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Health

LA Voters Will Decide Whether To Require Adult Film Stars To Depict Safer Sex

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Nov 5, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Tomorrow, voters in California will decide whether or not to pass Proposition B, which would require adult film stars throughout Los Angeles county to wear condoms during porn shoots. If Proposition B goes into effect, it will also allow the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to enforce sexual health in the industry by conducting inspections to ensure that actors are adhering to the regulation.

Michael Weinstein, the executive director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, is the primary proponent of the measure, which he says will help safeguard public health among a population that tends to lack health insurance coverage:

Weinstein has said the adult film industry’s current testing methods have contributed to an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases. He has also said that performers are not medically insured, which means tax payers front the bills for their healthcare. [...]

An independent study released by AHF last week found undiagnosed sexually transmitted diseases may be more common in the adult film industry than previously reported. The study, to be published in December in the Journal of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, found that roughly a third of the 168 adult film actors who participated in the research project were found to have a previously undiagnosed STD.

“I would call that an epidemic,” Weinstein said. “We’re in the business of promoting condoms. I’ve been called a condom Nazi and it doesn’t faze me.”

But members of the adult film industry say that Weinstein is mischaracterizing the issue, and claim the measure represents unnecessary government interference that infringes on their artistic expression. Adult film stars already get tested for sexually transmitted infections about once a month, which they say is a more effective method of maintaining their sexual health. They believe their industry will be threatened if they are forced to use condoms because “it’s just not what viewers want to see.”

The entertainment industry in general has typically failed to accurately depict safer sex practices — such as showing characters using contraception or condoms on screen — although some sexual health advocacy groups are working with television executives to try to change that. Adult films represent another area where the media could model safe sexual practices for consumers.

Condom use on porn sets is actually already required under both state and city law. Proposition B would expand an existing city ordinance in Los Angeles — the first city in the nation to institute a condom requirement for adult film stars — to the broader Los Angeles county.

Justice

How Early Voting Prevented Ohioans From Choosing Between Their Paycheck And Their Vote

By Scott Keyes on Nov 5, 2012 at 6:00 pm

DAYTON, Ohio — “Today is the first day in the last seven that I’ve been outside,” David Ellis, a heavy-set African American man, told me as he waited at the back of the line in Springfield to vote. Ellis had just been released from the hospital earlier that day following major surgery. “I can’t stand out here long,” he said as he leaned on his black cane.

What if there weren’t early voting on Monday, I asked.

“I would’ve been a no-vote,” Ellis said, letting out a hearty chuckle.

Whether he knew it or not, Ellis came within a hair’s breadth of being a no-vote. For the past few months, Secretary of State Jon Husted has fought to eliminate the final three days of early voting in Ohio. His efforts were mostly blocked by a federal appeals court, but Husted succeeded in restricting voting hours on those final days leading up to November 6th. In total, 1.6 million Ohioans had voted early through Sunday, but because of the limited hours (Sunday voting was just 1-5pm), extremely long lines were commonplace.

ThinkProgress traveled around southwest Ohio Monday, when voters were allowed to cast ballots from 8am to 2pm, to speak with people waiting in line at early polling locations.

Voters in line at the 1.5-hour wait mark in Greene County

“I got work tomorrow,” explained Rob, who’s employed at a marketing firm in Cincinnati, at the early voting center in Greene County. He wasn’t sure if his boss would have allowed him time off to vote tomorrow, considering the hour-long commute between work and his polling station. “I might not have been able to vote without Monday voting,” he said.

However, the shortened early voting hours brought about long lines. In Greene County, the line stretched approximately two hours this morning. One older gentleman was forced to leave after standing in line for 20 minutes. “Too long a wait and I got a bad hip,” he explained as he limped back to his car. He hoped he would be able to make it out on Tuesday, but wasn’t sure.

Still, some took the long lines in good cheer. “A little line never hurt nobody!” offered Shirley Martin, a middle-aged woman from nearby Yellow Springs.

