Time is Running out on Fund to Preserve and Create Jobs
GEORGIA FORUM
By Clare S. Richie
The good news is that the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund created by the federal Recovery Act of 2009 is creating jobs for poor families who have limited prospects. This program has the added benefit of stimulating local economies as these newly employed individuals spend their wages close to home.
Thanks to the TANF Emergency Fund, states are expected to create more than 240,000 subsidized jobs in the public and private sectors for TANF recipients, the long-term unemployed, and low-income youth.
Georgia set a goal of placing 5,000 unemployed adults and 15,000 low-income youth into jobs by September 30, 2010, the current deadline. The program is subsidizing 80 percent of adult wages for six months and has already subsidized youth summer employment. To date, Georgia has created new jobs for 14,800 youth and 1,558 adults.
Mother of Many Children is a privately owned day care provider in Savannah. Owner/Director Yvonne Bass was excited when she learned her small business was approved for the TANF subsidized employment program administered by the Georgia Department of Human Services. Through this program, Bass was able to hire up to three additional employees to assist in providing optimal child care for her clientele. Bass is extremely hopeful that the program will be extended because she will reinvest the savings she gains from the jobs program into her business so she can expand the square footage of the center and serve more families, and thus hire more qualified child care workers.
Unfortunately, the TANF Emergency Fund expires on September 30, 2010. Without an extension, Georgia will close down this successful subsidized employment effort for those hardest hit by the recession, whether or not it has spent all of its allotted funds. In fact, the Georgia Department of Human Services (DHS) has already stopped accepting applications and projects, falling short of its adult goal by 1,500 jobs.
That’s not all. Newly-employed adults stand to lose their jobs on September 30, 2010. Most states like Georgia encourage, but do not require, employers to hire program participants once the subsidy ends due to the uncertainty of the current economic climate. At a time when Georgia’s unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, such job losses are troubling and unnecessary.
Georgia can avoid these job losses as well as employ substantially more adults and youth if Congress enacts a one-year extension. The House has twice passed an extension of the TANF Emergency Fund that was fully offset (so as to avoid increasing the deficit). The Senate has failed to act, despite the thousands of jobs at risk and pleas from program administrators and governors in states across the nation.
Extending the TANF Emergency Fund has received support from a majority of senators but has fallen short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Georgia’s two senators have twice failed to support the extension, despite Georgia’s high unemployment and rocky economy. As a result, instead of continuing these proven and cost-effective programs, states are closing their doors to new job seekers and businesses employing low wage workers like Mary’s — and determining when current participants will receive their very last paycheck.
If Congress extends the TANF Emergency Fund before September 30, 2010, Georgia would:
•Place thousands more of the 480,000 unemployed Georgians into subsidized jobs.
•Create and preserve thousands of jobs.
•Boost local economies as newly employed workers begin spending their paychecks.
•Maximize the use of funds available in the TANF Emergency Fund. As of the current deadline, Georgia will leave nearly $100 million on the table.
Without an extension, Georgia and other states will close down their successful subsidized employment programs, which will cost thousands of jobs, remove much-needed income from local economies, adversely affect local businesses, and make it impossible for many low-income parents to cover basic expenses. Georgia and the nation cannot afford to lose these jobs.
Richie is senior policy analyst for the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute.
Copyright (C) 2010 by Georgia Forum. 8/10
Labels: economy, GEORGIA FORUM, jobs, TANF, unemployment 0 comments
The School Lunch Program: A Nudge in the Right Direction
By Daniel Brindis
If you blinked, you might have missed Senator Blanche Lincoln change what your child likely eats for lunch at school. Recently, in the wake of Elena Kagan’s confirmation, the Senate quickly and unanimously passed Lincoln’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.
After years of negotiations and a recent push from Michelle Obama, the proposal received 30 seconds of floor time, which was more than enough for it to pass without any objection. The Act will reauthorize the federal school lunch program before the September 30 deadline, and it will also take initial steps to make school lunches healthier, safer, and more accessible.
Although it receives a splinter of the attention given to the two wars, healthcare, and the economy, the school lunch program has a huge impact on America. More than half of U.S. children are eligible for Federal School Lunches and the purchasing power impacts the way our food is grown and consumed. Within schools this means that the lunches served under the school lunch program are served to everybody. In a cafeteria there is no “poor” section or “privileged” section -- it is the same food, same kitchen (that is, when there is a kitchen on premises). Unless you pack your son or daughter’s lunch, this proposal mandates what your children are eating.
Studies show that kids’ ability to learn and the nutritional value of the food they eat goes hand in hand. You don’t have to read the academic literature about this -- ask your local teacher what it’s like to teach a class that just consumed French fries and surplus beef served in gobs of undistinguishable “brown sauce.”
Besides encumbering attention-spans, the current school lunch system presents a serious problem: obesity. Children currently enrolled in the federal school lunch program are more likely to be obese than children who are not enrolled. Overall, 30 percent of American children are obese.
We are all stakeholders in this crisis. Obesity is a major factor in our ballooning healthcare costs because increased diabetes and cardiac disease are drains on Medicare, Medicaid and private plans. Obesity not only impacts our pocketbooks, but it also presents a National Security concern -- almost one third of young adults 17-24 years old are too obese to serve in the military. This is a problem that we need to address now. Each year we don’t address obesity, we neglect another class of young Americans.
Doing anything in the Senate these days is no small feat considering the fierce political climate, the bottlenecked Senate calendar, and the 60-plus vote mentality. The proposal passed mainly because the $4.6 billion bill was completely paid for by taking away money from other programs. Almost half of the funding comes from Food Stamps (the SNAP program).
The proposal is a step in the right direction, but the new changes are slight. It adds 6 cents per meal, per child (now a pittance $2.38 per meal). There is also some language that strengthens food safety, mandates wellness education, and sets guidelines for all food sold during school hours (a la carte and vending). The proposal provides funding for school gardens, which is important because they provide physical activity, food, and wellness education simultaneously.
The proposal does not go far enough though. We are missing an opportunity for real solutions to our broken food system.
Next month, the House will soon address the school lunch issue. Their proposal is slightly more ambitious and provides more resources -- $8 billion and more meals to more children. Still, this proposal’s increase (also 6 cents) is still nowhere near the additional $1-$2 more that nutrition experts estimate is necessary to bring school lunch standards up to par.
At the end of the day, neither proposal addresses other fundamental issues with school lunches. Nutritional standards are not enforced and in most schools, real fruits and vegetables are a distant reality.
Every year we delay in aggressively addressing school lunches, we neglect another class of 5 million children who are beholden to the same unhealthy food. Our students are not learning how to eat and enjoy healthy food. Instead they have been fed food influenced heavily by a fast food culture. Are chicken nuggets and French fries really the model of nutrition we want our children to follow? We cannot afford to wait another five years to make important changes in children’s nutrition. The young are where our nation’s obesity crisis begins – and in our schools we need to make nutrition a lesson for life.
Brindis is the Director of Policy for Earth Day Network. Earth Day Network’s Green Schools initiatives include reforming school lunches in order to promote local and sustainable agriculture, fight obesity, and develop students’ understanding of where their food comes from and their place in the eco-system.
Labels: American Forum, green education, NATIONAL, public schools, social welfare, sustainability 0 comments
By Carolyn Cook
When you're competing against the clock for the Grand Prize, you may not win, but at least you're entitled to your previous winnings.
Not so with the Equal Rights Amendment. Congress gave women the nod they were due, but their blessing came with a seven-year hitch. Constitutional Equality was an all-or-nothing proposition to be achieved within seven years. Considering it took 72 years to obtain a right to vote, a time limit for all other rights was doomed to fail.
ERA was first introduced in 1923 by Alice Paul, a Republican, lawyer and courageous suffragist – who was imprisoned, tortured and force-fed to obtain the vote for women. ERA was essential to acquire all other legal, economic, social and political privileges that were customarily the birthright of men only.
"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."
Forty-seven years of stagnation prompted 20 courageous Pittsburgh NOW members to disrupt a Senate hearing with homemade signs demanding immediate action on ERA. Civil disobedience could have led to their arrest but ultimately freed ERA from congressional stalemate by an overwhelming majority in 1972.
ERA attracted over 450 organizations. People from all walks of life lobbied, petitioned, raced, marched, rallied, picketed and boycotted for its passage. It was favored by a majority of Americans, scoring an impressive 67 percent in a nationwide survey. Women's groups pressed for an extension but were granted only three more years. Despite 35 states approving ERA, it fell three states short of becoming the 27th Amendment. On June 30, 1982, the campaign launched by Congress was ended by Congress.
