Wisconsin: None dare call it vote rigging

Please read the whole of the original article. I was a computer programmer for 40 years, and I know it would be easy to program a voting machine program to cheat, then have the program itself erase the cheating section.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2012/1936

June 14, 2012

If vote-rigging prospers, none may call it vote-rigging. It simply becomes the new norm. Once again, the universal laws of statistics apply only outside U.S. borders. The recall vote in Wisconsin produced another significant 7% discrepancy between the unadjusted exit poll and the so-called "recorded vote." In actual social science, this level of discrepancy, with the results being so far outside the expected margin of error would not be accepted.

When I took Ph.D. statistics to secure my doctorate in political science, we were taught to work through the rubric, sometime referred to as HISMISTER. The "H" stood for an explanation of the discrepancy rooted in some historical intervention, .....

The "I" that came next suggested we should check our instrumentation, that is, are the devices adequately reporting the data?

Here's where U.S. elections become laughable. A couple of private companies, count our votes with secret proprietary hardware and software, the most notable being ES&S. Every standard of election transparency is routinely violated in the U.S. electronic version of faith-based voting. How the corporate-dominated media deals with the issue is by "adjusting the exit polls." They simply assume the recorded vote on easily hacked and programmed private machines are correct and that the international gold standard for detecting election fraud – exit polls – must be wrong.

They are not going to go through the rest of the acronym and check to see if the Sample makes sense, that the right Measurements are being taken, or whether or not there's been a breakdown in Implementing the exit polling. They won't check to see if the representative Size of the polling numbers are accurate, or if there are problems with the pollster's Technique, or if there was human Error, or if there's just bad Recording going on.

Of course, the machines could be recording wrong because they are programmed for an incorrect outcome. The easiest people to convince regarding the absurdity of electronic voting with private proprietary hardware and software are the computer programmers across the political spectrum. Statisticians and mathematicians also readily comprehend the obvious nature of rigged elections.

One of my favorite mathematicians is Richard Charnin, who on his website using readily available public information, calculates the odds of the so-called ‘red shift" occurring from the 1988 to 2008 presidential elections. The red shift refers to the overwhelming pick up of votes by the Republican Party in recorded votes over what actual voters report to exit pollsters. See Richard Charnin's article

In Charnin's analysis of exit poll data, we can say with a 95% confidence level – that means in 95 out of 100 elections – that the exit polls will fall within a statistically predictable margin of error. Charnin looked at 300 presidential state exit polls from 1988 to 2008, 15 state elections would be expected to fall outside the margin of error. Shockingly, 137 of the 300 state presidential exit polls fell outside the margin of error.

What is the probability of this happening?

"One in one million trillion trillion trlllion trillion trillion trillion," said Charnin.

More statistical proof of Republican operatives, zealots and sympathizers tampering with the vote is found in the fact that 132 of the elections fell outside the margin in favor of the GOP. We would expect eight.

.....

The corporate-owned media does not want to mention that the problems with the exit polls began with the ascendancy of the former CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush to the presidency in 1988. It is also that year when the non-transparent push-and-pray voting machines were introduced in the New Hampshire primary by Bush ally John Sununu. Bush, who rigged elections for the CIA throughout the Third World did unexpectedly well where the voting machines were brought in.

In any other election outside the U.S., the U.S. State Department would condemn the use of the these highly riggable machines based on the discrepancy in the exit polls. It's predictable what would happen if an anti-U.S. KGB agent in some former Soviet Central Asian republic picked up an unexplained 5% of the votes at odds with the exit polls. A new election would be called for, as it was in the Ukraine in 2004. We would not have accepted the reported vote from the corrupt intelligence officer.

Power attracts corruption.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities! It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.-Frank Herbert, "Dune"

True for any position that gives people power over others, human or not, including many that are helping roles.

Meet Florence: The 95-Year-Old Wisconsin Woman Who Can’t Get A Voter ID

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/06/13/498810/wisconsin-voter-id/

By Scott Keyes posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 13, 2012

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — Last year, nearly a dozen new states passed voter ID laws. These laws may have prevented the nine cases of voter impersonation that occurred between 2000 and 2007, but the Brennan Center estimates they could collectively disenfranchise more than three million people this year. In other words, for each case of voter impersonation these laws prevent, nearly 350,000 citizens may lose their right to vote.

ThinkProgress traveled to Wisconsin recently to investigate how the new law, if allowed to stand by the state judiciary, would affect voters in the state. (Two judges recently blocked the law, but their ruling will be appealed.)

One Wisconsinite we spoke with, 95-year-old Florence Hessing of Bayfield, said that she’d voted in every election without any problems until voter ID was enacted. However, her driver’s license expired when she stopped driving at the age of 90 (she’s now half-blind) and because she was likely born via midwife, she didn’t have a birth certificate required to get a new photo ID. Lawyers were eventually able to find an exemption for Hessing that will ultimately allow her to vote, but thousands of other Wisconsinites might not be as lucky. Indeed, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee study found that approximately 300,000 lack photo ID.

Health Care Insurers Spent $100 Million To Defeat Obamacare

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/06/13/499093/health-care-insurers-spent-100-million-to-combat-the-affordable-care-act/

By Annie-Rose Strasser posted from ThinkProgress Health on Jun 13, 2012

As the Supreme Court readies to announce their decision on the individual mandate portion of the health reform, it has emerged that the largest health care lobbying group in the country spent a total of $102.4 million in just 15 months to prevent Obamacare from becoming law in the first place.

In 2009 alone, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) pumped $86.2 million into a conservative lobbying group, the US Chamber of Commerce, to combat President Obama’s health care reform plan. But with the added months of 2010 prior to the ACA’s March passage, AHIP piled on an additional $16 million to be used against the bill.

That staggering total, which the National Journal’s Influence Alley uncovered today, was not out in the open — rather, the funds were transferred through a secretive process and listed only by the organization as ‘advocacy’ spending:

.....

Self-contradicting actions

People are weird. They will drive around a parking lot, wasting time and gas and causing air pollution, to find a parking spot as close as possible to the store, then pay good money to try to lose weight at a gym, or buying pills or eating stuff that is supposed to help burn off fat.

Poll: Public Doesn’t Agree With Conservatives’ Extreme Views On Regulation

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/11/497191/poll-public-doesnt-agree-with-conservatives-extreme-views-on-regulation/

By Climate Guest Blogger Ruy Teixeira on Jun 11, 2012 at 11:31 am

When conservatives aren’t talking about cutting taxes for the rich, they’re getting misty-eyed about removing business regulations. Indeed, nothing less than the obliteration of all current restrictions on business would appear to satisfy them. There’s just one problem: The public doesn’t share this commitment.

On the contrary, the public understands that a free market economy needs regulation to serve the common good. And as a matter of fact, that was its verdict by a wide 63-31 margin in the Pew Research Center’s new American Values Survey released in April.

..... [see original article for graphs showing more detailed results of the survey

A free market economy needs at least some government regulation in order to best serve the public interest : 63% agree, 31% disagree

There need to be stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment:
74% agree, 25% disagree

Virginia Lawmaker Says ‘Sea Level Rise’ Is A ‘Left Wing Term,’ Excises It From State Report On Coastal Flooding

The inmates are running the asylum. I feel like we are living in a Kafka novel.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/10/496982/virginia-lawmaker-says-sea-level-rise-is-a-left-wing-term-excises-it-from-state-report-on-coastal-flooding/

By Rebecca Leber posted from Climate Progress on Jun 10, 2012

Virginia’s legislature commissioned a $50,000 study to determine the impacts of climate change on the state’s shores. To greenlight the project, they omitted words like “climate change” and “sea level rise” from the study’s description itself. According to the House of Delegates sponsor of the study, these are “liberal code words,” even though they are noncontroversial in the climate science community.

Instead of using climate change, sea level rise, and global warming, the study uses terms like “coastal resiliency” and “recurrent flooding.” Republican State Delegate Chris Stolle, who steered the legislation, cut “sea level rise” from the draft. Stolle has also said the “jury’s still out” on humans’ impact on global warming:

tate Del. Chris Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who insisted on changing the “sea level rise” study in the General Assembly to one on “recurrent flooding,” said he wants to get political speech out of the mix altogether.

He said “sea level rise” is a “left-wing term” that conjures up animosities on the right. So why bring it into the equation?

“What people care about is the floodwater coming through their door,” Stolle said. “Let’s focus on that. Let’s study that. So that’s what I wanted us to call it.”

There is a resistance to calling science what it is, even in the studies commissioned to investigate the impact of climate change. The reality is that coastal cities are spending millions to respond to rising sea levels, like Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk spends $6 million a year to elevate roads, improve drainage, and help homeowners raise their houses, according to BBC. Already, 5 percent to 10 percent of the city’s lowest-lying neighborhoods have heavy flooding. The world’s largest naval base, based in Norfolk, is spending hundreds of millions to replace piers to withstand rising water. Yet they manage to make no mention of climate change or sea level rise in their response strategy.

