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Elizabeth Warren Says Gay Men Should Be Able To Donate Blood

by RamonAlaniz Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Elizabeth Warren and a host of Democratic lawmakers are demanding the Obama administration stand up for gay rights.

A coalition of 80 senators and House members spearheaded by the Massachusetts senator—alongside Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Reps. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)—sent a letter Monday to Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, protesting the long-standing prohibition that bars men who have had sex with men from donating blood in the United States.

In 1983, the federal government instituted a lifetime ban for any man who has had sex with another man—even once—at any time after 1977. That rule went into effect during the early days of AIDS panic when the disease was largely unknown. Now, technology exists that can detect HIV within a few weeks of infection.

Last month, an HHS panel that handles blood policy advocated tossing out the lifetime ban—but argued for replacing it with a measure that would keep any sexually active gay man from contributing to the blood supply: a ban on donations from any man who had sex with another man within the past year.

To the Democrats in Congress, that slight improvement isn’t nearly enough. The letter calls both the lifetime ban and the one-year deferral policies “discriminatory” and “unacceptable.” The lawmakers urged an end to the lifetime ban by the “end of 2014,” while also pushing for a less-stringent restriction than the one-year celibacy requirement.

“The recommendation to move to a one-year deferral policy is a step forward relative to current policies; however, such a policy still prevents many low-risk individuals from donating blood,” the letter says. “If we are serious about protecting and enhancing our nation’s blood supply, we must embrace science and reject outdated stereotypes.”

The letter may have been better directed at the Food and Drug Administration. That agency’s Blood Products Advisory Panel met earlier this month to consider the one-year deferral proposed by HHS, but the panel of experts seemed more inclined to let the current policy stand rather than loosen the restrictions.

Here’s the full letter:

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Letter to HHS on blood donation ban (PDF)

Letter to HHS on blood donation ban (Text)

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Elizabeth Warren Says Gay Men Should Be Able To Donate Blood

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Mitch McConnell Wants to Open a Giant Loophole for Superrich Donors. Harry Reid Has Vowed to Stop Him.

by BenedicShultz Posted on December 9, 2014

Mother Jones

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is vowing to block any effort by his GOP counterpart, Mitch McConnell, to loosen the nation’s campaign finance limits as part of a bipartisan budget deal taking shape in Congress.

Last week, the Huffington Post reported that McConnell, who will take over as majority leader in January, wanted to slip into a major government funding bill a measure that would give presidential and congressional candidates more leeway to coordinate their campaign spending with political parties. Right now, candidates for federal office can coordinate some of their election spending with the parties—but only up to a certain amount. (The limit ranges from tens of thousands to several million dollars, depending on the size of the state’s voting-age population.) Beyond that threshold, parties and candidates can’t coordinate their spending plans, and the parties must spend their funds independently of the candidates they back.

The existing rule is intended to prevent donors from using political parties to skirt legal limits on donations to candidates. As it stands, donors can give up to $5,200 every two-year election cycle to each candidate for federal office. But McConnell’s measure, if enacted, would create a massive loophole in that rule, says Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, a group that supports limits on money in politics. If McConnell gets what he wants, rich donors who hit the $5,200 limit could simply route further donations to candidates by giving to political party committees—which may accept far larger donations and could work directly with the candidates to ensure the money was spent as the donors intended. “The practical effort here is to repeal the limits,” Wertheimer says.

McConnell has a broader plan here. Politico recently noted that McConnell is seeking to direct more big money to political parties, as opposed to outside groups such as super-PACs that in theory must remain independent of candidates. In a subsequent interview with Roll Call, McConnell suggested he might not force the issue, saying his proposal is “not on the agenda” but that the coordination limit he wants to eliminate is “an absurdity in the current law.”

That doesn’t mean the plan is dead. Should McConnell reverse course and attach this change to the budget bill, Reid’s office says the majority leader will block such a maneuver. “Reid strongly opposes and will fight against any efforts to include the McConnell measure,” an aide in Reid’s tells Mother Jones.

