ZWIRE comments:
This is just another indication of Police abusing their power and authority in this country. When will it end?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
BY AL FRANK AND MARGARET McHUGH
Star-Ledger Staff
As investigators yesterday reviewed video footage they hope will reveal why a Denville police officer shot a 21-year-old motorist five times, the dead man's mother called the officer a murderer and said she has hired an attorney.
"Last night, I kept visualizing five gunshots pounding into a young man, 140 pounds," said Maureen Miles, the mother of Ruben W. Martinez. She asserts that Officer Richard Byrne intentionally killed the 2005 Morris Knolls High School graduate.
"Why did he keep going? Was he trigger-happy? It makes no sense," said the mother, who lives in Rockaway Township.
The Morris County Prosecutor's Office has released few details about the circumstances of the 2:15 a.m. Thursday shooting on Franklin Road in Denville. Prosecutor Robert A. Bianchi said he expects to spend the weekend reviewing video recordings from patrol cars, radio transmissions and interviews with witnesses.
Martinez, who lived in Laredo, Texas, was in town for his brother's high school graduation. Byrne, a 14-year veteran of the police force, tried to pull over Martinez' Mus tang Bullitt on eastbound Route 46 at Franklin Road for an unspecified traffic violation. But Martinez didn't stop and drove around the block with Byrne and backup Officer Danny Fernandez in pursuit, police said. Martinez lost control of his car as he headed back toward Route 46, and it spun and skidded sideways.
What happened next is unclear. Byrne got out of his cruiser to approach Martinez, but Martinez backed up and took off, according to Bianchi. The prosecutor's office is investigating whether Byrne was inside or outside his vehicle when he fired five of the 13 rounds in his .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol.
Miles likened the incident to the killing of Sean Bell, the 23-year-old New York man who was shot 50 times by police on the eve of his wedding in 2006. "It's the same scenario, just a different situation," she said. "Whatever the circumstances, you don't unload a gun at a traffic stop."
Bianchi said he has sympathy for Miles, but he would not pass judgment until he has the facts.
"I've made a commitment to her and the police department that we will do a fair and impartial investigation based on objective facts -- not based on rumors and suppo sition, and the chips will fall where they will fall," he said. "We will be guided by the actual facts as best as we can piece them together."
The video recordings were removed from Denville police headquarters to ensure that officers don't view them before they are interviewed, he said. "I don't want their testimony to be slanted," Bianchi said.
The state Attorney General's Office will review the investigation, and the case could be presented to a grand jury.
Bianchi ultimately will have to determine if Byrne was justified using deadly force and whether he should have pursued Martinez when he failed to pull over.
Under the attorney general's guidelines, a police officer may re sort to deadly force only when he believes such action is needed immediately to protect himself or another person from imminent harm or death. But it is not to be used if the officer "reasonably believes" he can avert the imminent danger by another action, the guidelines said.
Bianchi would not comment about whether a weapon, alcohol or drugs were found in Martinez' vehicle.
Martinez had no criminal record in either New Jersey or Texas, pub lic records showed. He did not have a New Jersey driver's license. Texas driving records were not available yesterday.
Friends of Martinez in New Jersey and Texas were shocked by his death. Many left notes of condo lences on his MySpace page.
Theresa Loughlin, 19, of Og densburg, couldn't believe how his life ended. "I was just disgusted. I couldn't believe it. It is so unfitting for the way his life was," Loughlin said. She remembered him always saying, "live life to the fullest, be cause you never know when that's going to end."
Megan Perez, 24, who met Mar tinez a year ago in Laredo, said he was soft-spoken. "He was dedicated with work, smart, a very gentle, kind person, and this happened to him?" she said.
Family from as far as Texas and Maine will be attending Martinez' funeral next week.
Miles said she has taken great consolation in the outpouring of sympathy from friends and neighbors. "It's been actually overwhelming, the support that I'm getting," she said
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Terror Strike Would Help McCain, Top Adviser Says
A top adviser to Sen. John McCain said that a terrorist attack in the United States would be a political benefit to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, a comment that was immediately disputed by the candidate and denounced by his Democratic rival.
Charles R. Black Jr., one of McCain's most senior political advisers, said in an interview with Fortune magazine that a fresh terrorist attack "certainly would be a big advantage to him." He also said that the December assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, while "unfortunate," helped McCain win the Republican primary by focusing attention on national security.
"His knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us," Black told the magazine in its upcoming issue.
The comment reinjected the fear of terrorism into the campaign as both candidates had been shifting their conversation to the economy and $4-per-gallon gasoline. It also vividly recalled the 2004 contest between President Bush and Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry, in which Republicans repeatedly questioned Kerry's ability to protect the country from terrorists.
The comments also returned the political spotlight to McCain's advisers and, in particular, to Black, who has drawn criticism for his long lobbying career and his representation of controversial foreign governments. McCain has been criticized for surrounding himself with top advisers who were lobbyists.
Black earlier this year severed ties to the lobbying firm he founded. Records show that his firm had represented the Pakistan People's Party, which Bhutto led until her death.
Asked about the comments by reporters while campaigning in California, McCain said: "I cannot imagine why he would say it. It's not true. I've worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear."
He added: "I cannot imagine it, and so if he said that -- and I don't know the context -- I strenuously disagree."
In a strongly worded statement issued yesterday afternoon, the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama called Black's comments a "complete disgrace."
"The fact that John McCain's top adviser says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a 'big advantage' for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change," spokesman Bill Burton said. "Barack Obama will turn the page on these failed policies and this cynical and divisive brand of politics so that we can unite this nation around a common purpose to finish the fight against al-Qaeda."
In the Fortune article, Black is described as arguing that McCain's experience in national security would help him in the race. But Black and the campaign appeared to quickly understand yesterday that he had gone too far in suggesting that a politician would benefit from the devastation of terrorism.
Traveling with McCain, Black faced reporters in California to acknowledge his mistake. "I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate," he said. "I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."
The campaign issued an almost identical statement within an hour.
A longtime political adviser, Black has been a fixture in Republican circles for years, moving seamlessly between political consulting and lobbying. He was a top aide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and he closely advised the current president during his campaigns.
He has emerged as McCain's leading political adviser and, until recently, the most visible public face of the campaign on television. When McCain announced a no-lobbyist policy, however, Democrats immediately took aim at Black's long career, especially his representation of foreign governments in the United States.
Black and his lobbying partners were at times registered foreign agents for a collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as American conservatives embraced their opposition to communism. They included Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.
Black is not the first political figure to be tripped up by a conversation about the political realities of another terrorist strike.
In August, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said that an attack would benefit Republicans, drawing similar rebukes for appearing to be seeking political advantage from a possible disaster. She said her experience made her the stronger candidate in that situation.
"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' " Clinton said. "But, if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."
Charles R. Black Jr., one of McCain's most senior political advisers, said in an interview with Fortune magazine that a fresh terrorist attack "certainly would be a big advantage to him." He also said that the December assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, while "unfortunate," helped McCain win the Republican primary by focusing attention on national security.
