religion – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Keep Bannon out of New York

David Posnett — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:56:27 +0000

This demonstration is tomorrow Thursday on Park Ave and 47th in front of the offices of Wayne Berman, one of the hosts of Zeldin’s fundraiser with Bannon. The location may change in the last minute – keep checking this Facebook site:

https://www.facebook.com/events/787115771474452/?active_tab=discussion

On December 14, Steve Bannon will be in NYC fundraising for Rep. Lee Zeldin. It’s Bannon’s first fundraiser for a House Representative, and we have to show up big if we’re going to make it his last.

After Steve Bannon was ousted from the White House (we helped do that!), he set his sights on Congress with a plan to elect extremists who support Trump and his white supremacist agenda.

We need to make it clear that Steve Bannon and his white supremacist agenda are NOT welcome in New York or in Congress.

Help us bring our message to Rep. Lee Zeldin and every Member of Congress: if they’re willing to threaten our communities by giving a platform to Steve Bannon’s hateful agenda for their own political gain, we’re going to do everything in our power to hold them accountable.

Share and invite your friends, and sign our petition: http://www.weveseenthisbefore.org/zeldin_dump_bannon

More details to be announced!

CO-SPONSORS: Bend the Arc Jewish Action, Show Up LI, Let’s Visit Lee Zeldin, Suffolk Progressives, Resist and Replace, Long Island Progressive Coalition, PEER/NYPAN: Progressive East End Reformers, Resist Here, T’ruah, United Through Action/Flip Long Island, Make the Road New York, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice [JFREJ]

I would add:

As Doug Jones in Alabama proved yesterday and summed up by Michael Steele on MSNBC:

Prepare you signs/banners (but don’t mount them on sticks or poles).

Ideas for signs:

When you lie down with fleas…

No Hate in NY State

Zeldin is a Bannon puppet

Zeldin is a Trump puppet

Zeldin: Alt right Jew ???

Zeldin: siding with Alt Right

We are coming for you Lee Zeldin

Toxic Lee has the Bannon Virus

Peter King on Bannon:

https://patch.com/new-york/easthampton/s/gb6p0/watch-peter-king-says-bannon-looks-like-some-disheveled-drunk?utm_source=alert-breakingnews&utm_medium=email&utm_term=weather&utm_campaign=alert

What has Zeldin Actually Done ?

David Posnett — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 16:06:25 +0000

Letter to the Editor by Tina Plesset, published in the East Hampton Star, 3/17/2017

“What Has He Done?”

Educators and kids are doing what our leaders should be doing — implementing a hopeful worldview through example. Our Representative Lee Zeldin has talked about anti-Semitism, but what has he done?

Recently, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an associate professor of education and sociology at American University, writes that children of all ages are “experiencing extraordinarily high levels of stress about their safety and the well-being of their friends and families. Educators across the country have reported heightened anxiety and fear among their students.” Dr. Miller-Idriss says, “The rallying cries of the past few months have been about resistance and persistence,” and she writes that this movement has taught positive lessons in regard to social justice.

However, the main point of her article is to say that while these protest actions teach a sense of agency and purpose, they don’t make children feel safe or hopeful. Her call to action is for parents and educators to help their children and students to be helpers, and to “reach out to offer support,” as evidenced by mosques and churches that have come to the aid of defaced cemeteries and communities that have had fund-raising campaigns to resettle refugees.

While we haven’t experienced overt anti-Semitism in my neighborhood of East Hampton, we do have neighbors to protect in our community who are facing an inhumane deportation program. Fortunately, our town board has led the way with town meetings and issuing policies to protect our neighbors. This is responsible leadership.

In the past month, members of New York’s First Congressional District have been looking for Representative Lee Zeldin through phone calls, letters, emails, and a FaceTime meeting, to take action on these issues. To his credit, he has issued a statement saying, “The recent threats and property crimes targeting institutions and symbols of Jewish faith demonstrate that the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the United States and globally must be combated forcefully and decisively.”

Talk is cheap; what has he done? Has he visited a Jewish cemetery that has been defaced or a synagogue to personally express his support for the Jewish community? Has he spoken with immigrants to allay their fears? Has he visited schools, colleges, and universities to tell those who need to be protected that he is there for them? Has he come out and disavowed the biased right-wing news media that has been fueling the fires of anti-Semitism, bias, and hate?

However we slice and dice this issue, we come to an age-old principle, “Actions speak louder than words.” Given the recent actual violence and threats against the Jewish community and the rampant fear among our immigrant neighbors, only positive actions by Lee Zeldin now will give us the hope needed to lift us from the hate we are witnessing. The right-wing media continues to spew hateful messages, perhaps to foment the violence we are seeing. It is time for Mr. Zeldin to commit to action. I hope Representative Lee Zeldin has the courage of leadership to show the way for all of us — his constituents and neighbors. Now is the time. He owes this to his children and ours.