House and Senate members hashing out the budget bill were expected to release a version of the legislation as early as Monday evening.

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Mitch McConnell Wants to Open a Giant Loophole for Superrich Donors. Harry Reid Has Vowed to Stop Him.

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Prepare to be schooled on climate change, America

by rqu0hfl0 Posted on December 4, 2014

Prepare to be schooled on climate change, America

By on 4 Dec 2014commentsShare

The Obama administration announced plans this week to launch the Climate Education and Literacy Initiative — a concerted effort, in the words of the White House, to “lift our Nation’s game in climate education.”

Damn straight, Obama. Let’s step up that game! (We could start by not letting textbook publishers choose how to frame the “debate,” for example…)

The administration’s call-out to education and advocacy groups in October returned over 150 ideas from more than 30 states about how we might go about that — not only in K-12 classrooms and college campuses, but also at zoos and parks and museums. Now, it’s got a pretty impressive list of commitments that includes ways to educate everybody, not just students.

One of the administration’s promises, for instance, is to provide climate education for senior federal officials through a “Climate Change for Senior Executive Leaders” program. (What next? Training for members of Congress, I hope?!)

The White House also says it’ll provide climate education resources to National Park employees, convene climate science workshops for teachers, and host a competition next year for the best digital game prototype (’cause games are fun, even if they’re about our impending doom). And a bunch of non-governmental groups, such as the Green Schools Alliance and the Alliance for Climate Education, promise to do things like help teachers start conservation projects and edu-tain 150,000 high school students about climate science.

It stands to reason that Obama’s kinda tepid Climate Action Plan should include this kind of thing. We know you care about the climate, but a lot of Americans don’t, according to US News & World Report:

A Gallup analysis in April showed that 1 in 4 Americans are global warming skeptics and are not worried much or at all about it. All of those deemed skeptics said the rise in the Earth’s temperature is due to natural changes in the environment, rather than pollution, and that global warming will not pose a serious threat in the future.

Meanwhile, a separate survey from Yale and George Mason universities found just more than half of Americans – 55 percent – said they were at least somewhat worried about global warming, while only 11 percent said they were very worried about it. The same poll found 66 percent of Americans think global warming is happening, and that half of Americans think global warming – if it is occurring – is largely human-caused.

Now, you gotta take those opinion polls with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, I rest my case: A little education could go a long, long way.

Source:
Obama Wants Kids to Learn About Global Warming

, US News & World Report.

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Prepare to be schooled on climate change, America

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President Obama Acted Unilaterally on Immigration and the Right Is Predictably Outraged

by KathlenFromm Posted on November 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Barack Obama, who has issued fewer executive orders than any president since Grover Cleveland, issued a set of directives this week to protect 5 million undocumented residents from deportation. The new executive actions will allow undocumented parents of US citizens to stay in the country, and allow children who were brought to the United States by their parents to apply for employment visas. It also, according to various Republican critics, cements Obama’s status as a dictator, a king, an emperor, and maybe even a maniac bent on ethnic cleansing:

Obama is a king. “The president acts like he’s a king,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said. “He ignores the Constitution. He arrogantly says, ‘If Congress will not act, then I must.’ These are not the words of a great leader. These are the words that sound more like the exclamations of an autocrat.”

This will lead to anarchy. “The country’s going to go nuts, because they’re going to see it as a move outside the authority of the president, and it’s going to be a very serious situation,” retiring Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told USA Today. “You’re going to see—hopefully not—but you could see instances of anarchy. … You could see violence.”

He could go to jail. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) told Slate that the president might be committing a felony: “At some point, you have to evaluate whether the president’s conduct aids or abets, encourages, or entices foreigners to unlawfully cross into the United States of America. That has a five-year in-jail penalty associated with it.”

