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Sunday, May 13, 2012

US Sheds Jesse Helm's Shameful Legacy

      There probably aren't many things that can warm the heart more than a Politico headline "US Sheds the Helms Rule's Legacy." I mean right away without even knowing what it is-how can this not be a good thing. Shedding anything called the "Helm's Rule" must by definition be a good thing.

     And so it is. "The enormous International AIDS Conference will meet in the United States for the first time in more than 20 years, ending a boycott that protested a policy the late North Carolina Republican senator pushed into law."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76249.html#ixzz1uoD9rxr5

     "The “Helms rule” denied U.S. visas to people who are HIV positive. It was lifted in 2009, thanks to efforts by both President Barack Obama; his predecessor, President George W. Bush; and both parties in Congress. The policy was especially painful to advocates because U.S. scientific and financial investments are largely responsible for stemming the tide of the epidemic around the world."
   To be sure there are still some things that we as a nation must do to improve on fighting HIV/AIDS:

    "When the meeting convenes in Washington this summer, it will signal that the U.S. has brought its HIV policies into better alignment with the principles it advocates abroad."

    "But the meeting will also highlight other ways that the U.S. has fallen short, advocates say. Washington has an infection rate that rivals some African countries, symbolizing that domestic efforts have not matched the push to combat AIDS overseas."

     So it's actually at home that we have more room for improvement. However, President Obama has begun to change this:

   "And, they say, it will highlight Obama’s stamp on U.S. AIDS policy, because it was only after he took office that the country matched its global efforts to fight the disease with a coordinated commitment at home."

    Of course the President as an African-American is already by his very Presidency a shedding of another very shameful legacy of Helms.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for talking about this. I had never heard of this happening...chalk it up as another achievement in a long list of achievements for Obama (but of course, you'll never hear about it; not from the Right and not from the Far Left).

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  2. Yeah there's a lot of things Obama has done that you never hear about, starting with all the things we have gained from his health care law

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