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Health

Senate Unanimously Passes Bill To Enhance America’s Ability To Address Public Health Disasters

By Sy Mukherjee on Mar 1, 2013 at 3:40 pm

After Congress’ failure to reach a deal avoiding across-the-board discretionary spending cuts, the so-called “sequester” will go into effect on Friday, meaning that funding for early childhood education, safety net programs for low-income women and children, medical research, and disaster preparedness will be slashed considerably. But last night, the Senate took action to soften the blow when it comes to states’ and the federal government’s abilities to cope with unforeseen public health disasters and emergencies.

The Senate unanimously passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act of 2013 (PAHPRA) on Thursday. Sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), the bill “strengthens our nation’s preparedness for and ability to respond to medical and public health emergencies, optimizes state and local all-hazards preparedness and response efforts and collaboration, enhances medical countermeasure activities, and reauthorizes key medical and public health programs, including the BioShield Special Reserve Fund,” according to a press release on Burr’s congressional webpage.

PAHPRA updates and increases funding for a wide range of programs meant to strengthen America’s preparedness for potential public health crises, including chemical and biological attacks, nuclear meltdowns, and natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy that place massive burdens on states’ and municipalities’ hospitals and emergency response systems. That’s welcome news considering that, even before the sequester went into effect, state budget cuts had left America woefully unprepared to deal with future public health emergencies. In fact, 35 states and the District of Columbia meet fewer than seven out of 10 key public health preparedness indicators.

Among the bill’s most important provisions are its programs to give states “the flexibility to request voluntary temporary reassignment of federally-funded state and local public health department personnel to immediately address a public health emergency.” Such flexibility would give localities some much-needed help in an era of increasingly frequent natural disasters and the rise of “superbugs” and vaccine-resistant bacteria.

Still, state and public health officials warn that governments’ tendencies to cut emergency-preparedness funding — including cuts in the sequester — are dangerous and short-sighted, as hospitals and emergency-response units have to focus their efforts on real-time crises rather than allocating precious resources to future disasters. Strengthening preparedness programs is also a smarter and more cost-effective way to approach public health emergencies than the current habit of hastily enacting relief funding bills after a crisis has already occurred — an approach that leaves emergency-responders at the mercy of a dysfunctional Congress that couldn’t even pass a Hurricane Sandy relief bill on its first try.

LGBT

Congressional Democrats To SCOTUS: Times Have Changed Since DOMA Passed

By Zack Ford on Mar 1, 2013 at 3:05 pm

A coalition of 212 Democrats in Congress have submitted an amicus brief of their own calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV). In addition to articulating many of the familiar arguments against DOMA, the lawmakers explain that times have changed since Congress — including 25 signatories of this brief who voted for it then — originally voted for the law in 1996. They argue that the increased visibility and understanding now available about the lives of the gay community reveals :

When Congress enacted DOMA, gay and lesbian couples could not marry anywhere in the world. Some States still criminalized same-sex relationships, inviting further discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment, family relations, and housing. Gay men and lesbians were still often portrayed as mentally unstable, sexually promiscuous, and morally deficient. In short, it was a different world for gay men and lesbians, and many were understandably reluctant to speak openly about themselves or their families. A number of Members, like the constituents we serve, did not personally know many (if any) people who were openly gay, and majority attitudes toward that minority group were often viscerally fearful and negative.

As a result, when the question of same-sex marriage arose in 1996, reflexive beliefs and discomfort about same-sex relationships dominated congressional debate. From our perspective—including those of us who voted for DOMA—debate and passage of the law did not necessarily arise “from malice or hostile animus,” but instead from “insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves.” Bd. of Trs. of Univ. of Ala. v. Garrett (Kennedy, J., concurring). While fear and distrust of families different from our own may explain why DOMA passed by comfortable majorities in 1996, it does not obviate the need for a constitutionally permissible justification for the law.

