UNDERNEWS: September 17, 2011

How the Republicans are out of touch with America

Culture
Gallup finds that 53% of Americans support same sex marriage

69% oppose eliminating funding for PBS
58% of Americans say legalize marijuana
77% support DADT repeal

Economics
Poll: Americans blame Bush for economy

41% of Likely U.S. voters say they are at least somewhat likely to boycott all companies that have been bailed out by the government

Sixty-one percent of Americans say that increasing taxes to the wealthy should be the first step toward balancing the budget.

88% of Americans say bonuses at banks should be banned or taxed at 50%

80% say don't cut Social Security

Environment
77% of Americans think that "Congress should let the EPA do its job" and 61% of Republicans feel the same way. What's more, the majority of Americans feel that the EPA should do more, not less

Foreign affairs
60% of Americans look upon the UN favorably, with 85% saying it is important for the U.S. to be active at the UN. 69% of Americans support paying peacekeeping dues on time, and in full
58% of Americans want us to leave Afghanistan
Americans favor lifting Cuban embargo

Health
91% of Americans believe that someone without health insurance should be treated in an emergency room if they are seriously injured, even if they are in this country illegally.

Justice Interpress Service - A clear majority of U.S. voters - 61 percent - would choose a punishment other than death for murder if given a choice,

Politics
79% support constitutional amendment to reverse Supreme Court campaign bribery decision

More Americans view socialism favorably than they do the Tea Party
Religion
67% support separation of church and state

Taxes
Americans support higher taxes...

22 million Americans sharing homes

A third of American middle class has fallen out of it

Department of Good Stuff

PBS - Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness is a one-hour documentary about a town coming together to take action after anti-immigrant violence devastates the community. In 2008, a series of attacks against Latino residents of Patchogue, New York culminate with the murder of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant who had lived in the Long Island village for 13 years. Over a two-year period, the story follows Mayor Paul Pontieri, the victim's brother Joselo Lucero, and Patchogue residents as they address the root causes of the violence, heal divisions, and take steps to ensure that everyone in their village will be safe and respected.

Pocket paradigms

Reform breeds its own hubris and so few noticed that as we destroyed the evils of machine politics we also were breaking the links between politics and the individual, politics and community, politics and social life. We were beginning to segregate politics from ourselves…- Sam Smith

GOP candidates dumber on climate change than average Republican

Tree Hugger - According to a new poll 83% of Americans believe Earth is in fact warming. Last year 75% of people thought so. Despite the impression that the Republican debates may give, nearly two-thirds of self-identified Republicans believe that the climate is warming (72%). 92% of Democrats do.

The poll found that 71% of Americans believe humans are either mostly or partly causing the observed warming;

So who do the Republican candidates believe they are representing in their climate denial? Surely not their constituents.

Does this mean Washington should be invaded?

Wired - President Obama has repeatedly said his top counterterrorism goal is to prevent terrorists from acquiring the building blocks to make nuclear or “dirty” bombs. In April of 2009, Obama announced a new international effort to “secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years.” Since then, the Department of Energy has dispatched scientists around the globe to collect hundreds of pounds of the stuff.

But according to a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), issued late last Friday afternoon to little fanfare, thousands of pounds of highly-enriched uranium and separated plutonium remain. American officials may never get a chance to ensure its security.

That’s because the U.S. can’t track or fully account for 5,900 pounds of “weapons usable” nuclear material that it once shipped overseas. Instead, U.S. officials have to rely on foreign governments’ assurances that the potentially cataclysmic stuff is safe. And when those officials occasionally visit the sites holding the nuclear material, nearly half the places “did not meet International Atomic Energy Agency security guidelines,” according to the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm.

White House worried about solar firm's finances

NPR - Emails released Thursday night show that Obama administration privately worried about the effect of a default by Solyndra Inc. on the president's re-election campaign.

"The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad," an official from the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a senior OMB official. "The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up."

The email, released by the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee as part of its investigation into the Solyndra loan, showed that Obama administration officials were concerned about Solyndra's financial health even as they publicly declared the solar panel maker in good shape. Solyndra, which received $528 million in federal loans under the stimulus law, declared bankruptcy late last month and laid off 1,100 workers.

Gas drilling gives Wyoming worse smog than Los Angeles

USA Today - Rural Wyoming, known for breathtaking vistas, now has worse smog than Los Angeles because of its boom in natural gas drilling.

Residents who live near the gas fields in the state's western corner are complaining of watery eyes, shortness of breath and bloody noses. The cause is clearer than the air: local ozone levels recently exceeded the highest levels recorded in the biggest U.S. cities last year.

