ADAP Watch, 9.12.11

We’re beginning to think we’re trapped in the movie Groundhog Day.

Week after week, the waiting list numbers hover just over 9,000. Week after week, Congress doesn’t – and can’t – act. Week after week, Florida alone accounts for nearly half the waiting list numbers, and Florida doesn’t act.

Assuming an annual medications cost of $15,000 per ADAP recipient per year, $135 million a year in new ADAP funds would be enough to make this national disgrace go away. That’s less than four one-thousandths of a percent of the federal budget. If the will were there, the money could be found.

$60 million would do the job in Florida – not very much, even in Florida’s $70 billion state budget. But Florida doesn’t even seem to be spending the money already available effectively. Just before Labor Day, the Orlando Sentinel reported health officials for Orlando County and three neighboring central Florida counties had underspent their Ryan White funds by a half-million dollars – about six percent of the total $9 million, which suggests a certain lack of commitment to serving the people Ryan White funds are meant to help. And it’s a pity the unused funds couldn’t have been put to other uses, instead of just being help for possible use next year. They could have paid for drugs for more than thirty central Floridians currently on the ADAP waiting list.

Here are the latest waiting list numbers from our friends at NASTAD:

Sign the petition to end the waiting list here.

What’s Wrong With Montana’s DUI Laws

Sep11 by D Gregory Smith

…this.

National stats here.

Excellent info here.

Live Sun vs Dead Animals

Sep11 by D Gregory Smith

From One Block Off The Grid comes this interesting informational graphic:

Taxing The (Willing) Rich

Sep10 by D Gregory Smith

I was brought up with a sense of social justice that still shapes my life. It’s a complicated sense, shaped by Catholicism, rural sensibility and an awareness of the world from the perspective of a kid who was bullied. My social justice sense says, in part, “depriving one for the excesses of another is unjust.”

It seems some “Enlightened Rich” agree. The New York Times:

Some of the world’s wealthiest people are calling for higher taxes on the rich. They seem to recognize that the burden of the economic downturn cannot be borne entirely by the poor and middle class.

After the American billionaire investor Warren Buffett urged Congress last month to raise taxes on millionaires, the call echoed across Europe. Sixteen of France’s wealthiest individualsurged the government to raise their taxes. The Italian Formula One magnate Luca di Montezemolo publicly backed Mr. Buffett’s idea “for reasons of fairness and solidarity.” About 50 of Germany’s richest people have been campaigning for a higher top tax rate since 2009.

The suggestion is motivated, no doubt, by a sense of justice — that the very rich, who have survived the financial crisis very well, should contribute more to shrinking public coffers to reduce the spending cuts that would hurt the most vulnerable.

And yet, there are those who are resisting, no doubt motivated by fear- and quite possibly prejudice. But the results could be disastrous:

Americans have been historically less inclined than Europeans to explosions of social rage, despite suffering more poverty than most other wealthy democracies. But with unemployment above 9 percent, rising poverty rates and declining family incomes, the no-taxes, all-cuts agenda that has gripped Congressional Republicans will fray our social fabric and squander human capital here as well.

My sense of social justice also says, “If I make more money than others, I have a greater responsibility to maintain the fabric of my society”. But it’s obviously not what everyone believes.

Full story here.

ADAP Crisis Makes Local News

Sep9 by D Gregory Smith

An excellent story by Jessica Mayrer of the Missoula Independent highlights the National HIV Drug Crisis- and Montana’s link:

Montanans who can’t afford HIV drugs have recourse. The federally funded AIDS Drug Assistance Program provides medicine at no cost. What worries Smith and his clients is the fact that the program isn’t meeting demand. In January, 4,200 people nationally were waiting for entry into ADAP. At the end of August, that number grew to 9,200. ADAP now provides drugs to 107 of Montana’s 532 known HIV-positive patients, according to the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. In Montana, 28 people now await ADAP assistance. That’s up from 21 last year.

Full story here.

And if you haven’t signed the petition to Denny Rehberg, go here.

