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Monday, November 4, 2013

What If A Congressman Comes Out And Nobody Cares?

Rep. Mike Michaud talks to an Associated Press reporter Monday in Portland, Maine, about his public announcement that he is gay.

Clarke Canfield/AP

Rep. Mike Michaud talks to an Associated Press reporter Monday in Portland, Maine, about his public announcement that he is gay.

Clarke Canfield/AP

The final chapter in the history of bombshells of the closeted-gay-politician variety may have been written Monday by Rep. Mike Michaud, a Maine Democrat running for governor.

Michaud, 58, announced in a column published in two state newspapers and by the Associated Press that he is a gay man, and followed it with the question: "But why should it matter?"

Judging from immediate reaction in Maine, where Michaud next year will be competing to become the first governor in U.S. history elected as an openly gay man, the answer seemed to be that it probably won't.

"I don't think this will be a defining issue," says MaryEllen FitzGerald, president of the Portland, Maine-based Critical Insights market research and polling firm. "And I don't think most people are surprised by his announcement."

Wrote the Bangor Daily News in an editorial headline: "Mike Michaud is gay. Welcome this truth and move on."

Those on the ground in Maine are predicting that the expected three-way race in 2014 between Michaud, Republican Gov. Paul LePage, and progressive Independent Eliot Cutler remains competitive — and largely unchanged — after Monday's not-so-big reveal.

More Help Than Hurt?

One effect, however, could come in the money race. Michaud, the seventh openly gay or bisexual member (all Democrats) currently serving in the House, now becomes a symbol for LGBT supporters nationwide, says Mike Tipping of the Maine People's Resource Center, a non-profit that conducts regular polling and public opinion research.

The congressman's announcement, he says, will likely increase his ability to raise money nationally, and potentially help him siphon some support from Cutler.

"This is more likely to help him electorally than hurt him," Tipping says. "LePage has locked up conservative support, but there's more fluidity among moderate and progressive voters, going between Michaud and Cutler."

"If anything, this will help him among that voting bloc," he says.

Michaud's announcement comes a day before LePage, 65, a Tea Party favorite with high statewide negative ratings, has plans to announce that he'll seek a second term. Cutler, 67, a wealthy environmental lawyer who finished second to LePage in a three-way race in 2010, announced in September that he would run again.

Poll averages show Michaud, a Franco-American Catholic who has held elective office since 1980, leading in both a three-way matchup and in a two-candidate race with LePage.

State of Play

Maine voters last year legalized same-sex marriage, by a vote of 53-47 percent, three years after they had rejected a similar effort. Michaud and Cutler supported the legalization effort; LePage has said that he personally opposes gay marriage, but that it should be up to voters to decide.

Though there remains significant polarization over gay marriage, the antipathy does not appear to extend to candidates' sexual orientation, says FitzGerald, of the Portland market research firm.

"Mainers have shown tolerance on this and intolerance toward those trying the make that type of thing an issue," she said. "This candidate has a long track record in public service that people can judge him on."

Writing in the Portland Press Herald, political reporter Steve Mistler noted that "rumors about Michaud's sexual orientation have followed the former mill worker throughout his 33-year political career, but have never been reported."

Michaud served two terms in the state House, and five in the state Senate. He came to Washington in 2003 after what would prove to be his only close race for Congress — a 52 to 48 percent victory over Republican Kevin Raye.

He has since easily won re-election in the more rural and conservative of the state's two congressional districts.

"He worked in a mill, drove a forklift, he doesn't have a college degree, and has among the least personal wealth of anyone in Congress," Tipping says. "There are some other identity politics in this race."

In his coming-out column, Michaud suggested that his hand was forced by opponents' "whisper campaigns, insinuations, and push-polls."

The notion that he was somehow outed, however, struck FitzGerald as a bit funny.

"This is Maine, where nobody is whispering," she said. "This is just one large small town."

A town in which Michaud's announcement, whatever prompted it, came as little surprise and, a year from now, may have a marginal effect on what's expected to be a hotly contested election.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/11/04/243035126/what-if-a-congressman-comes-out-and-nobody-cares?ft=1&f=1001
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Illinois unions hold strong despite blows to labor

CHICAGO (AP) — Across the middle of the country, organized labor has taken one hit after another in places that were once union strongholds: Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana, where workers lost bargaining power and saw their ranks shrink, leaving them weaker than almost any time in the past century.

The notable exception is Illinois. Here, it's almost as though the Great Recession and the Republican resurgence of 2010 never happened. Public employees still have their defined-benefit pensions. Unions still negotiate and collect dues. And little public blame has been heaped on labor for the state's financial problems.

