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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
oct 20, 2019
Real News Today
oct 20, 2019
*Our Tax System Rewards Polluters
(Oil)
*Christ on a Crackpot: A Pair of Dangerous Speeches from the Attorney General and Secretary of State by the rude pundit(Commentary)
*Anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim Murders Are Latest in String of Fascist Attacks
(White Supremacy)
*What it means to raise a Black girl in white America
(Race Matters)
*Emmett Till: new memorial to murdered teen is bulletproof
(America)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
Hillary Clinton doesn't just predict the Russians will support Tulsi Gabbard as a third-party candidate; she also calls Jill Stein "a Russian asset -- I mean totally."
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Tim Wise✔
@timjacobwise
If you want to know the kind of evil we’re up against with the MAGA cult, please note: they’re on here this morning celebrating the death of Elijah Cummings. These people are ghouls. They must be completely defeated. No making nice. No reaching across the aisle. No mercy.
2:42 AM - Oct 17, 2019
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Chuck Schumer✔
@SenSchumer
Senator Lindsey Graham is trying to organize a letter of Senate Republicans promising not to convict President Trump under any circumstances.
Before the House even completes its inquiry.
Senator Graham is pushing Alice-in-Wonderland justice. First the verdict, then the trial.
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In ruling on Trump finances, court finds broad authority for impeachment inquiry
The late Elijah Cummings, as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, had a valid reason for seeking the president's financial records, the judges said.
Oct. 19, 2019, 8:32 AM EDT
By Danny Cevallos - nbc news
A federal appeals court ruled last week that President Donald Trump's accounting firm must turn over financial records requested by a House committee.
In April, the House Oversight and Reform Committee subpoenaed the firm, Mazars USA, for documents related to Trump's accounts going back to January 2009. His lawyers fought back with a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that argued Congress had no legitimate legislative purpose for getting the materials.
In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the court disagreed but put a temporary hold on the legal effect of its decision to allow Trump's lawyers to appeal. A large part of the court’s opinion, which runs more than 100 pages, can be distilled into three questions: Is the Oversight Committee pursuing a legislative, as opposed to a law-enforcement, objective? Is the committee investigating a subject on which constitutional legislation could be enacted? And does the subpoena seek information relevant to the legislative inquiry?
If the committee is pursuing only a crime-fighting objective, that could exceed its authority because such missions are exclusive to the executive and judicial branches. On the other hand, observers of congressional hearings have long known that the legislative purpose is not invalidated just because some criminal activity is unearthed during the process.
An April memorandum from Elijah Cummings, the longtime Baltimore congressman and chairman of the oversight panel who died on Thursday, identified four objectives of the subpoena: determine “whether the President may have engaged in illegal conduct before and during his tenure in office”; “whether [the President] has undisclosed conflicts of interest that may impair his ability to make impartial policy decisions”; “whether [the President] is complying with the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution,” and “whether [the President] has accurately reported his finances to the Office of Government Ethics and other federal entities.”
To the court, this and other supporting documents provided strong evidence that the committee has a valid legislative purpose.
Trump's lawyers argued that the Oversight Committee's statements were disingenuous, concealing the panel's true — and improper — law enforcement purpose. They also contended that the first objective of the subpoena, to determine “whether the President … engaged … in illegal conduct," establishes that Congress is improperly engaging in law enforcement.
In response, the court pointed out that the committee has gone beyond just saying insincere but validating words. As long as the panel's stated purpose is buttressed by references to specific past or future problems, and those problems could be the subjects of appropriate legislation, then it is not for the court to say that Congress has exceeded its broad power.
As for the investigation into possible “illegal conduct" on the president's part, the court held that even a mere congressional interest in past crimes can qualify as a constitutional interest in remedial legislation. So broad is Congress' power that even an investigation into the prior bad conduct of a single person can be valid when the objective is to enact legislation to fix the problem, the court said.
The judges concluded that the Oversight Committee is, in fact, pursuing a legislative, non-law enforcement purpose, and that at least one kind of constitutional legislation could flow from the committee’s investigation. The court then determined that the documents requested by the panel are relevant to its investigation.
In doing so, the judges recognized that congressional investigators have no way to reliably determine before issuing a subpoena which documents will lead to relevant information. It is enough that the information sought is "reasonably relevant" to the committee’s legitimate legislative inquiry, the court said.
In April, the House Oversight and Reform Committee subpoenaed the firm, Mazars USA, for documents related to Trump's accounts going back to January 2009. His lawyers fought back with a lawsuit in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that argued Congress had no legitimate legislative purpose for getting the materials.
In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the court disagreed but put a temporary hold on the legal effect of its decision to allow Trump's lawyers to appeal. A large part of the court’s opinion, which runs more than 100 pages, can be distilled into three questions: Is the Oversight Committee pursuing a legislative, as opposed to a law-enforcement, objective? Is the committee investigating a subject on which constitutional legislation could be enacted? And does the subpoena seek information relevant to the legislative inquiry?
If the committee is pursuing only a crime-fighting objective, that could exceed its authority because such missions are exclusive to the executive and judicial branches. On the other hand, observers of congressional hearings have long known that the legislative purpose is not invalidated just because some criminal activity is unearthed during the process.
An April memorandum from Elijah Cummings, the longtime Baltimore congressman and chairman of the oversight panel who died on Thursday, identified four objectives of the subpoena: determine “whether the President may have engaged in illegal conduct before and during his tenure in office”; “whether [the President] has undisclosed conflicts of interest that may impair his ability to make impartial policy decisions”; “whether [the President] is complying with the Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution,” and “whether [the President] has accurately reported his finances to the Office of Government Ethics and other federal entities.”
To the court, this and other supporting documents provided strong evidence that the committee has a valid legislative purpose.
Trump's lawyers argued that the Oversight Committee's statements were disingenuous, concealing the panel's true — and improper — law enforcement purpose. They also contended that the first objective of the subpoena, to determine “whether the President … engaged … in illegal conduct," establishes that Congress is improperly engaging in law enforcement.
In response, the court pointed out that the committee has gone beyond just saying insincere but validating words. As long as the panel's stated purpose is buttressed by references to specific past or future problems, and those problems could be the subjects of appropriate legislation, then it is not for the court to say that Congress has exceeded its broad power.
As for the investigation into possible “illegal conduct" on the president's part, the court held that even a mere congressional interest in past crimes can qualify as a constitutional interest in remedial legislation. So broad is Congress' power that even an investigation into the prior bad conduct of a single person can be valid when the objective is to enact legislation to fix the problem, the court said.
The judges concluded that the Oversight Committee is, in fact, pursuing a legislative, non-law enforcement purpose, and that at least one kind of constitutional legislation could flow from the committee’s investigation. The court then determined that the documents requested by the panel are relevant to its investigation.
In doing so, the judges recognized that congressional investigators have no way to reliably determine before issuing a subpoena which documents will lead to relevant information. It is enough that the information sought is "reasonably relevant" to the committee’s legitimate legislative inquiry, the court said.
Liberating the Camps, as done by Republicans
95 percent of baby foods tested contain toxic metals that could harm brain development, study finds
Experts tell Salon parents how to navigate these possibly harmful toxins with healthier diet choices and screenings
SHIRA TARLO - salon
OCTOBER 19, 2019 9:30PM (UTC)
Sleep deprivation, diaper changes and late-night feedings are a few of the many common challenges faced by parents with a new baby at home. To ease the transition, parents often rely on the convenience of store-brand baby foods to provide the nutrients their children need in order to develop into healthy toddlers, young adults, teenagers and eventually adults. But there is a strong likelihood that nearly every can, jar and pouch of store-bought baby food contains traces of toxic heavy metals, including arsenic and lead, according to a new study.
The research, commissioned by Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) and detailed in a report published Thursday, tested 168 baby foods from major manufacturers in the U.S. for the presence of four heavy metals: arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium.
The study found that 95 percent of the baby foods tested were contaminated by at least one of the four heavy metals, and 25 percent contained all four metals. Only nine of the 168 baby foods tested were not found to contain detectable traces of any of the four metals.
"Any amount of heavy metal can be potentially dangerous to a growing and developing baby," Dr. Jen Trachtenberg, MD, a nationally-recognized parenting expert, explained to Salon. "There is metal contaminants everywhere in the environment, water air and soil.”
Among the popular baby foods estimated to pose the highest risk are fruit juices, as well as rice-based products, including puff snacks and rice cereals. Rice is especially effective at absorbing arsenic, a common pesticide, as it grows. Four of seven infant rice cereals tested contained inorganic arsenic, which is the most toxic form of the metal, in levels exceeding the Food and Drug Administration’s proposed limit of 100 parts per billion.
Because rice is grown in water, the plant and grain tend to absorb higher levels of inorganic arsenic than other foods, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Leafy greens and root crops like sweet potatoes and carrots also retain higher levels of heavy metals than other vegetables. Organic products are not reliable either, according to the study.
"One of the best thing to do is to give baby a wide variety of different foods right from the start instead of relying on old recommendations of rice cereal, for example," Trachtenberg said. "As this study indicates, rice and fruit juices are high in heavy metals, so it’s just another reason why parents should avoid them as daily first baby foods. Rather, use oatmeal or other mixed grains and after six months of age introduce water in addition to breast milk or formula."
The study included 61 brands and 13 types of foods, including infant formula, teething biscuits, cereals and fruit juices. Baby food from various stores across the country — supermarkets, dollar stores, baby stores, super stores — and two online-only retailers was purchased and assessed.
In spite of these results, there are preventative measures parents can take in order to help their children avoid contamination from heavy metals.
“Parents can help their children absorb less lead and other heavy metals by giving their children a well-balanced diet that includes a variety of foods that are high in calcium and iron and by reducing the amount of fruit juice they drink," Dr. Scott Jelinek, MD, MPH, a pediatric resident physician at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, told Salon.
