2012 conventions 2012 election 2013 session arts arts and culture author ballot measures basketball bomb books boy scouts budget bullying business charlie hales children clackamas climate change coal college courts crime culture culture club democrats drugs economy education environment family film fluoride food gay rights guns handguns health health care health insurance high school history housing immigration internet kitzhaber language law legislature lgbt literary arts living marijuana marriage media medicine mental health military minor parties mohamed mohamud movies music native americans news newspaper obama olympics oregon our town parenting pers photography police politcs politics port portland portland business journal president prevention public safety religion republicans rnc romney rural salem sam adams sandy hook schools science shooting sports suicide supreme court taxes technology television terrorism theater third parties transportation union university of oregon washington wildfire women

Today's program would be an appropriate time to explore and compare Neil M. Bush and his part in the USA'S bailout of the bloated, under-regulated S&L market implosion. Does anyone else find it interesting that 2 of the Bush brothers have been closely tied to THE two significant, taxpayer bailouts of wealthy investors in 90 years? Why isn't anybody talking about this from this perspective? Is this an amazing coincidence or what?
Or am I just listening in the wrong places at the wrong times?
I worked for 7-plus years in the banking industry (1978 thru 1985). Some of these regulations everybody is yelling about have been there all along: They just have not been enforced with common sense and decency. It isn't a lack of legal regulation in the financial world; it is a lack of moral intelligence and over-abundance of unbridled power and shameless greed. Bonfire of the Vanities revisited.

Here's a question you probably don't want to touch: Neil B's messed-up financial dealings with Grace Corporation. Is that related to the disappearance of W.R. Grace from your list of big sponsors? Is it the same Grace corporation? I truly do not know for certain, but I have always wondered why W.R. Grace's name was dropped after so many years of sponsorship. They aren't the only big financial entity to be dropped from your list, but this coincidental connection with Neil Bush is fascinating to me. Has OPB ceo's ever considered that you might GAIN more members and money by coming out with the straight story on something like this?? Flagging this honest question as inappropriate just makes you seem like you have something to hide. Is this so difficult to comprehend? This is not a great leap of logic here.
You won't alienate your Religious Right Listeners: you do not have any. That is why I listen to you. I suspect I'm in a majority here. My RRR (religious-right Republican) family thinks I'm brainwashed by the evil left-wing talk shows of NPR. Does anyone else want to LOL here?
Neither George W. nor brother Neil have any gift for developing profitable businesses. Quite the reverse. Such an understatement....
What seems extremely important right now is the brothers' respective talents for relentlessly running businesses (economies)into the ground, and the (coincidental) timing of Two of this country's most significant financial disasters and the saddling of taxpayers with the Bush boys' rich friends' losses.
I suppose you will flag this as inappropriate, as is usual for my questions/comments. If so, that in itself is very disturbing and speaks volumes about OPB's ethics and values.
Why doesn't it trouble YOU? I wonder how many supporters you are losing to KBOO and Pacifica.
AT least of late I seldom hear your blurbs for Kaiser Permanente. One step at a time. Healthcare is a bad place to be unable to separate church from state in administration. I could tell you scary things about KP's methods of terminating unwanted pregnancies.
Laurie Hendrickson

posted 4 years, 7 months ago
view in context

This morning's program had a caller, "Ben", who suggested an solution that is an existing research program. I can't remember which American university is engaged in this successful endeavor to use waste products from plant crops as fuel. It is a single gene incorporated into the cellulose structural cells. Spontaneous ethanol creation begins when the plant is killed. Only the stalks are involved.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
view in context

Here is is my issue. There's a lot of press and excitement about computerizing medical records in a way to make them accessible to all of a patient's providers and facilitate care, even if an emergency occurs away from one's home area.
I have heard nothing on OPB or anywhere else about the dark side of this technology. Within Oregon's oldest HMO there has been this technology for about 9 years. It is easy for unscrupulous doctors to misuse this information at his/her discretion, and I have been a victim of exactly that abuse.
When a doctor with a politically prominent place in a medical administration commits a deliberate and calculated medical coverup, he or she can easily get copies with zero regard for the so-called patient rights of confidentiality. Even psychiatric records, both medical and counselling/listening non-MD psych visit records ("just somebody to talk to") were copied directly to my primary provider upon his sudden realization that he was being exposed as a deceitful provider with his own self-interest and the Company's covert financial manipulations as number one priority. In addition to exposing his own inept and collusive "care", I was especially problematic for him because I was also an employee in the facility where he had his medical office-space. During a time when the Company's need for millions of dollars to fund ever-growing technological abilities, staff-reduction was paramount. Huge staff cuts started being made in 2003 at Kaiser NW facilities. They are still going on. I am sad that NPR and OPB promote this so-called not-for-profit. Forty five middle-managers (my boss was a pharmacy supervisor for more than 20 years) were told that they either could take on a doubled or tripled management-load or leave with some form of gold-plated parachute. At least his parachute was golden compared to mine. I was suddenly disabled due to 14 yrs of medical covering-up during my employment in the pharmacy department. When many years of deliberately reversing a diagnosis and then totally ignoring that "history" of multiple sclerosis and developing degenerative disc disease were compunded by unignorable knee-arthritis, I was accommodated by a sudden transfer to pharmacy administration's main offices. I was in a minority there because I truly believed that quality of care and accessibility and HIPAA laws were serious stuff. I worked according the the Golden Rule (Do unto others, etc). It was soon obvious I was a Bleeding-Heart Liberal. The only one, apparently. I had to be eliminated even if it required multiple violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. I was hearing and seeing too much criminal, amoral administrative maneuvering. I floated between pharmacy and accounting. No room for ethics in Kaiser's accounting department. I should have filed a Whistleblower suit first, but at least I did copy all my medical records shortly before I was forced into early retirement, because as soon as I retained an attorney, the KP legal dept started a hatchet job on my records. It is really quite interesting to show to my new healthcare providers. Especially the OBGyn records that were 99.9% black magic marker. Worse than White House records.
Oregon law is totally biased toward protecting the medical establishment and has attorneys afraid to file med. malpractice suits for fear of punitive fines for filing "frivolous" suits.
I don't know if every state legislature is as bad as Oregon, but this enormous computerization of records to make them infinitely accessible to any sociopathic administrator who finds it necessary or convenient to alter, cover-up or destroy them to make the patient look like a nut-job is a very, very bad thing. There is no way to protect the patient from a disinformation campaign.
I 'm sure I can't be the only victim of this kind of gross negligence. It is not just unethical. It is evil. And for the perpetrator, it is EASY.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
view in context

I have a schizophrenic brother who has been dealing with the challenges of his illness for more than 30 years. He has been obviously not-right since the early 1970's, but he is not dangerous. He has only done non-violent crimes, but being in the wrong place at the wrong time when other people in the house were smoking pot caused him to be hauled into the local jail.

The saving grace in his situation was the judge presiding at his hearing was a neighbor and member of the same church as my family. He knew through the small-town grapevine that my brother was mentally ill and my family was struggling with a way to get help. At that time the person is in a small window of opportunity to access mental-health professional intervention: ie, he had to be perceived as having committed a crime to be forced to get care. When the patient refuses to acknowledge that there is something wrong with him, his family cannot force him to get help until he commits some kind of crime.
This creates a Catch-22 situation. People who do not have schizophrenic family members don't understand how small the percentage of the "crazy" population is truly dangerous to others. People are afraid of something they have no understanding about.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
view in context