But the ability of Illinois unions to withstand the pressures that broke down their colleagues elsewhere is back on display this week as lawmakers try for the umpteenth time to confront the nearly $100 billion shortfall in the public-employee pension system, the largest in the nation.

The Legislature is under pressure to consider slashing pension benefits or requiring employees to contribute more to their own retirement funds or to retire at a later age. It's the kind of overhaul most states did several years ago to ease the crushing weight of growing obligations to retirees, combined with declining revenue.

Or, lawmakers might do what they've done multiple times before: nothing.

The outcome could determine whether Illinois' dismal finances get a long-delayed fix or whether one of labor's toughest redoubts reaffirms its power by holding off any major changes in benefits.

"Whether you like that outcome or not, you have to say 'That's an organization that has some political strength, and that uses it,'" said Robert Bruno, a professor in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois.

Much of labor's success here, no doubt, derives from the fact that President Barack Obama's home state is a citadel for Democrats who have long enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with unions.

But Democrats aren't solely responsible for the current predicament. Some of the sharpest growth in employee benefits happened when Republicans were in charge.

Even some of the most direct victims of the state's woeful budget refuse to blame state employees and their comparatively generous benefits.

"We are a state that supports the workers. That's just who we are," said Judith Gethner, a lobbyist for hundreds of social-service agencies, mental health providers and other nonprofits that have waited months for Illinois to pay billions of dollars in unpaid bills.

Gethner has pushed for state pension reform. But she says slashing employee benefits runs counter to the culture of a place where unions have long been "the backbone" of Chicago, with its outsize influence over the state and a history that traces back to the Haymarket riots and other labor milestones.

Chicago Democrats control the most powerful jobs in the state — governor, House speaker and Senate president, plus attorney general and secretary of state. But the unions have maintained friendships with many moderate Republicans, giving them occasional endorsements and donating more to their campaigns than in neighboring states.

In the 2010 elections, for example, 13 percent of the money Illinois public-employee unions gave to political campaigns went to Republicans, according to an analysis of data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. In Wisconsin, public-employee unions gave less than 3 percent of their contributions to GOP candidates that year, when Gov. Scott Walker was elected and began his effort to end most collective bargaining.

Historically, Illinois Republicans "have not gone to war against unions," said former Gov. Jim Edgar, a Republican who enjoyed the support of some labor groups. "We had our differences, but I always felt union members were hard-working, and from a selfish point of view, they were better workers when government worked well."

Edgar noted that his GOP predecessor, Jim Thompson, was in office when one of the biggest expansions of collective bargaining rights in state history occurred. Those alliances also helped unions secure a constitutional provision in 1970 that says their pension benefits can't be cut — the most oft-cited obstacle when lawmakers have declined year after year to trim the amounts that retirees receive.

Henry Bayer, who started as an organizer for AFSCME Local 31 more than 35 years ago and now is its executive director, notes that workers have not gone unscathed. The state's largest public-employee union is currently suing Gov. Pat Quinn to get back pay it says members were promised in a salary increase two years ago.

"Not that (lawmakers) don't do bad things to us," Bayer said. "But it's not like Indiana or Wisconsin, where there's just outright, unbridled hostility."

Illinois' problems are probably worse than those places, due to years of spending more than the state took in and not making full payments to its pension funds.

In Wisconsin, for example, Walker argued that effectively ending collective bargaining for most public workers was a necessary cost-saving move. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and the GOP-controlled Legislature approved "right-to-work" legislation, which prohibits unions from requiring workers to pay dues, as a way to attract companies that would create jobs.

In Illinois, a right-to-work bill introduced earlier this year didn't get as much as a committee hearing.

Like much that happens in Illinois' topsy-turvy political world, the allegiances and public stances on pension reform do not break down as one might expect.

The state's highest-profile Democrats — Quinn, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and House Speaker Michael Madigan — have at least outwardly pressed the urgent need to deal with pension benefits. But Senate President John Cullerton, another Chicago Democrat, declared recently that the pension woes are not a crisis. Many rank-and-file Dems loathe voting against unions and have led the resistance to more substantial reform. So have some rank-and-file Republicans.

Meanwhile, the unions have not sat quietly. The Chicago Teachers Union wrested concessions from Emanuel in a 2012 strike, and one union leader said the former White House chief of staff would need "every damn dime" of his roughly $5 million campaign fund to win re-election in 2015. After state union workers booed Quinn at last year's state fair, the governor canceled his main event there this year.

