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Parents Don’t Talk About Birth Control Often Enough With Their Teens

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 2, 2012 at 4:00 pm

A new survey finds that although the majority of parents are talking about sex with their teenage children, they don’t bring it up often enough and they don’t regularly address more complicated topics surrounding sexuality, like birth control.

The survey — conducted through a partnership between Planned Parenthood, the NYU Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health, and Family Circle magazine — polled parents and teens living in the same households and found significant discrepancies in what each group believed was being conveyed about sex. For instance, parents believe they are having these talks with their kids much more frequently than teens believe their parents are initiating them:

The report finds that while 42 percent of parents say they’ve talked to their teens “many times” about how to say no to sex, only 27 percent of teens agree. In fact, 34 percent of teens say they’ve “never” or “only once” talked with their mom or dad about how to delay sex. Moreover, only small percentages of teens said they plan to discuss these and other sexuality-related topics with their parents in the future. This resistance is likely a result of teens’ discomfort discussing these topics. The results also indicate that parents need to do a better job tackling more-challenging topics, including those involving how teens can act to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

“This survey shows that parents and teens have very different perceptions about how often they’re talking about sex and what’s being said during those talks,” said Leslie Kantor, vice president of Education for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “Parents think they’re giving nuanced advice, but their teens are just hearing directives. We’re offering tips that can help parents talk with their teens in a way that resonates and helps them make smart choices about relationships and sex.”

One of the most troubling findings in the survey is the fact that parents are much less likely to address contraception than other issues, like maintaining healthy relationships and navigating consensual sexual experiences. Only about 30 percent of surveyed parents said they have discussed birth control methods many times with their teens, while less than a quarter of teens said they have discussed the topic many times with their parents. On the other hand, a full 93 percent of parents responded that they believe birth control should be covered in high school sex ed programs, while 78 percent believe that information about birth control should also be provided in middle school.

Although opponents of comprehensive sexuality programs in public schools often claim that conversations about sexuality need to happen at home, these conversations are falling short. While parents agree on the importance of conveying accurate information about sexuality — as well as preventative measures like birth control and condoms — they are struggling to break through to their teens in a way that guarantees the information is being received. Integrating medically comprehensive discussions about sexual health in the classroom is one way to help ensure that, no matter what gaps emerge in the conversations between teens and their parents, teenagers are fully equipped with the information they need to make healthy choices.

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Justice

SCOTUS Preview Part IV: Voting Rights, DNA Evidence And Marriage Equality Waiting In The Wings

By Ian Millhiser and Nicole Flatow on Oct 2, 2012 at 4:00 pm

The following is the fourth in a multi-part series on the U.S. Supreme Court term that began Monday. Parts I, II and III of the series are here, here and here.

Like last year’s Supreme Court term, which began with only a handful of high-profile cases on the Court’s calendar and concluded with major attempts to invalidate decades of immigration law and nearly two centuries of unambiguous precedents establishing that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, many of the blockbuster issues the justices are likely to hear this term have not yet been added to the Court’s docket. They include at least one major gay rights case, a challenge to DNA collection by law enforcement, and an effort to gut the most important voting rights law in American history:

Marriage Equality

As a matter of legal doctrine, same-sex marriage is one of the easiest questions the justices will likely face this year. Forty years ago, the Court held that minorities who are “saddled with such disabilities, or subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment, or relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection from the majoritarian political process” are entitled to the most robust constitutional protection against discrimination. Clearly, these words describe LGBT Americans. It is unclear, however, that five justices will be as ready to bring marriage equality to Alabama as they will be to restore it in California.

When the Ninth Circuit struck down the anti-gay Proposition 8 last February, it relied on a rationale that seemed tailor-made to avoid this Alabama problem. According to the Ninth Circuit, states that once provided marriage equality may not take it away, but the question of whether equality is mandated nationwide remains open. This rationale may avoid the political morass of a broader recognition of what the Constitution provides to gay couples, although it is unlikely to last as more than the stopgap that it was obviously intended to be.

The cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act present a different problem. That law denies federal marriage benefits to gay couples, but still allows states to provide gay couples with their full constitutional rights under state law. The First Circuit struck down DOMA in an opinion written by a very prominent conservative judge, but it also relied in part on an argument that bears a disturbing resemblance to arguments conservatives used in the Affordable Care Act case to attack Medicaid. As ThinkProgress explained when this decision came down, “America should not have to choose between the blessings of equality and the certainty that our national leaders can adequately address national problems such as the deficiencies in our health care system,” but conservative justices like Kennedy and Thomas could attempt to use marriage equality as a vehicle to drastically undermine federal power — and escape the baneful eye of progressives because their decision would also usher in equal rights for many same-sex couples.

The cleanest solution remains simply declaring that the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” applies universally in all fifty states, but it is not clear that there are five justices prepared to do so.

DNA Collection

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Economy

Leading Financial CEO Calls Explosion Of High-Speed Trading ‘Terrifying’

By Travis Waldron on Oct 2, 2012 at 4:00 pm

The growth of high-frequency trading is beginning to catch the attention of federal regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission as criticism mounts that the U.S. is far behind the curve when it comes to monitoring and regulating a computer trading industry that has added threatening levels of volatility to financial markets.

That explosion has caught the attention of leaders in the financial industry too, after high-frequency trading caused multiple “flash crashes” that sent stocks plummeting. The growth of high-speed trading, as well as the potential damage it can cause, is “terrifying,” one chief executive told the Wall Street Journal:

“It’s terrifying,” said Mark Gorton, chief executive of Tower Research Capital LLC, which is among the biggest high-frequency trading businesses in the U.S. Tower uses complex computer programs to trade stocks, currencies and other securities at speeds measured in fractions of a second. Such firms have come to account for the majority of trades in the U.S. stock market and are expanding in trading of foreign currencies, commodities and fixed income.

“Everyone’s sitting there saying, ‘This could happen to me’ ” said Mr. Gorton.

Gorton isn’t the only person within the industry to express concern. Last month, one of high-frequency trading’s pioneers said that the current explosion contains “absolutely no social value.” It’s been two years since officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago warned regulators that high-speed trading was becoming increasingly dangerous.

Other countries, like Germany, have moved to curb high-speed trading, and lawmakers in the U.S. have proposed a financial transactions tax that would limit the number of computer trades by making them more costly. The SEC, though, is only “planning to catch up” with other countries, and it held meetings in Washington today to assess how it could better regulate the practice.

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Election

Key Romney Transition Aide Was Tom DeLay Aide Turned Revolving Door Lobbyist

By Josh Israel on Oct 2, 2012 at 3:37 pm

Drew Maloney

In recent weeks, Mitt Romney has dispatched a two-person team to meet with Congressional Republicans to discuss his theoretical transition should he win in November. Along with former Utah Gov. and George W. Bush administration Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt (R), that team includes Republican National Committee external affairs adviser and Romney “fixer” Drew Maloney.

Who is Maloney?

After several years working as an aide to then-Reps. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Ed Bryant (R-TN), Maloney became legislative director and administrative assistant (chief of staff) for then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) in 1999, at the age of 30. Perhaps because DeLay was convicted in 2010 of money laundering and conspiracy to illegally funnel corporate money to Texas candidates, Maloney’s official biography identifies his former boss as only the “Republican House Majority Whip,” noting that he “managed the Whip’s congressional office and played an intricate part in formulating the energy, judiciary, commerce and campaign finance reform policy initiatives.” DeLay, a consistent opponent of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law actually argued that there was “not enough money” American politics. The Texas Republican raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry and was Big Oil’s point person in Congress.

Over his two-and-a-half years in DeLay’s office, Maloney was a frequent traveler to exotic places on industry’s dime. Among the highlights were week-long trips to the United Kingdom ($3,845, paid for by the Nuclear Energy Institute) and Brazil ($8,342, bankrolled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce). These controversial junkets were banned in 2007 by the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

In 2002, Maloney traveled through the revolving door from Congress to federal lobbying. As managing director of the Federalist Group — now Ogilvy Government Relations — Maloney quickly began representing the energy industry before the Republican Congress he had just left.

