensure that patients’ privacy is protected.
91. Obama will allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S. Obama will also repeal the ban that prevents the government from negotiating with drug companies, which could result in savings as high as $30 billion. Finally, Obama will work to increase the use of generic drugs in Medicare, Medicaid, and FEHBP and prohibit big name drug companies from keeping generics out of markets.
92. Obama will strengthen funding for biomedical research, and better improve the efficiency of that research by improving coordination both within government and across government/private/non-profit partnerships.
107. Obama will sign into law his Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, and ensure that payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies.
108. Obama will expand the highly-successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all 570,000 low-income, first-time mothers each year. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families.
109. Obama supports guaranteeing workers seven paid sick days per year.
143. Obama will allow the federal government to negotiate for lower drug prices for the Medicare program, just as it does to lower prices for our veterans.
144. Obama … will reduce waste in the Medicare system, including eliminating subsidies to the private insurance Medicare Advantage program, and tackle fundamental health care reform to improve the quality and efficiency of our healthcare system.
145. Obama will require companies to send Medicare beneficiaries a full list of the drugs and fees they paid the previous year to help seniors determine which plans can better reduce their out-of-pocket costs and improve their health.
146. Obama will work to give seniors choices about their care, consistent with their needs, and not biased towards institutional care.
156. Obama will also work to provide robust protection against misuses of particularly sensitive kinds of information, such as e-health records and location data that do not fit comfortably within sector-specific privacy laws.
167. Obama will encourage innovation at the local level through federal support of public/private partnerships that deliver real broadband to communities that currently lack it.
168. Obama will invest $10 billion a year over the next five years to move the U.S. health care system to broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records.
169. Obama will make the Veterans Health Administration, the nation’s largest integrated health system, a model in the use of technology to modernize and improve health care delivery.
176, Obama will make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible. He will improve care for polytrauma vision impairment, prosthetics, spinal cord injury, aging, and women’s health.
182. Obama will improve mental health treatment for troops and veterans suffering from combat-related psychological injuries.
183. Obama will improve mental health care at every stage of military service. He will recruit more health professionals, improve screening, offer more support to families and make PTSD benefits claims fairer.
184. Obama will establish standards of care for Traumatic Brain Injury, the signature injury of the Iraq war.
186. Obama … will make sure that every child has health insurance, expand educational opportunities for low-income children, extend resources for low-income families, support and supplement our struggling foster care system, and protect children from violence and neglect.
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Obama Will: Barack Obama’s Agenda for A New Foreign Policy
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The following are verbatim Barack Obama positions on foreign policy drawn from the ISSUES area of the official Obama site. They consist of positions with the keyword “foreign” in almost every case. They tell us what we might reasonably expect to be Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda if he becomes President. The numbers of the positions below refer to two master lists: 92 Obama Positions and 102 Obama Positions. I intend to create thematic pages drawn from these lists to show that Barack Obama has a definite and detailed agenda for constructive change.
Obama Will: Barack Obama’s Positions on Foreign Policy
8. Obama will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs.
9. Obama will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.
70. Obama will stop shuttering consulates and start opening them in the tough and hopeless corners of the world – particularly in Africa. He will expand our foreign service, and develop the capacity of our civilian aid workers to work alongside the military.
71. Obama will embrace the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty around the world in half by 2015, and he will double our foreign assistance to $50 billion to achieve that goal. He will help the world’s weakest states to build healthy and educated communities, reduce poverty, develop markets, and generate wealth.
72. Obama will rally NATO members to contribute troops to collective security operations, urging them to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization operations, streamlining the decision-making processes, and giving NATO commanders in the field more flexibility.
73. Obama will forge a more effective framework in Asia that goes beyond bilateral agreements, occasional summits, and ad hoc arrangements, such as the six-party talks on North Korea. He will maintain strong ties with allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia; work to build an infrastructure with countries in East Asia that can promote stability and prosperity; and work to ensure that China plays by international rules.
74. Obama will secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years. While we work to secure existing stockpiles of nuclear material, Obama will negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. This will deny terrorists the ability to steal or buy loose nuclear materials.
75. Obama will crack down on nuclear proliferation by strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that countries like North Korea and Iran that break the rules will automatically face strong international sanctions.
76. Obama will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it. Obama will always maintain a strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist. But he will take several steps down the long road toward eliminating nuclear weapons. He will stop the development of new nuclear weapons; work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair trigger alert; seek dramatic reductions in U.S. and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material; and set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate- range missiles so that the agreement is global.
77. Obama will make the investments we need so that the finest military in the world is best-prepared to meet 21st-century threats.
81. Obama will restore the readiness of the National Guard and Reserves. He will permit them adequate time to train and rest between deployments, and provide the National Guard with the equipment they need for foreign and domestic emergencies.