In Clark County, home to Springfield, a minority-heavy city decimated by the decades-long decline in manufacturing jobs, the line stretched to 150 long around 11am.

So many voters showed up on the final day of early voting in Clark County that the line snaked outside and down the sidewalk

I approached Joe Crowell, one of the few white men standing in line, and asked why he’d chosen today to cast his ballot. “I drive a truck and took the day off,” he said as he cradled his Big Gulp, “otherwise I could’ve been sent to Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or wherever tomorrow.” If he’d waited another day for Election Day, he would’ve lost $300 in pay.

His response was echoed by voter after voter throughout the day. Sarah, who works 11-hour days at the Elks Lodge, had Monday off but not Tuesday, as did Felicia, a phlebotomist at the nearby hospital in Springfield. Some, including Curtese Hunter, who works two jobs at Sinclair Community College, said they would’ve still done their best to show up on Tuesday had Monday voting not been an option, but were relieved not to have to choose between their paycheck and their civic duty.

The longest line of the day, unsurprisingly, was in Dayton, where 150 people stood in the parking garage alone, waiting to join the voting line inside.

The voting line in Montgomery County was so long that it snaked out through the parking garage

A young couple, Cynthia Develvis and Brian Latimer, arrived at 1:50pm with their seven-week-old baby girl in tow. “We both had work off today and hoped to avoid the long lines and as much noise for her sake,” Develvis explained, motioning to her daughter. They were understandably disappointed to be waiting in line 10 feet from where they’d parked their car.

Despite the long lines, poll workers did an exceptional job of keeping it moving and taking other steps to make the process as smooth as possible. As she passed out water bottles to voters in line, one worker in Dayton said that all employees had been instructed to move their cars out of the garage in order to open up more spaces, which were already scarce, for voters.

Because of the restricted early voting hours that Husted succeeded in implementing, more than 30 voters were turned away from the polls after arriving too late. One elderly African American couple who arrived a few minutes past 2pm were disheartened after being told they couldn’t vote today. “We couldn’t find a parking space!” the wife explained, to no avail.

The final voter in Montgomery County was Kysiah, a young African American woman who owned her own company and made it in line five seconds before the 2pm cutoff. Tomorrow is very busy, she explained, relieved to have made it in at the nick of time today. “This is my business day to handle all my business,” she said. One hour and approximately 250 voters later, Kysiah cast her ballot at 3:03pm.

Whether because of work constraints, school constraints, or other factors, voters across southwest Ohio were glad to have the opportunity to vote Monday. Even if it meant long lines, many reasoned that they would pale in comparison to what was to come on Tuesday. Few were aware of Husted’s push to roll back early voting, which would have prevented them from casting their ballot today; most, like Ellis, couldn’t believe that one of their elected officials would try to cut the number of voting days.

Still, despite being just hours out of the hospital, his was the face of determination. “As long as I’ve got an ounce of strength in me, I’m going to get out and vote.”

Climate Progress

The Sounds Of Silence: Team Obama Launched The Inane Strategy Of Downplaying Climate Change Back In March 2009

By Joe Romm on Nov 5, 2012 at 5:21 pm

Last week the UK Guardian published a bombshell piece on the origins of the fatefully dreadful decision to try to sell the climate bill without talking about the climate

The story describes a March 2009 meeting at the Old Executive Office Building, the White House informed the leading environmental groups that it had decided climate change was not a winning message. The blunt headline:

Revealed: the day Obama chose a strategy of silence on climate change

Betsy Taylor, president of Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions, was at the meeting:

“What was communicated in the presentation was: ‘This is what you talk about, and don’t talk about climate change’.” Taylor said. “I took away an absolutely clear understanding that we should focus on clean energy jobs and the potential of a clean energy economy rather than the threat of climate change.”

The message stuck. Subsequent campaigns from the Obama administration and some environmental groups relegated climate change to a second-tier concern.