In Illinois, "there's an acceptance that the labor movement isn't alien," Bruno said. "And it isn't bad."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/illinois-unions-hold-strong-despite-blows-labor-193911795.html
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Affidavit: Roommate took shooting suspect to LAX

This photo provided by the FBI shows Paul Ciancia, 23. Accused of opening fire inside the Los Angeles airport, Ciancia was determined to lash out at the Transportation Security Administration, saying in a note that he wanted to kill at least one TSA officer and didn’t care which one, authorities said Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013. (AP Photo/FBI)

This June, 2013 photo released by the Hernandez family Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013, shows Transportation Security Administration officer Gerardo Hernandez. Hernandez, 39, was shot to death and several others wounded by a gunman who went on a shooting rampage in Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport Friday. (AP Photo/Courtesy Hernandez Family)

Lawyer John Jordan gives a statement on behalf of the father and siblings of Paul Ciancia on Monday, Nov. 4, 2013, in Pennsville, N.J. Ciancia is accused of opening fire at Los Angeles International Airport on Nov. 1, killing a Transportation Security Administration officer. (AP Photo/Geoff Mulvihill)

Transportation Security Administration officers ride an escalator past a memorial at Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport Monday, Nov 4, 2013. TSA Officer Gerardo I. Hernandez was killed and two officers and one civilian wounded in the shooting at Terminal 3 Friday, Nov. 1. Operations at the airport were back to normal Monday, the first business day since the attack. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

In this Sunday, Nov. 3, 2013 photo provided by his mother Judy Ludmer, Brian Ludmer, left, the Calabasas High School teacher who was wounded in the Los Angeles International Airport shootings on Nov. 1, 2013, is joined by Las Virgenes School District Superintendent Dan Steponosky in his room at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Ludmer, the lone civilian wounded by gunfire that killed one Transportation Security Administration officer and wounded two others, received a severe leg injury that will require further surgery and a lengthy recovery period. (AP Photo/Judy Ludmer)

PENNSVILLE, N.J. (AP) — Court documents say the suspected gunman charged with killing a TSA officer at Los Angeles International Airport was dropped off at the terminal by his roommate.

In an affidavit supporting a search and seizure warrant for Paul Ciancia's cellphone, authorities say the roommate dropped off Ciancia on Friday morning after Ciancia entered his room unannounced and asked to be driven to LAX.

The roommate agreed and drove Ciancia in his black Hyundai Accent to Terminal 3. The attack began minutes later, leaving three others wounded, including two TSA officials.

The affidavit says Ciancia was concerned about the New World Order, a conspiracy theory that foresees a totalitarian one-world government.

The roommate told authorities he only learned of the shooting upon returning to the apartment.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-11-04-LAX%20Shooting-Suspect/id-18a0b7ec231c4c13ae0aeaf41bb07989
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NYC's First Inflatable Tunnel Plug Will Stop Floods, Smoke, and Gas

After Hurricane Sandy decimated the subway system last year, officials pledged to install new devices to help halt the rising tides—including flood gates and, more intriguingly, a device called a "tunnel plug."

U-M study: 'Smarter' blood pressure guidelines could prevent many more heart attacks and strokes

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Nov-2013

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Contact: Beata Mostafavi
bmostafa@umich.edu
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System

Care that emphasizes patients' risks of heart disease could prevent up to 180,000 more heart attacks and strokes a year using less medication over all

ANN ARBOR, Mich. A new way of using blood pressure-lowering medications could prevent more than a fourth of heart attacks and strokes up to 180,000 a year while using less medication overall, according to new research from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Individualizing treatment recommendations using patients' risk of heart disease after considering multiple factors such as age, gender and whether or not the patient smokes is a more effective way to treat patients than current methods, according to the study that appears in the medical journal, Circulation.

Current medical guidelines use a one-size-fits-all treatment approach based on target blood pressure values that leads to some patients being on too many medications and others being on too little, authors say.

Blood pressure medication is ultimately used to prevent associated heart disease and stroke. Researchers found that a person's blood pressure level is often not the most important factor in determining if a blood pressure medication will prevent these diseases but common practice is to base treatment strictly on blood pressure levels.

"Drugs that lower blood pressure are among the most effective and commonly used medications in the country, but we believe they can be used dramatically more effectively," says lead author Jeremy Sussman, M.D., M.Sc., assistant professor of internal medicine in the Division of General Medicine at the U-M Medical School and research scientist at the Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

"The purpose of these medications is not actually to avoid high blood pressure itself but to stop heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular diseases. We should guide use of medications by a patient's risk of these diseases and how much adding a new medication decreases that risk not solely on their blood pressure level. We found that people who have mildly high blood pressure but high cardiovascular risk receive a lot of benefit from treatment, but those with low overall cardiovascular risk do not."

Current treatment guidelines emphasize specific blood pressure goals, with the majority of treatment driven specifically towards pushing blood pressure below 140/80 mmHg. However, authors say tailored blood pressure treatment decisions based on a patient's overall cardiovascular disease risk and the estimated benefits of advancing treatment is a substantially more effective model of care.

