ThinkProgress Logo

Health

Why Emergency Contraception Should Be Available To All Women Over The Counter

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Dec 7, 2012 at 7:00 pm

Since Friday is the one-year anniversary of the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to overrule the FDA’s recommendations on emergency contraception — choosing to restrict access to Plan B for those under the age of 17 even though the FDA confirms it’s safe for women of all ages to use — health advocates are marking it as Emergency Contraception Day of Action to pressure the Obama administration to reverse its policy. The Center for American Progress has released an infographic to highlight why the age restriction on Plan B is a harmful policy that prevents young people from accessing the contraceptive methods they need:

Despite widespread information about the scientific nature of emergency contraception, it is simply a strong dose of birth control that does not actually induce abortions.

Health

Federal Government Will Expand Health Benefits For Veterans Suffering From Brain Injuries

By Sy Mukherjee on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:45 pm

The New York Times reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs today will propose new rules and regulations aimed at expanding health care benefits for current and former service members suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

The new regulations will include certain forms of “Parkinsonism, unprovoked seizures, certain dementias, depression, and hormone deficiency diseases related to the hypothalamus, pituitary or adrenal glands” as medical conditions eligible for benefits to any veteran with a brain injury — without burdening veterans to prove that their condition is directly caused by military service:

Since 2000, more than 250,000 service members — some still on active duty — have received diagnoses of traumatic brain injury, or T.B.I., according to the Defense Department. Though T.B.I. is commonly viewed as resulting from blast exposure, the vast majority of those injuries were diagnosed in nondeployed troops who were involved in vehicle crashes, training accidents or sports injuries.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says that a much smaller number of veterans — about 51,000 — are currently receiving benefits for service-connected traumatic brain injuries. However the department acknowledges that thousands more troops with T.B.I. may be eligible for the expanded benefits.

Veterans of prior wars will also be eligible for the benefits, if they can demonstrate that a traumatic brain injury was connected to their military service.

Under current rules, a veteran with one of the five illnesses has to provide medical evidence that the disease is the result of military service in order to receive veterans’ benefits.

The new rule would potentially speed up and simplify their cases, provided a veteran could first demonstrate a service-connected traumatic brain injury. Once that is established, the department will accept without further evidence that any of those five diseases was caused by the T.B.I., making the veteran eligible for additional compensation and health care for that particular disease.

While the expanded benefits will give America’s veterans some much-needed peace of mind, the rules will still place certain limitations related to the severity of the diseases being treated. And service members face many physical and mental health risks not necessarily associated with a traumatic brain injury. The number of suicides in the armed forces is on the rise, and retired military leaders have called on Congress to address the epidemic.

Economy

Low-Wage Jobs Don’t Just Harm Workers — They Harm Their Children

By Jeff Spross on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:45 pm

The recent report by the Pew Research Center that births per every 1000 American women have dropped to historic lows kicked off a flurry of concern amongst conservatives that American culture is beginning to undervalue the future. However, that concern ignores the rather dismal job the country’s economy is doing to care for the children Americans are already having — and the way conservative policy preferences are exacerbating the problem. In particular, Amanda Marcotte flagged a recent round-up of studies at The American Prospect detailing the ways low-wage jobs not only harm the workers who hold them, but can harm the children of those workers as well.

One out of every five children ages 12 to 17 currently live in a low-income family — one making twice the federal poverty level or less. And as the recent round of labor protests against Walmart and the fast food industry highlighted, two out of every three jobs the United States is predicted to produce over the next decade will be low-wage and will not require more than a high school diploma. The proliferation of low-wage work as an ever greater share of America’s job supply can have all sorts of damaging effects on the country’s future generations, as the paper found:

Low-wage work prevents parents from participating in their children’s development. Many low-income parents face longer hours, unusual hours, inflexible schedules, and lack benefits such as paid sick days, paid medical and parental lave, and vacation. This prevents them from providing the same attention and care to their children as higher income parents — often forcing a choice between their family and their income. They’re often less able to involve themselves in their child’s schooling, or to even ensure the child regularly attends class and completes homework. The kinds of jobs to which low-income parents are constrained are even associated with higher levels of depression, which of course effects the emotional health of the family as a whole.

