Gov’t & Trade – Page 16

2012100220131213

Resources to overcome depression and mental illness

If you need a place to spend social time, a volunteer opportunity, psychotherapy, housing or vocational training, here are some resources for people challenged by depression or another form of mental illness. Please feel free to post resources you know of which aren’t listed in a comment and I’ll add them to the list after checking them out.

For US By US Self Help Center 40 North Van Brunt Street, 2nd Floor, Englewood, NJ 07631 201-541-1221 Hours: Monday-Friday 1-5pm What it is: This program is a place where people dealing with a mental health issue of any type can spend time to socialize or spend quiet time in a place away from home. Activities take place that you can join if you like. The center is pretty much run by peers with professional oversight in the background. Who can participate: You may self-qualify to participate. Admission requirements: Drop-ins welcome – just show up. Feel free to ask a friend to bring you by. Work/volunteer opportunities:

Volunteering: can help out immediately and after a few weeks, can sign up to be on the scheduled volunteer rotation.
Paid positions: after volunteering for a while, people can qualify for a paid position when one opens up.

Crossroads to Wellness at Care Plus NJ 610 Valley Health Plaza, Paramus, NJ 07652 201-265-1233 careplusnj.org/pages/3087/index.htm What it is: A program which provides rapid access to comprehensive and intensive mental health services, integrated with self-directed wellness and recovery tools. Who can participate: All Bergen County Residents Admission requirements: Must be in acute need of mental health services or transitioning out of a long-term facility. Friendship House 125 Atlantic Street, Hackensack, NJ 07601 201-488-2121 njfriendshiphouse.org What it is: Support and training for mentally ill or behaviorally challenged individuals in need of vocational rehabilitation, group therapy, workplace reintegration skills and assistance, job coaching. Work/volunteer opportunities:

Supportive in-house workplace environment available on site. Pay commensurate with an individuals’ productivity level
Friendship House programs include
Computer training, culinary classes, maintenance work and clerical training. Social groups, therapy groups, beauty classes, diet classes, diabetes management, groups for young people diagnosed with Asperbergers or on autism spectrum

Admission requirements: By referral. Call to speak with a program counsellor who can help you understand the steps needed to be referred into one of the organization’s programs.

Volunteer Center of Bergen County
64 Passaic Street, Hackensack, NJ 07601
201-489-9454 bergenvolunteers.org info@bergenvolunteers.org
What it is: A service that matches volunteers with non-profit organizations in need of help.
Work/volunteer opportunities: read more

2012091720131213

The news is skewed – dig deeper for the truth

A West Indian friend writes to ask,

This country is becoming more like a 3rd world country. Why aren’t people demanding jobs instead of talking about racism. Sick and tired of hearing about racism. Everything is racism. Find some other excuse rather than racism. If anything is done wrong it’s blame it on racism. People need to stop blaming and stop looking for hand me out. It seems as though some people like to keep stoking the word racism and using the blame game too much. What about Solyndra all the billions that cost tax payers money. That money could have been used to help students pay for their school loans. The unnecessary spending while unemployment is still above 8%. read more

2012090820131213

Irish President Higgins Tells Tea Partier Off

Short version of audio interview

In this 2010 interview, Irish President Michael D. Higgins – then labor party leader – takes Megyn Kelly to task for attempting to spread Tea Party lies. President Higgins says, “(Your) tactic is to get a large crowd, whip them up, try and discover what is the greatest fear, work on that, and feed it right back in a frenzy.” He speaks of living and working in the United States in the 1970s in “Willie Nelson country,” and being astonished to discover that many decent, hard working Americans, the type of people, “…who are very proud, as they should be, of the man (Obama) they’ve elected president…” and continues read more

2012081920131213

Bill Moyers shows why we need Medicare for all

Bill Moyers tells the story of how both Harry Truman and John Kennedy tried to bring Medicare into being, but it wasn’t until Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the presidency after Kennedy’s death, that it acquired an advocate who worked tirelessly to make sure that the elderly and indigent had access to healthcare services. LBJ told Bill,

My inclination would be […] that it ought to be retroactive as far back as you can get it […] because none of them ever get enough. That they are entitled to it. That that’s an obligation of ours. It’s just like your mother writing you and saying she wants $20, and I’d always sent mine a $100 when she did. I never did it because I thought it was going to be good for the economy of Austin. I always did it because I thought she was entitled to it. And I think that’s a much better reason and a much better cause and I think it can be defended on a hell of a lot better basis […] We do know that it affects the economy […] But that’s not the basis to go to the Hill, or the justification. We’ve just got to say that by God you can’t treat grandma this way. She’s entitled to it and we promised it to her. read more

2012081920131213

GOP & Big Money block journalists from public spaces

Here are three examples of camera journalists in London, Canada and the United States encountering attempts to block them from exercising their legal right to stand in public spaces and use cameras to shoot street views or film public proceedings they have the right to share with their followers, and under the circumstances may have a moral obligation to do so as well.

Secrecy surrounds the reporting of certain public events and anything having to do with the financial district. Freedom of speech and reporters’ public access rights are being curtailed, which bodes ill for all citizens of organized societies. Film equipment is being seized and arrests are being made, although no security threats are perceived. These seem to be simply moves to prevent disclosure of every day proceedings in public spaces associated with Big Money interests and at certain government meetings. read more

2012081720131213

Racist Romney & GOP move to block the Latino & Black vote

If you think the Romney/GOP election tactics seem like a racist ploy to intentionally block Latino and Black people from voting, you’re not crazy. Spend 4 minute watching this video from Van Jones’ Rebuild the American Dream team to see the dots neatly connected. It proves that this sad fact is true. God help America.