Respectfully,

TINA PLESSET

Fascist Regime in the Making?

David Posnett — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 00:43:20 +0000

Several reports from today describe how US citizen Khizr Khan is essentially threatened with losing travel privileges. Khizr Khan is an American citizen born in Pakistan and a muslim. He is the father of an American soldier killed in Iraq and well known to the American public for his brave stand at the Dem convention.

He has canceled a speaking engagement in Toronto after being notified that his U.S. travel privileges were under review. It is unclear which U.S. agency ordered the review or who told him of the change in his travel privileges.

Khan had planned to speak at a luncheon in Toronto in a discussion about President Trump’s administration, according to Ramsay Talks, a Toronto-based speaker series.

The organization said in the same statement that Khan, a U.S. citizen for over 30 years, was notified Sunday evening that his travel privileges were being reviewed.

“Mr. Khan will not be traveling to Toronto on March 7th to speak about tolerance, understanding, unity and the rule of law,” said Ramsay Talks.

Travel restrictions on German jews were a hallmark of Nazi policy leading up to WWII.

While this story needs to be confirmed, and the details understood, the intent to sow fear and confusion is quite clear. And the signs of a fascist regime in the making are equally clear.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-khan-idUSKBN16D2MI?utm_source=applenews

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/06/khizr-khan-gold-star-muslim-american-father-says-his-freedom-to-travel-abroad-is-under-review/?source=newsletter

No to Medicare Privatization

David Posnett — Tue, 03 Jan 2017 15:30:55 +0000

Letter to the Editor by Mike Anthony – published in the Southampton Press

Since the November 8^th election, the focus has been placed on public policy options in a fully Republican-dominated federal government. One of those policy areas is Medicare and the direction US House Speaker Paul Ryan would like to take the program under his “Better Way” proposals; specifically, he is interested in privatizing Medicare and using a premium support stipend directed to beneficiaries to purchase their own health insurance in the marketplace.

There is a lot to chew over regarding that proposal, but as a former teaching hospital administrator, I would like to share my concerns solely related to Medicare’s role in teaching the future physicians of America.

Medicare is critical to teaching and training physicians – will that role be jeopardized under a privatization scheme?

Medicare supports nearly a quarter of all direct medical education costs (DGME) associated with training physicians: annual costs are $13 billion of which Medicare directly supports with $3 billion in payments to teaching hospitals. These payments help pay for stipends and fringe benefits, salary for supervision, administrative and overhead costs. (Note: Medicaid also supports medical education costs.)

In addition to the direct costs associated with training our future doctors, Medicare recognizes and pays for indirect costs associated with treating an older Medicare-eligible population that are common in teaching hospitals. Accordingly, Medicare provides an additional add-on called the Indirect Medical Education (IME) payment. Through this IME adjustment, teaching hospitals receive an additional $6.5 billion annually. What is critical to understand is that private insurance companies rarely recognize these additional costs in their reimbursements.

Since New York State has a robust physician training program, and many world-renown teaching hospitals, any diminution of teaching support payments from Medicare (and Medicaid) might place at risk the teaching mission at these hospitals.

For this and other reasons, we need to strengthen and not privatise Medicare.

A key aspect of Medicare: funding medical education. Every physician has benefited! Including myself. David

ACA (Obamacare) and Contraceptives

David Posnett — Sun, 12 Jan 2014 17:28:06 +0000

We have a pretty crazy system whereby employers are in charge of selecting/paying your medical insurance. My employer offers Aetna. I had nothing to do with that choice, but I understand that they were able to bargain for a good rate, given their large number of employees. Of course the money paid to the insurer is deducted from my paycheck. So they are not really “paying”. I am.

We also understand as individuals that, in general, when you cede control over any aspect of your life, the entity that has the control (employer in this case) may want to make decisions for you! That is why the system is “crazy”! And not replicated in any other western democracy that I know of.

So where is this leading? Contraceptives: should they be covered or not. There are 2 pending supreme court cases. The first one deals with a Florida based private business called “Hobby Lobby”. Here is an excellent discussion of the issue by Rick Lowery (a writer, a minister and a bible scholar), which I highly recommend as a ‘must read’. It is actually highly relevant to all of us, regardless of whether we buy contraceptives or not! For the guys out there, I would remind everyone that when you get prostate cancer, there are countless women that have paid insurance fees that help support coverage of your prostate problem (even though as far as I know they don’t have a prostate and don’t particularly need that kind of coverage for themselves). That is just the way insurance works.

If you want to learn about “Hobby Lobby” click here.