Children of low-wage parents are often forced into the labor market early themselves. Bringing in enough money for the family to make ends meet can often force low-income youth themselves into the labor market prematurely, which can damage their socialization, development, and schoolwork. While studies of the effect of work on youth is mixed — with some positive results in terms of experience, literacy, and positive social influences — multiple investigations have also found a negative correlation between how much young people work at a job and how well they perform in high school. In one investigation of teens who dropped out of high school, 29 percent cited family concerns as a reason for leaving. The demands placed on low-wage parents can force their children into roles caring for other family members at a young age, or to take care of themselves.

Children of low-wage parents are more likely to face educational difficulties. Low-income youth are three times more likely to drop out of high school than middle-class youth, and six times as likely as young people from high-income families. Less than half of low-income youth between the ages of 18 and 24 remain consistently involved in school or connected to the labor market. As for higher education, a 2010 paper found that three quarters of students listed their family as “their top source for college support” and “the place they turn most for help” — precisely the kind of support low-wage work can prevent a parent from providing.

These trade-offs can trap parents in economic or familial hardship. Often times, advancing out of low-wage jobs requires an employee to take on longer or more unusual hours — something parents are less able to do. Thus a feedback loop begins in which low-wage parents must sacrifice the developmental needs of their children to raise the family’s standard of living, or in which parents refuse offers of higher-paying jobs precisely because they do not want to leave their children without the attention they need.

Children of low-wage parents are more at risk for health problems. Children of low-income parents are more likely to suffer from obesity, and female teenagers in low-income families are more likely to become pregnant, again largely because of how the demands of low-wage work can hamper parental involvement in their children’s lives.

All these effects are particualrly pronounced for minority, immigrant, and single-parent families. The paper — by Lisa Dodson at Boston College and Randy Albelda at the University of Massachusetts, along with Diana Salas Coronado and Marya Mtshali — recommends policy responses including more paid sick and parental leave for workers, more vacation time, more schedule flexibility for workers, and efforts to increase hourly wages.

Justice

Former Bush Attorney General: Federal Marijuana Law Is A ‘Mistake,’ But I’m For It Anyway

By Nicole Flatow on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:30 pm

Former George W. Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told CNN Friday he believes federal law making marijuana illegal is a “mistake,” although he quickly backtracked claiming that marijuana legalization could impose health care costs outside of states where it is legalized. Addressing questions from CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield about how the federal government will respond to laws in Washington and Colorado that legalize and regulate marijuana, Gonzales noted that current Department of Justice officials are tasked with carrying out the federal Controlled Substances Act, regardless of their personal views. But, he added:

You ask me whether I have personal views about it, I certainly do. But as a general matter, it does represent the will of the people through the actions by Congress. I personally believe it’s a mistake.

I certainly, being a former state official of Texas, I certainly believe in the rights of states to make these kinds of decisions for their own people.

Watch it:

Later in the interview, Gonzales backed off his initial comment, explaining that while he believes in states’ right to enact marijuana legislation, he worries about the unavoidable interstate health care costs that would result from “prolonged marijuana use”:

From my own perspective, if in fact the people in Colorado and Washington state, they want to smoke marijuana and it doesn’t affect me, as a general matter I’d say OK, again putting aside the fact that there’s a federal law.

The concern that I have is that there are many reports that say that prolonged marijuana use results in long-term health care issues. And to the extent that someone smokes marijuana in Washington state and they do it for a number of years and they develop medical problems and so they need some kind of unique extraordinary health care and somehow my tax dollars that I pay to the federal government find their way into the state of Washington state to help pay for the health care, I have no interest in my tax dollars being used to subsidize marijuana use in a different state. And so if we could keep that conduct within the parameters of that state, I think it makes a much stronger argument for respecting the decision and the will of the people in those states but I don’t think you can do that.

