The contraceptive controversy may have died down somewhat at the King Middle School in Portland, Maine, but now another storm is brewing at the school-based health centers over their failure to report underage sexual activity to the authorities. Just over a week ago, the Portland School Committee voted 7 to 2 in favor of a plan to offer the ‘pill’ as part of an expanded contraceptives program for King Middle School students at the school-based health center. Students as young as 11 will now have access to birth control pills at the school. The proposal sparked a national debate about whether or not it’s appropriate to give contraceptives to kids at school — and at what age. Local Republicans are still resisting the policy, gathering signatures for a petition, hoping to turn things around. ‘I’m just against the awarding of 11 year olds with birth control — a precedent we should not be setting,’ said Sandy Sibson at a local GOP event. And now it turns out that health care providers at King Middle School and Portland’s five other school-based health centers may not have been in compliance with the […]
Charlie Rangel is an old-time Harlem Democrat. His slicked-back hair, dapper suits and pocket handkerchiefs recall the age of the 77-year-old congressman’s youth. But on Thursday October 25th the chairman of the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives showed he had a modernising side. Mr Rangel proposed an overhaul of the American tax code that he claims would simplify the collection of taxes. The bill may not be the ‘mother of all tax reforms’ as Mr Rangel reckons. But neither is it entirely modest. It is unlikely to make it into law during the remainder of George Bush’s term as president, but it may set the terms of the debate after the election next year, especially if a Democrat is elected. The main impetus for reform of America’s mammoth, complicated and costly tax code is the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Conceived as a way of making sure that rich people did not find so many loopholes that they paid no tax at all, the AMT has begun to apply to more and more middle-income families. This is a problem for both Republican and Democrat lawmakers. For several years politicians have preferred a temporary fix rather than wholesale reform. […]
If the price tag on an item seems too good to be true, that is usually because there is a hidden cost. Cheap shoes wear out quicker; cheap cars break down sooner. Increasingly, however, consumers are looking not only at the hidden costs to themselves, but at the effect their purchases have on the environment and the people who produce the goods they buy. The global coffee market is, for example, undergoing a gradual but substantial transformation thanks to recognition of the fair trade principle. Supermarket chains have responded to demand for food that is labelled in such a way as to inform consumer choice, not just on nutrition, but on place of origin. Those measures might not be perfect, but as evidence of a cultural change, they are significant. The next sector to undergo that transformation is surely clothing. In the last four years, average prices in retail fashion have fallen by 10 per cent. Outsourcing manufacture to countries with low labour costs in the developing world has fuelled a high street clothing boom. There have followed allegations that low prices are only possible because garments are produced in appalling conditions – sweatshops exploiting child labour. […]
WASHINGTON - George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ. ‘He’s a big government guy,’ said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group. The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group. ‘He’s a big spender,’ Keating said. ‘No question about it.’ Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors. When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending - or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare - shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush’s first six years, Slivinski calculates. That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch. Discretionary spending went up in Bush’s first term […]
The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist. 100,000 years into the future, sexual selection could mean that two distinct breeds of human will have developed. The alarming prediction comes from evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry from the London School of Economics, who says that the human race will have reached its physical peak by the year 3000. The report claims that after they reach their peak around the year 3000 humans will begin to regress These humans will be between 6ft and 7ft tall and they will live up to 120 years. ‘Physical features will be driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility that men and women have evolved to look for in potential mates,’ says the report, which suggests that advances in cosmetic surgery and other body modifying techniques will effectively homogenise our appearance. Men will have symmetrical facial features, deeper voices and bigger penises, according to Curry in a report commissioned for men’s satellite TV channel Bravo. Women will all have glossy […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
