Unreliable Sources and the Wounds of War

VeteransPolicy<veteranspolicy@gmail.com>

10/23/2018 10:46 AM

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Unreliable Sources Read the new, five-part report co-authored by VHPI’s Suzanne Gordon and Jasper Craven. The story begins with the Concerned Veterans for America, an arm of the Koch Brothers’ political network, that drove the widely-publicized Phoenix wait-time scandal. Then, as the VA’s public relations response withered under the criticism, news organizations like CNN and USA Today shaped the narrative around the Veterans Health Administration as a troubled and ineffective agency – even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Click here to read the report. From the authors: “I spent five years interviewing veterans and reporting from inside the VA. The failing healthcare system portrayed by many politicians and the news media ignores the evidence and many veterans’ experiences at the Veterans Health Administration.” - Suzanne Gordon, VHPI Senior Analyst  "In analyzing media coverage of the VA, we found journalists often promoted anecdotal scandals and ignored agency-wide triumphs. While accountability journalism is a vital tool of democracy, reporters also bear a responsibility to frame their stories with the the proper context, and data." - Jasper Craven, VHPI Fellow Excerpts:  On the powerful Koch-powered Concerned Veterans for America’s role in driving coverage: When the Phoenix scandal broke, Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) was a fledgling advocacy group working from the fringes. As the Washington Monthly reported, the group’s staff – led by telegenic veteran Pete Hegseth – brilliantly packaged, framed and fed the Phoenix story to a salivating news media desperate for a scandal in the Obama administration. The most serious charges out of Phoenix – that veterans died because they were unable to access care – were never substantiated. The cover up of wait times was more indicative of the agency’s chronic capacity and funding challenges than anything else – issues that to this day have not been meaningfully addressed. Today, CVA holds incredible sway in Washington. Numerous CVA officials have entered President Donald Trump’s White House, or his Department of Veterans Affairs. Hegseth is now an anchor on the president’s favorite morning news show, Fox & Friends. How the Obama Administration's VA kept the lid on positive stories: This duck-and-cover response extends to reporters trying to cover VA innovations. In 2015, Daniel Zwerdling, a well-known health care journalist for National Public Radio, was preparing a story that highlighted the VHA as an industry leader in installing lift equipment to reduce musculoskeletal injuries among bedside nursing staff. Zwerdling, who wanted to tell a positive story about the VA, was stymied at every turn. “I found terrific local people working at specific hospitals who were anxious and eager to help me because they felt this was so important,” he said. “They couldn’t do it without permission from on high.” And from the Trump Administration: Under Trump, obstructionism with reporters seems to rule, including at VA. When HBO’s VICE News was doing a segment on suicide among veterans, reporter Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani was unable to get much help from national VA communications staff. Staffers at the San Francisco VA were able to connect her to some suicide prevention experts, but were stymied when they asked permission to allow VICE to bring a camera crew into the medical center. Requests for interviews and even background conversations with national suicide prevention staff were also greeted with an endless stream of replies summed up as “we’re still working on it.” Read the full report: Click here for Section 1 Introduction Part 1: The Phoenix Story: Pack Journalism at Work Part 2: Corporate-Funded Critics Click here for Section 2 Part 3: All the VA News that’s Fit to Print? Part 4: What’s Missing from the Picture Part 5: The VA has a Public Relations Problem Section 3 – How Flawed Reporting Impacts Veterans and their Caregivers Note: This article was expanded from an original article published in The Washington Monthly in the July/August 2018 issue. New Book: Wounds of War Award-winning journalist and VHPI Senior Analyst Suzanne Gordon’s new book, Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans has been published by Cornell University Press. The book details how the nation’s largest healthcare system operates, why its care model is unique in American health care, and the danger to veterans if it were to be dismantled. Read a book review by Vietnam Veteran and VHPI Steering Committee member Paul Cox. Suzanne Gordon in an interview with Progressive.org: “The VA gives better care at lower costs to sicker patients. And the private sector is fragmented care, while the VA is an integrated system. Why is the care of the veterans so far superior to the care I will receive, and I have the best health insurance around? Because my doctors aren’t on salary, and they have huge incentives to overtreat, and they never talk to each other. Its completely uncoordinated.” …  “But no one in Congress really understands the VA, they don’t understand healthcare, they are very focused on individual doctors appointments and procedures. They don’t understand the kind of care coordination and integration that the VA puts into practice which I describe in my book.” What people are saying about Wounds of War: “Wounds of War highlights what the average American rarely gets to see in the news media but what many veterans know first-hand: day in and day out – and with little fanfare – the Veterans Health Administration provides high quality, patient-centered care to millions of our nation’s veterans.” – Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) “Wounds of War intersperses ‘boots on the ground’ stories from providers, volunteers, family members, and veterans receiving care and enhances dry data about VA care. I have never read something that so wonderfully ties it all together. It’s a true work of art.” – Amy Webb, National Legislative Policy Advisor, AMVETS "Suzanne Gordon's revealing work approaches veterans health care from a civilian's point of view and opens up a world most of us where unaware even existed. Mainstream media war correspondents make their names by reporting from war zones. But Gordon spent five years where the fallout of war is most intense – and often goes unreported. The majority of Americans will never experience the sacrifice of veterans or their families but this book puts us closer to truly understanding the Wounds of War." – Brett W. Copeland, VHPI Executive Director Purchase the book on Amazon.com. Wilkie ‘blows off’ Congressional document request re: VA ‘Shadow Rulers’ VA Secretary Robert Wilkie has declined to provide documents to the House Veterans Affairs Committee related to Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter and the two other VA ‘Shadow Rulers.’ A ProPublica story from August alleged the three men had unusual access to leaders and sway over the agency’s priorities and programs. Read the editorial from the Dallas Star Tribune. Quick Clicks: The VA estimates that more than half-a-million veterans have received Other Than Honorable discharges yet are eligible for some VA care. But so far, the agency has only treated 115 in a new program. Vietnam Veterans of America’s Rick Weidman and Kristofer Goldsmith respond in this article by NPR. Disabled American Veterans’ Legislative Director Joy Ilem was on Federal Drivediscussing the health care needs of the largest growing group of veterans: women. The AP reports on a shakeup of the leadership team at the Atlanta VA Medical Center after it was rated among the worst in the nation. VA Secretary Robert Wilkie continues to oppose extending benefits to ‘Blue Water’ Navy Veterans from the Vietnam War for potential Agent Orange exposure – and has the same position for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.Read the article at the Wall Street Journal. Copyright © 2018 Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, All rights reserved. You’ve subscribed to the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute newsletter (formerly FFVHC). Our mailing address is: 4081 Norton Ave., Oakland CA 94602 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.

