I look at you all see you all while your shopping
While my savings gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see your just whining
Still my savings gently weeps
I don’t know why nobody told you
how to solve the pain
I don’t know how someone controlled you
they bought and sold you
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my life gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my life gently weeps
I don’t know how you were diverted
Leaders are diverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
no one alerted us, the poor, who has nothing
I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
While the poor still weeps
I look at you all
Still, our lives gently weeps
Last night, I had a meeting with Organizing for America and helped with the phone bank, calling people across the nation about the importance of passing the healthcare reform bill in the senate. It was a fulfilling experience, a humble endeavor to make a difference. A few days ago, a U.S. senator noted that blending multiple healthcare reform amendments is not as easy as making a milk shake. In this light and while some of the elected leaders continue the hesitation to blend the healthcare reform amendments into one strong effective policy -CDC has developed and integrated the principles of program evaluation framework to achieve measurable health outcomes. The combined influence of CDC’s programs through collaboration will stimulate innovations toward collective improvement of community health, eventually improving the health index of the population, and through prevention-a healthy world as a whole. The ever complex process of passing a single U.S. healthcare policy that works, at least government organization like CDC has established a framework that make the complex transition in public health more efficient. The task of evaluating the effects of public health actions became more complex since the targets of public health actions have expanded beyond infectious diseases. It expanded to include chronic diseases, violence, emerging pathogens, threats of bioterrorism, and the social contexts that influence health disparities. Timely detection of the effects of public health actions is very important in order to enhance CDC’s ability to translate findings into practice. Clearer and more logical steps and standards will lead to the evolution of new and innovative program planning. Integrated information systems will amplify efficiency and success, supporting more systematic measurement. Information collected from evaluations will then be used more effectively to guide changes in public health strategies.
While our elected leaders tinker on the most important reform for America, we as the supposed beneficiaries should continue to work on initiatives that we could lean on in the event that part or the whole reformed health system goes to a nose dive. The fact that health is more closely related to income in developed societies, it is time to recognize the direct relationship of socio-economic inequality and population health. According to Richard Wilkinson, professor of social epidemiology “Poor social affiliations and low status carry high population attributable risks”. Wilkinson also noted that more unequal societies not only suffer more relative deprivation but tend to have lower rates of trust and of community involvement and more likely has poorer health conditions. “More unequal societies will be more differentiated by social rank into relations of dominance and subordination and less able to enjoy more egalitarian and inclusive relations consistent with higher social capital and less class and racial prejudice.” Income is recognized as a proxy for difference in social status in the United States than elsewhere in the global community. To improve the social dominance orientation scale, it is a must that we should do something to close the gap between the rich and the poor. The rise of cultural awareness on green and sustainable living, green entrepreneurship will help boost our crippled economy, giving new jobs in local and national level. More job creation means more jobs to everybody thereby improving the socio-economic status of the poor, giving them the capacity to have healthcare, and eventually improving our overall population status.
References
Richard Wilkinson, professor of social epidemiology, Income inequality and population health, Better measures of social differentiation and hierarchy are needed
Mackenbach JP. Income inequality and population health. BMJ. 2002;324:1–2. . (5 January.). [PubMed]
Wilkinson RG. Health inequalities: relative or absolute material standards? BMJ. 1997;314:591–595. [PubMed]
Marmot M, Wilkinson RG. Psychosocial and material pathways in the relation between income and health: a response to Lynch et al. BMJ. 2001;322:1233–1236. [PubMed]
Wilkinson RG. Mind the gap: hierarchies, health and human evolution. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 2000.
Sidanius J, Pratto F. Social dominance: an intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1999.
On our way to join our family for Thankgiving in Las Cruces New Mexico, I was mesmerized by the blades of the wind turbine circling gracefully as if it is being caressed and kissed gently by the Texas breeze, So we decided to make a quick stop and I playfully posed in front of my wife’s camera with my imaginary all electric Brammo Enertia with the wind turbine as the backdrop. Our daughter asked us to stay a little longer to enjoy the sight of immense wind turbines silhouetted against the skies of Sweetwater Texas. The ever-present breeze that sweeps the treeless Texas landscapes has been overtaken by hundreds of wind turbines that produces electricity for the distant city dwellers and new income for rural residents. The sight of the white wind turbines while the light of sun glinting across the horizon is like poetry in motion. The Department of Energy’s initiative to help the private sectors to build a smart integrated grid will allow the energy generated from wind and solar farms to be diverted in a national scale.