Is ethnic cleansing next? When asked by a talk-radio called on Thursday if the new executive actions would lead to “ethnic cleansing,” Kansas Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach said it just might:

What protects us in America from any kind of ethnic cleansing is the rule of law, of course. And the rule of law used to be unassailable, used to be taken for granted in America. And now, of course, we have a President who disregards the law when it suits his interests. And, so, you know, while I normally would answer that by saying, ‘Steve, of course we have the rule of law, that could never happen in America,’ I wonder what could happen. I still don’t think it’s going to happen in America, but I have to admit, that things are, things are strange and they’re happening.

Kobach is hardly a fringe figure. He was the architect of the self-deportation strategy at the core some of the nation’s harshest immigration laws.

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President Obama Acted Unilaterally on Immigration and the Right Is Predictably Outraged

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Climate Change Is Kicking the Insurance Industry’s Butt

by olikellopas Posted on October 22, 2014

Mother Jones

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In the months after Hurricane Sandy, insurance companies spooked by rising seas dropped coastal policies in droves.

That could become an increasingly common story, according to the largest-ever survey of how insurance companies are dealing with climate change, released today. Global warming is increasing the risk of damage to lives and property from natural disasters beyond what many insurers are willing to shoulder. And most insurance companies aren’t taking adequate steps to change that trend, the survey found. That’s a problem even if you don’t live by the coast: When private insurers back out, the government is left to pick up much of the damage costs; already, the federal flood insurance program is one of the nation’s largest fiscal liabilities.

Ceres, an environmental nonprofit, evaluated the climate risk management policies of 330 large insurance companies operating in the United States. The results are worrying. Only nine companies, 3 percent of the total, earned the highest ranking.

The insurers that scored highly on the survey (including several of the world’s biggest, such as Munich Re, Swiss Re, and Prudential) were those that have adopted a broad range of climate-conscious products and services, such as rate pricing plans that account for potential climate impacts like storms and fires. Some insurers are also investing in high-end climate modeling software to better understand where their risks really are. Others offer environmentally friendly plans like mileage-based car insurance and encourage their customers to rebuild damaged homes using green technologies. And some insurance companies are making significant efforts to monitor and reduce their own carbon footprint.

However, the report finds that one major way insurance companies are adjusting to climate change is by not insuring properties that are threatened by it, said Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, a lead author of the report.

“As a regulator, it’s very bad to see markets being abandoned because of the threat that exists,” he said.

Certainly the threat is real. Globally, average annual weather-related losses have increased more than tenfold in the last several decades, from $10 billion per year in the period 1974-1983 to $131 billion in 2004-2013, according to the report. The insurance industry is not keeping pace: The proportion of those damages that are insured is steadily declining:

Tim McDonnell

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Climate Change Is Kicking the Insurance Industry’s Butt

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California is No. 1 in prepping for climate change

by EugenioD07 Posted on October 9, 2014

CALIFORNIA LOVE

California is No. 1 in prepping for climate change

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9 Oct 2014 5:09 PM

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California, I’m coming home. Because duh: The hippie-tacular Golden State leads the nation in prepping for climate change. A new 50-state tracking tool developed by the Georgetown Climate Center charts state-by-state progress in climate adaptation plans, and shows which ones have been plucky enough to hit their goals. California is at the head of the pack, of course, and is trailed closely by — you guessed it — Massachusetts and New York.

Georgetown Climate Center

California has one of the longest wish lists in the nation, anyway, with 345 separate climate goals. The sad truth is that achieving 48 of its 345 goals actually puts it way out front. Another sad truth is that just 14 states have finalized any kind of climate action plan at all (not surprisingly, most of those are coastal).

California’s successes so far have a lot to do with prioritizing the issues. The state, for example, has created a “Planning for Sea Level Rise Database,” installed tools to identify and reduce climate-related health vulnerabilities, and even has a bill that’ll require lighter-colored pavement to reduce the effects of urban heat islands. So maybe Cali is just going for the low-hanging fruit here, but hey, at least it’s picking the stuff. (And it’d better before the fruit dries out completely.)

Source:
California leads on climate change, says 50-state tool

, USA Today.

