STRONG Salem is for everyone who wants to help and participate in getting Salem, Oregon, to quit chasing Growth Ponzi Scheme plans and instead become a resilient, fiscally responsible place that lives by the wisdom that "Communities exist for the health and enjoyment of those who live in them, not for the convenience of those who drive through them, fly over them, or exploit their real estate for profit."
Help them get connected to this program to help low-income folks remain able to access jobs and services. Cellphones are crazy overpriced, and totally unregulated, so the poor are hard-pressed to find a deal that doesn't turn into a nightmare for them, with shady bottom-feeding services dominating. But the inability to connect to employers and service providers readily via a phone is one of the biggest barriers that financially stressed people face. Solution? A subsidy program that helps use the Universal Service Fee money we've been stocking up for years to make sure the poor can stay connected without having to deal with a payday-loan type cellphone operation.
Here's a program that uses the Universal Service Fee money to help such people stay connected. (Clip starts about 15 seconds in.)
Enrollment is available to individuals who qualify based on
federal or state-specific eligibility criteria. You may qualify if you
are on certain public assistance programs, like Medicaid or Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). You can also qualify based on your
household income. You must provide proof of program participation or
proof of income.
The Lifeline Assistance program is available for only one
wireless or wireline account per household. Separate households that
live at the same address are eligible, including residents of homeless
shelters and nursing homes, for example. Residents with temporary
addresses are also eligible.
ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time: how can we save our badly broken healthcare system?
American healthcare costs are rising so rapidly that they could reach $4.2 trillion annually, roughly 20% of our gross domestic product, within ten years. We spend $300 billion a year on pharmaceutical drugs – almost as much as the rest of the world combined. We pay more, yet our health outcomes are worse. About 65% of Americans are overweight and almost 75% of healthcare spending goes to preventable diseases that are the major causes of disability and death in our society.
It’s not surprising that healthcare is at the top of many Americans’ concerns and at the center of an intense political firestorm in our nation’s Capitol. But the current battle over cost and access does not ultimately address the root of the problem: we have a disease-care system, not a healthcare system. The film examines the powerful forces maintaining the status quo, a medical industry designed for quick fixes rather than prevention, for profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care.
ESCAPE FIRE also presents attainable solutions. After decades of resistance, a movement to bring innovative high-touch, low-cost methods of prevention and healing into our high-tech, costly system is finally gaining ground.
Filmmakers Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke interweave dramatic personal arcs of patients and physicians with the stories of leaders battling to transform healthcare at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government, and even the U.S. military. ESCAPE FIRE is about finding a way out of our current crisis. It’s about saving the health of a nation.
Communities exist for the health and enjoyment of those who live in them, not for the convenience of those who drive through them, fly over them, or exploit their real estate for profit.-- Ted Roszak, "Where the Wasteland Ends"
"Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us." (Henrik Tikkanen)
"Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends." (Lewis Mumford) Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay
If you are thinking a year ahead, plant seeds. If you are thinking 10 years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate the people. Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They are people who say: This is my community, and it’s my responsibility to make it better. (Gov. Tom McCall)
Jan 19, 2008: LOVESalem reaches the web, bringing a vitally needed message to Oregon's capital city: We must Oregon-ize to put the needs of people before the needs of cars. This requires that we live our environmental values -- that we LOVE (Live Our Values Environmentally) Salem -- by working to stop the Sprawl Machine.
The Sprawl Machine is a ravenous beast that feeds on green space, close-in neighborhoods, and property taxes and that excretes monstrous, ugly road projects that pollute the air, increase mortality and morbidity, promote climate change, weaken families and neighborhoods, and help weaken the social fabric and civic participation.
The Sprawl Machine works by constantly luring its prey with promises that the problems created by cars can be addressed by doing more of the same -- building more lanes, more bridges, consuming ever more money. In other words, the Sprawl Machine promises that we can keep doing the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result this time.
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