It’s noteworthy that they quote Justice Kennedy here, as he is considered to be the swing vote on the Court. Indeed, Kennedy’s quote speaks to what is more commonly known as privilege, as in white privilege, male privilege, or in this case, heterosexual privilege. There were no doubt many intentionally anti-gay perspectives that motivated the passage of DOMA, but not all who voted for it consciously held animus against the gay community. Many likely dealt with a more subconscious uninformed sense that heterosexuality is “normal,” and thus felt threatened by the perceived abnormality of homosexuality.

In 1913, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Indeed, the amount of basic information available about the nature of sexual orientations and the prevalence of LGBT families is now impossible to ignore. Any current Justice who rules against marriage equality will have no grounds to plead ignorance.

Update

Curious which Democrats did not sign the brief? Here’s the list.

Justice

Lawmaker Makes Lewd Comment To 17 Year-Old Girl: ‘I Got A Snake Sitting Under My Desk Here’

By Ian Millhiser on Mar 1, 2013 at 2:35 pm

State Rep. Ernest Hewett (D-CT) was stripped of his leadership position as Deputy Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives this week after he was caught on tape making an inappropriate remark to a high school student testifying before a legislative committee.

The 17 year-old student was at the hearing to ask the committee to continue a funding to the Connecticut Science Center, where she said she was “usually a very shy person” but the Center’s program enabled her to teach “children about certain things like snakes.”

When she was done testifying, Hewett told the teen “[i]f you’re bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here.” Listen:

Hewett offered an odd explanation for his remark on Thursday, claiming that he meant to say “if you are shy then I have an acre of land in the Everglades.” He did, however, apologize for his comment.

Economy

How Stupid Sequester Cuts To The IRS Could Result In A Bigger Deficit

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 1, 2013 at 2:30 pm

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke this week patiently tried to explain to Congress how budget cuts in a weak economy can actually be counterproductive for deficit reduction. By stifling economic growth, those cuts cause more joblessness, thereby reducing revenue and increasing expenditures for programs like unemployment insurance.

The so-called “sequester” that goes into effect today barring a last-minute deal by Congress will knock 0.6 percent off economic growth and kill up to 750,000 jobs, according to independent estimates. But there’s at least one more way in which the sequester could hurt revenue — by cutting the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, the very agency charged with collecting revenue:

Here’s some welcome sequester news: The Internal Revenue Service says those across-the-board automatic spending cuts will not delay processing of individual income tax refunds, and may mean fewer audits.

The agency has warned its more than 100,000 employees to expect furloughs of one day per pay period — but not until this summer, after tax filing season ends. [...]

However, once staff cut-backs begin to take hold, the collection agency says, taxpayers could experience delays on calls to help lines and visits to taxpayer assistance centers. They will also face potentially fewer audits, with less staff to perform the reviews.

The IRS estimates that every dollar spent on enforcement brings in $4-$5 dollars of additional revenue. As Reuters’ David Cay Johnston found, every hour spent on corporate tax enforcement bring in more than $9,000 in revenue.

Already, the IRS has been facing a bigger job with fewer resources. The sequester is going to make that worse, and in the meantime, won’t even accomplish its core goal.

LGBT

CPAC’s Exclusion Of Conservative Gay Group Sparks A Schism On The Right

By Aviva Shen on Mar 1, 2013 at 2:10 pm

CPAC Chairman Al Cardenas


Conservative speakers and organizers will flock to Washington, DC next week for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). But GOProud, an extreme right-wing gay organization, won’t be invited this year after outcry from anti-gay groups that spearhead the conference. The decision to exclude GOProud for the second year in a row has triggered a schism between conservatives who plan to boycott the conference until GOProud is invited and those who believe the group goes against social conservative values.

S.E. Cupp, a conservative commentator on MSNBC, is refusing to attend CPAC without GOProud. Other well-known conservatives have backed up her decision and condemned CPAC’s intolerance. The National Review published an editorial today noting that the exclusion of GOProud has had “a greater downside for CPAC than its past of GOProud ever did”:

Conservative opinion on the intersection of homosexuality and politics is not monolithic, especially among the college-aged set that makes up the better part of CPAC attendees. And a gathering that hopes to speak for the conservative movement will be better equipped to do so if it represents the overlapping gamut of views included in it.

