This just in: President Obama and other world leaders have decided to postpone a legally binding international climate change agreement at next month’s Copenhagen summit. According to the New York Times, “Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen was Congress’s inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.”

Given the reality that “later” may very well be “too late” when it comes to enacting necessary measures to protect life on earth as we know it, this delay approaches criminal negligence on the part of our government.

For this increasingly disillusioned American, it’s one more sign that “Change we can believe in” comes with fine print reading, “…someday, later, eventually…maybe.”

Tea-party fanatics on the Right are beating their chests and screeching that Democrats are trying to turn this otherwise perfect nation on its head. Over here on the left, I wonder when they’re going to get started… doing, well, just about anything. With control of both houses and the executive branch, what could they possibly be waiting for? Off the top of my head, I can provide them a nice to-do list:

What of federally guaranteed civil rights for non-heterosexuals, including marriage, health care, adoption and inheritance? Of legislation protecting our food supply from E. Coli and other potentially lethal contaminants? Or reform addressing the un-sustainability of our industrial agriculture and its dependence on petroleum? Or that seriously tackles hazardous chemicals in everyday products (as the R.E.A.C.H. legislation did in the EU)? Where is the political will to develop a national rail grid? Or to truly jump-start the green economy? We are still waiting for a sound drug policy, for a redress in the regressive tax code (especially in corporate welfare) and for better consumer protections from lead and other contaminants, particularly in products arriving from China. Speaking of products arriving from China, where is the political leadership to revamp our manufacturing sector and the quality jobs it once afforded? And speaking of getting laid off…universal health care seems to be limping along towards some kind of resolution, but this has seemed to be despite- rather than thanks to- the party leadership.

Why aren’t we seeing any discussion of the impossibility of raising a child in today’s society due to the high cost of child care, combined with long commutes and working hours? Why is maternal mortality during childbirth higher in the US than in Poland, Ireland, Bulgaria and Korea? Why are American students having to take out unimaginable sums in student loans in order to pay for college (or, just as bad, being forced to work forty + hours per week while maintaining a full course load, as my husband did a few years ago)? Why do we continue to beat the dead horse of home ownership as the only manifestation of the American dream instead of promoting much-needed quality affordable housing? Why am I getting letters from my food bank informing me that demand has skyrocketed 54% since last year, when high-risk investment banks are being given incomprehensible bail-outs with taxpayer money? (And when I’m also reading that the Eurozone has left the recession?)

Out here in Arizona, we continue to wait for meaningful immigration reform, both to secure our borders more effectively and to provide a reasonable path to citizenship for those who are already here. Under most citizens’ radar, but even more upsetting, is the fact that the Obama administration has not only not overturned many Bush-era policies on wire-tapping, infringement on privacy rights, shadowy military tribunals, and top-secret “national security evidence”, but he is careening quickly into a never-ending folly in Afghanistan. Perhaps towards North Korea and Iran as well: at first seeming to extend the olive branch to those states, he’s reverted to the old pontifications about what we will and will not “allow.”

The list goes on. The rest of the world may have cause to celebrate that the ridiculousness and base criminality of the Bush administration has ended, but stateside, the changes are starting to appear largely aesthetic.

Increasingly, I wonder whether this “Change” doesn’t need to become, in accordance with the archetypical American spirit, more self-directed. Maybe we need to stop voting, stop waiting, and simply move abroad. As Rufus Wainwright says in his song “Going to Town”: “I’m so tired of America…I’ve got a life to live, America…”

I’m ever-more doubtful that we can make that life here. And with in-demand skills, I’m not even sure that we should. In light of the climate change debacle, I don’t know that we can take the guilt.

The month of August has left me feeling deeply chagrined. Not only was it defined by a marked insanity, virulent hostility and lists of lies repeated verbatim so many times that the media came to present them as a legitimate point of view, but it will also be remembered as the month that progressive leadership caved.

Last year during the presidential debates, it seemed that we were going to at least discuss single-payer national health insurance. Quickly sensing that this was beyond the capacity of a nation so bitterly divided between right and left – and loathe to blow all of his political capital on one issue alone while so many remain to be tackled - President Obama soon began to talk of a “public option” as a compromise. By the end of August, it appeared the public option too might be sacrificed on the trifecta altar of bipartisanship, capitalism and right-wing paranoia. By the second week in September, we were on our way to yet another compromise on a compromise: a health insurance exchange in the private market. Like the children’s game of Chutes and Ladders, I’m starting to feel that every two steps forward toward social justice are accompanied by a sudden and debilitating slide backwards. Pretty soon- with the WOOSH of a final compromise- we’ll just be back at square one: Those of you who like your insurance can keep it, and the rest of you can kiss off.

It’s time to ask a serious question: what does it mean to be an American citizen? Are we just taxpayers obligated to fund the interminable “War on Terror” and ballooning Social Security/Medicare programs (for apparently ungrateful seniors who don’t even realize it’s a government program) with our decreasing wages but without the right to press for our own needs? Are we just consumers hunting for the best deal in a never-ending Darwinistic climb to the top of the economic ladder without regard to those whose heads we have to kick to get there? Or, are we a society that is finally prepared to acknowledge our mutual responsibility to one another?

Are we ready to recognize the fact that our capitalist system – while excellent at generating untold wealth for a few and a pretty decent standard of living for most – by its very nature creates cracks through which the most vulnerable fall? That poverty will always go hand in hand with the free market -and that therefore if we want to have this system then we have to provide a safety net? That one’s inability to pay for a disease acquired through no fault of one’s own should not be a death sentence – or a bankruptcy one? That rationing already exists in that we keep our doctors’ office lines artificially short by preventing nearly 50 million people from having access? That the desperate scavenger hunt for decent health insurance skews our life choices and limits our full potential? That the limiting of such potential and the increased burden to provide employee medical benefits are two factors hurting our economy? That when doctors are opting out of health insurance plans (my dentist and eye doctor have already left) that our system isn’t serving anyone but profit-hungry shareholders answerable to no one but themselves? That health care is the most essential of all human rights in that it affects the very right to continue living? And that disease knows no socioeconomic barriers but impacts us all?

Put this way, it seems so obvious. But then, I’m a progressive who believes in social justice and equality for all, so maybe it’s only obvious to me. As such, I thought the first eight years of my adult life – the malignant Bush years- were just a blip. Lately, I’m wondering if that’s the case. Democrats control the executive and legislative branches, and untold millions are suffering as never before due to the recession and medical bankruptcy. If we can’t create real reform now, then WHEN?

"I come from another state where 'open carry' is legal, but no one does it, so the police don't really know about it and they harass people, arrest people falsely…I think that people need to get out and do it more so that they get kind of conditioned to it." Such were the words of wisdom expressed to CNN affiliate KNVX (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/obama.protest.rifle/index.html)by an unidentified man who protested outside Barack Obama's speech last week in Phoenix with an assault rifle.

The man’s decision to show up at the event with a loaded weapon was legal, but far from controversial. Is an unrestricted freedom to carry any type of gun to any place at any time truly what the founders had in mind? Do we really want to become "conditioned" to the sight of vigilante citizens walking down the sidewalks with loaded rifles? Strangely and disturbingly, the increasingly expansive interpretation of gun rights has been matched by the whittling away of other critical freedoms. Particularly since the Bush era, the protection from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom of speech, the right to a fair and speedy jury trial, and the right to due process seem to have become passé.

Several chilling examples immediately come to mind. Bush-era wiretaps on our fellow citizens still remain on the books due to the Obama administration’s approval - (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/obama-sides-wit/) despite objections that such spying violates that Constitution and widespread acknowledgment that the program has yielded little of value in the so-called War on Terror. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/12/bush.wiretap/index.html).

Lap-tops and other digital devices can be seized (or impounded, in Homeland Security lingo) at airports without explanation (http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/06/24/seizing-laptops-and-cameras-without-cause.html, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR2008020604763.html). Government observation of my personal life and seizure of my personal effects are serious threats to both our democracy and individual liberty, yet such concerns seem to be perpetually under the radar.

“Free Speech Zones” have popped up at controversial events such as political conventions and WTO conferences. The idea is that by corralling protesters into caged areas away from the media and delegates, citizens can vocalize their opinions without all of that messiness that general, non-caged free-speech can cause. Under the Bush administration, the secret service would select the “zones” in advance – perhaps this is one reason that relatively little real protest was ever recorded at his public engagements. Yet the Democrats have been no better: at the 2008 Convention last November, protesters were again restricted to a caged zone far from earshot of the participants. While the First Amendment doesn’t specifically allow you access to powerful people, I doubt the spirit of this particular right was merely legal permission to mutter your ideas from an isolated, off-site cage.

Certainly not last but equally troubling is the marked lack of transparency and due process accorded the detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in this never-ending War. The emotional response that “terrorists didn’t show the victims of September 11, 2001 any due process” strikes a chord, it is still no way to run a country if we intend to be a rational, law-abiding, democratic nation. There is also a startling and frighteningly pervasive belief that if these alleged criminals are granted a normal trial – the kind that we use for psychopaths, murderers, the mafia, and the like- that they will somehow “get off easy.” While they are not protected under our Bill of Rights, we should ask what defects our system has that render it incapable of dealing with these prisoners, and correct them, rather than simply operating outside the law. How can Americans sleep at night knowing that shadowy tribunals with laws unto themselves are taking place in our name – with evidence withheld and defense attorneys hamstrung all in the name of national security?

But then, it seems that Americans have already acquiesced and have grown accustomed to all manner of indignations. Maybe the 2nd Amendment is just the last one that we’re clinging to, because it is tangible and emotionally compelling. Yet it still doesn’t make a lot of sense. As one woman wrote in her letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic, it is truly bizarre that we are forced to limit the size of our hand lotion and other liquids to less than 4 oz for carry-on luggage on an airplane, but a man can carry a loaded weapon to a presidential appearance. American society must be fascinating to observe from the outside. From the inside, it can be positively frightening.

If we were to write a literary critique of the August town halls, one of the first elements to discuss would be the pervasive irony. As each senator and representative tours their home state, they are confronted by the same phenomenon: crowds of senior citizens opposing health care reform. More specifically, opposing a single-payer, universal system. Just like the popular Medicare program they currently participate in.

It simply defies logic. Today during John McCain’s town hall, citizens booed and cheered like an audience at a vaudeville melodrama whenever reform and “leaving health care alone” were mentioned, respectively. One charismatic elderly woman took the floor from the Senator for a good five minutes as she riled up the crowd with bumper-sticker slogans like, “it’s either good enough for the politicians’ families or it ain’t good enough for our families!” and “keep the government out of my health care decisions!” Perhaps she momentarily forgot that she's on that government-managed health care plan?

Just before CNN dropped its coverage of the event, there was a small clear voice from the back of the room. Holding the microphone nervously, the woman made a number of atypical statements. She said that she was tired of hearing about the two-year waiting period in Britain for MS treatment when her own daughter had waited for twenty years in the US because no insurance plan would accept her “pre-existing condition.” By the time she qualified for Medicaid, she was completely disabled. She also said that she didn’t understand why everyone in the room – who she said she guessed to be on Medicare- were so vociferously opposed to expanding that coverage to the rest of the country. At this point, the crowd predictably booed again-yet when she asked if any of them wanted to give up their coverage and go back to a private plan, they booed even louder. She pointed out to the Senator that he’d been on government plans his entire life, and asked what was so terrible about them. He didn’t answer her question.

Which brings us to the second element: tragedy. The truth is that for many senior citizens this debate isn’t really about health insurance. Underlying the shouting and fist-shaking is a disquieting trend: the abandonment of America's youngest generation by its oldest.

Today’s oldest senior citizens grew up in a time when America was rural, mostly white, and otherwise segregated. Where getting “work” was relatively easy: you either stayed on the farm, opened a small town store, or walked up to a factory and asked whether they could use any extra hands on the line. This is life the way my grandfather’s generation (born in 1926) knew it.

