1) What’s Happening in the Nation’s Capital?
2) National News
Baucus Outlines Universal Healthcare Strategies to Obama
Notice of Class Action: DREDF Initiates Lawsuit against SSA for Not Providing Alternate Formats
Social Security Warns Budget May Affect Consumers
Byrd Stepping Down, Innoye Up to Chair Appropriations Committee
3) State News
Hawaii CIL Protests Budget Cuts to Interpreter Program
PsychRights Sues State of Alaska to Stop Its Massive, Harmful Psychiatric Drugging of Alaskan Children
Colorado Voters Preserve Affirmative Action
Washington Physician-Assisted Suicide Law Goes into Effect in March
4) Announcements
National Council on Disability Quarterly Meeting
New Resources from the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange
5) Additional Resources
Letter from Nancy Becker Kennedy to President-Elect Barack Obama
The disability community, along with the rest of the world, has been abuzz this week with anticipation of how the change Obama has promised the nation will come. While the larger media has been cautioning the public that Obama has a very steep hill to climb, disability advocates have nonetheless focused on getting our message to the President-Elect. While no one has the power to fix all the problems our country faces in a day (let alone 71 days before being sworn in), our community has something that not every other community has: answers! During the campaign, Obama repeatedly emphasized the need for every American to step up to the plate if we hope to solve the almost insurmountable obstacles we face. Our community is ready and its time to let Obama know it!
Not only can we free our people, but we have a plan that also contributes to the larger good of our communities and our nation. Obama is ready for change and so are we. This week he launched a new website dedicated to information about the transition to the Obama Administration: www.change.gov. On this site you can submit your name to be considered for a job in the Administration. As you will read below, he has already started making appointments to his Cabinet and soliciting plans from Members of Congress to fulfill the promise he made to make universal healthcare a reality. So what are we waiting for? Let’s let Obama know the value of Independent Living to the disability community and the solutions it offers the nation.
We have included an excellent sample letter from advocate Nancy Becker Kennedy on some of the most important issues currently facing the next Administration below, under Additional Resources.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
My sincerest congratulations on your victory in this week’s election. As we celebrate the coming of historic and much-needed change in our national leadership, I know that you and I agree: work must begin immediately on fulfilling the promises that we have made, as leaders, to the American people. For this reason, I write to inform you that as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, next week I will present to you and to the country my plan to move forward on health care reform in the early days of the 111th Congress and of your administration.
As you know, the Senate Finance Committee has jurisdiction over Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and other health entitlement programs. I intend to work with you and with my colleagues on the Finance Committee, as well as with the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and relevant Committees in the House, to finalize a comprehensive health reform plan that can pass the Congress and be put on your desk in a timely fashion for signature into law.
The analysis and outlook that I will unveil next week will detail specific policy areas and proposals on which I believe the Congress must move forward to achieve successful health care reform – from options for strengthening the employer-based system and reforming the delivery of health care for efficiency and quality to existing ideas on comparative effectiveness research and health information technology. These proposals will be built on the key principles that I have identified as essential to successful reform:
- Universal Coverage: Our challenge is to find a mix of public and private solutions that will allow every single American to receive affordable, quality health care.
- Sharing the Burden: As neither the employer-based system nor the individual market can fulfill the demand for affordable, portable, quality coverage, we must seek to ensure affordable coverage through pooling arrangements. I will outline various types of pooling arrangements that may help individuals and businesses afford quality coverage.
- Controlling costs: As America cannot sustain its current rate of growth in health care spending, I will detail options in the tax code, in savings, and in other areas where efficiencies may be found to reduce the growth of health care costs. Our economy and our nation’s global competitiveness depend on success in this area.
- Prevention: Remaking our health care system with prevention at its foundation can avoid both needless suffering and the high costs of treating an illness that has been allowed to progress. I will outline a new focus on preventive care.
- Shared Responsibility: Individuals, employers, and the government must all play a part in the creating and funding of a new health care system. I intend to enumerate specific roles and opportunities for all to share the burden.
Many of my reform objectives as Finance Committee Chairman will dovetail with your own health plan; in the places where our opinions and policy plans diverge, I am eager to work with you to achieve consensus. My staff is already in contact with your transition team and has made plans for a thorough briefing on our work product next week. I look forward to meeting with you personally in the coming weeks to discuss this further.