CPAC Chairman Al Cardenas denies that GOProud was uninvited because gay people are unwelcome at CPAC, but rather because they “did not act properly as guests” last time. Cardenas said the group held press conferences attacking CPAC board members, which led to board members voting against them. Though Cardenas now insists that gay conservatives are welcome, his own wife said in 2011 that GOProud was banned because homosexuality “is a threat to society” and “not nature’s way.”

This year, according to notoriously right-wing columnist Jennifer Rubin, a CPAC sponsor employee blamed CPAC’s reluctance to “cross groups that are big sponsors that have said they’d leave if GOProud is ‘in the building.’” Indeed, several major sponsors including the Family Research Council refused to attend CPAC in 2011 when GOProud was participating.

This latest clash over conservative exclusion reflects the Republican Party’s new anxiety over outreach to minorities, women, young people and gay voters, all demographics that voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in the 2012 election. Still, even GOProud’s defenders have avoided opening debate on real policy shifts. Rubin argued, “No one is asking CPAC to endorse gay marriage or any other policy … merely to let gays into the room.” The National Review also reassured CPAC that including GOProud would “not now…imply its endorsement of any particular policies regarding gays.”

Alyssa

Why Chris Kluwe And Brendan Ayanbadejo’s Proposition 8 Brief Matters

By Travis Waldron on Mar 1, 2013 at 2:06 pm

Two of sports’ most outspoken advocates for marriage equality filed a brief with the Supreme Court Thursday, asking it to reaffirm a lower court’s decision that overturned California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage by ballot referendum in 2008.

“When we advance the idea that some people should be treated differently because of who they are, demeaned in public as lesser beings, not worthy of the same rights and benefits as others despite their actions as good citizens and neighbors, then we deny them equal protection under the laws,” Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe and Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo wrote in the brief. “America has walked this path before, and courageous people and the Court brought us to the right result. We urge the Court to repeat those actions here.”

Kluwe and Ayanbadejo, who have both argued for LGBT equality in both sports and America as a whole, also argued in the brief that their roles as prominent athletes matters in setting an example for all Americans, and that the Supreme Court should relish the similar role it has:

These athletes understand that, because of their public stature, the consequences flow naturally from their actions even if they cannot see the consequences. Consequences of being a role model and leader. Consequences for young children and adults who mimic our behavior when they interact with other children and adults. Those consequences flow because children and adults want to “Be Like [insert athlete name here].” Athletes are learning that they can no longer say “I am not a role model”— that they are forced to be a role model and privileged to be a role model, and that their words and actions, no matter how innocently intended, are magnified for both good and bad. If a professional basketball or football player says something is “gay,” young boys on the playground will copy and magnify the statement. If a hockey player says homosexuals are not welcome in the locker room, a young girl will shun a teammate who she thinks may be gay—where that teammate was until then a bright, happy, smart, and promising kid. After, she will be afraid of being who she is, and will takes steps, even dire steps, to avoid it.

But if a Pro Bowler treats a teammate as being an equal who is worthy of his friendship and respect because that other person is a good friend who places the team before himself, then high schoolers in Texas, Georgia, Illinois, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, and Minnesota will not—cannot—miss that example. If that Pro Bowler speaks out publicly and kindly, kids will hear it and feel it. Kids who are already dealing with everything youth throws at them will know they can treat others as friends and equals, and those others will know they are equal and that, without question, it is better to be themselves than to be hurt. They will follow the credo, “Live on, and be yourself.”

The argument that sports matter as a driver in social change is not novel, but it is a new feature in the debate for marriage equality. Sports have led civil rights fights in the past, but when it comes to equality for LGBT Americans, sports have largely been absent from the fight.