As the first or second generation to have fully-funded public school through high school and then the GI bill to cover university tuition and housing, those now aged 65 and older were given the best that this country could offer. From the bread lines during the Depression to Social Security today, they have truly been supported from cradle to grave. Such investment in a generation during its youth was unprecedented – and with such support, they propelled America to heights never before imagined: the best living standards in the world, with cutting-edge technology and enviable democratic principles.

Yet curiously, as they approach their own sunset years, they see their manifold successes not as a product of public policy but of their own elbow grease and bootstraps. Certainly, a strong work ethic gave them the fortitude to take advantage of the opportunities given to them – but the key is that those opportunities existed to begin with. The tragedy of our nation is that, upon attaining such previously unimaginable success, this generation turned its back on society and announced that government was the problem.

Alienated from the hip-hop and hipster Millenial generation with its large minority population, peculiar fashion and music sensibilities, and more tolerant and global outlook, it seems the self-anointed “Greatest Generation” has decided that we are all somehow lesser citizens. They don’t like us – they find us weak, lazy and un-American- and they’ve got a lot of time on their hands to attend such town halls. Surrounded by like-minded seniors, they confirm their own world-view and ensure that the needs of their demographic get heard the loudest.

Nobody my age has time to attend. We’re busy working 50-hour weeks with no overtime at non-union jobs with poor health insurance, no pensions and fifteen-minute lunch breaks. Attending a noon get-together with our senators is not only impractical but also, apparently, pointless. Bitingly called the “entitlement generation” by the one that deems itself to have been the “greatest”, we’re actually entitled to very little.

Last month, the story of the Liberian girl raped by a group of young boys in Phoenix made international headlines. It's the type of story that sells papers, with its eye-catching themes of immigration, sex, tribalism, war and poverty. Especially in Arizona, where the largest minority population is from Mexico, this crime harkened a foray into uncharted territory. Given the state's proclivity for intolerance and racial profiling, I braced myself for an onslaught of anti-Liberian sentiment and misinformed stereotyping. Imagine my surprise to instead witness an outpouring of support by the general public – both for the victim and for her community.

At first, it seemed I would have positive news to report. Last week, the Maricopa County Attorney's Office met with the deputy Liberian Ambassador to the United States, Edward Sele. Sent directly by the Liberian president, Sele expressed empathy for the victim and the involved families while proclaiming his outrage over the crime committed. He took a firm stand on the issue of rape, declaring it to be absolutely unacceptable in his own country.

A public relations victory for the Liberian government has not, however, produced greater justice for the nation’s former compatriots. The defendants – those boys aged 9 to 14 who are charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, and in the case of the eldest, sexually assaulting a minor - apparently voluntarily waived their rights to having their parents or legal guardians present during their interrogation.

One wonders how that voluntary waver played out – and how it can even hold water in court. As one Phoenix defense attorney has pointed out, “the only thing a 9-year old can wave is his hand.” Police insist that the boys were read their Miranda rights, but what could this possibly mean in a 9-year old boy’s mind? Phoenix police Sgt. Andy Hill claims that young suspects “generally prefer that their parents not be present,” – which one has to seriously doubt. Under what possible circumstances would any child prefer to talk to the police on their own? I have a ten year old cousin who until recently was too shy to even place her own order at a restaurant, much less testify in a jail cell. A human rights expert with extensive experience in Africa also notes the intense fear that a Liberian refugee in particular would likely have of the police force. Even if they had understood that they legally had rights, would they have assumed it was dangerous to press for them? And especially in a culture known for its emphasis on respecting one’s elders, what child would arrogantly insist on their right to an attorney?

Perhaps the process was made easier by the fact that the boys appear to lack parents or legal guardians. The two youngest are second cousins who live with an aunt as their parents are still in Africa. She is not their legal guardian. Another lives with an aunt and uncle – family members to whom the Department of Child Protective Services may refuse to return the boy because the couple does not have any other children.

Another human rights advocate who works with local Liberian leaders points out that the oldest boy’s English level is far too poor to comprehend legalese. The exact age of the boys is also under question due to conflicting documents. Further muddying the waters, it has emerged that the girl claims she was raped by only one of the boys.

Yet despite such irregularities, the wheels of our justice system roll swiftly on. The Arizona Republic reported that, “The two youngest boys went to court Wednesday morning looking like elementary-school children - except for the handcuffs and leg irons. One of the boys shrugged and cried when the judge noted an award he'd been given for schoolwork in jail…The other was so tiny that his head barely showed above his chair at the defense table. He nearly tripped on his chains as a deputy led him from the courtroom.”

The oldest is already going to be tried as an adult; prosecutors are pushing for the second eldest to be tried as an adult also. If convicted, they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The outrage in Phoenix has slipped from anger over the victim’s father’s initial reaction of shunning her to one of anger over the obvious misappropriation of justice. How do we truly know what happened in that shed? How can a 9 year old boy truly rape a 9 year old girl? How do we know that the boys weren’t play-acting, recreating horrific scenes of violence that they may have often witnessed in their home country? Is this act legally, physically and psychologically similar to acts of rape committed by adults? Certainly, there needs to be a punishment, but to try a child as an adult and throw his life away exhibits a lack of proportionality, a lack of reason, and a startling lack of justice.

To prove a point about the defense of women, the prosecutor’s office has forgotten an equally important mission: to defend the rights of an abused or traumatized child. Sadly, having fled one land of insanity, it seems the Liberian community simply jumped into another.

The Phoenix police department has called it "one of the most horrific cases" they've ever seen. Two days ago, an 8 year old girl was lured into an apartment shed by four boys ages 9 to 14 with promises of gum or candy. For the next ten to fifteen minutes, they took turns raping her. A passerby dispersed them upon hearing the heart-wrenching screams.

Naturally, area residents are shocked. How could such a young girl be raped in broad daylight, by such young boys, and within earshot of neighbors? Worse, it seems that she knew the boys; according to CNN, one of the attackers may even have been a cousin. If the story ended here, it would be disturbing enough.

Yet it doesn't end here. The family, you see, is ashamed of the girl. Disgusted with her for 'allowing' herself to be raped. Embarassed to have attracted such negative attention. Worried about the tensions that this drama will create between themselves and their neighbors, who are all from the same refugee group. Her father was reported as saying that he didn't want her back.

She has been shunned. The Maricopa County Attorney has promised that its office will "seek justice" for the girl, who has already been placed with Child Protective Services. The oldest boy is expected to be charged as an adult.

Liberia. It seems so far away from Phoenix; most of us probably never give it a second thought. But now we are left with a puzzle that we can't solve. We don't understand what it means to be a refugee, or how that cataclysmic experience binds friends and families together with different rules than those that govern our neighborhoods. We don't understand the omnipresent threat of rape that previously pervaded their lives, and how that constant risk has made parents hold their daughters responsible for whatever befalls them. We don't understand what it means to have lived in a shame-based culture, and how that alters the individual's relationship to the whole. We don't understand how complicated the process of assimilation truly is, and we resent "these people" moving here with their "backward" ways and crimes against women.

And they don't understand us. They don't understand that they will NOT be shunned by American society because their daughter was raped, but only conversely if they disown the young victim. They don't understand that family issues can't be resolved according to the family patriarch; that domestic violence issues must be resolved in court. They likely don't understand that rape is prosecuted as a serious crime, or what it means to be tried as an adult. They see that things are spiralling out of control, that the media has invaded their small enclave, and that they are being shamed. It is only natural to close ranks.

Obviously, we have to take a stand. American society has made too much (although still not enough) progress on the issues of rape and domestic violence to start making exceptions for immigrant communities. We can hardly say, "Well, in your culture this is permitted, so go on ahead." In many cases, the US legal system is the only life preserver available to the victim; and if justice truly is blind then it must be applied evenly, regardless of a resident's cultural background.

Yet long term, I wonder if this hard line is going to benefit their community or ours. A young girl already severed from her homeland will now grow up without her parents or community. A young boy who may or may not have understood the gravity of his crime is going to be charged as an adult - perhaps as retribution for they community's decision to shun the girl. And the community itself will close itself off further, lessening its chances for the kind of assimilation that promotes social mobility.

From start to finish, it is a bitter tragedy. All that we can hope is that Phoenix and other major metropolitan areas will develop task forces to improve the ties with these communities - before another tragedy strikes.

America is in the midst of yet another Great Awakening. There may not be any white tents out in the cotton fields or fire-and-brimstone orators, but there sure is a bandwagon.

Drive past a billboard, flick on the TV, open your newspaper or read the New York Times online and you will be swiftly inundated not only with lists of ideas to save money but stories of this new breed of American. Competitions are springing up for the “cheapest family” in cities and states across the nation as we search for self-sacrificing saints to promulgate the faith. Converts congregate in the aisles of 99-cent stores sharing recipes for bean casserole and baby boomers’ eyes glisten knowingly of those tribulations their own grandparents must have faced. A national confession of our sins and a casting off of those childish former days are accompanied by vows of chastity: “No matter if the economy improves… I will never live beyond my means again!”

The fall back to reality was hard, and like a runner’s high there is an element of catharsis and confidence through the pain. Those experiencing this sudden sensation of salvation want to share it with others, and the commandment of saving instead of spending certainly fits the times. An ascetic response to the global recession that combines a mix of adoration for “old-fashioned values” with pious devotion and religious ecstasy, it’s the inevitable swing of the pendulum back towards conservation and preservation and away from the sins of a world gone haywire with consumption. Yet while it may bring personal atonement in this time of reckoning – as well as plenty of opportunities to judge those who do not fall in line- it offers few solutions to our nation’s hard problems.

Americans, ever self-reliant and loathe to depend on the state or society to pull them up, are failing to appreciate the dimensions shaping this crisis. Instead, we are simply behaving in the same mode as we always have: every man for himself. In the 1990s it was your own fault if you weren’t making enough money and couldn’t buy yourself the world; today it is your own fault if you can’t save enough money to protect yourself from the world. Essentially unchanged…it’s as if we’ve learned nothing.

Making cleaning supplies from hand and growing our neo-victory gardens are great ideas. But they are no substitute for policy that could shape a livable future. Instead of asking ourselves how many boxes of cake mix we can buy for a dollar at one grocery store versus another, we should be reflecting on what it means to be a functioning society in 2009. A great many things are broken - from our financial institutions to our health care system to education and retirement. Trust is essential in building the local and national bond that sustains a country, but other than some nostalgic pride in our patriotic holidays, what faith in our society do we have?

Why do we have such a shortage of affordable housing - which would guarantee that everyone, regardless of their income, could afford to live in the city where they work? Why do most American cities and towns lack public transportation but have an abundance of freeways - which forces most of the Middle Class to take out huge auto loans just to get to work? Why do we hear of bridges collapsing over the Mississippi River, lead in children’s toys and almost monthly e. coli breakouts in our food supply? How can it be possible that the FAA merely “suggests” standards for our air transportation safety instead of mandating regulations, and why is college becoming so prohibitively expensive? Why is there a donut hole in Medicare coverage and how can we have 46 million people without insurance at all? In every department of our lives, the story is the same: a bloated bureaucracy of lobbyists and corporate talking-points that have driven the nail of deregulation into the coffin of the American dream.

Today we are surrounded by the wreckage of nearly three decades of this laissez-faire approach. The conventional wisdom told us that the market had “everything under control”, and somehow we were collectively brainwashed to believe that those piddly little details like civil rights, access to health care, employment for those willing to work, privacy of our personal details and credit information, and the safety of our streams, bridges and airplanes would be managed through mysterious market mechanisms that the groveling masses couldn’t possibly understand.

I’m not anti-capitalism or communist, but I’d say that in almost every regard, the market has failed. And how could it not have? The market is designed to reward the survival of the fittest, to line the pockets of those who can capitalize on the moment and make a fantastic overnight gain. It’s not designed to promote stewardship, to bring fulfillment or equality to society, or to foster a better democracy. We’ve asked of it what it simply cannot give us. That which we really need.

And now, we all wait with bated breath for the economy to turn itself back on, as if it’s merely been sleeping. The day will certainly come that the economy will improve – all recessions end – but we are fooling ourselves if we expect our lives to become measurably better. The same wealth disparity will persist, as will the revolving door between Wall Street and the halls of Congress.