Study: Companies With Big Spending CEOs Are More Likely To Commit Fraud

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/11/497121/wealthy-ceos-fraud/

By Travis Waldron posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 11, 2012

Pay for chief executives has skyrocketed over the last two decades, and a new study found that the way executives use their wealth has a direct impact on how their companies operate. “Unfrugal” CEOs — those who spend their massive salaries on luxury goods — aren’t more likely to commit fraud in their personal business dealings. Their companies, however, are more likely to commit fraud, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research:

However, as predicted, we find that unfrugal CEOs oversee a relatively loose control environment characterized by relatively high probabilities of other insiders perpetrating fraud and unintentional material reporting errors. Further, cultural changes associated with an increase in fraud risk are more likely during unfrugal (vs. frugal) CEOs’ reign, including the appointment of an unfrugal CFO, an increase in executives’ equity-based incentives to misreport, and a decline in measures of board monitoring intensity.

The study also found that companies run by free-spending CEOs are “significantly more likely” to make bad business decisions that lead to bankruptcy. But this shouldn’t be shocking: at some of America’s biggest companies, executive compensation is barely tied to the performance of the business.

Romney Campaign Chair: ‘Taxpayers Really Do Want To Hear There Will Be Fewer Teachers’

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/11/497293/sununu-romney-public-sector/

By Travis Waldron posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 11, 2012

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign isn’t backing off the candidate’s claim that America needs fewer teachers, firefighters, and police officers. Instead, former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu (R), a top Romney campaign surrogate, backed Romney’s call this morning, telling MSNBC that changes in technology and population shifts have made layoffs of teachers and public safety officials necessary.

Romney’s original comments left little room for interpretation. President Obama “says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers,” Romney said Friday. “Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.” But to Sununu, the comments highlighted a “real issue” that showed Romney’s “wisdom,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing today:

.....

Romney Economic Adviser Calls For More Austerity

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/11/497142/romney-hubbard-austerity/

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 11, 2012

Over the weekend, an op-ed authored by one of 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s economic advisers appeared in a German newspaper. In the piece, Glenn Hubbard criticized the Obama administration’s approach to Europe’s ongoing economic woes, instead calling for the adoption of more austerity:

.....

Mr. Hubbard proposed a classic conservative pro-austerity, anti-Keynesian approach, arguing that cutting government spending will restore public confidence, encourage growth and avert future tax increases.

“Long-term confidence in solid government financing shores up growth and enables the same scope for short-term transitional assistance,” he said.

Aside from the fact that Hubbard took out an op-ed in a foreign paper in which to blast the President, explicitly taking politics beyond “the water’s edge,” he is advocating for a doubling down on austerity that has simply made Europe’s economic situation worse. As this chart shows, austerity in Europe goes hand-in-hand with a contracting economy:

..... [original article for chart]

According to the International Monetary Fund, “Income and employment don’t fully recover even five years after the austerity program is enacted.” Yet that’s exactly the prescription that Hubbard and the Romney camp have in mind for both Europe and the U.S.

Children Exposed to Smoking Face Long-Term Respiratory Risks

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120520133614.htm

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2012) — For more than three decades, researchers have warned of the potential health risks associated with exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), especially among children whose parents smoke. Now a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Arizona reports that those health risks persist well beyond childhood, independent of whether or not those individuals end up becoming smokers later in life.

.....

Egos and Immorality

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/opinion/krugman-egos-and-immorality.html?_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-E-FB-SM-LIN-EAI-052512-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 24, 2012

In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation; he has proposed closing a few outrageous tax loopholes; and he has suggested that Mitt Romney’s history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pensions along the way, doesn’t make him the right man to run America’s economy.

Wall Street has responded — predictably, I suppose — by whining and throwing temper tantrums. And it has, in a way, been funny to see how childish and thin-skinned the Masters of the Universe turn out to be.

.....

But here’s the thing: If Wall Streeters are spoiled brats, they are spoiled brats with immense power and wealth at their disposal. And what they’re trying to do with that power and wealth right now is buy themselves not just policies that serve their interests, but immunity from criticism.

Actually, before I get to that, let me take a moment to debunk a fairy tale that we’ve been hearing a lot from Wall Street and its reliable defenders — a tale in which the incredible damage runaway finance inflicted on the U.S. economy gets flushed down the memory hole, and financiers instead become the heroes who saved America.

Once upon a time, this fairy tale tells us, America was a land of lazy managers and slacker workers. Productivity languished, and American industry was fading away in the face of foreign competition.

Then square-jawed, tough-minded buyout kings like Mitt Romney and the fictional Gordon Gekko came to the rescue, imposing financial and work discipline. Sure, some people didn’t like it, and, sure, they made a lot of money for themselves along the way. But the result was a great economic revival, whose benefits trickled down to everyone.

You can see why Wall Street likes this story. But none of it — except the bit about the Gekkos and the Romneys making lots of money — is true.

For the alleged productivity surge never actually happened. In fact, overall business productivity in America grew faster in the postwar generation, an era in which banks were tightly regulated and private equity barely existed, than it has since our political system decided that greed was good.

What about international competition? We now think of America as a nation doomed to perpetual trade deficits, but it was not always thus. From the 1950s through the 1970s, we generally had more or less balanced trade, exporting about as much as we imported. The big trade deficits only started in the Reagan years, that is, during the era of runaway finance.

And what about that trickle-down? It never took place. There have been significant productivity gains these past three decades, although not on the scale that Wall Street’s self-serving legend would have you believe. However, only a small part of those gains got passed on to American workers.

So, no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy, and there are real questions about why, exactly, the wheeler-dealers have made so much money while generating such dubious results.

Those are, however, questions that the wheeler-dealers don’t want asked — and not, I think, just because they want to defend their tax breaks and other privileges. It’s also an ego thing. Vast wealth isn’t enough; they want deference, too, and they’re doing their best to buy it.

.....

Illinois Law Makes It a Felony to Record Comments of Police in Public

http://www.buzzflash.org/node/13526

Submitted by mark karlin on Mon, 06/04/2012

That's right. There is a law in Illinois that can put a person in jail for up to 15 years for recording the remarks of a police officer in public. That means if you are videotaping police beating up protesters with your cellphone, you can be arrested and charged with a serious crime.

Police forces in various parts of the US have been trying to keep the public from recording everything from traffic stops to brutality.

And until recently, the effort to provide law enforcement officials with immunity from having their public actions documented was gaining momentum.

In May, however, the precedent setting and ominous Illinois law was struck down by a federal appellate court.

According to the Chicago Tribune last month,

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the controversial Illinois law prohibiting people from making audio recordings of police officers in public "likely violates" the First Amendment and ordered that Cook County prosecutors be prevented from enforcing it.

The ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago is the strongest blow yet to the state's eavesdropping law.

Furthermore, the Tribune noted.

In its ruling, the appeals court said the law is "the broadest of its kind" in the country and "likely violates the First Amendment's free-speech and free-press guarantees."

The law "restricts far more speech than necessary to protect legitimate privacy interests," wrote Judge Diane S. Sykes, who was joined in the decision by Judge David F. Hamilton. Judge Richard A. Posner dissented.

And fortunately, efforts by the police to arrest and intimidate people for holding them accountable for their activities through recordings are being struck down elsewhere. As the Tribune documents,

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled last year that people have a right to record police working in public after a man was arrested by Boston police for recording them while they arrested another person on the Boston Common. The city settled a lawsuit stemming from the case for $170,000 last month, according to the ACLU.

In January, the Department of Justice argued in a Maryland case that "the First Amendment protects the rights of private citizens to record police officers during the public discharge of their duties."

.....

Arctic Ice Melt Is Setting Stage for Severe Winters

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606132420.htm

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans might think.

That's because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino effect leading to increased odds of severe winter weather outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes -- think the "Snowmageddon" storm that hamstrung Washington, D.C., during February 2010.

Cornell's Charles H. Greene, professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, and Bruce C. Monger, senior research associate in the same department, detail this phenomenon in a paper published in the June issue of the journal Oceanography.

"Everyone thinks of Arctic climate change as this remote phenomenon that has little effect on our everyday lives," Greene said. "But what goes on in the Arctic remotely forces our weather patterns here."

A warmer Earth increases the melting of sea ice during summer, exposing darker ocean water to incoming sunlight. This causes increased absorption of solar radiation and excess summertime heating of the ocean -- further accelerating the ice melt. The excess heat is released to the atmosphere, especially during the autumn, decreasing the temperature and atmospheric pressure gradients between the Arctic and middle latitudes.

A diminished latitudinal pressure gradient is associated with a weakening of the winds associated with the polar vortex and jet stream. Since the polar vortex normally retains the cold Arctic air masses up above the Arctic Circle, its weakening allows the cold air to invade lower latitudes.

.....

Calorie-Restricted Diet Keeps Heart Young

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606092535.htm

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — People who restrict their caloric intake in an effort to live longer have hearts that function more like those in people who are 20 years younger.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that a key measure of the heart's ability to adapt to physical activity, stress, sleep and other factors that influence the rate at which the heart pumps blood, doesn't decline nearly as rapidly in people who have significantly restricted their caloric intake for an average of seven years.