Gonzales is right that the market for health care often crosses state lines – the costs of health care in Colorado can impact Americans throughout the country. Indeed, this fact explains why the Affordable Care Act is constitutional under the Commerce Clause – a controversy the loyal Republican declined to weigh in on before the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision upholding the law.

More fundamentally, though, Gonzales’ policy argument assumes not only that marijuana has more long-term health effects than any of a host of other activities not subject to federal prohibition, from drinking alcohol to consuming sweets, but also that prohibition is an effective mechanism for curbing health care concerns. More than 40 years after President Nixon launched the War on Drugs, drug abuse has remained stable, while the profits from this industry are funneled into illicit cartel and gang activity. It is because this approach has failed so miserably at addressing public health and safety goals that the Washington and Colorado laws were proposed.

NEWS FLASH

NOM Plans To Drive Wedge Right Into Middle Of Gay Community | The National Organization for Marriage made news earlier this year when a 2009 memo revealed the group’s intentions to drive a wedge between the gay community and people of color, a tactic they followed through on throughout this year’s marriage campaigns. Now, it seems the group is planning a new wedge strategy right through the gay community. Jeremy Hooper caught wind that NOM has purchased web domains for titles like “Gays Against Gay Marriage,” suggesting future intention to highlight gay people who oppose their own equality.

Security

House Intel Chair Lowers The Bar For U.S. Intervention In Syria

By Hayes Brown on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:09 pm

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI)

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has drawn his own new “red-line” for U.S. intervention in Syria, one that sets the onus for attack far lower than the White House’s.

Rogers, speaking at a conference in Bahrain, said that “the most dangerous days of desperation are starting to take hold” inside Syria which may change the calculus of government. In light of this, Rogers has made clear that he believes the intelligence he’s receiving may call for more direct action by the United States:

“As a coalition, we will have the moral obligation (to intervene) if we can say with even a moderate degree of certainty that these weapons have been prepared and are put in an arsenal for use,” Rogers said. “There are things that we should do, that would meet the world’s moral obligation to prevent the use of chemical weapons that would take the lives of tens of thousands and injure millions of Syrians.”

Rogers comments come at a time when reports are coming out of Syria that chemical weapons are already being prepared for launch. According to sources in the Pentagon, the chemicals that create sarin gas have already begun to be mixed and missiles capable of carrying the concoctions are being readied. Members of the Obama administration, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in the last few days that the use of chemical weapons against his people would be the “red-line” to prompt U.S. intervention. Under Rogers’ standard, the United States should currently be in the process of launching military strikes against Syria.

According to reports, the United States and its allies have been planning for contingencies where seizing Assad’s chemical weapons would be necessary to keep them out of the hands of terrorist groups. While chemical weapons, as banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention, have a historically low rate of fatality when used in war, they prompt a worry among observers due to the painful after-effects they produce, their indiscriminate nature when used among civilians, and the ease of use of such weapons by non-state actors.

(HT: Foreign Policy)

Alyssa

Next Week

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:02 pm

I’m running off to Charleston for a long weekend, so I’ll be late to Homeland—though if the world explodes on Sunday night, please do email me and let me know—and full-service blogging won’t resume until Wednesday. Have a good few days off, y’all. I promise to tell you all about the Charleston Museum, the jazz, and the food when I get back.

Health

Republican Leadership Split On Whether To Protect Native American Women

By Guest Blogger on Dec 7, 2012 at 4:50 pm

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager of the Half in Ten campaign for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With only three weeks left for Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), one man is standing in its way: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). The House passed a version of VAWA last May by a narrow 222-205 vote, which stripped protections for LGBT, immigrant and Native American women included in an earlier Senate version of the bill. The Senate version passed by a now-rare 68 vote super majority, including every female Senator.