Does a human's right to equality expire?
My friend's husband told me he supports ERA as long as he doesn't lose his "perks." ERA doesn't apply to the private lives of individuals or business. ERA would eliminate sex discriminatory laws while expanding beneficial laws to both sexes equally. It guarantees that the full range of opportunities exist for all individuals based on their talents, capabilities and preferences, and not limited by gender or stereotype. ERA would ensure that sex discrimination is guaranteed the same protection as race discrimination. It expands individual freedom by limiting government interference.
Will women earn equal pay for equal work? Will public policies provide greater flexibility for parents struggling to balance work and family? Will government be held accountable to eliminate sex-based hate crimes such as rape and domestic violence? At what point will the FCC & FTC determine that violent, hate-filled images and lyrics directed at women and girls crosses the line of entertainment and free speech to jeopardize peace and security? ERA is the foundation to begin to address these questions.
In exile for 27 years, ERA is finally making a comeback. Congress needs to listen. Citizens did not abandon ERA in 1982 - you suspended our campaign. In case you're unaware, women are working 24/7 both inside and outside the home. We are making daily sacrifices for our country, our families, our education, our careers, and our communities. We simply don't have the freedom to organize in our own interests. We're too busy caring for everyone else's.
In 2009, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida and Louisiana reintroduced the federal ERA. All five attempts were defeated. How can a handful of legislators control the interests of 157 million women? Behind closed doors with no media attention.
Article 5 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to amend the ratification process. Will Congress hit the reset button on ERA and require all 38 states again or use its powers to jump start the ratification process for the final three states needed?
With an economy struggling to get back on track -- beginning a nationwide ERA campaign requiring 38 states is both unrealistic and unnecessary. Give women a head start and a fighting chance by accepting the 35 states that have already approved ERA and allow us to target the three last states necessary to take that victory lap in 2015. Ready. Get Set. Game On!
Cook is the founder of United For Equality, LLC and the DC representative for the ERA Campaign Network.
Labels: American Forum, gender, gender equality, governance, NATIONAL, state policy 0 comments
By Linda Meric
There are many areas of life in this country where it appears that we live in two worlds. And that’s no different when we consider paid sick days. In the first world, if you’re sick, you stay home from work, take care of yourself, and have the time to get better.
In the second world, if you’re sick, you go to work anyway. In the second world, you go to work, even when your child is sick. You know that if you stay home, you’ll lose pay – or maybe even your job.
As we approach Women’s Equality Day on August 26, the day that marks the 90th anniversary of women’s right to vote, it’s troubling that so many of the workers who live in the second world are women. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, more than 22 million women workers lack paid sick days. And though women still bear the brunt of care-giving duties in most American families, we are also the least likely to have a paid sick day available to care for a sick child. Fifty-three percent of working mothers, as compared to 48 percent of working fathers, lack a paid sick day they can use to care for a child.
The U.S. is one of only four industrialized nations that do not offer a national standard of paid sick days. It just isn’t right. I wonder what the suffragettes, who worked so hard and so long to win women’s right to vote, would say about the lack of this basic workplace standard.
Let me tell you about Tahirah.
She and her young daughter live in a world without paid sick days. Twenty-something Tahirah had achieved a milestone in life: she finally had her dream job -- crew leader in a Denver airport restaurant with a clear path to the management track. There was just one problem: her daughter suffers with asthma and Tahirah had no paid sick days.
She managed to make it work for a while. Then, one day, her daughter had a brutal asthmatic episode. Her daycare provider called to inform Tahirah that she should meet her at the hospital emergency room. But her supervisor withheld the information -- until the lunch rush was done and he didn’t need Tahirah at work anymore.
The incident forced her to quit that job.
Seventy-eight percent of workers employed in hospitality and food service, and 69 percent of workers employed in administration and office work, lack paid sick days. This is a serious concern because, like Tahirah, they are the workers who have the most intimate contact with the public. The lack of paid sick days isn’t just an issue for family care-givers, it’s an issue of public health, as we saw during last year’s H1N1 flu epidemic. We all are at risk when workers lack the opportunity to stay home and get better without the possibility of spreading contagions to the rest of us.
There’s something else, too: Economic justice.
In these tough times, with families struggling mightily to hang on, to keep a roof overhead and food on the table, it seems particularly punitive that a worker could lose income or even lose a job simply for getting sick or for having a sick child. What would Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth have to say about how the lack of paid sick days disenfranchises women and their families?
Hundreds of 9to5 members and activists think those courageous women would deeply identify with the paid sick days movement. That’s why we’ve chosen Women’s Equality Day for 9to5’s National Day of Action -- Healthy Workplaces: Paid Sick Days Now!
On August 26, we will organize events around the country, from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., and call for Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act, federal legislation proposed by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, that would guarantee up to seven paid sick days a year.
It’s time that the U.S. joined other industrialized countries around the globe and made this one America; one where no worker has to choose between the family she loves and the job she needs.
Meric is executive director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women. For information on a Women’s Equality Day event near you, contact activist@9to5.org.
Labels: American Forum, Healthcare, Healthy Families Act, NATIONAL, workplace 0 comments
Labels: environmental policy, gender equality, leadership, Women 1 comments
By Major General Paul D. Eaton
Through repeated tours at Fort Benning and eventually serving as its Commanding General, I got to know Georgia and Georgians pretty well. First, among the places I have served, my neighbors around Fort Benning display a pride, patriotism and national security awareness that helped me in my mission at the Home of the Infantry. And they are natural allies to those of us in uniform who devote our careers to America’s national security, our No. 1 priority while on active duty, and in retirement.
Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson will soon have the opportunity to protect America’s national security by voting in favor of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia, which would further a process started by Ronald Reagan to verifiably reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 1,550 warheads and 700 deployed launchers. The New START Treaty also ensures strategic stability by reinstating strong verification regime that allow U.S. inspectors, for the first time, to peer inside Russian missiles and track Russian warheads with unique identifiers.
As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has written, “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership -- to include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of the service chiefs, and the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, the organization responsible for our strategic nuclear deterrent.”
Recently, I joined a group of retired flag officers, including Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson, former commander of all ICBM units and Deputy Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, in expressing my support for the New START accord. Like Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, we understand that the New START Treaty is essential to our national security.
For over 40 years, the U.S. has pursued strategic stability through an arms control process that has been vigorously supported by Republicans and Democrats alike. The New START Treaty both continues these established principles and tailors them to meet the security needs of the 21st century. In today's security environment we must protect against the dual threats of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. With the combined nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia accounting for nearly 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, the first step to nuclear security begins with New START.
The original START agreement expired on December 5, 2009, leaving the U.S., at present, without the intrusive inspection and verification regime that allowed U.S. inspectors to monitor Russia’s nuclear arsenal for so many years. The U.S. Senate should work to reinstate these verification provisions by ratifying the New START accord and getting U.S. boots back on the ground as soon as possible. Without these measures, our Strategic Command loses its access to Russia’s nuclear forces and the predictability between the world’s two largest nuclear powers is called into question.
Some have argued that we’ve not yet fully explored the treaty. That’s not true. The Senate has held an extensive series of hearings and meticulously reviewed the treaty and its accompanying documents. Throughout this process, serious national security experts of all ideological stripes have voiced strong support for the New START treaty. James Schlesinger, Brent Scowcroft, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Stephen Hadley, Colin Powell and scores of others have all expressed strong support for this treaty.
Senators Chambliss and Isakson would do well to recognize that when they cast their vote for New START, they will be faced with a choice: strengthen our national security with a vote in favor of the New START Treaty, or choose to ignore the advice of our nation’s most trusted voices and expose the nation to greater risk due to loss of verification of Russian behaviors and intent. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor, previously warned Senators that a rejection of this treaty would throw our nuclear policies into a “state of chaos.”
The support for New START from our military is clear. The national security benefits of New START are clear. So is the choice. Senators Chambliss and Isakson must support the New START Treaty and choose a safer Georgia and a stronger America.
Major General Eaton served more than 30 years in the United States Army, including combat and post-combat assignments in Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia and command of the Army Infantry Training Center in Fort Benning, GA.
Labels: GEORGIA FORUM, government, National Defense and Foreign Policy, national security, politics 0 comments
By Rev. Stephanie Coble Hankins
On top of all the problems working families face in this bleak economy, we can add one more: for the first time in three years the federal minimum wage won’t go up this summer.
From 2007 through 2009, the nation’s lowest paid workers received modest, yet long overdue increases in their paychecks each July. In 2007, Congress finally raised the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour, phased in over three years.