.....

"But we can't be absolutely positive that the practice of CR is solely responsible for the flexibility of the cardiovascular system," Stein says. "People who practice CR tend to be very healthy in other areas of life, too, so I'm pretty sure they don't say to themselves, 'Okay, I'll restrict my calorie intake to lengthen my life, but I'm still going to smoke two packs a day.' These people are very motivated, and they tend to engage in a large number of very healthy behaviors."

Obamacare Helps 295,617 People in Alabama, One of the States With the Most Opposition

http://blog.locustfork.net/2012/06/obamacare-helps-295617-people-in-alabama-one-of-the-states-with-the-most-opposition/

June 11th, 2012

In a state where the conservative population tends to oppose government regulation of the health care industry more virulently than any other, the Affordable Care Act helped 295,617 people in Alabama with original Medicare receive at least one preventive service at no cost to them during the first five months of 2012, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

This includes 8,500 who have taken advantage of the Annual Wellness Visit provided by the Affordable Care Act, according to a press release from the agency.

Nationally, almost 14.3 million people in Medicare received at least one free preventive service during the first five months of this year, including 1.1 million people who benefited from the Annual Wellness Visit.

In 2011, 32.5 million people in Medicare received one or more preventive benefits free of charge.

“Thanks to the health care law, millions of Americans are getting cancer screenings, mammograms and other preventive services for free,” said CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner. “These free preventive services are helping people in Medicare stay healthy and lower their health care costs.”

.....

How to get rich

The Barnes and Noble bookstore that is closest to me is closing at the end of June. Of course, with the recession, they have fewer customers than they used to, but they were not planning on closing the store - until the owner of the shopping mall raised the rent at the beginning of the year. Of course, B&N tried to get them to not do so, but to no avail. I noticed that there is already a large empty space at another part of the mall where there used to be one or two stores. One (much smaller than B&N) has relocated. But B&N will simply close this store. I don't blame B&N, I'm sure it wouldn't be worth it to re-open, given the decline in business and the size of the store they would have to acquire, and the costs of moving everything.

From what people have heard, it appears that the owner wants to lose money on this property because he can then use it to offset taxes on other property. So for the sake of getting even richer by paying fewer taxes, he is causing the loss of the jobs that the store has provided. And the state of Georgia decreased the length of unemployment benefits in the state legislative session that ended recently.

According to a sign on the building, it belongs to Isakson-Barnhart Properites.

Romney claims "everybody" tries to keep their taxes to an absolute minimum, but that is not true. Many of us have voluntarily checked off choices on our state tax forms contributing part or all of our tax refund to go to things we felt are worthy causes, such as wildlife conservation, land conservation, helping children and the elderly. But you would have to be a decent human being to understand why someone would do something like that.

Republicans Block Online Disclosure Of Campaign Television Ad Spending

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/06/09/496857/republicans-block-online-disclosure-of-campaign-television-ad-spending/

By Adam Peck posted from ThinkProgress Election on Jun 9, 2012

The Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision has created a flood of television ad spending — hundreds of millions of dollars — from outside groups, corporations, and individuals. The Justices who voted for the decision and its supporters argue that disclosure is all voters need to make informed decisions. But yesterday, a panel of House Republicans moved to keep much of this spending in the dark.

A new FCC guideline that would have forced the nation’s top television stations to list the funders behind political advertisements online.

But the House Appropriations financial services subcommittee voted along party lines to prohibit the FCC from implementing their proposal to add another layer of transparency to the political ad process. Committee Chair Hal Rogers (R-KY) argued that fiscal matters are private and should remain that way, according to the LA Times:

The proposal, which had cleared the Federal Communications Commission in April, would require TV stations affiliated with the four top networks in the 50 largest markets to post political ad sales records online. Stations are already required to make the records available to the public upon request, but most stations keep them in paper files, making it difficult to compile and track the information.

Democrats on the subcommittee tried, unsuccessfully, to strip the rider which blocked the FCC from the funding bill. Despite several groups and media organizations calling for the records to be posted online, the TV stations themselves have bristled at the idea of making those records publicly available. A widely circulated video made by journalism students at Kent State shows the difficulty they faced in attempting to get hard copies of those records. Political operatives and other insiders will get access to much of the information through high-priced subscription services.

Seizure-Freedom Reported in 68% of Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy Patients

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606075345.htm

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — A 25-year follow-up study reveals that 68% of patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) became seizure-free, with nearly 30% no longer needing antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment.

.....

Mothers' Teen Cannabinoid Exposure May Increase Response of Offspring to Opiate Drugs

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120605155944.htm

ScienceDaily (June 5, 2012) — Mothers who use marijuana as teens -- long before having children -- may put their future children at a higher risk of drug abuse, new research suggests.

.....

"Our main interest lies in determining whether substances commonly used during adolescence can induce behavioral and neurochemical changes that may then influence the development of future generations," said Research Assistant Professor John J. Byrnes, the study's lead author, "We acknowledge that we are using rodent models, which may not fully translate to the human condition. Nevertheless, the results suggest that maternal drug use, even prior to pregnancy, can impact future offspring."

Byrnes added that much research is needed before a definitive connection is made between adolescent drug use and possible effects on future children.

The study builds on earlier findings by the Tufts group, most notably a study published last year in Behavioral Brain Research by Assistant Professor Elizabeth Byrnes that morphine use as adolescent rats induces changes similar to those observed in the present study.

Other investigators in the field have previously reported that cannabinoid exposure during pregnancy (in both rats and humans) can affect offspring development, including impairment of cognitive function, and increased risk of depression and anxiety.

15 Executives Who Get Paid Millions To Deny You Health Care Coverage

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/february/15-executives-who-get-paid-millions-to-deny-you-health-care-coverage

Posted on: Thursday, February 10, 2011
15 Executives Who Get Paid Millions To Deny You Health Care Coverage

By Business insider, Wall St. Cheat Sheet
March 20, 2010

The business model of American health insurers is basically: try to get healthy customers as clients, and then resist as long as possible when it comes to paying out claims.

That’s actually not an indictment or a criticism.

It’s just the way our system works, and it’s screwed up.

Whatever you feel about Obamacare, you probably think our current system needs reform in some sense.

Below we present the posterboys of the problem. Top healthcare CEOs making millions, leading companies that deny you coverage.


Herbert Fritch, HealthSpring

2008 revenue: $2.2 Billion
Y/Y change: 39.0%

CEO compensation: $800,000 [$15,384/week]





Jay Gellert, Health Net

2008 revenue: $15.4 Billion
Y/Y change: 8.9%

CEO compensation: $1.34 Million [$23,103/week]

......

Ronald A Williams, Aetna

2008 revenue: $31.0 Billion
Y/Y change: 12.1%

CEO compensation: $38.12 Million [$733,077/week]

In order to increase profits year on year from 2009 to 2010, Aetna plans to raise premiums to the point where up to 650,000 people would have to drop their coverage in 2010, according to the Huffington Post.



http://www.pnhp.org/news/2011/december/meet-the-new-1-healthcare-ceos-replace-bankers-as-americas-best-paid

Posted on: Thursday, December 15, 2011
Meet the new 1%: healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid
No bankers in top 10 of America's best-paid executives, but those in charge of healthcare and drugs firms are in the money

By Dominic Rushe
The Guardian, 14 December 2011

Pity Wall Street's bankers. Once the highest-paid bosses in the land, they are now also-rans. The real money is in healthcare and drugs, according to the latest survey of executive pay.

There are no bankers in the top 10 of this year's GMI survey of CEO pay. In fact, they have been out since 2007, when Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein competed for the top slot with Richard Fuld, boss of soon-to-be-bust Lehman Brothers, and Angelo Morzillo, head of Countrywide, once the largest sub-prime home loan firm.

With the bankers still recovering from their tussle with hubris, old age and infirmity were 2010's boom businesses – at least in terms of pay. Leading the pack was John Hammergren, chief executive of McKesson Corporation. The firm's 52-year-old chairman, chief executive and president took home $145,266,971 [$2,793,595/week, more than 2 million a week!] in 2010.

McKeeson is probably the biggest company you've never heard of. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company is the largest pharmaceutical distributor in North America, distributing a third of the medicines used in the US. McKeeson's sales topped $112bn last year.

Hammergren's next closest rival was Joel Gemunder, outgoing boss of Omnicare, where he had been president since 1981. Omnicare is a pharmacy company that dispenses drugs in nursing homes – among other services – and had sales of $6.15bn last year. When Gemunder started at the firm it had sales of $150m. His 2010 total pay package was worth $98,283,242 [$1,890,062/week].

.....

Keep Your Government Hands Off My Welfare State

It is my observation that many/most people have no problem holding and expounding totally contrary opinions & beliefs. They will make contradictory statements within a few sentences.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/09-4

by Mark Engler
Published on Saturday, June 9, 2012 by The New Internationalist

During the Tea Party’s heyday, you could find variations of the ‘Keep Your Government Hands Off My Welfare State’ sign at rallies around the US. My favorite was a handmade version by a woman who had written out her slogan in black marker and then added, in red, a hammer and sickle to symbolize the peril of socialized medicine. The placard read: ‘Government Keep Your Hands Off My Medicare.’