In June 2002, Maloney organized an energy industry golf fundraising event for his former boss, DeLay. When the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct later investigated the event, Maloney told the ethics panel that he had asked companies to give $25,000 to $50,000 each to DeLay’s fundraising committees, including his Texans For A Republican Majority PAC (TRMPAC), which could accept unlimited “soft money” donations from corporations. While the ethics committee did not find the solicitation was itself improper, it did determine that Maloney’s fundraiser event for DeLay was “was not consistent with House standards of conduct providing that fundraising activities should not involve even an appearance that donors are being provided with special access to a Member in his or her official capacity.”

Three months later, Maloney suggested to Delay’s fundraising team a group of companies with “asbestos problems” which might support TRMPAC out of interest in tort reform.

While Maloney stepped down from his job as CEO at Ogilvy Government Relations this June to take his apparently unpaid position at the Republican National Committee, the clients he represented in 2012 include a wide swath of dirty energy companies and Wall Street banks who would stand to gain from Romney’s deregulatory approach. They included the American Petroleum Institute, Chevron, Hess, Excelon, Sempra, and GenOn Energy, as well as Blackstone Group, Highstar Capital, National Bank, and Visa. His client list and record are yet another indication that profit for Wall Street and Big Oil would be the priorities for a Romney administration.

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LGBT

Another Conservative Group Threatens Lawsuit Of California Ex-Gay Ban

By Zack Ford on Oct 2, 2012 at 3:37 pm

The conservative Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) has joined the Liberty Counsel in calling for a lawsuit challenging California’s new ban on ex-gay therapy for minors. PJI helped the ex-gay professional network NARTH oppose the bill, so it’s no surprise that PJI president Brad Dacus parroted NARTH’s claim that sexual abuse can cause homosexuality:

DACUS: Of all the freedom-killing bills we have seen in our legislature the last several years, this is among the worst. This outrageous bill makes no exceptions for young victims of sexual abuse who are plagued with unwanted same-sex attraction, nor does it respect the consciences of mental health professionals who work in a church. We are filing suit to defend families, children, and religious freedom. This unprecedented bill is outrageously unconstitutional.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights’ Executive Director Kate Kendell released the following statement countering the proposed lawsuits:

KENDELL: This lawsuit is a desperate, last ditch effort to defend the indefensible. The plain fact is that every mainstream medical and mental health association in the country has warned that these practices are ineffective and dangerous. The state has a clear duty to protect minors from harm, and that is exactly what this law does. NCLR is committed to doing all we can to defend this law while, at the same time, we work to pass similar laws in other states. We will not rest until this “quackery,” as Governor Brown has called this practice, is illegal throughout our nation.

It’s also misleading for Dacus to claim that “mental health professionals who work in a church” will be impacted. Only licensed or credentialed counselors fall under the jurisdiction of the law, so individuals who offer ex-gay therapy in the context of an unlicensed ministry will be unaffected.

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Alyssa

Why ‘Three Parts Dead’ Is One Of The Best Fantasy Novels You’ll Read This Year

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Oct 2, 2012 at 3:16 pm

I got an early birthday present today with the publication of Three Parts Dead, the first novel by my friend Max Gladstone, and a book I’ve gotten to read in various iterations over the years. It’s the story of Tara Abernathy, a necromancer who gets hired by a McKinsey-like firm called Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, and for her first assignment, finds herself staffed to a city called Alt Coulumb, which has a rather significant problem: God, specifically Kos the Everburning, who keeps Alt Coulumb powered, is dead. With the help of her boss, Elayne Kevarian, an anxious junior priest named Abelard who was on watch when Kos died, a vampire, a cop with an unfortunate addiction, and some gargoyles Tara gets to know Alt Coulumb, a rich and fully-realized fictional city, and learns a lot about the nature of faith.

That latter aspect is a significant part of what makes Three Parts Dead so excellent. The novel and the world it explores is based on an economic understanding of faith, and the relationships between gods and their worshippers, as well as between humans themselves, are significantly governed by contracts freighted with power and significance. Max writes:

Gods, however, made deals. It was the essence of their power. They accepted a tribe’s sacrifice and in turn protected its hungers from wolves andw ild beasts. They received the devotion of their people and gave back grace. A successful god arranged to receive more than he returned to the world. Thus your power and your people grew together, slowly, from family to tribe, from tribe to city, from city to nation, and so on to infinity. Nice strategy, but slow. Theologians centuries back had developed a faster method. One god gave of his power to another, or to a group of worshipers, on a promise of repayment in kind, and of more soulstuff than had initially lent. Gods grew knit to gods, pantheons to pantheons, expecting, and indeed requiring, their services to be returned. Power flowed, and divine might increased beyond measure. There were risks, though. If a goddess owed more than she could support, she might die as easily as a human who shed too much blood.