That is beginning to change, thanks in large part to athletes like Kluwe and Ayanbadejo. There still isn’t an out man in American professional sports, but three of the four major leagues have added sexual orientation to their non-discrimination clauses in labor negotiations, and as this week demonstrated, the prospect of violating those agreements is not taken lightly by players’ unions or leagues. Teams across leagues have participated in the “It Gets Better” campaign and leagues have set up organizations to push for equality. And players’ attitudes are slowly beginning to change, even if they are sometimes forced to. When San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver said he wouldn’t welcome a gay teammate the week before the Super Bowl, he was swiftly rebuked by his teammates and former players, and he attempted to make up for it by volunteering at an LGBT charity. Two years after Kobe Bryant called an NBA official a “fucking fag,” he has taken to rebuking Twitter users who use similar slurs.

Those attitude changes matter because sports, as leisurely and casual as we sometimes view them, often act as a powerful driver of social change. American professional sports integrated at least a decade before the Civil Rights Movement took off, and even after the movement began, athletes marched with civil rights leaders and exposed racial injustices on podiums at the Olympics. Athletes like Muhammad Ali fought both racial inequality and the plagues of war; athletes like Billie Jean King were central in the fight for equal rights for women. The sports world, if not Kluwe and Ayanbadejo themselves, may be late to the fight for LGBT equality. But that doesn’t mean they can’t, and won’t, still have a similar impact.

Climate Progress

Kansas Legislature Rejects Koch-Backed Effort To Chip Away At Renewable Energy Standards

By Jeff Spross on Mar 1, 2013 at 1:55 pm

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that twin votes in Kansas State House and Senate on Thursday put the kibosh on legislative efforts to roll back and delay Kansas’ renewable energy standard (RES).

Passed in 2009, Kansas’ RES requires investor-owned utilities to generate 20 percent of peak demand electrical capacity from renewable sources by 2020. The American Wind Energy Association has actually highlighted the RES as a driving factor in the states burgeoning wind power sector — half of Kansas’ wind farms began operating between 2010 and 2012, after the RES went into effect.

Unfortunately, Kansas has also been targeted by conservative anti-renewable efforts. Republican Rep. Dennis Hedke, the chairman of Kansas’ House Energy and Environment Committee, recently acknowledged he had private talks with a lobbyist for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC concerning the House bill to dilute the RES. (HB 2241) Even anti-tax activist Graver Norquist got in on the action, telling the state’s legislature it ought to abandon the “costly renewable energy mandate so as to mitigate its negative impact on the economy.”

But to Kansas’ credit, it looks like neither effort bore fruit:

[T]he Senate responded by voting 17-23 to defeat Senate Bill 82 that would have postponed the deadline for complying with the Kansas renewable portfolio standard. Instead of Kansas utilities reaching 15 percent of power from wind, solar or other alternative source in 2016, the bill would have moved the date to 2018. The measure also pushed the 20 percent mandate to 2024 from 2020. […]

The House answered by voting 63-59 to send House Bill 2241 back to a committee for additional deliberation. This measure would amend the state’s portfolio standard to declare 15 percent must be met by 2018, but the 20 percent target would be dropped.

House Republicans and Democrats supportive of the motion said previous House committee work on the bill was flawed, while other representatives questioned the goal of rewriting the state’s renewable energy standard because the amendment would remove “regulatory certainty” for business.

“I would suggest we exercise prudent restraint,” said Rep. Russell Jennings, R-Lakin. “In fairness to business, and in fairness to the people of Kansas, they need some certainty.”

Kansas is one of many states in which organizations like The Heartland Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council have been lobbying against renewable energy policy, and pushing “model legislation” to undo renewable standards — part of a broader shift by conservative organizations recently to attack clean energy efforts at the state level.

Nor is renewable energy the only policy area in which conservatives and climate change skeptics have tried to convince Kansas to set back its own advancement — often with the aforementioned Rep. Hedke, a contract geophysicist with a client list that includes 30 regional oil and gas companies, at the lead. Earlier this year, Hedke introduced a bill, HB 2366, that would prohibit public funds from being used “either directly or indirectly, to promote, support, mandate, require, order, incentivize, advocate, plan for, participate in or implement sustainable development.” Another Kansas House committee recently put forward a law — likely the product of ALEC’s “model legislation” — requiring the state’s educators to teach students “evidence which both supports and counters” the science of climate change.