Ideology and reality had been set on a collision course, and this absurd mash-up was the result.

Struggle as it might, the reality that Medicare – America’s government-run health insurance – is one of the nation’s largest (and most popular) public programs could not overcome the right-wing imperative to hate the state. Sometimes, it seems, keeping hate alive means making tough sacrifices in the realm of logic.

In February, the New York Times published an article entitled ‘Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It’. Several accompanying maps showed that some areas which rely heavily on public programs – for example, Owsley County, Kentucky, where per capita payments for food stamps are the highest in the country – vote overwhelmingly for conservative Republicans who vow to slash social spending. Other studies show that deeply conservative Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee are among the places where residents, on average, get the highest percentage of their income from government supports.

Of course, there is a fine tradition of allowing one’s behavior and professed beliefs to go their separate ways: Bible-belt states whose residents claim to promote chastity and ‘family values’ have higher rates of divorce – not to mention higher numbers of online porn subscriptions – than supposed Gomorrahs like New York and California.

But why would healthcare-loving conservatives risk self-injury by embracing anti-government animus?

For one, when people talk about making cuts, they do not picture themselves in their mental community of deadbeats. In his response to the safety net report, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman cited Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University, whose research shows that ‘44 per cent of Social Security recipients, 43 per cent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 per cent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program”.’

These people are thinking of cutting services for others – like immigrants, who in fact account for only a small portion of government spending.

...

Contrary to Tea Party belief, most of the growth in government programs has come not because President Obama has boldly expanded benefits. Rather, amid a historic economic downturn, more people have needed these supports. Just when the safety net is doing precisely what it should, conservative leaders denounce a system run amok.

In doing so, they encourage a misplacement of resentment. Business has taken the American denial of mutual support straight to the bank. As economist Dean Baker points out, the failure of working people to gain from productivity increases is a far greater financial burden than anything government levies in taxes. Productivity has grown more than 80 per cent since 1979, with nothing close to a commensurate increase in wages.

Early in the economic recovery, the distribution of benefits has been even worse. In 2010, America’s top 1 per cent claimed 93 per cent of all income gains. Income for the great bulk of citizens actually decreased.

To Quit Smoking, Try Eating More Veggies and Fruits

Another possibility is that people who are more caring about their health may be both more likely to eat fruits and vegetables, and be be more motivated to stopping smoking

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606132426.htm

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — If you're trying to quit smoking, eating more fruits and vegetables may help you quit and stay tobacco-free for longer, according to a new study published online by University at Buffalo public health researchers.

The UB study found that smokers who consumed the most fruit and vegetables were three times more likely to be tobacco-free for at least 30 days at follow-up 14 months later than those consuming the lowest amount of fruits and vegetables. These findings persisted even when adjustments were made to take into account age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, household income and health orientation.

They also found that smokers with higher fruit and vegetable consumption smoked fewer cigarettes per day, waited longer to smoke their first cigarette of the day and scored lower on a common test of nicotine dependence.

"We may have identified a new tool that can help people quit smoking," says Jeffrey P. Haibach, MPH, first author on the paper and graduate research assistant in the UB Department of Community Health and Health Behavior. "Granted, this is just an observational study, but improving one's diet may facilitate quitting."

Several explanations are possible, such as less nicotine dependence for people who consume a lot of fruits and vegetables or the fact that higher fiber consumption from fruits and vegetables make people feel fuller.

"It is also possible that fruits and vegetables give people more of a feeling of satiety or fullness so that they feel less of a need to smoke, since smokers sometimes confuse hunger with an urge to smoke," explains Haibach.

And unlike some foods which are known to enhance the taste of tobacco, such as meats, caffeinated beverages and alcohol, fruits and vegetables do not enhance the taste of tobacco.

"Foods like fruit and vegetables may actually worsen the taste of cigarettes," says Haibach.

Today's Climate More Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide Than in Past 12 Million Years

And remember that we are in a part of the earth's cycle which would normally be cooler. So the fact that it has been warming is especially significant.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606164930.htm

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — Until now, studies of Earth's climate have documented a strong correlation between global climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide; that is, during warm periods, high concentrations of CO2 persist, while colder times correspond to relatively low levels.

However, in this week's issue of the journal Nature, paleoclimate researchers reveal that about 12-5 million years ago climate was decoupled from atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. New evidence of this comes from deep-sea sediment cores dated to the late Miocene period of Earth's history.

During that time, temperatures across a broad swath of the North Pacific were 9-14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today, while atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations remained low--near values prior to the Industrial Revolution.

The research shows that, in the last five million years, changes in ocean circulation allowed Earth's climate to become more closely coupled to changes in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

The findings also demonstrate that the climate of modern times more readily responds to changing carbon dioxide levels than it has during the past 12 million years.

Stress May Delay Brain Development in Early Years

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606164936.htm

ScienceDaily (June 6, 2012) — Stress may affect brain development in children, altering growth of a specific piece of the brain and abilities associated with it, according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"There has been a lot of work in animals linking both acute and chronic stress to changes in a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in complex cognitive abilities like holding on to important information for quick recall and use," says Jamie Hanson, a UW-Madison psychology graduate student. "We have now found similar associations in humans, and found that more exposure to stress is related to more issues with certain kinds of cognitive processes."

Children who had experienced more intense and lasting stressful events in their lives posted lower scores on tests of what the researchers refer to as spatial working memory. They had more trouble navigating tests of short-term memory such as finding a token in a series of boxes, according to the study, which will be published in the June 6 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Brain scans revealed that the anterior cingulate, a portion of the prefrontal cortex believed to play key roles in spatial working memory, takes up less space in children with greater exposure to very stressful situations.

"These are subtle differences, but differences related to important cognitive abilities" Hanson says.

But they maybe not irreversible differences.

"We're not trying to argue that stress permanently scars your brain. We don't know if and how it is that stress affects the brain," Hanson says. "We only have a snapshot -- one MRI scan of each subject -- and at this point we don't understand whether this is just a delay in development or a lasting difference. It could be that, because the brains is very plastic, very able to change, that children who have experienced a great deal of stress catch up in these areas."

,,,,,

The researchers, whose work was funded by the National Institutes of Health, also took note of changes in brain tissue known as white matter and gray matter. In the important brain areas that varied in volume with stress, the white and gray matter volumes were lower in tandem.

.....

"For both gray and white matter, we actually see smaller volumes associated with high stress," Hanson says.

City Kids More Likely to Have Food Allergies Than Rural Ones: Population Density Is Key Factor, Study Finds

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607105858.htm

ScienceDaily (June 7, 2012) — Children living in urban centers have a much higher prevalence of food allergies than those living in rural areas, according to a new study, which is the first to map children's food allergies by geographical location in the United States. In particular, kids in big cities are more than twice as likely to have peanut and shellfish allergies compared to rural communities.

Environmental Benefit of Biofuels Is Overestimated, New Study Reveals

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120608100548.htm

ScienceDaily (June 8, 2012) — Two scientists are challenging the currently accepted norms of biofuel production. A recent commentary published in GCB Bioenergy reveals that calculations of greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions from bioenergy production are neglecting crucial information that has led to the overestimation of the benefits of biofuels compared to fossil fuels.

The critique extends to the Life Cycle Analysis models of bioenergy production. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a technique used to measure and compile all factors relating to the production, usage, and disposal of a fuel or product. The authors conclude that LCAs are overestimating the positive aspects of biofuel use versus fossil fuel use by omitting the emission of CO2 by vehicles that use ethanol and biodiesel even when there is no valid justification.

Proponents of bioenergy argue that analyses should always ignore this CO2 because plants grown for biofuel absorb and therefore offset the same amount of carbon that is emitted by refining and combusting the fuel. The commentary critiques this method by arguing that doing so double counts the carbon absorbed by plants when the bioenergy crops are grown on land already used for crop production or already growing other plants because the bioenergy does not necessarily result in additional carbon absorption. Biofuels can only reduce greenhouse gases if they result in additional plant growth, or if they in effect generate additional useable biomass by capturing waste material that would otherwise decompose anyway.

The overestimation of bioenergy LCAs becomes increasingly magnified when the omission of CO2 is combined with the underestimation of nitrogen emissions from fertilizer application.

.....

Spring was warmest on record, NOAA reports

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47721816/ns/weather/

By Miguel Llanos
msnbc.com
updated 6/7/2012 11:09:32 AM ET

This spring was the warmest on record across the contiguous U.S., scientists reported Thursday. On top of that, spring was 5.2 degrees warmer than average -- the largest temperature variance for any season on record.

"The fact that the U.S. has been in a warm pattern for several months is continuing to be the big story," Jake Crouch, who prepares the monthly climate reports for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told msnbc.com.

.....