So, what’s the hold up? Protections for Native American women. As law enforcement, victims, and advocates have turned up pressure to pass the widely-supported Senate bill before the end of the year, other Republican House leaders have changed course and offered a compromise. Two members of senior Republican leadership, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Tom Cole (R-OK), an enrolled member of the Chicasaw Nation, introduced a stand alone bill that responds to their caucus’ concern about the Senate bill. The concern is over a provision that restores local tribal authority to prosecute domestic violence against Native American women. The Issa-Cole compromise adds protections for defendants with a new option to remove the case to federal court. In fact, Issa tried to offer this language as an amendment during committee consideration of the bill, but was shut down by Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) who didn’t even allow a vote on it.

Although it is expected that the Majority Leader has worked through a compromise with advocates on the LGBT and immigration provisions, he has dug in his heels on stripping the Native American protections, even in light of the Issa-Cole compromise language.

After an election rife with statements splitting hairs over the definition of rape, and justifying unfair treatment of women, Republicans are scrambling to mend their party’s image when it comes to women and the inability to compromise. With few work days left in the 112th Congress, time is running out for this landmark legislation that strengthens law enforcement and funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence. That may explain why Republican leaders are now at odds with each other over holding up a domestic violence bill that sailed through Congress three times before. Even Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), who offered a similar stripped-down version of VAWA during consideration in the Senate, ended up voting for the bill that included full protections for Native, immigrant and LGBT victims. As the Majority Leader ponders how to move forward, he may want to take a cue from Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), another fellow Republican: “Rape is rape, and there’s no splitting hairs over rape.”

Alyssa

NFL Players Union Opposes Michigan’s ‘Right-To-Work’ Push: ‘We Don’t Think Workers Deserve This’

By Travis Waldron on Dec 7, 2012 at 4:32 pm

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) attempt to push a union-busting “right-to-work” law through the state legislature this week was met with considerable opposition from labor groups, who have protested en masse both outside and inside the state capitol in Lansing since Snyder announced his support for the law on Thursday.

Today, the legislation has a new foe: the National Football League Players Association, which represents players on Michigan’s NFL franchise, the Detroit Lions, and has come out against “right-to-work” before.

“We stood up against this in the past, and we stand against it in its current form in Michigan,” George Atallah, the association’s assistant executive director for external affairs, told ThinkProgress in a phone interview. “Our leadership and players are always proud to stand with workers in Michigan and everywhere else. We don’t think voters chose this, and we don’t think workers deserve this.”

The NFLPA is no stranger to labor disputes. NFL owners locked out players before the start of the 2011 season, and the players association was vocal in its support of the NFL Referees Association when the league locked out its officials at the beginning of this season.

Last year, the NFLPA opposed Indiana’s push for “right-to-work” just weeks before Indianapolis hosted Super Bowl XLVI. “We share all the same issues that the American people share,” NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith told The Nation at the time. “We want decent wages. We want a fair pension. We want to be taken care of when we get hurt. We want a decent and safe working environment. So when you look at proposed legislation in a place like Indiana that wants to call it something like ‘Right to Work,’ I mean, let’s just put the hammer on the nail. It’s untrue.”

Players, including Chicago Bears quarterback and Indiana native Jay Cutler, also spoke out against the Indiana law. While in Indianapolis, Smith marched with the UNITE-HERE union when its hotel workers were protesting low wages, missed overtime pay, and the firing of contract workers at local Hyatt hotels.

With such a short time table between introduction of the Michigan legislation and expected passage, Atallah said the players association had no plans for public actions against the right-to-work proceedings, but he iterated that the union stands with workers in Michigan. “We disagree with it and we’ll continue to stand with Michigan’s workers,” Atallah said.

Update

In an email to ThinkProgress, Major League Baseball Players Association Executive Director Michael Weiner said his union also opposes the “right-to-work” push.

“Major League Baseball Players Association has always stood by the principle that all who reap the many benefits of union representation should contribute to their operation,” Weiner said. “All union members — either auto workers, teachers, firefighters, or the American League champion Detroit Tigers — oppose legislation designed to weaken unions. The economic health of our country cannot be revitalized by depriving workers of their voice in the workplace.”