Most (but not all) environmental groups either agreed with the conclusion or felt they were not in a position to do go against the White House strategy:

“When the White House invites you to a meeting and says: ‘here is how we are going to talk about these things’, it sends a very clear message,” said Erich Pica, president of the US Friends of the Earth Action, who was also at the meeting.

Now with Obama fighting for re-election, and the climate agenda stalled and under constant attack from Republicans and industry, environmental groups acknowledge the go-softly strategy was a mistake.

I have confirmed with Taylor and Pica the accuracy of this story, one more sad chapter in the textbook the Obama administration is writing on how not to do communications.

In 2010 I discussed Eric Pooley’s reporting that former White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod and former Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel were the driving force behind the decision to downplay climate change — see “The unbearable lameness of being (Rahm and Axelrod).” I learned independently that the White House communications team (whom Axelrod helped set direction for) shot down a late-2009 effort by the Office of Science and Technology Policy to push back against the phoney attack on climate science the followed the theft of the University of East Anglia e-mails.

It bears repeating that this White House “strategy” was a bad idea from the beginning and based on faulty polling analysis (see, for instance,”Polling Expert: Is Obama’s Reluctance to Mention Climate Change Motivated by a False Assumption About Public Opinion?” and links below).

Support for climate action and aggressive clean energy policies actually rose slightly in 2010 climate action even during the depths of the recession, even in the face of an unprecedented fossil-fuel-funded disinformation campaign during the climate bill debate — even without the White House using its bully pulpit to tip the scales further (see “Memo to policymakers: Public STILL favors the transition to clean energy“).

The fact is climate action and clean energy have both consistently been shown to be winning “wedge issues” that split the most conservative elements of the Republican party from moderates and independents, who are closer to Democrats on both issues (see Krosnick: Candidates “May Actually Enhance Turnout As Well As Attract Voters Over To Their Side By Discussing Climate Change“).

The Guardian story asserts, “The White House, after studying polling and focus groups, concluded it was best to frame climate change as an economic opportunity, a chance for job creation and economic growth, rather than an urgent environmental problem.”

But even back then Mark Mellman, a leading pollster for progressives since 1982, explained just how wrong-headed this conclusion was in a May 2009 op-ed headlined, “Voters: Act on global warming“:

Read more

LGBT

Focus On The Family Rejects Trans Identities As Disordered And Unhealthy

By Zack Ford on Nov 5, 2012 at 5:15 pm

Jeff Johnston, Focus on the Family

Jeff Johnston is Focus on the Family’s resident ex-gay, and he is increasingly being called upon to speak as an expert on various identity issues, though he bears no such expertise. Following up on the group’s promotion of ex-transgender ministries, Johnston is back to spread a series of remarkable falsehoods about what it means to be trans. His claims are built around the false understanding that being trans is a disorder, even though the American Psychiatric Association is declassifying it as such next year. From this false premise, Johnston encourages many mistruths and harmful ideas for supporting transgender youth.

First, Johnston claims that sexual orientation and gender identity are the same, which they aren’t:

[Gender Identity Disorder] is a label usually given to children with same-sex attractions, but it can be given to adults.

Gender dysphoria — GID is now obsolete language — refers to how people experience their gender, which has very little to do with who they are attracted to. Some trans people are heterosexual, some are gay, and some have sexual orientations that do not fit into such neat boxes. Sexual orientation and gender identity can intersect, but they operate independently.

Johnston then claims the best way to support young people who are questioning their gender is to try to force them to accept the body they have, rejecting their gender identity:

Gender Identity Disorder is treatable. There are therapists who work with kids to help them accept the body they were born into and to embrace it as a good thing. This kind of therapy helps children to stop hating their bodies and to embrace their gender.

This sort of “ex-trans” therapy directly contradicts what the majority of medical professionals have found. For example, the American Psychological Association tells parents that “it is not helpful to force the child to act in a more gender-conforming way.” Doing so reinforces the stress young people often feel when their sex does not match their gender identity.