NFL wants to search 16 million fans

Under new "enhanced" pat-down procedures, the NFL wants all 32 clubs to search ticket-holding fans from the ankles to the knees as well as the waist up. Previously, security guards only patted down fans from the waist up while looking for booze, weapons or other banned items. The stricter physical screening policy impacts the 16.6 million fans expected to attend live regular season NFL games this season.

Ron Paul and the price of freedom

Gawker - At CNN's Tea Party-indulging debate on Monday, Ron Paul, a medical doctor, faced a pointed line of questioning from Wolf Blitzer regarding the case of an uninsured young man who suddenly found himself in dire need of intensive health care.

Should the state pay his bills? Paul responded, "That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody¬"

He never quite finished that point, letting the audience's loud applause finish it for him. So Blitzer pressed on, asking if he meant that "society should just let him die," which earned a chilling round of approving hoots from the crowd. Paul would not concede that much outright, instead responding with a personal anecdote, the upshot being that in such a case, it was up to churches to care for the dying young man. So basically, yeah. He'd let him die.

it turns out, Paul was not speaking purely in hypotheticals. Back in 2008, Kent Snyder ¬ Paul's former campaign chairman ¬ died of complications from pneumonia. Like the man in Blitzer's example, the 49-year-old Snyder was relatively young and seemingly healthy* when the illness struck. He was also uninsured. When he died on June 26, 2008, two weeks after Paul withdrew his first bid for the presidency, his hospital costs amounted to $400,000. The bill was handed to Snyder's surviving mother, who was incapable of paying. Friends launched a website to solicit donations.

DC students to be given standardized sex test

Australian precautions confirm electronic health records aren’t safe

The Review has been a lonely journalistic voice pointing out the privacy hazards of national electronic health records.

The Australian – Celebrities, politicians and victims of domestic violence will be given fake identities to prevent hacking into their medical records stored in the federal government's new electronic health database.

The government has decided to let patients who "fear exposure due to the public nature of their work" use pseudonyms when they sign up for the $467 million e-health system, which will begin storing medical records in a central database from July next year.

Those who "fear being traceable when escaping family violence" may also be given new identities.

The Health Department has also decided to let patients censor their medical records, by deleting sensitive documents or using a pseudonym for treatments such as sexually transmitted diseases.

The Australian Medical Association said yesterday the use of pseudonyms would undermine public confidence in the security and privacy of e-health records. AMA president Steve Hambleton said patients should not be able to delete their records.

General complains of White House pressure on congressional testimony

Hot Air - Eli Lake starts off his new gig at The Daily Beast with a huge bombshell ¬ an accusation made to members of Congress from a four-star Air Force general that claimed the White House pressured him to change his testimony to boost a big donor to the Democratic Party:

The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor.

FBI teaching agents to extreme anti-Muslim prejudice

Wired - The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

Designed by the Arch Group, about the only change from the original proposal is that it is made of wood instead of plastic (common for prototypes, and the minimum time has increased from 15 minutes to half an hour.

They appear to have given up on one my favourite features of the original concept, the automatic bed-changing system. Instead they have gone for conventional linen.

In mid-August 2011, the first Sleepbox was installed at the Aeroexpress terminal of Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia. This Sleepbox attracted such a great deal of interest from passengers and big companies that chances are first commercially operated boxes will be installed at airports and in the city by the end of this year.

Guy who helped create TSA says it's a failure

TSA - One of the politicians instrumental in creating the TSA, Rep. John Mica, who wrote the legislation that established the TSA, has apparently decided that the whole thing has been a failure and should be dismantled. He notes that "the whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats."

“It mushroomed into an army,” Mica said. “It’s gone from a couple-billion-dollar enterprise to close to $9 billion.”

As for keeping the American public safe, Mica says, “They’ve failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.”

“Everything they have done has been reactive. They take shoes off because of [shoe-bomber] Richard Reid, passengers are patted down because of the diaper bomber, and you can’t pack liquids because the British uncovered a plot using liquids,” Mica said.

“It’s an agency that is always one step out of step,” Mica said.

It cost $1 billion just to train workers, which now number more than 62,000, and “they actually trained more workers than they have on the job,” Mica said.

“The whole thing is a complete fiasco,” Mica said.

War on public education leaving students less smart

NY Times - Average scores on the SAT fell across the nation this year, with the reading score for the high school class of 2011 falling three points to 497, the lowest on record, according to a report Wednesday by the College Board, which administers the exams. The average writing score dropped two points, to 489, and the math score was down one point, to 514.

The College Board attributed the decline to the increasing diversity of the students taking the test. For example, about 27 percent of the nearly 1.65 million test-takers last year came from a home where English was not the only language, up from 19 percent a decade ago.

But Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of much standardized testing, said the declines were an indictment of the nation’s increasing emphasis on high-stakes testing programs and of No Child Left Behind, the federal education law that has driven it.

“How many wake-up calls do policy makers need before they admit that their test-and-punish strategy is a failure?” Mr. Schaeffer said. “Policymakers need to embrace very different policies if they are committed to real education reform.”

[Note: FAIR's accounting finds even white students at esseentially the same level they were in 2006. The only group to make progress were Asian-American students]

U.S. has weakest labor protection of any developed nation

AFL-CIO - University of Missouri-St. Louis Associate Professor Kenneth Thomas reviewed numbers from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and found that in 21 categories, U.S. workers are more vulnerable than workers in any OECD members (rich industrialized democracies) or even the so-called growing BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China…to being fired unfairly, to not getting severance pay, to getting the least notice on mass layoffs or being fired, to being stuck on a mouse wheel of temporary positions. Thomas also compared the United States labor protections with those in Estonia, Indonesia, and South Africa for good measure. The result, in every case, Thomas says on his blog Middle Class Political Economist, is that not only is the United States in last place, it isn’t even close.

US News - The rate of new lung cancer cases among American women is finally beginning to decline, much as it has for men in for years, a new U.S. government report shows.

New cases of lung malignancies fell by 2.2 percent per year on average for women between 2006 and 2008, after rising an average of 0.5 percent between 1999 and 2006, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Men's lung cancer incidence continued its long, slow decline, the agency added, but the pace of that decline has sped up in recent years. New cases fell by an average of 1.4 percent per year between 1999 and 2006 but that accelerated to a drop of nearly 3 percent per year by 2006-2008, the CDC said.

Jersusalem Post– New York City subways have recently started to display advertisements calling for the end of US military aid to Israel, deliberately coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly sessions next week.

The 25 posters in 18 Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Bronx subway stations are part of a mass transit advertising campaign by Be On Our Side to remedy what the advertisements call “the flawed and skewed representation in mainstream media” of Israeli-Palestinian relations.

This is the seventh city in which these ads have been displayed. The posters have been approved by the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, and will be displayed for one month.

Rick Perry put teacher retirement funds in hands of cronies

Mother Jones - On October 19, 2010, shortly before Texans voted to elect their governor, Democratic candidate Bill White took aim at Republican incumbent Rick Perry with what he called a "smoking gun." He revealed a leaked internal memo written in 2009 by Michael Green, an investment director-turned-whistleblower at the state's $100 billion public-teacher pension fund, the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. The memo accused TRS brass and Perry-appointed trustees of pressuring employees to violate ethics rules and possibly state law by reversing negative outlooks to positive ones on a slew of questionable investment deals. As it turned out, big-time Perry donors ran many of the investment funds cited in the memo. It was, White claimed, a classic case of crony capitalism, and it merited an independent investigation.

FBI investigating Scott Walker staffers

WLS, Chicago - A team of FBI agents executed search warrants at a home on the east side of Madison, Wisconsin, Wednesday. The raid was on a former top aide to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in what appears to be an expanding corruption investigation.

Wednesday's raid is the latest carried out by federal authorities on several of Governor Scott Walker's top staffers, all state employees who recently resigned.

Even though the search warrant was executed on a home in the state capital of Madison, they were Milwaukee FBI agents. It appears that the federal investigation concerns Governor Walker's time as Milwaukee county executive.

"Saw about two or three more, four or five, then I saw agents getting out of the car and putting on their jackets, that's what identified it, FBI on the back of the jackets," said Madison resident Dale Reichers.

Reichers says he saw the law enforcement teams show up at his neighbor's house before 7 a.m. His neighbor is Cynthia Archer, one of Governor Walker's most trusted allies--until last month, when she abruptly resigned her $124,000-a-year job as deputy secretary of the agency that oversees state contracts.

Pocket paradigm

Politics used to be about remembrance. The best politicians were those who remembered and were remembered the most -- the most people, the littlest favors, the smallest slights, the best anecdotes tying one's politics to the common memory of the constituency. Politics was also about gratitude. Politicians were always thanking people, "without whom" whatever under discussion could not have happened. You not only thanked those in the room -- as many as possible by name -- you even thanked those without -- for "having prepared the wonderful meal which we have just partaken of." The politician was the creation of others, and never failed to mention it. Above all, politics was about relationships. The politician grew organically out of a constituency and remained rooted to it as long as incumbency lasted. Today, we increasingly elect people about whom we have little to remember, to whom we owe no gratitude and with whom we have no relationship except that formed during the great carnie show we call a campaign. - Sam Smith

Data demons infiltrate the Coast Guard

Sam Smith

Having been a Coast Guard officer with a number of petty officers working for me, I was startled when another former Coastie sent me a copy of a five page Enlisted Employee Review Worksheet of the sort I would have to fill out numerous times if I were currently on the job.