As your candidacy and election have been historic, so I hope that your first term and the 111th Congress will be historic for their success in the achievement of comprehensive health care reform that finally makes health care accessible and affordable for every American.
Sincerely yours, Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Chairman, Senate Finance Committee
This notice contains important information for you:
IF You apply for or receive retirement, survivors, or disability insurance benefits or Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI) payments from Social Security;
OR IF You are the representative payee for an individual who receives Social Security benefits or SSI;
AND You have a visual impairment that substantially limits your ability to see, so that you require materials to be in an accessible format in order to participate in these programs.
A federal court has authorized a class action lawsuit against the Social Security Administration (SSA) on behalf of people with visual impairments who require communications from SSA to be in an accessible format in order to participate in the Social Security or SSI programs. The court has authorized two classes: If you have a visual impairment that substantially limits the major life activity of seeing and you (1) apply for or are receiving Social Security or SSI benefits, or (2) are the representative payee for a Social Security beneficiary or SSI recipient, then you are a member of at least one of the two classes. This means that the court’s decision in this case may affect your rights. The case, called American Council of the Blind v. Astrue, No. C05-04696, is pending in the Federal district court in San Francisco, California.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to find that SSA has violated a federal law called the Rehabilitation Act. The Rehabilitation Act says disabled individuals cannot be denied meaningful access to Federal programs and benefits. Plaintiffs, who include the American Council of the Blind, are asking the court to order SSA to provide communications in alternative formats such as Braille, large print, electronic mail, computer disk, and audio recording to make sure that people with visual impairments have meaningful access to SSA’s programs. This case does not include any claims for money damages.
This notice tells you about your right to intervene in this case, submit comments, and how to contact plaintiffs’ class counsel. You do not have to intervene or take any action in response to this notice in order to be included in the class or affected by the outcome of the case. If you want to intervene or have questions about this case, you should contact class counsel listed below at either the toll-free 800 number or the email provided at the end of this notice by December 31, 2008.
The court would like maximum input from the class members. The same number and email may be used to provide class counsel with suggestions about how SSA can effectively communicate with people who have visual impairments. You should give class counsel your comments by December 31, 2008.
Please do not telephone the court, the court clerk's office, or SSA for information about this case. If you require this notice in an alternative format such as Braille, large font print, audio recording or computer disk, please leave your name, request and delivery address at: Arlene B. Mayerson / Silvia Yee / Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, Inc. (DREDF). Telephone: 1-800-348-4232. E-Mail: ssaclassaction@dredf.org.
Source: SSA
On September 30, 2008, President Bush signed H.R. 2638: the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009. This bill contains a continuing resolution (CR) which funds most federal agencies, including Social Security, at their fiscal year 2008 levels through March 6, 2009. Operating under this CR, Social Security will have $300 million less than what was in the President's budget request for the first six months of the year. This severely restricted funding will have real effects within the agency and on our ability to serve the public.
Social Security cannot address the many challenges the agency faces without adequate and timely funding. In fiscal year 2008, Social Security made great strides towards putting the foundation in place to begin to truly address the hearings backlogs (more on that in the article below). To the extent possible, Social Security will do everything it can to try to minimize the deterioration of service to the public under the CR. However, given the tight fiscal constraints, service to constituents could be adversely affected and the forward progress we have made over the past year will likely be slowed.
To read more about Social Security's budget, visit www.socialsecurity.gov/budget.
Source: CQ
Democrat Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in history, announced Friday he will step down as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee in the 111th Congress.
Byrd, 90, was hospitalized several times this year and had come under growing pressure to relinquish his gavel as the committee gears up for a busy year under a new Democratic president. 'To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven," Byrd declared, turning as always to the Bible to express his thoughts.
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, currently chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, is expected to become chairman of the full committee as well in the new Congress. Inouye, Byrd said, "has stood in line for many years and now his time has come. He is my friend. He is a genuine American hero. He will be a skillful and fair chairman of the Appropriations Committee because he is a man of outstanding character and great wisdom. "
Inouye is 84, not all that much younger than Byrd. But his health has been better. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, reportedly discussed the chairmanship issue with Inouye before the Nov. 4 elections, irritating Byrd - who issued a statement expressing his disappointment to learn of those talks.