Authors say new blood pressure guidelines could help patients make informed decisions about their care. For example, if patients knew that medication only slightly reduced their risk of a heart attack or stroke (e.g. from 8 in 100 to 6 in 100 over the next 10 years), they may decide medication is not the right choice for them.

"In addition to resulting in more positive health outcomes for patients, this approach provides the type of information we need to guide individual decisions tailored to the patients' preferences and priorities," says senior author Rod Hayward, professor of Medicine and Public Health and senior investigator at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.

"Our research shows how we can estimate how much taking more blood pressure medicine will reduce an individual's risk of heart disease and strokes, so that they and their doctor can make the best decision for them."

Both Sussman and Hayward are members of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the Center for Clinical Management Research at Ann Arbor VA..

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Additional Authors: Sandeep Vijan, M.D., M.S., associate professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School, research scientist at the VA Ann Arbor Health Care System and member of the IHPI.

Disclosures: None

Funding: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Quality Enhancement Research Initiative and the Methods Core of the Michigan Center for Diabetes and Translational Research of the National Institutes of Health (P60DK-20572)

Reference: Circulation, "Using Benefit-Based Tailored Treatment to Improve the Use of Antihypertensive Medications," doi:10.1161/Circulationaha.113.00229

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

U-M study: 'Smarter' blood pressure guidelines could prevent many more heart attacks and strokes

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Nov-2013

[

| E-mail

]

Contact: Beata Mostafavi
bmostafa@umich.edu
734-764-2220
University of Michigan Health System

Care that emphasizes patients' risks of heart disease could prevent up to 180,000 more heart attacks and strokes a year using less medication over all

Both Sussman and Hayward are members of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the Center for Clinical Management Research at Ann Arbor VA..

###

Additional Authors: Sandeep Vijan, M.D., M.S., associate professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School, research scientist at the VA Ann Arbor Health Care System and member of the IHPI.

Disclosures: None

Reference: Circulation, "Using Benefit-Based Tailored Treatment to Improve the Use of Antihypertensive Medications," doi:10.1161/Circulationaha.113.00229

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| E-mail

Share

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/uomh-us110413.php
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Google is understandably upset with the NSA

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has reason to be angry. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Google and Yahoo servers without telling the Internet giants. Schmidt expressed his disappointment in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

According to Schmidt, the newly-revealed snooping "just doesn't pass the smell test."

"It's really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that's true," said Schmidt. "The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment, to pursue its mission and potentially violate people's privacy; it's not OK. It's just not okay...it's perfectly possible that there are more revelations to come."

In Schmidt's view, the NSA has gone overboard. "The NSA allegedly collected the phone records of 320 million people in order to identify roughly 300 people who might be a risk. It's just bad public policy…and perhaps illegal." He admits that "There clearly are cases where evil people exist, but you don't have to violate the privacy of every single citizen of America to find them."

The government, not surprisingly, doesn't agree. In a statement that the NSA issued last week, the organization promised that it "conducts all of its activities in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies—and assertions to the contrary do a grave disservice to the nation, its allies and partners, and the men and women who make up the National Security Agency."

Despite these claims, an audit released in August disclosed that the organization broke the law nearly 3,000 times in 2011 and 2012.

Nevertheless , NSA Director General Keith Alexander has denied the allegations, initially made by whistleblower Edward Snowden. "I can tell you factually we do not have access to Google servers, Yahoo servers." Last week's allegations did not claim that the NSA accessed the servers, but the links between the servers and the open Internet.

Schmidt's objections aside, Google doesn't have a sterling reputation when it comes to privacy, either. Google knowingly took part in the NSA's PRISM program, which collected information on American's phone calls and email. The company has long hunted for keywords in Gmail subscribers' email to direct advertising their way. And last month, the search giant changed its terms of service to allow it to use your name and photo in advertising. One could reasonably describe Google's business model as giving you free services so they could learn more about you.

Schmidt, and Google have good reason to be angry with NSA, even if their own hands aren't entirely clean in this matter. The rest of us are left with a general wariness about what Google knows about us, what the government knows about us, and how those two floods of information intersect.

[ This sponsored article was written by IDG Creative Lab, a partner of PCWorld. ]

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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2060682/google-is-understandably-upset-with-the-nsa.html#tk.rss_all
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This morphing table can create a virtual version of you in realtime

Keiichi Matsuda is excited about this invention and I can't blame him: A solid table that reproduces a virtual version of anything that you put under its sensors—in realtime. You can see how it reproduces the hands moving in the clip above, but there's more: