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A Senator and her constituent: Carole Migden and the brightest film star residing in NorCal were all smiles before they tackled a serious subject over the weekend.
Actor and part time journalist Sean Penn spent some time in the Bay Area working on antiwar issues this past weekend. To say he was a little ahead of the country with his opposition to the increasingly unpopular conflict in Iraq would be a gross understatement, to say the least. Eavesdropping is rude but we know that Mr. Penn and the Senator discussed battle plans on opposing the war going into next year, and also her Joint Senate Resolution 10 concerning the overextension of California's National Guard troops and ways of getting CA's part-time servicemembers back home. We didn't notice any Celtic tattoos on Sean (ala Mystic River) but we did spot a small inked-on logogram on his left forearm. How to pronounce it is a mystery to us, but its a very simple Chinese character meaning strength or power. Mmmmm.
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Carole Migden! an enchanted hybrid of Phil Spector and....Florence Henderson.
Mark Leno (opposing Carole Migden in upcoming election) kills important diabetes legislation significant to minority communities.
Efforts to address growing diabetes concerns among African-Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans suffered a major setback most recently in California when Assemblymember and Appropriations Committee Chair Mark Leno killed a diabetes bill that hoped to help alleviate this growing public health crisis. The bill was an expressed priority of the California Democrat Legislative Black Caucus. After listening to extensive information on the increasing diabetes epidemic and the disproportionate suffering from diabetes it in minority communities Leno, with the authority as Chair of the Appropriations Committee, still moved to kill the bill by placing the bill in suspense file.
In the late 1990s California experienced a 60% increase in diabetes among the adult population. In tandem with national trends, it is California’s minority populations who suffer in the highest numbers from this diabetes epidemic and obesity. The bill, which was brought forth by Mervyn M Dymally Legislative Black Caucus Chair and Assemblymember from Compton, presented to Leno and the committee the disproportionate statistics and immediate health concerns of diabetes effecting minority communities. Dymally explained that 10.3% of African American, 9.3% of Native Americans, and 6.0% of Latinos suffer from diabetes and obesity compared with 5.6% of whites and 4.7% of Asian Pacific Islander communities. For those diagnosed with diabetes health related problems can be very serious including high blood pressure, blindness, heart disease, and even fatalities. Moreover, minority communities suffer the highest number of diabetes related deaths compared with the general population of those diagnosed with diabetes.
The bill, that Leno effectively made sure would never be enacted, proposed to study the factors and causes contributing to high rates of diabetes and obesity in Latinos, African-Americans, and Native Americans in this country, starting with California. The bill would further have called for a task force to prepare a report containing recommendations on how to reduce instances of diabetes and such debilitating conditions among these ethnic groups. Dymally as Chair of the Legislative Black Caucus expressed his deep concern and dismay over Leno’s actions in the Appropriations Committee in killing the bill.