As I recall, my employee reviews consisted of saying something to the captain like, “You know Bill’s fucking good and deserves a promotion.”

The reason I didn’t have to say much more than that was that both the captain and I knew that Bill was fucking good, having seen him doing his work day to day, or a hundred miles at sea during a heavy weather rescue, or watching him helping get a buoy on station. Our Coasties did real things with real results and you didn’t need a whole mess of adjectives and abstractions to judge them.

But now the data demons have taken over the Hooligan Navy along with just about everything else in America and so I would now be required to:

“After observing and gathering input on member’s performance and behavior, evaluate member’s performance against the written performance standards and place an “X” within the appropriate oval. Give form with recommended marks and written comments to the Marking Official within the time frames specified in the CG Personnel Manual.”

I would set about making carefully filled in marks (no partially filled circles) next to such assessments as:

“Made good use of available personnel and their skills. Materials, budget, tools, equipment, and publications effectively used. Supported new approaches, methods, or technologies. Met all customer needs.”

[We didn’t have any customers when I was in the Coast Guard; we just had citizens]

“Used all personnel and their skills to capacity in a positive working environment. Sought out better ways to accomplish tasks. Developed new methods or approaches.”..

“Handled stressful situations well. Worked extra hours as required to get the job done. Productivity and safety were adequate.”

Five pages of this sort of crap can make you a bit dizzy and leave you feeling like you’re working for a insurance company or a chain store rather than the Coast Guard.

Worse – and this is true every place that demonic data collection is taking place – to process this junk you must waste money employing people who have no true useful skills to offer the organization and who take time and money away from those who do. The data demons don’t provide a positive working environment, they don’t find better ways to accomplish tasks, they don’t provide productive and safety. They just create piles of paper and hours of wasted time.

Kucinich keeps his district

CBS News - Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) plans to run for re-election in Ohio, rather than moving to Washington state as he had mulled doing as part of statewide redistricting plan.

"It is an amazing turn of events that the legislature decided not to dismantle the district I represent," the former Cleveland mayor and presidential candidate said in a prepared statement.

After Ohio's population declined in the 2010 U.S. Census, the state lost two of its 18 congressional districts in the House of Representatives.

Kucinich had feared the new district borders would make it impossible for him to win in Ohio and considered moving to Washington state where he has gained a following from his unsuccessful bids for the White House.

Republicans in Ohio's legislature unveiled proposed boundaries for the 16 new districts Tuesday, and Kucinich's old district remained partially intact.

"I have been praying that I could continue to serve my Cleveland-area constituency and it looks like I have a chance," he said. "That is all I could hope for."

Gardasil: A case study of what can happen when pharma hustling goes wild

While the corporate media has rushed to defend Merck’s profit nub – Gardasil – against Michelle Bachmann - its critique missed the central point about the HPV vaccine: it was not the efficacy of the vaccine that was at issue but whether politicians should be mandating its use at a time when the medical profession was only recommending it for certain age groups. While the cause of this political leap is less clear in DC, it seems evident that Texas Governor Perry was influenced by contributions from Merck. Notice in the stories that follow no medical recommendation that the vaccine’s use be mandated.

As we wrote at the time a bill for mandatory use was introduced in DC:

||| The issue here is not whether the vaccine would work for many; the issue is the wisdom of requiring by law the use of a pharmaceutical that has only just come on the market and for which, for example, even the maker doesn't know its effect on women who take it around the time of conception. The true effects of a drug are often not realized until it's been on the market for some time. And the pharmaceutical industry has a dismal record - from indifference to outright fraud - on policing itself. Mind you, we're talking about a drug that will need to be taken in three $120 a shot doses. Consider that to this day that most people have little idea of the danger of memory loss with statins and that it took years of young people taking anti-depressants before research showed a connection with suicides. The wise move here is to provide but not require until we know much more. As the Washington Post reported, ‘Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends the vaccine for all girls ages 11 and 12, an adviser to the academy said he thought it was premature to recommend making it mandatory. 'I think it's too early,' said Joseph A. Bocchini, who chairs the academy's committee on infectious diseases. 'This is a new vaccine. It would be wise to wait until we have additional information about the safety of the vaccine.'” ||||

ABC News - Perry took issue with Bachmann’s accusation that his decision was spurred by the prospect of cash pouring into his campaign fund from the drug company. . . Perry cited a $5,000 campaign donation from Merck, but according to records from the Merck PAC, Perry has received nearly $30,000 in donations from the drug company over his decade as governor of Texas. The $5,000 Perry referred to was merely the Merck donation from 2006, one year before he established the executive order.

