STUDY: Treatment And Testing Are Not Curbing HIV Rates Among Gay Men In The UK

By Zack Ford on Feb 1, 2013 at 3:20 pm

A new study published today in The Lancet shows that despite increases in treatment and testing, HIV infection rates among gay and bi men in the United Kingdom have not declined. Testing rates quadrupled and treatment increased from 69 to 80 percent, but infection rates in England and Wales have flat-lined between 2,300 and 2,500 every year. A November report showed that more UK gay and bi men were diagnosed with HIV in 2011 than in any previous year on record.

The main problem the researchers report is that “a large proportion of new infections come from men who are recently infected themselves, so testing and treatment, while vital, are not the only answer.” If men are transmitting the virus before they even realize they have it, then education about responsible behavioral choices will be necessary to curb the rate beyond where it has flat-lined. Indeed, researchers cite two key challenges: men are having more unsafe sex because they don’t view HIV infection as deadly and internet dating sites make finding sexual partners increasingly easier.

Yusef Azad, director of policy at the National AIDS Trust, called for a “new approach to prevention for gay and bisexual men, which, in addition to continuing condom promotion,” will help address specific issues like drug use, mental health issues, and the gay scene.

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Alyssa

What ’30 Rock’ Taught Me About Television

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 1, 2013 at 3:07 pm

When 30 Rock premiered on October 11, 2006, I wasn’t a television critic. I barely had the credential that Tracy Jordan would later use to try to sell his Thomas Jefferson biopic, “television watcher.” I was newishly single, living in a newish city, and had recently become the first person in my family to acquire a subscription to cable. As I settled into the rhythms of adult life, one of the things I learned was how to watch television*, whether I was marathoning Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (a useful source of valuable tips for how to avoid being murdered in the big city), scarfing down Sex and the City, which I got on disc from the Blockbuster that once stood on a corner two blocks away, and discovering the wonders of my first broadcast television season.

30 Rock was the first network show I fell in love with, the first thing—in the days before I got a DVR—that I made appointment viewing, that I introduced to my parents. In retrospect, it was perfect training for a television critic. 30 Rock was a clinic in how to balance long-arc character development with a mind-boggling joke density and quality A, B, and C plotting week to week. But it was also a show that taught me how television got made, and that ended up informing my reporting about what happens along the way from a show’s conception to its arrival and survival on the air.

30 Rock didn’t just have a novel-for-television setting: it drew its procedural elements from actual and substantial issues in television. Over the past several years, and aided by the rise of social media and the infiltration of general-interest media sites by trade reporting about everything from ratings data to showrunner hirings and firings, knowing a lot about the business of television has become part of being an engaged television fan. But for me, and I’d imagine for a lot of other people who were watching the show simply as fans rather than as reporters, 30 Rock was an early introduction to a lot of the facts about how the television industry worked. 30 Rock got episodes out of the fact that product integration is both a cost savings for shows, and the result of corporate consolidation that made media companies part of larger conglomerates; that women and people of color in television writers’ rooms are often paid by diversity fellowships that get them their initial jobs, but are structured such that studios have disincentives to promote them to positions where their salaries wouldn’t be covered by fellowships; that Standards and Practices departments can be enormously arbitrary places that question everything from the intensity of the yellow in a urine sample to a couple’s shift in position during sex. The show made clear that these rules and practices were hilariously arbitrary, but also that they were something you had to accept if you wanted to work in the business, and the only way to live with them was to laugh at them, very hard, and to see what space it was possible to create around them.

But for all that 30 Rock could be hilariously pessimistic about the conditions under which television was created, and the extent to which those conditions ground down even the people who had the greatest hopes for what they could do with the form on network, the series has gone out on a subtly hopeful and ambitious note. Sometimes, it suggested, when Jack Donaghy turned NBC over to Kenneth Parcells, people who adore television get to make it for a living. And even if Kenneth represents a kind of cheerful mediocrity—he presented Liz with a long list of “TV no-no words” when she tried to pitch him a new project after TGS ended—30 Rock suggested that progress will continue anyway.
Read more

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Health

Thanks To Anti-Planned Parenthood Crusade, Texas Women Have Fewer Doctors To Choose From

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Feb 1, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Texas officials were so insistent on defunding Planned Parenthood, they dismantled the state’s federally-funded Women’s Health Program — a network of doctors that provide care for low-income women — so they could relaunch a new program excluding the national organization. But targeting Planned Parenthood comes at a steep price for the women seeking preventative care in Texas. Even though the state initially claimed their new program would have 3,500 participating providers for women to choose from, that list has now shrunk by nearly 1,000, leaving women in the state with even fewer options for their doctors.

