wow, what a brilliant response...boy wonder can only use Bush as an excuse for a few more months...

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

by the courts for criminally violating the US Constitution. When are they going to impeach him? We get 24/7 front page JonBenet coverage (very sad story), but nothing on the crooks in the White House. All the drama with Watergate and Clinton IMO pales in comparison to what is on this President's mantle. What a mess.

Katrina & Recovery

Woes at Embattled FEMA Spur Employee Exits

by Laura Sullivan

Enlarge

Tim Sloan

The FEMA command center in Washington, D.C., Aug. 30, 2005, shortly after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. AFP/Getty Images

Mark Wolfe

Bill Carwile, in an October 2005 photo taken before he retired from FEMA. Days after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, the head of hurricane response in Mississippi e-mailed FEMA headquarters: System appears broken. FEMA

All Things Considered, January 13, 2006 � FEMA is having trouble holding on to its best people. Several FEMA staffers have told NPR that people are leaving because the agency is in trouble and no one appears to be addressing the problems. These departures are raising concerns about FEMA's ability to respond to the next disaster.

Leo Bosner, a union chief and manager of the emergency operations desk at FEMA, says morale was bad Katrina, but it's only gotten worse. He notes there have been several retirement parties at the agency in recent weeks.

They're getting out not because they're tired and want to work in the garden but because they're just sickened by the agency's failure -- very public failure -- and just sickened to see nobody doing anything to lift a finger to fix the problems, Bosner says of the departing employees.

According to half a dozen other current or former FEMA managers who did not want their name used for fear of retribution, more than 50 people have left FEMA in the past four months. One official inside FEMA who has seen the agency's attrition data says 56 people have left in the past five weeks alone.

But FEMA says only 20 people have left. FEMA spokesman Nicole Andrews says the information Bosner and other employees shared with NPR is either incomplete or imprecise. She says there's an influx of applications to work for the agency, adding, To suggest that there is any sort of a trend related to Katrina and attrition would be absolutely false.

One recent retiree is Bill Carwile, a 10-year veteran of FEMA and former Army colonel who left in November. Carwile led FEMA's hurricane response in Mississippi.

Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. Three days into Katrina recovery operations in Hancock County, Miss., Carwile couldn't get any food, water or even body bags. System appears broken, he wrote in an e-mail to FEMA headquarters. Carwile says it was the worst moment of his FEMA career.

The exhaustion frustration he felt in Mississippi wasn't the only thing pushing him to retire. Carwile says he was upset watching FEMA's training programs get cut year after year, leaving his teams unprepared.

Good morning. This is Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the House Majority Leader.

Over the past several months, Democrats and Republicans in Congress have negotiated a bipartisan extension of the highly successful childrens health insurance program known as CHIP - a program enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1997, with strong Democratic support, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

CHIP provides health insurance coverage for over six and one-half million American children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford private insurance.

However, millions of other children who are currently eligible for this health insurance are not enrolled due to the programs limited resources.

To address this, our bipartisan legislation provides funding for approximately four million more children - ensuring that at least 10 million low-income children in our nation receive the health care coverage they need and deserve. Thats good for them and for our country.

This legislation does not change current eligibility guidelines. It simply strengthens CHIPs financing, covers more low-income children, and improves the quality of care they receive.

The truth is, this legislation is fully paid for. It does not add one nickel to the deficit or to the debt.

Furthermore, under the Presidents proposal more than 800,000 children who now receive coverage under CHIP would lose that coverage.

The President claims that this legislation would lead to a government takeover of health insurance. He is wrong.

The truth is, Americas largest private insurance lobbying group supports this bill - as do Americas doctors, nurses, childrens advocates, 43 governors, and, most importantly, 72 percent of Americans.

As Senator Pat Roberts, a senior Republican from Kansas, recently said: I am not for excessive spending and strongly oppose the federalization of health care. And if the Administrations concerns with this bill were accurate, I would support a veto. But, Senator Roberts added: Bluntly put, they are not.

Most puzzling of all, perhaps, is the fact that the Presidents veto violates his own campaign promise.

In 2004, at the Republican National Convention, the President promised (and I quote): In a new term, we will lead an aggressive effort to enroll millions of children who are eligible but not signed up for government health insurance programs. We will not allow, he said, a lack of attention, or information, to stand between these children and the health care they need.

But the Congress has done exactly what the President said he was going to do, if re-elected.

Yet today, the only thing standing between millions of American children and the health insurance they need and deserve is one person. The President is saying no to these children he promised to help.

In the words of Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, weve got to do what we can to try to override the Presidents veto.

In the days ahead, we will work to persuade many of our Republican colleagues, who insist on standing with the President, to instead join the bipartisan majorities in Congress - and Americas children - in overriding this veto.

Ask them to vote to override the Presidents veto and ensure health care for our kids and for their future.