But this year, workers will get nothing. The federal minimum wage will once again be flat unless Congress takes action again.
Until 2007, the federal minimum wage had been stuck at $5.15 an hour for 10 years. The federal minimum wage for tipped workers like waitresses and car wash workers is even lower. It’s been frozen at a meager $2.13 an hour since 1991.
For the child care worker who watches your toddler and the waitress at your local diner, the minimum wage plays a big role in setting their pay scales. That’s why farsighted business leaders like Costco’s CEO Jim Sinegal have been supportive of raising the minimum wage to help America’s working families.
The faith community also supports raising the minimum wage. As an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I can think of few causes that the faith community should be more interested in than ensuring that the working poor in our own neighborhoods earn enough money to support their families.
This summer, the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition has trained college interns at DOOR Atlanta to teach over 200 high school students on mission trips to Atlanta about the struggle of Georgia’s minimum wage workers. Our goal is to help these students recognize that families can’t make ends meet with wages that remain stagnant year after year.
The solution to the minimum wage problem is straight-forward. Simply “index” it, so that it is automatically adjusted each year to keep up with the cost of living. Indexing is already the law in 10 states. Workers in those states see a small automatic bump in their wages every year, helping families keep from falling farther behind on basic expenses.
Florida has indexed their state minimum wage. Georgia hasn’t. So while janitors and elder care workers in Jacksonville will be getting a raise next January 1st, the same workers in Valdosta won’t. In fact, Georgia’s state minimum wage is still $5.15 an hour, meaning that workers not covered by the federal minimum wage can still be legally paid this poverty wage in our state.
There is a proposal that would raise Georgia’s minimum wage to the federal rate of $7.25 an hour and index it to the cost of living. Despite broad public support to raise the minimum wage, it has yet to receive a House committee hearing.
This is really a shame. Fixing the minimum wage is vital for working families and key for restoring consumer spending that our economy needs to grow. A strong minimum wage puts money into the pockets of low-income families who spend it in their local communities. According to the Economic Policy Institute, last year’s rise in the minimum wage (from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour) generated $5.5 billion in new consumer spending.
It’s not just the economics of a higher minimum wage that makes sense. It’s also the right thing to do for our neighbors who are working hard and still struggling to stay afloat.
Rev. Hankins is an ordained Presbyterian minister who works as a part-time faith-based organizer for the Georgia Minimum Wage Coalition.
Labels: economy, GEORGIA FORUM, labor, workplace 0 comments
Hospitals Must Better Inform Patients about Charity Care
MISSISSIPPI FORUM
By Rims Barber
There is a provision of the new Health Reform Law that will help sick Mississippians this year. Nonprofit hospitals will have to meet new indigent care requirements.
Mary Jo went to the hospital recently and was given a bill of over $15,000. She was uninsured and unable to pay more than about $20 per week. It would take her about 15 years to get out from under this debt. Many hospitals are established as private nonprofit entities, and are expected to give back charity care to the community in exchange for their tax-exempt status.
The new Health Reform Law, passed by Congress this year, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, amended Section 501c(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. It now requires nonprofit hospitals to publish guidelines for financial assistance, explain who is eligible, and how a person can apply for assistance.
In order to qualify for nonprofit status, a hospital must:
• Develop written financial assistance policies
• Limit what they charge for services
• Observe fair billing and debt collection practices
• Conduct regular community needs assessments.
With the exception of the needs assessment, these requirements go into effect this year. The Secretary of the Treasury is charged with enforcing the new provisions and has authority to issue further guidance and regulations as needed to make sure they are correctly implemented. The hospitals will report to the I.R.S on their annual 990 forms.
The Mississippi Human Services Agenda wrote all the private nonprofit hospitals in Mississippi asking them how they intended to comply with this new requirement. Only three hospitals responded to our survey, and we were directed to their websites for specifics on their financial assistance/charity care policies.
The web-published sliding scale showed discounts from the hospital charges, based on income. Since most hospitals accept a discount from insurance companies of 30-40 percent as payment in full, we can see that the hospitals are using their sliding scale to grant some patients the same discount as they give insurance companies.
Two hospitals used this sliding scale:
% of Poverty $ for Family of 4 Discount from charges
Below poverty $22,050 100%
100 – 119% $26,240 100%
120 – 139% $30,650 90%
Persons would have to bring documents with them to verify their income when they enter the hospital and declare that they are uninsured.
A major religious nonprofit medical center recently released a policy that allows any uninsured patient who applies during the admission process to have their hospital charges discounted by at least 50 percent (regardless of income), and free care for those under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
If all our state’s nonprofit hospitals would make the effort to obey the law, and let people know that they may be eligible for discounts on their hospital care (and how they can qualify for this benefit), we would be much better off. People should let their local nonprofit hospitals know that they expect them to follow the law and treat the needy with equity.
Barber is director of the Mississippi Human Services Agenda.
Copyright (C) 2010 by Mississippi Forum 8/10
Labels: health care reform, MISSISSIPPI FORUM, social welfare 0 comments
Posted by American Forum at 7:35 AM
TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM
By R.C. Braun, MD
Both during and after the health care reform debate many pondered two important questions: Why does our country need to reform our health care system? And, especially, why now when we are in the midst of a serious economic recession?
The response to the first question is in fact why it has it taken so long to change a system which is increasingly failing due to inefficiency, excessive cost, frequent poor results, and exclusion of far too many persons? All of these factors contribute significantly to our country’s economic problems and is why health reform is and was so needed.
Now, can we afford to reform our health care system? On the surface it appears that the proposed changes cost far too much. However, the changes are designed to be “budget neutral” by doing away with much of the waste and profiteering, and instead, promoting cost-effective care.
Many fears have been voiced, often promoted by organizations or businesses which might lose money or influence due to the new proposals. We are told that the government will take control of all health care and make medical decisions, that “I’ll lose my very good health insurance,” or that “Medicare will be drastically cut back” in order to pay for new programs for the uninsured.
It should be recognized that the majority of Americans who have good health care through private pay, insurance, or Medicare will only be slightly affected.
For Tennessee, this legislation comes at a critical time of near disaster for our health care “safety net.” TennCare, which 10 years ago was a national leader in providing health care for the needy, has been decimated to the point that now our state is one of the worst in the nation. The new legislation, among other relevant things, provides federal funding to Tennessee of more than $4 billion a year to cover 650,000 people who are currently uninsured.
Since our bureaucracy moves slowly, full implementation of the new legislation will not take effect until 2014. However, some of the following benefits for many of us will start before the end of this year. For example:
• Health insurance will be mandated, and help in providing it will be available for those in need.
• Insurance companies will be monitored, and will be required to pay out at least 80 percent of their premium income in benefits.
• Insurance benefits cannot be arbitrarily denied or excluded for “pre-existing conditions.”
• Annual checkups and preventive or screening services, such as mammograms and immunizations, will be covered without co-pays and deductibles.
• “Job lock” (continuing unsatisfactory jobs in order to keep health insurance) will disappear with “insurance exchanges.”
• Nearly all children can be covered up to age 26 on their parent’s policy.
Special Medicare provisions for seniors include:
• All guaranteed Medicare benefits remain intact, and reforms help the program remain solvent for years to come.
• Medicare Advantage (Part C) will be revised for better efficiency and fairness.
• Gradual reduction of the “doughnut hole” in Medicare Part D, starting with a $250 rebate this year.
• 50 percent discount on brand-name drugs.
• Investments in training more primary care physicians.
Implementation of the new health care legislation will not solve all of our health care problems, but the negative spell has been broken, and we can look forward to continuing improvements over the years.
Braun is a medical doctor in Pleasant Hill.
Copyright (C) 2010 by Tennessee Editorial Forum. 8/10
Labels: health care reform, insurance benefits, TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM 0 comments
In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the bill establishing the Social Security Administration. It was bitterly opposed by many as an intrusion of government into the lives of private citizens. As originally envisioned it was a very imperfect and incomplete plan, with many defects. Many millions of needy citizens were not included.
There have been many changes in Social Security since 1935. For the most part, these have been positive changes such as adjusting costs and benefits and including more people. This has been an ongoing evolution. Still today there are imperfections and inequalities, such as the lower contribution rates for the wealthy.
There are still some people who oppose Social Security and say: “I don’t need it and I don’t want it.” But the vast majority of senior Americans are dependent on it. It has made life easier for our entire society. Very few people today would agree to its abolition.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the establishment of Medicare, to provide access to affordable health care for seniors and persons with disabilities. Again it was opposed by many, and there were attempts to repeal it. This program also has gone through many changes since 1965, some to make it more efficient, or to add benefits, some to lower costs. And there have been recognized abuses and wastes.