Can you hear us now? The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Can you hear us now?

The Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival<info@poorpeoplescampaign.org>

10/23/2018 5:57 PM

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Dear Alfred, Movements begin with the telling of untold stories. The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has pulled off five hearings in the last few weeks—in Richmond, Virginia, Wichita, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, Little Rock, Arkansas and Racine, Wisconsin. Find your local event in Massachusetts. We’ve heard stories of farmers committing suicide because they can’t provide for their families alongside immigrant families at risk of being torn apart and veterans who survived war only to die from Agent Orange exposure back at home. We have proclaimed “somebody is hurting our people” after people whose votes have been suppressed by felony disenfranchisement, voter purges, and the closing down of polling places and low wage workers who risk homelessness and incarceration because of poverty speak out. But things don’t have to be this way. At the conclusion of each hearing, we read the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and affirm that we believe in automatic voter registration at the age of 18, universal single-payer health care, a $15 living wage and a union, and clean air, water and land. We have more hearings and canvassing activities over the next two weeks. Check out the events happening near you. And get involved in registering people for a movement that will vote! Forward together, not one step back! The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival GIVE TODAY

BREAKING: Methodist Theological School in Ohio endorses the Wendy’s Boycott in unanimous vote!

Coalition of Immokalee Workers<workers@ciw-online.org>

10/24/2018 9:06 AM

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BREAKING: Methodist Theological School in Ohio endorses the Wendy’s Boycott in unanimous vote! The Reverend Jay Rundell, President of the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, signs the official resolution endorsing the Wendy’s Boycott on Tuesday following its unanimous approval by the MTSO Board of Trustees. The CIW’s Nely Rodriguez looks on. Ohio-based seminary becomes first academic institution to endorse the Wendy’s Boycott!  “Sustainable justice cannot be a value we claim only for ourselves and the school’s property; rather, it is one that we must put in service to the common good…” The Fair Food Nation has some big news to share, and it’s coming straight out of Wendy’s own backyard! The Methodist Theological School in Ohio (MTSO) – located in Delaware, Ohio, just miles from Wendy’s corporate headquarters in Dublin – has become the first institution of higher learning to endorse the Wendy’s Boycott, with a unanimous vote by the Board of Trustees.  On Tuesday, MTSO President Reverend Jay Rundell was joined by Nely Rodriguez of the CIW to make the precedent-setting announcement in a special signing ceremony, and the Student/Farmworker Alliance was there. Here is SFA's report: The following is an excerpt from the MTSO resolution, which was written and presented by Yvonne Zimmerman, Associate Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Christian Ethics: The purpose of the Wendy’s Boycott that CIW is asking MTSO to endorse is to pressure Wendy’s to protect the human rights of farmworkers by joining the Fair Food Program… What endorsing the boycott does do is formally express that MTSO recognizes the moral claim that the farm workers who make Wendy’s corporate profits possible have on the corporation regarding its responsibility to ensure fair wages and safe working conditions. Why should MTSO endorse the Wendy’s boycott? Endorsing the boycott fits squarely with the commitments named in our institutional mission to justice, sustainability, and generativity. The value of sustainable justice that we proudly and prominently espouse is an intersectional conception of justice that includes within its purview immigrants, farm workers, and people who are vulnerable to sexual violence. Sustainable justice cannot be a value we claim only for ourselves and the school’s property; rather, it is one that we must put in service to the common good, starting with the most vulnerable and exploitable. Supporting the basic rights and dignity of migrant farm workers is absolutely consistent with our institutional mission...  