RED EYE 02/01/12

Unions follow bosses on pay-cuts

12/30, NYT -- Louisville, KY- Manufacturers are hiring again in America, softening a long slide in factory employment. But for a new generation of blue-collar workers, even those protected by unions, the price of employment is likely to be lower wages stretching to retirement.
The wages for the new hires,are $10 to $15 an hour less than the pay scale for hourly employees already on staff--with the additional concession that the newcomers will not catch up for the foreseeable future.
 The shrunken pay scale for newcomers--$12 to $19 an hour versus $21 to $32 an hour for longtime workers--threatens to undo the middle-class status of even the best paid blue-collar jobs still left in manufacturing. ‚Ķneither G.E.'s 2,000 hourly workers nor Ford's 2,900 have objected.
Quite the contrary, all argue that job creation must take precedence over holding the line on wages‚…"You must have a globally competitive wage to create jobs."


Good teacher a life-long benefit

1/6, NYT--After identifying excellent, average and poor teachers, the economists then set out to look at their students over the long term, analyzing information on earnings, college matriculation rates, the age they had children, and where they ended up living.
The results were striking. Looking only at test scores, previous studies had shown the effect of a good teacher mostly fades after three of four years. But the broader view showed that the students still benefit for years to come.
Students with top teachers are, more likely to enroll in college, and more…likely to earn more.

Poverty biggest drag on students

12/14, NYT--We desperately need a reminder of the relationship between economic advantage and student performance.
The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high-and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students.
‚…more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates.
International research tells the same story.

Hiding poisonous laws from public

12/16, NYT--To The Editor: Speaker John A. Boehner, at the urging of lobbyists for chemical manufacturers, refiners, paper mills and other big polluters, put poison in the stockings of children across the country with a deadly provision buried in the tax relief bill.
This rider would eliminate controls on toxic pollution for some of the nation's most dangerous polluters, the industrial boilers and incinerators used to generate heat and power at major industrial facilities. It [is]…exposing communities to pollutants that cause birth defects, developmental damage and cancer.
What does this have to do with middle-class tax relief? Nothing.


No real effort vs. hospital errors

1/6, NYT--Washington--Hospital[s] recognize and report only one out of seven errors, accidents and other events that harm Medicare patients while they are hospitalized, federal investigators say in a new report.
The inspector general estimated that more than 130,000 Medicare beneficiaries experienced one or more adverse events in hospitals in a single month.
The inspector general found that "hospitals made few changes to policies or practices" after employees reported harm to patients. In many cases, hospital executives told federal investigators that the events did not reveal any "systemic quality problems."
Organizations that inspect and accredit hospitals generally "do not scrutinize" how hospitals keep track of medical errors and other adverse events, the study said.

France, UK, US sent killers to Haiti

1/1, NYT--In 1791, what today is Haiti became the scene of the largest slave revolt in history. Over the next 13 years, the rebels fought off three successive attempts to re-enslave them. The first was by local planters and French soldiers, aided by arms from the United States, whose president and secretary of state, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were both slave owners horrified by the uprising. The second was by the British, eager for fertile sugar land and slaves to work it. And finally, Napoleon.
Ill-armed, barefoot and hungry, the rebels fought against huge odds:‚….Napolean sent the largest force that had ever set sail from France, losing more than 50,000 soldiers. The former slaves lost even more defeating these invasions.
By the time Haiti declared independence in 1804, many of its fields, towns and sugar mills were in ruins and its population shrunken by more than half. The Haitian Revolution, as it is known today, was a great inspiration to slaves still in bondage throughout the Americas, but it was devastating to the country itself.
France in 1825 insisted that Haiti pay compensation for the plantations taken from French owners. In case the Haitians did not agree, French warships lay offshore. The sum the French demanded was so big that a dozen years later, paying off this exorbitant ransom, and paying the interest on loans taken out for that purpose, was consuming 30 percent of Haiti's national budget. The ruinous cycle of debt continued into the next century.
Brute force still ruled in the next century, climaxing in the three-decade reign of the Duvaliers, father and son. Their militia, the dreaded Tontons Macoute, spread terror, murdering as many as 60,000 people.
Duvalier, no matter how brutal, could usually count on American support as long as he was vocally anti-Communist. Father and son understood this well and shrewdly used that knowledge to retain power, as did petty tyrants across Latin America, Africa and Asia.
["Haiti,The Aftershocks of History",by Laurent Dubois]‚….does feel chillingly up to date, however:its account of the United States Marine occupation of Haiti for some two decades starting in 1915. The occupation was accompanied by high-flown declarations of benevolence, but the real motive was to solidify American control of the economy and to replace a constitution that prevented foreigners from owning land.
United States troops burned entire villages accused of sheltering insurgents and ruthlessly executed captured rebels or--does this sound familiar?--men who might have been rebels; often there was no way to distinguish them from local farmers.