"His knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us," Black told the magazine in its upcoming issue.
The comment reinjected the fear of terrorism into the campaign as both candidates had been shifting their conversation to the economy and $4-per-gallon gasoline. It also vividly recalled the 2004 contest between President Bush and Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry, in which Republicans repeatedly questioned Kerry's ability to protect the country from terrorists.
The comments also returned the political spotlight to McCain's advisers and, in particular, to Black, who has drawn criticism for his long lobbying career and his representation of controversial foreign governments. McCain has been criticized for surrounding himself with top advisers who were lobbyists.
Black earlier this year severed ties to the lobbying firm he founded. Records show that his firm had represented the Pakistan People's Party, which Bhutto led until her death.
Asked about the comments by reporters while campaigning in California, McCain said: "I cannot imagine why he would say it. It's not true. I've worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear."
He added: "I cannot imagine it, and so if he said that -- and I don't know the context -- I strenuously disagree."
In a strongly worded statement issued yesterday afternoon, the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama called Black's comments a "complete disgrace."
"The fact that John McCain's top adviser says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a 'big advantage' for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change," spokesman Bill Burton said. "Barack Obama will turn the page on these failed policies and this cynical and divisive brand of politics so that we can unite this nation around a common purpose to finish the fight against al-Qaeda."
In the Fortune article, Black is described as arguing that McCain's experience in national security would help him in the race. But Black and the campaign appeared to quickly understand yesterday that he had gone too far in suggesting that a politician would benefit from the devastation of terrorism.
Traveling with McCain, Black faced reporters in California to acknowledge his mistake. "I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate," he said. "I recognize that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."
The campaign issued an almost identical statement within an hour.
A longtime political adviser, Black has been a fixture in Republican circles for years, moving seamlessly between political consulting and lobbying. He was a top aide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and he closely advised the current president during his campaigns.
He has emerged as McCain's leading political adviser and, until recently, the most visible public face of the campaign on television. When McCain announced a no-lobbyist policy, however, Democrats immediately took aim at Black's long career, especially his representation of foreign governments in the United States.
Black and his lobbying partners were at times registered foreign agents for a collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as American conservatives embraced their opposition to communism. They included Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.
Black is not the first political figure to be tripped up by a conversation about the political realities of another terrorist strike.
In August, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said that an attack would benefit Republicans, drawing similar rebukes for appearing to be seeking political advantage from a possible disaster. She said her experience made her the stronger candidate in that situation.
"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' " Clinton said. "But, if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."
Sunday, June 22, 2008
The Age of Autism: 'A pretty big secret'
By Dan Olmsted UPI Senior Editor
CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2005 (UPI) -- It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill.
But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism.
"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.
The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."
The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000.
"We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."
No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities say it isn't childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible.
This column has been looking for autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein at the suggestion of a reader, and we also visited Homefirst's office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.
Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"
In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.
Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book "Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate!" and is critical of the CDC's vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines -- HepB included -- contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States.
Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.
Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.
Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented.
Chicago is America's prototypical "City of Big Shoulders," to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst's mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims.
They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm -- half of Homefirst's mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also, because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines.
Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it.
"In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."
Schattauer said Homefirst's patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years said she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child.
"Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you've got a pretty big secret," Schattauer said. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures.
The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.
"In the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent," he said. "At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst's children) were breast-fed, but even among the breast-fed we've had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you're breast-fed and not vaccinated."
Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein said, Homefirst's low rate is hard to dispute. "It's quantifiable -- the definition is not reliant on the doctor's perception of asthma."
Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group.
Earlier this year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet said there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons -- lending credence to Eisenstein's observations.
"It's largely non-existent," said Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. "It's an extremely rare event."
Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement.
"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons." In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."
Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines, including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. Last year a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, said there is no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to "promising" research.
Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal.
Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. "My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosal-containing vaccines," said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC.
That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong that health authorities, "whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk" when formulating immunization policies.
But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children? Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago's Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission.
-- This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com
CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2005 (UPI) -- It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill.
But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism.
"We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.
The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."
The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000.
"We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."
No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities say it isn't childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible.
This column has been looking for autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein at the suggestion of a reader, and we also visited Homefirst's office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.
Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"
In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.
Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book "Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate!" and is critical of the CDC's vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines -- HepB included -- contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States.
Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.
Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.
Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented.
Chicago is America's prototypical "City of Big Shoulders," to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst's mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims.
They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm -- half of Homefirst's mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also, because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines.
Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it.
"In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."
Schattauer said Homefirst's patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years said she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child.
"Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you've got a pretty big secret," Schattauer said. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures.
The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.
"In the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent," he said. "At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst's children) were breast-fed, but even among the breast-fed we've had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you're breast-fed and not vaccinated."
Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein said, Homefirst's low rate is hard to dispute. "It's quantifiable -- the definition is not reliant on the doctor's perception of asthma."
Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group.
Earlier this year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet said there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons -- lending credence to Eisenstein's observations.
"It's largely non-existent," said Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. "It's an extremely rare event."
Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement.
"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons." In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."
Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines, including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. Last year a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, said there is no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to "promising" research.
Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal.
Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. "My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosal-containing vaccines," said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC.
That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong that health authorities, "whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk" when formulating immunization policies.
But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children? Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago's Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission.
-- This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com
Thursday, June 19, 2008
$165 billion more approved for war - McCain Obama agree?
June 19 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic and Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on legislation to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan until President George W. Bush's successor is in office.
The measure allocates about $165 billion for the wars, which will fund the conflicts until mid-2009. The compromise also includes an extension of unemployment benefits that Democrats sought and Bush had opposed, increased educational funding for returning veterans and emergency spending for states affected by recent flooding.
The House may vote on the measure as soon as today.
``This is a major victory,'' said White House Budget Director Jim Nussle. ``It meets the president's priorities'' and ``lives within'' his funding request.
The measure ``gets our troops the funding they need,'' House Republican Leader John Boehner said in a statement.
Congress has been under pressure to produce a bill -- without the troop-withdrawal measures Bush has threatened to veto -- because the Defense Department was beginning to run short of funds for the wars. The agreement also ends a series of confrontations over spending on the conflicts that began when Democrats took control of Congress last year. Since then, Bush has vetoed or Republican senators have blocked Democratic efforts to link funding to demands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
No Pull Out
This legislation doesn't demand that troops pull out.
``What has been going on is the three-cornered discussions between the House, the Senate and the White House,'' House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters yesterday. ``We're hopeful that the Senate will pass it and the president will sign it.''
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said ``we look forward to reviewing the House's complete proposal, and we will take it up quickly once we receive it.''.
The House last month rejected a plan to spend about $163 billion for the wars because of objections by Republicans angry about not being given opportunities to amend the legislation.
The House did approve a tax surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000 per year to pay for expanded veterans' benefits. The new legislation includes the veterans' programs but removes the tax surcharge, which Bush and congressional Republicans opposed.