Moreover, there is no need for parents to serve their children juice, a beverage which offers no nutritional benefits to children under age one, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Juice lacks dietary fiber and also carries the risk of tooth decay and excessive weight gain.
"There is no need for young children to drink juice,” Trachtenbergs said. “Offer different types of fruits and vegetable which can help improve picky eating by frequent exposures leading to better nutrition in the long term.”
Among the metals, lead was found most frequently, appearing in 94 percent of the baby foods tested. Cadmium and arsenic followed, showing up in approximately three-quarters of the baby foods tested. Mercury was the least common, found in roughly one-third of the baby foods tested. All of the metals except mercury are known as potent human carcinogens.
The four metals are also neurotoxic, and thus may pose serious threats to a child's brain development. And while many factors can contribute to a child's IQ — from nutrition and genetics to environmental toxins like heavy metals — the levels of arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead found in baby food "constitute both a significant and a solvable problem," the report noted.
"Even in the trace amounts found in baby food, these contaminants can alter the developing brain and erode a child's IQ," the report continued. “The impacts add up with each meal or snack a baby eats.”
A data analysis also commissioned by HBBF estimated that children ages 0 to 24 months have already lost more than 11 million IQ points from exposure to arsenic and lead in food. Just 15 foods contribute to more than half of this IQ loss, with rice-based foods alone making up 20 percent of it.
Additional impacts of heavy metal exposure include attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as learning and behavioral impacts.
The results underscored that while reports of heavy metals in baby food span nearly a decade, the problem remains unsolved.
To reduce the level of heavy metals in baby foods, the FDA should establish regulations, the report recommended. For nearly 90 percent of the baby foods tested, the FDA did not set standards for the maximum safe limit of heavy medals.
The researchers also recommended that the FDA implement a testing program for heavy metals in foods consumed by babies and toddlers. Notably, the AAP recommends all children receive a lead risk assessment at six months, nine months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, and at three, four, five and six years of age. If the risk assessment comes back positive, AAP recommends a blood lead level test is conducted.
Dr. Jelinek praised the study for drawing attention to the issue of screening for such toxins.
“Lead exposure is a preventable environmental threat to children’s neurocognitive development and this study draws attention to the importance of screening all children during pediatric visits for their risk of lead exposure," he said.
The research, commissioned by Healthy Babies Bright Futures (HBBF) and detailed in a report published Thursday, tested 168 baby foods from major manufacturers in the U.S. for the presence of four heavy metals: arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium.
The study found that 95 percent of the baby foods tested were contaminated by at least one of the four heavy metals, and 25 percent contained all four metals. Only nine of the 168 baby foods tested were not found to contain detectable traces of any of the four metals.
"Any amount of heavy metal can be potentially dangerous to a growing and developing baby," Dr. Jen Trachtenberg, MD, a nationally-recognized parenting expert, explained to Salon. "There is metal contaminants everywhere in the environment, water air and soil.”
Among the popular baby foods estimated to pose the highest risk are fruit juices, as well as rice-based products, including puff snacks and rice cereals. Rice is especially effective at absorbing arsenic, a common pesticide, as it grows. Four of seven infant rice cereals tested contained inorganic arsenic, which is the most toxic form of the metal, in levels exceeding the Food and Drug Administration’s proposed limit of 100 parts per billion.
Because rice is grown in water, the plant and grain tend to absorb higher levels of inorganic arsenic than other foods, according to the Food and Drug Administration.
Leafy greens and root crops like sweet potatoes and carrots also retain higher levels of heavy metals than other vegetables. Organic products are not reliable either, according to the study.
"One of the best thing to do is to give baby a wide variety of different foods right from the start instead of relying on old recommendations of rice cereal, for example," Trachtenberg said. "As this study indicates, rice and fruit juices are high in heavy metals, so it’s just another reason why parents should avoid them as daily first baby foods. Rather, use oatmeal or other mixed grains and after six months of age introduce water in addition to breast milk or formula."
The study included 61 brands and 13 types of foods, including infant formula, teething biscuits, cereals and fruit juices. Baby food from various stores across the country — supermarkets, dollar stores, baby stores, super stores — and two online-only retailers was purchased and assessed.
In spite of these results, there are preventative measures parents can take in order to help their children avoid contamination from heavy metals.
“Parents can help their children absorb less lead and other heavy metals by giving their children a well-balanced diet that includes a variety of foods that are high in calcium and iron and by reducing the amount of fruit juice they drink," Dr. Scott Jelinek, MD, MPH, a pediatric resident physician at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital, told Salon.
Moreover, there is no need for parents to serve their children juice, a beverage which offers no nutritional benefits to children under age one, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Juice lacks dietary fiber and also carries the risk of tooth decay and excessive weight gain.
"There is no need for young children to drink juice,” Trachtenbergs said. “Offer different types of fruits and vegetable which can help improve picky eating by frequent exposures leading to better nutrition in the long term.”
Among the metals, lead was found most frequently, appearing in 94 percent of the baby foods tested. Cadmium and arsenic followed, showing up in approximately three-quarters of the baby foods tested. Mercury was the least common, found in roughly one-third of the baby foods tested. All of the metals except mercury are known as potent human carcinogens.
The four metals are also neurotoxic, and thus may pose serious threats to a child's brain development. And while many factors can contribute to a child's IQ — from nutrition and genetics to environmental toxins like heavy metals — the levels of arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead found in baby food "constitute both a significant and a solvable problem," the report noted.
"Even in the trace amounts found in baby food, these contaminants can alter the developing brain and erode a child's IQ," the report continued. “The impacts add up with each meal or snack a baby eats.”
A data analysis also commissioned by HBBF estimated that children ages 0 to 24 months have already lost more than 11 million IQ points from exposure to arsenic and lead in food. Just 15 foods contribute to more than half of this IQ loss, with rice-based foods alone making up 20 percent of it.
Additional impacts of heavy metal exposure include attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as learning and behavioral impacts.
The results underscored that while reports of heavy metals in baby food span nearly a decade, the problem remains unsolved.
To reduce the level of heavy metals in baby foods, the FDA should establish regulations, the report recommended. For nearly 90 percent of the baby foods tested, the FDA did not set standards for the maximum safe limit of heavy medals.
The researchers also recommended that the FDA implement a testing program for heavy metals in foods consumed by babies and toddlers. Notably, the AAP recommends all children receive a lead risk assessment at six months, nine months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, and at three, four, five and six years of age. If the risk assessment comes back positive, AAP recommends a blood lead level test is conducted.
Dr. Jelinek praised the study for drawing attention to the issue of screening for such toxins.
“Lead exposure is a preventable environmental threat to children’s neurocognitive development and this study draws attention to the importance of screening all children during pediatric visits for their risk of lead exposure," he said.
This overdose-reversal medicine could reduce opioid deaths – so why don’t more people carry it?
October 19, 2019
By The Conversation - raw story
Forty-seven thousand Americans died of opioid-related overdoses in 2017 – similar to the number of deaths from car accidents and gun violence.
That number could have been much lower had more people received naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid-related overdose.
Naloxone is safe, non-addictive and highly effective. And it does more than save lives: When used shortly after overdose, naloxone reduces the likelihood of long-term brain damage from diminished blood flow.
Available as an injection or nasal spray, naloxone can be administered by anyone trained to do so – assuming, that is, that someone has it on hand at the scene of the overdose.
Restricted access
Police, firefighters and medical first responders are increasingly equipped with naloxone.
However, the true first responders to an overdose often aren’t professionals but the friends, family and peers of people who use heroin and other opioids. Relatively few of these “laypeople” have access to naloxone, which is available via community distribution, a doctor’s prescription or, in states that allow naloxone to be sold without a prescription, from a pharmacy.
While at least 41 states allow pharmacists to dispense the medicine without a prescription, many pharmacies fail to actually stock it. In California, only a quarter of all pharmacies carried naloxone last year.
As opioid-related deaths have soared, there’s been an increase in programs working to get naloxone into the community. Health centers like Prevention Point Pittsburgh, for example, train people likely to witness overdose on how to recognize the signs and give them free naloxone.
However, the most recent available data suggest that relatively few communities with high rates of opioid-related deaths actually have such programs.
Even emergency medical personnel, or EMS, may not have naloxone when they need it.
Most U.S. states only authorize intermediate- and advanced-level EMS to carry and administer the drug. But in many parts of the country – particularly rural and tribal areas – EMS with basic training are often the only medical first responders immediately available in emergencies.
‘Moral hazard’
One impediment to increased naloxone access is the argument that reviving overdose victims will encourage opioid use.
Naloxone critic Dr. Harold Jonas, founder of the website Sober.com, has warned health care providers that naloxone creates a safety net, making people think “they don’t need treatment for substance abuse and … continue using at will.”
The fear that life-saving interventions encourage reckless behavior – a concern historically used to oppose everything from condoms to seat belts – is called “moral hazard.”
There is no peer-reviewed, empirical evidence that naloxone use encourages opioid use. But this argument remains pervasive.
Often, politicians combine moral hazard with budgetary arguments to oppose broader naloxone distribution.
The prices of some naloxone products have been rising. Between 2009 and 2016, naloxone manufactured by Amphastar almost doubled in price, from US$20.34 to $39.60 per dose.
In 2017, the city of Middletown, Ohio, spent almost $35,000 on naloxone administered by EMS in 966 opioid overdose calls – up from $11,000 and 532 calls in 2016.
Citing cost, Middletown Councilmember Dan Picard has said the city should refuse to resuscitate people who overdose repeatedly.
Naloxone is cost-effective
Since the opioid crisis disproportionately hurts low-income communities like Middletown, our team of health policy and epidemiology researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a study to determine whether naloxone is a good use of the scarce resources available to reduce opioid-related deaths.