Texas relaunched its state-run Women’s Health Program at the beginning of January. Even though the state has always maintained its new program will be able to meet the same demand as the old one did, that hasn’t proven to be the case so far. The first list of providers the state provided was inaccurate and confusing. And now that the state has released a revised list, the Texas Tribune reports it’s significantly smaller than promised:

The Texas WHP replaced the federal Medicaid WHP on Jan. 1. The program’s Affiliate Ban Rule, which prohibits providers associated with abortion clinics from participation, forced the exclusion of 50 Planned Parenthood clinics that participated in the former Medicaid program. Without Planned Parenthood, women’s health advocates have argued that the state will not be able to adequately serve low-income women enrolled in the program.

The HHSC had previously stated that the Texas WHP had 3,500 participating providers, roughly 1,000 more than the number of providers that participated in the former Medicaid WHP. That list has shrunk to 2,448 doctors and clinics, as 965 providers said they would not accept WHP patients, despite being certified for the program. The contact information for 700 other providers has also been updated on the state’s website.

From the beginning of Texas’ crusade against Planned Parenthood, there have been questions about the state’s ability to effectively relaunch its health program without federal funding. Last year, Gov. Rick Perry (R) convened a smoke-and-mirrors press conference to announce that the new Women’s Health Program was ready to go — even though it wasn’t.

Up to 50,000 women are being forced to search for new doctors this year now that they can no longer get their care at Planned Parenthood. To keep up with the increased demand from new patients, other providers in the Women’s Health Program may be forced to take up to five times the number of their usual Medicaid patients.

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Justice

Nevada Republicans Embrace Path To Citizenship For Undocumented Immigrants As Civil Rights Issue

By Rebecca Leber on Feb 1, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Nevada Republicans became the first state GOP party to endorse comprehensive immigration with a clear path to citizenship. In a statement, officials said the GOP’s hard line on immigration reform conflicts with the “party’s historic commitment to civil rights.” They proposed some of the same tenets in the Senate’s bipartisan framework:

The GOP has increasingly found itself in positions that do not meet the demographic realities of the State’s electorate. These positions also conflict with our party’s historic commitment to civil rights. To that end, Republicans must become more inclusive, reflecting our desire to secure a better life for all Americans, and equally important, for our children.

We support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants that would require registering with the government; and, include the ability to communicate in English, performing military or other community service, and proof of financial responsibility as required by the USCIS. One hundred and fifty years ago, our country fought a bloody Civil War. That war affirmed we have only one class of citizens — American.

Nevada has the nation’s fifth-highest Latino population, at 26.5 percent. Immigrants play a major role in the state’s economy, as well, contributing $1.6 billion each year in state and local tax revenue.

Not everyone on the right is ready to embrace an issue most Americans view as common sense. But after Republicans’ major losses among Latino voters in 2012, conservatives began to embrace comprehensive reform, including Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (R).

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LGBT

Hawaii’s Only Republican Senator Admits Marriage Equality Will Pass

By Zack Ford on Feb 1, 2013 at 2:25 pm

Hawai’i's state Senate has only one Republican, and Sen. Sam Slom has conceded that proposed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage will likely pass:

SLOM: Same sex marriage probably will pass this year. You’ve got a preponderance of Democrats who support it in both Houses, you’ve got the Congressional delegation, you’ve got our Governor!

Despite his concession to inevitability, Slom will still oppose the bill:

SLOM: To me, I don’t care if gay people want to get married but to force other people to do things or to subsidize certain activities– that I oppose.

In other words, he believes that it’s perfectly fair to provide security and support for opposite-sex families but not for same-sex families. Fortunately, his position does not have the support to get anywhere.

Hearing dates have still not been set for the proposed bills.

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Economy

What The FTC’s Latest Settlement Says About The State Of Mobile Privacy

By Andrea Peterson on Feb 1, 2013 at 2:15 pm

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, who announced he would be stepping down this month.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that it settled charges against the operator of the Path social networking app for allegedly deceiving consumers. The app was collecting personal information from mobile devices address books without the users’ consent and collecting the personal information of around 3,000 children under the age of 13 in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule.