Money undercuts medical expertise

1/3, NYT--If you want to know what is wrong with American health care today, exhibit A might be the two new proton beam treatment facilities the Mayo Clinic has begun building, one in Minnesota, the other in Arizona, at a cost of more than $180 million dollars each. They are part of a medical arms race for proton beam machines, which could cost taxpayers billions of dollars for a treatment that, in many cases, appears to be no better than cheaper alternatives. So why is the venerable Mayo Clinic building two proton beam facilities? Because it's competing against Massachusetts General Hospital, M.D. Anderson in Texas, the University of Pennsylvania, Loma Linda in California--all of which have one. With ‚reimbursement so generous and patients and doctors eager for the latest technology, building new machines is,….profitable business for hospitals like Mayo.
But it is crazy medicine.


U.S., Israel already at war vs. Iran

NYT, 1/11 —— As arguments flare in Israel and the United States about a possible military strike to set back Iran's nuclear program, an accelerating covert campaign of assassinations, bombings, cyberattacks and defections appears intended to make that debate irrelevant…. The campaign, which experts believe carried out mainly by Israel, apparently claimed its latest victim on Wednesday when a bomb killed a 32-year-old nuclear scientist….
He was at least the fifth scientist with nuclear connections to be killed since 2007…Fereydoon Abbasi survived a 2010 attack and was put in charge of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.
Iranian officials immediately blamed both Israel and the united States for the latest death, which came less than two months after a suspicious explosion at an iranian missile base that killed a top general and 16 other people…



Child-base cuts put jobs at risk

NYT, 12/14 —— With stats under pressure to cut their budgets and federal stimulus money gone, low-income working parents are facing a paradox. Just when they have to work longer hours to make ends meet, they are losing access to teething they need most to stay on the job: a government subsidy that helps pay for chid care….
"There's a long history of recognition that child care is essential to helping low-income women work."…. "That commitment is being eroded."…

Those who have the subsidy live in fear of losing it….A customer service workers for an electricity company in Pennsylvania, said she had to ask her new boyfriend and her 8-year-old son to watch her baby girl, who was at home screaming with a fever, because she has received too many warnings at work about taking time off to care for her.


Election: misleader vs. liar

NYT, 1/6 —— America's recovery from recession has been so slow that it mostly doesn't seem like a recovery at all, especially on the jobs front. So, in a better world, President Obama would face a challenger offering a serious critique of his job-creation policies, and proposing a serious alternative.
Instead, he'll almost surely face Mitt Romney….His claims about the Obama record border on dishonesty, ad his claims out his own record are well across that border….



Will home-carers really get a raise?