June 2011 through May 2012 "broke the record for warmest consecutive 12 months, which we just broke last month" with May 2011 to April 2012. Moreover, each of the last 12 months ranked in the top third of the historical distribution -- the first time that's happened in 117 years of record keeping. "If we assume that each month has an equal chance of having temperatures in the top third," Crouch said, "the odds of this happening are one in 531,441."
Each month of spring (March, April, May) "all ranked as top-ten warm" -- also the first time that's happened.

Overall, spring averaged 57.1 degrees -- 2 degrees above the previous record set in 1910 and 5.2 degrees above the 1901-2000 average for spring. The previous record differential was 4.2 degrees in the winter of 1999/2000.

Each of the previous three seasons were also well above average: 2.4 degrees last summer, 1.3 degrees in fall, and 3.9 degrees in winter.

.....

May was the second warmest on record at 64.3 degrees.
January-May was the warmest stretch for those months on record. The average temperature of 49.2 degrees was 5 degrees above the long-term average.
During the record June 2011 through May 2012 warmth (averaging 56 degrees, 0.4 degrees warmer than the previous record) every lower 48 state but one -- Washington -- saw above average temps.

Romney-Backed Solar Company Fails Days After He Faulted Solyndra

Any emerging industry will have some failures. If they are cutting new ground, we can't know ahead of time which will succeed. If they were a sure thing, they wouldn't need gov't help.
7 minutes ago · Like

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-04/romney-bashes-solyndra-s-loan-as-solar-company-he-backed-fails

Bloomberg News
Romney-Backed Solar Company Fails Days After He Faulted Solyndra
By Jim Snyder on June 05, 2012

Republican Mitt Romney, who criticized President Barack Obama last week for backing failed Solyndra LLC, supported as governor of Massachusetts a different solar-power company that has gone out of business.

Konarka Technologies Inc. filed to liquidate on June 1 after getting state and U.S. aid, a development that may muddy his attempts to use Solyndra to try to show Obama’s broader economic failures, a professor said.

“It demonstrates the ‘problem’ of having a record, in that obscure decisions and circumstances come to light, often far removed from their original frameworks,” Burdett Loomis, a University of Kansas political science professor, said in an e- mail yesterday.

.....

At least four other U.S. solar-panel manufacturers filed for bankruptcy in the past year as the price of the products fell 50 percent on an oversupply and expanded production in China.

How to get & stay rich - lie and cheat

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2012/june/oig-catches-pacificare-red-handed

Thursday, June 7, 2012

By Don McCanne, MD

As you know, Medicare beneficiaries have the option of leaving the traditional Medicare program and obtaining their care through private insurers offering Medicare Advantage plans. These private plans receive from the government monthly capitation payments (a set dollar amount for each beneficiary enrolled). To protect the private insurers from the higher spending required for sicker patients, the capitation payments are adjusted upward based on how ill the patients are. This is known as risk adjustment. Sounds reasonable. So what's the deal here?

Keep in mind that the traditional Medicare program is designed to serve patients whereas the private Medicare Advantage plans are private businesses designed primarily to make money. So how can these private plans meet their business obligation of keeping their spending down while increasing their revenues?

Quite simple. Game risk adjustment. Report many of the patients as having more serious disorders than they really do in order to increase the capitation payments. Although the insurers have denied that they do this, the Office of the Inspector General has caught them red-handed.

Based on this chicanery, UnitedHealth's PacifiCare was overpaid about $115 million for this one contract alone. That is almost $1000 excess for each of the 118,000 beneficiaries enrolled!

.....

Our own government stewards from the OIG (Office of the Inspector General), working for us, have exposed this scheme that is being used to skim off our tax dollars. So what are we going to do about it? Don't you think it's time to get rid of the amoral business ethic in health care financing and instead place in charge people dedicated to a service ethic? We can do this by establishing our own single payer national health program. But first we have to elect people who place public service above all. Supporting the 1 percent isn't working.

Scientists uncover evidence of impending tipping point for Earth

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/06/06/scientists-uncover-evidence-of-impending-tipping-point-for-earth/

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | June 6, 2012

A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.

UC Berkeley professor Tony Barnosky explains how an increasing human population, coupled with climate change, could irreversibly alter Earth’s ecosystem. (Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian)

“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal Nature. “The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.”

.....

The authors of the Nature review – biologists, ecologists, complex-systems theoreticians, geologists and paleontologists from the United States, Canada, South America and Europe – argue that, although many warning signs are emerging, no one knows how close Earth is to a global tipping point, or if it is inevitable. The scientists urge focused research to identify early warning signs of a global transition and an acceleration of efforts to address the root causes.

.....

Co-author Elizabeth Hadly from Stanford University said “we may already be past these tipping points in particular regions of the world. I just returned from a trip to the high Himalayas in Nepal, where I witnessed families fighting each other with machetes for wood – wood that they would burn to cook their food in one evening. In places where governments are lacking basic infrastructure, people fend for themselves, and biodiversity suffers. We desperately need global leadership for planet Earth.”

The authors note that studies of small-scale ecosystems show that once 50-90 percent of an area has been altered, the entire ecosystem tips irreversibly into a state far different from the original, in terms of the mix of plant and animal species and their interactions. This situation typically is accompanied by species extinctions and a loss of biodiversity.

.....

“Can it really happen? Looking into the past tells us unequivocally that, yes, it can really happen. It has happened. The last glacial/interglacial transition 11,700 years ago was an example of that,” he said, noting that animal diversity still has not recovered from extinctions during that time. “I think that if we want to avoid the most unpleasant surprises, we want to stay away from that 50 percent mark.”

.....

“My view is that humanity is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice,” Barnosky said. “One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, ‘Let’s just go on as usual and see what happens.’ My guess is, if we take that latter choice, yes, humanity is going to survive, but we are going to see some effects that will seriously degrade the quality of life for our children and grandchildren.”

Companies Run By Romney’s Private Equity Firm Received Millions In State And Local Government Subsidies

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/06/495730/romney-local-subsidies/

By Pat Garofalo on Jun 6, 2012 at 10:30 am

2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has been campaigning hard against government spending, blasting “crony capitalism” and criticizing the Obama administration for providing economic development subsidies. Romney has blasted the “endless subsidies and credits intended to shape behavior in our economic society,” calling them “intrusion in the workings of the free marketplace itself.”

However, as Bloomberg News reported, the companies run by the private equity firm Bain Capital when Romney was its CEO had little problem accepting subsidies from state and local governments:

During Romney’s years as chief executive of Bain Capital LLC, companies owned by the firm received millions of dollars in benefits from a variety of state and local government economic development programs.

In California, taxpayer money built one Bain company a conveyor bridge between two of its buildings. New York City gave another Bain company tax breaks and lower energy bills to discourage it from moving to New Jersey. And in Indiana, a county government issued bonds to help buy new equipment for a Bain-owned steel plant — a business success featured in a Romney campaign ad touting his private sector prowess.

As ThinkProgress has reported, in his campaign ads, Romney has been citing the Steel Dynamics as an example of where his business acumen help turn around a company and create jobs. Steel Dynamics benefited from $37 million in subsidies from the state of Indiana.

Number Of Wealthy Households Paying No Income Tax Spiked After 2004

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/07/496055/wealthy-taxpayers-chart-income/

According to data from the Internal Revenue Service, one in 189 high income Americans paid no federal income taxes in 2009. This included households making more than $200 million. As this chart by Noni Mausa at Angry Bear shows, the number of wealthy taxpayers managing to avoid the income tax spiked after 2004, while the percentage increased “eightfold”:

.....

Comparisons of free virus protection software

A comparison of several free anti-virus software.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-free-antivirus-2012,review-1767.html

June 7, 2012 - by Bruno Mathieu

Actions

You are responsible for your actions, not your intentions. ~ Paulo Coelho

I don't think "responsible" is really the right word here. I think he means our actions are what counts, not what we plan to do. Or maybe I totally misunderstand him?

Cost overruns of almost $1 billion — so far — at Ga. nuke reactors

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/06/06/cost-overruns-of-almost-1-billion-so-far-at-ga-nuke-reactors/

11:04 am June 6, 2012, by Jay Bookman

Last month, a consortium of utilities including Atlanta-based Southern Company announced cost overruns of almost $1 billion at two new nuclear reactors being built near Waynesboro.

That’s an arresting number under any circumstances, but it looms even larger when you realize that major construction on the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors has basically just begun, with at least five more years of construction to come.

And if costs soar, who’s going to pay for it? Southern Company and its subsidiary, Georgia Power, own 45.7 percent of the project, so its ratepayers’ share of these recent overruns would come to more than $400 million. But according to Buzz Miller, Southern’s executive vice president of nuclear development, that cost will be borne by contractors who are building the project.

“Our official position is that there’s no way we’re going to pay that amount,” Miller said Tuesday.

Study: TV Hurts the Self-Esteem of Girls and Children of Color, But Bolsters Boys

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/06/04/494018/study-tv-hurts-the-self-esteem-of-girls-and-children-of-color-but-bolsters-boys/

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jun 4, 2012

The usual caveats apply, but I was interested to read through this study out of Indiana University which tracked children’s television viewing habits over a year and found that both white and African-American girls and African-American boys’ saw their self esteem take a television-related hit, while white boys felt better about themselves.