Health Research Group – Perry’s former chief of staff Mike Toomey has found a new (and presumably more lucrative) lease on life with Merck, manufacturer of the HPV vaccine Gardasil. And on the very day that Perry’s staff met with Merck about the Executive Order, a $5,000 check from the company made its way into the governor’s coffers. Add to that Merck funding of a group of female state legislators called Women in Government, many of whom introduced mandatory vaccination bills in their respective states, and you have all the ingredients for a sordid political stew.

But just because self-interested corporate behavior is at the root of an initiative does not prove that the initiative is not worthwhile. Cervical cancer takes the lives of some 3,700 American women each year. Preventing these deaths is obviously an end worth pursuing...

We certainly agree that the lobbying for this product has been unseemly. In its greed to maximize profit and its desire to gain a solid foothold before another HPV vaccine is approved, as is expected, Merck opted for the hard sell. It is unusual for a vaccine to be mandated so early in its lifespan. A better course would have been to wait for more safety data to accumulate and then sell the vaccine on its scientific merits, rather than by heavy-handed lobbying.

We recommend that people wait seven years unless the new product is a breakthrough of some kind. As there is no vaccine or medication proven to prevent infection with HPV, and because young people often become infected soon after becoming sexually active, we recommend not waiting the seven years in this case.

It’s true that the studies were funded by Merck itself, but this is standard practice in the drug and vaccine industries. We have advocated that drug companies be required to pay into a pool and that neutral scientists should conduct and analyze drug and vaccine studies. But until this proposal is accepted, most studies of new products will be conducted by their sponsors. While this should always make one skeptical of the results reported, one cannot simply dismiss studies solely on the basis of who is their sponsor. To do so would lead to refusing to take almost all drugs.

Studies of the vaccine show that toxicity was limited, usually restricted to pain and tenderness at the injection site (84 percent and 25 percent respectively). There are, however, few data on long-term toxicity due to the limited length of the trials conducted. This leaves many questions unanswered. The FDA recommends against use in pregnant women, though there is no evidence that it is toxic to the developing fetus

NY Times, 2011 - The vaccine is strongly recommended by medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Cancer Society, to prevent cervical cancer, which kills about 4,000 women in the United States annually.

The recommended age of vaccination for girls is 11 or 12, before they become sexually active. But only Virginia and the District of Columbia require vaccination for middle school entry, according to the cancer society.

Dr. Deborah Saslow, the group’s director of breast and gynecological cancer, said it did not advocate requiring HPV vaccinations before entering middle school, since parents and even doctors need more time to get used to the idea of the vaccine and to accept that it is safe.

ABC News - Currently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that doctors "strongly recommend" that all 11- or 12-year-old girls be vaccinated against HPV, which is the cause of almost all cases of cervical cancer. The vaccine is a series of three shots, and is approved for use in males and females from ages 9 to 26.

Dr. William Meadow, a pediatrician and medical ethicist at the University of Chicago, said a doctor's strong recommendation to vaccinate a child often is all the prodding that many parents need. "Most pediatricians should and do recommend the HPV vaccine, and most parents of young women choose to have their child vaccinated," Meadow said. "What's the advantage of forcing someone to do it?"

Progress Report, 2008 - In July, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services quietly amended its list of required vaccinations for immigrants applying to become citizens. One of the newest requirements was Gardasil, which vaccinates against the human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted viral infection in the United States. The problem with this regulation is that the HPV vaccine is not mandatory for U.S. citizens. Therefore, U.S. citizens are allowed to weigh the costs and risks associated with Gardasil, but immigrants are forced to pay-out-of-pocket for a vaccine they might not want to take. Without health insurance, the three-shot vaccine can cost $162 per dose, making it the most expensive vaccine on the market. "Given Gardasil's high cost, and the fact that there does not seem to be a public health justification for this particular mandate, I'm concerned that its real purpose is to create a financial barrier for immigrant women who seek to lawfully enter this country," said Jessica Arons of the Center for American Progress.

CBS, 2009 - Amid questions about the safety of the HPV vaccine Gardasil one of the lead researchers for the Merck drug is speaking out about its risks, benefits and aggressive marketing. Dr. Diane Harper says young girls and their parents should receive more complete warnings before receiving the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. Dr. Harper helped design and carry out the Phase II and Phase III safety and effectiveness studies to get Gardasil approved, and authored many of the published, scholarly papers about it. She has been a paid speaker and consultant to Merck. It’s highly unusual for a researcher to publicly criticize a medicine or vaccine she helped get approved. Dr. Harper joins a number of consumer watchdogs, vaccine safety advocates, and parents who question the vaccine’s risk-versus-benefit profile. She says data available for Gardasil shows that it lasts five years; there is no data showing that it remains effective beyond five years. . . .

Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture, Testimony before DC City Council - I am not personally advocating against the HPV vaccine; I'm strongly advocating that we all ask questions and demand all of our questions and concerns be addressed to our satisfaction. . . The following questions must be asked:

- Does the vaccine Gardasil prevent all types of cervical cancer? If not, which ones will it prevent? Does the vaccine protect against the most common types of cervical cancer here in the USA? If the leading killer of women in the USA is heart disease and not breast or cervical cancer, why is this vaccine being made "mandatory"?

- New Jersey-based Merck Co. makes this vaccine and its questionable ties to politicians and others has now come to light. . . Billions of dollars can be made by the drug company; the three required doses cost $360, and of course, the drug company is aggressively pushing for the vaccine to be "mandatory."

- Who is held liable in the case of mild or severe adverse effects or allergic reactions? . . . How many years of study on possible adverse effects has been done and documented?

- How do you "opt out" and who is responsible for explaining this process? Is it a time consuming process? Are there any penalties for opting out?

- If a young girl's parent [or] guardian is in jail, prison or a mental institution, do such parents [or] guardians give up their right to give consent for this vaccine? Who will advise such parents [or] guardians of their legal rights?

- Has Merck and Co. had any type of contact with any members of our City Council, their staff members, our city's Department of Health, their staff members or any other city officials? Has this drug company had any contact with any of our city's community leaders or other health care professionals?

- Cervical cancer and HIV - AIDS are both caused by a virus. Why are some people trying to make the HPV vaccine "mandatory" and not mandatory testing for HIV - AIDS, especially in a city like Washington, DC with its ever increasing HIV - AIDS rate, especially among women? Since DC General Hospital is now closed, where do you go to get the vaccine? Community clinics? Planned Parenthood? Your private doctor's office?

- The obvious race, class and gender aspects of this issue cannot be overlooked. Why didn't the HPV vaccine proponents do the kind of research of community opinion and carefully plan educational programs to answer any and all questions and concerns parents and the general public may have? . . .

- Why not make high quality public schools, equipment, supplies and infrastructure "mandatory"; comprehensive, science-based human sexuality education; affordable health care; health insurance; living-wage jobs; domestic violence, sexual assault and violence prevention education; high school and post-high school vocational education; substance abuse prevention education, etc. Why must African people, women, people of color and other marginalized groups of people, our bodies, be made guinea pigs for the benefit and advancement of science?

Rita Rubin, USA Today, 2007 – The American Academy of Family Physicians on Feb. 7 issued a policy statement that said it was "premature" to consider requiring immunization for school entry. "Long-term safety with widespread use, stability of supply and economic issues" must be clarified first, the statement said. .

Gregory Lopes And Christopher M. Dolan, Washington Times - Lawmakers looking to force preteen girls to take Gardasil, a new vaccine against a virus that causes cervical cancer, are targeting the wrong age group, cancer data shows. Middle-school girls inoculated with the breakthrough vaccine will be no older than 18 when they pass Gardasil's five-year window of proven effectiveness -- more than a decade before the typical cancer patient contracts the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus.

Infectious disease specialists and cancer pathologists say the incubation period for HPV becoming cancer is 10 to 15 years -- meaning the average cervical cancer patient, who is 47, contracted the virus in her 30s and would not be protected by Gardasil taken as a teen. "It is a delicate balancing act," said Debbie Saslow, director of breast and cervical cancer control at the American Cancer Society. "If the vaccine is given at too young an age, it may wear off. Yet if it is given too late, it won't work.". . .

Progressive Review City Desk - We noted the other day the foolishness of DC requiring young girls to take a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer before there was an adequate history on the drug. The vaccine in question is made by Merck and now we read in the Online Journal: "Let no one say the studies in JAMA are funded by hidden drug company money. The funding is right out in the open. 'Effects of Continuing or Stopping Alendronate After 5 Years of Treatment,' in the December 27, 2006, issue of JAMA was funded by Merck that manufactures alendronate, a bisphosphonate, under the patent name Fosamax. Not only was the study 'supported by contracts with Merck and Co.,' according to JAMA, it 'was designed jointly by the non-Merck investigators and Merck employees' and written 'with editorial input from Merck throughout the process.' Want further transparency? 'The final version of the manuscript was approved by all coauthors, including Merck authors,' says JAMA.

Sarah Boseley, Guardian, UK, 2007- A campaign fronted by doctors and celebrities to persuade European governments, including the UK, to vaccinate all young girls against cervical cancer is being entirely funded by the drug company that markets the vaccine.

