The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments. - NY Times, August 6, 2009
By a vote of 124 to 4 the American Psychological Association agreed that gay patients should not be told they can become straight. Reparative therapy is used primarily by religious conservative therapists and wing nuts like James Dobson. They have destroyed many lives along the way with their zealot like assault on the GLBTTQI communities.
“He hopes people don’t Google his name,” said John E. Hartwig, a former deputy inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, one of various state and federal agencies that investigated Columbia/HCA when Mr. Scott was its chief executive.(NY Times Article, April 2, 2009)
Rick Scott is the big money man behind Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), a lobby group created to stop President Obama's Health Care plan from passing. The organization is run primarily by Scott and have hired the Swift boat company, Creative Response Concepts (The company contributed to John Kerry's loss in 2003 with a smear campaign, now commonly referred to as "Swiftboating", to be its public relations firm.
Scott is no stranger to controversy, In the 1990's he built the largest health care company in the world, owning over 340 hospitals and hundreds of other health care facilities. He was turfed as the CEO by his board of Directors when the FBI launched an investigation into fraud of Medicaid and Medicare which lead to 1.7 billion dollars in fines and reimbursements to several States and the federal government.
Richard J. Kirsch, the national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now told the NY Times in April, ...“We cannot have a better first person to attack health care reform than someone who ran a company that ripped off the government of hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Yet despite this incredible past of heading a hospital conglomerate that defrauded the US and many State Governments of 100's of millions of dollars, the main stream media are slow to pick up on who the people heading these so called "grassroot" organizations like CPR are. They have made their billions using the current system of private health insurance. Scott does not want to see that change anytime soon. He has a vested interest in insuring no public plan is created.
Scott now owns Solantic, a firm that operates urgent care clinics, marketed as a "lite" emergency room for people that do not have health coverage. Some of these are in Wal-Marts in Florida. These center's cherry pick customers by doing the light work, leaving the burdensome work to an already overloaded system.
The American Academy of Pediatrics discourage regular use of urgent care because they say it undermines the concept of having a primary-care doctor who manages long-term health. "There's nothing like having a physician that really knows you," said Dr. Karl Altenberger, a retired Ocala physician and immediate past president of the Florida Medical Association told the Gainsville Sun in Florida.
All of this indicates to me that Rick Scott sees healthcare as a commodity to be bought and sold as the market will let it. A public funded health care option would see fewer people using/needing his urgent care facilities as people will be able to afford good regular health care and will not have to wait until something can not be tolerated any longer before they seek treatment.
Scott is a very rich American. He has a vested interest in a health care system that must meet Wall Street expectaions for profits each quarter.
More on Scott and his and like organization in future posts.
It appears that one can never be successfully convicted of these charges in Canada. There needs to be some serious review of the laws in question.
The right wing was very concerned with two candidates from the right entering the race for Mayor thus splitting the vote allowing the middle of the road candidate, long time city counselor Alex Munter to squeak out a win.
I am pretty sure that many folks talked to both Larry O'Brien and Terry Kilrea, about the probable electoral defeat of the Conservative forces if they both ran.
What we will not know for sometime if ever, is what was really offered and by whom to convince Kilrea to drop out of the race. His decision to drop out pretty much ensured O'Brien would become the front runner in the election for mayor.
Health care is coming and perhaps just in time for Senator Kennedy. The Senator was not at the committee meeting today when they passed legislation (See AP below) supporting President Obama's Health care plan. Kennedy was receiving treatment for brain cancer at the time. One of his last efforts as a senator will be to get this legislation to the President, the culmination of a long career dedicated to bringing affordable health insurance to every American.
Kennedy's medical treatment is likely something many Americans could not readily afford without going into crippling debt. The Senate as a whole will have an opportunity now to discuss, modify and pass the legislation.
From AP: The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted 13-10 along party lines to pass a $600-billion measure that would expand coverage to nearly all Americans by requiring individuals get insurance and employers to contribute to the cost.
One more nail in the DoMA (Defence of Marriage Act) Legislation. Bill Clinton, found himself in the awkward position as President, signed the bill into law. Now Clinton says yes to gay marriage. Can it be that congress will act on this soon? Let's hope so.
America needs this now. Time to join the rest of the western world USA!
This is just awesome. United airlines broke his guitar and the guy writes a song and produces a video and its an instant hit on youtube. Take that big uncaring airlines. See Sons of Maxwell here. It looks like he has won. United issued this statement according to CBC...
On Tuesday, United Airlines spokeswoman Robin Urbanski issued a statement about the incident.
"This has struck has a chord with us. We are in conversations with one another to make what happened right, and while we mutually agree that this should have been fixed much sooner, Dave Carroll’s excellent video provides United with a unique learning opportunity that we would like to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us," the statement said.
From YouTube: Full Story: http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story... - In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise. Follow me at http://twitter.com/DaveCarroll. Video Produced by Curve Productions of Halifax, http://www.curveproductionsinc.com.
The Conservative government in Canada gave stimulus money to Toronto's Gay Pride festival. An awesome $400,000. That was bad according to ConservativeMP Brad Trost. Trost told Lifesite News that most ConservativeMP's were caught by surprise and did not support this kind of funding. Lifesite quoted Trost, "The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy, was not supported by - I think it's safe to say by a large majority - of the MPs. This was a very isolated decision."
Trost went on to tell Lifesite that Minister Diane Ablonczy, who was responsible for the funding, lost the file as a consequence of the embarrassment to the Party.
The pride festival in Toronto is the biggest in Toronto, a city that is one festival after another from May to September every year. Minister Ablonczy made a good decision based on the Conservative Government's stimulus criteria. It supported tourism, was spent now and created many jobs.
Ablonczy lost the program after this grant was made. One can only speculate as to why, my guess is Mr. Harper didn't like to be seen funding a queer festival even if it is likely not only Toronto's biggest festival, but Canada's as well.
Queer, gay tourists not wanted in this country as long as Mr. Harper and MP Trost are on watch.
The Allegheny County Council passed a bill 8-6 on Wednesday night to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community against discrimination in housing and the workplace.
Amazing as it may seem, until today gays in Allegheny County could be refused housing or work solely on the basis of sexual orientation. Though heartening this local bylaw was passed, it could be reversed if another vote were to be called when the likelihood of success presented itself, after an election.
Subjecting Human rights to the will of simple majorities suggests a lack of understanding and an unwillingness to live in a 'Just Society'.
I am happy to see this small part of Pennsylvania recognize the wrongs of discrimination. Only a few thousand more communities across the USA to go.