Wisconsin Voters Report Receiving Robocalls Telling Them Not To Vote

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/06/05/495085/wisconsin-voters-report-receiving-robocalls-from-walker-supporters-conveying-false-information/

By Adam Peck on Jun 5, 2012 at 11:00 am

From Eau Claire to Beloit, voters across Wisconsin are relaying stories via Twitter, Facebook and online message boards about anonymous “robocalls” from allies of Scott Walker, telling them–incorrectly–that if they signed petitions to recall Governor Walker, their vote in today’s crucial election has been recorded.

An NBC reporter tweeted that a family friend was one recipient of the call

‘For Going Against God’s Will’ Catholic Hospital Denies Gay Man HIV Meds

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/1-for-going-against-gods-will-catholic-hospital-denies-gay-man-hiv-meds/legal-issues/2012/06/03/40477

by David Badash on June 3, 2012

A Catholic hospital in New Jersey is accused of denying a gay and HIV-positive man his HIV medications, as one doctor on staff reportedly stated, “for going against God’s will.”

“Joao Simoes sued Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Union County Superior Court,” the Courthouse News Service reports. “He says that the hospital admitted him in August 2011, but that requests for his lifesaving medication were not honored, and his sister was denied visitation rights.”

Susan V. Borga, M.D., from the Department of Behavioral Health and Psychiatry, allegedly approached Simoes while he was confined to the hospital’s mental health wing. Borga is not named as a defendant.
Simoes says Borga was unfazed when another patient told her that he had just gotten out of prison, where he served time for murder. But her reaction was allegedly different when Simoes said that he did not work because he planned to go back to school and because of his HIV status.
Borga then allegedly asked Simoes how he got HIV, to which he responded, “I got it from unprotected sex.”
The complaint then says that “Dr. Borga closed the plaintiff’s file, put it down and looked at plaintiff with disgust on her face and asked, coldly, “Is that from sex with men?”
Simoes says he responded affirmatively and that, “immediately after hearing this, Dr. Borga proceeded to exit the room.”
After this consultation, no nurse or doctor came to see Simoes, even though he told them that he needed to take his HIV medication, according to the complaint.
When the hospital finally permitted Simoes to call his personal physician on the third day of his stay, he learned that the doctor had already spoken with Borga about Simoes’ medication, according to the complaint.
Borga allegedly responded: “You must be gay, too, if you’re his doctor.”
“Additionally, apparently realizing that plaintiff’s doctor had an accent, Dr. Borga exclaimed, ‘What, do you need a translator?’ to which plaintiff’s doctor had again responded that Dr. Borga needed to give plaintiff his HIV medication,” the complaint states.
“Dr. Borga responded to plaintiff’s doctor by stating, ‘This is what he gets for going against God’s will,’ and hung up the phone on plaintiff’s doctor.”

The University of California at San Francisco AIDS Research Institute notes:

Treatment failure may occur rapidly with poor adherence. Some studies suggest that drug resistance can develop after one week of missed medication or irregular use, or after missing as little as one dose in five. When resistance to a drug develops, it loses its effectiveness forever; in some cases, cross-resistance to other drugs occurs, further limiting treatment options.

Joao Simoes says in court documents he missed five doses as a result of the hospital’s actions. Presumably, the trial will reveal what damage was done to his health, daily well-being, and ability to survive was done by the hospital’s actions.

.....

Trinitas states its mission is “to provide excellent, compassionate healthcare to the people and communities we serve, including those among us who are poor and vulnerable.”

The flood of falsehoods about the health care law

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/mar/21/health-care-fact-checking/

By Martha M. Hamilton
Published on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

The Affordable Care Act, the Democrats' health care law, has often been defined more by falsehoods than truths.

.....

Eliminating "Obamacare" … "saves $95 billion a year." Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney liked this claim so much he made it at least twice in the past year, on Nov. 4, 2011, and again in January 2012. It's true that the law spends money providing tax subsidies to help people buy insurance and expanding the Medicaid health insurance for the very poor. But it also slows the growth of future spending on Medicare and imposes new taxes and fees to help offset the deficit. If you look at both spending and new revenue the actual savings from repealing the law would be much smaller -- $16 billion. And, over the long haul, repealing the law actually adds significantly to the deficit. So this claim earns a False.


=======================================

I didn't post most of the false statements this article addresses because research has shown that when people read a refutation of a falsehood, often they will later recall the lie, and not the fact that it is a lie. If you read some statement that seems unlikely (if you are a skeptic) or makes you mad at the bill (if you are gullible), you might want to check out this link to see if they address it.
It boggles my mind the silly stuff people will accept as fact w/o question.

Wider letter spacing helps dyslexics read: study

http://news.yahoo.com/wider-letter-spacing-helps-dyslexics-read-study-193022621.html;_ylt=AuG1nor1L36E28cqYj41X6Ws0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTRhcGlvNnE1BG1pdANTZWN0aW9uTGlzdCBGUCBIZWFsdGgEcGtnAzk4MjUyNDZlLWZiYTQtMzc2YS05ZjhjLTg4ZDdiOGUzMmJkNARwb3MDMwRzZWMDTWVkaWFTZWN0aW9uTGlzdFRlbXAEdmVyAzAxM2UxODkxLWFlN2MtMTFlMS1iYmI5LWU4MmE0NmNlZGY3NQ--;_ylg=X3oDMTFlamZvM2ZlBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdAMEcHQDc2VjdGlvbnM-;_ylv=3

Mon, Jun 4, 2012

European researchers said Monday that offering reading materials with wider spacing between the letters can help dyslexic children read faster and better.

In a sample of dyslexic children age eight to 14, extra-wide letter spacing doubled accuracy and increased reading speed by more than 20 percent, according to the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Venus transit: A last-minute guide

See the article for pictures and maps
I live in Atlanta, and it's been cloudy all day, so we'll probably not be able to see it live unless it clears up quickly.

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/05/12056397-venus-transit-a-last-minute-guide?lite

By Alan Boyle 6/5/2012

Thousands of scientists and skywatchers around the world have made detailed plans to monitor today's transit of Venus across the sun, but chances are that word of the last-in-a-lifetime event is just now sinking in for millions of just plain folks — so what's the big deal? And what's the best way to watch the transit?

We've had dozens of stories about Venus' day in the sun over the past few weeks, but for those of you who are just tuning in, here are the top 10 things to keep in mind about today's transit, whether your skies are sunny or completely socked in:

Venus comes between Earth and the sun five times in the course of every eight years, but because of the inclination of the planets' orbits, Venus usually misses passing over the sun's disk, as seen from Earth. In fact, that passing-over phenomenon occurs only twice in the typical person's lifetime. Two transits occur eight years apart, but each pair is separated by either 105.5 years or 121.5 years. We had a Venus transit in 2004, and we're having another one today. The next one won't come until 2117. So if you're into rare sky phenomena, today is as good as it gets.

Venus' disk begins to pass over the left edge of the sun's disk a little after 6 p.m. ET, and makes a stately crossing that lasts until about 12:50 a.m. ET. (Of course, the sun will have set on the East Coast by then.) Some part of the transit will be visible from most locations on Earth — though you're out of luck if you're in eastern South America, western Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Antarctica or the middle of the Atlantic.

The precise time when different edges of the planet's disk cross the sun's edge is actually a big deal. Those times vary by location on Earth, and the variations can be used to calculate dimensions and distances in the solar system. Today, so much is known about those dimensions that astronomers can predict the key times of the transit based on your location. To find out what you can see when, use the U.S. Naval Observatory's transit computer.

.....

This is where I type out the bold-face warning that you should never gaze at the sun without proper eye protection. Sunglasses are not adequate. Neither are black plastic garbage bags, or film negatives. Unsafe viewing can damage your retinas. This video from "Astronomy Dave" Fuller explains the difference between proper and improper eye protection, not only for the transit, but for anytime you want to observe the sun:

.....

I'm guessing that most transit-watchers will be getting at least some of their looks via the Internet, particularly if the weather is lousy. Here's a listing of the webcasts that'll be available, including msnbc.com's simulcast of NASA's coverage:

NASA TV and NASA EDGE at Mauna Kea: The Hawaii show starts at 5:45 p.m. ET, and you should be able to watch it here:

.....

=================================================

There are a bunch of webcasts to choose from, so even if some are at locations that are cloudy, some should work.

The following is from the SLOOH space camera, so doesn't have to worry about clouds:

http://www.slooh.com/transit-of-venus/

http://events.slooh.com/

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/cvplive/cvpstream1&hpt=hp_c2#/video/cvplive/cvpstream1


The following has info about past, present, and future eclipses of various kinds:

http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html

Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science

http://blog.locustfork.net/2012/06/conservatives-attack-scientific-findings-about-why-they-hate-science/

Two months have passed since my new book, The Republican Brain, was published, and so far it has gotten a lot of media attention. However, the coverage has followed a noteworthy pattern: while progressives and liberals seem intrigued about what I’m saying, the so-called “mainstream” media — the CNNs of the world — have shied away from the subject.