Read more about today's breaking news out of Ohio at the CIW website! Coalition of Immokalee Workers (239) 657 8311 | workers@ciw-online.org | www.ciw-online.org Connect with us  ‌  ‌  ‌  ‌

11/14 Richard Levins book event 7:30-9 at MIT-The book launch below will be proceed by a short Meeting of the Boston Chapter of Science for the People in the same room from 7 to 7:30 PM

11/14 Richard Levins book event 7:30-9 at MIT

Charlie Welch<cwelch@tecschange.org>

10/24/2018 3:37 PM

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The book launch below will be proceed by a short Meeting of the Boston
Chapter of Science for the People in the same room from 7 to 7:30 PM


/The Truth is the Whole: Essays in Honor of Richard Levins/ is now
available as a 300-page paperback through online retailers in North
America, Europe, and Australia.
The Boston chapter of Science for the People and Radius are hosting a
book launchon Wednesday, November 14, 7:30-9:00 p.m. at MIT in
32-141.The 1.5-hour program will include prepared remarks by Peter
Taylor, Katherine Yih, Nafis Hasan, Victor Wallis, and Abha Sur, as well
as Q&A with this panel of speakers. Paperback books will be available
for purchase for $15.
Levins (1930-2016) was an ecologist, evolutionary biologist,
biomathematician, philosopher of science, complexity theorist, Marxist,
and one-time tropical farmer. Key to all aspects of his thinking was a
dialectical logic of process and change. His work provides a framework
for the understanding of crises in environment and society and their
analytic relationship with capitalism and imperialism, as well as the
tools for the critique of biological determinist justifications for the
existing structures of power. This collection of essays pays tribute to
Levins by carrying forward his work in the development of the
understanding of the dialectics of nature and society.

The book includes an introduction by John Vandermeer and chapters by
Antonio Bodini, Douglas Boucher, David Bruck, Luis Fernando Chaves,
Harold Heatwole, Patricia Lane, Julio Munoz-Rubio, Cristina de
Albuquerque Possas, Brian Rubineau, Javier Sandoval Guzmán, David
Schwartzman, Peter J. Taylor, Robert G. Wallace & colleagues, and Victor
Wallis.
Also featured are reminiscences and tributes by Tamara Awerbuch,
Graciela Campos Escalante, Arturo Cervantes, Yrjo Haila, Aurora Levins
Morales, Olga Mas, Leda M. Menéndez Carrera & colleagues, Hilary Rose
and Steven Rose, and William Wimsatt.

Editors: Tamara Awerbuch, Maynard S. Clark, and Peter J. Taylor.

Please pass on this notice to friends, colleagues, and librarians.


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Cold War II: Trump threat to pull out of INF Treaty could set off new arms race

Michelle Cunha<cunha.michelle@gmail.com>

10/25/2018 4:32 PM

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/cold-war-ii-trump-threat-pull-inf-treaty-set-off-new-arms-race-162358331.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw 

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Ideology over interest? Trump’s costly INF decision.

Michelle Cunha<cunha.michelle@gmail.com>

10/29/2018 11:41 AM

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https://thebulletin.org/2018/10/ideology-over-interest-trumps-costly-inf-decision/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Twitter%20Post&utm_campaign=Ideology_Oct26 

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