Wednesday, July 4th, 2018
SARAH KARLIN-SMITH, - Politico
Stephan: More evidence of the illness profit system. Trump made a big deal about lowering drug prices but, like the Korea summit, it's all theater with no real substance. There's no follow through so Americans will continue to pay more for their drugs than any other country on earth. Keep quiet peasants, do as you're told.
Health policy experts say one flaw with the administration’s plan is the lack of any serious follow through.
Credit: Reuters
President Donald Trump in May said that drugmakers would soon announce “massive” price cuts, and his administration rolled out a plan to bring down the cost of medicines. But the companies don’t appear to have gotten that message.
Bayer raised the price of two cancer drugs by hundreds of dollars in May and Novartis followed by boosting four pricey treatments in June. Pfizer, one of the largest U.S. pharmaceutical companies, announced increases on more than 41 products this week. They weren’t alone.
A Wells Fargo report found 104 price increases in June and the first two days of July, with an average jump of 31.5 percent and a median increase of 9.4 percent. That followed 48 increases in May. The list price hikes don’t factor in discounts that companies may provide to some insurance companies and patients.
The across-the-board increases cast doubt on whether Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar can […]
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DAVID EDWARDS, - Raw Story
Stephan: I don't know what this country is about any more, what it stands for. To me this is evil.
A federal judge said last week that children have no fundamental right to learn to read and write in the United States.
In a 40-page opinion on Friday, U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy III ruled against Detroit students who wanted to hold state officials accountable for what their attorneys said were systemic failures in teaching literacy.
The judge acknowledged in his opinion that illiteracy is damaging to people and society.
“Plainly, literacy — and the opportunity to obtain it — is of incalculable importance,” Murphy wrote. “As plaintiffs point out, voting, participating meaningfully in civic life, and accessing justice require some measure of literacy.”
However, Murphy argued that impact of illiteracy does “not necessarily make access to literacy a fundamental right.”
“I’m shocked,” Detroit Federation of Teachers President Ivy Bailey told The Detroit Free Press. “The message that it sends is that education is not important. And it sends the message that we don’t care if you’re literate or not.”
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MELANIE SCHMITZ, - Think Progress
Stephan: More evil. This is who we are now. This is the way people in other countries have come to see us. Are you proud of this?
MCALLEN, TX – JUNE 21:
Jennifer Chavarria Martinez of Nicaragua holds her 2-year-old son, Jayden Chavarria, and Rudy Gudiel Salazar Enriquez of Guatemala holds his 2.5-year-old son, Keyler Ismael Salazar Martinez at Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday, June 21, 2018, in McAllen, TX. Both families left their respective countries in the beginning of June. Donald Trump abruptly signed an executive order ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border after international public uproar over the impact of his administrations zero tolerance immigration policy. A day after the signing of the executive order, officials announced the U.S. will stop prosecuting parents who cross the border illegally with children.
Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post
Families and sponsors of immigrant children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border are being forced to pay thousands of dollars to get them released from government-contracted detention centers, The New York Timesreported Sunday.
According to several sponsors, many of whom are close relatives of the children, the amount of red tape and financial hurdles before […]
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Patrick Cockburn, - Independent
Stephan: The curtain rises on the water wars. Water is destiny, as we are going to learn, like it or not.
The Tigris River as it winds through Baghdad Credit: Getty
“I once rescued a friend from drowning when he was swept away by the force of the current as we were swimming in the Diyala river,” says Qasim Sabti, a painter and gallery owner in Baghdad.
“That was 50 years ago,” he recalls. “I went back there recently and the water in the Diyala is so shallow today that a man could walk across it with his dog.”
The rivers of Iraq, above all the Tigris and Euphrates, are drying up. The country is becoming more arid, and desertification is eating into the limited amount of agricultural land.
Dams built upriver in Turkey, Syria and Iran since the 1970s have reduced the flow of water that reaches Iraq by as much as half and the situation is about to get worse.
Iraq isn’t as dangerous as it was – but many still live […]
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SARAH GIBBENS, - National Geographic
Stephan: I have been telling my readers since the early 1990s that sea rise was going to submerge much of coastal America, as well as the other coastal areas of the world, and that in the U.S. it would begin with Florida and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The other day I did a report on what is happening in Florida, Here is what is happening on the Outer Banks. Water is destiny.
Sand encroaches the now demolished Beacon Motor Lodge in Nags Head, North Carolina. Oceanfront motels once dotted the landscape.
Credit: John Tully
Slowly but surely, North Carolina’s Outer Banks are being eaten up by the sea.
The 200-mile stretch of islands that sits just off the coast is known for its idyllic beaches and thriving tourism, but scientists say those beaches are in jeopardy. Rising sea levels are forcing residents to grapple with a home that’s slowly washing out from under them.
One 2010 report predicted that sea levels around North Carolina could rise 39 inches by 2100 as climate change melts glaciers and contributes to global sea level rise. Already, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality says, about six feet of costal land erodes every year.
These rising seas are making already unstable strips of land more erosive. The Outer Banks are shifting sandbars that naturally drift toward the coast. Each time a storm makes landfall, seawater carves […]
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