Our study, published in International Journal of Drug Policy, found that naloxone is extremely cost-effective.
We analyzed the cost-effectiveness of giving naloxone to three different groups: laypeople, police and firefighters and EMS.
When all three groups have naloxone, it costs about $16,000 per year of “high-quality” year of life saved. We accounted for quality of life as well as quantity, since problematic substance use increases the risk of hepatitis, HIV and other health serious illnesses.
As life-saving interventions go, $16,000 per high-quality year of life is an excellent deal. The public defibrillators used to revive people in cardiac arrest come out to around $53,797. And a breakthrough class of new cancer drugs run $100,000 to $150,000 per high-quality year of life saved.
Naloxone actually saves society money when we take the lost economic productivity from fatal overdoses into account, we found. Hard-hit communities may see naloxone as an expense – but they’re actually saving the city money by keeping more of its workforce alive.
This finding holds even when we add in a city’s criminal justice costs associated with opioid use.
Naloxone would remain cost-effective even if the “moral hazard” concerns were true. We found that overdose rates would have to rise 20% for lay distribution of naloxone to cease being cost-effective – a large margin of error for an unsubstantiated worry.
Moral imperative
Our research determined that the most cost-effective strategy is to distribute naloxone to all three groups: laypeople, police and firefighters, and EMS.
If low-income communities can’t afford that much naloxone, however, the next-best scenario is to give the medicine to laypeople plus at least one first responder group – either police and fire or EMS.
Getting naloxone into lay hands is so critical because many overdose witnesses hesitate to call 911 due to fear of arrest, stigma or loss of government benefits like subsidized housing. No matter how many first responders have naloxone, the victims in those cases cannot benefit from it. They need someone close by, like another person using opioids, to revive them.
But emergency responders should have naloxone as well since overdose witnesses may not always have naloxone or be able and willing to use it.
Sometimes, a single naloxone dose can save two lives.
In 2018, clinicians in North Carolina treated a pregnant patient who had recently overdosed. Friends had used naloxone to reverse the overdose, allowing her to enter treatment for substance use.
A few months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby.
That number could have been much lower had more people received naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid-related overdose.
Naloxone is safe, non-addictive and highly effective. And it does more than save lives: When used shortly after overdose, naloxone reduces the likelihood of long-term brain damage from diminished blood flow.
Available as an injection or nasal spray, naloxone can be administered by anyone trained to do so – assuming, that is, that someone has it on hand at the scene of the overdose.
Restricted access
Police, firefighters and medical first responders are increasingly equipped with naloxone.
However, the true first responders to an overdose often aren’t professionals but the friends, family and peers of people who use heroin and other opioids. Relatively few of these “laypeople” have access to naloxone, which is available via community distribution, a doctor’s prescription or, in states that allow naloxone to be sold without a prescription, from a pharmacy.
While at least 41 states allow pharmacists to dispense the medicine without a prescription, many pharmacies fail to actually stock it. In California, only a quarter of all pharmacies carried naloxone last year.
As opioid-related deaths have soared, there’s been an increase in programs working to get naloxone into the community. Health centers like Prevention Point Pittsburgh, for example, train people likely to witness overdose on how to recognize the signs and give them free naloxone.
However, the most recent available data suggest that relatively few communities with high rates of opioid-related deaths actually have such programs.
Even emergency medical personnel, or EMS, may not have naloxone when they need it.
Most U.S. states only authorize intermediate- and advanced-level EMS to carry and administer the drug. But in many parts of the country – particularly rural and tribal areas – EMS with basic training are often the only medical first responders immediately available in emergencies.
‘Moral hazard’
One impediment to increased naloxone access is the argument that reviving overdose victims will encourage opioid use.
Naloxone critic Dr. Harold Jonas, founder of the website Sober.com, has warned health care providers that naloxone creates a safety net, making people think “they don’t need treatment for substance abuse and … continue using at will.”
The fear that life-saving interventions encourage reckless behavior – a concern historically used to oppose everything from condoms to seat belts – is called “moral hazard.”
There is no peer-reviewed, empirical evidence that naloxone use encourages opioid use. But this argument remains pervasive.
Often, politicians combine moral hazard with budgetary arguments to oppose broader naloxone distribution.
The prices of some naloxone products have been rising. Between 2009 and 2016, naloxone manufactured by Amphastar almost doubled in price, from US$20.34 to $39.60 per dose.
In 2017, the city of Middletown, Ohio, spent almost $35,000 on naloxone administered by EMS in 966 opioid overdose calls – up from $11,000 and 532 calls in 2016.
Citing cost, Middletown Councilmember Dan Picard has said the city should refuse to resuscitate people who overdose repeatedly.
Naloxone is cost-effective
Since the opioid crisis disproportionately hurts low-income communities like Middletown, our team of health policy and epidemiology researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a study to determine whether naloxone is a good use of the scarce resources available to reduce opioid-related deaths.
Our study, published in International Journal of Drug Policy, found that naloxone is extremely cost-effective.
We analyzed the cost-effectiveness of giving naloxone to three different groups: laypeople, police and firefighters and EMS.
When all three groups have naloxone, it costs about $16,000 per year of “high-quality” year of life saved. We accounted for quality of life as well as quantity, since problematic substance use increases the risk of hepatitis, HIV and other health serious illnesses.
As life-saving interventions go, $16,000 per high-quality year of life is an excellent deal. The public defibrillators used to revive people in cardiac arrest come out to around $53,797. And a breakthrough class of new cancer drugs run $100,000 to $150,000 per high-quality year of life saved.
Naloxone actually saves society money when we take the lost economic productivity from fatal overdoses into account, we found. Hard-hit communities may see naloxone as an expense – but they’re actually saving the city money by keeping more of its workforce alive.
This finding holds even when we add in a city’s criminal justice costs associated with opioid use.
Naloxone would remain cost-effective even if the “moral hazard” concerns were true. We found that overdose rates would have to rise 20% for lay distribution of naloxone to cease being cost-effective – a large margin of error for an unsubstantiated worry.
Moral imperative
Our research determined that the most cost-effective strategy is to distribute naloxone to all three groups: laypeople, police and firefighters, and EMS.
If low-income communities can’t afford that much naloxone, however, the next-best scenario is to give the medicine to laypeople plus at least one first responder group – either police and fire or EMS.
Getting naloxone into lay hands is so critical because many overdose witnesses hesitate to call 911 due to fear of arrest, stigma or loss of government benefits like subsidized housing. No matter how many first responders have naloxone, the victims in those cases cannot benefit from it. They need someone close by, like another person using opioids, to revive them.
But emergency responders should have naloxone as well since overdose witnesses may not always have naloxone or be able and willing to use it.
Sometimes, a single naloxone dose can save two lives.
In 2018, clinicians in North Carolina treated a pregnant patient who had recently overdosed. Friends had used naloxone to reverse the overdose, allowing her to enter treatment for substance use.
A few months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby.
US imposes tariffs on EU goods, targeting Airbus, wine and whisky
October 18, 2019
By Agence France-Presse - raw story
The United States imposed tariffs on a record $7.5-billion worth of European Union goods on Friday, despite threats of retaliation, with Airbus, French wine and Scottish whiskies among the high-profile targets.
The tariffs, which took effect just after midnight in Washington (0401 GMT), came after talks between European officials and US trade representatives failed to win a last-minute reprieve.
The WTO-endorsed onslaught from US President Donald Trump also comes as Washington is mired in a trade war with China and could risk destabilising the global economy further.
In the line of fire are civilian aircraft from Britain, France, Germany and Spain — the countries that formed Airbus — which will now cost 10 percent more when imported to the US.
But the tariffs also target consumer products such as French wine, which Trump had vowed to attack in recent months. Wine from France, Spain and Germany will now face 25 percent tariffs.
Speaking in Washington hours before the tariffs were due to come into effect, France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire warned the move would have serious repercussions.
“Europe is ready to retaliate, in the framework of course of the WTO,” he told reporters shortly after meeting with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund annual meetings.
“These decisions would have very negative consequences both from an economic and a political point of view.”
Le Maire was due to meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer later on Friday.
He also warned the US against starting another front in its trade conflicts and again called for a negotiated solution.
At a time when the global economy is slowing, “I think that our responsibility is to do our best to avoid that kind of conflict,” Le Maire said.
The Europeans have long advocated negotiation over conflict and they themselves will be able to impose tariffs next year to punish the United States for subsidizing Boeing.
But EU officials had already offered in July to call a truce on subsidies for planemakers, in which both sides would admit fault and agree to curtail state aid — to no avail. The two sides have been involved in a row over the subsidies for 15 years.
The tariffs kick in just days after the United States was given the formal go-ahead by the World Trade Organization.
As recently as Wednesday, Trump singled out the Europeans for being unfair with the US on trade, but said his door was open to negotiate a settlement.
– ‘Very hard’ –
The Europeans fear above all that Trump will impose heavy duties on imports of European cars around mid-November.
This would be a serious blow for the German automotive sector in particular, even if giants such as Volkswagen or BMW also manufacture in the United States.
“Our products are very hard to bring in (to Europe)” when Europeans easily import their cars into the United States, Trump said.
The Airbus-Boeing row is just one of several issues stoking transatlantic tensions that quickly descended into acrimony when Trump took office in 2017.
Trump embraced a protectionist agenda, slapping import duties on steel and aluminium from the EU and other allies, while also threatening tariffs on cars.
Trade groups in Europe such as winemakers, German tool manufacturers and whisky producers in Scotland have kept a clamour of protest, demanding Washington reverse tack.
The US leader and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed in July 2018 to a ceasefire in the conflict to hold trade talks that have so far led nowhere.
The epic legal battle between Airbus and Boeing at the World Trade Organization began in 2004 when Washington accused Britain, France, Germany and Spain of providing illegal subsidies and grants to support the production of a range of Airbus products.
