I am speaking at the West Jordan Senior Center today and at the Draper Senior Center next Friday as part of a series of Open Houses sponsored by the Salt Lake County Division of Aging Services. Candidates were invited to attend and take advantage of the opportunity to provide a 3-minute or less speech and talk with senior citizens.
I developed a personal statement on aging issues at my campaign website.
Here is what I will say today:
Continue reading
There is an article in today’s Salt Lake Tribune on a new homeless housing initiative, a project that places transients in housing. While there are some “bumps” in the project, it is an overall success and frees up space in shelters for families.
It has been 25 years sinces the AIDS epidemic was declared. The UN projects that by the year 2025 31 million people in India and 18 million in China will die from complications associated with AIDS.
A man who suffers with AIDS, Eric Sawyer, has an article published on Common Dreams, What 25 years of AIDS Has Taught Me, where he addresses the lack of a global funding commitment on the U.S.’s part to combat the disease and the lack of information being desseminated to the public.
Sawyer attended last week’s United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS and reports what was……or more significantly, what was not…..accomplished.
Senior Citizens are being evicted from their homes of more than 50 years, according to a Deseret News article today.
Residents of a well established mobile home park in Cottonwood Heights, most of whom are elderly and low/fixed income and who had planned on living out their lives in the park, are being forced to move as a result of the sale of land upon which their homes sit. Many of the residents will be unable to move their mobile homes because of the aged style of the structures.
The developers who purchased the land plan to build more luxury homes (Cottonwood Heights is an area for million dollar homes)and 150 trailers will have to be moved or destroyed.
For those with newer mobile homes who can move to another park, the cost to relocate is anywhere from $7,000 to $12,000. The incoming developer has offered to offset some of those costs, but “it’s not going to be painless,” Cullimore[Cottonwood Heights Mayor Kelvyn Cullimore Jr.] said. “And there’s going to be some human costs as this unfolds.”
There is talk of hiring lawyers to fight this.
Some residents want to hire attorneys to fight the landowners and developers. Shearrer[one of the long time residents] said she feels helpless: “How can you fight people with money? You just can’t.”
The Salt Lake Community Action Program is stepping in the help the displaced residents, but this scenario is very disruptive to these peoples’ lives.
“These people that are truly, truly in need, and how do they survive?” Martinez[Salt Lake Community Action Program’s Virginia Marrufo Martinez ] said. “I always say I believe in miracles. So, we’ll see what happens.”
The mayor is portrayed in the article as having empathy and compassion for these folks and is quoted as stating that the land owners “had the right” to sell their property. That may be but where has the mayor and its council been? Can’t they re-zone the land? It’s not too late.
This is yet another case where money and greed is superceding human needs. With our aging population increasing significantly, we just cannot allow these things to happen. Goliath must be confronted by the Daveys here and fight for what is right. Kicking seniors out of their homes just isn’t right.
As stated by many and understood by few the recent marriage amendment issue created a diversion away from the really important issues, like the Iraq War, wire-tapping, and human needs issues.
The Salt Lake Tribune today reports that Republicans may have accomplished their political goal: energizing their base in a tough election year.
Paired with debate scheduled next week on prohibiting desecration of the flag, the two proposed constitutional amendments could change the subject – at least temporarily – as many members of Congress face voters after a spate of Washington scandals. Republicans, fearing a Democratic takeover of one or both houses, brought up the marriage amendment to stoke their base, observers say.
The Senate voted yesterday on whether or not to take the marriage amendment to a vote. It failed. Senator Orrin Hatch insists that Americans demand that there be a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Proponents had said they had four more votes for ending debate than they did in 2004, but only picked up one. Forty-eight senators voted to continue debate.
Hatch said in a statement that the Senate will again bring up the issue “because the American people demand it.”
“For millions of people in Utah and throughout country, no issue is more important than this one,” said Hatch, who co-sponsored the proposed amendment. “As we see it, marriage and family life are the bedrock of American society.”
But he added, “We aren’t going to fall back and cry about today’s vote.”
There you go. “no issue is as important as this one”. That’s the diversion folks. Yup. There’s no more important issues to our world and our health and our lives than who and what defines marriage. Not even hunger issues or survival issues for the elderly, or health care issues.
I’ve made posts here in the past year about Utah’s human needs issues and how our tax dollars are spent on those. While the U.S. government is spending tax dollars on building apartheid walls, illegally occupying other countries,confiscating people’s phone records in the name of national security and arguing over the definition of marriage, people in America, the United States of America, are suffering from poverty-stricken conditions and are going hungry.
Yesterday was the 5th National Hunger Awareness Day, a grassroots movement to raise awareness about the solvable problem of hunger in America. According to the National Hunger Awareness Day website, 38 million Americans aren’t even sure where they will get their next meal.
There is an article in today’s Deseret News about a creative display at the Gallivan Center, in conjunction with National Hunger Awareness Day, that portrayed the number of hungry people in Utah:
Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning News
Jeff Golden of the Food Development Office sets up 218 plates at the Gallivan Center during the rally for National Hunger Awareness Day.