Nevertheless, Medicare has been remarkably effective in bringing access to health care to millions of persons who otherwise would have had to do without care. The increasing life expectancy of Americans is the lasting legacy of Medicare.
However there are still many who grumble about Medicare. Even persons who use and benefit from Medicare complain: “Get the government out of our lives!” However today it would be hard to imagine what life would be like for many persons without Medicare.
Is history repeating?
On March 23, 2010 President Barak Obama signed health care reform into law -- the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Again, this was a very controversial act, fraught with omissions, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and concessions to special interests. Again there has been talk of repeal, or of opting out of its provisions.
But passage of this bill came after many years of almost universal recognition of the serious inadequacies and injustices of our health care system, and after a number of failed efforts at reform by Congress. There has been great pressure on Congress to simply JUST DO SOMETHING!
The major opposition to this bill has been spearheaded by businesses in the health care field which anticipate losing some of their enormous profits, especially the drug and health insurance industries. Major concessions have been made in an attempt to keep them “on board,” but the handwriting is on the wall. They recognize that their dominant role in controlling health care in this country will necessarily and inevitably diminish.
As with Social Security and Medicare, we can anticipate many changes in the present health reform legislation, changes which will modify, clarify, and improve its provisions for the betterment of our health and our country.
Labels: health care reform, life expectancy, Medicare, TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM 0 comments
Recognizing Our State and Local Public Service Workers
By Michael Lipsky and Ed Sivak
Presently, the work environments of our state and local public service workers are being crippled by the fiscal crisis in the states. Legislatures around the country face gaps of $260 billion in the next two fiscal years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In Mississippi, we estimate a shortfall of over $500 million over each of the next two budget cycles in relation to needs.
For the public workforce, this fiscal crisis threatens functions critical to our communities’ sense of well-being, as well as the economic status of our workforce. County governments have laid-off workers, and state employees have been asked to accept unpaid furloughs and increase their contribution to their retirement funds. Critical positions will remain unfilled, and caseloads will increase. Once again state and local workers will be asked to do more with less.
In Mississippi, 226,000 people work in state, county and municipal governments, part of a workforce of 15 million in these sectors around the country.
The enduring value of the state and local public service was recently dramatized in the aftermath of the tornadoes that swept through Mississippi this spring.
Within 12 hours, responders from state and local law enforcement and the Mississippi National Guard came from around the state to assist with storm recovery. Within 48 hours, employees of the Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service had deployed over 200 volunteers to the area creating a “volunteer city” that served as a clearinghouse for state employees and volunteers to provide urgently needed relief ranging from infant formula to disaster counseling.
Another example of the dedication of state workers is of course happening daily on the Gulf Coast. As oil from the broken well endangers our shorelines and threatens the way of life for many Gulf Coast residents, state workers tirelessly strive to mitigate the damage to the region’s economy and environment.
Technicians in the departments of Environmental Quality and Marine Resources are monitoring the Gulf’s waters, air, beaches, and commercial fisheries. Specialists in the Department of Employment Security are connecting people to thousands of jobs related to oil spill recovery. Workers with the Board of Animal Health are coordinating efforts to rehabilitate wildlife. As is the case with any disaster in the state, the dedicated people at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency provide the leadership to pull all these pieces together.
To work in public service means that the final decision about what constitutes a job well-done is made by determining that you have met a public need, and knowing that you have extended yourself on behalf of others. In contrast to private sector counterparts, the bottom line for public service workers is not profitability but the public good.
Police and highway patrol troopers, who represent one out of every 25 state and local workers, are never off duty, and teachers, who represent more than one out of every four state and local public employees, are always asking whether they have extended themselves enough with the time and resources available to them. There is always another client to see at a work-training center, or another call that a social worker could make on behalf of an elder requiring services.
In short, public sector work requires deep commitment to the service ideal.
Our state and local public service workers deserve better. Mississippi must ensure that we not only recognize the admirable work of our public service workers, but also find revenue sources to properly staff and fund these services for the good of Mississippi.
Sivak is the Director of Mississippi Economic Policy Center. Lipsky is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Dēmos. An expanded 30th Anniversary edition of his book, Street Level Bureaucracy, was recently published.
Labels: budget, economy, MISSISSIPPI FORUM, public service workers, workers 0 comments
ALABAMA FORUM
By Pat Byington
Several times I have been invited to the weekly meetings of the Rotary Club of Birmingham. Like any busy business club meeting, with a couple of hundred people in attendance, there is a chorus of knives, forks and spoons, clanging ever so slightly as members try to finish their meal when a speaker begins to speak. This past May, when Bill Finch, former director of Conservation at the Nature Conservancy and longtime nature writer spoke to Rotary it took only 30 seconds before the room fell completely silent.
He was speaking about the Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Only a few weeks after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, Finch described the slow moving invasion that was taking place on Alabama’s and the Gulf Coast’s shores and its devastating impact on our people and the environment. When he finished his presentation, the audience was shell-shocked. I remember walking amongst the members of the club after the meeting – heads were shaking, and shoulders slightly lowered. The members were somber.
According to Finch, we are in the midst of a “severe ecological rearrangement.”
Oil sheens had invaded Grand Bay, Alabama’s model estuary. On Petit Bois Island, an area west of Dauphin Island, 60 tons of oil pebbles and patties have already been picked up. The beaches looked like a Dalmatian.
In some places the effects may not be obvious for a year or two. Because of the toxicity and the oxygen deprivation caused by the spill, whole generations of fish, crabs, and shrimp will be impacted this year, next year and beyond. Life in our estuaries, the beaches and wildlife will change, and in some cases disappear altogether. Whole links in the food chain are broken.
One of the questions within Rotary’s four-way test, the guiding principles members ask of each other is: “Will it be beneficial to all concerned?” We need to start developing strategies and solutions that will benefit all Gulf residents as well as our delicate environment.
One such benefit and strategy has been developed by the Nature Conservancy and endorsed by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Mobile Baykeeper, Alabama Coastal Foundation and the Alabama Department of Conservation, which calls for the construction in three to five years of 100 miles of oyster reefs and 1,000 acres of marsh and sea grasses in Mobile Bay. The new reefs will help nurse our local fisheries back to health. Over the last century, we have lost 90 percent of our marshes, sea-grasses and oyster reefs in the bay. The oil spill threatens the remaining fragile habitat which we need to ensure a viable seafood industry. This strategy will repel the effects of the oil spill and start the natural and ecological recovery process.
This crisis will be unlike any other confronted by our state and region. It will take years; maybe even a generation, to address the harm that has been caused. Be mindful, Alaskans are still dealing with the adverse effects of the Exxon Valdez spill, more than 20 years later. This spill is many times greater than that disaster.
In response, Gov. Riley needs to create a permanent non-partisan task force in Alabama to develop beneficial strategies that will nurse the gulf back to health. This is not just a Mobile-South Alabama crisis. We all need to pitch in and help our fellow Alabamians.
Along with the task force, we must insist, that every candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General pledge to work immediately on the oil spill once elected in November, if not sooner. There is no time for a transition.
The motto for Rotary International is “Service Above Self.” Maybe that is why the Rotarians leaving that meeting were so somber. They understood the enormous generational task ahead.
Byington is a longtime Alabama environmental advocate and currently the director of the Eastern Forest Partnership.
Copyright (C) 2010 by Alabama Forum. 8/10
Labels: ALABAMA FORUM, Environment, environmental policy, social welfare 0 comments
By Steve Macek and Mitchell Szczepanczyk
On December 3, 2009, the cable giant Comcast announced plans to buy NBC/Universal from General Electric in a $28 billion merger.
Ever since, lawmakers in Washington and legions of activists have been raising the alarm about the threat such a deal would pose to telecommunication workers, cable and Internet users, and communities of color.
As a result, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), the Justice Department, and two Congressional committees have spent months carefully reviewing the proposed merger. The FCC even held a public hearing on the matter in Chicago last month.
Chief among the concerns the FCC must consider is the impact of the merger on workers. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has promised that “there will be no massive layoffs,” even though every big media merger inevitably brings with it steep job cuts. For example, when AOL bought Time-Warner in 2000, the company laid off some 2,400 employees in the space of a year, about 3 percent of its total pre-merger workforce.
What’s more, Comcast has a long history of attempting to break its employees' unions and firing labor organizers. When Comcast bought AT&T Broadband in 2002, Comcast refused to negotiate a first contract with 16 former AT&T collective bargaining units and forced employees to attend intimidating anti-union meetings. Comcast has also spent lavishly to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act, which aims to strengthen workers’ right to form unions. Unsurprisingly, research shows that Comcast pays its workers 30 percent less in wages and benefits than other, unionized telecom companies.
