Brownwood Bulletin (Brownwood, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 65, Ed. 1 Sunday, December 29, 2013 Page: 4 of 16
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Sunday, December 29, 2013
4A Brownwood Bulletin
Give life in January: It’s National Blood Donor Month
I just got into watching the show
Dracula on NBC.
I am not particularly fond of the recent
crop of vampire films and television of-
ferings - and by recent, I mean anything
post Peter Cushing - but I don’t have cable
or satellite television so I take what I can
stream.
And, while you may question my taste in
after-work, can’t-sleep programming, one
positive came from it this week.
I want your blood. Or rather, I want your
blood to help save lives.
I realized we are coming up on National
Blood Donor Month in January. For about
40 years now, the American Red Cross has
used the first month of each year to honor
those people - more than 10 million each
year - who donate blood.
January is a perfect month to symbolize
the need for blood donation in the United
States. It is cold. The weather is often un-
kind. People have their busiest schedules
around holiday events. So getting people
into donation centers is a challenge this
time of year.
And those who want to donate shouldn’t
wait until February to get started.
According to Red Cross statistics, more
than 41,000 donations are needed every
day to keep pace with the need in the
United States. I don’t know what that
translates to in Brown
County, but I’m willing to
bet there is a strong need.
When you spend your
career covering car ac-
cidents, tornadoes and
other events that threaten
lives, you gain a pretty
strong appreciation for
having a sufficient blood
supply. And as a reporter,
I want to always see
numbers and facts. Well
here are some numbers
and facts, courtesy of
the American Red Cross
website.
Every two seconds
someone in the U.S. needs
blood. With nearly 20,000 residents living
in Brownwood, if you were the last one to
need blood your time would statistically
come up in less than five days.
A single car accident victim can re-
quire as many as 100 pints of blood. Our
newspaper covered an injury accident this
week. That injured person might be your
neighbor. And that injured person might
be depending on 100 neighbors donating
one pint each.
Here come three statistics all at once.
The number of blood donations collected
in the U.S. in a year is 15.7 million. The
number of blood donors in the U.S. in
a year is 9.2 million. Although an esti-
mated 38 percent of the U.S. population
is eligible to donate, less than 10 percent
actually do each year.
And donating once and just forgetting
about it? Fagedda ‘bout it. New donors
and repeat donors are needed to keep up
the supply. Blood has an expiration date,
too. — Most donated red blood cells must
be used within 42 days of collection. Do-
nated platelets must be used within five
days of collection.
According to the Red Cross, one do-
nation could potentially save three
lives. The number-one reason people
give for not having donated blood is “I
never thought about it.” Think about this
number. According to the Red Cross, If
you began donating blood at age 17 and
donated every 56 days until you reached
76, you would have donated 48 gallons of
blood, potentially helping save more than
1,000 lives.
The Red Cross provides 40 percent of
the nation’s blood supply and more than
80 percent of that is collected at mobile
stations and blood drives at civic organi-
zations, schools, churches, businesses and
military bases.
In early November, The Bulletin told
readers about four upcoming community
blood drives at places much like those I
mentioned earlier. United Blood Services
organized the drives and did so, I am sure,
to beat the holiday rush. But unused red
blood cells from those drives are past the
point of viability. So it is time for us to
face the needle once again.
You will have a chance to do so very
soon. According to the United Blood
Services website, a bloodmobile will be at
Center for Life Resources in Brownwood
from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Jan. 7.
I encourage everyone to take seriously
National Blood Donor Month and to be-
come a donor or donate once again.
In May 2011,1 was teaching in Joplin,
Mo., when an EF-5 tornado tore through
that town without discrimination for what
it destroyed. It hit a hospital Thousands
rushed to give blood, and that was so
inspiring. But the time to give is before the
disaster strikes.
Give in to those who want your blood
to save lives. They won’t be vampires and
you’ll all be heroes.
Thom Hanrahan is the editor of the
Brownwood Bulletin. His column appears
on Sundays. He may be reached by e-
mail at thom.hanrahan@brownwoodbul-
letin.com.
Discovering
Brownwood
Thom
Hanrahan
EDITORIALS
Balancing
security,
civil liberties
A tough and thorough report by an independent
panel of experts last week should be all the justifi-
cation that President Obama needs to make critical
changes in the National Security Agency’s spy pro-
grams to protect Americans’ privacy without under-
mining national security.
Until now, President Obama has tried to deflect
criticism of the NSA secret surveillance projects that
a federal judge last week labeled “nearly Orwellian.”
The president has offered soothing assurances that
he understands why the public is worried, but he has
never committed to undertake the changes necessary
to ensure a minimum level of privacy. It’s time to
stop talking and start acting.
The report by a five-member panel of intelligence
and legal experts appointed by the president himself
stopped short of recommending the dismantling of
NSA programs designed to prevent acts of terrorism.
Nor should they have. The threat of terrorism on
American soil remains very real.
But does that mean that the public has to surrender
a reasonable expectation of privacy in communica-
tions, either by phone or in cyberspace? The NSA’s
excesses, responding to orders from two adminis-
trations and from Congress, went far beyond what
is necessary to maintain a proper balance between
security and the right to be free of a smothering level
of surveillance.
Among the most important is the recommendation
that the data gleaned from systematically collecting
the logs of every American’s phone calls — so-called
metadata — should be held in private hands (phone
companies or some sort of private consortium) and
not by the government itself. The NSA would have to
get a judge’s order to perform “link analysis” on any
stored record.