A war-spending bill approved earlier by the Senate included about $10 billion in additional domestic spending that was opposed by Bush, who had threatened to veto any measure that exceeds his spending request for the wars.
The measure allocates about $165 billion for the wars, which will fund the conflicts until mid-2009. The compromise also includes an extension of unemployment benefits that Democrats sought and Bush had opposed, increased educational funding for returning veterans and emergency spending for states affected by recent flooding.
The House may vote on the measure as soon as today.
``This is a major victory,'' said White House Budget Director Jim Nussle. ``It meets the president's priorities'' and ``lives within'' his funding request.
The measure ``gets our troops the funding they need,'' House Republican Leader John Boehner said in a statement.
Congress has been under pressure to produce a bill -- without the troop-withdrawal measures Bush has threatened to veto -- because the Defense Department was beginning to run short of funds for the wars. The agreement also ends a series of confrontations over spending on the conflicts that began when Democrats took control of Congress last year. Since then, Bush has vetoed or Republican senators have blocked Democratic efforts to link funding to demands for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
No Pull Out
This legislation doesn't demand that troops pull out.
``What has been going on is the three-cornered discussions between the House, the Senate and the White House,'' House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters yesterday. ``We're hopeful that the Senate will pass it and the president will sign it.''
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said ``we look forward to reviewing the House's complete proposal, and we will take it up quickly once we receive it.''.
The House last month rejected a plan to spend about $163 billion for the wars because of objections by Republicans angry about not being given opportunities to amend the legislation.
The House did approve a tax surcharge on individuals earning more than $500,000 per year to pay for expanded veterans' benefits. The new legislation includes the veterans' programs but removes the tax surcharge, which Bush and congressional Republicans opposed.
A war-spending bill approved earlier by the Senate included about $10 billion in additional domestic spending that was opposed by Bush, who had threatened to veto any measure that exceeds his spending request for the wars.
Black Ops in Denver
According to a Denver Police spokesperson, the invasion of black helicopters with uniformed men hanging off of them, experienced by this neighborhood this evening, is a practice run of Navy Seals and SWAT teams, landing at the Civic Center, Childrens Hospital, and City Park, in preparation for the Democratic National Convention.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Vaccines - shots in the dark?
Charlotte Vandervalk, R-Westwood, is an assemblywoman serving the 39th Legislative District.
The lack of safety studies has been at the core of what has been terrifying many parents who have been researching the issue of compulsory vaccinations for children.
AHMED SOLIMAN'S column ("Don't let parents opt out of children's inoculations," Other Views, June 12) decries the parents who oppose compulsory vaccinations.
He laments the suffering of a family whose child did not have the benefit of a particular vaccine. Does he also lament the suffering of the more than 4,800 families who are now in the process of suing in a special federal court because they believe their children were seriously damaged by a vaccine?
Does he lament the many deaths caused by vaccines? Does he know that the compensation for a dead child in such instances has been established at $250,000?
Does he know that in New Jersey there are 60 doses of vaccines mandated by the state Department of Health by the time a child is 6 years old?
It must be pointed out that appropriate safety studies have not been done — no double-blind studies and no studies about the safety of combining several vaccines into a multiple dose.
The lack of safety studies has been at the core of what has been terrifying many parents who have been researching this issue.
Unfortunately, it is the extent to which children have been damaged that is driving this concern.
The public and the media are rightly concerned about pollutants in our waterways, on our recreation fields and in the environment in general. Some of these same pollutants are being injected directly into the bloodstreams of our babies by way of vaccines, in quantities larger than permitted by federal law for our environment.
If you check the package inserts of vaccines, which are written by the vaccine manufacturers, you will find aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, latex rubber and a variety of potentially cancer-causing chemicals.
These package inserts also warn of serious side affects, such as encephalitis, myelitis, seizure, Guillain-Barre syndrome, multiple sclerosis, even sudden death.
Unvaccinated and risk
Do unvaccinated people cause a risk to the rest of society? No. Just look at the older generation of Americans who grew up prior to vaccine proliferation. We are not spreading epidemics.
On the contrary, some vaccines are made from live viruses, and they can spread the disease to those in close contact with the vaccinated person. There are 19 states that allow a type of philosophical exemption, and their residents have not had epidemics.
There has been a recent report of eight cases of measles in California, to which a mother responded in the press, "I'll take measles any day over autism."
Look at the Amish people in Pennsylvania. They do not vaccinate, and they do not have any outbreak of autism. Most European countries as well as Canada, Australia and Japan have rescinded their vaccination requirements.
In 1975, Japan stopped vaccinating babies under 2 years old, and it went to the top of the charts worldwide for low infant mortality. It had previously ranked somewhere in the middle.
Manufacturers have been exempted from liability in producing vaccines. Therefore, when a court decides a child has been seriously damaged by a vaccine, it is the taxpayers who will foot the bill.
New Jersey allows both a religious exemption and a medical exemption; however, the medical exemption is worthless. I have seen firsthand how a doctor's letter explaining the medical risk to a particular child was overruled by officials. That family is moving to Pennsylvania.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons has called for a halt to mandated vaccines until appropriate safety studies are done. In the meantime, parents should have the right to decide about vaccines for their children.
The lack of safety studies has been at the core of what has been terrifying many parents who have been researching the issue of compulsory vaccinations for children.
AHMED SOLIMAN'S column ("Don't let parents opt out of children's inoculations," Other Views, June 12) decries the parents who oppose compulsory vaccinations.
He laments the suffering of a family whose child did not have the benefit of a particular vaccine. Does he also lament the suffering of the more than 4,800 families who are now in the process of suing in a special federal court because they believe their children were seriously damaged by a vaccine?
Does he lament the many deaths caused by vaccines? Does he know that the compensation for a dead child in such instances has been established at $250,000?
Does he know that in New Jersey there are 60 doses of vaccines mandated by the state Department of Health by the time a child is 6 years old?
It must be pointed out that appropriate safety studies have not been done — no double-blind studies and no studies about the safety of combining several vaccines into a multiple dose.
The lack of safety studies has been at the core of what has been terrifying many parents who have been researching this issue.
Unfortunately, it is the extent to which children have been damaged that is driving this concern.
The public and the media are rightly concerned about pollutants in our waterways, on our recreation fields and in the environment in general. Some of these same pollutants are being injected directly into the bloodstreams of our babies by way of vaccines, in quantities larger than permitted by federal law for our environment.
If you check the package inserts of vaccines, which are written by the vaccine manufacturers, you will find aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, latex rubber and a variety of potentially cancer-causing chemicals.
These package inserts also warn of serious side affects, such as encephalitis, myelitis, seizure, Guillain-Barre syndrome, multiple sclerosis, even sudden death.
Unvaccinated and risk
Do unvaccinated people cause a risk to the rest of society? No. Just look at the older generation of Americans who grew up prior to vaccine proliferation. We are not spreading epidemics.