The FCC must also scrutinize the potential of a combined Comcast/NBC to undermine “network neutrality,” which requires Internet Service Providers to treat all legal Internet content equally. Comcast is America’s leading provider of broadband Internet access and has been caught repeatedly blocking its users' downloads on peer-to-peer file sharing sites. They even sued the FCC over its right to enforce network neutrality and won in a controversial federal court case.
A Comcast buyout of NBC/Universal would also lead to Comcast control of the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks and 52 cable channels, including MSNBC, Bravo, USA, E!, Style, Versus, and Comcast SportsNet. Having this mother lode of content would give Comcast even greater incentive to discriminate
in favor of its own online video offerings and against video available from BitTorrent, YouTube, or Blip.tv.
A Comcast/NBC merger could also be detrimental to communities of color. This very concern was the main topic of a hearing, also held in Chicago, by the U.S. House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet on July 8, 2010. There, complaints abounded about the lack of diversity in Comcast and NBC hiring practices, the companies' upper-level management and their television programming.
As Representative Maxine Waters pointed out at the hearing, only two of 28 Comcast executives and only two of 18 NBC Universal executives are people of color. Even worse, of the dozens of cable networks currently owned by Comcast and NBC, only one is headed up by a person of color. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists opposes the merger –which will give Comcast control over the second-largest Spanish language TV network in the county-- because they fear it will lead to fewer jobs for Latino broadcast journalists and less coverage of the Latino community.
Comcast and NBC have offered some proposals to address these concerns, but as Stanley E. Washington, president and CEO of the National Coalition of African American Owned Media, said previously: “It’s crumbs and they know it is crumbs.” And as Representative Maxine Waters said at the Chicago House Committee hearing: “Neither Comcast nor NBC made any of these (pro-diversity) moves…until all of this began to unfold.”
Then, there’s the bread-and-butter issues about Comcast and cable television in general: higher cable costs, fewer cable channels (especially fewer independent channels), less funds for public access, education, and government cable channels, and ever worsening customer service.
Over the past five years, Comcast has jacked up its cable rates by nearly 50 percent in certain markets and plans to raise rates by 4 percent for some customers again in August. At the same time, the company has long had the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any of the country's cable and satellite TV providers.
For all of these reasons, the FCC and the Justice Department should reject the proposed merger, which for the public is decidedly not Comcastic.
Macek is an associate professor of speech communication at North Central College. Szczepanczyk is an organizer with Chicago Media Action.
Labels: American Forum, NATIONAL, social welfare, telecommunications 0 comments
Free Patty Prewitt: An Act of Mercy is an Act of Fiscal Responsibility
MISSOURI FORUM
By Jane H. Aiken
Incarceration rates in Missouri are 12 percent higher than the nation. We also spend 6.8 percent of our state budget on the cost of incarceration.
Currently there are over 30,000 men and women in Missouri’s prisons. Reducing that number would substantially reduce costs so we can better spend that money to support the thousands in the state who find themselves out of work, hungry and homeless.
Governors all over the nation are looking hard for ways to stop unnecessary, costly incarceration. Absent some kind of expansive legislative action, this cost-saving strategy rests solely in the hands of the governor. The concern, appropriately, is that if we release these prisoners, will they commit new crimes?
So how can we reduce the prison population, while at the same time, protect Missourians?
The single best indicator of determining whether a person will commit another crime after leaving prison is age. Older prisoners pose a significantly lower risk of recidivism if released.
In addition to their lower risk, older prisoners impose much higher costs on the system as maintenance and medical costs, on average, are two to three times that of a younger prisoner.
Let’s look at a 40-year old prisoner. The prisoner did not have a criminal record before the present offense. The prisoner has already served considerable time and has an excellent institutional record. The prisoner has made use of the rehabilitative, educational and skills-building training provided in the prison. The prisoner has a supportive family and job prospects upon release. It’s easy to see that the prisoner described here (while admittedly rare) should be considered for release to save us all money.
To make it easier, let’s add equity issues into the mix. Missouri has historically sentenced women charged with violent crimes far more harshly than their male counterparts. Issues that have been traditionally excused in men, like alleged infidelity or alleged poor parenting, have been used to taint women, inflame juries, and obscure weaknesses in proof. This has resulted in extremely long sentences and perhaps wrongful convictions.
The problem of gender bias has improved over time but there are women in Missouri prisons who were convicted before societal awareness of this problem existed.
Governor Nixon is considering a clemency case that calls out for release, if not to correct the gender bias that plagued her trial, to reduce the cost of incarceration.
Patty Prewitt is emblematic of the prisoner who should be free. Prewitt’s trial focused far more on her infidelities and suggested bad mothering than on the facts of her case. Not surprisingly, she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 50 years. Her case is ripe for scrutiny. Even if the equities do not persuade, she is 60 years old, has served 25 years of her sentence, has an excellent institutional record, has participated in virtually every prison program for which she qualified and even created others, has a family eager to have her home, and four job offers waiting for her.
Even former Department of Corrections’ employees support her release. Sixty-five legislators saw the merit in ending her incarceration and urged Governor Nixon to grant her clemency. It’s time to release Patty Prewitt. If not for her, then for all of us who must pay the bills for her incarceration and her inevitably increasing health care needs.
There is nothing more the State of Missouri can do to her or for her. Send her home to her children who have been waiting for their mother for 25 long years and to her aging parents who yearn for her to be with them in their final days.
Aiken is the director of The Community Justice Project at Georgetown University Law Center and former Director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.
Copyright (C) 2010 by Missouri Forum. 7/10
Labels: criminal justice, government, MISSOURI FORUM, social welfare 0 comments
By Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson
Bob Corker has defied typecasting for a freshman senator, emerging in his first few years in the U.S. Capitol as a go-to leader for getting work done across party lines. Tennesseans should urge him to continue in this vein by leading his fellow Republicans in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
New START, which was signed by President Obama and Russian President Medvedev this April, is presently under review by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could be sent to the Senate floor as soon as late July. The Treaty is a conservative and modest reduction in both nations’ strategic nuclear forces. It limits each side’s deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, a reduction of approximately 30 percent from the 2002 Moscow Treaty, and restricts deployed delivery vehicles—ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers—to 800.
Perhaps most significantly, New START will continue the verification regime that has given us intelligence on Russian forces for the past two decades. START I, which was proposed by President Reagan and signed by President George H.W. Bush, expired last December. Though both nations have agreed to continue abiding by its provisions in the interim, the need to formalize these trust-building mechanisms has led Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to urge the Senate to ratify New START “as soon as possible.”
Senator Corker has been a careful and thoughtful questioner throughout the more than 10 Senate hearings thus far on New START. He has heard a level of bipartisan support that is nearly unimaginable in the current, poisonously partisan environment of the Beltway. Treaty endorsements so far have come from top security officials representing every administration from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, including George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, Brent Scowcroft, and James Schlesinger. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “The New START Treaty has the unanimous support of America's military leadership,” citing “the security it provides to the American people.”
Equally telling is the opposition to the Treaty, which has proven shockingly weak. The voices raised against New START have been primarily those of individuals whose foremost interest is not improving national security, but scoring political points against the Obama White House. Mitt Romney, as an aspiring 2012 presidential candidate, has emerged as the most prominent national critic to date—but nuclear experts dubbed his error-riddled and embarrassingly ill-informed op-ed against New START as “flat wrong” and “shabby, misleading, and…thoroughly ignorant.”
In the meanwhile, red herrings—the Treaty’s alleged impact on American missile defense, for example—have been thoroughly refuted by those who are actually responsible for national security, like Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, who testified that, “The New START Treaty actually reduces previous START treaty's constraints on developing missile defense programs in several areas.”
Yet despite New START’s overwhelming bipartisan support and substantive merit, its fate in the Senate is uncertain. The question is which direction Republican senators will go. Senator Richard Lugar, a recognized expert in nuclear arms control and the GOP’s elder statesman on foreign policy, has declared his strong support for the Treaty; Senators James Inhofe and Jim DeMint have stated their opposition. Senator Corker’s decision on New START could be a bellwether for the rest of the GOP caucus.
Let’s be candid: if this Treaty, which has the unanimous support of our military leadership, had been negotiated by a Republican president, ratification would be both expeditious and with a huge majority. This means that the sticking point is that New START is President Obama’s treaty. Unfortunately, some Senate Republicans seem to be choosing the “party of no” over the traditional axiom that “politics stops at the water’s edge”—preventing the ratification of a treaty that is so obviously in our national security interests.
