Letters to the Editor
Nequals1
Published Letters: 285 Editor's Choice: 6
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Re: On the rug
[Read the article: "Make sure the rug says 'optimistic person comes to work'"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If only if could be "in the rug". As in rolled up tighter than a bug in one.
As a PSA, note that no Air Force personnel were in the picture. Wright Patterson AFB is literally just down the road. Wonder why it wasn't represented?
The Dayton Daily News has the answer: Wright-Pat Leaders Announce Broad Spending Cuts.
Supporting' the troops, yessirree. Read more local color here.
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Lack of professional nursing is at the nexus of military/VA healthcare systems failures
[Read the article: The Pentagon's chronic neglect of Iraq vets]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is good reportage, and it helps to highlight how oversight and systems failures were inevitable. However, what has been missed by everyone across all forms of media is that at the root of all of the failures - outpatients floundering, no treatment and under treatment of PTSD/acute mental illness, failure to provide comprehensive rehabilitation for TBI's, management of complex open wounds, and management of front line contracted infectious diseases is the absence of professional nursing care and management.I've been posting about the specifics of this, and http://universalhealth.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/walter-reed-panel-smacks-hard/ - this post provides extensive linkage to connect the dots.
What is even more ominous is that the national nursing shortage continues to grow, and wherever you find patients experiencing complications and preventable deaths, there is a concomitant lack of professional nursing. Solid research demonstrates that patient recovery and rehabilitation is directly affected by the presence of baccalaureate-prepared registered nurses. Where that care is lacking or absent, death rates, complication rates and length of time to recover are increase significantly - in the military, the VA and in civilian healthcare settings.
Nurses provide 95% of ALL healthcare services in the US. There are about three million nurses currently registered. Yet funding for nursing education, research and practice is stagnant or it is being decreased. The military reports a ten percent shortage across all branches, with nurse officers leaving twice as fast as all other officers.
Professional nursing gets virtually no coverage by any form of media. The public, therefore is ignorant about the critical role nursing plays in public and individual health and survival rates. Perhaps now is a good time to change that.
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Accuracy
[Read the article: The Dan Gerstein sham]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why is it that Akers (or any media professional) is permitted to publish factually incorrect data without accountability? Where is the fact checking process? Where is errata recognition? Where is the clean record?
How is this smearing allowed to be construed as credible?
Frankly, it is just this sort of deliberate misleading and lying tactic which undermines this N=1's trust in journalism. Is that the intent of the Washington Post?
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Fascism In Disguise as Democracy
[Read the article: The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn:
I appreciate the points you make about Mansfield's intellectual honesty in making his argument that the executive can override the law. Except that he fails to take responsibility for defining his defense of fascism just that.
It's dishonest to continue to reference this extreme right wing ideology as anything BUT fascism. The principles of Mansfield's argument certainly aren't contained within the Constitution. It isn't defensible as a precept of a democracy, and it deeply fissures and renders useless true debate about the nature of the executive branch in the US model of democracy.
Best to get it out in the open and subject to the light of day and intense scrutiny. Thank you for writing this story.
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Extant Journalism is Dead - Long Live Journalism
[Read the article: The Politico: Exhibit A for our broken political press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You log yet more examples of propaganda lurking behind a mask of journalism. With very few exceptions, journalism via the adqueducts of old - newsprint, radio and television - are dead. That a few facts are booby-trapped into propaganda stories does not objective reporting make.
Where this N=1 sees real journalism is in the blogosphere. With the filters, advertisers, corporate profit motives and time to file deadlines removed, bloggers can investigate, cogitate and masticate over "stories" to identify fantasy, fiction, falsehood and frenzy. They can identify patterns from seemingly disparate and unconnected details. They can apply professional and worker values and understanding to detail and minutiae lost on reporters.
They connect the dots to create clarity from clouds.
What is refreshing is to be able to see propaganda for what it is. What is critical is that the public sees and understands propaganda - and the clear story - as two distinct and separate entities, and that it learns to value clarity over obfuscation, fact over sensation, and blogger legitimacy as a process that is the "new muckraking."
Blogging is truth to power - but with the filters and restrictions removed. It demands participation by readers. It is not passive, it is not one-way, and it is not without fault.
It is an honest, honorable and risky process.
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Access and Disparity - Maternity Services
[Read the article: Maternity care is a money loser]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The only money makers are likely to be community hospitals who see a high proportion of patients who are covered by thir party payer insurance and who have low risk prenancies.
As an FYI - healthcare insurers, third party benefits administrators and HMO's add up to 35% of purely administrative, claims and "paper shuffling" costs for every dollar spent in healthcare. Eliminate healthcare insurance, add everyone in the US (which spreads the risk) to the Medicare pot, and the administrative overhead dromps from 33% to about 3.5%. Since physicians and nurses are in critical short supply, there are ample opportunities to retrain and reducate displaced insurance industry workers as direct care providers.
The HR676 bill, sponsored by John Conyers, incidentally, does just that in covering everyone under a Medicare For All single payer plan. And before anyone can say it, no this is not socialized medicine. It is a plan that puts everyone in a risk pool, eliminates the middle administrative layer, frees up physicians and nurses from submitting claims and appeals (which account for massive time and dollar resource allocation - and adds overhad costs to physicians and hospitals) - and keeps the patient/physician relationship off limits to interfering healthcare insurers and HMO's.
Now, that's a win-win situation.