In all these cases, Kansas would be wise to continue pushing back right-wing efforts while moving ahead with clean energy policy. Kansas is one of the Plains states that’s been wracked by record-breaking droughts over the last few years, likely driven by global warming, as well as other forms of economically damaging extreme weather.

Health

The Average ER Trip Costs 40 Percent More Than What Most Americans Spend On Monthly Rent

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Mar 1, 2013 at 1:55 pm

The rising cost of medical services is driving up the price of health care throughout the industry. There’s perhaps no better illustration of that phenomenon than hospitals’ emergency departments, since ER trips are the most expensive type of health care delivery. In fact, a new NIH-funded study finds the average cost for an ER visit was over $2,000 — about 40 percent more than most people spend on their rent each month.

The most common reasons that Americans visit an emergency department, like treating sprains or urinary tract infections, can rack up exorbitant charges. But the industry’s wide range in pricing means Americans often have no idea what kind of bill they should expect when they head to the hospital. When factoring in the IQR — the “interquartile range,” which represents the difference between the 25th and 75th percentile of charges — it becomes clear that hospitals end up charging most patients a lot more or a lot less than the average prices for these services (although these numbers don’t account for what insurance plans may end up covering):

And the researchers note that, since they focused on the most common diagnoses, these aren’t even necessarily the most costly ER services out there. If they had set out to figure out how an ER trip could be as expensive as possible for a sick American, that chart would have even higher numbers.

The study’s lead researchers ultimately conclude that Americans need to get more upfront information about ER costs before they land in an emergency department. They recommend better pricing transparency throughout the health care industry — a significant step forward that could help drive down health costs by allowing patients to be more discriminate about which unnecessary and expensive services they’d rather not pay for.

Ultimately, the rising cost of basic medical treatment is putting a big strain on the American families struggling to regain their footing in the wake of the Great Recession. Health costs have skyrocketed at the same time as workers’ wages have stagnated, and more than one in three people are forced to put off the health care they need because they can’t afford it.

Justice

‘Crypto-Anarchist’ Wants You To ‘Download This Gun’

By Andrea Peterson on Mar 1, 2013 at 1:00 pm

3D Printer at the Fab Lab © 2011 by Keith Kissel, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license

If you’re having trouble finding the perfect automatic weapon, a Texas group headed by a self-described “crypto-anarchist” who wants to “build an organization” around “evading and disintermediating the state” soon might be able to help.

Cody Wilson’s non-profit organization, Defense Distributed, is dedicated to producing and publishing information related to the 3D printing of firearms–and according to the Department of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, it’s all perfectly legal because “[t]here are no restrictions on an individual manufacturing a firearm for personal use.”

The group made headlines for an AR-15 lower (the regulated part) produced using 3D printing that failed after six shots last year, but released a video showing a more recent design successfully shooting off six hundred rounds this week, complete with dramatic soundtrack.

Using 3D printing to create firearms raises a a whole new slew of questions about the practical application of gun violence prevention measures. If you can download plans and print them in the privacy of your home, how will background checks be enforced? Indeed, given the current costs of 3D printing, it’s not clear why anyone would produce a gun this way other than to evade gun safety laws. Wilson claims his plans would work on printers that cost as little as $1,500, but the printer he used to produce the part costs closer to $30,000. Meanwhile, the raw materials necessary to produce Wilson’s AR-15 lower cost between $150-200. The same part can already be purchased elsewhere for less than $135. So lawful gun purchasers can buy their merchandise for cheaper elsewhere, while illicit guns could be printed for significantly more money.

In the long term, however, it is possible that Wilson’s plans could simply enable anyone to produce a cheap firearm in the comfort of their own home. While 3D printers are expensive now, cheaper models are on the horizon even as owners are experimenting with person to person rentals after the AirBnB model, and Wilson claims his designs have been downloaded 10,000 times, not counting downloads via BitTorrent.

(HT: Ars Technica )

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