A year later, the EU alleged that Boeing had received $19.1 billion worth of prohibited subsidies from 1989 to 2006 from various branches of the US government.
The two cases were then tangled up in a legal quagmire, with each side being given partial vindication after a long series of appeals and counter appeals.
The tariffs, which took effect just after midnight in Washington (0401 GMT), came after talks between European officials and US trade representatives failed to win a last-minute reprieve.
The WTO-endorsed onslaught from US President Donald Trump also comes as Washington is mired in a trade war with China and could risk destabilising the global economy further.
In the line of fire are civilian aircraft from Britain, France, Germany and Spain — the countries that formed Airbus — which will now cost 10 percent more when imported to the US.
But the tariffs also target consumer products such as French wine, which Trump had vowed to attack in recent months. Wine from France, Spain and Germany will now face 25 percent tariffs.
Speaking in Washington hours before the tariffs were due to come into effect, France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire warned the move would have serious repercussions.
“Europe is ready to retaliate, in the framework of course of the WTO,” he told reporters shortly after meeting with US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund annual meetings.
“These decisions would have very negative consequences both from an economic and a political point of view.”
Le Maire was due to meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer later on Friday.
He also warned the US against starting another front in its trade conflicts and again called for a negotiated solution.
At a time when the global economy is slowing, “I think that our responsibility is to do our best to avoid that kind of conflict,” Le Maire said.
The Europeans have long advocated negotiation over conflict and they themselves will be able to impose tariffs next year to punish the United States for subsidizing Boeing.
But EU officials had already offered in July to call a truce on subsidies for planemakers, in which both sides would admit fault and agree to curtail state aid — to no avail. The two sides have been involved in a row over the subsidies for 15 years.
The tariffs kick in just days after the United States was given the formal go-ahead by the World Trade Organization.
As recently as Wednesday, Trump singled out the Europeans for being unfair with the US on trade, but said his door was open to negotiate a settlement.
– ‘Very hard’ –
The Europeans fear above all that Trump will impose heavy duties on imports of European cars around mid-November.
This would be a serious blow for the German automotive sector in particular, even if giants such as Volkswagen or BMW also manufacture in the United States.
“Our products are very hard to bring in (to Europe)” when Europeans easily import their cars into the United States, Trump said.
The Airbus-Boeing row is just one of several issues stoking transatlantic tensions that quickly descended into acrimony when Trump took office in 2017.
Trump embraced a protectionist agenda, slapping import duties on steel and aluminium from the EU and other allies, while also threatening tariffs on cars.
Trade groups in Europe such as winemakers, German tool manufacturers and whisky producers in Scotland have kept a clamour of protest, demanding Washington reverse tack.
The US leader and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed in July 2018 to a ceasefire in the conflict to hold trade talks that have so far led nowhere.
The epic legal battle between Airbus and Boeing at the World Trade Organization began in 2004 when Washington accused Britain, France, Germany and Spain of providing illegal subsidies and grants to support the production of a range of Airbus products.
A year later, the EU alleged that Boeing had received $19.1 billion worth of prohibited subsidies from 1989 to 2006 from various branches of the US government.
The two cases were then tangled up in a legal quagmire, with each side being given partial vindication after a long series of appeals and counter appeals.
America is being held hostage by a bloody madman — and he’s in the White House
Donald Trump has his finger on the button. We now know he’ll push it, if he thinks it can get him re-elected
LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV - salon
OCTOBER 19, 2019 12:00PM (UTC)
These are the most frightening words Trump has uttered since becoming president:
“Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. Sometimes you have to let them fight like two kids. Then you pull them apart.”
He said this at a campaign rally, naturally. In Texas, naturally. He tossed out the remark like just another chunk of red meat, so we can assume he meant what he said, because that’s when Trump tells us who he is, when he’s standing before an adoring crowd and he goes “off script.”
Trump’s entire presidency has been “off script,” but it’s telling when his excursions into the la-la land of his mind are this specific. He was speaking of the Kurds and the Turks, who have been engaged in bloody battles along the border between Syria and Turkey ever since Trump effectively gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade Syria on Oct. 5. Kurdish forces have already lost as many as 11,000 since they began fighting ISIS alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Now hundreds more have died, and thousands may yet lose their lives. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced and are refugees. It’s a bloody disaster that Trump refers to as a fight between children on a playground.
It isn’t just that Trump is a chickenshit draft-dodger who was famously exempted from military service because of bone spurs on his heels, and it isn’t just that he is famously disdainful of the advice of his own military commanders and foreign policy experts.
Because he is the president of the United States, he is the man who as commander in chief has the power to use nuclear weapons, and for the first time since he took office, I am afraid that he would not hesitate to use them if he thought it would help him win re-election.
What he just did to our allies the Kurds and the way he described it at his rally is all the evidence we need that he not only has no regard for human life, but he has no idea whatsoever what the waging of war is, what it means, what it does and what it costs. Just as money accrues to measure wealth, to Donald Trump, war is just another way to keep score.
Look at what he said this week when he belittled his former secretary of defense, James Mattis, during a meeting with congressional leaders. After criticizing him as “not tough enough,” Trump bragged, “I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month.”
Let’s take a moment and have a look at everything that’s not merely wrong, but hideously stupid, about that remark. There is Trump’s puerile obsession with “toughness,” of course, but beyond that, there is his use of the word “captured.” What does he think the war against ISIS has been? A game of Capture the Flag? The goal of the campaign we waged against ISIS with the Kurds was never to “capture” them. It was to end their effectiveness as a fighting force, to destroy their so-called Caliphate, and to prevent them from sending their fighters to this country to commit acts of terrorism. It didn’t happen in “a month,” and it didn’t start with Donald Trump. It took years of fighting to bring ISIS to its currently weakened state. Years and many, many dead bodies, most of them Kurdish, but some of them American.
These aren’t the words of a commander in chief. They aren’t even the words of a schoolyard bully. They’re the words of a deeply and completely stupid man. Trump doesn’t bother to dumb things down for an audience like the one in Texas. It’s what he actually thinks, an ongoing sum total of all that he doesn’t know and has no interest in learning. It’s evidence that he doesn’t care about the purpose and power of waging war. He doesn’t know or care that wars kill people, thousands of people, sometimes tens and hundreds of thousands, and in the not too distant past, even millions. Command over armies and navies and air forces in war should never have been granted to such a helplessly ignorant fool.
Trump has no idea where American soldiers are in Syria, or what they’re doing. He has no idea if they are still in harm’s way. They are. He has no idea how many Kurds have been killed since Turkey invaded northern Syria, nor does he care. He has been dismissive of our Kurdish allies and what they have helped us accomplish, not only in the war against ISIS, but in bringing a relative peace back to northern Syria and areas of Iraq all the way east to Mosul. This week he dove even deeper into his well of lies when he declared that the Kurds are “no angels” and are “worse than ISIS.”
Even as Trump bragged about pulling 1,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, he sent 2,000 troops to Saudi Arabia on a mission that still hasn’t been defined, other than as an unfocused response to the recent Iranian drone attack on Saudi oil fields. He prepares to start new wars at the same time he lies about ending old ones.
All this is just more willful ignorance contained within his usual fog of lies. But it was his description of the grief of families meeting the bodies of their dead at Dover Air Force Base that was most illustrative of his abject disdain for human life. “They scream, like I’ve never seen anything before. They’ll break through military barriers. They’ll run to the coffin and jump on top of the coffin. Crying mothers and wives. Crying desperately.”
Let’s put aside the callousness of using the grief of fathers and mothers and husbands and wives. That’s a given. It’s the way he treats that grief as spectacle that illustrates Trump’s inhumanity. For him, the tableau of families witnessing the grim ritual of military bodies being returned on a cargo jet at night to American soil is just another scene in the reality television show that runs in his head 24 hours a day. Trump has no idea what a bullet or a piece of shrapnel does to a human body. He has no idea, in fact, what the death of a soldier is. His description of the scene at Dover is the worst kind of voyeurism, and yet another example of Trump’s inability to feel or express empathy.
The least you must do if you are a commander who sends soldiers into battle is to be able to understand what death is. Trump does not. It’s all just a big game for him. He likes Erdogan. He’s “tough,” he’s a “real leader.” He likes Putin. He’s “tough.” He’s a “real leader.” In the world of Donald Trump, they are in the Trump club of “real” men who understand what it takes to win and are willing to do it. He admires them because he sees himself in them.
Trump doesn’t have any more of a clue about the devastating destructive power of a nuclear weapon than he has of the effect of a single bullet on a body. That’s why he is so dangerous. He was willing to sacrifice our Kurdish allies, to kill hundreds if not thousands of them so he could go down to Texas and stand on a stage and appear tough and feed the insatiable need of his base to worship him and his falsehoods. All he cares about is how he looks — and whether he wins.
Mark my words: Donald Trump will take us to war, even nuclear war, if he thinks that is what it will take to win this election. You read it here first.
“Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. Sometimes you have to let them fight like two kids. Then you pull them apart.”
He said this at a campaign rally, naturally. In Texas, naturally. He tossed out the remark like just another chunk of red meat, so we can assume he meant what he said, because that’s when Trump tells us who he is, when he’s standing before an adoring crowd and he goes “off script.”
Trump’s entire presidency has been “off script,” but it’s telling when his excursions into the la-la land of his mind are this specific. He was speaking of the Kurds and the Turks, who have been engaged in bloody battles along the border between Syria and Turkey ever since Trump effectively gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the green light to invade Syria on Oct. 5. Kurdish forces have already lost as many as 11,000 since they began fighting ISIS alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Now hundreds more have died, and thousands may yet lose their lives. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced and are refugees. It’s a bloody disaster that Trump refers to as a fight between children on a playground.