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Kenya Plans to Hang a Nurse for Botching an Illegal Abortion

by SuzannaBohn Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Abortion is prohibited in Kenya except under certain circumstances, forcing hundreds of thousands of women underground every year to receive treatment. But it’s not just these women who are putting their lives in danger: Late last week, the Kenyan high court gave a nurse the death penalty after a patient and her fetus died during an illegal abortion.

The nurse, Jackson Namunya Tali, saw a teenage girl who’d recently come to the Nairobi area for a job as a domestic worker, according to the Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest newspaper. Having had one child already, she decided to get an abortion upon getting pregnant a second time. The teen went to Tali for help after being turned down elsewhere.

Tali took the patient to an office—widely assumed by neighbors to be a dental clinic—and performed the abortion. Yet something went wrong and the woman started to bleed out. Tali wrapped her in sheets and drove her to a hospital, but it was too late. She died in the car.

Despite some loosening of the rules in recent years, the right to an abortion is still extremely limited in Kenya. Women are only allowed to receive one when necessary “for emergency treatment” in the eyes of a “trained health professional,” or when the woman’s life is in danger.

Tali was a licensed registered nurse, and when the girl came to his home seeking help, she was allegedly in severe pain, but it’s unclear if her condition was a medical emergency under Kenyan law.

Tali’s wife told the Daily Nation that he only wanted to help the woman. The judge presiding over the case, however, didn’t think his good intentions mattered. “The only question is, who interfered with the fetus?” he asked in his ruling. “It is only the accused who can answer since he attempted to secure the abortion…He has killed two people; a fetus and a mother. The only sentence available in law is the death penalty.”

For most of Kenya’s history, abortion was outlawed entirely. In 2004, the high court sentenced a gynecologist and two nurses who’d performed abortions to die for the murder of several fetuses. (All three were eventually acquitted for lack of evidence.)

In 2010, the country revisited the issue, and American-backed anti-abortion activists fought to keep the prohibition on the books, promising to spend “tens of thousands of dollars” to defeat a proposed constitution with a provision allowing for abortions in the case of an emergency. That campaign failed, and the constitution passed. But legal abortions are still largely out of reach.

As we reported last year, Kenya’s own health ministry issued a study arguing that greater access to abortions would not only save the lives of countless women but also save the entire health care system money by reducing the instance of abortion-related complications. In 2012, an estimated 465,000 women underwent an abortion in Kenya. Of these, more than a third were treated for complications. Seventy-seven percent of those women endured complications that were “moderately severe” or “severe.” Worse still, 266 women die for every 100,000 unsafe abortions in Kenya. “Improved access to high-quality comprehensive abortion care…will not only save lives, but also reduce costs to the health system,” the report said.

Kenya’s legislature did not adopt that recommendation. And following Thursday’s judgment, underground abortions are now all the more risky for both women and the people who operate on them.

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Kenya Plans to Hang a Nurse for Botching an Illegal Abortion

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Obama Threatened Far More Often Than Any Previous President

by NonaBoothe Posted on September 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Carol Leonnig has a piece in the Washington Post today about a botched Secret Service response to a 2011 shooting at the White House:

The suspect was able to park his car on a public street, take several shots and then speed off without being detected. It was sheer luck that the shooter was identified, the result of Ortega, a troubled and jobless 21-year-old, wrecking his car seven blocks away and leaving his gun inside.

The response infuriated the president and the first lady, according to people with direct knowledge of their reaction. Michelle Obama has spoken publicly about fearing for her family’s safety since her husband became the nation’s first black president.

Her concerns are well founded — President Obama has faced three times as many threats as his predecessors, according to people briefed on the Secret Service’s threat assessment.

Gee, I wonder why?

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Obama Threatened Far More Often Than Any Previous President

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Texas’ New Public School Textbooks Promote Climate Change Denial and Downplay Segregation

by ShaylaAlfred Posted on September 17, 2014

Mother Jones

The battle over Texas textbooks is raging once again. On Tuesday, hundreds of citizens turned out for the first public hearing on the controversial social-science materials now under review as part of the state’s contentious once-in-a-decade textbook adoption process. During the all-day proceedings, activists and historians pointed out numerous factual errors and complained that the books promoted tea party ideology while mocking affirmative action and downplaying the science linking human activity to climate change. “They are full of biases that are either outside the established mainstream scholarship, or just plain wrong,” Jacqueline Jones, who chairs the history department at the University of Texas-Austin, said from the podium. “It can lead to a great deal of confusion in the reader.”