The visions of President Obama and other green pioneers like Craig Bramscher of Brammo Inc. & Boone Pickens gives us a new sense of hope and believe that our difficulty we face today will lead us to great success later on. The goal of sustainable America is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil; oil we import from countries which are in unstable regions, unfriendly to the United States, or both. The Pickens Plan is the only plan on the table to accomplish that goal. The Pickens Plan has had three major pillars. The first pillar is to produce more electricity from renewable sources. Wind and solar are the principal sources. We can produce well over 20 percent of the electrical energy we need by building out the capacity for generation in the Wind Corridor which stretches from Texas to the Canadian border, and the Solar Corridor through the desert Southwest. A necessary part of being able to utilize the energy produced by wind and solar, is the construction of a 21st century electricity transmission grid to get the electrons from where they are being generated to the population centers where they are needed. The second pillar is energy conservation. Adding insulation to residential and commercial buildings, using new-types of light bulbs and modern temperature controls, weather stripping windows and doors are all a part of saving energy. Energy saved, is energy which never has to be imported. The third pillar is to utilize the astonishing amounts of natural gas which are now available for recovery in the continental United States. Recent reports have indicated the energy available from natural gas in the U.S. is the equivalent of the amount of energy available from all the oil in Saudi Arabia. Utilizing that natural gas – and its cousin, propane – for everything from energy generation to manufacturing to powering tractors and lawnmowers can make a real impact on our oil imports. But the major new use of natural gas must come from replacing heavy trucks – 18-wheelers – which run on imported diesel with domestic natural gas. About 70 percent of the oil we import is used as gasoline or diesel for transportation. We can use our enormous natural gas supplies as a temporary bridge until batteries and hydrogen fuels come on-line to power our national wheeled fleets.
“What investments in the Smart Grid can mean for American economy”. Investments in the smart grid and other related target investment areas will create thousands of new job opportunities that will include manufacturing workers, engineers, electricians, equipment installers, IT system designers, cyber security specialists, and business and power system analysts. The sound economic principles of a green new deal such as the Pickens Plan other green investments initiated by companies like Brammo Inc. will drive our crippled economy back to its feet. Even more, the $620 million budget of the Department of Energy to fund projects around the country to demonstrate advanced Smart Grid technologies became the best greener Black Friday deal that America can get from the Obama Administration.
Senator Edward Kennedy’s extraordinary life has come to an end. The extraordinary good that he did, his visions will live on. Because of him, I became an active supporter of Serve America Act. I am presently a Research Consultant volunteer of Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation (GNIF). Through Serve.Gov and through my other volunteer works, by mere luck I met Dr. Richard Heller, the program coordinator of Peoples-Uni.org, People’s Open Access Educational Initiative on Public Health. I am now enrolled for the fall and will be taking a graduate course on Public Health. With our present economic situation, I cannot afford at this time to take a Graduate Education through traditional means nor complete Boston University’s Graduate Program in Clinical Investigation, but I will move on to continue the visions of Senator Edward Kennedy. Uncle Ted-‘a Defender of a Dream’ will always be my hero and my inspiration.
Through our perseverance, his roar will continue to be amplified to protect and serve the sick, the weak, the poor and the voiceless. His compassionate roar will always remain in my heart. The dream, his dream, our dream shall never die.
Without Our Initiative, Support and Follow-Through
“Everything Will Just Be Dust in the Wind”
The practicality of a simple initiative coming from us to push our leaders to do the right thing is as practical as a Novocain therapy on easing the pain of a Trigeminal Neuralgia.A green initiative such as the Pickens Plan or any imagination from our engineers and green entrepreneurs will give us an initial fix to pacify our anguish with the present economic tic douloureux. One thing we do not have is time. We do not have the time just to sit around and wait for our leaders to do something, wait for our leaders to pick us up. The cost of not doing anything is catastrophic. The initiative should start from us, and not from Washington. Otherwise, without our push and our initiative, the imaginations of our scientists and our entrepreneurial spirit are nothing but dust in the wind. Our anguish will just be a drop of water in an endless sea, our hopes will just crumble to the ground, our cry will just be an old song, and all we are is just dust in the wind.I could almost feel my heart thumping while I use the poetic words of Kerry Livgren of the group Kansas to describe the ramification of not answering the call of urgency. Now is the time for us to take charge of our future, push to our leaders the importance of the “cap and trade”.