What’s up with this? Well, a book with conclusions closely related to mine — Norman Ornstein’s and Thomas Mann’s It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism — seems as though it is being handled similarly by some in the press. And perhaps there’s a reason: Centrist (aka “mainstream”) journalists might well prefer that the findings of these books not be true.

.....

The evidence for my thesis — that liberals and conservatives differ by personality, psychological needs, moral intuitions, and numerous other traits; and that this is what is lurking behind our political battles over what is true, on issues ranging from global warming to whether President Obama was born in the U.S. — was lying in plain sight in the scientific literature. I simply compiled it and reported on it. Notably, this evidence is not dependent on the work of any one scientist or group of scientists, on any one methodology, or on any one discipline. It is cross-disciplinary, and it is growing.

No wonder that since the book came out, I’ve heard from a number of researchers whose work I’ve reported on, saying that I’ve done an accurate job. Indeed, there have been a number of public remarks from people of expertise, saying essentially the same thing.

Most prominent among these is Jonathan Haidt, the University of Virginia moral psychologist and the author of the much discussed book The Righteous Mind. Notably, Haidt defines himself as a “centrist,” not a liberal. On MSNBC’s Up With Chris Hayes, Haidt had this to say about my thesis:

Chris has done a great job of surveying the literature. I want to give him a stamp of approval. He is not cherry picking, he is representing the current state of thinking about politics and personality.

Haidt went further, adding that his own science casts additional light here:

I want to fully agree with Chris that the psychology does predispose liberals more to be receptive to science; my own research has found that conservatives are better at group-binding, at loyalty, and so if you put them in a group-versus-group conflict, yes the right is more prone, psychologically, to band around and sort of, circle the wagons.

.....

So what do conservatives have to say in response to this science? Honestly, the objections are quite weak, and frankly provide a wealth of new evidence in support of the book’s argument — that conservatives tend to simply reject science and evidence when it threatens their beliefs. The main conservative counterargument relies on little more than misrepresenting the book and its arguments. Jonah Goldberg claimed, in USA Today, that I was saying there is something wrong with conservatives; that they have “bad brains.” Nonsense, and I refuted Goldberg here.

.....

A lot of people are clearly threatened by what my book is saying. And no wonder, for the claims it makes are deeply inconvenient, both to conservatives but also to quite a lot of media centrists. (Liberals get a drubbing too in much of this research — for being indecisive and wishy-washy — but somehow they don’t seem particularly worried about that. Which itself is interesting, no?)

.....

Is it possible that, paradoxically, this is something conservatives could learn to accept or even respect? After all, it’s kind of a basic human tradition. Liberals push the envelope, and err on the side of too much open-mindedness; conservatives pull us back again, and err on the side of too much closure. It could be a productive relationship. It could be considered normal, and even necessary.

But that won’t happen until conservatives, and journalists, are willing to accept what the science of politics is now telling us.

On 'This Week,' Paul Krugman Destroys Romney Surrogate, Calls Ryan Plan a 'Fraud'

http://crooksandliars.com/blue-texan/week-paul-krugman-destroys-romney-surro

June 03, 2012

Unfortunately for Eric Ferhnstrom, a senior campaign advisor to the Romney campaign, Paul Krugman (who's been on a tear lately) was on "This Week" Sunday morning to dismantle all of his vapid talking points.

First, he pointed out that government spending has been cratering since 2010 -- and openly mocked the idea that Mitt Romney has an answer to unemployment.

KRUGMAN: Well, the economy is weak. It's not terrible, but it's weak. The bitter irony here has to be for Obama, certainly for people like me, is that if the Republican answer is "let's slash spending, let's have low taxes," that's actually the policy we've been following. It's amazing, actually. Especially if you look at the last couple of years, what we've actually seen is sharply...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me show you -- we have a chart in your blog this morning.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, this is...

STEPHANOPOULOS: We created it. It shows the point you're making.

KRUGMAN: Yeah, this is real government spending, so it's federal, state and local combined, deflated, you know, adjusted for population growth and inflation, and it is plunging. It's plunging mostly because of cutbacks at the state and local level, because the aid that they were receiving in the stimulus has run out, but also because unemployment benefits have been expiring because Congress won't -- you know, Republicans in Congress won't extend them.

So in effect - and, by the way, if you extend that chart backwards, there's been nothing like this since the demobilization after the Korean War. We're actually practicing government austerity on a scale that we haven't seen in 60 years. It's not the president's policy. In effect, we've already got the policies that Republicans say they will impose if they take the election, and yet, of course, it may lead to the defeat of this president.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And that's the point Stephanie was making, so bringing it back to you, what would Governor Romney do right now -- not in the future -- right now, to get the economy moving again?

FEHRNSTROM: Well, it's not just, as Paul says, tax policy. That's part of it, of course, but it's also spending policy, it's regulatory policy. It's confronting China on their unfair trade practices. It's -- it's a whole -- it's labor policy, George.

The governor has laid out very detailed plans. People can go to mittromney.com and learn about them for themselves. But I think what we really have here...

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: ... ...I know from detailed plans and there is nothing there. There is not...

Brutal.

.....

3 Years After Taxpayer Bailout, Bank of America Ships Jobs Overseas

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/bank-of-america-outsourcing-call-center-philippines

By Josh Harkinson
| Tue May. 29, 2012

Bank of America, which last fall announced plans to lay off 30,000 workers, is about to go on a hiring spree—overseas.

America's second-largest bank is relocating its business-support operations to the Philippines, according to a high-ranking Filipino government official recently quoted in the Filipino press. The move, which includes a portion of the bank's customer service unit, comes less than three years after Bank of America received a $45 billion federal bailout.

Roman Romulo, deputy majority leader of the Philippine House of Representatives, bragged to the Manila Standard Today earlier this month that the Philippines "has secured its place as the world's fastest-growing outsourcing hub." Romulo pointed out that BofA is the last of the "big four" US banks to move their business-support network to his island nation, where the average family makes $4,700 a year.

.....

The bank's outsourcing comes amid rising concerns about the security of customers' financial data in the hands of foreign contractors. In March, undercover reporters for England's Sunday Times met in India with "IT consultants" who claimed they were call center workers and offered to sell them credit card and medical information for 500,000 Britons—including account holders at major banks such as HSBC.

.....

US banks already are operating call centers in the Philippines, "despite the fact that they haven't actually passed this rudimentary legislation," says Shane Larson, legislative director for the Communication Workers of America (CWA), which represents 150,000 American call center workers. The Indian government is ahead of the Philippines in passing data privacy laws, notes the union, but those laws specifically exempt the call center industry. And that could lead to problems: In a 2005 survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 85 percent of the Indian outsourcing companies that responded said they had experienced information security breaches in the previous year.

.....

Email ‘vacations’ decrease stress, increase concentration

http://today.uci.edu/news/2012/05/nr_email_120503.php

Irvine, Calif., May 03, 2012 —

Being cut off from work email significantly reduces stress and allows employees to focus far better, according to a new study by UC Irvine and U.S. Army researchers.

Heart rate monitors were attached to computer users in a suburban office setting, while software sensors detected how often they switched windows. People who read email changed screens twice as often and were in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from email for five days experienced more natural, variable heart rates.

“We found that when you remove email from workers’ lives, they multitask less and experience less stress,” said UCI informatics professor Gloria Mark. She co-authored the study, “A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons,” with UCI assistant project scientist Stephen Voida and Army senior research scientist Armand Cardello. The UCI team will present the work Monday, May 7, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Austin, Texas.

.....

Mark said it was hard to recruit volunteers for the study, but “participants loved being without email, especially if their manager said it was OK. In general, they were much happier to interact in person.”

Getting up and walking to someone’s desk offered physical relief too, she said. Other research has shown that people with steady “high alert” heart rates have more cortisol, a hormone linked to stress. Stress on the job, in turn, has been linked to a variety of health problems.

.....

Judge sends honor student to jail for missing school

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/26/judge-sends-honor-student-to-jail-for-missing-school/

By David Ferguson
Saturday, May 26, 2012 11:30 EDT

A Houston-area teenager has been jailed and fined for missing school by a judge who hopes to make an example of her. 17-year-old Diane Tran is working two jobs while taking advanced placement and dual credit courses at Willis High School in Willis, Texas. Some mornings, she is simply too exhausted to make it to school on time. Some days she misses classes altogether.

She was warned by Judge Lanny Moriarty in April not to miss any more school. When she missed school again last week, he sentenced her to 24 hours behind bars and a $100 fine.

“If you let one of ‘em run loose, what are you gon’ do with the rest of ‘em, let them go too?” the judge offered as justification.

A reporter from Houston’s KHOU relayed to the judge that Tran is working to support an older brother who attends Texas A&M University and a younger sister. Her parents divorced “out of the blue” last year and both moved away, her mother to Georgia, leaving the high schooler on her own in Willis. She is working part time at a wedding venue and full time at a dry cleaning business just to stay afloat.

When confronted with the facts in the case, Judge Moriarty admitted to KHOU that he could perhaps have been more lenient, but that the hadn’t given any thought to reversing the sentence.