The president is expected to announce next month
what he intends do about the secrecy programs. He
should embrace those changes that provide greater
accountability and enhance the civil liberties of
Americans. If there are recommendations he cannot
accept, he must make a persuasive case to the public
as to why.
Miami Herald
Can GOP avoid
Obamacare trap?
2014 will be the year Republicans
are forced to deal with the Obamacare
Trap, helpfully set for them by the
Democratic authors of the Affordable
Care Act.
In 2009 and 2010, President Obama
and his party took a health care sys-
tem in which 85 percent had insur-
ance coverage, and blew it up. Now,
with Obamacare causing misery right
and left, those same Democrats are
screaming, “You can’t go back!”
The national health care scheme
they designed is so complex and has
already embedded itself so deeply in
the health care system, they argue,
that it can never be repealed. The only
course now is for lawmakers of both
parties to “fix” Obamacare’s problems.
The argument will be heard more
and more as the burdens imposed
by Obamacare - canceled policies,
higher premiums, higher deductibles,
narrower doctor networks, restricted
choices of prescription drugs and
more - become a reality for millions
of Americans. The situation could be-
come even more politically charged if,
as many experts expect, the burdens
that have so far beset those in the
individual insurance market spread to
the small-group market and ultimately
to the larger universe of all people
who receive coverage through their
jobs.
In such a scenario, Democrats will
ratchet up their demands that Repub-
licans join them in “fixing” the law.
They will condemn Republicans who
declare Obamacare beyond repair
and decline to go along. And at the
same time, Democrats will stead-
fastly refuse to back down in their full
support of the law they - and they
alone - passed that is causing all the
trouble. The blame, they will argue,
lies with the GOP.
It’s an astonishingly
brazen strategy. And it
might work.
Already, some Re-
publicans appear to be
wavering on the insis-
tence that repeal must
be the first step in
minimizing the damage
done by Obamacare. In
a weird irony, the more
serious the problems of
Obamacare become, the
less likely some Republicans are to
demand repeal.
“It’s so bad that you just can’t let it
happen,” says one well-connected GOP
strategist. “My sense is, at least at this
point, it’s gotten so bad that as much
as you don’t want to fix Obamacare,
you just can’t let the impact of this
happen.”
Says a House Republican aide: “Mea-
sures that provide Americans some
form of relief from the most painful
parts of Obamacare don’t have to
begin with repeal.”
Of course, many ways Republicans
would want to provide Obamacare
relief - Michigan Rep. Fred Upton’s
keep-your-health-plan proposal, for
example - won’t win Democratic sup-
port. But the more fixes the GOP signs
on to, the more incentive Democrats
have to keep stonewalling all calls for
repeal.
Other House Republicans are (fi-
nally) uniting behind an actual repeal-
and-replace proposal. H.R. 3121 is the
work of the Republican Study Com-
mittee, and, like another effort by GOP
Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, would both
repeal Obamacare and enact a pack-
age of Republican health care reforms.
It would address the tax unfairness of
SEE YORK, 5A
LETTERS
Facing the
New Reality
To the editor:
Paul Butler’s recent col-
umn (Back B-4, Dec. 15) on
the values of the pioneers
of the American West
reminded me of a report
I read recently, Facing the
New Reality:
Preparing Poor America
for Harder Times Ahead.
Published by Commu-
nity Action Partnership in
2011, the report identi-
fies three global mega-
trends that will affect
us all, but especially the
poor, for the foreseeable
future: natural resource
depletion, climate change,
and ongoing economic
turmoil. While many of its
predictions are grim, the
tone is hopeful, noting
that “times of scarcity
need not limit beauty, el-
egance, and the power of
the imagination.” The rec-
ommended remedy, for
individuals, families, and
particularly communities:
increased self-reliance.
Like other social trends,
the popularity of the self-
reliant lifestyle is cyclical.
In the 20th century, the
scarcities caused by both
World Wars and the Great
Depression required near
total self-sufficiency for
many families, and the
nation as a whole, while
the New Deal jobs pro-
grams provided the social
safety net to prevent utter
destitution for the poorest
Americans. The youth
of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s led
another massive revival
in the “back to the land”
movement, based on their
rejection of consumerism
and the evils of the mili-
tary-industrial complex.
Out of their counter-cul-
ture arose influential inno-
vations in organic farming
and renewable energy.
From Australia, came Per-
maculture Design, which
integrates Earth-care eth-
ics with ecological science
to re-introduce a modem
way of living in harmony
with our environment,
as did the Indians here
before us.
While Butler concludes
SEE LETTERS, 5A
Jerry Pye: Publisher
Karen Wade: Business Manager
Thom Hanrahan: Editor
Derrick Stuckly: Sports Editor/
Assistant Editor
Marty Baker: Mailroom
John Reyes: Pre-press Manager
Wesley Davis: Press Room
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The Brownwood Bulletin is
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through Sunday morning by
Brownwood Newspapers, Inc., at
700 Carnegie, Brownwood, Texas
76801. Mail correspondence to
Brownwood Bulletin, P.O. Box
1189, Brownwood, Texas 76804.
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Hanrahan, Thom. Brownwood Bulletin (Brownwood, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 65, Ed. 1 Sunday, December 29, 2013, newspaper, December 29, 2013; Brownwood, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth740176/m1/4/?q=green+energy: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Brownwood Public Library.