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Daylight Savings Time May Impact Americans’ Health | Americans turned their clocks ahead this weekend — but researchers have conflicting views on Daylight Savings Time’s effect on Americans’ mental and physical well-being. Some experts, like University of Washington’s Hendrik Wolff, say that nationwide studies have shown that “at the time of daylight saving time extension in the spring, television watching is substantially reduced, and outdoor behaviors like jogging, walking, or going to the park are substantially increased.” On the other hand, studies by chronobiologist Till Roenneberg suggest that by pushing the body’s natural biological rhythms out of sync, Daylight Savings has resulted in an American population with lower productivity, lower quality of life, and more tired and susceptible to illnesses.

Education

Record Numbers Of Young Americans Are Earning College Degrees

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Nov 5, 2012 at 5:05 pm

For the first time, about one-third of young adults in the U.S. hold bachelor’s degrees, according to the Pew Research Center, up from fewer than 20 percent of young Americans in the early 1970s. And the number of high school graduates has risen as well, with 90 percent of Americans now having a high school degree, up from 78 percent in 1971.

The economic slowdown had a large impact on the gains in educational attainment, the New York Times reports, as a college degree now translates into much higher wages than it did several decades ago:

In a 2010 Gallup survey, about three-quarters of Americans agreed that a college education is very important, up from only 36 percent in 1978.

The wage premium for those with college degrees has leapt 40 percent since 1983, according to Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

“The demand for college graduates has been increasing about 3 percent a year, while the supply has increased only one percent a year, which is why the college wage premium has increased so precipitously,” he said.

Since the recession began, workers without a college degree have lost more than 5 million jobs, compared to no net loss for workers with at least a bachelor’s degree. While the national unemployment rate is around 7.9 percent, the unemployment rate is closer to 4 percent for those with college degrees. It’s in the mid-teens for those with only a high school degree.

But despite the increasing number of college degrees, the U.S. is still lagging behind many other developed nations — including South Korea, Canada, Japan, and Russia. The percentage of Americans with degrees is also growing more slowly than other nations. Additionally, the United States is among the worst developed countries in ensuring that young people obtain a college degree if their parents did not, and almost half of American college students drop out before they complete their degree.

NEWS FLASH

Poll: Support For Voter Suppression Initiative Collapses In Minnesota | At its peak, support for a ballot initiative to require all voters in Minnesota to show voter ID — a common voter suppression law used to reduce the number of low income, student and minority voters who cast a ballot — enjoyed 80 percent support in some polls. On Saturday, a new survey from Public Policy Polling revealed that 51 percent of Minnesota voters oppose the initiative, as opposed to just 46 percent who support it.

Election

The Serious Flaw With Ohio’s Plan To Count Provisional Ballots

By Aviva Shen on Nov 5, 2012 at 4:54 pm

Thousands of Ohio voters have been falsely notified that they are not registered to vote due to a database error in Ohio’s voter rolls. An Ohio voter advocacy group alerted Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) to this major system problem on October 30. But instead of fixing it, Husted issued a directive instructing local boards to use the same flawed search method to count provisional ballots after Election Day.

Ohio’s computer search of the voter registration database will only find exact matches, meaning that voters could come up as unregistered due to typos, abbreviations, or partial entries. This flawed search mechanism missed huge numbers of registered voters in Franklin and Cuyahoga Counties, incorrectly rejecting 33,000 requests for absentee ballots. These two counties corrected the error, but thousands of others may have slipped through the cracks in the rest of the state. These voters were told they are not registered to vote and may be forced to use provisional ballots at the polls.

But if they do decide to file provisional ballots, along with a growing number of other legal voters in the state, the very same search method could disenfranchise their vote entirely. Husted has ignored warnings that the system is missing large numbers of registered voters. As the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, who first discovered the problem, explain:

Worse yet, Sec. Husted last night released a Directive with a proposed search method for Boards of Elections to verify registration status on provisional ballots. Yet Sec. Husted’s latest recommendations for search are entirely inadequate, likely to miss thousands of voters because of mis-spelling of names, variation in form of ID, failure to use all available tools for a reasonable search and other reasons. Once again, our warnings and suggestions, sent this morning, have gone unanswered. Unless this inadequacy is corrected, several thousand provisional ballots could be wrongfully rejected as “not registered.” If the election is close, this could be a source of endless legal battles.