NYT —— The Obama administration proposed regulation on Thursday to give the nation's nearly two million home care workers minimum wage and overtime protections… The White House said 92 percent of these workers were women, nearly 30 percent were African-American and 12 percent [Latino]. Nearly 40 percent rely on public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps….many do not receive a time-and-a-half premium when they work more than 40 hours a week…..
Business groups criticized the proposed rules, which can still be modified after a 60-year public comment period. Industry officials said the proposals would push up costs [for] home care agencies….Nearly 90 percent of the nation's home care aides work for agencies…



Lobbyists protect poison-dumping

NYT, 12/15 —— The export of hazardous electronic wastes, including lead acid batteries to the developing world has irreparable public health effects in some of the most impoverished countries on earth.
DUmping-by-export of hazardous wastes is prohibited by an international treaty called the Basel Convention. Lead acids batteries and other used electronics are covered by this treaty.
While 175 countries have ratified that important treaty, three have not: Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States.
Under the guise of promoting "free trade," lobbyists in Washington working for companies that claim to be "recyclers" but are primarily waste exporters have prevented the United STates from banning the export of hazardous wastes….



U.S. shuts eyes as innocents die

NYT, 1/4 —— ….Our view of [U.S.] wars has been blind to one specific aspect of destruction: the human toll of those who live in war zones.
We tune out the voices of the victims and belittle their complaints about the midnight raids, the house-to-house searches, the checkpoints, the drone attacks, the mobs that fall on weddings instead of Al Qaeda….
More than 10 years after the war in Afghanistan began, we have only the sketchiest notion of how many people have died as a consequence of the conflict. The United States office in Kabul assembles some figures from morgues and other sources, but they are incomplete. The same has even true for Iraq, although a number of independent effort sha een made thee to account for the dead.
but such numbers, which into the hundreds of thousands gain scant attention. [U.S.] political and military leaders, like the public, show little interest in non-[U.S.] casualties.
Denial, after all, is politically convenient. Failing to consider the mortality figures, the refugees, the impoverished, the demolished hospitals and clean water systems and schools is to deny, in effect, that he war ever happened…
Yet many of the captured Iraqis said they were defending their communities by resisting the occupying forces. Roughing up, detaining or killing suspecting enemy fighters —— as the coalition forces did in countless operations —- prompted some Iraqis to take up the gun, the I.E.D. and the suicide bomb. The more violence from the occupiers,the more ferocious their reaction….
In several opinion polls, Iraqis identified American forces as the primary cause of the violence besetting their country….In 2006, two separate household surveys, by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, found between 400,000 and 650,000 "excess deaths" in Iraq as a result of the war. At the time, however, the commanding general in Iraq put the number at 50,000….If we do not demand a full accounting of the wages of war, future [repetitions] are all the more likely….


Low social spending = bad health

NYT, 12/9 —— It's common knowledge that the United States spends more than any other country on health care….We found that if you counted the combined investment in health care and social services, the United States no long spend the most money —— far from it….In a national survey…four out of five physicians agreed the unmet social needs led directly to worse health….Our current social programs are mostly opt-in, leaving holes for the undocumented, uneducated, and unemployed to slip through cracks and become acutely ill….The impact of sub-par social conditions on health has been well documented. Homelessness isn't typically thought of as a medical problem, but it often precludes good nutrition, personal hygiene and basic first aid, and it increases the risks of frostbite, leg ulcers, upper respiratory infections and trauma from muggings, beatings and rape…. The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program tracked the medical expenses of 119 chronically homeless people for several years. In one five-year period, the group accounted for 18,834 emergency room visits estimated to cost $12.7 million…..


She says mouse-clicks fall short

NYT, 1/6 —— To the editor: I teach in a College. Over the last 10 years we have witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of technology among children and teenagers.
Despite the ready access to these informaiton-rich tools, our students come to college with weak attention skills and too often an active dislike of sustained readings. Their dislike of sustained reading. Their knowledge base is far less than that of their parents and older siblings who lacked the ready access to technology.
While the Web may provide information, it does not equip the student without the critical-thinking skills to discern the good from the bad or ridiculous….Students will succeed in college and in the world because they will know how to talk with one another, work through differences of opinion, have and use information productively, and solve problems critically and cooperatively.
none of this is achieved through mouse clicks….