12 Ways Americans Solved Safety Prolems

February 15, 2018 (The Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, the deadliest school massacre in our history, cries out for us to look at the big picture and examine how our country handles health problems.)

Americans have a history of looking a problem straight in the eye and taking action to solve or lessen the problem. These are a handful of examples:

1. Sports safety equipment has evolved so fewer athletes are injured.

2. Tooth decay, sometimes leading to abscess and sepsis, affected quality of life and sometimes led to death. Toothbrushes, modern dental care and fluoride have led to better dental heath.

3. Houseflies used to homes and spread deadly microbes. Screens were invented.

4. Drivers could not see the edges of their lanes which often led to fatal accidents. Bott’s Dots were invented and used on roads to help motorists see boundaries and stay in their lanes.

5. Years ago, contaminated milk was killing children. Pasteurization of milk changed this.

6. Too many accidents were happening in work places. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration was formed to reduce these accidents.

7. Some toys can kill children. The consumer Product Safety Commission was formed to oversee this problem and recall toys that could kill children.

8. Before stethoscopes, doctors put their ear to the patient’s chest to listen to the heart. Now they use stethoscopes for better heart hearing.

9. Years ago, patients who had to have legs amputated or teeth extracted suffered great pain during these procedures. Anesthesia was invented.

10. Children used to suffer from whooping cough (I did) and it was especially life-threatening in babies. Babies and children now are vaccinated with DTaP to prevent this disease.

11.  When so many people were being killed in automobile accidents, seat belts and airbags were invented and legislated.

12. Current problem: “When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Conn., and reverberated across the world. Since then, there have been at least 273 school shootings nationwide. In those incidents, 439 people were shot, 121 of whom were killed.” (NYT, 2/15/18)    Solution? Send thoughts and prayers and listen to the NRA?

Read more:

 NRA money speaks loudly to our politicians: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/04/opinion/thoughts-prayers-nra-funding-senators.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur


How Australians solved a problem: http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/04/opinion/thoughts-prayers-nra-funding-senators.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

A roadblock to the solution in the US: http://www.newsweek.com/government-wont-fund-gun-research-stop-violence-because-nra-lobbying-675794

Beware the Fox

I am angry, dismayed, disappointed and worried.

I am also amazed there are so many, mostly older white people, who believe the twisted information that Fox calls news.

Yesterday I got yet another e-mail forward about Obama. This one was a copy of an editorial column from “Obama’s College Classmate” who claims that our President is purposely “overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos”  to eventually destroy capitalism and become a socialist ruler. (I’ll bet those who shout about the evils of socialism do not return their monthly social security checks.)

Then, in an attempt to give these outrageous claims credibility, this e-mail added, “True per snopes!” and “vetted by Snopes.” I am sure many people will not check the Snopes site that tries to set misinformation right and dispel gossip. For those who checked, they would have seen that Snopes does not claim that the writer’s words are correct but that it is  “correctly attributed” to Wayne Allyn Root.

Fact Check

In the past, Fox news has claimed they could not find any classmates who remembered Obama. The innuendo is that he lied to the public and didn’t really attend Columbia University.  Of course, it’s easy to find out the truth by quickly going to Fact Check.

 http://www.factcheck.org/2010/02/obama-at-columbia-university/

Fact Check, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, is a “nonpartisan, nonprofit "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics.”

I am a former teacher who tried to teach my students how to think, how to analyze and separate truth from fiction. Have we teachers failed or is the American public just plain stupid?

Driven by Fear?

I am afraid that much of the split in our country could be the result of underlying racial prejudice. It saddens me so say this but just look at the sea of white faces in the Republican Party. There might also be a deep-seated white fear. The demographic snapshot of this country has changed and I believe many whites are fearful they will become the minority and lose power.

According to the European Union Times, within the next 40 years, the color of our country will have changed dramatically.

http://www.eutimes.net/2009/05/americas-quick-changing-demographics/

It reports statistics in 2005:

- 60% White
- 16% Hispanic
- 13% Black
- 5% Asian
- 2% Native
- 4% Other/Mixed

Projections for 2050 show whites as a minority:

- 33% Hispanic.
- 21% White.
- 20% Asian.
- 11% Black.
- 1% Native.
- 14% Other/Mixed.

Instead of clinging to the divisiveness that Fox encourages, we should be celebrating diversity. 

Manipulating the Masses

I am angry at the divisiveness nourished by the Republican party. I am dismayed at the condition George W. Bush left our country in, a condition that not even a smart President such as our current one can fix in eight years, if given a chance. I am disappointed in the gullibility (read that “stupidity”) of  a seemingly large segment of the American public. And I am worried for the future of our country.

It is incredible that people accept what Fox tosses out as real news. If people are so willing to believe Glenn Beck and his cronies, then who else might they be willing to believe?

Hitler writes in Mein Kempf, “The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and hence to the heart of the broad masses... The broad mass of a nation does not consist of diplomats, or even professors of political law, or even individuals capable of forming a rational opinion...”

In Hitler’s Germany, people were easily led by his lies, innuendo and propaganda. Hitler seduced the masses.  In the United States, how can so many people be seduced by Fox?

Yes, I am worried.

I’ll be at Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity in D.C. on October 30. A large crowd at this event would be a good sign that there is some hope for our country.

http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/

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Still Hugging Ruts

It’s hard to break old habits. George W. Bush was a great leader...when it came to division. Not exactly something to be proud of. Now the Republicans seem to be in a deep rut created by the habit of Republican politics...the habit of wearing blinders that allow only an us vs. them perspective.

Why are they against the stimulus bill? Have they even read it? Can they read? It seems not when you look at the claims they’re making about the bill. And when will they stop their lies?

Here’s a quick summary of GOP stimulus myths listed by FactCheck.Org today:

Summary

Many claims of Democrats slipping in earmarks for frivolous projects aren't true.

Do some of the Republican claims you've heard about the stimulus bill sound too awful to be true? We find a few that are wildly exaggerated or downright false.

· It's not true that the bill contains spending for "golf carts." It has $300 million to buy fuel-efficient vehicles, some of which may be electric cart-like utility vehicles.

· Money claimed to be for "remodeled federal offices" is mostly designated for upgrading buildings to "green" status through such things as thicker insulation and highly efficient lighting, not new drapes or paneling.

· A widely repeated claim that $8 billion is set aside for a "levitating train" to Disneyland is untrue. That total is for unspecified high-speed rail projects, and some of it may or may not end up going to a proposed 300-mph "maglev" train connecting Anaheim, Calif., with Las Vegas.

· There's no money in the bill specified for butterfly parks, Frisbee golf courses or water slides, despite a GOP congressman's claim that the bill "will fund" those projects. He culled those silly-sounding items from a list of 18,750 city projects that the U.S. Conference of Mayors cobbled together in January as examples of "shovel-ready" projects.

Let's hope that the President can pull the Republicans out of their rut.

(The picture at the top shows President Obama's speech tonight configured as a Word Cloud. )