When Satire Hits Close to the Truth

This is a piece of satire from The Onion, but it does raise a pretty serious issue:

A report on growing disparities in the concentration of U.S. aluminum-can wealth, released Tuesday by the Department of Commerce, revealed that 66 percent of the nation's recyclable assets are now held by the poorest 1 percent of the population.

According to the sobering report, the disproportionate distribution of soda-can wealth is greater than ever before, and has become one of the worst instances of economic inequality in the nation's history. Data showed that over-salvaging of cans by a small and elite group of can-horders has created a steadily growing and possibly unbridgeable gap between the rich and the mega-poor.

"Although our nation's upper middle class actually consumes the most beverages, a staggering percentage of these cans wind up in the hands of a very few," said economist Cynthia Pierce, who worked as a consultant on the three-year, $14 million government study. "It's a troubling trend. And as a tiny fraction of the population continues to maintain its stranglehold on redeemable can wealth, it's a trend that shows no sign of slowing."

According to Pierce, the study points to a distinct economic advantage for the most can-affluent—those who possess the resources necessary to collect, transport, separate, and accumulate more and more cans than the rest of the population.

The new economic reality for people is this: recycling things they scavenge is keeping a lot of people alive right now. Homes are being stripped of materials if they are abandoned on under construction. Copper pipes are being stolen at an alarming rate.

One "Free Republic" reader noticed that, in San Francisco, residents are seeing their recycling areas raided by people who are desperate. In areas where people can drop off their recycling, the materials are quickly taken by people to recycling centers. [you don't need to click the link to go read how nasty the freepers are about desperate people in desperate times, but that's up to the reader.]

Recycling bottles and cans is a fairly prominent environmental issue--various groups lobby the states to affect the policies in place and try to improve the process.

Anecdotally, it has been noticed in several areas that people are walking along the road more, that vehicles are stalling in rush hour traffic more often and this could be due to the increasing price of gas. Bicycle sales have risen and more and more people are living in their cars. Economic troubles have driven many people underground.

Do rising fuel and food prices mean better health?

Cuba’s economic crisis in the 1990s had a silver lining, scientists are reporting: a decrease in the rates of obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.

And no wonder. Average calorie consumption dropped more than a third, to 1,863 calories a day in 2002 from 2,899 in 1989. Cubans also exercised more, giving up cars for walking and bicycling.

Using national vital statistics and other sources, the researchers gathered data on energy intake, body weight and physical activity in Cuba from 1980 to 2005. In Cienfuegos, a large city on the southern coast, obesity rates decreased to less than 7 percent in 1995 from more than 14 percent in 1991. As more food became available, obesity increased to about 12 percent again by 2002.

Nationwide, coronary heart disease mortality declined 35 percent from 1997 to 2002. Diabetes mortality was down to less than 10 per 100,000 in 2003 from 19 per 100,000 in 1988. The death rate from all causes declined to 4.7 per thousand in 2002 from 5.9 per thousand in 1982.

“No one is recommending an economic crisis as a health measure,” said Dr. Manuel Franco of the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins. “What we are saying is that changes at the population level designed to reduce caloric intake and increase physical activity might be best suited to prevent obesity and its related conditions.”

The way things are going in this country, look for us to see similar effects. Many more Americans are getting more exercise and eating less just trying to survive.

With the V.A. overwhelmed, Veterans suffer needlessly

The Department of Veterans Affairs has produced it's annual year-end report to the congress, and for the third year running, the rate at which the V.A. acts to render decisions on disability claims fell further behind.

While the goal is to make determinations within 125 days, the reality is, on average it takes a claim 183 days to be acted on.

When a claim is rejected and appealed, the goal is to act on that appeal within one year, or 365 days. In reality, rejected claims take on average 660 days to be acted on; just under two years.

The VA has responded to this backlog by hiring new personnel, but it takes a reviewer two to three years to become efficient at their job, and the backlogs had a huge head start. While new personnel have been hired, and are being trained and gaining the acumen to do their jobs efficiently, veterans continue to be caught in limbo.

And when it is all said and done, just under 90% of all claims are found to be reasonable and valid, and the veteran receives the benefits he or she is due.

Very few wounded veterans have the ready resources that politicians seem to take for granted, and virtually none have the resources of the Bush clan. While they wait for their benefit determinations, they often face poverty, destitution and homelessness. No returning soldier should face homelessness, and no soldier should be relieved that they lost both arms because then the VA will have to give them a 100% disability rating!

That is why I favor the heartbreakingly simple approach advocated by Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard: Give the Veteran the benefit of the doubt. Provisionally approve all claims made by Veterans for disability benefits, and don't withhold health care benefits while the claim is under review by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Bilmes has been studying veterans’ medical care and disability benefits for years, and it is her considered and esteemed opinion that the current backlog simply overwhelmed a system that was already struggling under budget cuts before the wars started and created a whole bunch of new veterans needing services. Now things only stand to get worse. Last spring, in testimony before a congressional subcommittee, she predicted 250,000 to 400,000 claims will be filed over the next two years alone by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This, she maintained, would create a situation that she said “will rapidly turn the disability claims problem into a crisis.” The problems of the VA are exacerbated as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on and on with no end in sight, and and the flood of wounded shows no sign of abating. And the DoD health system continues to dump patients into the underfunded VA system. This negatively impacts all veterans who use the system.

Keep in mind that Bilmes offered this testimony nearly a year ago, before the latest information on TBI was publicized.

The most recent findings are the result of percussive experiments conducted on animals, then the animals were sacrificed and the brain tissue examined microscopically. In the animal studies, scientists have discovered a fundamentally different injury than the “concussion” wound that has traditionally been ascribed to exposure to explosions. A concussion is essentially a bruise on the brain that generally heals with time.

Brain damage at the cellular level is likely permanent – and will almost certainly lead to further neurological degradation over time. Put bluntly, G.I.’s afflicted by TBI are not likely to get better, and in fact will get worse. How much worse is still unknown, but this will strain the system even further.

When the V.A. falters, it is the Veterans who stepped up and served who pay the price - again! - and who suffer as a result. That is a situation I find wholly intolerable. And frankly, anyone who professes unflagging support for the troops, but isn't hopping mad about the way our veterans are being treated once back home, should probably not profess their patriotism in direct proximity to me.

They gave the government the benefit of the doubt that they would not be sorely used when they joined up - the government owes them the same courtesy in return.