Other speakers raised concerns about the treatment of religion, especially the tendency of some books to play up the role of Christianity in our nation’s founding. Kathleen Wellman, a professor of history Southern Methodist University, noted with dismay that a popular civics text was filled with references to Moses and claimed that the biblical prophet had inspired American democracy. If the draft texts are adopted as is, she argued, Texas children could grow up “believing that Moses was the first American.” Conservatives, meanwhile, complained that the books gave too much space to liberal figures such as Hillary Clinton.

It’s a high-stakes debate. Because Texas has one of the nation’s largest public school systems and some of the most rigid textbook requirements, publishers have traditionally tailored textbooks they sell nationwide to the Lone Star market.

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Texas’ New Public School Textbooks Promote Climate Change Denial and Downplay Segregation

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Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

by CandacePapst Posted on September 12, 2014

Cheeri-NOs

Why millennials aren’t going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

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12 Sep 2014 5:40 PM

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The New York Times crunched the nation’s cereal-eating numbers this week, and it looks like the typical American breakfast is starting to include fewer sugary flakes and moon-shaped marshmallows.

The Times’ Stephanie Stroml reports that in the past decade, Americans have been eating less boxed cereal, preferring healthier options like juiced fruits and veggies and probiotic-rich Greek yogurt. Between 2003 and 2013, sales of the once-beloved flaky cereals (Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, etc.) decreased by 5.5 percent. Children’s cereals (Lucky Charms and good ol’ Cap’n Crunch) have plummeted 10.7 percent. Meanwhile, Muesli, a favorite of health nuts everywhere, is steadily gaining popularity, increasing in sales by 1.8 percent.

The article reads:

For the last decade, the cereal business has been declining, as consumers reach for granola bars, yogurt and drive-through fare in the morning. And the drop-off has accelerated lately, especially among those finicky millennials who tend to graze on healthy options — even if Cheerios and some other brands come in whole-grain varieties fortified with protein now.

As a millennial myself, I’d like to take this opportunity to say a little something to big breakfast cereal companies to give them a heads-up on why young people like me are opting out of their morning Cap’n Crunch:

Dearest Big Breakfast Cereal Companies (BBCCs),

Hello, I am your loyal fan Liz. I am particularly fond of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch, the perfect blend of whole-wheaty oats and sun-dried raisin chewiness. It’s my favorite thing to snack on while I scroll through my Instagram feed. So, to you I extend the deepest of gratitude.

But, BBCCs, I’m writing to tell you to CUT THE CRAP. We millennials are having a tough time believing the whole “Lucky Charms are a great source of whole-grains” thing when they actually contain 40 percent more sugar by weight than typical adult cereals. C’mon, people, we both know this is bogus. Sugary breakfast cereals are not health food, even if you pump them up with protein. It’s like trying to make “fetch” happen. And it’s not going to happen.

You see, it’s not that we don’t enjoy the taste of sugary deliciousness, it’s that we’re becoming smarter consumers. We’re smarter, BBCCs, because we’ve seen these tricks before. Other companies have been trying to sell us products that cater to millennial interests — by making cars more tech-friendly and fast-food look quaint and local. But those marketing ploys that tell us we should be slaves to the automobile, or that food products are healthy when the nutrition label reads, “sugars: 19 grams” — well, they’re starting to feel a little stale.

I probably won’t give up eating a bowl or two of cereal for dinner once in a while, but if you’re wondering why your sales continue to drop despite your new “heath conscious” advertising campaigns — it’s because when millennials want to get their daily fix of whole grains, we’ll reach for the organic barley, not the box of Fruit Loops.

Source:
Cereals Begin to Lose Their Snap, Crackle and Pop

, New York Times.

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