Sanofi Pasteur MSD, which markets Gardasil in Europe on behalf of the drug giant Merck, spent millions on what was billed as the "first global summit against cervical cancer", held in Paris on Thursday with doctors and patient organizations from across Europe.

The revelation comes as public health experts express disquiet about the promotion of a vaccine that is only effective in young girls - possibly at the expense of screening programs that are essential to protect adults. They also worry that the long-term effects of the vaccine are not known. The vaccine protects against the most common strains of the sexually-transmitted human papilloma virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer.

Pharmalot, 2007 - A recent three-day event at the University of Chicago campus was held to promote awareness of HPV and the new vaccine everyone has been talking about. And it was co-sponsored by Peer Health Educators, a student program, and three companies: Sony, Avon and Merck.

One day, there were free makeovers. Another brought live music. And there was a day devoted just to discussing men's health. "We felt that it's very rare that there's a men's health event on campus. We wanted to bring men's health into a seemingly women-specific issue," Colleen Christensen, a second-year Peer Health Educator, tells the Chicago Maroon, the school newspaper.

Not only were free coffee and t-shirts given away, so were little bags of peanuts labeled with instructions on how to give 'self-testicular exams.' Peanuts? Why not beer bottles? Anyway, here's the message young men: One day, you won't have to worry that your short and curlies are sporting warts or growing harmful cells if the Merck vaccine is approved for fellas like you.

A similar event is being held at Ohio State University as part of a pilot program, and Merck plans to sponsor the same thing at 20 other universities this fall. By the time Merck convinces the FDA to approve Gardasil For Guys, a whole generation of educated young men will be primed for a shot. And they'll no longer have to associate peanuts with tricky maneuvers.

Kaiser, 2007 - Some health insurance companies are not covering Merck's human papillomavirus vaccine Gardasil and others only cover part of the vaccine's cost, the Detroit News reports. According to the News, many physician offices are requiring patients to pay for Gardasil up front or sign a waiver stating they will pay for the vaccine if their insurance company does not. . . According to some Detroit-area physicians, the full cost of the vaccine, which is given in three injections during a six-month period, is about $450. Two of the largest insurance providers in southeast Michigan, Health Alliance Plan and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, provide coverage for the vaccine. BCBS only pays for the HPV vaccine when the plan has immunization coverage, which is included in most employer groups, an unnamed company spokesperson said. According to the News, some health insurance plans stop immunization coverage at age seven or 17. In addition, some insurance companies that cover Gardasil have annual limits on preventive care that might be lower than the cost of the vaccine. "The insurance issue is a nightmare," April Sarvis, a Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based ob-gyn, said, adding that some physicians are not offering Gardasil because insurance plans are not paying the full cost

Another rightwing myth busted: private contractors actually cost government a lot more

POGO - The U.S. government's increasing reliance on contractors to do work traditionally done by federal employees is fueled by the belief that private industry can deliver services at a lower cost than in-house staff.

But a first-of-its-kind study released today by the Project On Government Oversight busts that myth by showing that using contractors to perform services actually increases costs to taxpayers.

POGO’s new report is the first to compare the rate that contractors bill the federal government to the salaries and benefits of comparable federal employees. The study found that while federal government salaries are higher than private sector salaries, contractor billing rates average 83 percent more than what it would cost to do the work in-house.

The study comes at a crucial time, considering that Congress’ special “Super Committee” is looking for ways to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit.

“We’re wasting tens of billions of dollars on a belief that it’s cheaper to have contractors doing the work, without any hard evidence. The government should operate on evidence, not belief” said Paul Chassy, a POGO Investigator.

Perry and Bachmann want to cut your salary and benefits

Robert Reich - While Texas leads the nation in job growth, a majority of Texas's workforce is paid hourly wages rather than salaries. And the median hourly wage there was $11.20, compared to the national median of $12.50 an hour.

Texas has also been specializing in minimum-wage jobs. From 2007 to 2010, the number of minimum wage workers there rose from 221,000 to 550,000 -- that's an increase of nearly 150 percent. And 9.5 percent of Texas workers earn the minimum wage or below -- compared to about 6 percent for the rest of the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state also has the highest [correction] percentage of workers without health insurance. Texas schools rank 44th in the nation in per-pupil spending.

The Perry model of creating more jobs through low wages seems to be catching on around America.

More and more Americans are retaining their jobs by settling for lower wages and benefits, or going without cost-of-living increases. Or they've lost a higher-paying job and have taken one that pays less. Or they've joined the great army of contingent workers, self-employed "consultants," temps, and contract workers -- without healthcare benefits, without pensions, without job security, without decent wages.