On the contrary, some vaccines are made from live viruses, and they can spread the disease to those in close contact with the vaccinated person. There are 19 states that allow a type of philosophical exemption, and their residents have not had epidemics.
There has been a recent report of eight cases of measles in California, to which a mother responded in the press, "I'll take measles any day over autism."
Look at the Amish people in Pennsylvania. They do not vaccinate, and they do not have any outbreak of autism. Most European countries as well as Canada, Australia and Japan have rescinded their vaccination requirements.
In 1975, Japan stopped vaccinating babies under 2 years old, and it went to the top of the charts worldwide for low infant mortality. It had previously ranked somewhere in the middle.
Manufacturers have been exempted from liability in producing vaccines. Therefore, when a court decides a child has been seriously damaged by a vaccine, it is the taxpayers who will foot the bill.
New Jersey allows both a religious exemption and a medical exemption; however, the medical exemption is worthless. I have seen firsthand how a doctor's letter explaining the medical risk to a particular child was overruled by officials. That family is moving to Pennsylvania.
The American Association of Physicians and Surgeons has called for a halt to mandated vaccines until appropriate safety studies are done. In the meantime, parents should have the right to decide about vaccines for their children.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Ron Paul plans his own convention
Maverick GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has booked an arena in Minneapolis for a "mini-convention" that could steal some of John McCain's thunder just days before he accepts the Republican nomination.
A Paul campaign aide said the Texas congressman hopes to pack about 11,000 supporters into the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, which coincides with the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in neighboring St. Paul.
Paul, 72, will announce details for the rally Thursday at the start of the Texas Republican Convention in Houston.
The campaign hopes the daylong event will "send a message to the Republican Party," Paul campaign spokesman Jesse Benton tells the Tribune-Review.
"There is a growing surge of people out there just craving" for a return "to traditional American government, limited government that places personal liberty first and places an emphasis on personal responsibility and essentially gets out of the way after that," Benton said. "The buzz we get from supporters is that they are very eager to come to St. Paul and very eager to send a strong message."
McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky declined comment. Paul has won 35 convention delegates, but was not invited to speak in St. Paul because he refuses to endorse McCain, according to his campaign.
Paul's plan to stage his own event is bad news for McCain, said G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College.
"Conventions are about demonstrating unity and purpose and showcasing the nominee. They are media events made for prime-time TV. Any distraction from the central message of the convention is not helpful," Madonna said.
McCain clinched the nomination on March 4 after gaining enough delegates to reach the 1,191 needed to win. Although Paul conceded in March he'd lost his bid for the White House, he's maintained a scaled-down campaign.
Paul, a Green Tree native, surprised most of the political establishment by raising about $35 million, mostly via the Internet. Paul's Libertarian-leaning views created a following across a broad political spectrum.
Paul did not win any primaries or caucuses, but continued to pick up significant votes in key states such as New Mexico and Pennsylvania even after McCain had clinched the nomination.
Jerry Shuster, a political communications expert at the University of Pittsburgh, said Paul's timing for the event is likely to put him in a media spotlight during at least one day of the convention.
Paul's forum probably won't be aimed at hurting the GOP, Shuster said.
"He never seemed to be an open opponent of the Republican Party, but more about what the Republicans need to get back to," Shuster said. "This is a golden opportunity for him to do that. The media is all going to be there so it's just a matter of going down the block to see him.
"You know he's going to get his 15 minutes on national news."
More parents skipping vaccines, fear of Autisim
In public health circles they are known as "exempters" — parents who for reasons of faith or philosophy choose not to immunize their children against diseases such as measles and whooping cough. Some exempters claim that childhood vaccines contain unnatural or harmful ingredients; others say they regard vaccination as a "dark force" that conflicts with their belief in a benevolent deity; still others are members of a religion that bars invasive procedures.
Regardless of the reason, the ranks of parents exercising non-medical exemptions to vaccination are growing, public health officials say. Although the number remains small and involves an estimated 2 to 3 percent of the approximately 3 million children who start kindergarten annually, the trend alarms some experts. They worry that parents' fears are being stoked by misinformation about vaccines that abounds on the Internet and are using religion as an excuse to opt out of immunization. This refusal, scientists say, threatens a cornerstone of public health.
"People are motivated by their fears," said Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the most outspoken defenders of vaccines. "Young mothers today don't see these diseases, they didn't grow up with them. Vaccines were not a hard sell" several decades ago, when people saw children killed by measles, brain-damaged from haemophilus influenzae or deaf after a case of mumps.
"I think religious exemptions are used as a default," said Offit, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania who has written several books on vaccines.
Half a dozen studies, Offit noted, have found no link between vaccines and autism, one of the major objections cited by those who spurn immunization. The overwhelming consensus among scientists, he said, is that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the risks.
But that view is rejected by such anti-immunization groups as Vaccine Liberation and Citizens for Vaccine Choice. They claim the shots are harmful and urge parents to exercise their right to avoid them.
Two weeks ago, the National Vaccine Information Center launched a campaign calling for "broad exemptions for medical, religious and conscientious belief reasons." According to Barbara Loe Fisher, the group's co-founder, "forcing vaccination is a violation of human rights."
Every state and the District of Columbia grants medical exemptions to children who are allergic to components of vaccines or whose immune systems are too compromised to benefit from them. And all but two states — West Virginia and Mississippi — allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
In recent years lawmakers in 21 states have created "personal-belief" or philosophical exemptions that permit children to skip vaccines on the grounds that they conflict with a parent's views. [New Jersey does not allow such exemptions.]
In 2006, Saad Omer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other vaccine researchers published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which examined rates of pertussis, or whooping cough, in states with personal-belief exemptions and those where non-medical exemptions were easy to obtain.
They found that the incidence of the disease was about 50 percent higher in states with personal-belief exemptions than those without them and in jurisdictions where religious exemptions were easy to obtain than in those with more stringent requirements.
Researchers also found a substantial increase in personal-belief exemptions: The rate grew from 0.99 percent in 1999 in states that allow them to 2.5 percent in 2004.
In Maryland, state statistics show that 1,300 kindergarteners, or 0.2 percent, were exempted on religious grounds in 2004, a rate that rose to 0.5 percent, or 2,500 children, in 2006.
Parents who decide not to immunize, Omer noted, are making decisions for children other than their own. No shot confers 100 percent immunity, and unvaccinated children can spread disease to those who are too young or too medically fragile to be immunized, including those suffering from cancer.
Currently, Omer noted, a measles epidemic is unfolding in San Diego, where 64 cases of the disease have been reported. All but one of the affected children, he said, had not been vaccinated, some because they were too young for the shot, which is administered at about 12 months.
A bill that would grant personal-belief exemptions has been introduced in New York, where Rita Palma and her husband have been battling school officials over a religious exemption for the youngest of her three sons. Palma, a Roman Catholic, said that in 2006, after several years of receiving signs from God, she decided not to take her son for the last of three required hepatitis B shots.
"Vaccinations," Palma said in an interview, "are based on a very dark, threatening pessimistic principle" that if you do not inject your child, he will become sick or could die. "To me, good health is earned through seeking God."