Climate Progress

What Are the Near-Term Climate Pearl Harbors? What Will Take Us from Procrastination To Action?

By Joe Romm on Dec 7, 2012 at 4:12 pm

“So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent…. Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger….  The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close.  In its place we are entering a period of consequences….  We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now….”

– Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936, House of Commons

What kind of climatic mini-catastrophes might move public and policymaker opinion over the next decade?  Please share your thoughts below.

“The battleship USS Arizona belches smoke as it topples over into the sea during a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a Dec. 7, 1941 file photo. The ship sank with more than 80 percent of its 1,500-man crew, including Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd. The attack, which left 2,343 Americans dead and 916 missing, broke the backbone of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and forced America out of a policy of isolationism.” (AP Photo/File)

Today marks the 71th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  In the wake of the extreme weather in the past two years, including superstorm Sandy — all of which served to increase concern about global warming among the public and some politicians — I’m updating my post from 3 years ago, “What are the near-term climate Pearl Harbors?” (which I had updated already last year).

The genesis of the original piece started with an October 2008 post, “Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 7: The harsh lessons of the financial bailout.”  It concluded that a key driver of serious government action is “bad things must be happening to regular people right now.”  Shortly after that I wrote a post on the paper “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” by Hansen et al.  I noted the authors conclude:

The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture CO2, is herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.

A NY Times blogger posed this question, “What kind of wake-up call does Mr. Romm think is conceivable on a time scale relevant to near-term policy?”

My reply was “Multiple Pearl Harbors over the next decade — half or more of these happening” followed by a list of 9 items.

Before repeating that list, let me note that I pointed out that one of the media’s greatest failings is ‘underinforming’ people that “Bad things are happening to real people right now thanks in part to human-caused climate change — droughts, wildfires, flooding, extreme weather, and on and on.” I listed a perfect example: “My article criticizing the NYT on the bark beetle story“.  Things hadn’t changed much by last December but the U.S. weather has been so relentlessly extreme that media coverage has improved a tad in recent months (see the July post, Every Network Gets Extreme Weather Story Right, ‘Now’s The Time We Start Limiting Manmade Greenhouse Gases’ — ABC.)

If FDR had said, “Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked. But we’re still working to identify the perpetrators.”  Well, not bloody much would have happened.

Of course, the U.S. military had some warnings, but there was a massive volume of intelligence signals (“noise”) coming in.  Roberta Wohlstetter wrote in 1962: “To discriminate significant sound against this background of noise, one has to be listening for something or for one of several things….   One needs not only an ear but a variety of hypotheses that guide observation.”

The Japanese commander of the attack, Mitsuo Fuchida, was quite surprised he had achieved surprise.  Before the Russo-Japanese war of 1904, the Japanese Navy had used a surprise attack to destroy the Russian Pacific Fleet at anchor in Port Arthur.  Fuchida asked, “Had these Americans never heard of Port Arthur?“

So if you have the right hypothesis or worldview, you can make sense out of “noisy” warnings.  If you don’t, then you will be oblivious even to signs that in retrospect will seem quite obvious.  Certainly future generations will be stunned by our obliviousness.

In the case of the almost non-stop series of “off the charts” extreme climatic events that many opinion leaders seem shocked about over and over again — they aren’t merely “explainable and predictable” after the fact.  They were very often predicted or warned about well in advance by serious people.  The powers that be simply choose to ignore the warnings because they don’t fit their world view.

Unfortunately for the nation and the world, there is no American Churchill on climate.  Quite the reverse:

That lack of statesmenship means the country is not going to act on the basis of the increasingly dire warning of scientists (see Lonnie Thompson on why climatologists are speaking out: “Virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization”).

No, things are going to have to get worse.  And it certainly will take more than one climate Pearl Harbor.  I fear it will take most of these happening over the span of a few years:

Read more

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up