The Irony Of Rehberg’s Labor Day Column

Sep6 by D Gregory Smith

…is not lost on Mr Pogreba:

Contrary to what subdivision ranchers in Congress might think, Labor Day is not the culmination of a month-long taxpayer funded vacation, but a celebration of the importance of the union movement and workers in this country. As the Department of Labor notes, the day is “dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

And that’s what makes printing Rehberg’s pablum today so absurd and so offensive. Throughout his career in government, Rehberg has been hostile to the unions and workers today is meant to celebrate.

And, oh, so much more…. For some fun facts, statistics and scathing analysis, read the rest here.

Poem For Labor Day 2011

Sep5 by D Gregory Smith

Labor.

Welcome, life’s toil! I thank the gracious Giver
Who find my heart and hands their work to do;
That labor done still multiplies forever,
And each swift hour and moment claims its due,.

I pity him who sits him down repining,
Bound in his idleness^__a silken thong;
He hates the sun and wearies of its shining;
His moments creep^__for empty days are long.

My days are full, ! have no far off “mission;”
My work is near; ’tis only mine to stand
Accepting tasks that spring from my condition^__
Doing, as best I may, the work at hand.

It may be small: yet, drop by drop is added
to make the gentle flow, the steady stream;
The smallest needle, if ’tis often threaded
By patient hand, may sew the longest seam.

The finest strands may twist into a cable;
Small stones be piled till looms a pyramid,
Slow, patient thought may break the crust of fable,
Beneath which golden mines of truth be hid.

I cannot always see my cable growing;
Nor always see my pile of stones increase;
Yet, while I toil^__ the still years swiftly going^__
This fruit of labor bears; it bringeth peace.

^__Ellen P. Allerton.

Walls of Corn and Other Poems
by Ellen P. Allerton
Collected and Published by Eva Ryan
(Hiawatha: The Harrington Printing Co. 1894)
Page 204-205

Rehberg’s (allegedly) Poor Polling Numbers

Sep5 by D Gregory Smith

Cowgirl has them:

Tester’s job approval is 50-26 whereas Dennis Rehberg’s is 41-34. There is a large swath of voters who say they have not decided. Strangely, Obama, in this same poll, is at 42-48, numbers that comport with polls we’ve seen in the press the last year or so. But it means that while Obama’s negatives are high in Montana (predictably so), his positive job approval is higher is than Rehberg’s. This is somewhat surprising. (emphasis mine)

I have never figured out what Montanans see in Rehberg- he’s not a leader, he’s never out in front of an issue- the exact opposite of Tester. Cowgirl again:

Rehberg doesn’t seem to really do anything in his job. He provides nothing beyond criticism of democrats in the form of regurgitated FoxNews talking points, whereas Tester is visibly active, always, and active on issues that resonate within important sectors of the electorate.

Exactly. Full story here.

Reading The Unbelievable

Sep4 by D Gregory Smith

You can do it here.

Thanks to Towleroad

God does have ‘A Better Way’- don’t stand in the path of it

Sep3 by D Gregory Smith

My friend, Kathy Baldock, writes about her crusade to counter anti-gay christianist hate groups during Charlotte Pride last week.

It’s an historically heroic effort- and her writing is very moving, funny and important- especially if you believe that God is Love….

On Saturday, August 27, a group of about two hundred Christians marched into “Pride Charlotte” with “God Has A Better Way” (GHABW), an action formed by the Coalition of Conscience and the Speak the Truth Project.

Three quarters of the group, including children, wore red tee shirts boldly declaring the message and website “God Has A Better Way.” The balance of about 30 were “plain clothes” street evangelists.

I heard about the GHABW action two weeks before the event and decided to go to Charlotte with a str8apology action that I have done at many Gay Pride events. Some have striven to label me “gay activist;” a term that is often used to dismiss my intentions and the core of my Christian beliefs.

Would you label Martin Luther King as simply a “black activist” missing that his passions were deeply rooted in his faith that called him to strive for justice and against oppression?

I, too, am driven by my faith which compels me to fight against oppression and injustice. (Isaiah 58)

I am keenly aware that some Christians will and do use the Bible to exclude an entire class of people not only from social equality, but more egregiously, from the benefits of a relationship with God both now and in eternity. So, I took Str8apology to Pride Charlotte. Str8apology is a Christian action. We see the value of positive expressions of God’s love and are acutely aware of the damage caused by conditional and condemning messages from some Christians .