12 January 2012 5 million dollars to buy South Carolina How much to stop people spitting?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kamikaze-gingrich/2012/01/11/gIQA7AyxrP_story.html

Kamikaze Gingrich, on the loose in South Carolina

By Dana Milbank, Published: January 11

“As Republican leaders watch with horror Newt Gingrich’s one-man campaign to bring down the party’s likely presidential nominee, they should remind themselves of this: Gingrich is a monster of their own making…

“… there are 5 million reasons Republicans have to fear Gingrich. That’s the number of dollars billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson gave to a pro-Gingrich super PAC— the largest contribution to a candidate’s cause in U.S. history. This allowed the Winning our Future PAC to buy $3.4 million worth of ads in South Carolina — enough to saturate the state with poisonous messages about Mitt Romney…

“…Liberals have complained for two years about the Supreme Court’s Citizens Uniteddecision, which made such unlimited contributions possible. But Republicans on Capitol Hill resisted attempts to limit the damage of the decision — and now Gingrich is teaching them the consequences of their own actions.

“… Romney, on his way to South Carolina, complained explicitly that Gingrich was against “free enterprise.”

“Romney has it wrong. Gingrich’s attacks on him are the very essence of free enterprise: They’re helped by campaign finance laws that sell elections to the highest bidder. For those Republicans who thought that unlimited political contributions would be a good thing for their party, it’s a delicious irony that a casino billionaire is using his money to underwrite a populist assault on the GOP front-runner.”

http://www.hopkinsglobalhealth.org/resources-old/global_health_ads/TBcampaigns.html

After Villemin and Koch’s discovery that tuberculosis was contagious through the tubercle bacilli in sputum, The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (NASPT) began their Anti-Spitting Campaign to discourage such behaviors as public spitting. The NASPT, co-founded in 1904 by over 200 of the most prominent medical men in America, was a voluntary organization formed to unify and expand the country’s regional anti-tuberculosis programs. TB was the number one cause of death in the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and one of the most feared diseases in the world. In an effort to control this health risk, the campaign encouraged towns to outlaw spitting in the streets and on the floors of shops, theaters, taverns, or any public gathering spots. Women refused to wear long dresses into town for fear they may pick up the disease and bring it home with them. Any handkerchief or piece of belonging that was infected was burned, and spittoons were disinfected with carbolic acid and boiling water. By 1915, the NASPT involved children in the campaign, encouraging the Modern Health Crusade, which developed into the new health education system for elementary schools.

Cassi Creek:         The subject of drug-resistant tuberculosis was broached on a forum I follow.  As much as I would like to rid the world of Gingrich, I’d like to see TB eliminated even more.  The corporations masquerading as persons in order to buy elections and place puppets into state and national legislative bodies could do quite a lot of good if they chose to apply their wealth to defeating disease. 

          Prior to the evolution of HIV/AIDS and excepting malaria, Tuberculosis was one of the most prevalent causes of preventable death in the modern world.  As I grew up in the 1950s, Polio was largely beaten back by vaccination, small pox was officially eliminated, and malaria somewhat subdued by DDT.  TB was widely feared when I began school.  Anti-spitting ads were still prominently displayed and there was moderate public compliance with anti-spitting campaigns.  TB was incurable then and resistant strains have potentially erased the advances in treatment in many locations around the world. 

          I was taught, growing up that spitting was repulsive and not something done by polite and/or educated people.  The association between spitting and disease was easy to draw then and should be even easier to draw now.  Somehow, that association has broken down and spitting has become common behavior, particularly in young males.  It is time to revamp the campaign against spitting, time to remind people that it helps to spread TB. 

          Contact any corporate impersonator you can locate and demand that they stop buying elections and start funding anti-spitting campaigns.  Boycotts are indicated.  Targeting middle and high school students is essential. There is nothing “cool” about dying of tuberculosis.