Vivian Rothstein: We seem to be taking the humans out of a system that I thought was organized to make life better for actual people. As the cynics say, human services would be so much easier if it weren’t for the humans.
David Brooks’s Anti-Poverty Program: “Bourgeois Paternalism”
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Joseph Palermo: After telling his readers he isn’t going to blame the poor for being poor because of their bad behavior, David Brooks plows right ahead and blames the poor for being poor because of their bad behavior.
Homeless in Los Angeles
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Jerry Drucker: In all of Los Angeles County, except for Glendale, Pasadena and Long Beach, which conduct their own census counts, the 2011 census count of the homeless was 51,340, 3% less than 2009 at 52,931.
Does AA Really Work?
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Kevin Gray: Scores of studies have tried to analyze the effectiveness of Alcoholics Anonymous. But statistics about the group’s success rates are contradictory and often surprising.
Death Penalty: R.I.P. Paul Rhoades
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Andy Love: In a sworn statement in support of clemency, a psychiatrist noted that “Rhoades’ genetic and social history created a perfect storm of risk factors for drug addiction.”
Occupy LA’s Greatest Opportunity: The Polls
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Stephen Box: Occupy LA’s greatest opportunity to impact the policies and actions that are responsible for eviscerating the middle class, for destroying our economy, for unleashing predatory greed and for selling political access to the highest bidder is to mobilize voters at the polls on election day.
The Troops and Occupy Wall Street
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Tina Dupuy: Meet the new face of Occupy Wall Street: Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine and Iraq War vet who was shot in the head with a “non-lethal round” during a raid on Occupy Oakland last week.
When We All Are Doing Better
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Carl Bloice: Greed is rampant, poverty and economic inequality are growing relentlessly in our country and our political system is ever increasingly corrupted by money. The system is in trouble.
Payback Time
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Rodolfo F. Acuña: One of the first political lessons that I remember was Benito Juárez’s famous saying, “entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz,” “among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.”
It Takes Strength to Compromise — and It Costs Less, Too
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Tanya Acker: There is a lot of discussion these days about the detriments of compromise. When you compromise, for instance, certain people may claim you don’t stick to your guns and decide not to vote for you.
Testing and Poverty
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Mark Naison: Hearing that the governor of New York plans to raise student test scores from twenty percent to forty percent of teacher ratings just reinforces my perception that a species of insanity has overtaken those in charge of public education in the United States.
3D Decision-Making Model
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Ron Wolff: Robust cognitive ability, a healthy emotional outlook, and high ethical standards will combine to produce decisions fitting our complex society.
Subsidized Childcare Breaks Poverty Cycle
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Tracy Emblem: Subsidized childcare allows a parent to work, look for a job, or attend a work-training program or school with a defined graduation plan. Self-sufficiency is the goal – to lift families out of poverty, and off of the welfare rolls and into taxpaying jobs
Ask Not for Whom the Drug Tolls
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Wendy McElroy: A new slate of drugs now addresses a wide range of so-called disorders, or dysfunctions, that former generations considered environmental problems or lifestyle choices: from obesity to attention deficit, from erectile dysfunction to social anxiety (shyness), from menopause to alcoholism.
Remember Our Homeless Gay Youth This Holiday
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Rev. Irene Monroe: many of our LGBTQ youth, myself included as once a homeless youth, do not really have a home to go to where they can sit at the family table and be fully out — or if out, fully accepted.
No, Higher Consciousness Won’t Save Us
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Norman Solomon: When social movements seem to be no match for a destructive status quo, people are apt to look around for alternative strategies. One of the big ones involves pursuing individual transformations as keys to social change.
Human Nature = Prejudice
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Adam Eran: Vedantam suggests education, rather than confrontation, is what gets us beyond prejudice. The Obama presidential run ignored the obviously bigotry coming from his opponent’s proxies, and suggested, without recrimination, that we give Obama a chance. That tactic, not Reverend Wright’s understandable anger, was what worked.
Washington May Be Broken Now, But the Future Is Up for Grabs
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Michael Sigman: But lest the healthy anger of progressives during the Bush years curdle into full-blown, hide-under-the-covers depression, it’s worth asking: When did Washington work, anyway?
Falling For Feldenkrais: A Patient’s Progress
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Michael Sigman: For an obsessive swimmer who craves the endorphins, the past two years of failed therapies for a bum shoulder have been a bummer. I’ve been acupunctured, acupressured, cracked, Rolfed, electro-stimulated, nutritionized, lasered, therapized, osteopathed, hypnotized, rheumatologized, cortisoned, massaged, medicated, iced, heated, surgerized and more. Much more.
Fewer than Half of Returning Vets Suffering Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome Seek Help, VA Doctor Says
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Veterans returning from the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq are displaying many of the same post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms of troops that fought in Viet Nam, yet most do not seek treatment.
Veterans Fight to Preserve West LA Veterans Grounds
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Veterans fight to preserve LA Veterans grounds. Yesterday Citizens For Veterans’ Rights (CFVR) received word from Congressman Henry Waxman’s office that the Real Property Exchange Program Manager ACSIM-Army Reserve Division announced “that phase 2 of the West LA Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will begin in the next few weeks … for the sale or transfer [...]
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