83. Obama will seek consistency and integrity at the top of our intelligence community – not just a political ally.
84. Obama will reverse President Bush’s policy of secrecy. He will institute a National Declassification Center to make declassification secure but routine, efficient, and cost-effective.
85. Obama will bring foreign policy decisions directly to the people by requiring his national security officials to have periodic national broadband town hall meetings to discuss foreign policy. He will personally deliver occasional fireside chats via webcast.
86. Obama strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship, believes that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, America’s strongest ally in the Middle East.
173. Obama will work to ensure intellectual property is protected in foreign markets, and promote greater cooperation on international standards that allow our technologies to compete everywhere.
174. Obama will ensure that our patent laws protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and collaboration.
Barack Obama Discusses An Open Access Foreign Policy
Barack Obama Stands Up to Bush, McCain on Foreign Policy
In a clear signal that Barack Obama will not take his place in a stream of losing Democratic Presidential aspirants, the Illinois Senator has thrown the gauntlet down to President Bush and Senator McCain with a resounding commitment to a new foreign policy that is proactive, reasonable, careful but, above all, smart. The full Obama statement is quoted below.
With their words today, George Bush and John McCain called for staying the course with an endless war in Iraq and a failed policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like, but Americans of all political persuasions are calling for change. The American people aren’t looking for tough talk about fighting for 100 years in Iraq, because they know we need to end this war, finish the job in Afghanistan, and take the fight to al Qaeda. The American people aren’t looking for more of a do-nothing Cuba policy that has failed to secure the release of dissidents, failed to bring democracy to the island, and failed to advance freedom for fifty years, because they know we need to pursue new opportunities to achieve liberty for the Cuban people. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will offer the clearest contrast to John McCain’s call for four more years of George Bush’s policies, because I want to fundamentally change our foreign policy to secure the American people and restore our standing in the world.
Barack Obama’s Approach to Foreign Affairs
Panel With Obama’s Foreign Policy Advisers
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Obama Tuesday Victory in Sight — A Sweep or Three-to-One
BLOOMBERG POLL RESULTS: My Bloomberg poll is complete. It sees Bloomberg NOT as Obama’s VP. The bulk of respondents saw Bloomberg as Infrastructure Czar — a Cabinet Level position that would make him responsible for an integral renewal of our entire country, moving it into the future. One fourth of the respondents said None of the Above. In today’s NYTimes, Bloomberg takes himself out of the running as an independent but sagely indicates he will support an independent approach by one of the contenders. That would be Barack. The Veep door is not closed. Polls change.
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Obama Could Sweep on Super Tuesday
My predictions show Obama winning three out of four states. But he could sweep all four. We are waiting for definitive poll information over the weekend. The state we find most shaky is still Texas. This is in defiance of most polls. But if you click on the Polls link above and relevant links below, you will be reading the only poll that has hitherto been on the mark in anticipating the Obama surge. Public Policy Polling has indicated that Texas will hinge on how well Obama does in shoring up his position with Hispanic voters.
Bookmark this page and return over the weekend for advisories. We are at the critical moment now when victory is in sight, but also when the presumption of victory is ratcheting up attention by a factor of ten.
The media have decided they have gone too soft on Obama and this is no time to be complacent about the capacity to face down all media attacks. I use the word attack advisedly. We are moving into what Bob Dylan calls the arena in his remarkable song Angelina.
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Maxim Noah Khailo’s Whimsical Web Works: Poverty, Crime, and the space you live.
Maxim Noah Khailo's Whimsical Web Works: Poverty, Crime, and the space you live.
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“We often assume socio-demographic reasons for crime in an area such as race, income, and education. With the emergence of GIS technology, studies have been done to investigate whether connectivity of neighborhoods affects income and crime. There have been studies that showed a strong correlation and ones that showed a negative ones.
“The architect Christopher Alexander and his theory of centers created a different model of understanding well being in the context of the physical space around you. His idea is that physical space (the actual space of objects and where objects do not exist) has a degree of life to it that can be increased by proper incremental enhancement of centers. Centers specifically are anything that attract the eye. In his book series “The Nature of Order”, Alexander explains several practical ways of increasing the life of centers and therefore increasing the life of a specific location. How this affects our mood and consciousness can be scientifically tested and maybe eventually pave a way to construct objects, neighborhoods, and cities that is beneficial for everyone.”
Thinking of this sort is what I devoutly hope will sprout up on the Web. Our politics is meaningless and counterproductive if it does not think about issues like space, its function and shape, aesthetics, the relationship of wellbeing to more than one’s personal problems. I have quoted perhaps too much, but I do like the thought and I add this in hopes of encouraging more of the same.
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christopher alexander
parrern language
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