It isn’t just that Trump is a chickenshit draft-dodger who was famously exempted from military service because of bone spurs on his heels, and it isn’t just that he is famously disdainful of the advice of his own military commanders and foreign policy experts.
Because he is the president of the United States, he is the man who as commander in chief has the power to use nuclear weapons, and for the first time since he took office, I am afraid that he would not hesitate to use them if he thought it would help him win re-election.
What he just did to our allies the Kurds and the way he described it at his rally is all the evidence we need that he not only has no regard for human life, but he has no idea whatsoever what the waging of war is, what it means, what it does and what it costs. Just as money accrues to measure wealth, to Donald Trump, war is just another way to keep score.
Look at what he said this week when he belittled his former secretary of defense, James Mattis, during a meeting with congressional leaders. After criticizing him as “not tough enough,” Trump bragged, “I captured ISIS. Mattis said it would take two years. I captured them in one month.”
Let’s take a moment and have a look at everything that’s not merely wrong, but hideously stupid, about that remark. There is Trump’s puerile obsession with “toughness,” of course, but beyond that, there is his use of the word “captured.” What does he think the war against ISIS has been? A game of Capture the Flag? The goal of the campaign we waged against ISIS with the Kurds was never to “capture” them. It was to end their effectiveness as a fighting force, to destroy their so-called Caliphate, and to prevent them from sending their fighters to this country to commit acts of terrorism. It didn’t happen in “a month,” and it didn’t start with Donald Trump. It took years of fighting to bring ISIS to its currently weakened state. Years and many, many dead bodies, most of them Kurdish, but some of them American.
These aren’t the words of a commander in chief. They aren’t even the words of a schoolyard bully. They’re the words of a deeply and completely stupid man. Trump doesn’t bother to dumb things down for an audience like the one in Texas. It’s what he actually thinks, an ongoing sum total of all that he doesn’t know and has no interest in learning. It’s evidence that he doesn’t care about the purpose and power of waging war. He doesn’t know or care that wars kill people, thousands of people, sometimes tens and hundreds of thousands, and in the not too distant past, even millions. Command over armies and navies and air forces in war should never have been granted to such a helplessly ignorant fool.
Trump has no idea where American soldiers are in Syria, or what they’re doing. He has no idea if they are still in harm’s way. They are. He has no idea how many Kurds have been killed since Turkey invaded northern Syria, nor does he care. He has been dismissive of our Kurdish allies and what they have helped us accomplish, not only in the war against ISIS, but in bringing a relative peace back to northern Syria and areas of Iraq all the way east to Mosul. This week he dove even deeper into his well of lies when he declared that the Kurds are “no angels” and are “worse than ISIS.”
Even as Trump bragged about pulling 1,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, he sent 2,000 troops to Saudi Arabia on a mission that still hasn’t been defined, other than as an unfocused response to the recent Iranian drone attack on Saudi oil fields. He prepares to start new wars at the same time he lies about ending old ones.
All this is just more willful ignorance contained within his usual fog of lies. But it was his description of the grief of families meeting the bodies of their dead at Dover Air Force Base that was most illustrative of his abject disdain for human life. “They scream, like I’ve never seen anything before. They’ll break through military barriers. They’ll run to the coffin and jump on top of the coffin. Crying mothers and wives. Crying desperately.”
Let’s put aside the callousness of using the grief of fathers and mothers and husbands and wives. That’s a given. It’s the way he treats that grief as spectacle that illustrates Trump’s inhumanity. For him, the tableau of families witnessing the grim ritual of military bodies being returned on a cargo jet at night to American soil is just another scene in the reality television show that runs in his head 24 hours a day. Trump has no idea what a bullet or a piece of shrapnel does to a human body. He has no idea, in fact, what the death of a soldier is. His description of the scene at Dover is the worst kind of voyeurism, and yet another example of Trump’s inability to feel or express empathy.
The least you must do if you are a commander who sends soldiers into battle is to be able to understand what death is. Trump does not. It’s all just a big game for him. He likes Erdogan. He’s “tough,” he’s a “real leader.” He likes Putin. He’s “tough.” He’s a “real leader.” In the world of Donald Trump, they are in the Trump club of “real” men who understand what it takes to win and are willing to do it. He admires them because he sees himself in them.
Trump doesn’t have any more of a clue about the devastating destructive power of a nuclear weapon than he has of the effect of a single bullet on a body. That’s why he is so dangerous. He was willing to sacrifice our Kurdish allies, to kill hundreds if not thousands of them so he could go down to Texas and stand on a stage and appear tough and feed the insatiable need of his base to worship him and his falsehoods. All he cares about is how he looks — and whether he wins.
Mark my words: Donald Trump will take us to war, even nuclear war, if he thinks that is what it will take to win this election. You read it here first.
Bites from Real News
*10/20/2019*
*A Census Undercount Likely Cost Detroit $1.3 Million for Childhood Lead Prevention Lack of investment in the 2020 Census will make the problem worse.
*White supremacists view escalating tensions in small North Carolina town as an opportunity to radicalize armed neo-Confederates
Neo-Confederate activists and antiracists clashed briefly in Pittsboro, NC, a town west of Raleigh, on Saturday, when a man wearing a “Trump 2020” hat and a face mask attempted to drive a front-end loader festooned with Confederate flags down a street where the two groups were facing off.
*Defense chief says US troops leaving Syria will go to western Iraq
U.S. troops leaving Syria will be relocated to western Iraq, where they will continue to conduct operations to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday. Esper told reporters traveling with him to the Middl ... (The Hill)
*TULSI GABBARD’S FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES LEAVE OUT TIES TO KOCH-FUNDED THINK TANK
THE HAWAII CONGRESSWOMAN, WHO’S RUNNING AS A DEMOCRAT FOR PRESIDENT, SITS ON A FOREIGN POLICY ADVISORY COUNCIL FOR THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA.(Sellouts)
*DEMOCRATS WANT TO BE ECONOMIC POPULISTS. WHY ARE THEY CLINGING TO A FLAWED REAGAN-ERA TAX CREDIT?
... the EITC excludes the poorest Americans by design. Nonworkers, meaning those who do not earn any income, make up around 75 percent of poor people in America. As Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project has found, the overwhelming majority of nonworkers are either children, elderly, have disabilities, or in school. Kleven’s research, Bruenig said, undermines the only justification for excluding these people from the benefit.
*DOLLARS FOR DOCTORS We Found Over 700 Doctors Who Were Paid More Than a Million Dollars by Drug and Medical Device Companies
ProPublica has been tracking drug company spending on doctors since 2010. We just updated our database and found that companies are still paying private doctors huge sums for promotional talks and consulting.
*Climate Crimes: LEAKED AUDIO REVEALS HOW COCA-COLA UNDERMINES PLASTIC RECYCLING EFFORTS
FOR DECADES, COCA-COLA has burnished its public image as an environmentally caring company with donations to recycling nonprofits. Meanwhile, as one of the world’s most polluting brands, Coke has quietly fought efforts to hold the company accountable for plastic waste.
*All the President’s Crimes: IS A UKRAINIAN OLIGARCH HELPING TRUMP SMEAR BIDEN TO EVADE U.S. CORRUPTION CHARGES?
THE CONSPIRACY TO reelect the president by misleading the American people about Joe Biden’s work in Ukraine continues, despite the impeachment inquiry triggered by revelations that Donald Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, tried to coerce Ukraine’s government into investigating the former vice president.
*The Age of Radical Evil
We live in an age of radical evil. The architects of this evil are despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction. They are stripping us of our most basic civil liberties and freedoms. They are orchestrating the growing social inequity, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a cabal of global oligarchs. They are destroying our democratic institutions, turning elected office into a system of legalized bribery, stacking our courts with judges who invert constitutional rights so that unlimited corporate money invested in political campaigns is disguised as the right to petition the government or a form of free speech.
BY CHRIS HEDGES
*interview: Why Dr. Zach Bush believes herbicides could end life on Earth
Dr. Zach Bush went from developing chemotherapy to fighting pesticide-makers
*Trump Town: Track White House Staff, Cabinet Members and Political Appointees Across the Government
*Update: We Found a “Staggering” 281 Lobbyists Who’ve Worked in the Trump Administration
That’s one lobbyist for every 14 political appointees, and four times more than Obama appointed in half the time.
*OPINION: THE PERNICIOUS MYTH OF A CAUCASIAN RACE
(TALKERS)
the fool speaks!!!
Trump blurts out a startling statement: ‘We’ve taken control of the oil in the Middle East
October 18, 2019
By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story
President Donald Trump made a startling statement Friday afternoon while boasting about how he believes he handled his widely-condemned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Northern Syria – a move that had opened the gate to ethnic cleansing of America’s now-former allies, the Kurds.
“We’ve taken control of the oil in the Middle East, the oil that we’re talking about, the oil that everybody was worried about. We have the U.S. control of that,” Trump said, minutes after concluding a talk with the first two women astronauts to participate in an all-women spacewalk.
Trump went on to claim “there are no shots being fired, and a lot of people are doing a lot of things,” despite the supposed “ceasefire” that lasted less than 24 hours.
“This is a deal that should been made 15 years, 10 ago, over the last number of years under the Obama administration. The real numbers is over one million people were killed,” Trump said, doubling his claim from earlier this week. “We have lost no, not a drop of blood since we’ve started, what I’ve started, and it was, so far it’s working out.”
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale was among the first to report on Trump’s stunning claim.
Trump in fact made a similar statement on Twitter that went largely unnoticed just a few hours ago:
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 3h
Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen. Too bad there wasn’t.....
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
.....this thinking years ago. Instead, it was always held together with very weak bandaids, & in an artificial manner. There is good will on both sides & a really good chance for success. The U.S. has secured the Oil, & the ISIS Fighters are double secured by Kurds & Turkey....
8:42 AM - Oct 18, 2019[...]