After Tara’s graduation from the Hidden Schools, a magical academy inspired in part by Max’s wife’s experience in law school, and before she joins Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, she works as a country magician.
“Ned Thorpe lost half the profit from his lemon crop every year, due to a bad arbitration clause in his reseller’s contract. Ghosts stole dead men’s bequests through loopholes in poorly written wills,” she reflects of her work. “Shopkeeps came to her to draft their pacts, farmers for help investing the scraps of soulstuff they eked out of the dry soil.” But she’s something of an atheist. “Millions of people live without gods,” she reflects. “They live good lives. They love, and they laugh, and they don’t miss churches and bells and sacrifice.” When she gets to Alt Coulumb and starts sorting through the web of contracts Kos signed before his death, the contracts she has to maintain, and her understanding of worship, gets rather more complicated.
Read more

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Economy

Paul Ryan: Only Business Owners Work Hard, Make ‘This Country Grow’

By Igor Volsky on Oct 2, 2012 at 2:57 pm

On Labor Day, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) characterized the holiday — “a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country” — as a celebration not of the worker, but of management and CEOs.

During a rally in Iowa on Tuesday afternoon, Paul Ryan expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that business owners are the only Americans working hard and taking risks to make “this country grow.” The comments echoed Mitt Romney’s now infamous 47 percent remark and suggested that Ryan too believes that many Americans are too lazy or simply refuse to work long hours:

RYAN: And when he says, if you have a small business you didn’t build that. Look, all we mean is that nobody else gets up at 5:00 AM and opens the doors. Nobody else works 7 days a week. Nobody else takes the risks. Nobody else meets the payroll. Nobody else goes to the bank. These are businesses that are built by the sweat, toil, and hard work of workers in this country of businesses in this country and that’s what makes this country grow.

Watch it:

Indeed, all Americans are working more today than ever before — and have some of the highest productivity rates in the world. As one Brookings study found, median wages for two-parent families have increased 23 percent since 1975, but not as a result of higher wages. “Rather, these families are just working more. In 2009, for instance, the typical two-parent family worked 26 percent longer than the typical family in 1975.”

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Health

Medicaid Official: States Should Accept ‘Unusually Generous Federal Resources’ To Insure Poorest Residents

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Oct 2, 2012 at 2:00 pm

In the first official guidance about the health care reform law since the Supreme Court ruling that upheld its constitutionality, the Obama Administration is warning states that they will risk losing federal funding if they do not move to expand the Medicaid program under Obamacare. Although Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion would give states federal money to extend health coverage to millions of low-income Americans who cannot currently afford it, Republican governors have resisted accepting the expansion because they say it costs their states too much money.

But Cindy Mann, the federal official in charge of Medicaid, is reminding lawmakers that rejecting the expansion will actually be more costly for states than proceeding with it, because they will lose the federal funding for the expanded populations under their Medicaid programs:

Under the new law, she said, the federal government will pay the entire cost of Medicaid coverage for newly eligible beneficiaries for three years, from 2014 to 2016. The federal share will decline to 95 percent in 2017, 94 percent in 2018, 93 percent in 2019 and 90 percent in 2020 and later years.

The federal payment rates “are tied by law to the specific calendar years noted,” Ms. Mann said. So if a state defers the expansion of Medicaid to 2016, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for only one year. After 2016, the federal share will drop to the levels specified by Congress, and states will be responsible for the remainder.

“I am hopeful that state leaders will take advantage of the opportunity provided to insure their poorest families with these unusually generous federal resources,” said Ms. Mann, a deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Studies have estimated that 21 to 45 states would save money by taking the Medicaid expansion, with savings across state budgets potentially reaching into the billions. And if GOP governors don’t heed Mann’s advice and eventually opt to expand Medicaid in their states, they will not only be making an unwise financial choice — they will also be denying millions of the poorest Americans access to essential health services.

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