Fight by helping everyone you know that plans to vote for a fair America and President Obama to get their identification documents ready so they can’t be turned away at the polls. Inform yourself about your rights as a voter. Write to your elected officials and urge them to fight for American justice, fairness and the upholding of the one person, one vote system. Ask them to work hard to get big money out of general elections once and for all. And vote! Remember, New Jersey and some other states allow early voting and vote by mail. read more

2012080520131213

Start-ups need a long runway to succeed

According to Florence Lowe, Founder & CEO of SQBlueSky, the commonality all start-ups need to succeed is a long enough runway – the resources needed to ramp up to full flight when they’re getting started. The resources won’t be the same for every company. Some teams will need a lot of money to burn through while in the start-up phase, others (like Florence) count heavily on personal experience and a fabulous team, others benefit simply from applying themselves 100% to the task of getting their business fully operational. And, Florence says, read more

2012080520131213

Voting Rights Timeline in the US

Voting rights in the US are closely tied to other important social issues: the right to own property, First Amendment free speech rights, rights to assemble and to be the master of one’s own destiny. These resources show when the right to vote was obtained by various populations of American society.

Timeline by Center for Democracy

Timeline by the ACLU in graphic format and as a pdf file

The voting rights timelines does not address two other serious voting rights issues being played out in the US: using felony disenfranchisement as a mechanism to prevent Black men (plus some women) and Latinos from exercising their voting rights, which has become a type of apartheid in these communities. Michelle Alexander writes about this in her book, The New Jim Crow and the concerted Republican effort put in place since the first GWB election in 2000 which seeks to purge legitimate voters from voting rolls in targeted communities and otherwise restrict voting rights across the country. read more

2012080520131213

To students of real history, corruption doesn’t look worse today

People who believe widespread social problems are new to the United States come from ethnic backgrounds of privilege, or didn’t learn true history at home or in school. A Facebook friend and Green Party member thinks he is trying to explain to me that ethnicity does not affect a person’s belief about whether there is more corruption today than in the past. But, what Mark is really doing is demonstrating that he hails from a background where White male privilege is so much part of his personal culture that he is unaware that any other reality exists. read more

2012080420131213

Black and Latino borrowers victims of mortgage red-lining

The announcement on July 12 that Wells Fargo had agreed to a $175 million dollar settlement to avoid prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department for race bias in its lending policies follows a settlement with Bank of America Corp. last December to pay $335 million to avoid similar charges. Unfortunately, this amount is just a wee drop in the bucket when compared with the destruction these financial institutions’ policies have wreaked in the lives of Latino and Black families. Thanks to the exploitative lending policies they’ve been much harder hit by our harsh economic climate specifically because housing has cost them hundreds more each month than White families paid, even when the Black and Latino borrowers had equally good jobs and purchased properties valued at the same price. read more

2012080320131213

NJ shares in historic $25 billion fed-state mortgage fraud settlement

President Obama has responded to the injustices and fraud enacted by banks upon mortgage borrowers with the negotiation of a massive, wide-spread assistance program for one of America’s greatest ills – the home foreclosure crisis. Visit the website National Mortgage Settlement which is maintained by Attorney Generals from every state in the country (except Oklahoma) to learn more about the $25 billion dollar settlement that America’s five largest banks will pay over the next three years. read more

2012080320131213

New study released: Who austerity hurts

Friend and civil rights attorney Bennet D. Zurofsky posts a link to an extensive new 84 page study of the detrimental effects of austerity entitled Prosperity Economics: Building An Economy For All. “Worth reading,” he says.

2012073120131213

Fire Demarco for underwater mortgage relief and $1 billion in savings

The good people at Rebuild the Dream tell us,

DeMarco is the Bush appointee who has been dragging his heels and blocking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from engaging in targeted principal reductions (resetting home loans to fair market value) for struggling, underwater homeowners on the grounds that it would cost the taxpayers too much.

Today, two things happened. First, FHFA produced a study that said principal reductions would actually save taxpayers more than a billion dollars. And then DeMarco announced that he still wouldn’t allow any principal reductions! read more

2012073020131213

When they understand what it is, people love Obamacare

A Truthout op-ed article explains the real benefits of Obamacare. Once people understand how much benefit they provide, they love the new healthcare provisions. They’re also going to love the $500 rebate checks that will soon be sent out from insurance companies to compensate policyholders for the price gouging their insurers have been subjecting them to, and the $100 billion our government is going to save this decade because of the bill. Here’s an excerpt:

What the decision does do, using the taxing authority of the Constitution, is assure that everybody gets covered for health care – no one can be turned down. The President’s bill guarantees that everyone is now covered for pre-existing conditions, preventive care, mammograms, colonoscopies, seniors’ drugs, children on parent’s plans through 26, no lifetime caps, and this is a key part, requires that 80 percent of the benefits go to patients, not to administrators, prohibiting insurance companies from overcharging for their salaries and administrative costs. The insurance company overcharges – paying them as middlemen — were one of the factors that made us pay twice as much for health care as any nation on earth. read more