Senator Corker’s conservative credentials are above reproach. But in an increasingly ideological Capitol, he faces an uphill battle to employ the commonsense pragmatism that he demonstrated as a successful businessman and mayor. Tennesseans would do well to exercise our responsibilities as active citizens and stand behind Senator Corker, letting him know we appreciate his style of leadership on behalf of our state and our nation—and that we welcome the political courage necessary to choose the greater national good over oppressive partisanship.
The Rev. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson is the founding director of the Nashville-based Two Futures Project, an organization of Evangelical Christians for nuclear security.
Labels: National Defense and Foreign Policy, TENNESSEE EDITORIAL FORUM 0 comments


THE HURT LOCKER: Fetus-Hoarding Doctor Tied To Controversial Botched Abortion Experiments
INQUIRER: Harvey Karman, a California psychologist who ran an underground abortion service in the 1950s, wanted to make abortion simpler, cheaper, and less painful. He succeeded by inventing a soft, flexible tube, the Karman cannula, that is still used in early-stage abortions. Then he “set out to revolutionize second-trimester abortion” with a plastic spiral, “the super coil,” that could be inserted into the uterus to trigger an abortion, according to Tunc. At the invitation of the Bangladeshi government, Karman tested the device on hundreds of women there who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers. He claimed there were no complications. On Mother’s Day weekend in 1972, Karman, other activists, and 15 women in their second trimester of pregnancy boarded a bus in Chicago and headed for Philadelphia, where Dr. Kermit Gosnell had agreed to give them super-coil abortions at his clinic, then at 133 S. 36th St. The women, who were poor, had been unable to get abortions in Chicago or New York. Gosnell’s super-coil abortions – filmed and later shown on a New York City educational-TV program, thanks to Karman – turned out badly. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health subsequently did an investigation that detailed serious complications suffered by nine of the 15 women, including one who needed a hysterectomy. The complications included a punctured uterus, hemorrhage, infections, and retained fetal remains. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s license was temporarily suspended this week after investigators found blood on the floor, fetus parts in jars and a recovery area consisting of recliners. Gosnell, 69, is named in nearly four dozen lawsuits going back 20 years. Ten are malpractice suits, including one by the family of a young woman who died after a March 2000 abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. Semika Shirelle Shaw called the office the day after her abortion because she was bleeding badly but wasn’t told to get checked there or at a hospital, according to court documents. The lawsuit alleged that Shaw, a 22-year-old mother of two, died two days later of a perforated uterus and sepsis. MORE
RELATED: MALINA WILLIAMS took one look at the roomful of bottled fetus remains and knew instantly that something wasn’t right. She was just 13, still a baby herself, and had just had an abortion at the hands of Dr. Kermit B. Gosnell. She said she had thought something was amiss when the West Philadelphia doctor eagerly agreed to perform the abortion, even though he allegedly didn’t have permission from her parents as required by state law. After her procedure was over, Williams said she saw Gosnell cradling a bottle that contained the remains of her fetus. Her eyes darted away and landed on the room with the bottles. “He left the door open,” said Williams, now 32. “I could see all the little babies in bottles filled with liquid, and I started crying. “He said he did research on them. He said, ‘Don’t cry, don’t feel bad. Everybody does this.’ ” MORE
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 25th, 2010	at 7:40 am	and is filed under News	. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0	feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Your Comprehensive Guide to McLaren Senna
By Steve Hampton on July 3, 2018
When a hypercar pays tribute to a three-time F1 world champion – Ayrton Senna – you just know it’s going to be out of this world. The McLaren Senna has scrapped the evolution of batteries and electric motors and have instead opted for maximum weight reduction. Don’t be fooled, though, because that lightness is combined with phenomenal engine power, innovative aerodynamics, top-of-the-range brakes and next-generation chassis.
The Senna offers all of the amazing perks of a true hypercar, but the engineers at McLaren have conquered the art of weight reduction. That’s what sets this car apart from its competitors. To put it into perspective, it weighs in at around 2,641-LB, which is crazy. With all of the awesome specs to get excited about, we mustn’t forget about how gorgeous the car looks.
The first thing you notice is the massive, imposing spoiler that’s fused onto the back of the car to aid aerodynamics. But, once you start to look closer, you notice the sleek lines running throughout, the stunning intersecting surfaces, and the huge inlets bursting out of the sides. Alongside, you have the brilliant Pirelli Super Trofeo R street legal tyres in sizes 214/35ZR19 or 315/30ZR20.
Of course, this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the design isn’t what the manufacturer was banking on. The simplicity of the design and the intricate styling is just simply a beautiful cover of the book; it’s inviting car-enthusiasts around the world to open the book and allow the performance to run wild.
Once you step inside, you’ll immediately fall in love with the super-light carbon-fiber bucket seats which are equipped with a Sabelt race harness. All the controls are ergonomically positioned so the driver can use them with ease; the start/stop, race mode, fan and central locking buttons are fixed into the roof console. The electric windows, map and reading light controls are placed into another section.
Moreover, the slimline centre console is cleverly attached to the driver’s seat, which moves in alignment with seat adjustment. Why? So that the driver can reach the D, N & R gearbox selector and launch control easily. In the middle of the dash you have an infotainment system that’s full of technology.
Now for the fun part… performance. With an M840TR twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V8 engine, the Senna can rack up 789-BHP and 590 pound-feet or torque. With that kind of power – and the help of launch control – it can hit 62-MPH in a mere 2.8 seconds, 124-MPH in 6.8 seconds and finish at a top speed of 211-MPH.
That makes it 6 seconds faster than the McLaren P1. It also has a seven-speed dual clutch transmission that utilizes Formula 1 Ignition Cut tech to push shifts through immediately. When you put the dial at 155-MPH, you’ll have 1,764-LB of downforce thanks to the expert knowledge that McLaren engineers possess. The six-pot monobloc alloy callipers squeeze the carbon-ceramic discs to reduce the car to 0-MPH in just 100 meters.
Overall, the throttle is incredibly responsive and works harmoniously with precise steering to fly around corners. A beautiful melody is produced by the V8 with plenty of purrs, gurgles and growls, but a symphony of noise is belted out when you top out at 7,500-RPM.
Only 500 versions of these were made and distributed around the world. Despite being priced at $958,966, all of them sold out rapidly, and it’s easy to see why. It’s essentially a road car that is right at home on the track, with some labelling it as a road-legal track car. Whatever you think of the Senna, it’s a car that everyone would dream of driving.
Tags: McLaren, New Model, Reviews, Specs


Some Genetic Sequencing Tests Are Coming Up Short
If doctors suspect that a person has a genetic disease, it’s become straightforward to simply sequence all the coding regions of the individual’s genome; what used to be an incredibly time-consuming and laborious process has now become a more routine part of healthcare. This is especially true for young children and infants that have mysterious illnesses that probably have a genetic cause. However, new research has suggested that this sequencing methodology, called whole exome sequencing, may be missing large portions of protein-coding DNA, and may be impeding doctors from making a proper diagnosis.
This study, which was reported in Clinical Chemistry, showed that labs performing whole exome sequencing tended to analyze less than three-quarters of coding genes, and showed that there are large gaps in their diagnostic abilities for certain diseases. The study authors are concerned about how the quality of genetic testing is being documented.
"Many of the physicians who order these tests don't know this is happening," said Jason Park, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at UT Southwestern. "Many of their patients are young kids with neurological disorders, and they want to get the most complete diagnostic test. But they don't realize whole exome sequencing may miss something that a more targeted genetic test would find."
There are around 20,000 genes that code for protein in the genome, which only makes up about two percent of our genetic material. However, analyzing all of those genes completely is challenging, and there may be oversights, noted Park. About half of whole exome sequencing analyses don’t find a genetic mutation carried by the patient, and this study may help show why.
After reassessing exome testing for 36 patients, done between 2012 and 2016 at three national laboratories, the researchers found big differences. A ‘completely analyzed’ gene would have had its coding region sequenced at least twenty times per test. The study showed that less that 1.5 percent of genes were completely analyzed in the 36 samples. In one lab, at least 28 percent of genes weren’t completely analyzed, and only five percent definitely were. Another lab had completely analyzed only 27 percent of genes.
"And things really start to fall apart when you start thinking about using these tests to rule out a disease," Park said. "A negative exome result is meaningless when so many of the genes are not thoroughly analyzed."
Every lab had a different chance of diagnosing an epileptic disorder. One lab was checking most epilepsy-related genes in most patients, although three of their patient samples had only covered around 40 percent of those genes. Another lab was checking only about 20 percent of those genes completely.