NOVA has outlined an alternative, more accurate search method that will result in far fewer mistakes. Husted’s office has not yet responded.

Husted’s directive also jeopardizes legal ballots by shifting the burden of proof on the contested voter, even though Ohio law requires the poll worker to fill out the form. A federal judge will hear the case the morning after Election Day.

Election

The Five Big Policy Changes That Might Happen After The Election

By Josh Israel on Nov 5, 2012 at 4:51 pm

(Credit: Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic)

Beyond the federal, state, and local candidates on the ballot tomorrow, voters will consider 174 state ballot questions. While these touch on a wide array of subjects, here are five of the most significant areas of potential policy change:

1. In-state tuition for eligible undocumented immigrants in Maryland. Maryland voters will vote on Question 4, deciding whether a state DREAM Act, passed by the legislature, should go into law. If voters approve the question, eligible undocumented immigrants would be able to to pay in-state tuition at state universities. On the other hand, Montanans will vote on LR-121, a proposal to deny state services to undocumented immigrants — including state permits, licenses, and services for crime victims.

2. Marriage equality could be enacted in Maine, Maryland, and Washington. Voters in Maryland (Question 6), Maine (Question 1), and Washington (Referendum 74) will vote on whether to enact marriage equality for same-sex couples. In Maryland and Washington, the voters would be endorsing bills enacted by the state legislature, while Maine voters will consider the first effort to proactively pass marriage equality by initiative petition. Minnesotans, however, will consider a proposed marriage inequality amendment (Amendment 1). Under state law, opponents of equality will need a majority of all voters who show up — even if they don’t vote on Amendment 1 — to amend the state constitution.

3. Marijuana could be legalized in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. Colorado’s Amendment 64 and Washington’s Initiative 502 would legalize and regulate sales of small quantities of marijuana to residents 21 years and older. Oregon will consider a less-restrictive Measure 80. Additionally, Arkansas (Issue 5) and Massachusetts (Question 3) will both consider proposals to allow medical marijuana and Montana (Initiative Referendum 124) will vote on whether to allow the state legislature to substitute its own medical marijuana law for one enacted by voters in 2004.

4. Unions in California could lose their power to engage in political activity. California’s Proposition 32 would effectively prevent labor unions from collecting money from their membership to pay for political activities, while doing nothing about corporations which, thanks to Citizens United, can spend as much of their corporate treasury funds on electioneering as they wish. This misleading proposal — dressed up as a campaign finance reform effort — is being pushed by a wealthy Republican activist and the Koch-linked America’s Future Fund. On the other hand, Michigan’s Proposition 12-2 would amend the state’s constitution to protect collective bargaining rights.

5. Extreme anti-tax rules could be enacted in Florida, Michigan, and Washington. Florida voters will decide whether to accept Amendment 3, a so-called “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” which limits public spending and revenue collection through a harmful proscribed formula. Both Michigan (Proposal 12-5) and Washington (Initiative 1185) will vote on proposals to require a two-thirds legislative supermajority in order to end tax breaks or increase tax rates. Additionally, Oregon voters will decide on Measure 84, which would gradually repeals the estate tax and will cause a $120 million loss in revenue for the state every year.

These ballot initiatives have a huge potential to shape policy — and possibly the direction the nation will go on those topics.

Alyssa

Jay-Z Has “99 Problems But Mitt Ain’t One”

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Nov 5, 2012 at 4:42 pm

Jay-Z, warming up a crowd for President Obama in Ohio today, rewrote the lyrics to his much-analyzed song 99 Problems to declare that he’s got “99 problems, but Mitt ain’t one”:

I have to say that, if with the distraction of Mitt Romney off the table, we could end stop and frisk after the election and thereby get Jay-Z down to 98 problems, that would be an America I’d be pretty happy to live in.

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