The health-care reform debate is in full roar with the arrival of Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, which compares the U.S. system unfavorably with single-payer systems around the world. Critics of the film are quick to trot out a common defense of the American way: For all its problems, they say, U.S. patients at least don't have to endure the endless waits for medical care endemic to government-run systems. The lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans spells it out in a rebuttal to Sicko: "The American people do not support a government takeover of the entire health-care system because they know that means long waits for rationed care."

In reality, both data and anecdotes show that the American people are already waiting as long or longer than patients living with universal health-care systems. Take Susan M., a 54-year-old human resources executive in New York City. She faithfully makes an appointment for a mammogram every April, knowing the wait will be at least six weeks. She went in for her routine screening at the end of May, then had another because the first wasn't clear. That second X-ray showed an abnormality, and the doctor wanted to perform a needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure. His first available date: mid-August. "I completely freaked out," Susan says. "I couldn't imagine spending the summer with this hanging over my head." After many calls to five different facilities, she found a clinic that agreed to read her existing mammograms on June 25 and promised to schedule a follow-up MRI and biopsy if needed within 10 days. A full month had passed since the first suspicious X-rays. Ultimately, she was told the abnormality was nothing to worry about, but she should have another mammogram in six months. Taking no chances, she made an appointment on the spot. "The system is clearly broken," she laments.

It's not just broken for breast exams. If you find a suspicious-looking mole and want to see a dermatologist, you can expect an average wait of 38 days in the U.S., and up to 73 days if you live in Boston, according to researchers at the University of California at San Francisco who studied the matter. Got a knee injury? A 2004 survey by medical recruitment firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates found the average time needed to see an orthopedic surgeon ranges from 8 days in Atlanta to 43 days in Los Angeles. Nationwide, the average is 17 days. "Waiting is definitely a problem in the U.S., especially for basic care," says Karen Davis, president of the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, which studies health-care policy.

All this time spent "queuing," as other nations call it, stems from too much demand and too little supply. Only one-third of U.S. doctors are general practitioners, compared with half in most European countries. On top of that, only 40% of U.S. doctors have arrangements for after-hours care, vs. 75% in the rest of the industrialized world. Consequently, some 26% of U.S. adults in one survey went to an emergency room in the past two years because they couldn't get in to see their regular doctor, a significantly higher rate than in other countries.

There is no systemized collection of data on wait times in the U.S. That makes it difficult to draw comparisons with countries that have national health systems, where wait times are not only tracked but made public. However, a 2005 survey by the Commonwealth Fund of sick adults in six nations found that only 47% of U.S. patients could get a same- or next-day appointment for a medical problem, worse than every other country except Canada.

The Commonwealth survey did find that U.S. patients had the second-shortest wait times if they wished to see a specialist or have nonemergency surgery, such as a hip replacement or cataract operation (Germany, which has national health care, came in first on both measures). But Gerard F. Anderson, a health policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, says doctors in countries where there are lengthy queues for elective surgeries put at-risk patients on the list long before their need is critical. "Their wait might be uncomfortable, but it makes very little clinical difference," he says.

The Commonwealth study did find one area where the U.S. was first by a wide margin: 51% of sick Americans surveyed did not visit a doctor, get a needed test, or fill a prescription within the past two years because of cost. No other country came close.

Few solutions have been proposed for lengthy waits in the U.S., in part, say policy experts, because the problem is rarely acknowledged. But the market is beginning to address the issue with the rise of walk-in medical clinics. Hundreds have sprung up in CVS, Wal-Mart (WMT ), Pathmark, (PTMK ) and other stores�so many that the American Medical Assn. just adopted a resolution urging state and federal agencies to investigate such clinics as a conflict of interest if housed in stores with pharmacies. These retail clinics promise rapid care for minor medical problems, usually getting patients in and out in 30 minutes. The slogan for CVS's Minute Clinics says it all: "You're sick. We're quick."

at our current rate of usage - it's basically a drop in the bucket. And to get all the equipment in place to extract it and refine it would take approximately four years or more.

And that "desolate wasteland" is one of the last pristine areas left in the world. Does man really have to desecrate every square foot of this earth to satisfy his own greed and consumption? Guess so.

and she cannot find anyone hiring in her area or anywhere near her area. She is a registered nurse and is in the process of a divorce and is trying to raise 2 little girls.

"Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Is Biden saying that America's current enemies - sorely aware of Obama's inexperience - plan to test a President Obama with similar crises, to see what he's made of?

Biden has also commented Obama's inexperience and said the job of the Presidency "does not lend itself to on the job training." He's also said Obama's "going to need help."

Well, I guess 'ol Joe has his foot in the door and that's all he really wanted. I don't believe he's changed his mind about our new President Elect. I think he saw his way into the White House and jumped on the bandwagon.

Great! We've got a totally inexperienced, slick snake set to run this country and the man who knows Obama will fail, has announced the Obama will be tested and fail, and probably wants Obama to fail, so he can come out smelling like a rose.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UBS_SECRETS?SITE=VACUL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

I know this is old (July of 2001), but I just came across it and thought it was worth sharing with liberals.