Under the settlement, Path will pay an $800,000 fine, establish a comprehensive privacy program, and be required to obtain independent privacy assessments every other year for the next two decades. A report in February of last year detailed the disappointing privacy protections in apps aimed at children, such as those alleged in today’s settlement.

The announcement came at the same time the FTC released a report of recommendations for privacy protections on mobile devices, which grew out of a May 2012 workshop with industry and consumer representatives, and provides non-binding guidance on mobile privacy for consumers, app developers, and platform development — much of it focused on providing adequate disclosure about what information is being collected and for what purpose, rather than directly limiting the collection of data.

Forty-five percent of adults in the U.S. and two-thirds of young adults owned a smartphone as of September 2012, and those users care about the security of their personal information according to the press release accompanying today’s report:

“[...]57 percent of all app users have either uninstalled an app over concerns about having to share their personal information, or declined to install an app in the first place for similar reasons. Less than one-third of Americans feel they are in control of their personal information on their mobile devices.”

But while today’s settlement announcement and recommendations represent a step in the right direction for mobile privacy, their limited scope provides even more evidence that the FTC doesn’t have the authority necessary to protect American consumers in the digital age. An $800,000 fine to a company valued at $250 million amounts to a slap on the wrist and the mobile privacy recommendations are just that: Non-binding guidelines for behavior, not actual privacy standards mobile app or platform developers will be held accountable to.

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Security

GOP Senator: Don’t Filibuster Hagel Confirmation

By Ben Armbruster on Feb 1, 2013 at 2:00 pm

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO)

A Republican senator who serves on the Armed Services Committee said on Friday he does not believe Chuck Hagel should need 60 votes to be confirmed as the next Secretary of Defense.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said on MSNBC this morning that he does not intend for vote for Hagel; but when asked if he would support a filibuster of the former Republican senator, Blunt said he would not and that Hagel should receive an up-or-down vote:

BLUNT: I will be voting no in the committee and then assuming there’s a vote on the floor I’ll be voting no on the floor.

CHUCK TODD: Well there’s two ways — and there’s a third way to vote no on him which of course is the issue of a filibuster. Would you support a filibuster of Chuck Hagel’s nomination?

BLUNT: I doubt it. I doubt it. I think for somebody who’s going to be there the length of time the president serves as opposed to a Supreme Court judge, that a majority in the Senate should be able to confirm. I wouldn’t intend to be a part of that majority but certainly my strong inclination would be that this is a vote that should be done by a majority rather than a 60 vote standard and this person’s going to leave the day the president leaves that makes a difference.

Watch the clip:

While only a handful of Republicans have said they will vote against Hagel, it does appear that he will get some GOP support. And with the Democrats in the majority, it seems increasingly likely that Hagel will get confirmed.

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Health

REPORT: States Are Falling Behind In Implementing The Most Basic Obamacare Provisions

By Sy Mukherjee on Feb 1, 2013 at 1:40 pm

According to a just-released study by the Commonwealth Fund and Georgetown University, most states are woefully behind in implementing even the most basic Obamacare consumer protections.

The report finds that “only 11 states and the District of Columbia have passed rules needed to implement the law.” That means the other 39 states — which constitute an overwhelming majority of the American population — find themselves playing catch-up when it comes to enacting Obamacare’s core regulations, including provisions that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions and charging outsized premiums to elderly Americans.

It isn’t all bad news, as the study focuses on individual state efforts to change their insurance regulation rules — the federal government can still step in to enforce the measures in lieu of state action. And state insurance regulators that notice “problems in those areas – either through a review of insurer filings or through complaints from consumers – could contact insurers directly and ask that they fix the problems, or could notify the federal government, which can seek penalties against insurers that violate the health law.”

Still, the report’s findings illustrate the complexity of implementing the massive health care overhaul, which leaves a considerable amount of deference to unpredictable state governments. So far, as many as 30 GOP-led states have refused to implement Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion to help low-income Americans, and about half of U.S. states have refused to establish their own insurance marketplaces. And with 2014 fast approaching — and with it, full Obamacare implementation — many Americans may find their states unprepared for the impending changes.

