Arvind Venkat, MD , Emergency Physician and Pennsylvania State Representative - MEDPAGEToday
Stephan:
Once again the social outcome data proves that we do not have a healthcare system committed to fostering wellbeing. Instead we have an illness profit system, and it is the worst in the developed world. The most expensive by orders of magnitude, with the worst social outcome data. Is it going to change? I don’t think so while our Congress is paralysed by the the behavior of the Republicans. We need to create a universal birthright, single payer system that is equitably spread out across the country, and that is not going to happen as long as the Republicans have any control.
As an emergency medicine resident in the early 2000s, I cared for a patient in her early 60s with back pain. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), approximately 16% opens in a new tab or window of emergency department patients were uninsured. Often their issues were of low acuity, again because they had no other place to see a physician. I assumed that to be the case with this patient, that I would treat her presumably musculoskeletal back pain, and discharge her. However, while treating her, I noticed she struggled to walk and clutched her gown across her chest. It was the clutching that really struck me as unusual.
When I examined her chest, I saw something unexpected, right out of the medical history books. Her entire left breast was as hard as a rock, consumed by cancer that likely developed over months, if not years. She had severe hypercalcemia and was on the verge of going into cardiac arrest as a result.
After I stabilized her, I gently inquired why she […]
Jake Johnson, Staff Writer - truthout / Common Dreams
Stephan:
Here is some very interesting and, I think, excellent news. Municipalities and states are beginning to sue big oil corporations for deliberatively covering up, and issuing misinformation about the role of their industry in causing climate change and doing great damage to the wellbeing of the planet and all the beings living on it. I hope they win and bleed these corporations dry.
A person walks on a flooded street after Tropical Storm Hilary, on August 21, 2023, in Cathedral City, California. Credit: Mario Tama / Getty
The state of California on Friday filed suit against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron, accusing the five oil and gas giants of a decades long campaign to mislead the public about the threat fossil fuels pose to the climate.
The lawsuit makes California the largest economy on the planet to take legal action against fossil fuel companies over their efforts to deceive the world about their destructive — and immensely profitable — business model. California is also a major producer of oil and gas.
“This has been a multi-decade, ongoing campaign to seek endless profits at the expense of our planet, our people, and the greedy corporations and individuals need to be held accountable,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta toldThe New York Times in an interview on Friday. “That’s where we come in.”
With its new civil lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco court, California joins Rhode Island, Minnesota, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and other states that have sued the […]
Casey Crownhart, Climate Reporter - MIT Technology Review
Stephan:
While the septic circus that is the U.S. Congress wails about having an impeachment with no evidence, this is what the Biden Administration has done, and is doing. I don’t know why the Democrats cannot work out a way to pierce the MAGAt miasma of misinformation, and get people to understand and appreciate what Biden and the Democrats are doing that is fostering wellbeing. This, perhaps, is the article they should circulate. Bravo, Casey Crownhart
A $5.6 billion joint project by Ford Motor Company and battery maker SK is under construction in Tennessee, one of a wave of new manufacturing facilities for climate technology in the US. CRedit: Adrian Sainz / AP
A half-trillion dollars is starting to work its way through the US economy, remaking climate technology along the way.
One year ago, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law, marking the most significant action on climate change to date from the federal government. The legislation set aside hundreds of billions of dollars to support both new and existing technologies—from solar panels and heat pumps to batteries for electric vehicles—in an effort to slash costs for clean technologies and cut greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
Experts say the IRA has already begun making waves across the economy, most visibly through a steady stream of company announcements unveiling new manufacturing facilities in the US. However, the most significant effects from the legislation are still to come, as many of the programs are designed to last for a […]
ZACH HRYNOWSKI and STEPHANIE MARKEN, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan:
I don’t think older Americans realize how badly criminal Trump and his MAGAt world have damaged American democracy. But the christofascist, White racist, gender and sex obsessed world created by criminal Trump and the Republican Party has wrought damage that may take generations to repair — if it ever gets repaired. Frankly, if you value a society based on democracy this article should make you furious.
Members of Generation Z in the U.S. — those between the ages of 12 and 26 — generally lack trust in political and societal institutions, according to a new study from Gallup and Walton Family Foundation. Among the institutions rated in the survey, youth express the lowest levels of trust in Congress, the news, the presidency and large technology companies, with one in six or fewer reporting they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in each.
Similarly, fewer than one in four Gen Z members trust the information they find on the internet, the U.S. Supreme Court and the criminal justice system. Science garners the most trust, at 71%.
These results are based on the Gallup and Walton Family Foundation-State of American Youth Survey, conducted April 24-May 8, 2023, with a sample of 3,114 U.S. children and adults aged 12 to 26.
Younger Gen Z Members More Positive About Institutions
Within Gen Z, K-12 students aged 12 to 18 are generally more trusting of institutions compared with older members of the generation, those aged 18 to […]
I was the Special Assistant to two Chiefs of Naval Operations, Admirals Elmo Zumwalt, and James Holloway, and before that the editor of Sea Power Magazine, and it taught me that in the culture of the military promotions have many implications virtually unknown to civilians. A typical tour in a specific job for an officer is 36 months accompanied by your family 24 months unaccompanied. But the thing that is particular to the military is that when your tour is up you could be moved, whether you like it or not, to another state or another country. It is an enormous hassle. You have to take your kids out of school, and they have to leave their friends. If your partner works they will have to leave their job, and the whole family will have to start over in a new locale, sometimes at the higher ranks in assigned housing. And then there are the financial implications that accompany a promotion, which don’t happen until your promotion is confirmed. For career military this semi-nomadic lifestyle is typical, and you know it is going to happen with a promotion, and the system is set-up to make something always difficult as easy as possible. So when a cretinous MAGAt like Alabama’s Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, blocks promotions the whole system gets stressed, and upended, and that is exactly what Tuberville has done, as this article describes. And note you see none of his Republican MAGAt colleagues publicly urging him to stop behaving like the lout he is. Also please note the American Navy is now to be headed by a woman. As one of the team that created an all-volunteer military that was racially and gender neutral, that gives me great satisfaction.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti underscored the “uncertainty” Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s blockade has created for Navy families, who face delayed moves, issues with school enrollments and other problems. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP
President Joe Biden’s nominee to be the Navy’s top officer, Adm. Lisa Franchetti, said it could take the service years to recover from the impacts of Sen. Tommy Tuberville‘s blockade of hundreds of senior military promotions.
Franchetti told the Senate Armed Services Committee during her confirmation hearing Thursday that the impasse has created “a lot of uncertainty” for Navy families.
“Just at the three-star level, it would take about three to four months just to move all the people around,” Franchetti said. “But it will take years to recover … from the promotion delays that we would see.”
More than 300 general and flag officer nominees have no clear path to confirmation over Tuberville’s objections, which he put in place over his opposition to the Pentagon’s policy that reimburses troops who need to travel to seek abortions and other reproductive care. The Pentagon is […]
