Children as young as 7, many of
them Hispanics, are working in tobacco fields under hazardous health conditions,
according to the report “Tobacco’s Hidden Children” released on Wednesday by the
Human Rights Watch. The majority of children interviewed were of Hispanic
origin. Many were U.S. citizens born to non-citizen parents, and almost all
reported working out of a need to provide for themselves and their families.
Despite vocal opposition to
Obamacare, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana just joined the ranks of conservative
state officials willing to compromise with the federal government to expand
health coverage for their states' poorest residents.
After cars, the food system uses
more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy. As for health-care, the
chronic diseases forcing spending ever upward are rooted in the way Americans
eat. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand
coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern
American diet....There’s been a timidity when it comes to looking at the food
system.
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In short, because fixing the VA
backlog isn’t just a question of putting the proper resources into an
overwhelmed agency. Solving it would require not only untangling a Gordian knot
of dysfunctional bureaucracy surrounding the VA claims system and decades of
neglect, it would also mean overcoming a perfect storm of factors in the past
few years that has made the problem much, much worse.
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The real story is that SOCOM has
done things that have incensed members of Congress and thus Congress is
resorting to the only thing it feels safe doing: squeezing programs that don't
cost a lot of money and won't affect big-ticket platforms that translate into
jobs and corporate money for campaigns. Forcing SOCOM to fire a few physical
therapists and psychologists won't result in a loss of donations...But the loss
of those services for those who have deployed numerous times, are suffering from
PTSD and suicide, and dealing with the loss of physical abilities is shameful
and Congress should stop it.
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