My Disease and Civilization class recently jumped from studying tuberculosis to discussing the first twenty years of the AIDS epidemic. The articles we read all spoke about the vast leaps that were made in the first two decades after AIDS came to the forefront in 1981, its evolution from GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency) to the standard distinctions between HIV and AIDS; the social stigmatization of its victims in America; its terrifying spread throughout African countries.

The articles closed with an optimistic statement about “the next twenty years of AIDS” and what we could hope to achieve. Then it hit me — yesterday’s World AIDS Day 2009 marks almost thirty years of the epidemic! We’re nearly halfway to the next benchmark set by the scientific and political communities, so what do we have to show for it?

About a month ago, President Obama signed into effect the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009, bipartisan legislation that will allow the Ryan White Program to continue treating those suffering from HIV.

Obama also announced the elimination of the HIV entry ban — the intention is that, by January 2010, people who have HIV but aren’t citizens of the U.S. will be able to enter the country for treatment, one step on the way to eliminating the stigma attached to the disease.

This year, as in years past, JoinRED has led the way through social networking, scooping up Facebook and Twitter. The latter urged users to tweet #red in order to turn their text this powerful color:

The official site has video stories that relate to this year’s theme, Universal Access and Human Rights. Says the featured storyteller Gary, “I don’t suffer from HIV, I live with it.” It’s commendable that in twenty-eight years we’ve moved from a global disaster to what some now consider a chronic disease, but that’s not enough. While eliminating stigma is imperative, governments and educators also must find ways to get through to people who are unwilling or unable to follow safe sexual practices, or who otherwise put themselves and their loved ones in danger.

HIV is both a horizontal and a vertical means of infection; we need to attack it from all angles.

[Via World AIDS Day, The White House, JoinRED]

[Image sources: Canadian Aids Treatment Information Exchange, Shabooty]

[Video source: The White House]

President Obama has a full plate as we approach Thanksgiving in America.  Part of the plate, a much too small part, is GLBT rights.  Most people recognize by now that allowing gays to openly serve in the military we are doing a great service for the nation, let alone giving deserved rights to a discriminated minority.  But, Obama could add a smidgen of sweet potatoes to his plate with a little sweet talk in Africa on gay rights.  Parliament is soon likely to pass a law in Uganda, with an overwhelming support of the nation, that includes provisions like the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” and even prosecution for Ugandans who engage in homosexual acts abroad.

The law goes so far as to make even talking about homosexuality in public, a criminal offense.  As The Economist reports this week, “spying and sneaking on homosexuals will be encouraged.”  In fact, failure to report instances of anal sex could become a criminal act as well.  Sadly, Uganda isn’t so special in the African context.  Many African nations retain colonial-era laws making homosexuality punishable by death.  But, Uganda’s laws are new legislation, intended to codify and add new provisions to emphasize the country’s detestation of the “deviant” lifestyle.

Enter President Obama.  Obama is worshipped in Africa, and especially in Eastern Africa, where is father was a native Kenyan and his grandmother still lives.  Uganda is next door neighbors with Kenya and also jubilantly celebrated Obama’s ascendancy to the presidential office in America.  Obama should more clearly make it an issue.  Estimates, although it’s difficult to verify, show that there are nearly 500,000 gays in Uganda’s 33 million population.  Hope and change would feel a bit more sweet for them than the lack of hope and change on our home front.  ‘

Don’t Ask, Don’ Tell’ suddenly looks like apple pie.

In last night’s historic, yet squeaker health care vote (220-215) in the House of Representatives, we learned a few different things other than just about the health care bill introduced by Speaker Pelosi and its terrible Republican alternative (which had really no talk of pre-existing conditions.)  As expected, despite Obama’s last-minute pleas to vote their conscience over politics, most of the Blue Dog Democrats voted against the bill.  The New York Times has a great graphic detailing how political considerations likely helped lead to the way these members voted.

But, among those Democrats who opposed the historic legislation was former presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinich.  This speaks volumes about the bill, and more than the mainstream media will likely trumpet, because they only like to emphasize the fact that there is a small and powerful right-wing minority in the country.  Kucinich, likely opposing because of the strong anti-abortion measure in the bill, represents both a progressive left who still believes heavily in a woman’s right to choose and an increasingly larger center-left uncomfortable, whether politically or otherwise, with abortion.  67 Democrats helped to make sure a woman’s right to choose was abridged last night.

While I’ll tussle with abortion myself as an issue because it is messy and it can be psychologically damming, I’m not a woman and, at the end I remind myself that as a man I have control over my internal organs.  There is no government telling me what I can and cannot do with my body.

What this bill does is to effectively send a message to America that abortion is indeed as an elective procedure as someone deciding they want a tummy tuck.  Keeping things in the vain of health care (as opposed to the other reasons to protect a woman’s right to choose), we must recognize that while getting an abortion can be potentially pyschologically damaging for a mother to be (or not… for some people it really just isn’t), we must also consider how pyschologically damaging it is for a child who is unwanted.  It’s two sides of the same coin.