RELATED: Bizarre Trump fan has dreamed of sitting on president’s gold toilet since she was a child
RELATED: Deadly Turkey air strikes shatter Trump’s hours-old ‘ceasefire’ deal
Deadly Turkish air strikes Friday shattered an hours-old US-brokered deal to stop Ankara’s military offensive against Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.
“We’ve taken control of the oil in the Middle East, the oil that we’re talking about, the oil that everybody was worried about. We have the U.S. control of that,” Trump said, minutes after concluding a talk with the first two women astronauts to participate in an all-women spacewalk.
Trump went on to claim “there are no shots being fired, and a lot of people are doing a lot of things,” despite the supposed “ceasefire” that lasted less than 24 hours.
“This is a deal that should been made 15 years, 10 ago, over the last number of years under the Obama administration. The real numbers is over one million people were killed,” Trump said, doubling his claim from earlier this week. “We have lost no, not a drop of blood since we’ve started, what I’ve started, and it was, so far it’s working out.”
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale was among the first to report on Trump’s stunning claim.
Trump in fact made a similar statement on Twitter that went largely unnoticed just a few hours ago:
Donald J. Trump✔
@realDonaldTrump
· 3h
Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen. Too bad there wasn’t.....
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
.....this thinking years ago. Instead, it was always held together with very weak bandaids, & in an artificial manner. There is good will on both sides & a really good chance for success. The U.S. has secured the Oil, & the ISIS Fighters are double secured by Kurds & Turkey....
8:42 AM - Oct 18, 2019[...]
RELATED: Bizarre Trump fan has dreamed of sitting on president’s gold toilet since she was a child
RELATED: Deadly Turkey air strikes shatter Trump’s hours-old ‘ceasefire’ deal
Deadly Turkish air strikes Friday shattered an hours-old US-brokered deal to stop Ankara’s military offensive against Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria.
Pentagon expert could reveal key details in Ukraine probe
Alexander Nazaryanyahoo news
10/18/19
WASHINGTON — In the summer of 2018, Congress allotted $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, part of a continuing effort to help the Eastern European nation defend itself against Russia. Several months later, Laura K. Cooper, the Pentagon official in charge of Ukraine and Russia policy, touted the forthcoming aid package, which would be joined by $141 million from the State Department.
“You can count on the United States to remain your strong partner in strengthening Ukraine’s military to defend Ukrainian democracy,” Cooper said in a video address on Dec. 7, 2018, as she stood before the Ukrainian and American flags.
But months went by, and the assistance did not come, not even after a May letter from the undersecretary of defense in charge of policy, John C. Rood, in which he affirmed that the Ukrainians had “taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption, increasing accountability, and sustaining improvements of combat capability enabled by U.S. assistance.”
Now, less than a year later, Cooper, who played a crucial role in trying to move the Ukrainian aid forward, is set to testify next week in the impeachment inquiry being led by Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman. Cooper, who was originally slated to appear before lawmakers on Friday, will be the first career official to testify from the Pentagon, which has largely remained outside the recent political controversy.
The impeachment panel has already heard from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine; former National Security Council aide and Russia expert Fiona Hill; and State Department official George P. Kent. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, has testified twice, including on Thursday.
Schiff’s office did not answer requests for comment about Cooper’s expected testimony.
Conversations with roughly a dozen Capitol Hill staffers and foreign policy experts suggest that while no one is sure precisely what Cooper might say, there is broad consensus that, as the top defense official on Ukraine matters, she was among those who pushed to have the $250 million in aid released. In fact, her public assurances to Ukrainians about the coming assistance make clear that she fully expected the funds to flow sometime in early 2019.
A former senior U.S. official confirmed that Cooper was involved in such efforts. That could make her testimony crucial to Democrats’ argument that President Trump and his loyalists were guided solely by political considerations.
What’s known from the public record is that by June, the money remained tied up in a bureaucratic quagmire because the White House’s Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on the funding. Throughout the summer, frustrated Pentagon officials endeavored to figure out why that hold was in place. They went so far as to conduct a legal analysis, determining the hold had no merit, since Congress had already appropriated the funds.
That forced the White House budget office to reveal to the Pentagon that the hold had been ordered by the president.[...]
“You can count on the United States to remain your strong partner in strengthening Ukraine’s military to defend Ukrainian democracy,” Cooper said in a video address on Dec. 7, 2018, as she stood before the Ukrainian and American flags.
But months went by, and the assistance did not come, not even after a May letter from the undersecretary of defense in charge of policy, John C. Rood, in which he affirmed that the Ukrainians had “taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption, increasing accountability, and sustaining improvements of combat capability enabled by U.S. assistance.”
Now, less than a year later, Cooper, who played a crucial role in trying to move the Ukrainian aid forward, is set to testify next week in the impeachment inquiry being led by Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman. Cooper, who was originally slated to appear before lawmakers on Friday, will be the first career official to testify from the Pentagon, which has largely remained outside the recent political controversy.
The impeachment panel has already heard from Kurt Volker, the former special envoy to Ukraine; former National Security Council aide and Russia expert Fiona Hill; and State Department official George P. Kent. Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, has testified twice, including on Thursday.
Schiff’s office did not answer requests for comment about Cooper’s expected testimony.
Conversations with roughly a dozen Capitol Hill staffers and foreign policy experts suggest that while no one is sure precisely what Cooper might say, there is broad consensus that, as the top defense official on Ukraine matters, she was among those who pushed to have the $250 million in aid released. In fact, her public assurances to Ukrainians about the coming assistance make clear that she fully expected the funds to flow sometime in early 2019.
A former senior U.S. official confirmed that Cooper was involved in such efforts. That could make her testimony crucial to Democrats’ argument that President Trump and his loyalists were guided solely by political considerations.
What’s known from the public record is that by June, the money remained tied up in a bureaucratic quagmire because the White House’s Office of Management and Budget had put a hold on the funding. Throughout the summer, frustrated Pentagon officials endeavored to figure out why that hold was in place. They went so far as to conduct a legal analysis, determining the hold had no merit, since Congress had already appropriated the funds.
That forced the White House budget office to reveal to the Pentagon that the hold had been ordered by the president.[...]
TRUMP TEEN RAPE ALLEGATION RESURFACES, RONAN FARROW CLAIMS NATIONAL ENQUIRER TRIED TO PROTECT HIM IN NEW BOOK
BY TUFAYEL AHMED - newsweek
ON 10/16/19 AT 1:46 PM EDT
Amid behind-the-scenes details of his explosive reporting on Harvey Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct, Ronan Farrow's new book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators claims that American Media Inc. (AMI), the former publisher of the National Enquirer, tried to help Donald Trump bury allegations he raped a teenager in 1994.
Farrow claims in the book that AMI CEO David Pecker was in close contact with Trump when the rape allegations were made public in a 2016 lawsuit, and that then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard assured Trump's personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, "that they would track down the woman with the rape allegation and see what they could do about her." An AMI spokesperson told Newsweek Tuesday that Farrow's claims are "completely untrue."
AMI has been accused in the past of purchasing potentially damaging stories about Trump in order to keep them from becoming public—a practice known in the industry as "catch and kill." Last December, AMI admitted that in 2016 it made a $150,000 payment "in concert" with Trump's election campaign to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an affair with Trump a decade earlier. The publisher made the pact with McDougal "in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
At the crux of the lawsuit filed against Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election were claims that Trump raped a woman when she was 13 years old in 1994. At the time, Trump's lawyer Alan Garten responded to the lawsuit saying that the allegations are "categorically untrue."
The anonymous plaintiff—identified only as "Katie Johnson" in an initial legal filing that was dismissed in California, and "Jane Doe" in two subsequent legal filings in New York—said that she was raped by Trump during a party hosted by the now-deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein at his New York City apartment. In the third and final lawsuit, Doe alleged she had numerous sexual encounters with Trump and Epstein at the latter's parties and said she was also raped by Epstein, as BuzzFeed News reported at the time.
Among the lurid details of the lawsuit, Jane Doe alleged Trump tied her to a bed, "forcibly raped" her and threatened her and her family with physical harm, if not death, if she told anyone about the assault. "I understood that Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old," Jane Doe wrote in an affidavit.
Farrow alleges that after the suit was filed in September 2016, Enquirer editor Howard and Trump lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. (Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison last December on charges including campaign finance violations for his part in hush payments to McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels.)
"There was no opportunity to buy this story," Farrow writes, claiming that AMI chief Pecker—a longtime friend of Trump's—only found out about the lawsuit after it was filed.
Still, Farrow says, Howard, now chief content officer at AMI, tried to use his influence to convince Lisa Bloom, a power attorney who agreed to represent Jane Doe, to drop her client.
In November 2016, just days before the presidential election, Bloom suddenly announced a press conference with Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving death threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. Jane Doe has not been heard from since.
Speaking to Newsweek Tuesday, Bloom said that while the Enquirer editor "did tell me he thought Jane Doe lacked credibility ... that wasn't the reason she asked her other attorney to drop her case."
"After we received numerous death threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added.
Bloom also said that she did not enter any agreements with AMI on Doe's behalf. "I represented Ms. Doe for free and there was never any discussion of money or settlement as I strongly believed her allegations should be made public given that Donald Trump was running for president at that time."
Farrow claims in the book that AMI CEO David Pecker was in close contact with Trump when the rape allegations were made public in a 2016 lawsuit, and that then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard assured Trump's personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, "that they would track down the woman with the rape allegation and see what they could do about her." An AMI spokesperson told Newsweek Tuesday that Farrow's claims are "completely untrue."