After a two-hour meeting the Palmas had with school officials, the district rejected the couple's request for a religious exemption. In a February 2007 letter they cited the couple's history of immunizing their children.
Palma ultimately took her son for the shot so he could attend school but has appealed the decision to the New York State Supreme Court.
"I'm furious about it," she said. "This is an absolute injustice."
Fisher, of the vaccine information center, said she claimed a religious exemption to certain shots required for her daughter when she attended parochial schools.
Fisher said her older son had a bad reaction to a childhood vaccine, and "I was very afraid that I would have another child this would happen to."
"I prayed about whether God wanted me to do what this physician wanted me to do," she recalled. Her Lutheran pastor signed a statement in support of her exemption. "He said he didn't have to agree with me but that I had a sincere religious belief." School officials accepted it, she said.
Ed Hirshhorn, chief of Maryland's Vaccines for Children program, said that although he thinks the religious exemption requirement is "too easy," officials are reluctant to seek stronger requirements in the absence of an outbreak of disease or dramatic increase in parental refusal.
"You're always opening Pandora's box," he said.
Regardless of the reason, the ranks of parents exercising non-medical exemptions to vaccination are growing, public health officials say. Although the number remains small and involves an estimated 2 to 3 percent of the approximately 3 million children who start kindergarten annually, the trend alarms some experts. They worry that parents' fears are being stoked by misinformation about vaccines that abounds on the Internet and are using religion as an excuse to opt out of immunization. This refusal, scientists say, threatens a cornerstone of public health.
"People are motivated by their fears," said Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the most outspoken defenders of vaccines. "Young mothers today don't see these diseases, they didn't grow up with them. Vaccines were not a hard sell" several decades ago, when people saw children killed by measles, brain-damaged from haemophilus influenzae or deaf after a case of mumps.
"I think religious exemptions are used as a default," said Offit, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania who has written several books on vaccines.
Half a dozen studies, Offit noted, have found no link between vaccines and autism, one of the major objections cited by those who spurn immunization. The overwhelming consensus among scientists, he said, is that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the risks.
But that view is rejected by such anti-immunization groups as Vaccine Liberation and Citizens for Vaccine Choice. They claim the shots are harmful and urge parents to exercise their right to avoid them.
Two weeks ago, the National Vaccine Information Center launched a campaign calling for "broad exemptions for medical, religious and conscientious belief reasons." According to Barbara Loe Fisher, the group's co-founder, "forcing vaccination is a violation of human rights."
Every state and the District of Columbia grants medical exemptions to children who are allergic to components of vaccines or whose immune systems are too compromised to benefit from them. And all but two states — West Virginia and Mississippi — allow parents to opt out on religious grounds.
In recent years lawmakers in 21 states have created "personal-belief" or philosophical exemptions that permit children to skip vaccines on the grounds that they conflict with a parent's views. [New Jersey does not allow such exemptions.]
In 2006, Saad Omer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other vaccine researchers published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which examined rates of pertussis, or whooping cough, in states with personal-belief exemptions and those where non-medical exemptions were easy to obtain.
They found that the incidence of the disease was about 50 percent higher in states with personal-belief exemptions than those without them and in jurisdictions where religious exemptions were easy to obtain than in those with more stringent requirements.
Researchers also found a substantial increase in personal-belief exemptions: The rate grew from 0.99 percent in 1999 in states that allow them to 2.5 percent in 2004.
In Maryland, state statistics show that 1,300 kindergarteners, or 0.2 percent, were exempted on religious grounds in 2004, a rate that rose to 0.5 percent, or 2,500 children, in 2006.
Parents who decide not to immunize, Omer noted, are making decisions for children other than their own. No shot confers 100 percent immunity, and unvaccinated children can spread disease to those who are too young or too medically fragile to be immunized, including those suffering from cancer.
Currently, Omer noted, a measles epidemic is unfolding in San Diego, where 64 cases of the disease have been reported. All but one of the affected children, he said, had not been vaccinated, some because they were too young for the shot, which is administered at about 12 months.
A bill that would grant personal-belief exemptions has been introduced in New York, where Rita Palma and her husband have been battling school officials over a religious exemption for the youngest of her three sons. Palma, a Roman Catholic, said that in 2006, after several years of receiving signs from God, she decided not to take her son for the last of three required hepatitis B shots.
"Vaccinations," Palma said in an interview, "are based on a very dark, threatening pessimistic principle" that if you do not inject your child, he will become sick or could die. "To me, good health is earned through seeking God."
After a two-hour meeting the Palmas had with school officials, the district rejected the couple's request for a religious exemption. In a February 2007 letter they cited the couple's history of immunizing their children.
Palma ultimately took her son for the shot so he could attend school but has appealed the decision to the New York State Supreme Court.
"I'm furious about it," she said. "This is an absolute injustice."
Fisher, of the vaccine information center, said she claimed a religious exemption to certain shots required for her daughter when she attended parochial schools.
Fisher said her older son had a bad reaction to a childhood vaccine, and "I was very afraid that I would have another child this would happen to."
"I prayed about whether God wanted me to do what this physician wanted me to do," she recalled. Her Lutheran pastor signed a statement in support of her exemption. "He said he didn't have to agree with me but that I had a sincere religious belief." School officials accepted it, she said.
Ed Hirshhorn, chief of Maryland's Vaccines for Children program, said that although he thinks the religious exemption requirement is "too easy," officials are reluctant to seek stronger requirements in the absence of an outbreak of disease or dramatic increase in parental refusal.
"You're always opening Pandora's box," he said.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Little Rascals and the Three Stooges are back!
When WPIX-TV began broadcasting from The News Building on Tuesday, June 15, 1948, it made a simple promise to New Yorkers, the overwhelming majority of whom did not yet own one of those new-fangled and pricey television sets.
WPIX promised "programs based on a policy of creativeness and tailored specifically to fit the needs of video viewer in this area."
Given that no one in 1948 had any idea how the TV landscape would look in 1958, never mind 2008, WPIX did a remarkably good job fulfilling that promise.
Not that "creativeness" and serving local tastes didn't always took the high-falutin' course the phrase would suggest. At ‘PIX, creativeness sometimes took the form of doing a lot with a little.
Who would have dreamed, for instance, that training a camera on the fireplace at Gracie Mansion would create one of the city's most cherished holiday programming traditions, the Yule Log?
And who would have imagined the devotion a whole generation of New Yorkers would develop for Officer Joe Bolton and Bozo the Clown, or old clips of the Little Rascals and the Three Stooges?
But someone at WPIX figured it out, or lucked into it, and millions of New Yorkers who grew up in the years after World War II will carry Channel 11 around with them forever.
It's the place they memorized all 39 episodes of "The Honeymooners."
WPIX did higher-brow things, too, over the past 60 years, and it will recall many of them in a special at 9 p.m. Saturday.