In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the US has the highest inequality after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000 (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/21/business/main4535488.shtml). Noting that social mobility is lowest in countries with the greatest inequality, the report adds that “In the United States, the richest 10 percent earn an average of $93,000 - the highest level in the OECD. The poorest 10 percent earn an average of $5,800 - about 20 percent lower than the OECD average. "The report cautions that “Greater income inequality stifles upward mobility between generations, making it harder for talented and hardworking people to get the rewards they deserve…It polarizes societies, it divides regions within countries, and it carves up the world between rich and poor."

This, not a previous failure to clip coupons, is the real crisis that we face. All of the weekly specials on ground-chuck and 2 for 1 T-shirt deals won’t set things right.

As the effort to reform our nation’s health care system intensifies, certain Republican leaders, industry front-groups and lobbyists are engaged in a last-ditch effort to frame the debate in an ideological way meant to distort the facts and strike fear into the hearts of Americans.

First is the lie that President Obama and the Democratic Party are proposing a sweeping overhaul of our medical infrastructure with the goal of micro-managing every element of your health care. Not five minutes after the President concluded a town hall meeting on the topic in Green Bay, during which he repeatedly and explicitly said that his proposed reforms would not change anything for people who had insurance and were satisfied with it, Republican leaders held press conferences stating that they were ‘absolutely opposed to government-run health care.’

Were they not listening? Or were they hoping that the American people were not listening? President Obama and others working towards a viable plan have taken great pains to reiterate their intentions. The government is not going to tell us which doctor to see or what tests we can have. But need I point out that our insurance companies already do this? The very development that Americans profess to fear most – the intrusion of an entity between the patient and the doctor- is already the status quo. This is precisely how managed care and insurance operate – by creating lists of doctors, procedures and medications that will and will not be covered.

The second series of lies are really myths about the quality of care Americans receive now versus what they will receive with a public single-payer plan option. A pamphlet I received from my health insurance provider makes the following assertions: the employer-based system will be destroyed, premiums will skyrocket, private insurance will be only for the wealthy, and there will be reduced innovation.

Hold on just one second. Aren’t all of those things happening NOW? Already? This is exactly the reason that we need health care reform!

The employer-based system is crumbling because small firms can’t afford to purchase it for their employees; a growing number of employees find the individual premiums prohibitively expensive; and because large corporations are continually downsizing their health insurance options and off-loading larger percentages of the premiums onto employees as a way to cut costs and raise stock prices.
Premiums themselves are certainly skyrocketing: just for the pleasure of being insured, we pay over $4000 per year for two healthy individuals. But who am I to complain? According to the National Coalition on Health Care, “in 2008, employer health insurance premiums increased by 5.0 percent – two times the rate of inflation. The annual premium for an employer health plan covering a family of four averaged nearly $12,700.” (The Coalition took its statistics from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation report on Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Survey published in September 2008). That same report notes that “since 1999, employment-based health insurance premiums have increased 120 percent, compared to cumulative inflation of 44 percent and cumulative wage growth of 29 percent during the same period.”

Who was raising these premiums? It certainly wasn’t the government, because we don’t have socialized medicine in this country.

As for private insurance being only for the wealthy, this trend is already well-underway. As stated above, increasing numbers of middle-class people simply cannot afford to pay the premiums. A parallel problem is the fact that many lower-paying jobs simply do not offer health benefits at all. Many service jobs operate on an unofficial, cash basis, but even when the work is performed on the books it tends to be at small companies that cannot afford to offer health insurance. The situation is no better at larger retailers and even local government jobs because of the prevailing policy of hiring everyone at just-below fulltime –ensuring that few employees qualify for benefits even if that firm technically offers them.

46 million Americans – some 15% of the population – have no insurance. While a few of them may be wealthy individuals who either believe themselves to be invincible or able to pay for catastrophic illness, I would hazard a guess that at least 45 million of them would like to be covered, were it available and affordable.

Of course, the real inconvenient truth is that private insurance, while highly desired, is hardly a safety net at the moment. As a recent CNBC.com article on research reported in the American Journal of Medicine points out, medical bills were a factor in 60% of US personal bankruptcies, up 50% from six years ago. More than 75% of those families had medical insurance – plus they were well-educated, owned homes and were in professional occupations. Yet even with insurance, medical expenses in 92% of the cases exceeded 10% of their income.

Even more appalling is the pervasive practice of dropping patients from their insurance. "Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year,” CNBC.com quotes from the same article. Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein adds grimly, “Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy… For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection.”
And what of that threat of reduced innovation? Well this is already happening as well. In fields with huge financial incentives, such as coronary and neurological procedures, there have been huge gains. But in fields without a strong lobby or financial incentive – children’s health care, cancer, orphan diseases and preventative medicine – there is a lengthy backlog of promising research that dies in the laboratory test tubes for lack of adequate funding.

The greatest lie of all is the one underlying this debate: the notion that the best way to operate a national health care system is through the market. The market exists to make money, and people who are well do not make money for a medical industry that bills per procedure.

Yet the corollary to this truth is that national health care makes good sense for capitalism and for that American Dream we all seek. Our companies are put at a real disadvantage when they are forced to pay for rising premiums compared to manufacturers and firms overseas. This creates a perverse incentive to off-shore these jobs and also keeps real wages from rising – after all, what company is going to raise your salary when it is already paying that much again for your health insurance? Our current system is a terrible disincentive for entrepreneurism – that combination of innovation and elbow grease that we collectively believe built this nation – because it corrupts the risk/benefit analysis by making it incredibly reckless for anyone other than the very wealthy to set out on their own and develop a new product or a revolutionary work of art. It further makes very little sense in today’s mobile society – one in which individual workers are likely to be laid off and retrain for new jobs throughout their lifetime- for health insurance to be tied to employment. The new reality is one in which most of us will experience an ebb and flow in employment: family changes, chronic illness, periods of renewed education, and of course lay-offs. That is why health insurance must remain constant, and why any viable public plan must be created at the federal level.

According to The Nation magazine, “the healthcare industry tops the list for spending on lobbying in 2009, reporting about 127 million in expenditures for the first three months alone. The lobby’s (campaign) Conservatives for Patients’ Rights vows to spend $20 million to scare Americans about Obama’s reforms.” That sounds like an awful lot of extra money they have to spend – money coming directly from our monthly premiums. When an industry is willing to sacrifice so much to preserve the status quo – one that is doing untold harm to growing millions of Americans- we know it’s time for reform.

After nearly two decades of rising excess, “Living Within Your Means” is suddenly all the rage. In magazines, newspapers and on TV, cheap is the new chic; on Wall Street, Suits are fretting about the possibly permanent return to frugality and away from recreational shopping. As Americans cart truckloads of long-forgotten belongings to Goodwill – where, incidentally, they have begun to shop for the basics– there is a real sense that a sea change in our attitude towards consumption is underway.

There is much to applaud in this trend. Most people really, truly, only need a few pairs of shoes, a few pairs of pants, and an assortment of work and casual tops. We don’t need ten sets of sheets and twenty towels when a handful will do, and we really don’t need three styles of plastic dishes for “outdoor entertaining”. Buying a car once every decade is rational and more affordable, as is downsizing into a house of reasonable square-footage. A wonderful renaissance is taking place in kitchens across the country as people realize that it is actually possible to cook meals at home, and there are intangible gains to be had by spending more time together as a family playing board games or even running around the backyard – all for free.

Yet underlying this trend is a critical misunderstanding of the crisis. While a contributing cause of the current situation was a collective spending beyond one’s means, it was not the only cause. A corrupt financial system with perverse incentives to approve buyers- particularly minorities- for homes that they could not afford, an upside-down tax system that promotes corporate welfare while sucking every penny from those least able to afford it, a continuation and even speeding-up of outsourcing for both manual labor and office jobs, exorbitant health care and education costs and a decline in real wages surely had something to do with it – arguably much more to do with it.
It wasn’t the occasional splurge on an anniversary necklace or a weekend at an amusement park that did the country in. It was the structure of our economy and the fact that most Americans cannot afford to get by – with or without the little extras. Charging the little extras to the Visa card was a symptom of the disease, not the illness itself. And so today, by avoiding the extras, Americans duck additional financial pain but are merely applying bandages to a dying patient.

The risk today is that ordinary Americans, instead of challenging the status quo and pressing for real transformative change, are berating themselves and devolving into martyrs of frugality. Like anorexic patients who count every calorie as if the counting, not the enjoying of the meal, was the end goal, many today are expending all of their energy on the tallying and the agonizing instead of on the living. Sure, there has been a lot of waste, and certainly, where there is waste, there can be a rectification and therefore a future increase in savings. Yet, what qualifies as waste is a difficult matter – and in the frenzy toward cutting costs, important elements of life can be the first to go.

Shelter and food (and in many places, transportation) are necessities, so they stay. What about the type of food they’ll buy, though? Will it be nutritious produce, yogurt and lean meat, which cost more, or ready-made packaged meals, which cost less but offer far more calories, fat and sodium? And what about their shelter and transportation? Will they perform annual maintenance to ensure the proper functioning and safety of their homes and vehicles, or will they postpone it all for a better year? What about pets – are they ‘family’ or are they a luxury? As the abundance of abandoned pets seems to suggest, responsibility for the lives that once dwelled with the family has been brushed off as a needless excess in the quest for a balanced budget.

And what of extra-curricular activities for kids (to say nothing of hobbies for adults)? Is Pop-Warner football, a weekly ballet lesson, a summer theater class, or piano lessons too much to ask for in a recession? Will parents cancel their children’s best chance at enrichment, at experiencing the world, and at both personal and interpersonal development so that their ledger will be tidy? Many school districts seem to agree that these are worthless trivialities in life, demonstrated by their decision to ax artistic, athletic and even industrial and technology programs despite a proven record of improving students’ lives and rounding out their education – not to mention jump-starting and inspiring future careers.

Let’s think of all of the other things that could go: weekend afternoons at the movies; birthday parties and gifts on religious holidays; the feasts for those religious holidays; extra books and developmental toys for our children’s book-shelves and toy chests; art to adorn our hallways; family vacations; outings to the zoo or the museum; cameras to record the special moments in our lives, sports equipment and the chance to perfect one’s game; camping and boating gear to facilitate our exploration of the outdoors; the time wasted by exploring nature when one could be working a second or third job; houseplants; the Internet and cell-phones; coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, seafood, cheese, jams and other yummy treats; weddings, births and retirements with their expensive festivities; Netflix and cable TV; craft sets and other hobbies; contact lenses; electronic games; higher education.. and maybe we could all start washing our clothes in the back yard, too. The list goes on and on. After food and shelter, we could pretty much cut out everything and still survive.

If we do that, if we cut out everything not immediately necessary to everyday survival, we can succeed in our rush to return to the supposed good-old-days when households managed their finances without access to credit and abstained from frivolities. But once we return, I’m afraid we’ll see that the reality can be bleak. An example that always comes to mind is that of my father’s tragic teeth. Born in 1950, when the economy was supposedly improving, my father’s family had no dental care. The neglected trips to the dentist saved his parents – a WWII veteran turned car salesman and his wife, a secretary- thousands of much-needed dollars over the years, I am sure. But today, it hasn’t saved any money or teeth. Dozens of crowns and cavities later – not to mention thousands of dollars in expense and countless hours of pain – it is clear that the trade-off wasn’t worth it. Yet it is the reality of living within one’s means when one’s means are simply too small.

And that, I fear, is the real problem in our economy and our society. When over 60% of personal bankruptcies are due to medical bills, when promising students drop out of college for financial reasons, when expectant mothers cannot provide their babies with pre-natal care, when two incomes is not enough to make ends meet, when a parent cannot afford to enroll their little boy in Little League or give their daughter swimming lessons, and when the queues outside food banks is ever-growing, we don’t have a problem with living within our means. We have a problem with the means themselves. While we all have a responsibility to manage our households the best we can, it is time that we start demanding answers to why it is increasingly impossible to succeed in that task. Could it be because of the inequities inherent in our current system? I believe so. The time for change and reform is now, as Congress debates a flurry of new bills pertaining to the health care, industrial and financial sectors.