AMI has been accused in the past of purchasing potentially damaging stories about Trump in order to keep them from becoming public—a practice known in the industry as "catch and kill." Last December, AMI admitted that in 2016 it made a $150,000 payment "in concert" with Trump's election campaign to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an affair with Trump a decade earlier. The publisher made the pact with McDougal "in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
At the crux of the lawsuit filed against Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election were claims that Trump raped a woman when she was 13 years old in 1994. At the time, Trump's lawyer Alan Garten responded to the lawsuit saying that the allegations are "categorically untrue."
The anonymous plaintiff—identified only as "Katie Johnson" in an initial legal filing that was dismissed in California, and "Jane Doe" in two subsequent legal filings in New York—said that she was raped by Trump during a party hosted by the now-deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein at his New York City apartment. In the third and final lawsuit, Doe alleged she had numerous sexual encounters with Trump and Epstein at the latter's parties and said she was also raped by Epstein, as BuzzFeed News reported at the time.
Among the lurid details of the lawsuit, Jane Doe alleged Trump tied her to a bed, "forcibly raped" her and threatened her and her family with physical harm, if not death, if she told anyone about the assault. "I understood that Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein knew that I was 13 years old," Jane Doe wrote in an affidavit.
Farrow alleges that after the suit was filed in September 2016, Enquirer editor Howard and Trump lawyer Cohen were in contact frequently. (Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison last December on charges including campaign finance violations for his part in hush payments to McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels.)
"There was no opportunity to buy this story," Farrow writes, claiming that AMI chief Pecker—a longtime friend of Trump's—only found out about the lawsuit after it was filed.
Still, Farrow says, Howard, now chief content officer at AMI, tried to use his influence to convince Lisa Bloom, a power attorney who agreed to represent Jane Doe, to drop her client.
In November 2016, just days before the presidential election, Bloom suddenly announced a press conference with Jane Doe had been canceled, saying Doe had become frightened after receiving death threats. Two days later, Doe's lead attorney, Thomas Meager, filed to dismiss the case. Jane Doe has not been heard from since.
Speaking to Newsweek Tuesday, Bloom said that while the Enquirer editor "did tell me he thought Jane Doe lacked credibility ... that wasn't the reason she asked her other attorney to drop her case."
"After we received numerous death threats and my law firm's website and emails were hacked, she did not want to go forward," Bloom added.
Bloom also said that she did not enter any agreements with AMI on Doe's behalf. "I represented Ms. Doe for free and there was never any discussion of money or settlement as I strongly believed her allegations should be made public given that Donald Trump was running for president at that time."
climate protest - dc
10/18/19
Frank Thorp V
✔
@frankthorp
· 2h
Jane Fonda getting arrested during a climate change protests blocking the street at the Capitol:
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View image on Twitter
Frank Thorp V
✔
@frankthorp
Also arrested at this climate change protest blocking the road outside the Capitol: Law & Order actor Sam Waterston, who says this is his first time being arrested:
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Shaquille O’Neal Wants to Bring Papa John’s to Every HBCU Campus
By Daryl Nelson - atlanta black star
October 17, 2019
It seems that after Papa John’s founder John Schnatter was forced out for saying the n-word on a conference call last year, the pizza chain has been trying hard to win back Black customers.
And one of the first moves they’ve made was partnering with Shaquille O’Neal earlier this year, who now wants to put a Papa John’s restaurant on every HBCU campus.
To do so, he’s teamed up with Miles College, an HBCU located in Fairfield, Alabama, and he’ll make an announcement on Saturday, Oct. 26, with the school’s president, Bobbie Knight. They’ll make the announcement on the Miles College campus in the Student Activity Center at noon.
“HBCUs have been pivotal in the development of young minds; influential in highlighting the history and culture of African Americans and effectively provided a means for academic success,” said O’Neal in a statement. “It is in these great halls of these wonderful institutions that students saw their potential magnified and exemplified.”
“Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘If you want to move people, it has to be toward a vision that’s positive for them, that taps important values, that gets them something they desire and it has to be presented in a compelling way, so that they feel inspired to follow,'” he added.
“Join me and President Bobbie Knight of the great Miles College, as we move toward a business initiative that will open avenues of opportunities for our HBCUs. Today is our day. This is our time,” the statement concluded.
Earlier this year, O’Neal spoke to The Undefeated about joining Papa John’s and said he would only be involved if the company “got some diversity” in its leadership.
So to honor that request, he was asked to come on as a board member.
“‘How about a triple threat?’” O’Neal remembered telling CEO Steve Ritchi at the time. “’Board member; I want to invest in stores to show you I’m serious, and of course I’ll be an ambassador to the brand.’”
O’Neal holds a bachelor’s in general studies, with a minor in political science from Louisiana State University.
He also received a Master of Business Administration degree in 2005 from the University of Phoenix and a Ed.D. in Human Resources Development from Barry University in 2012.
And one of the first moves they’ve made was partnering with Shaquille O’Neal earlier this year, who now wants to put a Papa John’s restaurant on every HBCU campus.
To do so, he’s teamed up with Miles College, an HBCU located in Fairfield, Alabama, and he’ll make an announcement on Saturday, Oct. 26, with the school’s president, Bobbie Knight. They’ll make the announcement on the Miles College campus in the Student Activity Center at noon.
“HBCUs have been pivotal in the development of young minds; influential in highlighting the history and culture of African Americans and effectively provided a means for academic success,” said O’Neal in a statement. “It is in these great halls of these wonderful institutions that students saw their potential magnified and exemplified.”
“Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘If you want to move people, it has to be toward a vision that’s positive for them, that taps important values, that gets them something they desire and it has to be presented in a compelling way, so that they feel inspired to follow,'” he added.
“Join me and President Bobbie Knight of the great Miles College, as we move toward a business initiative that will open avenues of opportunities for our HBCUs. Today is our day. This is our time,” the statement concluded.
Earlier this year, O’Neal spoke to The Undefeated about joining Papa John’s and said he would only be involved if the company “got some diversity” in its leadership.
So to honor that request, he was asked to come on as a board member.
“‘How about a triple threat?’” O’Neal remembered telling CEO Steve Ritchi at the time. “’Board member; I want to invest in stores to show you I’m serious, and of course I’ll be an ambassador to the brand.’”
O’Neal holds a bachelor’s in general studies, with a minor in political science from Louisiana State University.
He also received a Master of Business Administration degree in 2005 from the University of Phoenix and a Ed.D. in Human Resources Development from Barry University in 2012.
Chuck Schumer Calls for Food and Drug Administration Probe Into Tainted Baby Food
Barbie Latza Nadeau - Correspondent-At-Large
Published 10.20.19 9:37AM ET
Daily Beast Cheat Sheet
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is calling on the Food and Drug Administration to look into a new report that claims rampant contamination of baby food, according to the Associated Press. A new study by Healthy Babies, Bright Futures found that 95 percent of 168 baby foods they tested had traces of heavy metals including lead, arsenic, mercury and cadmium. The study found that one in four samples contained all four metals. On Sunday, the top Democrat said the FDA must take action to regulate the entire baby food industry to ensure consumers “rightfully expect those foods to be undeniably safe, appropriately regulated and nutritiously sustaining.”
U.S. Troops Leaving Northern Syria Are Heading to Western Iraq
Barbie Latza Nadeau - Correspondent-At-Large
Published 10.20.19 8:06AM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
U.S. soldiers leaving the battlefield in northern Syria are not coming home, despite President Donald Trump’s claims that they are. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told journalists traveling with him in the Middle East that they will go to western Iraq instead, according to the Associated Press. On Wednesday, the president had justified the withdrawal of troops helping provide cover to Kurdish allies by saying, “It’s time to bring our soldiers back home.” But Esper said the U.S. forces will conduct counter-terrorism missions from Iraq into Syria to try to stop an ISIS resurgence. Esper laid out a two-prong mission for the 1,000 U.S. troops leaving Syria. “One is to help defend Iraq and two is to perform a counter-ISIS mission as we sort through the next steps,” he said. “Things could change between now and whenever we complete the withdrawal, but that’s the game plan right now.” There are currently around 5,000 troops stationed in Iraq.
*What's Inside*
oct 17 - oct 19
✔FIVE KEY THINGS ABOUT FENTANYL AND AMERICA’S OPIOIDS CRISIS
(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*INFLICTING FINANCIAL PAIN ON THE PAIN PILL PUSHERS
(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*GABBARD: CLINTON 'PERSONIFIES ROT THAT HAS SICKENED DEMOCRATIC PARTY'
(DEMO POLITICS)
*PARLIAMENT VOTES TO WITHHOLD FULL APPROVAL OF BREXIT DEAL, POSTPONING BORIS JOHNSON’S MOMENT OF RECKONING(WORLD)
*CHILE PRESIDENT DECLARES STATE OF EMERGENCY AS RIOTS GROW
(WORLD)
✔THE PRO-TRUMP SUPER PAC AT THE CENTER OF THE UKRAINE SCANDAL HAS FACED MULTIPLE CAMPAIGN FINANCE COMPLAINTS
(CORRUPTION)
*BILLIONAIRE TRUMP-LOVING GOVERNOR TOOK $125,000 IN BAILOUTS MEANT FOR STRUGGLING FARMERS: REPORT(CORRUPTION)
*TRUMP SUFFERS RARE INTERNATIONAL REBUKE IN A WITHERING STATEMENT FROM MULTIPLE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES(WORLD)
*SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL TRAIN SERVICE RETURNS ON TRUMP’S AMTRAK
(REALITY)
*GOP’S RELIANCE ON WHITE CHRISTIANS HAS MADE ITS EXTINCTION INEVITABLE: CONSERVATIVE
(GOP POLITICS)
*TRUMP SUPPORTERS CRY BITTER TEARS AFTER BUS COMPANY THEY NEVER BOTHERED PAYING LEAVES THEM STRANDED(SUCKERS)
✔HERE ARE 5 WAYS TO RESTORE THE LEGITIMACY OF THE SUPREME COURT
(TALKERS)
*THE MADMAN AND THE TURKS BY THE RUDE PUNDIT
(COMMENTARY)
*CRITICS WARN ‘CONSUMERS WILL PAY THE PRICE’ AFTER GOP-CONTROLLED FCC APPROVES T-MOBILE/SPRINT MERGER(CAPITALISM)
*DEMANDING ‘PAY AND BENEFITS THAT GIVE US DIGNITY,’ 25,000 CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS GO ON STRIKE(EDUCATION)
*FACEBOOK’S RATIONALE FOR ALLOWING LIES IN POLITICAL ADS MAKES NO SENSE
(WORTHLESS MEDIA)
*JUUL AGREES TO RESTRICT YOUTH ADVERTISING IN 'VICTORY' FOR FIGHT AGAINST TEEN VAPING
(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*ELIJAH CUMMINGS, ESTEEMED LONGTIME BALTIMORE CONGRESSMAN, HAS DIED AT 68
(REAL PEOPLE)
*late news of interest*
a present from trump!!!