Hosted by Kaity Tong and Jim Watkins, the special follows nine hours of nostalgic "birthday bash" comedy programming that starts with the Little Rascals at noon, followed by Abbott and Costello at 1, the Three Stooges at 2, "Superman" at 3, "Get Smart" at 4, "My Favorite Martian" at 5, "I Dream of Jeannie" at 6, "The Odd Couple" at 7 and of course "The Honeymooners" at 8.
The special itself touches on dozens of highlights through WPIX history, including:
The special also takes viewers through popular shows like Officer Joe, Chuck McCann, Shari Lewis and "The Magic Garden," and emphasizes news coverage of events like the 1956 sinking of the Andrea Doria.
It also, of course, recalls the 47 years (1951-1998) when Channel 11 was the home of the Yankees - even though WPIX's first baseball team was the Giants, in 1949, and since 1999 it has carried what is now just a handful of Mets' games every year.
WPIX promised "programs based on a policy of creativeness and tailored specifically to fit the needs of video viewer in this area."
Given that no one in 1948 had any idea how the TV landscape would look in 1958, never mind 2008, WPIX did a remarkably good job fulfilling that promise.
Not that "creativeness" and serving local tastes didn't always took the high-falutin' course the phrase would suggest. At ‘PIX, creativeness sometimes took the form of doing a lot with a little.
Who would have dreamed, for instance, that training a camera on the fireplace at Gracie Mansion would create one of the city's most cherished holiday programming traditions, the Yule Log?
And who would have imagined the devotion a whole generation of New Yorkers would develop for Officer Joe Bolton and Bozo the Clown, or old clips of the Little Rascals and the Three Stooges?
But someone at WPIX figured it out, or lucked into it, and millions of New Yorkers who grew up in the years after World War II will carry Channel 11 around with them forever.
It's the place they memorized all 39 episodes of "The Honeymooners."
WPIX did higher-brow things, too, over the past 60 years, and it will recall many of them in a special at 9 p.m. Saturday.
Hosted by Kaity Tong and Jim Watkins, the special follows nine hours of nostalgic "birthday bash" comedy programming that starts with the Little Rascals at noon, followed by Abbott and Costello at 1, the Three Stooges at 2, "Superman" at 3, "Get Smart" at 4, "My Favorite Martian" at 5, "I Dream of Jeannie" at 6, "The Odd Couple" at 7 and of course "The Honeymooners" at 8.
The special itself touches on dozens of highlights through WPIX history, including:
The special also takes viewers through popular shows like Officer Joe, Chuck McCann, Shari Lewis and "The Magic Garden," and emphasizes news coverage of events like the 1956 sinking of the Andrea Doria.
It also, of course, recalls the 47 years (1951-1998) when Channel 11 was the home of the Yankees - even though WPIX's first baseball team was the Giants, in 1949, and since 1999 it has carried what is now just a handful of Mets' games every year.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Woman Punched in Face by Mugger in Brooklyn
NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Neighbors of the woman who was attacked in front of a Brooklyn Catholic school are saying they may take matters into their own hands if police do not act quickly.
Police are looking for the man who punched a 62-year-old woman in the face before running off with her purse Tuesday morning.
The victim has been identified as Patricia McGowan, of Staten Island.
McGowan is terrified and remains inside her house with several members of the NYPD providing security.
A neighbor, acting as a spokesman for her, said her woman's face is still swollen and she is not planning to go back to work for the remainder of the school year.
Her sister's home, located a few blocks away, has been robbed in recent months, and neighbors are promising to "take care" of the suspect if the police don't catch him first.
McGowan was robbed around 6:30 a.m. after she parked her car and was walking up to the Good Shepherd School at 1943 Brown Street, police said. The mugger then went up to the woman and punched her in the face before knocking her to the ground.
Police say the man then ran away with the victim's purse.
Police released surveillance video showing the attack as it happened at the gate of the school.
Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS.
NJ State Police pulls out guns on Summer Jam crowd
Link of the altercation above.
State Police today said an officer working a detail at Giants Stadium pulled his gun on rapper Jim Jones and his entourage after an assault broke out during a backstage incident earlier this month.
A portion of a videotape released this morning shows the plain clothes officer pulling the gun as he and a group of colleagues confront Jones and his entourage following a performance at “Summer Jam” on June 1.
A person with Jones’ entourage said the officer didn’t properly identify himself, prompting Jones to begin making references to Sean Bell, who was shot 50 times by New York City police in 2006 (A grand jury recently acquitted the officers of wrongdoing in that incident).
“The weapon was pulled to try to bring order to the rest of the crowd and to keep them from advancing [toward the troopers],” he said.
Troopers were heavily outnumbered at the time and did what they had to do to keep control, the captain said. He couldn’t say how many troopers were at “Summer Jam,” adding that most were outside for crowd control. Only three were backstage when an initial incident with a bodyguard sparked the altercation, he said.
The crowd began to chant, “Sean Bell,” because they knew the three men in plain clothes were troopers, Della Fave contended.
“Contrary to what was stated in the video clip, state police identified themselves very early on in the altercation,” Della Fave said. “And everyone involved in the altercation was well-aware of their status as New Jersey State Troopers.”
What the video on whatspoppin.net omits, as Della Fave noted, is the arrest of a man identified Jones’ bodyguard, Charles Chandler, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was charged with grabbing a trooper's head and face with both hands. It was that incident, he said, that caused the confrontation.
In the video, the officer -- wearing a red "Hoboken" shirt and a New Jersey Devils cap backwards -- points the gun during the confrontation. A member of Jones' entourage shouts at him: "You didn't even pull out your ID, man!"
Another section of the video shows the officer returning with several other officers -- all wearing their badges around their necks.
Della Fave couldn’t say whether anyone in the group threatened police but said, “The whole atmosphere was threatening.”
Jones, who wasn't on the bill, was a show-stopping surprise for the crowd, estimated at about 44,000. He performed his well-known anthem, “We Fly High (Ballin’),” and his latest single, “Love Me No More.”
Moments after Jones closed the show around 10:30 p.m. his entourage tangled with police backstage.
This was the sixth consecutive “Summer Jam” held at Giants Stadium. The event, which began in New York in 1994, moved there after quickly outgrowing Big Apple venues.
"Summer Jam," hosted by New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97, was headlined by rappers Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, hip-hop legends Public Enemy and singer Alicia Keys.
State Police today said an officer working a detail at Giants Stadium pulled his gun on rapper Jim Jones and his entourage after an assault broke out during a backstage incident earlier this month.
A portion of a videotape released this morning shows the plain clothes officer pulling the gun as he and a group of colleagues confront Jones and his entourage following a performance at “Summer Jam” on June 1.
A person with Jones’ entourage said the officer didn’t properly identify himself, prompting Jones to begin making references to Sean Bell, who was shot 50 times by New York City police in 2006 (A grand jury recently acquitted the officers of wrongdoing in that incident).
“The weapon was pulled to try to bring order to the rest of the crowd and to keep them from advancing [toward the troopers],” he said.