To me, it seems like we shouldn’t be chipping away at a fundamental freedom but instead should be making the decision to have an abortion one that counsels great care, one that a certain piece of legislation could mandate, and send another kind of statement to America: a woman’s right to choose is upheld but only after we provide the best counseling possible, covered by your insurance.

If you’re older, whiter, and thus had the money to get more educmacation, you’re doing pretty dang well in this recession.  No wonder Goldman Sachs is getting swine flu shots before the average child in America.  According to an awesome new graphic developed at The New York Times, minorities and young Americans have been disproprotinately affected by the recession.  In fact, white men with college educations do by far the best.

3.9% : White, male, and college educated.

8.3%:  Black,  male, and college educated.

7.5%:  White, male, all education levels.

16.1%: Black, male, all education levels.

Let’s not forget that these number don’t include discouraged workers, those who simply have stopped looking for work after weeks and weeks of not finding any.  Unlike many of his followers believe, Obama isn’t able to part the sea and make all better with a flick of his finger, but he sure could get a little tougher on Congress and banks.

Earlier this week we learned that green jobs were indeed a huge area of actual growth we’ve had from stimulus money.  But, we also heard from an article in Fortune magazine that there actually are a lot of jobs out there vacant because the skills needed to do these jobs just aren’t there.  Therein lies the conudrum of the ‘oldwhiteivycans’ that these unemployments numbers show: you can’t repeat the past and expect different results.  You can’t blame private companies who want qualified professionals to fill important positions.  You can blame government, though, for slow stimulus that isn’t stimulating the American people; but instead is following the orthodoxy of ‘oldwhiteivycans.’

Green jobs are great.  But, I wonder how many of them are permanent and how many of them actually require the skills of a workforce already marginalized by years of discrimination?

Obama, you should know better.

” 87 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday, the same-sex marriage law was rejected 53 percent to 47 percent, according to the Bangor Daily News Web site.”

Maine does not want gay marriage. And is anybody surprised? In the 31 states where this has been a ballot question, the anti-gay marriage crowd has won every single time. The popular sovereignty of the country is clear. But that doesn’t settle the question. Our federal Constitutional structure exists in large part to protect the rights of minorities in the states from the tyranny of numbers.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a thoughtful post on the historical parallels with Civil Rights:

“…It’s quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the South could not have been struck down by a majority vote; interracial marriage was banned in Alabama until 2000, and even then, some 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep it. It’s quite clear to me that Jim Crow in the North, enforced through housing segregation, restrictive covenants, block-busting realtors, and the federal government red-lining could not have been defeated by a majority vote.

But more than that, the sense that prejudice is actually not a common and potent force among straight people today, and white people then, that the group intent on discriminating is “essentially good” is the most remarkable parallel. Rod believes that most of the people voting against gay marriage aren’t prejudiced against gay people per se. That reminds me of  National Review, in 1957 arguing that most of the people intent on preventing blacks from voting weren’t actually anti-black…”

This issue won’t be settled until it is settled by the Courts.

Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the votes to pass a “robust” (read, liberal) version of the public option–one in which the reimbursement rates (what insurers, in this case the government, pay to doctors and hospitals for patient care)–are tied to Medicare rates. Medicare rates are, needless to say, lower than private insurer rates. This screws doctors out of some extra pocket cash, but it gives Medicare, and a would-be public option tied to it, a cost advantage.

Moderate Democrats are worried that this cost advantage is unfair and anti-free market. They wanted a bill that would enable doctors and health care providers to negotiate reimbursement rates with the government. And they got it in the version brought to the floor by Pelosi. Whatever your thoughts on the merits, this sounds like a good compromise between parties with a principled disagreement, right?

Nope. Because the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which scores bills on cost, says that the new public plan will have HIGHER premiums than most private plans! At this point, I feel compelled to remind you that the point of a public option is to insure Americans who can’t afford or don’t qualify for private plans.

To see why the weaker “compromise” public plan will likely enter a “death spiral” and, in turn, increase the profits of big insurance companies, see this Tim Noah’s excellent post at Slate.com today.

For a point about why the weak public option is probably not long for the earth anyhow, see Ezra.

As we speak, financiers are likely secretly cursing the new regulations being put forward under the guise of “consumer protections.”  It’s no secret that this is an issue at the center of the Main Street versus Wall Street battle that has turned into titillating 24-hour news banter.  Americans are finally learning that the Federal Reserve, the chief regulator for banks in this country since 1913, is composed of bankers themselves.  Sure, it makes sense.  The banking system is a complex, morose beast that requires a bit of know how to regulate.  So, who better than to have regulate it than former or current bankers themselves?  How about someone with understanding of the system who also is held accountable, such as a triumvirate of Federal Reserve, government, and academia, in panels in no particular order.  Sure understanding banking is important, but it is just as important to understand the millions of Americans these decisions affect.  We surely wouldn’t ask one department of a corporation to regulate and report to a subset of that same department for quality assurance.  So, why would we do the same here?