Romney brags that yes, he sent hecklers

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2012/06/01/romney-brags-that-yes-he-sent-hecklers/

June 1, 2012, by Jay Bookman

Obama strategist David Axelrod, appearing at a rally in Boston this week, was confronted by an organized group of hecklers who disrupted the event and turned it into a shouting match. Axelrod and others immediately accused the Mitt Romney campaign of organizing and orchestrating the disruption using paid Romney staffers.

That seemed unlikely. At least, it seemed unlikely until Romney admitted it:

“Most of the events I go to, or many of the events I go to, there are large groups of, if you will, Obama supporters there heckling me,” Romney told the press. “And at some point you say, ‘You know what, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’ If they’re going to be heckling us, why we’re not going to sit back and play by very different rules. If the president is going to have his people coming to my rallies, and heckling, why, we’ll show them that, you know, we conservatives have the same kind of capacity he does.”

Asked for evidence that the Obama campaign is sending hecklers to Romney events, Romney staffers identified an incident at a New York City firehouse in which a press conference with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani was interrupted by heckling.

That incident in New York was indeed regrettable.
However, the sole rude and vulgar heckler turned out to be an Occupy Wall Street activist who had heard about the event and hustled over to interrupt it. What she did was way out of line, but there is no evidence whatsoever tying her to the Obama campaign or organization.

(BTW, the whole Occupy tactic of interrupting events and trying to shout down opponents is undemocratic and uncivil and harms the credibility of its cause. It’s a tactic of those unable or unwilling to debate.)

Now, if the Romney campaign has evidence that the woman in New York was following instructions from the Obama camp, or if it has evidence of an orchestrated effort by Obama supporters and campaign staff in other efforts, let’s see it. Such tactics by either side should not be tolerated .

Big Paychecks, Tiny Tax Burdens: How 21,000 Wealthy Americans Avoided Paying Income Tax

http://news.yahoo.com/big-paychecks-tiny-tax-burdens-21-000-wealthy-100029578--abc-news-politics.html

by Amy Bingham May 31, 2012

The richest woman in Wisconsin, Diane Hendricks, is worth an estimated $2.8 billion, but she did not pay a dime in state income tax in 2010, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel first reported.

Because of a change in how her company, ABC Supply Inc., the country's largest distributor of roofing, windows and siding, is structured, Hendricks reduced her personal state income tax burden from $2.3 million in 2009 to zero in 2010, according to records the state Department of Revenue released to the Journal-Sentinel.

While a tweak in ABC's corporate structure allowed its CEO to get out of state income taxes, a complex web of deductions and exemptions in the federal tax code have allowed more than 20,000 wealthy tax filers get off the hook on paying federal income taxes.

A recent IRS report showed that 20,752 households that reported earning more than $200,000 in 2009 paid no federal income taxes. About 1,500 of those tax-free Americans were millionaires.

So how does someone in the top 3 percent of America's income earners finagle their income tax burden down to zero? For the majority of them, it's all about donating to charity, investing in local and state governments, earning money overseas and writing off doctor bills.

In Hendricks' Wisconsin case, ABC Supply switched from an "S" corporation, which passes all of its profits and losses through its owner to be taxed under personal income, to a "C" corporation, which stands independently of its owner and whose income is subject to corporate taxes.

Scott Bianchini, ABC tax director, told the Journal-Sentinel that the switch was a "substantial part" of why Hendricks had no state income tax liability. Bianchini noted that while Hendricks' tax burden was minuscule this year, the billionaire has paid more than $10 million in taxes since 2005.

On the federal level, the nearly 21,000 high-income earners who aren't paying federal income tax represent only one half of one percent of the 4 million tax filers that make up the top 3 percent.

.....

Florida tells another 91-year-old WWII veteran he's not a citizen

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/01/1096521/-Florida-tells-another-91-year-old-WWII-veteran-he-s-not-a-nbsp-citizen-

Fri Jun 01, 2012 at 08:49 AM PDT
Joan McCarterFollow

One of the 2,700 voters targeted in the initial list of voters the state of Florida has determined are not citizens and are ineligible to vote was 91-year-old World War II veteran, and Bronze Star recipient, Bill Internicola.

Astonishingly, he's not the only WWII vet on the list. Archibald Bowyer, 91, a Navy corpsman in World War II, got the letter, too.

Bowyer said he has lived in the United States since age 2, been a citizen since his father was naturalized, lived in Tampa more than 30 years, and voted "every time there was a reason to." [...]

He said he got the letter around the time his wife died.

"I had a lot to do, and I just glanced at it," he said. "I didn't send it back to them."

Thankfully, the county elections supervisor where Bowyer lives isn't so enthusiastic about taking away people's votes, and had his staff call voters who hadn't responded. They cleared up the confusion with Bowyer, and he's still a Florida voter.

The lists the state is using, culled from old motor vehicle records, are so flawed that potentially tens of thousands of Bowyers and Internicolas and Maureen Russos are in danger of losing their vote. In an article for Rolling Stone, Ari Berman uses an analysis from Think Progress that shows in just Miami-Dade County alone, more than 20 percent of the people on the list are indeed citizens. If the 20 percent figure held across the state, Berman calculates, 35,000 citizens would be stripped of their vote.

Which is why the Department of Justice has stepped in, and not a moment too soon.

Georgia school workers denied unemployment benefits

http://m.jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2012-06-01/story/georgia-school-workers-demonstrate-today-over-benefits-policy

Friday, June 1, 2012
Georgia school workers to demonstrate today over benefits policy
By Walter C. Jones

ATLANTA - Organized labor and its supporters plan a demonstration today against a state policy change that is leaving school workers without benefit checks over the summer.

School-bus drivers in Savannah staged a similar protest in mid-May.

"Georgia has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, so there are really not a lot of opportunities for these folks to get jobs in the summer because there are no jobs," said Yvonne Robinson, secretary/treasurer of the Georgia AFL-CIO.

Labor Commissioner Mark Butler, the target of the outrage, says he changed the policy to correct inconsistencies in how unemployment-insurance benefits had been granted.

The issue arose last year when public prekindergarten teachers complained that they were denied benefits while prekindergarten teachers from private schools and churches received them, according to Labor Department spokesman Tom Krause. When the department's lawyers investigated, they learned the agency had been inconsistent and also violated state law.

"It came down to a fairness issue," he said.

Federal law specifically exempts teachers from summer benefits and other workers who expect seasonal breaks in work. However, it allows states to grant benefits to lunchroom workers, bus drivers, crossing guards and other school employees over the summer as long as all are eligible, public or private.

The state had granted benefits to the private-school employees and those working for companies under contract with schools, like the Savannah bus drivers. Public-school workers had not gotten benefit checks because state law says they are to be treated the same as teachers.

Butler conducted a December public hearing and released his decision in February in which he decided rather than to grant it to every worker in the same category and seek a change in state law, he was denying them all.

.....

Since January, the state has reduced unemployment benefits and enacted legislation to require welfare recipients to take drug tests at their own expense, issues the union also fought as harmful to low-income Georgians.

Some bus drivers have complained that they didn't have any warning, leaving them too little time to sock away money or find temporary jobs. Butler's spokesman said his option to hold a public hearing five months before the end of school was his way of providing ample notice.

Robinson said that, even though the union's lobbyist attended the hearing before she began representing the AFL-CIO, the organization didn't learn of the outcome until local affiliates reported their members were denied when they applied during the Easter break. She wasn't aware of an effort by the state organization to notify workers of the policy change.

Black cats

From Facebook:

A black cat crossing your cat signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

Study: Exercise Improves Memory, Helps Alleviate ADHD

http://www.wired.com/playbook/2012/05/exercise-memory-and-adhd/

By Beth Carter May 25, 2012

We’ve long known exercise has a wonderful effect on the brain. It makes you happier, evens your temperament and can even mitigate the painful withdrawal from heroin addiction. Now evidence suggests being active improves cognition and memory and could alleviate the symptoms of ADHD in kids.

In a series of studies, Dartmouth researchers discovered these benefits vary according to age, and a specific gene appears to determine the degree to which exercise helps. This raises the possibility that exercise could be a treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

.....

In research published in the journal Neuroscience, Bucci’s team studied sedentary Dartmouth undergrads who couldn’t or wouldn’t exercise more than once every two weeks or so. They were divided into two groups, having one group exercise regularly on a treadmill and the other remain sedentary. A subset did not exercise until the day of testing to see if there were any acute effects. The subjects took memory tests before and after the study, with the goal of determining if students would perform better if they exercised. Turns out there is a specific gene that determines the extent to which exercise helps.

All genes have two copies, or alleles. In most people, the amino acid valine is present at the 66th amino acid position in the genetic code. But in some people, methionine has been substituted for valine in one or both alleles. This is the switch-up Bucci and his colleagues have pinpointed as one reason exercise provides better cognitive and memory improvements for some people but not others.

“The expectation was that exercise after four weeks could make you do better,” said Bucci. “The most striking thing, however, was that this was only true with the people who had this growth factor. If you had some substitution you did not get the benefits — the activity of that growth factor seemed to have a big effect.”