Troopers were heavily outnumbered at the time and did what they had to do to keep control, the captain said. He couldn’t say how many troopers were at “Summer Jam,” adding that most were outside for crowd control. Only three were backstage when an initial incident with a bodyguard sparked the altercation, he said.
The crowd began to chant, “Sean Bell,” because they knew the three men in plain clothes were troopers, Della Fave contended.
“Contrary to what was stated in the video clip, state police identified themselves very early on in the altercation,” Della Fave said. “And everyone involved in the altercation was well-aware of their status as New Jersey State Troopers.”
What the video on whatspoppin.net omits, as Della Fave noted, is the arrest of a man identified Jones’ bodyguard, Charles Chandler, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was charged with grabbing a trooper's head and face with both hands. It was that incident, he said, that caused the confrontation.
In the video, the officer -- wearing a red "Hoboken" shirt and a New Jersey Devils cap backwards -- points the gun during the confrontation. A member of Jones' entourage shouts at him: "You didn't even pull out your ID, man!"
Another section of the video shows the officer returning with several other officers -- all wearing their badges around their necks.
Della Fave couldn’t say whether anyone in the group threatened police but said, “The whole atmosphere was threatening.”
Jones, who wasn't on the bill, was a show-stopping surprise for the crowd, estimated at about 44,000. He performed his well-known anthem, “We Fly High (Ballin’),” and his latest single, “Love Me No More.”
Moments after Jones closed the show around 10:30 p.m. his entourage tangled with police backstage.
This was the sixth consecutive “Summer Jam” held at Giants Stadium. The event, which began in New York in 1994, moved there after quickly outgrowing Big Apple venues.
"Summer Jam," hosted by New York hip-hop radio station Hot 97, was headlined by rappers Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, hip-hop legends Public Enemy and singer Alicia Keys.
Ireland deals stunning blow to Europe
Irish voters have dealt a stunning blow to the European Union by decisively rejecting the bloc’s Lisbon treaty on institutional reforms, official results are expected to show on Friday.
The vote against Lisbon will plunge EU leaders into a crisis almost identical to that which gripped the 27-nation bloc when Dutch and French voters threw out a proposed EU constitutional treaty in 2005.
But some European politicians suggested that the latest crisis would be even worse, because it could tempt some EU member-states, frustrated with the lack of progress towards European political unity, to press ahead with closer integration on their own.
“There will arise a debate about a Europe of two speeds, a debate about those states that want deeper European integration and those that don’t,” predicted Martin Schulz, the German leader of the European Parliament’s socialist group.
Pro-Lisbon politicians in Dublin contested this argument and pointed out that Ireland belongs to the 15-nation eurozone, making it difficult to exclude it from core EU projects of economic integration.
EU leaders, who are due to hold a summit in Brussels next Thursday and Friday, are expected to react to the Irish No by reaffirming the need for all other EU member-states to ratify the treaty.
Eighteen countries have so far approved Lisbon in their parliaments, but the vote in Ireland – the only country to submit the treaty to a referendum – is sufficient to mean that the reforms contained in the document cannot come into effect.
These include the appointment of the EU’s first full-time president, a strengthened role for the EU’s foreign policy chief, increased powers for the European Parliament and national parliaments, a slimmed-down European Commission and a reform of the EU’s voting rules.
The Irish vote leaves the EU looking as if its ambitions to play a bigger role on the world stage are constantly being frustrated by its inability to reach a long-term settlement on its highly complicated internal arrangements.
The first response of EU leaders, while insisting that the ratification process in other countries must go ahead, will be to analyse the reasons why the Irish rejected Lisbon. Only later will they decide what steps are feasible to preserve the treaty’s reforms – or as many as politically possible.
One problem is that a second referendum in Ireland looks, at this stage, very difficult to justify. The turn-out was a respectable 52 to 53 per cent, higher even than the 49 per cent that endorsed the EU’s Nice treaty at a second attempt in Ireland in 2002.
“It’s up to the Irish, but I think the times are over when we can ask the people to vote again until they vote Yes,” Mr Schulz said.
The result was a kick in teeth for the Irish political and business establishment. All the main parties were united in support of a Yes vote and had the backing of big companies and small business associations alike.
Brian Cowen, who took over as premier last month, and ministers in his centre-right government blamed the outcome on “scare-mongering” by No campaigners who raised fears that the Lisbon treaty threatened Irish sovereignty and the Irish way of life on everything from taxation and neutrality to abortion and the use of hard drugs.
A spokesman for the nationalist opposition Sinn Féin party said that the pro-Lisbon forces in Ireland had missed the point by blaming their defeat on “scare-mongering”.
“Where is the humility? Where is the sense of them listening to the people’s concerns?” the Sinn Féin spokesman asked on Irish radio.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
The vote against Lisbon will plunge EU leaders into a crisis almost identical to that which gripped the 27-nation bloc when Dutch and French voters threw out a proposed EU constitutional treaty in 2005.
But some European politicians suggested that the latest crisis would be even worse, because it could tempt some EU member-states, frustrated with the lack of progress towards European political unity, to press ahead with closer integration on their own.
“There will arise a debate about a Europe of two speeds, a debate about those states that want deeper European integration and those that don’t,” predicted Martin Schulz, the German leader of the European Parliament’s socialist group.
Pro-Lisbon politicians in Dublin contested this argument and pointed out that Ireland belongs to the 15-nation eurozone, making it difficult to exclude it from core EU projects of economic integration.
EU leaders, who are due to hold a summit in Brussels next Thursday and Friday, are expected to react to the Irish No by reaffirming the need for all other EU member-states to ratify the treaty.
Eighteen countries have so far approved Lisbon in their parliaments, but the vote in Ireland – the only country to submit the treaty to a referendum – is sufficient to mean that the reforms contained in the document cannot come into effect.
These include the appointment of the EU’s first full-time president, a strengthened role for the EU’s foreign policy chief, increased powers for the European Parliament and national parliaments, a slimmed-down European Commission and a reform of the EU’s voting rules.
The Irish vote leaves the EU looking as if its ambitions to play a bigger role on the world stage are constantly being frustrated by its inability to reach a long-term settlement on its highly complicated internal arrangements.
The first response of EU leaders, while insisting that the ratification process in other countries must go ahead, will be to analyse the reasons why the Irish rejected Lisbon. Only later will they decide what steps are feasible to preserve the treaty’s reforms – or as many as politically possible.
One problem is that a second referendum in Ireland looks, at this stage, very difficult to justify. The turn-out was a respectable 52 to 53 per cent, higher even than the 49 per cent that endorsed the EU’s Nice treaty at a second attempt in Ireland in 2002.
“It’s up to the Irish, but I think the times are over when we can ask the people to vote again until they vote Yes,” Mr Schulz said.
The result was a kick in teeth for the Irish political and business establishment. All the main parties were united in support of a Yes vote and had the backing of big companies and small business associations alike.