Thanks to Trump, STD rates hit a record high
Trump’s pro-life policies and attacks on reproductive health care are having repercussions beyond the GOP's intent
NICOLE KARLIS - salon
OCTOBER 10, 2019 11:00PM (UTC)
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released an annual report revealing that the number of combined reported cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia reached a record high last year. Titled "Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report", the report noted that in 2018, there were more than 2.4 million syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia infections combined — an increase of more than 100,000 from the previous year.
There was also a 71 percent increase in syphilis cases since 2014, along with a 22 percent increase from 2017 in the number of newborn deaths related to congenital syphilis.
The CDC said the rise in newborn deaths caused by congenital syphilis, which is passed from mother to child during pregnancy, is connected to rising syphilis rates among women having children. In a media statement, the CDC encouraged women to get tested for STDs by their health care providers and use protection.
“STDs can come at a high cost for babies and other vulnerable populations,” Jonathan Mermin, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said. “Curbing STDs will improve the overall health of the nation and prevent infertility, HIV, and infant deaths.”
While the CDC did not explicitly state it, STI testing is becoming harder to come by for vulnerable populations because free test clinics — including some Planned Parenthood clinics — are being defunded by Trump administration policies. Ironically, the Trump administration's pro-life policies have put newborn babies at a higher risk for death. Indeed, the Trump administration’s policy decision to cut off Title X funding to health care centers that provide abortion care is resulting in the closing of clinics that don’t offer abortion services, but do offer STD testing.
“While we’ve been battling sky-high STI rates, [Republican] politicians...have spent years relentlessly working to chip away at Ohioans’ reproductive health care,” Kersha Deibel, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, told Vice in September. “This is the world they want to see: one where women lose access to birth control, where information about how to access abortion is held hostage, and where, if you don’t have money, it’s almost impossible to access an STI test or a cancer screening.”
According to the CDC report, defunding public programs is merely one part of a larger problem. The Center said data suggests there are multiple issues at play: reduced access to STD prevention due to drug use, poverty, and stigma; decreased condom use among gay and bisexual men; and cuts to STD programs at the state and local levels.
“In recent years, more than half of local programs have experienced budget cuts, resulting in clinic closures, reduced screening, staff loss, and reduced patient follow-up and linkage to care services,” the CDC said.
Congenital syphilis can be prevented, but requires testing a pregnant woman for syphilis right away. If tested positive, they can be treated with antibiotics.
As reported by Olga Khazan in The Atlantic, defunding public programs has been going on for over a decade. Since the 2008 recession, local health department workforces have shrunk.
“That makes it harder for officials to follow pregnant women to be sure they’re getting their antibiotic doses, or to reach out to doctors and community leaders to raise awareness about the rise of syphilis,” Khazan wrote. “And the overall lack of funding means many health departments can’t pay for all the tests and medications they need to catch other types of STDs.”
Astonishingly, syphilis was close to being eliminated in 2000. Since the recession, some programs were cut because STDs weren’t seen as such a threat, but many of the cut programs didn’t have their funding restored post-recession. Compounded with newfound resources flooding other initiatives, like the Trump administration’s federal budget supporting abstinence-only programs, STD prevention programs have few resources now. According to the National Coalition of STD Directors, more than half of local STD programs have experienced budget cuts.
“We cannot be shortsighted. We will not end the HIV epidemic on the back of an exploding STD epidemic. Achieving our goal of ending HIV will require a paradigm shift in how we operate – one that includes STD prevention and care and broader sexual health promotion,” Harvey said.
Alyssa Lederer, PhD, MPH, MCHES, an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University, told Salon in an interview there are additional barriers Americans face when it comes to STI prevention, such as access to healthcare and stigma.
“The fear of a positive result, the misinformation — chlamydia gonorrhea and syphilis are easily curable,” she said. Lederer added with the appropriate funding, public health institutions could prioritize where to invest resources.
Yet when reports like this one from the CDC are published, while it is meant to raise awareness, it can often perpetuate the stigma, Jenelle Marie Pierce, Executive Director of TheSTDProject.com and Spokesperson for PositiveSingles.com, told Salon in an email.
“Using language like ‘skyrocketing,’ ‘devastating,’ and ‘astronomical,’ for example, is fear-mongering, and it only serves to further stigmatize STIs by extrapolating one component of a giant report without including thoughtful analysis, supportive resources, or content that moves the conversation around STIs forward," she wrote. “Undiagnosed and untreated STIs can have a tragic impact on mothers and infants, and one of the primary ways to reverse those tragic outcomes is through testing advocacy and initiatives — but if we keep fear-mongering the public, folks won't get tested, so we're stymieing our efforts before they even begin, and that's probably the most disheartening point of all.”
There was also a 71 percent increase in syphilis cases since 2014, along with a 22 percent increase from 2017 in the number of newborn deaths related to congenital syphilis.
The CDC said the rise in newborn deaths caused by congenital syphilis, which is passed from mother to child during pregnancy, is connected to rising syphilis rates among women having children. In a media statement, the CDC encouraged women to get tested for STDs by their health care providers and use protection.
“STDs can come at a high cost for babies and other vulnerable populations,” Jonathan Mermin, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said. “Curbing STDs will improve the overall health of the nation and prevent infertility, HIV, and infant deaths.”
While the CDC did not explicitly state it, STI testing is becoming harder to come by for vulnerable populations because free test clinics — including some Planned Parenthood clinics — are being defunded by Trump administration policies. Ironically, the Trump administration's pro-life policies have put newborn babies at a higher risk for death. Indeed, the Trump administration’s policy decision to cut off Title X funding to health care centers that provide abortion care is resulting in the closing of clinics that don’t offer abortion services, but do offer STD testing.
“While we’ve been battling sky-high STI rates, [Republican] politicians...have spent years relentlessly working to chip away at Ohioans’ reproductive health care,” Kersha Deibel, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region, told Vice in September. “This is the world they want to see: one where women lose access to birth control, where information about how to access abortion is held hostage, and where, if you don’t have money, it’s almost impossible to access an STI test or a cancer screening.”
According to the CDC report, defunding public programs is merely one part of a larger problem. The Center said data suggests there are multiple issues at play: reduced access to STD prevention due to drug use, poverty, and stigma; decreased condom use among gay and bisexual men; and cuts to STD programs at the state and local levels.
“In recent years, more than half of local programs have experienced budget cuts, resulting in clinic closures, reduced screening, staff loss, and reduced patient follow-up and linkage to care services,” the CDC said.
Congenital syphilis can be prevented, but requires testing a pregnant woman for syphilis right away. If tested positive, they can be treated with antibiotics.
As reported by Olga Khazan in The Atlantic, defunding public programs has been going on for over a decade. Since the 2008 recession, local health department workforces have shrunk.
“That makes it harder for officials to follow pregnant women to be sure they’re getting their antibiotic doses, or to reach out to doctors and community leaders to raise awareness about the rise of syphilis,” Khazan wrote. “And the overall lack of funding means many health departments can’t pay for all the tests and medications they need to catch other types of STDs.”
Astonishingly, syphilis was close to being eliminated in 2000. Since the recession, some programs were cut because STDs weren’t seen as such a threat, but many of the cut programs didn’t have their funding restored post-recession. Compounded with newfound resources flooding other initiatives, like the Trump administration’s federal budget supporting abstinence-only programs, STD prevention programs have few resources now. According to the National Coalition of STD Directors, more than half of local STD programs have experienced budget cuts.
“We cannot be shortsighted. We will not end the HIV epidemic on the back of an exploding STD epidemic. Achieving our goal of ending HIV will require a paradigm shift in how we operate – one that includes STD prevention and care and broader sexual health promotion,” Harvey said.
Alyssa Lederer, PhD, MPH, MCHES, an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University, told Salon in an interview there are additional barriers Americans face when it comes to STI prevention, such as access to healthcare and stigma.
“The fear of a positive result, the misinformation — chlamydia gonorrhea and syphilis are easily curable,” she said. Lederer added with the appropriate funding, public health institutions could prioritize where to invest resources.
Yet when reports like this one from the CDC are published, while it is meant to raise awareness, it can often perpetuate the stigma, Jenelle Marie Pierce, Executive Director of TheSTDProject.com and Spokesperson for PositiveSingles.com, told Salon in an email.
“Using language like ‘skyrocketing,’ ‘devastating,’ and ‘astronomical,’ for example, is fear-mongering, and it only serves to further stigmatize STIs by extrapolating one component of a giant report without including thoughtful analysis, supportive resources, or content that moves the conversation around STIs forward," she wrote. “Undiagnosed and untreated STIs can have a tragic impact on mothers and infants, and one of the primary ways to reverse those tragic outcomes is through testing advocacy and initiatives — but if we keep fear-mongering the public, folks won't get tested, so we're stymieing our efforts before they even begin, and that's probably the most disheartening point of all.”