"When we saw this data we made it a regular practice to ask the labs about coverage of specific genes," said the corresponding study author Garrett Gotway, M.D., Ph.D., a clinical geneticist at UT Southwestern. "I don't think you can expect complete coverage of 18,000 genes every time, but it's fair to expect 90 percent or more."
Other work has revealed similar problems with a different kind of sequencing tool, whole genome sequencing. The researchers are hopeful that more clinicians will demand better testing standards for their patients.
"Clinical exomes can be helpful in complex cases, but you probably don't need one if a kid has epilepsy and doesn't have other complicating clinical problems," Gotway said. "There's a decent chance the exome test will come back negative and the parents are still left wondering about the genetic basis for their child's disease."
Gotway suggested that using genetic tests that focus on a panel of disease-related genes that are appropriate for a patient may be a better way to look for a disease-causing mutation. These tests can be less expensive and better at revealing genetic errors that cause disease.
Sources: AAAS/Eurekalert! via UT Southwestern Medical Center, Clinical Chemistry
Carmen Leitch
Experienced research scientist and technical expert with authorships on 28 peer-reviewed publications, traveler to over 60 countries, published photographer and internationally-exhibited painter, volunteer trained in disaster-response, CPR and DV counseling.
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Tour Barcelona Camp Nou: The world’s third largest football stadium
June 24, 2015 December 10, 2015 bizFlats
If you’ve ever happened upon Barcelona during a football match then you may have been surprised to see the red and blue streets filled with ecstatic fans cheering as if their very lives depended on victory. Catalonians couldn’t be prouder of their all-star team now sporting football heroes such as Lionel Messi, an idol of many Spanish youths, and soccer players around the world. Barcelona Camp Nou was the team’s very first stadium in its inaugural year of 1957, carrying some of the team’s richest history in its bleachers as well as on the turf. Soccer fan or not, taking a tour of Barcelona Camp Nou will provide a lot of insight into the heart of Catalan culture.
About Barcelona Camp Nou
Constructed between the years of 1955 and 1957 using mainly concrete and iron, the project cost was a staggering 288 million pesetas, meaning the team would spend its first years of existence in great debt. Nevertheless, it was a point of great pride among the team members and coaches, as well as the expanding local fan base that was quickly growing beyond what could be accommodated at the stadium. With a capacity of 99,354 it is now the biggest stadium in all of Europe, but still the crowds overflow into the streets and pubs of the city. When it initially opened it held just over 93,000, which was increased to 120,000 in 1982 to host the FIFA World Cup. New regulations forced the stadium to reduce its capacity in the late 1990s.
There are many notable facilities within the stadium that are cause for its official five-star status. On the tour, you will get to see all of them including the chapel, the presidential box, VIP lounge, Press and television rooms, veteran players area, and the FC Barcelona club museum.
Tour Club Nou
Touring Barcelona Club Nou has become one of the most popular things to do upon visiting the city and is a chance for visitors to get a behind the scenes experience of this Spanish landmark. Check out their impressive trophy room literally filled with accolades; step foot on the actual grass of FC Barcelona, and check out the coveted Messi Space covered with the Argentinian superstar’s accomplishments. You can also visit the press room and visitors’ dressing room, and see the players’ tunnel and commentary boxes. There are truly endless places throughout the stadium to explore that your general admission ticket would not allow you to see, which makes tours all the more appealing to real sports fans.
If you’ve growing up playing football then a visit to Barcelona Club Nou, whether for a tour or a match, will be a high point in your romance with the sport. There are few places as crazed over this game than Spain, and you’ll be left without any doubts about what committed fans actually look like. It is ideal to see this place both empty and quiet where you can just appreciate its legacy, and yet bustling and crazed during game time so you can witness what it was built for.
If you’re planning a trip to the city, be sure to look into these short-term rentals that will make the perfect spot for your pre or post game party!
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our planet live in concert
In 2020 a spectacular new live experience, Our Planet Live in Concert will launch with its world premiere in London. The production will feature highlights of the Our Planet Netflix original series and narrated on screen by legendary broadcaster, David Attenborough. Combining the outstanding natural world visuals of Our Planet with creative innovations in live production, this concert will be a live experience like no other. The creators are also ‘going green’ with the production by introducing measures which will offset the tour’s carbon footprint. Our Planet Live in Concert will tour international arenas with the world premiere in London’s O2 on Sunday 18 October 2020.
The landmark eight-part Our Planet documentary series is being reimagined into a two-hour arena show with beautiful visual and sound effects and will be accompanied by a breath-taking 66-piece orchestra and live vocalist. Three giant screens will present the incredible cinematography of Our Planet on a scale that has never been seen before, allowing audiences to be fully immersed into the wonders of earth’s wildlife and their habitats.
Our Planet took the world by storm when it was released in April 2019. Taking viewers on a spectacular journey of discovery, showcasing the beauty and increased fragility of our natural world, the series explores the fact that humans have become the greatest threat to the survival of our planet, and all the species that inhabit it. Whilst at times a hard watch, the series also highlights the fact that there is still time to address the challenges that we have created, if we act now. It helped people to understand what is at stake and realise how imperative it was to lobby businesses and governments to start paying attention.
Sunday,18 October 2020 at 19:30
The O2 Arena, London
Monday,19 October 2020 at 19:30
SSE Glasgow
A celebration of the music from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and The Hobbit
Blade Runner in Concert


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Why Children Must Respect Authority
By Dr. James C. Dobson
The most urgent advice I can give to the parents of an assertive, independent child is to establish their positions as strong but loving leaders when Junior and Missy are in the preschool years. This is the first step toward helping them learn to control their powerful impulses. Alas, there is no time to lose. As we have seen, a naturally defiant youngster is in a high-risk category for antisocial behavior later in life. She is more likely to challenge her teachers in school and question the values she has been taught. Her temperament leads her to oppose anyone who tries to tell her what to do. Fortunately, this outcome is not inevitable, because the complexities of the human personality make it impossible to predict behavior with complete accuracy. But the probabilities lie in that direction. Thus, I will repeat my most urgent advice to parents: that they begin shaping the will of the particularly aggressive child very early in life. (Notice that I did not say to crush his will or to destroy it or to snuff it out, but to rein it in for his own good.) But how is that accomplished?
Well, first let me tell you how not to approach that objective. Harshness, gruffness, and sternness are not effective in shaping a child’s will. Likewise, constant whacking and threatening and criticizing are destructive and counterproductive. A parent who is mean and angry most of the time is creating resentment that will be stored and come roaring into the relationship during adolescence or beyond. Therefore, every opportunity should be taken to keep the tenor of the home pleasant, fun, and accepting. At the same time, however, parents should display confident firmness in their demeanor. You, Mom and Dad, are the boss. You are in charge. If you believe it, the tougher child will accept it also. Unfortunately, many mothers today are tentative and insecure in approaching their young children. If you watch them with their little boys and girls in supermarkets or airports, you will see these frustrated and angry moms who are totally confused about how to handle a given misbehavior. Temper tantrums throw them for a loop, as though they never expected them. Actually, they have been coming on for some time.
A pediatrician friend told me about a telephone call he received from the anxious mother of a six-month-old baby.
“I think he has a fever,” she said nervously.
“Well,” the doctor replied, “did you take his temperature?”
“No,” she said. “He won’t let me insert the thermometer.”
There is trouble ahead for this shaky mother. There is even more danger for her son in the days ahead. He will quickly sense her insecurity and step into the power vacuum she has created. From there, it will be a wild ride all the way through adolescence.
Here are some nuts-and-bolts suggestions for avoiding the trouble I have described. Once a child understands who is in charge, he can be held accountable for behaving in a respectful manner. That sounds easy, but it can be very difficult. In a moment of rebellion, a little child will consider his parents’ wishes and defiantly choose to disobey. Like a military general before a battle, he will calculate the potential risk, marshal his forces, and attack the enemy with guns blazing. When that nose-to-nose confrontation occurs between generations, it is extremely important for the adult to display confidence and decisiveness. The child has made it clear that he’s looking for a fight, and his parents would be wise not to disappoint him! Nothing is more destructive to parental leadership than for a mother or father to equivocate during that struggle. When parents consistently lose those battles, resorting to tears and screaming and other signs of frustration, some dramatic changes take place in the way they are seen by their children. Instead of being secure and confident leaders, they become spineless jellyfish who are unworthy of respect or allegiance.