On Friday, however, Byrd was gracious. "I have been blessed to have had the honor to represent the people of West Virginia in the United States Senate for 50 years. I have been honored to lead the Senate as its Majority Leader for 12 years.
"I have been privileged to be a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee for 50 years and to have chaired the Committee for ten years, during a time of enormous change in our great country, both culturally and politically. I have learned that nothing is quite so permanent as change. It is simply a part of living and should not be feared."
Byrd said he was confident Inouye and other Democrats will protect funding for his beloved West Virginia. Over his half century of service, Byrd has funneled literally billions of dollars to his home state.
"God willing, I will continue to serve on the Appropriations Committee. I will continue to chair the Homeland Security Subcommittee, and I will work to help my state and the people of our great country in those roles," Byrd said.
Hawaii CIL Protests Budget Cuts to Interpreter Program
Source: KITV.com
A group representing the deaf and hearing impaired held a protest rally Monday. The protestors were trying to bring attention to proposed state budget cuts that might affect programs that help them to communicate. They held signs and waved on Punchbowl Street, complaining about possible cuts to the Hawaii Center for Independent Living and interpretive services for deaf people.
Speaking through an interpreter, one of the protestors talked about how important interpreters are to them. "Now suppose if there weren't Interpretive Referral Services, the person who would go to the hospital during an emergency, they would have no interpretive services and that person could possibly die," said Cheryle Mizusawa, of the Hawaii Center for Independent Living.
A spokesman for the Department of Human Services said all state-funded programs are at risk for budget cuts, but no final decisions have been made.
PsychRights Sues State of Alaska to Stop Its Massive, Harmful Psychiatric Drugging of Alaskan Children
Source: PsychRights
Today the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) announced that due to the State of Alaska’s unwillingness, or inability, to enter into substantive talks, it has filed its lawsuit against the State of Alaska and officials responsible for the excessive, ineffective, and extremely harmful psychiatric drugging of Alaskan children and youth. The lawsuit seeks an injunction stopping the practice of Alaska authorizing or paying for psychotropic drugs to be given children without safeguards being in place to make sure proper decision making occurs.
Jim Gottstein, the president of PsychRights and the attorney bringing the lawsuit, said, “The corrupt influence of the pharmaceutical industry in illegally promoting much of this psychiatric drugging of children has been well established, yet the State of Alaska continues to inflict great harm on the children it has taken away from their families by giving them these drugs.” It is ludicrous that the State sued a drug company for fraud in hiding the harm caused by one of these drugs and still gives that same drug and other toxic drugs like it, to children.
Dr. Karen Effrem, pediatrician and board member of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), said, “These dangerous and ineffective drugs are tragically overused to merely control behavior of children who are distraught about being taken away from their families. Missing one’s family or reacting to trauma are wrongly labeled as biological brain disorders that need treatment with powerful medications. Drugs will not put their families back together or help them overcome their trauma and grief. These brain and body damaging pharmaceuticals compound the abuse and trauma. To paraphrase a popular motivational saying, what these kids truly need are ‘hugs, not drugs; hope not dope,’ (even legal dope)” Read article in full.
Colorado Voters Preserve Affirmative Action
Source: Rocky Mountain News, by Kevin Flynn
Colorado becomes the first state to reject an initiative being pushed across the country that would have eliminated race- and gender-based affirmative action programs by voting down Amendment 46. By a slim margin, voters turned down the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative backed by California millionaire Ward Connerly and a local committee headed by Jessica Corry of the Golden-based Independence Institute.
Connerly's initiative had passed 10 years ago in California and since then has passed in Washington, Michigan and Nebraska. He intends to take it to other states in an effort to end affirmative action programs.
Results remained too close to call election night and throughout Wednesday, but returns have continued to pile up and the slender lead widened for the "no" side."I am incredibly proud an honored to have been part of the first campaign to defeat Connerly's initiative," said Melissa Hart, leader of the No on 46 campaign. "It's a great testament to the people of Colorado that when they understood the truth about the initiative, they rejected it. Coloradans stand for equal opportunity."