Gore vs. Pickens: who got the right stuff? Environmentalism and Green Capitalism could best describe the March 9thMemnosyne Foundation “Energy Independence: Pickens Plan vs. Gore Challenge” Leadership Dialogue.Conversation Catalysts”-Geoffrey Bailey, former White House intern, Regional Leader – New Energy Army/Pickens Plan and Todd Howard, President of T. Howard & Associates and graduate of Al Gore’s “The Climate Project” framed the two plans to kick off the dialogue. The third in a 3-event Environmental Leadership Dialogue Series, facilitated by Orbits of Influence –was truly a powerful and engaging experience, bringing together some of the best minds and strongest advocates to compare and contrast the two prominent U.S. Energy Independence plans (one – the Pickens Plan – based right here in Texas!) and to address how best to ensure sustainable energy and the national security issues for our region and nation, while protecting our natural resources and sparking innovation to leverage new alternative energy sources and the economic boom they represent. Al Gore, former U.S. vice president, a Nobel Prize-winning crusader challenges the U.S. to produce all of its electricity from renewable sources in 10 years to combat climate change.
T. Boone Pickens, a Texas Billionaire, answer the challenge for a massive switch to natural gas as a transportation fuel and a dramatic increase in wind power, building the largest wind farm in the world. So who’s right? It is clear that there is much that these two men agree on. Gore and Pickens along with former President Bill Clinton and other prominent leaders on alternative energy emphasizes the importance of the continuance of a new green revolution during the February 23rd“National Clean Energy Project Summit” in Washington DC. The summit focused on the modernization and expansion of the electrical grid, integrating energy efficiency and increasing transmission capacity for renewable energy-a green approach on reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil by examining short and long term solutions to replace foreign oil with domestic resources to fuel vehicles and trucks, including natural gas. The energy system of the future will tie efficiency and renewable energy together. The bundling of efficiency and renewable energy together will not be feasible without the unique alignment of an environmentalist visions like Al Gore’s, the imaginations of scientists,engineers and entrepreneurs, and the risks of capitalists has to take in the present unstable economic environment. What is the difference between entrepreneurs and capitalists? The entrepreneurs are the athletes and the capitalists are the coaches. The coaches train and motivate their teams and choose which athletes get to play, and help them create the plays and the plans to win. The beginning of the greatest story of this century is now, and the success of our initiative relies to our determination. Our determination will then fuel others to join our fight, and together we will prevail as a nation of leaders, leaders who will make this country great again, leaders who will make this earth of ours, a green planet for the future generation.
On April 1st to 3rd, the Pickens Plan will initiate a Virtual March on Washington. The Pickens Plan team will utilize the size and unique capabilities of the New Green Energy Army to have an enormous impact on the White House and Congress. The Army will focus its energy for three days on e-mails, calls and faxes to every Member of Congress. The success of this event will prove that advances in communication technology could bridge our differences, expanding human interconnectedness to virtually test the possibility of ideological re-wiring of America. The Virtual March will strengthen our true power to initiate change, making way to the evolution of our common conviction not as white, black, yellow or brown, Christians or non-Christians, straight or gay, but us one nation, one body, one soul to create a better future for the country and the rest of the world. Well, some will say that achieving a unified comprehensive vision for the future of America is impossible because each and every one of us are raised in different ethnic and religious values, if the majority will foster such mentality then all of our efforts to renew America is nothing but dust in the wind. An advice from a friend in Alabama will be something that I will always remember. “Confidence will give my generation and the next generation a special kind of courage to strike out in new directions and still believe that the future will be at least as bright as the past ever was”.Personally, I got my confidence and my inspiration when America embraced the need for change and elected the First Black President of the United States. Without embracing change, in just a blink of our eyes, our hope, our dreams and everything we started will be just dust in the wind. With out our initiative to push any plan like the Pickens Plan to answer the call of the Gore Challenge, with out the support of our leaders who are willing to risk their political careers to do what is right for the future, with out the much needed inter-agency cooperation to build a new smart energy grid needed for our sustainability survival-the new genre of job opportunities that depends upon the renewal of our energy infrastructures will be nothing but dust in the wind.
Uly Labilles Congressional District Leader (Dallas TX-32 At-Large) at T. Boone Pickens Plan Dallas/Fort Worth Area Virtual March on Washingtonon April 1-3, 2009.
“Pickens Plan vs Gore Challenge”
March 9, 2009–Zale Auditorium/Jewish Community Center
For us to get out from the present economic and environmental pickle, the initiative should start from us and not from Washington. It is high time for the ideological re-wiring of America.