Susanna Wesley, mother of eighteenth-century evangelists John and Charles Wesley, reportedly bore nineteen children. Toward the end of her life, John asked her to describe in writing her philosophy of mothering for him. Copies of her reply are still in existence today. As you will see from the excerpts that follow, her beliefs reflect a traditional understanding of child rearing. She wrote:
In order to form the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer the will, and bring them into an obedient temper. To inform the understanding is a work of time, and must with children proceed by slow degrees as they are able to bear it; but the subjecting of the will is a thing which must be done at once, and the sooner the better!
For by neglecting timely correction, they will contract a stubbornness and obstinacy which is hardly ever after conquered, and never without using such severity as would be painful to me as to the children. In the esteem of the world, those who withhold timely correction would pass for kind and indulgent parents, whom I call cruel parents, who permit their children to get habits which they know must afterward be broken. Nay, some are so stupidly fond as in sport to teach their children to do things which in the after while, they must severely beat them for doing.
Whenever a child is corrected, it must be conquered; and this will be no hard matter to do, if it be not grown headstrong by too much indulgence. And, if the will of a child is totally subdued, and if it be brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great many childish follies and inadvertencies may be passed by. Some should be overlooked and taken no notice of, and others mildly reproved. But no willful transgressions ought ¬ever to be forgiven children without chastisement, more or less as the nature and ¬circumstances of the offense shall require.
I cannot dismiss this subject. As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in children insures their after wretchedness and faithlessness. Whatever checks and mortifies, promotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident if we further consider that Christianity is nothing less than doing the will of God, and not our own; that the one grand impediment to our temporal and eternal happiness being this self-will. No indulgence of it can be trivial, no denial unprofitable.
Does that sound harsh by our modern standards? Perhaps. While I would have balanced the approach with greater compassion and gentleness, I believe that Mrs. Wesley’s basic understanding was correct. If the strong-willed child is allowed by indulgence to develop “habits” of defiance and disrespect during his or her early childhood, those characteristics will not only cause problems for the parents, but will ultimately handicap the child whose rampaging will was never brought under self-control.
Does this mean that Mom or Dad should be snapping orders all day long, disregarding the feelings and wishes of the child? Certainly not! I would not want to be treated that way, and you wouldn’t either. Most of the time, you can talk things through and come to a mutual understanding. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with negotiating and compromising when disagreements occur between generations. Six-year-old Lance may voluntarily rest or nap in the afternoon so that he can watch a late evening children’s program on television. Mom may offer to drive her ten-year-old daughter to soccer practice, provided she agrees to straighten and clean her room. There are countless situations such as these during childhood when a “no-win, no-lose” agreement can be reached without imposing constant demands and threats on a youngster. These mutually agreed-upon conclusions will not undermine parental leadership and won’t reinforce a spirit of rebellion, even in a tough-minded child.
On the other hand, there is a time to speak in that tone of voice that says, kindly but firmly, “Please do it now, because I said so.” One can’t always negotiate with a child or give repetitive explanations and requests for cooperation. Every command doesn’t have to end with a question mark, as in, “Would you like to go take your bath now?” Sometimes you simply have to step in and be the boss. As we saw in the last chapter, it is this expression of authority that many modern parental advisers resist tooth and nail. They never want moms and dads to sound as though they are in charge. Some even refer to that style of management as “power games.” One writer of books for parents expressed his permissive philosophy this way:
The stubborn persistence of the idea that parents must and should use authority in dealing with children has, in my opinion, prevented for centuries any significant change or improvement in the way children are raised by parents and treated by adults. Children resent those who have power over them. In short, children want to limit their behavior themselves, if it becomes apparent to them that their behavior must be limited or modified. Children, like adults, prefer to be their own authority over their behavior.
I couldn’t disagree more. God has installed parents as leaders for a finite period of time. When they are afraid or unwilling to fulfill that responsibility, the strong-willed child is positively driven to step to the front and begin running things. As we have seen, it is his passion to take charge anyway. If you as a mom or dad won’t be the boss, I guarantee that your tough-as-nails kid will grab that role. That is the beginning of sorrows for both generations.
The New Testament, which the Scripture tells us is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16), speaks eloquently to this point. We read in 1 Timothy 3:4-5, “He [speaking of the father] must have proper authority in his own household, and be able to control and command the respect of his children” (Phillips). Colossians 3:20 expresses this divine principle to the younger generation: “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord” (KJV). I find no place in the Bible where our little ones are designated as co-discussants at a conference table, deciding what they will and will not accept from the older generation. Power games, indeed.
Why is parental authority so vigorously supported throughout the Bible? Is it simply catering to the whims of oppressive, power-hungry adults, as some would have us believe? No, the leadership of parents plays a significant role in the development of a child! By yielding to the loving authority (leadership) of his parents, a child learns to submit to other forms of authority that will confront him later in his life. Without respect for leadership, there is anarchy, chaos, and confusion for ¬every¬one concerned.
There is an even more important reason for the preservation of authority in the home. Children who are acquainted with it learn to yield to the benevolent leadership of God Himself. It is a fact that a child identifies his parents with God in the early days, whether the adults want that role or not. Specifically, most children see God the way they perceive their earthly fathers (and, to a lesser degree, their mothers). This fact was illustrated in our home when our son, Ryan, was just two years old. Since his babyhood, he had seen his sister, mother, and father say grace before eating our meals, because we always thank God for our food in that way. But because of his age, the little toddler had never been asked to lead the prayer. On one occasion when I was out of town, Shirley put the lunch on the table and spontaneously turned to Ryan, saying, “Would you like to pray for our food today?” Her request apparently startled him and he glanced around nervously, then clasped his little hands together and said, “I love you, Daddy. Amen.”
When I returned home and heard about Ryan’s prayer, it was immediately apparent that my son had actually confused me with God. And I’ll confess, I wished he hadn’t! I appreciated the thought, but I was uncomfortable with its implications. It was too big a job for an ordinary dad to handle. There were times when I’m sure I disappointed our children—times when I was too tired to be what they needed from me—times when my human frailties were all too apparent. The older they became, the greater was the gap between who I was and who they had thought I was—especially during the storms of adolescence. No, I didn’t want to represent God to my son and daughter. But whether I liked it or not, they thought of me in those terms, and your younger children probably see you that way too!
In short, the Creator has given parents the awesome responsibility of representing Him to their children. As such, they should reflect two aspects of divine nature to the next generation. First, our heavenly Father is a God of unlimited love, and our children must become acquainted with His mercy and tenderness through our own love toward them. But make no mistake about it: our Lord is also the possessor of majestic authority! The universe is ordered by a sovereign God who requires obedience from His children and has warned that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). To show our little ones love without authority is as serious a distortion of God’s nature as to reveal an iron-fisted authority without love.
From this perspective, then, a child who has only “negotiated” with his parents and teachers during times of intense conflict has probably not learned to submit to the authority of the Almighty. If this youngster is allowed to behave disrespectfully to Mom and Dad, sassing them and disobeying their specific orders, then it is most unlikely that he will turn his face up to God about twenty years later and say humbly, “Here am I, Lord; send me!” To repeat, a child learns to yield to the authority of God by first learning to submit to (rather than bargain with) the leadership of his parents.
But what did the apostle Paul mean in his first letter to Timothy where he referred to parents having the “proper authority”? Was he giving them the right to browbeat their children, disregarding their feelings and instilling fear and anxiety in them? No. There is a wonderful balance taught by Paul in this letter and in Ephesians 6:4. It reads, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
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Connect With Rebecca Hagelin
Rebecca Hagelin has championed faith and family values in Washington, DC and around the nation for some 30 years. She speaks and writes to encourage and educate parents on how to combat the negative affects of the pop media culture on their children. Her weekly column, co-authored with her daughter Kristin Carey, "Faith and Family: Hope for Every Generation" appears in The Washington Times, Townhall and other national news sites and publications. Rebecca also owns a boutique marketing company that specializes in creating and directing national talk radio marketing campaigns. She previously served as The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President of Communications and Marketing, and as Vice President of Communications for WorldNetDaily.com. In 2006, Concerned Women for America named her as one of the nation’s “Top Ten Evangelical Women”, and in 2007, The Claire Boothe Luce Policy Institute named her one of 12 "Great Conservative Women". She is the author of the acclaimed books, Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture That's Gone Stark Raving Mad, and 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. The latter book will be re-released in late April. The newly updated version is entitled, "30 Ways in 30 Days to Protect Your Family" and will include reflections from her daughter, Kristin, as well as a bonus new chapter on marriage. Rebecca serves on several boards including FamilyTalk. She and her husband (of 30 years!) Andy, have three grown children, and live on Little Gasparilla Island in Florida.
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