Corry wasn't immediately available for comment.
Washington Physician-Assisted Suicide Law Goes into Effect in March
Source: The Herald
With Washington voters last week approving physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients, doctors, pharmacists and other health-care workers are scrambling to figure out how the controversial law will change the way they do business. Initiative 1000, known as the Death with Dignity Act, will go into effect as law in March -- four months after voters approved it. The people behind the initiative said they wanted to leave plenty of time for everyone to understand exactly what it means.
Patients with six months or less to live can now ask their doctors for a prescription for lethal medicine they would self-administer to end their own lives. Doctors opposed to the practice aren't required to write such a prescription, and pharmacists opposed to the practice aren't required to fill it. Private hospitals, such as Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, a Roman Catholic institution, aren't required to allow patients to take lethal drugs. "Anybody can opt out," said Eli Stutsman, an Oregon lawyer who wrote the text of both the Oregon and Washington physician-assisted suicide laws. "Entire health-care institutions can opt out. We disagree with our opponents, but we respect their right to opt out."
Voters approved the initiative by 59 percent -- a majority some say constitutes a landslide. The vote came 17 years after the state first considered physician-assisted suicide. The initiative failed then. Advocates say Washington voters likely felt more comfortable with the initiative this year because Oregon has shown that the worst-case scenario situations some opponents warned against aren't likely to occur. Oregon voters approved their Death with Dignity Act in 1994. "Trust that your neighbor to the south has dealt with this readily," Stutsman said.
The Washington State Medical Association opposed the initiative, but now plans to support doctors who choose to participate in the practice. "We continue to oppose physician-assisted suicide, but we respect the public's wishes," association spokeswoman Jennifer Hanscom said. "We don't want to be a barrier to this law." The association has posted the entire law on its Web site and will provide doctors with a summary in the next association newsletter.
Stutsman warns against using the phrase "assisted suicide" to describe the law. Assisted suicide without a doctor's involvement and within the confines of this new law is a crime, and no one is arguing to change that, he said. He also noted that only doctors specializing in end-of-life care are legally able to write a prescription for a lethal drug. A patient won't be able to doctor-shop to get a prescription, he said. It must be written by that patient's primary care physician. "We want no part of Jack Kevorkian," he said, referring to the Michigan doctor who was jailed for administering lethal injections on patients. "We would have put Jack Kevorkian in jail in Oregon, and I would have joined that cause," he said.
Backers of Washington's initiative said former Gov. Booth Gardner, the man behind this year's initiative, has said that he would prefer a law that would allow him to end his own life, but he also thinks the law that voters approved this week is good public policy, Stutsman said. "Booth was very honest," he said. "He acknowledges that his own disease process will likely preclude him from hastening his own death. But he understands the difference between his personal desire and public policy. He knows that as a matter of public policy, this is appropriate."
4) Announcements
National Council on Disability Quarterly Meeting
The National Council on Disability (NCD), invites you to attend NCD’s next quarterly meeting, which will take place at the Chaparral Suites Resort, 5001 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale, Arizona beginning on Monday, January 12 through Wednesday, January 14, 2009. This meeting is open to the public.
Specific times are designated to receive public comment, supported by a toll-free call-in line, and input is encouraged and greatly appreciated. Individuals or organizations can also provide written comments by e-mail, fax, or mail. Public comment sessions will be held Monday, January 12 from 11:30 a.m. until noon (MST), on Tuesday, January 13 from 4:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m., and on Wednesday, January 14 from 11:30 a.m. until noon. The toll-free call-in number is (888) 790-6568, and the pass code is “NCD Meeting.” More info.
Do you know young people with disabilities with a passion for foreign languages? Or a desire to pursue an international career? Please find attached a press release from Mobility International USA’s National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange (NCDE) with information and links to online resources about ways to use VR funding to study abroad, the availability of foreign language materials in alternative formats, tips on traveling with a power wheelchair, and more.
If you have any questions about the resources available from the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange, please don’t hesitate to contact NCDE’s Information Services Coordinator, Olivia Emilia, at (541) 343-1284 (tel/tty). Thank you for your support of the inclusion of people with disabilities in the full range of international exchange opportunities!
