ARTURO GARCIA, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The Catholic Church owns hospitals across the country, sometimes the only hospital in town. As this report makes clear theology is now making policy at facilities that could not exist were it not for public monies, i.e., medicare, SSI. This is what happens when the firewall between church and state is breached.
Birth control access for women in Oklahoma and several other states will be cut short as part of a new directive by a Catholic-affiliated healthcare firm that recently acquired another company.
The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise reported on Monday that as a result of St. Louis-based Ascension Health’s acquisition of its parent company, gynecologists affiliated with Jane Phillips Medical Center in Bartlesville will no longer be allowed to issue birth control without diagnosing patients with a separate condition.
‘I was told that my physician has been instructed that they can no longer write prescriptions for birth control as birth control,” one woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Examiner-Enterprise. ‘This affects me because I take birth control as birth control. There are other ways to receive birth control, for example headaches, cramps, excessive bleeding – but I have none of those symptoms.”
A representative of Jane Phillips refused to comment when contacted by The Raw Story Monday evening.
Jane Phillips’ parent company, St. John Health System, was acquired by Ascension last year. A spokesperson for St. John released a statement saying, ‘Consistent with all Catholic health care organizations, St. John Health System operates in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Facilities.”
The […]
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STEVE KROFT, Correspondent - 60 Minutes/CBS News
Stephan: I think this is the truth. Middle class investors are for the most part little lambs on a freeway, frequently headed to become road kill.
The following script is from “Rigged” which aired on March 30, 2014. Steve Kroft is the correspondent. Draggan Mihailovich, producer.
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the current bull market on Wall Street, making it one of the longest and strongest in history. Yet U.S. stock ownership is at a record low and less than half of Americans trust banks and financial services. And in the last two weeks, the New York attorney general and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Washington have both launched investigations into high-frequency computerized stock trading that now controls more than half the market.
The probes were announced just ahead of a much anticipated book on the subject by best-selling author Michael Lewis called “Flash Boys.” In it, Lewis argues that the stock market is now rigged to benefit a group of insiders that have made tens of billions of dollars exploiting computerized trading. The story is told through an unlikely cast of characters who figured out what was going on and have devised a plan to correct it. It could have a huge impact on Wall Street. Tonight, Michael Lewis talks about it for the first time.
Steve Kroft: What’s the headline here?
Michael Lewis: Stock market’s […]
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Bill Moyers, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: This interview presents a fact-based assessment of what is happening to public free education in this country. It is a sad and painful story.
Public education is becoming big business as bankers, hedge fund managers and private equity investors are entering what they consider to be an ’emerging market.” As Rupert Murdoch put it [3] after purchasing an education technology company, ‘When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone.”
Education historian Diane Ravitch says the privatization of public education has to stop. As assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush, she was an advocate of school choice and charter schools; under George W. Bush, she supported the No Child Left Behind initiative. But after careful investigation, she changed her mind, and has become, according to Salon, ‘the nation’s highest profile opponent” of charter-based education.
Bill Moyers: This week on Moyers & Company, the high cost of turning our schools into profit centers.
Diane Ravitch: In terms of the public coffers there are billions of dollars, but I think what’s at stake is the future of American public education. I believe it is the foundation stone – one of the foundation stones of our democracy. So an attack on public education is an attack on democracy.
Announcer: Funding is provided by:
Anne Gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy.
Carnegie […]
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