The same goes, I argue for the news industry.  Just like the Federal Reserve enhanced the banking system to get high on America’s dime, our penchant once for equal viewpoints to be aired on television news as part of regulation has gone by the wayside.  Right now, we are to believe that 24-hour news channels like FOX News are “fair and balanced”, just as fair as those subprime loans given to all the people who couldn’t afford them.

How did we possibly come to an era where a branding strategy was to declare yourself “fair and balanced.?”  The White House’s choice to treat FOX News as commentating is interesting.  But, it’s just as interesting that Rupert Murdoch himself once said that the network had no ideological viewpoint, it was there to make money.  And, make money it has.  It’s vengeful, crass, and rude commentators like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Bill O Reilly, are the network’s highest rated shows.  It’s more balanced Sunday news talk show with Chris Matthews is mired at the bottom of the political talk show heap.

Why?  Because, FOX News is in it for the money and the Obama Administration’s attacks on them only fuel the  ratings fire.  To be fair, MSNBC has recognized the FOX News magic and presented an evening full of liberals to offset the right-wing machine at FOX.  CNN just looks like a stupefied child who has just been tongue lashed and left with nothing but fancy toys to draw graphs on.  This would all be well, fine, and good, if the three weren’t sparring over which is actually a “news” network.  America: the new subprime loans are cable news talks shows masquerading as news, and they are selling you short.

The inevitable question is: what do we do?  We need to get over our fetish that we need socialism or capitalism only as pure bred answers to the nation’s ills.  Americans are a discerning people when their leaders stop playing games and stop maniuplating them.  The existence of the Glenn Beck’s and Keith Olbermann’s of the world and vitriol-filled blogs can thrive in a free market; but, folks, let’s understand that news is different than talk radio, opinion, or for that matter, what we broadly call “media” in this country these days.

News is fact checking.  Why don’t most Americans know what factcheck.org is?  Why does this even exist if that’s what we allegedly have our news to exist for?  FOX News likes to tout that Free Press gets 1 point and the White House gets 0; but what do the American people get?  It’s time Obama quit playing his own version of the spin game (as we’ve seen his aides brag about) and get serious about regulating the media industry.

I think the answer is that we must create a few channels that are designated as news and staff them with news reporters only.  If a factcheck.org can exist and not be a biased, big brother machine, we can surely create a regulatory framework that does the same as a government agency.

Obama: stop playing the media game, and start playing ball.

MoveOn is taking an interesting tack in emphasizing the competition aspect of the public option. The argument is kind of the reverse of the old libertarian argument for things like school vouchers–introduce competition to an area of bloated monopolistic control and thus force the crusty vested interests to innovate or die. I happen to like that argument, but it’s inapplicable here precisely because government run programs don’t have the same incentives as private firms.

If we’re going to have a public option, we’re going to have it for moral, not economic reasons.

Autumn months always leave me feeling happy and satisfied with life. I love walking through the red and yellow leaves, and breathing the crisp, fresh air that the summer here in New York is always lacking.

Though I personally love the fall, there are many Americans that dread the first leaf fall–as the imminent coldness and holidays that come with it only highlight their already empty fridges and pockets. According to the Feeding America site, 1 in 8 Americans do not have adequate food supply due to poverty. During the times of Thanksgiving and the preceding Holidays, the hunger pangs that these Americans are feeling probably increases ten-fold.

In order to combat these hunger pangs, Macy’s is teaming up with Feeding America to raise 10 million meals. In Macy’s “Come+Together” campaign, stars such as Martha Stewart, Jessica Simpson and Donald Trump encourage people to donate to the Feeding America charity through many ways: Straight donations, buying a $5 Macy’s pass for the Shop for a Cause Day on October 17th, or through throwing charity dinner parties (which is my personal favorite). The idea that Macy’s is trying to get across to consumers is that we all must come together in order to help out.

I personally love this concept, and it’s refreshing to see such a huge corporation as Macy’s work so hard for the people of this country. I, for one, am planning a game night for early-November, which will raise money for this great cause. Being someone who has never known true hunger, I think that giving back to the less fortunate is an excellent way to give thanks for my easy upbringing. For more information on how to help out, go to: macys.com/cometogether

Facebook Stalking just got a little bit more real.

A Tennessee woman named Shannon D. Jackson was arrested when it was determined that she Facebook “poked” another woman in violation of the protective order the woman had filed against her.

Police arrested Jackson for violating the order, which forbade Jackson from “telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the [woman], directly or indirectly” after obtaining a screenshot of the alleged poking.

In this ABC News story, Ryan Calo, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet & Society, points out that there is no reason to think that a Facebook poke would be treated differently than any other attempted commuication: “A poke is a very deliberate action,” he said. “You have to select the person and say, ‘this is what I want to do….Protective orders are not always about physical danger, they’re often about getting this person out of your attention and getting away from them,” he said.