Your leaders need to hear from you. They are certainly hearing from the lobbyists.

Following President Obama's historic speech today, CNN followed up with a variety of correspondents and commentators. One of them was Republican Representative Mike Pence, who called the speech "disappointing" because it seemed to create a "moral equivalency" between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In Pence's opinion, Israel is America's ally, and we should only be pursuing peace in the Middle East insofar as it promotes the interests of our ally. He asserted that "millions of Americans" were on the side of Israel, and that the burden of peace was squarely on the shoulders of Palestinians.

Embedded in Mr. Pence's logic is the root of the problem.

To Mr. Pence, I say, “Moral equivalency? Exactly." Moral equivalency is not ours to grant - it is inherent in all peoples' quest for self-determination and survival. Each side believes that it has God on its side, each side has a litany of reasons validating its own righteousness, and each side has historical precedent to justify its current position. Moral equivalency, in the sense that each side has a right to fight for its interests - is a given and a fact of life.

Political equivalency - now that is the real question. It's political equivalency that Americans are not willing to grant - but without it, no progress can be made.

Many Americans are uneasy with Muslims and their unfamiliar dress, believe all Muslims must be closet terrorists, feel a residual guilt over the Holocaust, and have a religious affinity with the Israelis due to the sharing of the Old Testament with Christianity. Add to this the fact that historically, there have been many more Jews than Arabs in the United States (particularly in influential political cities), plus memories of the long gas lines from the 1970s, and it is unsurprising that Americans would want to side indefinitely with Israel.

The problem with this is.... well, there are numerous problems with this.

First of all, this intransigent position reflects a lack of appreciation for the way the world is changing. Clinging to a dogged support for Israel is no longer politically neutral - or equivalent to taking the moral high ground - because of Israel's own egregious actions since its founding. The forced exodus of the Palestinian people from their homes and the refusal of their right to return pale in comparison to the continued policy of responding to any protest large or small with overwhelming force -the most notorious being the firing of tanks in retaliation for young boys throwing stones. These repeated actions, in combination with the draconian legal restrictions placed on Palestinians' freedom of movement, economic vitality and educational opportunities, have caused Israel's support in Europe to drop off precipitously.

Which leads me to the second problem. Europe, still the home of the United States’ most enduring allies, is undergoing a social transformation that can only be called revolutionary. To blindly side with Israel is now politically untenable domestically for European countries that have large Arab populations – to do so would be to light the powder keg under all of their feet.

If we need a third reason that our absolute loyalty to Israel needs revisiting, let’s consider the relative failure of our policy up to this point. Billions upon billions of dollars have been sent to both Israel and Egpyt, among other allies, and countless conferences have been held, but no true solution has been met. Why? One reason is that the US has continued to act as Israel's advocat. To create a real solution, it must act as a neutral partner.

Today, as I watched President Obama’s speech, I felt a flicker of hope that perhaps the next eight years of my adult life will not be spent fighting the Crusades but will be an era of increased collaboration. Whether the crisis between the Palestinians and Israelis will ultimately be resolved remains to be seen. But it is time to begin viewing that as only one piece of the diplomatic puzzle, not a lens through which all policies are viewed. The Middle East is here, and is everywhere. We must extend our hand, and attempt to work together. If they are willing to forgive us for all of Bush’s blunders, there may be some common ground after all.

(Readers interested in reading an extended version of this blog are invited to visit http://bravetheworld.blogspot.com/)

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a judge has ordered 13-year old Daniel Hauser to undergo chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkin’s Lymphoma against both his and his parents’ expressed wishes. Diagnosed in January, Hauser initially began radiation and chemotherapy, but stopped in favor of alternative treatments – at which point the doctors filed a child-neglect petition. Noting that five doctors agreed on the necessary course of treatment, the judge ruled the boy to be in need of child protection, stating a “compelling state interest in the life and welfare of Daniel sufficient to override the fundamental constitutional rights of both the parents and Daniel to the free exercise of religion and the due process right of the parents to direct the upbringing of their child."

71% of readers on the Tribune site voted in favor of the ruling, and they have strong facts buttressing their opinion. According to MayoClinic.com, “advances in diagnosis, staging and treatment of Hodgkin's disease have helped to make this once uniformly fatal disease highly treatable with the potential for full recovery.” At first glance, then, the decision seems obvious and uncomplicated: a child has a potentially fatal yet easily curable illness, and his parents don’t want to treat him. Worse, they’ve brainwashed him into rejecting treatment and are leading him to his death. Clearly, the state should intervene.

They do have a point. And yet, there are many important subtleties and layers to this dilemma, in particular compelling issues of individual liberty. As such this ruling sets a chilling precedent for personal rights.

First, the ruling appears based on the assumption that life and death decisions cannot be left to the parents if they choose a course not preferred by the state. I would strongly disagree with the judge – it is exactly in such matters that the ‘due process right of the parent to direct the upbringing of their child’ must be upheld. Parents are the legal, moral and spiritual guardians of their children, and they have a fundamental right to raise their children within their particular world view – be it unconventional or unpopular. If such constitutional rights can be negated in a medical case of life and death, are they not made irrelevant? After all, constitutional rights are there to protect us in precisely these types of instances; by comparison we hardly need them in the monotony of every day life.

Parents make many unhealthy and unwise decisions for their children. Critically, we should ask, “What is the definition of abuse?” Rape is abuse, starvation is abuse, and physical beatings are abuse…but after that, it is murky. Will it become ‘abuse’ to raise a child in poverty? To remove an infant from life support? To attempt to deliver a baby with a midwife instead of with drugs? To refuse a blood transfusion? What of selective reduction in a multiple pregnancy? Whether to put tubes in a child’s ears or use chiropractic instead? Will parents be forced to steer their children through a course of heroic medicine instead of palliative care in diseases such as leukemia? What about children with weight –related diabetes – should their parents be arrested for the clear and present danger in which they have put their obese children? If high schoolers experiment sexually as they have done for generations, should parents now be prosecuted? What if they can’t or won’t pay for college tuition – that would affectively cut their child off from a meaningful economic future, which is a type of death. Once a thoughtful person starts down this road, the list of parental quandaries abounds.

So the first issue is one of parental rights and the dignity of the family. There is a pervasive crisis of confidence in our society which assumes that all families are dysfunctional, abusive and neglectful – and that the state must intervene to correct decisions of which it disapproves.

The second is an over-simplification of medical diagnoses and treatments. Having had two family members with the same cancer, I can relate to the difficult decision the parents are forced to make. Based on our outlook on life and a lack of spiritual barriers to treatment, in both instances we chose the invasive method – surgeries to remove the tumors, plus chemotherapy in one and radiation in the other. At least in the latter case, the doctors gave the patient two options: he could operate and then proceed with radiation, or he could simply monitor it, meaning regular tests but no treatment unless it became worse. In the previous case, chemotherapy was required – this was twenty years previous and radiation was not being offered.

I was personally relieved that my husband, the second case, chose the radiation. I didn’t want to have that threat of a disease lurking over our heads, always looming as something unresolved. And yet, before he could begin, we had to sign forms stating our understanding that side effects – in addition to extreme fatigue and nausea- were a substantial risk ‘compared to the average population’ of developing stomach and other soft-tissue and organ cancers. Cancers that are next to impossible to treat. Cancers that could kill him, all because he chose the invasive treatment method for the cancer he currently had instead of taking a “wait and see” approach. It seems simple at first, but it is quite the opposite when the pen is in your hand.

The first case of testicular cancer was my father. With two children at home and one on the way, my dad chose the chemotherapy for the same reason my husband later chose radiation. But it took its toll, nonetheless. Besides losing his hair, he risked liver damage because the doses at the time were substantially higher. The side effects that came later were even worse, with many current and frustrating health problems connected to that course of treatment twenty-some years ago: low testosterone, peripheral neuropathy, and chemo-brain, that pervasive forgetfulness experienced by many survivors.

We will never know with certainty if it was the treatment that saved my husband and father’s life. After all the expense and the pain, we tell ourselves that we did the right thing. But I wonder: had they had this disease today, as a child (and it is a disease that strikes boys in high school), would they have been given the same option to “wait and see”? Or, we they have been forced into aggressive treatment for “their own sake?”

The third issue is one of individual physical integrity and the right to choose not to live. As alienating as this idea may sound, it is a fact of life that none of us are going to live forever. Many cancer patients wrestle with this reality, as it hits them squarely in the face. It should be a fundamental right to choose one’s own path in dealing with a debilitating illness or how to live out one’s last days, if that be the case. Medicine should be holistic and concerned with the health of the entire person, not merely a missile defense system designed to hone in on one of the body’s trouble spots.

Every person should have a right to the dignity of their own person and their own body. It is not an indication of insanity to reject a course of treatment as simply being beyond the bounds of what one individual can- or is willing- to bear. People who wish to live a spiritual life of a different color should be allowed to do so; families who do not feel the same way about the material world should not be forced to act against their own beliefs in order to execute the state’s beliefs in order to prolong the corporeal existence.

This ruling is particularly troubling as we consider geriatric medicine, where patients are repeatedly overruled with the argument that “they don’t really know what they are saying” or “they don’t really mean that” or “they don’t really know what they want.”

It is a dangerous road that we all travel as a society when doctors claim to speak for the “true” interests of a patient – one who is attempting to speak for himself but is opposed to the doctors. A doctor who overrules a patient’s expressed wishes clearly does not have the patient’s best interest at heart. In such cases, the court should defend the patient’s right to self-actualization, not the doctor’s desire to see his scientific outcome bear fruit.

This case is fascinating and terrifying because it presents a story formed from the overlapping spheres of the ordinary citizen’s life: family, parenting, health, religion, and individual rights. Especially in the US legal system, where cases set a precedent for future rulings, we as citizens must question whether this decision is in all of our best interest. While it is a victory for the young patient’s battle over cancer, it is clearly a loss for his personal dignity and liberty. A pyrrhic victory, indeed.

Anyone who has purchased shampoo, toothpaste or body wash in the US within the past five years knows what a nightmare of options such an excursion presents. Improvable claims about 'beautifying effects' tempt even the most cynical, constantly growing and shrinking bottle sizes baffle the budget-conscious, and assertions of 'purity' lure those concerned about their health and the environment.

Acculturated to the idea of "consumer choice" by our corporate - dominated society, most of us latch on to our primary objective (beauty, frugality or health and sustainability) as a light house - a beacon to help us navigate the sea of choices.

In my household, our concern was health - for us, for the environment, and for society. Even before my husband was diagnosed and treated for cancer in early 2008, we made a concentrated effort to weed out toxic ingredients. This meant purchasing brands that most mainstream consumers had never heard of, like Tom's of Main and Burt's Bees.

Our pro-active toiletry purchases complemented our diet. We had recently begun eating organic and minimally processed food to the extent possible - discovering among others brands such as Kashi, Odwalla, Naked Juice, Cascadian Farms, Barbara's, Health Valley, Arrowhead Mills, Stoneyfield Farms and Dagoba Chocolates.

That was in 2004. Still in college and working several jobs, we could justify more expensive purchases on our tight budget for moral reasons: I simply couldn't fathom knowingly using a product loaded with carcinogens - toxins that I would massage directly onto my own scalp and then rinse down the drain out into the lakes and streams. We also wanted to help smaller, environmentally conscious companies succeed in a market dominated by Archer-Daniels Midland and Unilever.

Just five years later, our attempt to "do our part" for the planet through eco-conscious purchases seems sadly anachronistic. If we make the same purchases today, we are no longer helping mom-and-pop enterprises, but are instead lining the pockets of the largest multinationals we set out to avoid.