This Facebook group was created in response to the Gore Challenge. The goal for this group is to establish a bellwether to test the global IQ on alternative energy and global concerns on the changing earth climate. Inno4Green Initiative will not only focus on how to help on issues regarding global warming, development and innovations on alternative energy and green construction; but also will help influence leaders on governmental policies, and guidelines on technology transfer for sustainable development. As an extension to the goal of Inno4Green Initiative, I am fortunate to be involved with the Pickens Plan. I remember I have been called so many names when I supported Barack Obama for President, Now that he is in place as the 44th President of the United States of America, I will be devoting my spare time with green energy projects such as the Pickens Plan. Believe it or not, the same group of people who called me names, derogatory words that I will not waste my time mentioning in any given occasion-just tagged me as a pawn to a rich man’s game. All I can say is that I know when it is time to step up to the plate and do the right thing.We have until 2020 and do whatever it takes to answer the Gore Challenge. In 2020, my daughter will be 16-years old, Boone will be at least 91-years old, and I hope at that time we already have the power grid that will not only put more greens in our pockets but also reaching our goal to at least more than 50% reduction in emissions making this Earth of ours a greener planet. For now, just think about the short term gain of any green energy projects-new genre of jobs that cannot be outsourced, green jobs that will eventually heal our ailing economy.
The deafening silence of our drive back from Schulenburg Texas to Dallas made me reminisce the sight of immense wind turbines silhouetted against the Texas skies on our way back from our holiday vacation in Cloudcroft New Mexico. The ever-present breeze that sweeps the treeless Texas landscapes after you exit the New Mexico border has been overtaken by hundreds of wind turbines that produce electricity for the distant city dwellers and new income for rural residents. The newly minted Stimulus Bill will help create new jobs not only for rural America but for the rest of the country. The sound economic principles of a green new deal such as the Pickens Plan will drive energy development in Texas, to the country and our neighbors.
While the blades of the wind turbine circling gracefully as if it is being caressed and kissed gently by the Texas breeze, it suddenly reminds me of the fact that Texas is one of the greatest wind power potential in the United States. Texas has a consistent high wind speeds capable of sustaining a productive wind farm. The fact that wind energy is clean, reliable and inexhaustible is icing on the cake. The sight of the white wind turbines while the light of sun glinting across the horizon is like poetry in motion. Only if I got that new thin “Green” Apple laptop for Christmas-I could have written a perfect poem for such a unique but promising sight. As soon as we pass the last cluster of wind turbines, it feels like I snapped from a trance and realized that I got the perfect gifts ever from any given holidays-my wife, and our little princess sleeping in the back sit of our fuel efficient Toyota Sienna as if she is being comforted with the enchanting thrum of the wind turbines The deafening silence of our drive back from Schulenburg Texas to Dallas made me reminisce the sight of immense wind turbines silhouetted against the Texas skies on our way back from our holiday vacation in Cloudcroft New Mexico. The ever-present breeze that sweeps the treeless Texas landscapes after you exit the New Mexico border has been overtaken by hundreds of wind turbines that produce electricity for the distant city dwellers and new income for rural residents. The newly minted Stimulus Bill will help create new jobs not only for rural America but for the rest of the country. The sound economic principles of a green new deal such as the Pickens Plan will drive energy development in Texas, to the country and our neighbors.
While the blades of the wind turbine circling gracefully as if it is being caressed and kissed gently by the Texas breeze, it suddenly reminds of the fact that Texas is one of the greatest wind power potential in the United States. Texas has a consistent high wind speeds capable of sustaining a productive wind farm. The fact that wind energy is clean, reliable and inexhaustible is icing on the cake. The sight of the white wind turbines while the light of sun glinting across the horizon is like poetry in motion. Only if I got that new thin “Green” Apple laptop for Christmas-I could have written a perfect poem for such a unique but promising sight. As soon as we pass the last cluster of wind turbines, it feels like I snapped from a trance and realized that I got the perfect gifts ever-my wife, and our little princess sleeping in the back seat of our fuel efficient Toyota Sienna as if she is being comforted with the enchanting thrum of the wind turbines lining the Texas trails.
Ulysses “ULY” Labilles
InnoMD.Org
Innovations4Green Initiative
The Big Three US automakers’ push toward green – seems to be too much too late, too little, or too late. Many years ago the “big three” had a choice to make a risk, redesigning their cars based on a technology at that time was just in its infancy. Foreign car makers like Toyota took the risk, but the Big Three did not. They are now taking the blows of the ramification of not taking the risk. Today, it is our chance to take the same risk not only for the future of our children, but also for the future of our country and the whole world. This is not the time for us to wait and see. This is the time for action. I volunteered and campaigned for Barack Obama because of his vision for the future. In his inaugural address, President Obama called on us to utilize our wind and solar resources to generate electricity. The U.S. wind corridor is a huge swath of the Great Plains which runs, two states wide, from northern Texas to the Canadian border. The time is now; the time is now for us to forget the past, drop our political ideology, the time is now to make the move for America. ”The real impetus of change is our openness to accept the evolution of our common conviction that it is not about what a party could do for our country, but what we could do together as a nation.” Every dream comes from a speck of hope. It is through hope where we gain our strength to make a change. Then it is through change where we can make this country great again.