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Justice

Citizens United To Supreme Court: Landmark School Desegregation Case Was Wrong

By Ian Millhiser on Feb 1, 2013 at 1:30 pm

Citizens United, the conservative group that successfully sued to enable wealthy corporations to buy elections, also has it in for same-sex couples. Yet an amicus brief they recently filed in the Supreme Court backing the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act would not simply deny marriage equality to gay people, it calls upon the Supreme Court to toss out a landmark decision ending public school segregation in the District of Columbia and declare that the federal government is free to discriminate against minorities and women:

Until May, 17, 1954, the day upon which this Court struck down “racially segregated public schools” in the States under the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was generally understood that the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment did not have an equal protection component. As this Court observed in Adarand, “[t]hrough the 1940′s, this Court has routinely taken the view . . . that, ‘unlike the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifth contains no equal protection clause and it provides no guaranty against discriminatory legislation by Congress. However, in Bolling v. Sharpe, this Court shoehorned equal protection into the due process text by sheer will, declaring “it would unthinkable that the same Constitution would impose a lesser duty on the Federal Government.”

To the contrary, it was and is eminently “thinkable” that the Reconstruction Congress, led by abolitionist Republicans, would propose an amendment to the Constitution that would increase the powers of the federal government at the expense of the states.

To translate this a bit, the Fourteenth Amendment provides that “[n]o State shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” and thus this guarantee against discrimination explicitly applies only to state laws and not to the federal government. On the same day that the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, however, the Court also held in Bolling that a shield against public school segregation is one of the liberties protected by the Fifth Amendment, which does apply to the federal government. Thus, the District of Columbia, which is a federal entity, could not have segregated public schools.

Citizens United is now claiming that Bolling was wrong, and that the Constitution does absolutely nothing to prevent the United States from engaging in discrimination of any kind. If the justices buy their argument — as they were all too willing to do in the case that bears Citizens United’s name — it would mean that Congress is free to set up its own Jim Crow laws.

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Economy

How Taxpayers Are Footing The Bill For The Site Of This Year’s Super Bowl

By Travis Waldron on Feb 1, 2013 at 1:05 pm

The tenth Super Bowl played in New Orleans, and the first since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, will kickoff in a stadium that has received more than $470 million in public support since the storm, as taxpayers have footed the bill for renovations and upgrades in the face of threats from ownership and the National Football League to move the team to another city.

In the aftermath of Katrina, New Orleans was desperate to keep the Saints from skipping town. The NFL and Saints owner Tom Benson seem to have taken advantage of that desperation, leveraging it into hundreds of millions of dollars in public support — from the city, state, and federal governments — for renovations to the decimated Superdome, which housed Katrina refugees during and after the storm. In 2009, the state committed $85 million more to keep the Saints in town and attempt to woo another Super Bowl, all while signing a lease worth $153 million in a nearby building owned by Benson.

While investors and Benson have profited from the deals, taxpayers haven’t been as lucky, Bloomberg reports:

Talks headed by then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue led to a plan to fix and renovate the Superdome with $121 million from the state, $44 million from the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, which oversees the facility, $156 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $15 million from the league. Blanco said a rushed bond deal followed.

Ultimately, the financing cost the district more than three times its $44 million commitment, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from state documents and interviews. [...]

In April 2009, Louisiana negotiated a new lease to secure Benson’s promise to keep the team in New Orleans through 2025. The state made $85 million in fresh Superdome improvements, adding luxury seating and moving the press box. A company owned by Benson, Zelia LLC, bought the 26-story tower next to the stadium that had stood mostly vacant since Katrina and renovated it. At the time, Benson put the total cost at about $85 million. The state then signed a $153 million, 20-year lease for office space in the building, which now houses 51 state agencies, according to the Louisiana Administration Division. [...]

“A lot of folks in New York made a ton of money,” [former state Treasurer John] Kennedy said. “Louisiana taxpayers didn’t do so well.”

The Superdome certainly needed renovations following Katrina. But its original construction was financed solely by taxpayers, and Benson, who is worth roughly $1.6 billion, didn’t contribute and repeatedly hinted that the Saints would move to San Antonio, Los Angeles, or another city unless taxpayers ponied up. Kennedy, the state treasurer, told Bloomberg he went into negotiations with the NFL and Benson “with a gun against my head.”

Benson isn’t alone. Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wylf used the threat of relocation to help secure public funding for a new stadium, and owners across the NFL are doing the same. Owners of the Miami Dolphins are using the promise of future Super Bowls (even though the event rarely provides the promised economic boost) to lure more money from taxpayers who are already on the hook for the city’s new baseball stadium.

The NFL’s program that provides loans to teams for new facilities is contingent on taxpayer support for at least part of the cost, and only one current NFL facility was built without some sort of public funding.

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