In her recent Alternet article, "In Burt's Bees, Tom's of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Brands? Take Another Look -- They May Not Be What They Seem", Andrea Whitfill reveals that not all "natural" brands are as sustainable as their marketing and bucolic origin stories make them appear.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/131910/burt%27s_bees%2C_tom%27s_of_ma?page=entire

Whitfill's research will make most of us think twice about the supposedly progressive brands we purchase:

Burts Bees is now owned by Clorox. Tom's of Maine is now owned by Colgate-Palmolive. Brown Cow Yogurt is owned by Danone, which also owns a majority stake in Stoneyfield Farms Yogurt. Horizon Organic (milk and eggs) is owned by Dean Foods. Odwalla is owned by Coca-Cola. Pepsi owns Naked. Smuckers bought R.W. Knudsen and Santa Cruz Organic.Kellogg's now owns Kashi, Kraft (itself a subsidiary of Altria, which also owns Phillip Morris) bought Back to Nature, General Mills owns Cascadian Farms, and Weetabix owns Barbara's. Mother's is owned by Quaker Oats (in turn owned by Pepsi)and both Health Valley and Arrowhead Mills are owned by Hain Celestial Group (which Whitfill points out is traded on the NASDAQ and partially owned by Heinz). Green & Black's chocolate was bought by Schwepp's, and Dagoba Chocolate is now owned by Hershey's.

Surprised? I consider myself relatively up to speed on which of my (formerly) special brands have been purchased by a global corporation, but even I was shocked by the almost complete degree to which this process has taken place. What's left? Maranatha Peanut Butter? Annie's Organic Bunnies? Muir Glenn?

There may be no way to tell. Whitfill points out that such corporate ownership is rarely made obvious on the packaging.

She includes a revealing quote by Laura Christenson of Spins: "There is frequently a backlash when a big cereal package-goods company buys a natural or organic company.I don't want to say it's manipulative, but consumers are led to believe these brands are pure, natural or organic brands. It's very purposely done."

This leaves advocates for the environment turned concerned shoppers in a serious bind. Do we submit and buy regular Clorox and Colgate on the cheap? (They are much less expensive, after all). Or do we continue making our old purchases, knowing that the money is going to the multinational instead of a man out in the forest tending his bees? If we choose the second, do we comfort ourselves with the thought that we are still using a product that is less harmful? (As far as I know, the parent corporations haven't fiddled with the ingredients - that would kill the golden goose.) Or do we tell ourselves that 'at least we are making a values statement?' Or is it none of these but something else altogether - a positive development by which healthier products are becoming more widely available to the masses at potentially lower cost?

I'm not entirely certain. What I do know is that the idea of 'buying our way to sustainability' - if it ever had any real hope- is now officially dead. If we want truly sustainable goods (organic in the fullest, original sense of the word), we have to start at the beginning. We have to see daily hygiene and sustenance not as a cache of favorite labels, but with an eye toward simplicity and the home-made.

We've already begun making our own toothpaste, have recipes for shampoo and conditioner, and make our own kitchen and bath cleaner. We make our own bread, and cook dinners not from a box but from the garden - even if we have to buy the produce from store. By slowing down and looking to commercial products only when we truly require them, we can all live more simply. Which is, after all, the heart of sustainability.

I do not yet have children, but when I do, I will be inclined to either home school them or enroll them in a charter school with an emphasis on the arts, sciences, or another area of their interest. This is not because I do not support the democratic ideal of public school - quite the contrary - but because I would not want my kids to waste their time and potential as my siblings and I did for so many years. The demands on public school are so great that a talented or struggling individual student is easily overlooked and much time is wasted on trying to maintain classroom discipline. Ironically, with their mandate to broadly serve everyone, many public schools end up deeply meeting the needs of no one. I am especially concerned with the over-emphasis on testing and the rote-memorization in public schools that is becoming a proxy for real learning. By contrast, there is a palatable sense of purpose and a dynamic energy at many charter schools, and I would want my kids to be surrounded by that aura of dedication, personal attention, and quality instruction.

And yet, for all of their appeal, I don't know that these schools are the solution. For one thing, I would argue that they are succeeding right now partially because they are the “exception”, an alternative to the mainstream. If everyone joins Charter schools, they will lose that cache, that exclusivity and sparkle that underlies their mission and helps them raise funds and attract glowing media attention. Additionally, many Charter schools are allowed to select their students in a way that public schools aren’t – the latter are obligated to serve everyone within their boundaries, even when they are stretched beyond capacity or have inadequate resources.

Secondly, I would assert that depending on a few highly educated souls who are willing to work for a pittance is not a solution for public education at large. I have a good friend who works at one such Charter school. She is highly qualified and well-compensated for her hours, but she only works part-time as a music teacher, a situation that will never change since her charter school schedules its academic courses in the morning and its art classes in the afternoon (that way, all employees are part-time). In a public school, she would work full-time (possibly travelling between two or three schools, but she’d have a full-time salary), would have health benefits and would be participating in the state retirement system. After five years of working for this charter school, she is faced with an impossible dilemma: does she continue to make a meager living out of the sheer love of education? Or, does she eventually want to be able to afford a moderate standard of living – one exhibited by her students’ families-including having health insurance?

It seems to be deeply embedded in our culture that teachers should be some kind of ascetic, noble saints with no material aspirations of their own - as if demanding a living wage is gross selfishness on their part. It’s almost as if our society believes that to pay teachers a professional wage would somehow degrade their civic mission, that money would soil the purity of their calling. I would argue instead that by paying low wages, society tells its future college students that to become a teacher is to sell oneself short, that to teach is not a “real” job.

Further, I question whether it is in the best interest of the schools - Charter or public- and the communities they serve to have mini waves of idealistic Ivy League grads who flit in for a few years of “playing teacher” before moving on to bigger and better things.

Two parts of this widely-held belief don’t sit right with me. For one thing, why do we assume that graduates from expensive and internationally acclaimed schools automatically will be able to make a more lasting impact on students’ lives – especially impoverished students in broken communities- than teachers who come from those communities? These elite universities deserve their accolades, but most of their accomplishments lie in more prestigious scientific fields and not in education. We need improved pedagogy across the board at ALL of our state universities instead of relying on some magical way to lure these brilliant and selfless stars from the East Coast to come serve in our community for a year or two. While these graduates do have something valuable to give from their hearts, we need sustainable educational policy and not charity depending on students wealthy enough to take a few years off.

Additionally, we need teachers who are going to put down roots in their community, who will have a stake in the big picture and who will be intimately familiar with the neighborhood and district’s needs. Yes, there are teachers who “should have retired a long time ago” or who are simply warming the seat and climbing the pay scale without making a difference in their students lives, but their presence should be a call to professionalize the field instead of doing quite the opposite by treating the career as a community service year to be experienced and then abandoned.

Finally, are the lessons from Charter schools’ success applicable to the public school model? And if not, with the exception of a few inner-city success stories, are they just a way for disaffected middle class families to ensure that their kids get a private-school education on public dollars? And worse, what of the concern that they are siphoning public tax dollars away from the traditional public schools, thereby reinforcing the cycle that dooms public schools to fail? Many argue that the money should be put where it will have a higher success rate, and I agree – but is this merely a way to pass the buck onto private enterprise instead of having the civic and political conversations needed to address the core problems and challenges in educating our youth for the 21st Century?

“Phoenix is in the eye of the storm.”

That is how Phoenix Police Chief Andy Anderson describes the metropolitan area’s struggle to combat the wave of drug cartel violence spilling over the Arizona-Mexico border, in a February 11 interview with the ABC news program Nightline.

According to that broadcast, the Arizona capital ranks 2nd worldwide in kidnappings, beat only by Mexico City. Last year alone, there were a stunning 370 kidnappings here, all believed to be tied to the ongoing drug war raging in Mexico’s Nogales and other border cities. .

As a resident of the Phoenix metro area for most of my 26 years, I’m accustomed to living in a more violent and criminal city than most. In separate incidences when I was eight years old, our home was broken into and our kitchen window was shot out. In a third unrelated incident, in our new subdivision, my grandmother’s vehicle was set on fire while it was parked in our driveway.

The city long held the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of vehicular theft in the nation, and gang violence was commonplace in the news. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, eco-terrorists launched an arson assault on upscale communities; in the mid-2000s, the metro area was paralyzed by a serial killer. Losing two governors to impeachment by the time I was in high school, it seemed there was no variety of crime that could not be committed in Phoenix.

In such a place, it can hardly be surprising that citizens ardently defend their Constitutional right to carry firearms, or that they consistently vote for “America’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio - a man criticized by Amnesty International, among others, for his overzealous and inhumane approach. Their disapproval only reinforces his local popularity - and by reinstituting chain gangs, setting up a web “Jail Cam”, forcing maximum-security prisoners to wear pink underwear and eat green bologna, and establishing a permanent “Tent City” (read: outside jail where temperatures on upper bunks are recorded above 150 degrees Fahrenheit, or over 65 degrees Celsius), Arpaio has made himself into a larger-than-life, celebrity crime-fighting folk hero.

There are many people such as myself that roll their eyes in disgust and vote against Sheriff Joe. Particularly for his virulent and blatant racial profiling as well as his belief that he constitutes a law unto himself, I consider him not only to be a danger to the rights of all citizens but also an embarrassment to our state.

And yet, I know that his popularity will only be augmented by the kidnapping statistics. Fed up with a remote and aloof federal government and feeling increasingly under attack by a shadowy parallel society of drug smugglers and coyotes (people smugglers), anxious citizens turn to the one person who appears to not only care, but ACTS. For his fans, he is the lone voice in the wilderness, the only elected leader brave enough to cast political correctness aside and fight the deluge of crime tied to that lawless zone south of the border known as Mexico.

His assertions about the percentage of crime tied to Mexico and illegal immigration are likely overblown- given his proclivity for bombastic proclamations to rile up the angry voter base – and yet there is no denying the increasing presence that illegal immigration occupies in the daily lives of many Phoenicians.

Today, simply driving between home and work, it is not uncommon to find ourselves behind an unmarked delivery van with (illegally) tinted windows -through which we can just make out the shapes of twenty or more heads. Typically, the van is going a good ten miles below the speed limit; they cannot risk getting pulled over for fear of deportation. Yet, being unfamiliar with our urban grid and presumably full of anxiety, the vans are repeatedly caught in high-speed chases and spectacular crashes – in which, sadly, many of the passengers are flung to their deaths. Those who survive are often caught on news footage as they flee on foot across highways and into neighboring communities, climbing over backyard walls in a desperate attempt to escape “La Migra,” the immigration police. (You can see videos of such crashes here: and here.

We witnessed one such accident south of Tucson over the weekend – a generic white van was tipped over in the median between the north and southbound freeways, surrounded by scattered possessions. Traffic was halted in both directions as nearly twenty squad cars and at least five ambulances cordoned off the scene. Our suspicions were confirmed: lined up by the highway patrol was a group of under-nourished, twenty-something, Latino males.

Just minutes before, we had passed through an impromptu border patrol checkpoint, about thirty miles north of the border. While we immediately understood the logic: roving border patrols along the various highways in order to catch those who entered through the open desert or the American sister city of Nogales, it is very disconcerting as a citizen to have to declare your citizenship when you have not even left the country.

Horrific, fatal traffic accidents involving unlicensed and often intoxicated illegal immigrants continually make headlines – including several instances in which local police officers were killed in their attempt to pull over an offending car because the driver panicked.

The day that I was called to jury duty several years ago, one of the cases in the docket involved an illegal immigrant charged with multiple counts of manslaughter. He was driving a stolen vehicle at the time, had a repeated history of driving infractions, DUI and auto theft, and had no license. I did not serve on that jury, but the mood in the courtroom was palpable. Even if he was acquitted, it confirmed what many angry Arizonans already believed: the man embodied everything they hated about illegal immigration and everything that was wrong with “the system”. Undoubtedly, Sheriff Joe found a few more converts to his personal campaign that day among the scores of citizens who were forced to miss a day of work in order to decide his fate.

