Sunday, February 26th, 2012
KATE SHEPPARD, - Mother Jones
Stephan: This is part of the war on women, and there are so many of these stories now there is a selection. I chose this one from several possibles because this Texas event shows that it is not about money; it is about the status and power of women. Think about this: Cancer is an enormously expensive disease, with a high rate of bad outcomes. From a fiscal conservative's perspective cancer screenings are orders of magnitude cheaper than cancer treatment. So why is a policy that eliminates screenings, and supports increased cancer, being passed? It cannot be a fiscal argument. Instead it is one of social values. And why is this so gender specific? Again the answer is social values. Laws like this sacrifice national wellness to an amalgam of theology and ideology. Is social self-mutilation really what we want?
In the latest dispatch from the Republican war on Planned Parenthood, on Thursday the administration of Texas Gov. Rick Perry enacted a new rule banning state funds from going to any health center at all affiliated with anyone who offers abortions. The measure would effectively end the Women’s Health Program in the state, because federal law prohibits states from discriminating against specific providers in the allocation of Medicaid.
The Texas Tribune reports that the move bans Planned Parenthood clinics and other ‘affiliates of abortion providers’ from taking part in the program:
The rule, signed by Commissioner Tom Suehs on Thursday, takes effect March 14. Unless some last-minute agreement is brokered, the program, which receives $9 in federal funds for every $1 in state funds, will be either phased out or cut off by the end of March. At least 130,000 poor Texas women will lose access to cancer screenings, well-woman exams and contraception.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richard said Perry has again ‘chosen politics over the lives of Texas women.’ This isn’t the first time the Perry administration has cut women’s health programs; last year, the governor and legislature axed two-thirds of the budget for those […]
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Sunday, February 26th, 2012
, - Khaleej Times (Dubai)
Stephan: The collapse of the Himalayan hydrology is going to affect over a billion people. It is a huge deal, even though it is rarely mentioned in the United States, and it is going to change the course of history.
GATI, NEPAL — Climate change is altering the face of the Himalayas, devastating farming communities and making Mount Everest increasingly treacherous to climb, some of the world’s top mountaineers have warned.
Apa Sherpa, the Nepali climber who has conquered Mount Everest a record 21 times, said he was disturbed by the lack of snow on the world’s highest peak, caused by rising temperatures.
‘In 1989 when I first climbed Everest there was a lot of snow and ice but now most of it has just become bare rock. That, as a result, is causing more rockfalls which is a danger to the climbers,
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Saturday, February 25th, 2012
Stephan: Antipsychotic pharmacology is beginning to seem more and more peculiar and indefensible on the basis of the data. In many of these drug trials the outcome difference between those who get the medicine and those who get the placebo is within the margin of error for the study. Now it seems these drugs kill people as well. Yet millions of dollars are spent convincing people to take them, and millions do. They are highly profitable so in the Illness Profit System model they are a success, whatever the human cost.
An analysis of tens of thousands of people in nursing homes in the U.S. suggests that residents who take certain antipsychotic drugs for dementia are at about double the risk of dying compared to residents not taking those specific medications.
All the residents in the study, published Friday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), were over age 65.
The Harvard Medical School study, the largest ever undertaken among U.S. nursing home residents, focused on 75,445 nursing-home residents from 45 states from 2001 to 2005. Their risks of death were looked at during a six-month period.
Facts about dementia in Canada
What is it? An umbrella term for a variety of brain disorders. Symptoms include loss of memory, judgment and reasoning, and changes in mood and behaviour.
Prevalence: In 2010, more than 500,000 Canadians were living with dementia. Of these, about 71,000 were under age 65. One in 11 Canadians over 65 have the condition.
Who is most at risk? Women account for 72 per cent of all Alzheimer’s cases, and 62 per cent of all dementia cases.
Cost to health-care system: Estimated at $22 billion a year, including direct costs of health-care services, the opportunity costs of a caregiver’s ability to work, and indirect costs of […]
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Saturday, February 25th, 2012
AMANDA TERKEL, Senior Political Reporter - The Huffington Post
Stephan: The decision by the Right to so blatantly favor the one per cent, is either the great political move of the generation, or we are going to have Goldwater-Johnson 1964, which forced the Republican Party to reinvent itself. All the polls I see suggest a tight race, but it is hard for me to accept this with any of the candidates still competing.
Theocratic Rightists constitute about about 15 per cent of the electorate, are reliably Republican, and vote in primaries. It's easy to see how this skews primary voting.. But I think it is a miscalculation to think independents will go along, and they are the key to a tight race.
If one looks at the Komen-Planned Parenthood embarrassment, the transvaginal debacle in Virginia, even the personhood amendment failure in Mississippi, it seems to me voters are signalling the Right's social value policies are not acceptable. The same is true for the attack on labor unions, and hourly wage workers, as witnessed by what is happening in Wisconsin.
Yet the Right continues to pursue its priorities in the face of those rejections. Why? One would think there would be course corrections. Yet one thing follows another as this story describes. Here's something to think about: the development of a parallel universe media network has effectively produced a large mass of willfully ignorant people. And the small group of people who created and controlled that media made millions in the process of creating this parallel world. For the power it purchased it was a cheap investment with a great payoff.
WASHINGTON — In 2009, the Wisconsin legislature made it easier for victims of wage discrimination to have their day in court. That law is now on the verge of repeal.
The Equal Pay Enforcement Act was meant to deter employers from discriminating by giving workers more avenues to press charges. Among other provisions, it allows individuals to plead their cases in the less costly, more accessible state circuit court system, rather than just in federal court.
In November, the state Senate approved (SB 202) rolling back this provision. On Wednesday, the Assembly did the same. Both were party-line votes. The legislation is now in the hands of Gov. Scott Walker (R). His office did not return a request for comment on whether the governor would sign it.
‘It really takes away the teeth and the enforcement aspect of equal pay in Wisconsin,’ said Sara Finger, director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health (WAWH).
Women earn 77 cents for every dollar that men make. In Wisconsin, it’s 75 cents, according to WAWH, which also estimates that families in the state ‘lose more than $4,000 per year due to unequal pay.’
State Sen. Dave Hansen (D) was one of the authors of the 2009 law, and […]
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Saturday, February 25th, 2012
PETE SPOTTS, - The Christian Science Monitor
Stephan: It is such an extraordinary story that is emerging. The evolving story of how humanity has talked to itself about the cosmos is one of our great species adventures.
Imagine a planet where the night sky is all you have, any time, anywhere you go – where the phrase ‘day job
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