Letter from Nancy Becker Kennedy to President-Elect Barack Obama
November 6, 2008
Dear President-Elect Obama,
Anyone who knows me knows how I wept with tears of joy when I heard you give the keynote speech at the Democratic convention. I said “This man is the balm for our wounds." And I appreciate how you always mention people with disabilities in all your speeches. I've been waiting to hear that for a long time. I've had an Obama 2008 sticker plastered to the back of my wheelchair for almost 2 years now. I've met the nicest people that way, but this is not the reason I'm writing to you.
I need to tell you about how we could save billions in healthcare dollars while creating millions of jobs for workers who might otherwise be dependent on Public Assistance. I helped to found and have served for 11 years as a member, and most recently as the vice chair, of the Los Angeles County’s Personal Assistance Services Council, (PASC) the largest public authority in the United States. Our PASC oversees the In-Home Supportive Services program in Los Angeles County serving 168,000 seniors and persons with disabilities partnered with the SIEU’s home care workers Union to give seniors and people with disabilities dignity and empowerment in their own homes at less than a third of the cost of warehousing us in nursing homes.
Our public authority employs 139,000 home care workers. In our program, here in California, which could serve as a model for the nation, we save very substantial sums. The cost of the average person receiving assistance on the IHSS program in California is approximately $12,400 while the annual cost of maintaining such a person is a skilled nursing facility is over $57,000.
Nationally, this program could employ millions of workers. You've spoken many times of the need for jobs, as well as the need for service. I can think of little that could be this effective to promote both these causes. And while promoting service and empowerment, we could at the same time eliminate a great evil. By that I’m referring to the waste of human talent and cutting short the lives of millions of people inappropriately placed in nursing homes.
Nursing home abuse and neglect ranges from unconscionable to horrific. Older people are left to get bedsores and lie in their own excrement, while nursing homes cut costs, and the patient ratios are terrible. When I visited with 4 women in a nursing home for a year, I’ll never forget waiting with one woman crying, who was holding her bladder for close to two hours until one of the nurses aides, who was responsible for eight other patients came in to put her on the toilet. Young people in nursing homes are robbed of the vital life they could have and are not even made aware of their options. Instead, some states are now offering them assisted suicide. The prejudice against and marginalization of people with disabilities is so pervasive that we are viewed as people whose lives are not worth living.
For young people and seniors who don’t require skilled nursing, being warehoused in an institution is to live a life akin to a political prisoner -- with no real civil rights or rights to even move about the community. I broke my neck at age 20, and had I been sent to a nursing home, I swear to G-d that I would have been dead decades ago, from cross-contamination because of my indwelling catheter, but more importantly, I would have withered away from a life without hope or purpose. My mother and I had a suicide pact. Tomorrow I will be 57 years old, and having had a life of purpose, energy, adventure, service, marriage and even visiting England and France, I shudder to think that I could have made that decision. I didn’t make that decision because the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago expected too much of me, the University of Illinois gave me a wheelchair accessible campus to return to, and most importantly in home care gave me the passport I needed to return home to an independent life in the community. Had I not had these gifts, I might have asked for that lethal injection. The wrong public policy kills -- not only physically, but it kills people's spirits, and the cherry on top is that it cost taxpayers over three times the money to do it.
With homecare I was able to return to college to earn a master's degree, become a news and public affairs producer for public television and later become a comedian and always an activist for people with disabilities. And now, thanks in large part to Senator Kennedy, Jim Jeffords, and my very dear friend, John Podesta, who is heading up your transition team, I work as a therapist at the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic because of the Work Incentives Improvement Act. But I had the best of everything.
My fate was so much different than the young people who have my same injury today. Now HMOs send newly injured young people to nursing homes – nursing homes that hire a physical therapist to come in once a month and then euphemistically refer to themselves as "rehabilitation centers." As someone who received her rehabilitation from the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and later worked with newly injured people at the Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, I know what real rehabilitation is.