The emotional ante has been considerably augmented with the uptick in human trafficking. At regular intervals, local news stations beam in helicopter footage of SWAT teams bursting into “drop houses” in neighborhoods both destitute and upscale. These empty homes, abandoned in the foreclosure crisis and now being rented out or simply squatted by “coyotes” (human smugglers), serve as weigh-stations for illegal immigrants before they are trafficked to destinations across the country. (You can see news footage at here.

In a city whose rich (read: safe) and poor (read: gang and drug haven) areas are well-established, the presence of drop houses in wealthy Scottsdale resort neighborhoods has struck a knife of panic into the upper-class. For many, it is the final straw in a long line of intolerable injustices: not only must they spend their non-existent health care funds paying for illegal immigrants who arrive in our cities needing emergency care (where by federal law it must be provided regardless of ability to pay), not only are they forced to change their school curriculum to meet the needs of the children of illegal immigrants who do not speak English, not only are they forced to learn Spanish for their own job security in some fields, not only are they up against a crime and drug wave ignored by the federal government, but now their own private gated oasis has been violated.

In their eyes, law abiding citizens are held hostage to an impotent legal system that is incapable of dealing with the onslaught. While so far only those tied to the drug trade have been kidnapped, it doesn’t take an enormous leap of the imagination to project that innocent bystanders could easily be caught up in the gang war soon. After all, in Mexico, the warfare is brazenly no-holds-barred – resulting in an appallingly high civilian casualty rate.

And yet, at the moment, most people are angry on a matter of civic principle: their frustration centers around the continual siphoning of limited state and municipal resources to combat what many believe should be a national concern. In Arizonan eyes, one of the poorest states is left to defend the nation against an unstoppable tide.

Along with California Attorney General Jerry Brown, Chief Anderson expresses his concern that this wave of violence is overlooked by a Washington preoccupied with tracking down Al Qaida. “If it doesn’t stop here – if we aren’t able to fix it here and get it turned around, it will go across the nation.”

My concern is more finite and more immediate. Washington’s failure to act could spark off vigilantism by citizens who feel there is no other option. It will push the dialogue even farther to the militant right and encourage ever-more radical responses by the Sheriff and his followers, especially in light of the current fiscal crisis. It will turn this fight from a primarily economic one into an openly racial one, polarizing the state to the point where it is torn apart. Our former Governor Janet Napolitano was selected as the Secretary of Homeland Security. We await her leadership and influence in resolving this escalating crisis.

In today's online edition of the New York Times, writer Cara Buckley examines the plight of uninsured young adults falling into the chasm between college and salaried positions with health insurance.

A particularly striking story is that of a young receptionist who was billed almost $18,000 for less than 48 hours in the hospital. US Census stats from 1999 – the most recent available – report that per capita income was less than $22,000. In 2004, the median household income was less than $45,000. Aside from the upper one or two percent of our wealthiest citizens, what person could hope to ever pay that bill – nearly a year’s income - without declaring bankruptcy?

This is just the latest in a sea of articles focusing on the near impossibility of securing health insurance and access to medical care in the US today. The oft-quoted ball-park figure of 46 million uninsured – a whopping 18 % of the population- is only growing with the recent rounds of lay-offs. Losing one’s job is the death knoll for access to health care, as the National Coalition for Health Care reports that only approximately 7% of the population can afford to pay COBRA fees - regularly topping $700 per month. (For international readers: federal law mandates that former employees be granted temporary access to their former employer’s health insurance program as a sort of bridge-coverage until they find their next place of employment. This program is known by its acronym COBRA).

The situation is even worse than those statistics indicate. NCHC further reports that the "number of uninsured rose 2.2 million between 2005 and 2006 and has increased by almost 8 million people since 2000" and that "nearly 90 million people – about one-third of the population below the age of 65- spent a portion of either 2006 or 2007 without health coverage".

Even those who manage to hang on to their jobs in this recession find little comfort - for an estimated 37 million of those 46 million uninsured are working and either have the misfortune of working for the 1/3 of firms that do not have employer-offered health benefits or simply cannot afford the premiums - which increased over 120% between 2000 and 2006.

Increasingly, even upper-middle class families cannot afford these payments - NCHC states that 40% of the uninsured live in households making over $50,000.

The solution for many is to avoid going to the hospital or the doctor until it is an emergency, when by federal law they cannot be turned away for lack of funds. NCHC reports that “about 20 percent of the uninsured (vs. three percent of those with coverage) say their usual source of care is the emergency room.” This is hardly a solution- by the time a patient arrives in the hospital, the once low-level ailment is now much more expensive to treat (in addition to the obvious fact that the patient’s life may have been endangered in the interim).

Several young adults interviewed by Buckley also reported using their friends' expired medication to treat ailments such as the flu - a trend medical experts believe only adds to the already growing crisis of antibiotic-resistant infections. Since diseases are blind to our income and health insurance lines, the desperate struggle of an increasing percentage of our population to make medical ends meet could very well bring about a health crisis for us all in the form of virulent strains of TB, MRSA (Staph) and pneumonia. Without antibiotic treatment, we could catapult our entire society back to the medical dark ages.

Universal health insurance as a basic right and service is long overdue. Historically treated like a commodity, its prices have soared far beyond any standard of reasonableness or comprehension, and far beyond the capacity of any ordinary citizen to pay. Tying health benefits to employment is outdated and illogical – for an individual’s need to see a doctor (or the risk they pose to public health) is in no way related to their current job title. (By the current rational, it would seem that we believe only wealthy, salaried citizens ever get sick).

Disturbingly, many Americans cling to a paranoid fear of government controlled health care – as if this is just a precursor to a Communist incursion. And yet, we are willing to turn over our personal records and the ultimate power to approve or deny a necessary service to private companies that exist for the express purpose of making a profit. In a government-run system, everyone is guaranteed the same basic rights – and since we operate under a democracy, we would have the right to make demands about the way the system would function – and we would all be in the same boat. As it is now, we are atomized and forced to fight our own individual health insurance battles on our own because there is no common ground – everyone is subject to their own employer’s revolving array of health care options.

For those who fear the long lines oft-reported here about the British system, take heart: even in that country, individuals have the right to purchase expensive health insurance and skip the lines. If you want to continue paying upwards of $400 a month, you’d still be entitled to do that. The rest of us, instead of being medically disenfranchised, would just earn our human right to see a doctor.

When we currently spend more than any industrialized nation on health care with such depressing results, it's time for more than a change. It's time for a health care revolution.

(More stats can be found here.)

I have never been to Israel or to Palestine, and I have no ancestral connection to those lands. Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, I have never known anyone who overtly associated themselves with Judaism or Islam. You could say that I have no stake in the resolution of this conflict. You could say that I have no right to an opinion.

In fact, my opinion will anger many Americans, because I question our nation's unwavering support for the Israeli State. I see a disturbing pattern, set in motion over the past seventy years, whereby our "special relationship" with Israel has covered all manner of horrible sins committed by (and in the name of) our ally.

I see that the combination of fundamentalist Christianity, guilt over the Holocaust, general hostility towards the Arab World, and a very vocal pro-Israel lobby in Congress have converged to give a feeling of endurance and inevitability to perpetual American support for Israel. So ingrained is this reality that most Americans cannot - or refuse to- think critically on this policy and its serious ramifications.

The dust has not yet settled on this conflict, and with Israel denying access to reporters who wish to enter Gaza, it is very difficult to get a handle on the facts. So, I cannot comment on who started what this time around. What I can say with certainty is that it is entirely justified to question Israel and to hold them to the same international standards that the world would hold China, Australia, Germany and Russia to in a similar conflict. Certainly, Hamas must accept its share of the blame. But the underlying problem is at least as much a matter of inequality and a degraded quality of life as it is a problem of Hamas militancy.

If we look at the situation with clear eyes, we see that the power relationship is fundamentally unequal. Which society has lived in refugee camps for multiple generations? Which society lacks access to its traditional farm lands, to quality medical care, to bomb shelters? Which society has inflicted an embargo on whom, has rammed humanitarian relief ships so that they cannot reach the other? Which has the authority to ban the entrance of journalists into the lands of the other? Which has the support of the greatest global military? Israel has all of the power; Palestinians consistently suffer disproportionately.

I am reminded of the American Civil Rights Movement, which angered many White Americans at the time. The thinking by those in power was that Blacks had been liberated from slavery and that they had no right to push for more. Equality was White America's to give and to take away. The same disenfranchisement exists today, the same power differential is at the heart of this and all conflicts between Israel and Palestine.

Obviously, there are flaws in this analogy, but it is nonetheless instructive. Palestinians must fight, because their current status is untenable. And whether Israel likes it or not, the Palestinian situation is largely a result of the State of Israel being established. As much as Israel hates its reality, it is stuck with Palestine as a neighbor. As the stronger power, it needs to take the first step to resolving - not enflaming- the conflict.

Of all the terrible policies enacted by the Bush Administration, the eleventh hour “Medical Conscience” ruling is one of the most deplorable. The New York Times reports that the move is heralded by supporters as a necessary step to prevent medical practitioners from having to choose between their morals and their professional standing. Like many citizens and patients, I see right through that logic to the truth: it seriously undermines public health in the name of allowing individual health care employees to impose their own moral code on their vulnerable patients.

I seriously doubt that it will prevent the obstetricians who refuse to perform abortions (and other doctors who keep quiet about legally approved procedures in their own field to their patients’ detriment) from losing some sort of standing amongst their peers. A staunchly scientific community, it is already difficult for religious extremists to find colleagues who share literal interpretations of the Bible or a belief in miracles. Additionally, doctors ALREADY have the right to refuse to perform an abortion under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on religion. In this tightly-knit professional community, doctors know of each others’ reputations, and these personal opinions- which make or break careers- are not likely to change just because the few outcasts now have the law behind them.

The new ruling is not going to smooth out the wrinkles in the relationship between morally-torn doctors and their colleagues- although even if it could, this would be heavy-handed big government interference at its worst. What the ruling WILL do is prevent patients from around the country from receiving all of the legal options available to them in their individual health situation. Given the limited availability of medical choice in rural areas- in addition to the restrictions placed on individuals by health insurance policies- this rule sets the US on a course to even more unequal access to care.

Imagine being pregnant in Nebraska, in a small town with only one clinic. Perhaps you would like to take the emergency contraceptive Plan-B, perhaps you would like to have an abortion, or perhaps you would like to carry the baby to term and either raise it yourself or give it to another family through adoption. All of these options are legally permitted in this country, and yet, because you live in X town or Y town, you may not have a full range of choices. Not because your city or township or county laws prohibit you from making an informed decision, but because your doctor doesn’t approve of your lifestyle or doesn’t approve of one of the options.

Under the new law, the doctor may not only refuse to perform procedures he or she disapproves of, but can also withhold ANY information with you that he or she wishes not to share. Maybe as a patient, you would like to discuss the likely physical or emotional side effects of an abortion. As soon as you begin talking, the doctor can simply hold up his or her hand and prevent the discussion from going further. Their moral values will be forced upon you, making care even more unequal than it was before.

If you lived in a metropolitan area, you may have had the opportunity to scout around to different hospitals and clinics. However, even if you did live in an area with multiple options, it sounds like a wild goose chase to call multiple practitioners a day with your list of questions, just to find a pharmacist that will fill your medication or a doctor who will follow your care by YOUR preferences AND who is covered by your health plan.

While the law was undoubtedly crafted to address concerns by doctors and pharmacists who have been unable to separate their professional and political feelings on the divisive topic of abortion, it will affect EVERYONE- men, women and children, young and old. I can imagine a couple that would like the husband to take Viagra, that would like growth hormones to be prescribed (or not) for their child, who would like to try a more holistic approach for serious illness over radical pharmaceuticals. In each case, the doctor in question could simply deny one or more options based on his own personal beliefs. Perhaps he doesn’t believe in sex over fifty, in hormone treatments or in “touchy-feely medicine”.

What of a couple that wishes to have a vasectomy or other irreversible procedure preventing further children, making the choice for their own family that they have enough children? A doctor who believes otherwise may simply not perform the procedure. What about a doctor who believes that vaccines cause autism? Will they abstain from delivering certain ones? Will the elderly be permitted to make painful end of life decisions without the moral authority of the doctor bearing over them?