It's no great feat to create lots of lousy jobs. A few years ago Michele Bachmann remarked that if the minimum wage were repealed "we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."

The Perry (and Bachmann) model of job growth condemns Americans to lower and lower living standards. That's nothing to crow about.

Absent an Obama peace plan, Jimmy Carter supports Palestinian UN recognition

Politico - Former President Jimmy Carter says he supports the Palestinian campaign for statehood recognition at the United Nations because the Obama administration hasn’t offered a plan for peace in the region. “As an alternative to a deadlock and a stalemate now, we reluctantly support the Palestinian move for recognition,” Carter said on Tuesday at the Carter Center in Atlanta. . .

The 39th President of the United States said that statehood recognition at the U.N. would be a “real step forward,” even if the Palestinians were only upgraded “non-member state” status at the world body.

Carter says that he would not have been in favor of the U.N. recognition bid had the Obama administration “put forward any sort of comprehensive peace proposal.”

Poorly planned field trip of the day

President Obama is visiting a small North Carolina manufacturing company that has outsourced half its workforce to Costa Rica and whose president is a Democratic politician who has contributed $2,000 to Obama. . . Ironically, Obama is traveling to the company’s headquarters to tout his new proposal to create jobs in the United States.

Great thoughts of Pat Robertson

Right Wing Watch - On the same "700 Club" program today in which Pat Robertson said that Jews must convert to Christianity in order to enter Heaven, he also took on a question from a woman who was friends with a man whose wife is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and has begun to date another woman and wanted to know what to do.

Robertson's advice was to encourage the husband to divorce his wife with Alzheimer's because she was, for all intents and purposes, already dead. Co-host Terry Meeuwsen understandably wondered if that would not violate the "til death do you part" provision of the wedding vow, which Robertson just pretty much dismissed, saying "he certainly wouldn't put a guilt trip" on anyone who decided that divorce was the answer.

Meanwhile. . .

GOP would slash public housing further

Geithner tries his arrogance out on Euros

The Europeans did not react favorably to being told what to do by an American. “I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the euro zone that they tell us what we should do,” Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter told reporters after the meeting.

Pocket paradigms

Reform breeds its own hubris and so few noticed that as we destroyed the evils of machine politics we also were breaking the links between politics and the individual, politics and community, politics and social life. We were beginning to segregate politics from ourselves.. - Sam Smith

Where the action is. . .

A few Koch products you might wish to avoid:

Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft 'n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins
Georgia-Pacific paper products and envelopes
Lycra
Stainmaster Carpet

Hotels to boycott on behalf of hotel workers

Stupid Capitol Hill staff tricks

Staffers for Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, don't mind if you read as they pass along hurricane updates or chat with other folks on Twitter. They'll even plug someone's business. Just don't talk about what you read: Whitehouse's communications director, Seth Larson, deputy press secretary, Richard Pezzillo, and new media director, Catherine Algeri, have disclaimers in their Twitter profiles that declare their posts ¬ on public, unprotected accounts ¬ to be off the record. That's right. Larson's tweet announcing the Senate Ocean Caucus? Strictly on the hush-hush.

Furthermore. . .

Millions of birth control pills recalled nationwide. Side effects may include further "packaging errors" appearing in 9 months - Fark

University of California students could face annual tuition increases of 8% to 16% over the next four years, possibly bringing the fee as high as $22,068 for the 2015-16 school year, according to a long-term budget plan the university . . If state funding grows 4%, tuition would rise 12% annually, reaching $19,188 by 2015-16.

A public bike-share system in NYC has been a long time coming, but it's almost here: The city has announced a partnership with Alta Bike Share, the company that runs systems in DC, London, and Montreal. And now for the best news: There will initially be 10,000 bikes, at 600 stations around the city.

Woman taken off plane and strip searched. That will teach her to look Middle Eastern.

Reader Keith Rutter has a suggestion for branding the recycled disposable diapers that a company is turning into roof tiling that we reported on: Shit on a Shingle.

Paul Ryan's healhcare plan would cost the average 65-year old $6,000 more a year

Stats

The share of Americans without health insurance rose to 16.3 percent in 2010, from 13 percent ten years earlier.

Lung cancer rates among women declining for first time

The number of children under five who die each year has plummeted from 12 million in 1990, to 7.6 million last year, the UN says.

Occasional justice

Bank of America must pay $930,000 to an employee who uncovered fraud at Countrywide Financial Corp. and was fired in violation of whistleblower protections, the U.S. Department of Labor said. The employee was terminated soon after the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank took over Countrywide in 2008, the agency said today in a statement. The worker, who must also be reinstated, led internal investigations that found “pervasive wire, mail and bank fraud involving Countrywide employees.”

Gallery

New York City in the `1940s

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