When my mother suffered from a fall last year, and she could not return to her assisted living for several days, the acute care hospital told me they were transferring her to a "rehabilitation center." They promised me that in the three days my mother would stay there, they would give her physical therapy twice a day, and I wanted that because she was falling and we didn't know why. When I arrived the next day to this "rehabilitation center” with no telephone for me to reach my mother, there was no physical therapist there. Instead, my mother had been lying in bed for 10 hours, been drugged, put in diapers, and looked like she was not even alive --while a large slice of French bread pizza was the only item on her dinner plate. My mother takes insulin for diabetes. When I protested that a diabetic should not be given only a large piece of French bread pizza filled with starch, they said "Our diabetic care is calorie controlled," another euphemism for not giving a damn about what they feed people with medical conditions as long as it's cheap. When I asked why she hadn’t been gotten out of bed for 10 hours, they said "She didn’t want to," another euphemism for not feeling energetic because you are being dosed with Vicodin four times a day at 85 years old. My mother was lucky. She had me to advocate for her and to take her back to the decency of her assisted living, but other people are not so fortunate. People are dying from these euphemisms.
Whenever I visit my doctor I try to always go up to the rehab floor to visit with the newly injured patients. In the last two years, you could shoot cannon through these real rehabilitation centers. Where I used to visit 40 patients, there are now two, as HMOs send young people to nursing homes. It is a quiet genocide that robs them of their spirit and their futures. It kills their body through cross-contamination and neglect, but worst of all, the eclipse of hope sends them to an early death.
I have always been in the right place at the right time, but it shouldn't be a crapshoot, whether you live or die in hope or despair. It isn’t fair that paraplegics living in one state should die an early death in a nursing home because they don't have homecare or because when they were able-bodied, they didn’t have the medical sophistication to know what their HMO would do and how to keep themselves out of nursing homes when trauma strikes. People don’t know what they can have. They die of despair, without adequate services, and the time is long overdue to rectify this evil. Making in-home supportive services a national choice would not only give the gift of dignity and efficacy of millions of seniors and people with disabilities, but it would employ millions of home care workers as well.
When I visited those women in the nursing home, there was one worker for eight women. Three home care workers are employed taking care of me. That means that people who might otherwise be on public assistance could have jobs, and we have the opportunity to go out into the world and make a difference. President Obama, you talk about the need to look for wasteful programs and replace them with good ones. For people inappropriately placed in nursing homes, this is one the finest changes you could possibly make.
One of the greatest days of my life when I sat by my friend John Podesta’s side on a freezing day in Washington, in front of the Franklin Roosevelt monument (the real one where he was sitting down In a wheelchair) after Senator Kennedy’s and Jim Jeffords’ bipartisan bill, the “Work Incentives Improvement Act” was signed as the last piece of legislation the 20th century. That "Ticket to Work" was a start to remove the barriers that forced millions of people with disabilities into idleness with the threat of losing their health care and in-home supportive services if they tried to work. We need to go further, because many of us are still on a very short leash and cannot escape poverty by only being permitted to earn $900 a month, or save because we cannot have more than $2,000 in our bank accounts. But it was a grand beginning.
There are still many rivers to cross for people with disabilities, but I firmly believe that the time is now to release seniors and people with disabilities who don't belong in skilled nursing facilities, from imprisonment and despair, and back to their rightful place in the American life with its promise of liberty and pursuit of happiness. Perhaps what we crave even more is the opportunity to contribute our gifts to this world and put meaning in to our lives. We need to make it possible for every young person in every state to have the gift of in-home supportive services. It saves money, it saves lives, it creates jobs, and it unleashes vast stores of human enterprise among seniors and people with disabilities who still have work to do and people to love. Some may say this is too ambitious, but I believe that you, President-elect Obama will understand best of all, that this is a bold request born out of the "audacity of hope."
This is respectfully submitted on behalf of all of us who have been “wheeling on air” for the last two days!
Most Sincerely!
Nancy Becker Kennedy
PS Robert Kuttner, journalist, economist, and author of the book "Obama's Challenge: a Transformative Opportunity." was on NPR’s "Fresh Air" tonight. Kuttner has previously been a columnist for Business Week as well as the Chief Investigator of the US Senate Banking Committee. In the interview he talks about the expansion of jobs to fix the infrastructure and emphasizes expansion of service job like those of caregivers as a strategy to create jobs as FDR did to infuse the economy to end the Great Depression.
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November 10, 2008