Medical ethics- a growing and critical field- has barely begun to deal with many of these issues under the old atmosphere. This new mandate throws a wrench into the entire process, skewing public ethics in favor of an individual doctor’s own religious beliefs or political views.

All of us will be patients at some point in our lives- at least at the beginning and the end. How we make our decisions is a personal and complicated process, and one in which we take into account our OWN religious beliefs. However, the only person who should matter in patient decisions is the one whose body and health is being affected: the patient. Instead of wringing our hands over doctors who chose to enter a profession so seemingly at odds with their own rigid beliefs, we should be concerned with the rights of patients. Alongside the Hippocratic Oath should be the right to have the best care possible, without the interference of anyone else’s religion. A separation of church and hospital. Now that would be progress.

The weekend before the US Presidential Election, I attended the first Arab American Festival in Glendale, Arizona. We have a very small Arab American community (so small that I had wrongly assumed it was nonexistent), and I was very intrigued to see what types of vendors and performances they might put on.

"The Arab American Festival is a Non-political, Non-religious, Non-profit Organization established to build community pride in the valley and showcases our diversity of music, arts, and cultures. Multi-generational and multi-cultural families gather to enjoy free music, arts and crafts, entertainment, children’s activities, and services from local businesses, foods, and vendors.

The Arab American Festival is an exploration of the rich culture and history of the world’s oldest civilization. Our festival is targeted to all Americans to create an awareness of the diverse ethnic groups while having fun."

Imagine my surprise, then, that the entire festival seemed to be geared around recruiting Arab Americans to work for the CIA, FBI, Armed Forces, and translation contractors.

Overall the event had a peculiar atmosphere of tension and suspended disbelief. It was not at all the welcoming, informative, unifying event that I had anticipated attending. Arab Americans appeared disquieted; the few non-Arab attendees seemed lost and uncertain. The information booth had no information except a list of which musicians were performing at which time. There were no explanations of the origins of certain dances and no boothes explaining the unique history and cultures of the many Arab nations. Other than an Afghan tent selling wooden frames of Mecca, I only saw a hookah tent and a couple of belly dancing costume boothes. Even the food stands left much to be desired: other than falafal, pita and kebab, there were almost no opportunities to discover Arab American cuisine. No tabbouleh, even!

Why not just have a career fair and openly court Arab Americans? Why try and mix it in with a "non political" cultural festival? My husband and I both tried expressing an interest in working for the federal government in these boothes, but they were clearly only interested in Americans with an Arabic background. So again, why not just have a career fair for them specifically? Wouldn't that have been a better way to reach out to them after all of the social injustice that they have endured anyway?

I regret most that such a promising opportunity to build a bridge between the Arab American community and Arizona society - and between Arabs themselves- was so blithely lost. Had the event really focused on its stated purpose, it would have been a success - regardless of the size of the turnout or the number of vendors. Instead, we all participated in a CIA raffle for giveaways such as post-it pads and lanyards.

Last night, I witnessed one of the seminal events of my lifetime. When CNN called the vote at 9 pm my local time, I did a double take. Could it really be that easy? I sat numbly for a moment, silently staring at the screen in front of me- afraid to blink lest it all disappear into the mist of another lost hope.

The footage suddenly cut to the mass of humanity pumping their fists and jumping up and down in unison; the colossal roar jarred me out of my stupor. After eight years of alienation in my own land, I felt surreally elated as I witnessed the physical manifestation of my joy playing out on the vast fields of Grant Park in Chicago.

It's really happened. I sat back on the couch, my legs tucked into my chest under a blanket, positioned like the awed child I now felt myself to be. A child witnessing history, beginning to hope again for the first time since I was in high school in the late nineties.

Scores of emotions poured out of me at once, the hundreds of hopes and dreams that I'd felt quashed year after year as the country had become increasingly anti-intellectual, regressive, hostile, and intractable. How many months had I been holding my breath, anxiously awaiting the result of this litmus test on the future of the nation?

As a 26 year old, I feel an immense sense of hope and promise that my next decade of adulthood will be better than my first. Not because Obama is a magical prophet who possesses some omnipotent ability to right all wrongs of the past, not because the nation will never suffer an economic depression again, and not because a great beautiful tomorrow free of social cleavages and corruption is guaranteed with this victory.

No, my unabated joy springs from a different font. I celebrate because we have closed the door on the blatant criminality and abject incompetence of the past eight years. While not a resounding mandate for the broad panoply of liberal values that I personally espouse, there is no denying that this election result is a solid "guilty verdict" on the Bush administration's conduct.

The elements that swelled into a perfect storm thrusting Bush into office both times still exist in our society, and they may re-emerge again. Conservatism, populism, ruralism and evangelical religious passion have long histories in this nation, and will not disappear overnight. You could even argue that they should not disappear, for they have contributed in often unappreciated ways to the progressive movement itself. Society will always be engaged in the push and pull of conflicting interests; tonight I am thankful that the flexibility still exists in our nation to permit us to correct our past mistakes.

The election of Obama is not just a referendum on the past, but a lighting of the torch for the future. It threatens to become a cliche, but there is no arguing against the reality that the under-30 voters have announced their generation's claim on the future of the nation. This generation is more tolerant, multi-racial, worldly and open to new ideas than the outgoing "Greatest Generation." The youth of the last depression and the Second World War was idealistic like us once; like them, we too will one day become outdated and calcified in our fears. For now, the moment belongs to us, and those who have dared to believe in the possibilities of change.

Certainly, Obama's victory is a fitting and long overdue milestone in the march for civil rights. Who could hold back their own tears while seeing the ones in Jesse Jackson's eyes? But it goes beyond this. Obama represents not only African Americans, but all of the multi-racial Americans, first-generation Americans, and Americans with Middle Eastern and African names. He is the face of the America I have always known.

My childhood best friend was half Slovenian, half Mexican. My best friend since high school is half German, half Filipino. My husband is half Korean, and a quarter each German and Irish. My brother's best friend in high school was half Jewish, half Japanese. My cousin's best friend is Indonesian. One of my sister's best friends is Iranian, and her two college roommates were Black-French from Louisiana and a recent immigrant from Peru. My other friends range from Polish and Norwegian to Indian and Chinese. My husband's best friend is African American; his other good friend is Navajo.

I list out these examples of diversity not because they are shining beacons in a dark night of white bread and Velveeta cheese, but because they are the new reality. This has, actually, been the reality for my entire life, and the lives of my generation. It just took us awhile to get to the polls, to form the groundswell with the sense of purpose demonstrated one night ago. For too many years, Americans like Sarah Palin and John McCain have been able to carry on as usual, operating under the great myth that American was still White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Taking a favorite line from McCain, "My friends, it's just not that simple anymore."

Simply put, I prayed for Obama to win because he represents the diversity and complexity of our nation, the promise foretold by the tremendous efforts of our ancestors. But at least as importantly, he is a man of dignity and intelligence, with a critical mind and a strong educational if limited political background. He stands erect behind the podium, poised, alert, and calm. He has the capacity to deal with the immense trials of our time, to understand nuance and navigate the shades of gray. He is a man that I trust to be able to take in and synthesize an impossible amount of information every day, a man that I trust to select qualified advisers instead of campaign contributor cronies. And fortunately for him, on the heels of the worst president ever to walk the corridors of the White House, he really can't mess things up any more than they already are.

The election of Barack Obama is a clear signal to the rest of the world that America desires a fresh start, that we are separating ourselves from the disastrous legacy of George Bush- and by voting this way, we are also taking responsibility for the shortsightedness we'd demonstrated during the past decade. We are standing for accountability, for our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, for the maligned middle class, and for the ultimate American Dream. Even if Obama accomplishes nothing, he has allowed the nation to begin to heal. And for that, I am grateful.

In her NY Times "Lesson Plans" blog post entitled 'The Cross-Cultural Classroom', Christina Shunnarah describes the challenges of working as an educator in one of the nation's most diverse communities.

The issues she raises are not for educators alone, however, but for everyone living in America today.

How do we learn to live together when our underlying beliefs about raising children, a work ethic, the role of religion in life, concepts of beauty, perceptions of time and personal space, and approaches to problem solving, for example, differ so drastically among our nation's many cultural groups?

Shunnarah advises us that learning about other cultures is a first step, but ultimately, we cannot possibly learn every detail about every other society on the planet.

Instead, what we can do, and what we should all do, is to keep an open mind. Perhaps, we don't know everything because we know one way of doing it. Perhaps, our way is not the only way to live. Perhaps, there is enough room here for everyone's own perspective, if we are brave enough to treat differing points of view with respect and dignity.

As refugees and immigrants from around the globe continue to seek their futures on our shores, we cannot afford to selfishly and rigidly guard our own culture from any changes. We should instead seek to understand and to engage those around us, no matter what their food smells like or how their words sound.

An engagement of citizens with one another... isn't that, after all, the original American ideal?

As a student of Russian culture and politics, I was terribly disappointed by both politicians' obvious lack of understanding of that nation as expressed during the debate.

It is easy to vilify Putin as an evil KGB thug, but he is extraordinarily popular with his own people, and that phenomenon bears examination. The American media bandies around words like "oligarch" without a substantive discussion and analysis of the real Russia today. Shockingly unaware of the ways in which Russian society has been transformed during the past nearly ten years under Putin’s leadership, we are inclined to shrug off the fact that the current Prime Minister is considered a real hero by many. Our thinking seems to be that we are free, so we know better; if Russians adore Putin, they are wrong and we must defend them from their false thinking.

The fall of the Soviet Union was not seen as a heroic moment by most Russians; it was certainly not the harkening of the era of peace that Americans and many Europeans celebrated. Mikhail Gorbachev was not their hero; in their eyes, he was a blundering fool and even a traitor who gave away the Motherland without even a ruble in exchange. The prosperous 1990s left Russians behind, and seemingly overnight an entire nation was left penniless. People who had had sacrificed everything in the name of creating a brighter future for their children’s children were left devastated. Pensions dissolved, crime (previously unheard of) skyrocketed, health care evaporated, and the entire infrastructure of the nation crumbled. If Americans are in an uproar over our own current economic crisis, we cannot even begin to imagine the extent of the catastrophe that befell Russia.

Americans saw this as proof of the inevitability of Russia’s decline, but we were mistaken. Russia has been crushed before, but has never been long defeated. In our arrogance, we assume that we will be able to outwit or overwhelm the largest state on the planet, overlooking that we are hardly its toughest historical opponent. We forget that our erstwhile enemy is nothing if not resilient; it endured several centuries of terror under the Mongol yoke; staved off Hitler’s plans of annihilation at the cost of eating leather boot straps and one’s own pets; remade itself out of whole cloth under the banner of socialism.

Russia is massive beyond the mind’s limits of measurement and perspective. According to the CIA World Fact Book, it measures over 17 million square miles, or approximately 1.8 times the size of the US. The greatest tragedy of Russian history is most certainly the brutality that the various regimes have resorted to in order to reign-in the vast territories the state engulfed. The second greatest tragedy may be the fact that repeated invasions have proved the necessity of a strong state; in most Russian minds, the state must be strong in order to survive. It is worth mentioning to true believers in US-style democracy that Lenin’s own revolution emerged out of the instability created by the floundering democracy immediately following the Tsar’s abdication.

A similar power vacuum emerged under the inept Yeltsin years. Shock therapy, or the immediate implementation of market prices and individual ownership of state enterprises, directly led to the phenomenon of the oligarchs. In order to meet the strict output regulations during the communist years, factory managers resorted to the black market for their supply line. The technocrats at the top of each industry under the Soviet system just before it dissolved were the ones who were able to play the shadow market game the best (in order to survive, you had to meet the specified outputs regardless of circumstances to avoid being accused of sabotage).

When they suddenly became de-facto CEOs of the new private enterprises, they kept their old behavioral patterns alive; becoming not just businessmen but the captains of massive organized crime leagues.

