Play along with me here. Imagine a child, alone in a room, just standing there. Okay, now put that in the back of your mind and I will continue.
These are some Facebook notifications I have received recently.
Why should we fund immigrant health care, while our veterans suffer with poor health care?
Actually, the U.S. only provides medical exams for illegal immigrants to ensure the current health of the individual, something we would naturally do for any human being, or would we?
The truth is low-income immigrant children are less likely than their U.S.-born citizen counterparts to see a doctor even when they are insured. Similarly, immigrant adults are less likely to use emergency rooms than low-income natives. This report examines health care coverage and usage among immigrants and the U.S. born.
The report finds that low-income immigrant children with private or public health care insurance were significantly less likely to visit a doctor’s office during 2010 than their native-born counterparts – 44 percent versus 69 percent for children with private coverage, and 62 percent versus 71.5 percent for children with public coverage. Overall, whether insured or uninsured, 47 percent of low-income immigrant children reported visiting a doctor’s office during 2010 compared to 69 percent of U.S.-born children.
Regarding adult health care usage, the report finds that immigrant adults had lower rates of doctor’s office and even emergency room visits. Analysis of Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data showed that 8 percent of low-income immigrant adults overall reported an emergency room visit during 2010, compared to 13 percent of their native-born peers; for those who were uninsured, the rate was 6 percent for immigrants and 14 percent of the native born. And for adults with public insurance coverage, the rate was 17 percent for immigrants and 25 percent for their U.S.-born peers.
Regardless of the actual facts, this Facebook and Tweet demeans immigrants because they are an easy target. I guess it would be a lot easier to just let a child or adult die while, or if, in our custody. We should probably do the same for prisoners of war if that makes some feel better.
The question here is not why we fund immigrant health care, but why veterans are not receiving the health care they deserve. It is the government’s problem and we should not unload on immigrants. It seems we transfer anger here.
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Sooo many Facebook postings about...
We have an automatic tendency to believe a Black person running from a cop is guilty.
Funny how we rarely see a White guy getting shot in the back, or at all on the news. But who is at fault here? We have built up such a racist overtone that unfortunately has carried over to a few police in these cases.
In reality, Cops killed nearly twice as many whites as blacks in 2015. According to data compiled by The Washington Post, 50 percent of the victims of fatal police shootings were white, while 26 percent were black. The majority of these victims had a gun or “were armed or otherwise threatening the officer with potentially lethal force,” according to Mac Donald in a speech at Hillsdale College.
Unfortunately, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reveal that blacks were charged with 62 percent of robberies, 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 biggest counties in the country, despite only comprising roughly 15 percent of the population in these counties.
“Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force,” writes MacDonald.
More whites and Hispanics die from police homicides than blacks. According to Mac Donald, 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide deaths were due to police officers, while only four percent of black homicide deaths were the result of police officers.
The Washington Post found U.S. police killed at least 258 black people in 2016, according to a project by The Guardian that tracks police killings in America.
The Post found that 34 percent of the unarmed people killed in 2016 were black males, which is quite disproportionate since black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population. There was also a considerable uptick in deaths caught on camera via cellphone and police cameras.
Since the 2014 death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, the media has reported extensively that police arrest and kill black men at far higher rates than other groups. Six out of 10 black men say they have been treated unfairly by police because of their race, according to a 2015 study.
Blacks, unfortunately, have been pigeon-holed due to economic and racists demigod White traditions. Part of this problem is the media portrayal, along with some Black attitudes.
“Race is a trigger for police brutality,” Jack Glaser, an associate professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Huffington Post in 2015. The reasons for this may lie in the history of policing in America and the fact that modern-day policing, at least in the South, can trace its lineage to slave patrols.
Bottom line, we all take some part in of the problem due to our and their upbringings.
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Gun legislation is all about the NRA and bad guys vs. Second Amendment soap boxers.
Universal background checks would be a slippery slope, and stores asking that no one enter their store displaying a firearm is bad business. Oh, and AR-15 and large gun magazines are not really a problem. The problem here is that we are already on a slippery slope without SOME gun legislation.
I even received THIS e-mail.
Guns Across America coalition (PAC), a grassroots gun-rights advocacy group out of Washington, is the newest member of the broadening coalition supporting Guns and God Appreciation Day. The endorsement comes as citizens rally in response to efforts by the nation’s political class to limit and ban firearms.
The group boasted their moves to prevent any gun legislation...ANY gun legislation!
Now I realize somebody’s god is in favor of guns. They didn’t mention which god favors guns. Just close your eyes and see your god carrying an AR-15, with a Glock 9mm holstered on his/her side.
Now for some chilling facts.
States with higher rates of gun ownership and weak gun violence prevention laws have the highest overall suicide rates in the nation, while states with lower gun ownership rates and strong gun laws have the lowest suicide rates, according to a Violence Policy Center (VPC) analysis of 2017 data (the most recent year available) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
According to ProCon.org - The United States has 120.5 guns per 100 people, or about 393,347,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). America’s pervasive gun culture stems in part from its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Proponents of more gun control laws state that the Second Amendment was intended for militias; that gun violence would be reduced; that gun restrictions have always existed; and that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions.
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Gun ownership is an American tradition older than the country itself and is protected by the Second Amendment; more gun control laws would infringe upon the right to bear arms.
Don’t forget! Legally owned guns are frequently stolen and used by criminals.
Gun control laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws.
A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines. Gun control laws such as background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy.
Bottom line: 129 suicides per day; one suicide every 11.1 minutes. More than half (50.6 percent) of these were firearm suicides, which totaled 23,854 in 2017. We have the highest rate of death due to guns. We are at WAR with ourselves and nobody, nobody is looking at the big picture.
That child I wrote about in the first paragraph doesn’t care about Facebook posts, the Second Amendment rights debate, or whether the person killed in White, Black, Hispanic. That child does not care about percentages and is bombarded with daily news pieces about gun deaths, or illegal or legal migrants.
That child is growing up scared - because this generation cares more about being right and his/her future. At least the child has the sobering knowledge we now have a Guns Across America Day!