The 218 empty dinner plates standing on the Gallivan Center lawn each represented 1,000 Utahns who live at or below the federal poverty level, joining more than 38 million people — including 14 million children — living in poverty across the country.
Gina Cornia of Utahns Against Hunger pointed out that there is plenty of food for people but that poverty creates condidtions whereby people do not have access to food.
Utah has the fifth highest rate of food insecurity in the nation and the 10th highest hunger rate.
Local organizations and activists are encouraging people to up their donations to local food banks this summer. Summer is a time when donations drop off and the demand for emergency food supplies increase.
As a person who has been represented by one of those plates above at various times in life with small children, I can speak from personal experience to this issue.
Please donate to your local food bank. Your neighbors may be depending on it.
According to Utah Policy‘s Lavaar Web in his “Monday Buzz”. Lavaar’s piece, “Population Bomb is a Bust”, highlights parts of readings on population around the world, the decline of population in Europe and how Utah’s high birth rate will one day be an advantage:
One day Utah’s high birth rate will be seen as a significant competitive advantage. We’ll have a workforce when others are lacking.
While the U.S. increases the size of its population with force, the dollars spent on services to support its population is severely lacking, something that many European countries have an advantage over the U.S.
See my post on the numbers of people who die each year as a result of not being able to afford healthcare.
The latest news in the “War on Terrorism” is the NSA Phone Records Confiscation. The reason being given for this invasion of privacy is that it is necessary to combat the war on terrorism. Sadly, many Americans feel that it is o.k. for this violation of rights to occur in the name of “protecting” U.S. citizens from terrorist attacks.
Even more sad is that there are more people who die each year from lack of health care than from terroists attacks. Approximtately three times more people in the United States die each year as a result of not being able to obtain the necessary health care than died in the single terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York on Septebmer 11, 2001.
The Citizens Healthcare Report, a government initiated working group to study and report on health care in America, acknowledges that Health care services are not available to everyone, and millions of Americans can’t afford to pay for health care services even when they are available, and these problems are getting worse.
So are we more at risk of dying from disease and malnutirition…….or from terrorist attacks?
The answer is obvious.
While the regime that is currently at the helm of running the United States focuses most of our money and efforts on combating terrorism and degrading our civil liberties, more and more people are suffering and dying as a result of not being able to access much needed services to sustain a quality of life. Basic human needs are a right outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the U.S. is a signatory.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged civil liberties, government corruption, healthcare, human needs
Today’s Salt Lake Tribune is reporting that the Indian Walk-in Center in Salt Lake could be axed under Bush’s budget plan.
President Bush’s 2007 budget proposes canceling all funding to the nation’s 34 urban Indian health clinics. Utah’s share of the $33 million cut is $1.1 million, roughly 90 percent of the Walk-In Center’s budget.
The center services over 7,000 of Utah’s poor each year. Most clients are uninsured Indians living below poverty level.
“That would pretty much wipe us out. I’d hate to say we’d disappear, but we would close our doors to regroup,” said Thomas Burkes, the center’s development director.
“We’re Utah’s only urban Indian health clinic to close.” Fast Horse-White said, “I wouldn’t take the initiative to go somewhere else. I would just go without.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Senator Bob Bennett of Utah stated that Senator Bennett is looking into what he can to restore the funding.
After a legislative session that failed (in my opinion) to address basic human needs and, instead, debated the merits of personal lifestyle and “morals”, Utah citizens are still suffering from lack of services and resources. This article appeared in today’s Salt Lake Tribune:
Homelessness hits more Utah families: SLC’s largest shelter struggles to handle an unexpected surge
102 families….[took] up residence this winter at the Road Home in Salt Lake City – a 62 percent spike over last year, matched only by the winter preceding the Olympics. “We’re not seeing any trends,” said associate shelter director Michelle Flynn. “The families are larger and using up more nights. Most are local two- and single-parent families who, for whatever reason, have just fallen on hard times.” ….poverty and the lack of affordable housing are two growing trends, say low-income advocates.
While the media chooses to publicize the creation of more jobs on Utah, low-income advocates also point out that, yes, more jobs are being created……but for lower pay. The Federal government is reducing its rental assistance programs. Tim Funk, an advocate at Crossroads Urban Center, the state’s busiest food pantry, said Utah’s housing authorities lost 895 Section 8 rent vouchers to federal cuts last year, a 9 percent hit. More cuts are pending under President Bush’s proposed 2007 budget.
How you can help:
More than a third of the Road Home’s budget comes from private donations. To donate, call 359-4142.
The article in the Salt Lake Tribune has a chart that shows stats of the Road Home’s increase in clientel.
Thank you Chris Buttars and LaVarr Christiansen for taking up taxpayer dollars to use the legislative time to argue incessantly about issues that have no place in government, instead of addressing what our citizens really need.
Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 