The competitive market provided opportunities for untold millions, and competition between varying oligarchs-the new rich strong-men- began to fill the streets of Moscow with blood. Ordinary Russians continued to eat rotten vegetables to survive while the oligarchs rode around in their limousines with their mistresses; Moscow rent soared to the most expensive in the world.

It is in this context that Russians adore Vladimir Putin. There are outspoken voices to be sure; the socially inconvenient consciences that warn of a darkness ahead. We should listen to these voices, especially those informed critics such as Anna Politkovskaya, an opponent of both the war in Chechnya and Putin himself, who was gunned down in 2006. We should not content ourselves with carrying the mantel of those protestors, however, without knowing the whole story. Why are they so unpopular in their own society, and how does this reflect the difference in between the way we perceive Russia and they way its citizens see themselves?

To analyze all of Putin’s successes and crimes would take more than a single blog. For here, we should at least acknowledge the primary reasons that he retains such an overwhelming support, even in light of election irregularities and other controversies. Quite simply: He’s made the people happy by getting the nation back on track. He’s reigned in the oligarchs. Jobs have returned. Upward mobility and social expectations have risen. Crime is down. The economy is awash in petrodollars. Most importantly: after yet another wasted generation of suffering, Russians have regained their pride.

Returning to the US presidential debate, the posturing by both candidates implies that they plan to act under the assumption that it is still 1992 and the US is still triumphant. In fact, the geopolitical reality in 2008 is as different as night and day from the end of the Cold War nearly two decades ago. For the next president of the US to start announcing that we are going to somehow keep Russia in its place is patently ridiculous, especially with our military stretched so thin as it is and with the EU already desperately engaged in talks to restore their relationship with Moscow.

Just like all major states on the planet, such as China and our own, Russia has ambitions befitting its stature and capabilities. Certainly, we should not turn a blind eye to its excess, and we should not ignore the plight of those crushed beneath its wheels. However, what is needed is not the broken record of Russia-bashing, but a multi-faceted policy designed to meet the challenges of working with such a behemoth of a nation. This is the real world, and in the real world, you must deal with nations that you dislike or with which you disagree ideologically.

Times are too critical to create another enemy out of Moscow; sadly, neither candidate has either the awareness or the courage to admit this.

Have you heard? University of Illinois employees- including faculty- are now forbidden to wear political buttons or park cars with bumber stickers supporting a particular candidate. They are additionally banned from attending on-campus political rallies in favor of a specific candidate.

Those who choose to do so in protest (or just in the interest of civic participation) will now be in violation of the university system's ethics policy.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/24/buttons "Beware the Bumper Police" explains that this is a sharp departure from past policies around the country which permitted individual political expression, while banning the use of department funds for the support of a particular candidate. Certainly, nobody would support the diversion of science lab grant money for the Obama campaign, and of course, it would be inappropriate to have a university reimburse their staff for making a donation to a particular campaign.

But this official directive is both chilling and monumentally important in the ongoing battle for freedom of expression in the US. When we lose the freedom to express ourselves during an election, what will be next? And when universities become closed to dialogue and civic debate, where will we protest at all?

In yesterday's electronic edition of The New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope examined an emerging front in the war on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Entitled The Doctor’s Hands Are Germ-Free. The Scrubs Too?, Parker-Pope's article presents the frightening possibility that some of the most deadly hospital infections may be getting a free ride on doctor's clothing, especially ties and white coats but also on scrubs.

The article is worth reading for the full scoop, but what I'd like to point out here is the startling gap in health codes that she reveals between the US and Europe, and how that could be needlessly endangering the lives of many.

In Denmark, where there has been an increased emphasis not only on handwashing, but also on "sterilization, screening and clothing control," the rate of drug-resistant staph infections was 1% of the total. In the US, where there has been no protocol similar to the EU-wide one informing Danish policy, the rate of drug-resistant staph infections is 50% of all such infections.

I find it incredibly concerning that the nation that trains many doctors around the world and that considers itself to be a leader in global medicine has not even managed to establish a basic germ policy addressing this problem.

What do you think? If you are in a medical profession, what is your experience in your country? What have you experienced as a patient? I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks about both this article and the topic, so please share!

Somewhere between the glass jars of Jacobs and Nescafe instant coffees , the tetra packs of barszcz and the ubiquitous display of Kinder eggs, I felt the frustration simmer up to my ears. Bored from shifting my weight between my right and left leg, my arms long ago having given up on carrying the obligatory shopping basket (now situated between my two feet for efficient shuffling, should we ever move forward in the line), I revealed myself as a foreigner with an exasperated sigh. In the past half an hour, we had moved approximately three customers closer to the register, and four couples remained in front of us.

Every payment had to be made in exact change, to the grosz, and in the precise denominations preferred by the clerk. The customer at the register, having given up on digging for three 10-grosz pieces and one 5, emptied out her coin purse into her palm and extended it to the clerk to speed up the process. Not finding the satisfactory coins, she turned in desperation to the next customer in line and bartered change. If you ever wanted to have your turn at the check-out counter, you’d cooperate with the poor customer in front of you.

Finally, only three customers to go, and it would be our turn to pay for our muesli and juice. Compared to the grueling class schedule earlier that day, my life that hour had become nauseatingly slow. Still wrapped in my scarf and hat, my jacket bringing me to a boil, I searched for a logical explanation through the rapidly growing mental fog.

“I just don’t get it,” I moaned to my husband as inconspicuously as possible, “How can this possibly take so long?”

“It’s Poland,” he sighed.

Ahead of us, another familiar scenario played out: one person stood in line with an empty basket, while his companions shopped for items one at a time and placed them into the basket, departing again for more. The process seemed to continue up until the very moment that the waiting customer had arrived at the cash register. Apparently, they base their grocery list on how much they can buy in the time allotted by the line, I thought, wishing we’d done the same. It had to be faster, I thought with a scowl.

“But Carrefour is a French supermarket!” I insisted to my husband, reviving my gripe. The shelves of one of the world’s largest retailers were stocked with everything from soy milk to salsa, the freezers stuffed with drinkable yogurt and delicious bagged berry medleys, the housewares section complete enough to rival any Wal-Mart. On the surface, it was like any other industrialized nation.

“Doesn’t matter- the culture is Polish,” he grumbled, his head tilted back in agitation. Smiling wryly, he quoted the region’s motto, “Haste leads to degradation.”

There’s the rub, I thought bitterly. In spite of nearly twenty years after the end of Soviet domination, Poland was still cloaked in its own mental iron curtain. Long lines. Poor customer service. A widespread acceptance of mediocrity. A largely cash-based economy. Political ineptitude and a lack of real economic opportunities for young people, aside from immigration. Grey buildings and even bleaker skies, broken sidewalk cobbles and menacing Skoda drivers barreling down on pedestrians. Clinging to a noble past of suffering and victimization, wavering in the face of an uncertain future.

Exiting the large double doors with our bags in tow, the cool night air shocked my cheeks and jolted my spirit out of its irritation. Walking past the train station with the seasonal skating rink in front, we made our way through the pedestrian underpass back into the Old Town. Vendors hawking sour sheep’s cheese imprinted with fancy patterns, striking autumnal floral arrangements, miniature bagels on strings, and colorful mittens vied for our attention in vain. My mind was occupied with the trials and tribulations of life in a transitioning country.

Carefully dodging the icy potholes, the elderly gentleman playing the harmonica, and arm-linked couples enjoying a romantic stroll, my eyes turned to the glow of the main market square ahead. Seduced again by the glistening Słowackiego theater on my left, the haunting remains of the ancient city wall on my right, and the anticipation of the magical Sukiennice cloth hall through the alleyways, I felt my heart sink with guilt.

Life was frustrating here, but that certainly wasn’t the full story. My experiences that evening, the surreal and incomprehensible swing from stagnation and irritation in the hypermarche to bliss and exhilaration ten minutes later on the streets reflected the complicated reality of life in Poland.

It is full of inconsistencies, bureaucratic mazes, masked faces, false hopes, and intense pride, but also an enchanting aura wafting through the crevices, a sorrowful but angelic aria permeating the nation’s soul. In order to completely understand its mystery, one would need to spend a lifetime peeling back the layers, painstakingly deciphering its clues. Poland, I was discovering, was an enigma.

I was in good company as I tried to resolve its riddles. My first months in Krakow were a tumultuous period in Polish domestic as well as foreign relations- a time when European Union leaders and Poland’s own citizens would become increasingly confounded with the status quo.

Particularly within the EU, a swelling “Poland fatigue” came to dominate all diplomacy like an omnipresent and obstinate cloud. Having expanded to include Poland in 2004, the former member states complained increasingly vocally that Poland seemed to mistakenly believe that the EU had joined it, rather than the other way around.

Resenting the march of European history that had nearly obliterated and then forgotten it, and realizing its geopolitical leverage for the first time, Poland overplayed its hand in round after round, alienating nearly every ally. The ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) retaliated over the most minor infractions with Germany, at one point cancelling a high level visit due to an unfavorable newspaper editorial. As the EU attempted to wrap up the Lisbon Treaty negotiations, an increasingly mercurial and sanctimonious Polish posture towards Germany threatened to unravel years of international effort. Warsaw also impeded Brussels’ efforts to thaw relations with Moscow, raising concerns over Russian energy shipments to the subcontinent as winter rapidly approached.

An overwhelming and self-defeating paranoia and victimization in combination with an intense messianic mission drove Warsaw’s self perception and policy. Acidly hostile towards Germany due to unresolved disputes from the Second World War and distrusting Russia following the Cold War; still bitter at the opulent “West” for its perceived abandonment of Poland twice to its enemies; convinced of its fraternal and moral mission to lead the nations of Eastern Europe to freedom; and finally, certain only of the military backing of the distant United States, Poland lashed out at its past and nearly lost its foothold on the future.

The situation was at least as bad on the home front. Besieging its opponents with allegations of corruption, mafia ties, sex crimes and communism, PiS found itself caught in its own avalanche and lost control of the political implosion it had set in motion. Championing the interests of its primarily elderly, agrarian, impoverished and staunchly Catholic supporters, the President and Prime Minister (coincidentally, twin brothers) failed to inspire the hope of young, educated workers with upward aspirations and experience abroad. Clinging to a sense of moral superiority and confident in a victory, the majority party voted to dissolve itself in September.

Weary of PiS’s overzealous political machinations, the EU held its breath for one month. When the results of the snap elections were tallied, it, and much of Poland, was able to finally breathe a sigh of relief. Donald Tusk, of the pro-business Civic Platform, had persuaded voters that the time for a new course in domestic and foreign policy had arrived. Young, attractive and athletic, well educated and articulate, hopeful and charismatic, he appeared the John F. Kennedy to the Nikita Krushchev. Immediately shaking hands with EU leaders, he promised to revive Poland’s relationship with the supranational body, and promptly set to work on ironing out old problems. Particularly with Russia, cracks appeared in the ice if not a thaw, as Tusk sent high level delegations to discuss bilateral issues. And with the US, Tusk has held a firmer line, delicately attempting to balance the wishes of its former champion with its geopolitical reality.

In spite of the greatest turnout PiS had ever seen by its supporters, Tusk carried the election due to tidal wave of support, primarily by younger citizens, many of whom cast their votes from abroad. Whether Tusk will be the answer to Poland’s heartfelt prayers remains to be seen; what is clear at this point is the desire of the nation’s younger generation to make peace with the past and take its proper place on the pedestals of Europe.

Arriving at my apartment, squeezing past waiting tram passengers and customers scurrying into the apteka, I paused for a moment with my key in hand. Turning around back towards the Planty, a green ring created when the Austrian invasion obliterated the old city walls, I felt for a moment a flickering of understanding, as if the enigma had brushed past my skin and whispered in my ear. Perhaps it cannot be cracked, and perhaps the legacies of past suffering will linger past their expiration date. Long lines may remain, but so does the indefatigable Polish spirit. Just as the acid-rain washed buildings on the Rynek sparkle again under the sun and new paint, and just as the city created a park out of the destruction of its ancient history, so too will the nation rise again. Just how it will transpire remains to be seen.