Brian Cowen, who took over as premier last month, and ministers in his centre-right government blamed the outcome on “scare-mongering” by No campaigners who raised fears that the Lisbon treaty threatened Irish sovereignty and the Irish way of life on everything from taxation and neutrality to abortion and the use of hard drugs.
A spokesman for the nationalist opposition Sinn Féin party said that the pro-Lisbon forces in Ireland had missed the point by blaming their defeat on “scare-mongering”.
“Where is the humility? Where is the sense of them listening to the people’s concerns?” the Sinn Féin spokesman asked on Irish radio.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Brooklyn man dies after officer zaps him twice with Taser
Newsday.com
June 10, 2008
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) _ Police on Long Island say a man has died after being shocked twice with an officer's Taser stun gun while trying to swallow a bag of drugs.
Suffolk County police say an officer saw the 26-year-old Brooklyn man trying to swallow a bag of cocaine on Monday. They say the officer shocked the man twice to try to stop him.
Police say the man spat out a white powder and remnants of a plastic bag. They say he was taken to a Riverhead hospital, where he died that evening.
The announcement of the man's death comes a day before thousands of New York City police sergeants are due to begin carrying Tasers on their belts.
June 10, 2008
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) _ Police on Long Island say a man has died after being shocked twice with an officer's Taser stun gun while trying to swallow a bag of drugs.
Suffolk County police say an officer saw the 26-year-old Brooklyn man trying to swallow a bag of cocaine on Monday. They say the officer shocked the man twice to try to stop him.
Police say the man spat out a white powder and remnants of a plastic bag. They say he was taken to a Riverhead hospital, where he died that evening.
The announcement of the man's death comes a day before thousands of New York City police sergeants are due to begin carrying Tasers on their belts.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
South Korea rejects U.S. beef
Seoul, South Korea - The government of President Lee Myung Bak was plunged into crisis Tuesday, 3 1/2 months after he took office in a landslide win.
His entire cabinet offered to resign in the morning, and about 200,000 protesters staged a candlelight demonstration in the evening, holding banners, waving signs, and chanting slogans targeting the agreement his government reached in April to resume importing American beef.
Protesters accuse Mr. Lee of risking the health of Koreans in his eagerness to please the United States and push through a free trade agreement.
But the size and scope of the protest dramatizes problems that go far beyond that of simply beef.
The protests reflect discontent with "a lot of national issues," including high unemployment, education, and the economy, says Moon Kook Hyun, who campaigned for president on his own minority party and then was elected to the National Assembly. "The people are so disappointed. They have no other way to express themselves."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Taser linked San Jose man's death
Like them or despise them, one thing has been consistent about stun gun-maker Taser International: They never, ever lose in court. 45 wrongful death or injury lawsuits had swung the company's way, as of early last year. About a month ago, Taser even got a judge to reverse three Ohio autopsies that had partially faulted the electroshock weapons.
But that all changed on Friday, when a federal jury in San Jose found the company responsible for the death of 40-year-old Robert Heston Jr., awarding his family more than $6 million in damages. "An attorney for the family called the verdict a 'landmark decision,' and indicated that it was the first time Taser International had been held responsible for a death or injury linked to its product," the Monetrey County Herald reports.
But that all changed on Friday, when a federal jury in San Jose found the company responsible for the death of 40-year-old Robert Heston Jr., awarding his family more than $6 million in damages. "An attorney for the family called the verdict a 'landmark decision,' and indicated that it was the first time Taser International had been held responsible for a death or injury linked to its product," the Monetrey County Herald reports.
Tasers issued to 10 percent of New York cops
NEW YORK (AFP) — Beginning Wednesday about 10 percent of New York police officers will be packing new Tasers in their holsters -- stun guns which human rights groups warn are linked to hundreds of deaths.
Versions of the controversial electric weapon have been used by the New York Police Department (NYPD) since 1984 but policy required storing them in police cruisers because of their cumbersome size.
A new, lighter "M-26" model about the size of a handgun will be added to the belts of 3,050 sergeants, allowing law and order personnel to avoid when possible the use of traditional firearms, according to city Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
"While smaller departments have opted to equip all of their patrol officers with them, we have been more cautious before authorizing up to 30,000 officers on patrol to have them," Kelly told reporters Monday.
"For the moment, we feel it is best to restrict them to supervisors who are required to respond to incidents involving emotionally disturbed persons," Kelly added.
The Taser packs a 50,000-volt punch that can paralyze targets from up to 10 yards (meters) away. A United Nations committee ruled in November that its use constitutes "a form of torture" which can result in death.
The UN criticism followed a string of deaths in the United States and Canada that occurred after police used Tasers to subdue people, including a Polish man who was filmed dying after being stunned at Vancouver airport.
Amnesty International says around 300 people have died around the world after being zapped with a Taser and has called for the weapon's use to be suspended while a full investigation is conducted.
Versions of the controversial electric weapon have been used by the New York Police Department (NYPD) since 1984 but policy required storing them in police cruisers because of their cumbersome size.
A new, lighter "M-26" model about the size of a handgun will be added to the belts of 3,050 sergeants, allowing law and order personnel to avoid when possible the use of traditional firearms, according to city Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
"While smaller departments have opted to equip all of their patrol officers with them, we have been more cautious before authorizing up to 30,000 officers on patrol to have them," Kelly told reporters Monday.
"For the moment, we feel it is best to restrict them to supervisors who are required to respond to incidents involving emotionally disturbed persons," Kelly added.
The Taser packs a 50,000-volt punch that can paralyze targets from up to 10 yards (meters) away. A United Nations committee ruled in November that its use constitutes "a form of torture" which can result in death.
The UN criticism followed a string of deaths in the United States and Canada that occurred after police used Tasers to subdue people, including a Polish man who was filmed dying after being stunned at Vancouver airport.
Amnesty International says around 300 people have died around the world after being zapped with a Taser and has called for the weapon's use to be suspended while a full investigation is conducted.
Bilderbergers plan America's future
Slate--
About this time each year, the Bilderberg group convenes a weekend conference in a hotel or resort somewhere in North America or Europe in which 120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists assemble to discuss world affairs in private.
This year, the 56th Bilderberg meeting took place over the weekend at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Va., seven miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. As in previous years, Bilderberg critics are berating the mainstream press for observing a "blackout" of a group they believe directs a secret, shadow government.
The critics claim that Bilderberg grooms future American presidents and future British prime ministers, pointing to Bill Clinton's attendance in 1991 and Tony Blair's in 1993. Time magazine reported in 2004 that John Edwards impressed attendees at the Bilderberg session in Italy, after which John Kerry asked him to join his presidential ticket.
About this time each year, the Bilderberg group convenes a weekend conference in a hotel or resort somewhere in North America or Europe in which 120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists assemble to discuss world affairs in private.
This year, the 56th Bilderberg meeting took place over the weekend at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Va., seven miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. As in previous years, Bilderberg critics are berating the mainstream press for observing a "blackout" of a group they believe directs a secret, shadow government.
The critics claim that Bilderberg grooms future American presidents and future British prime ministers, pointing to Bill Clinton's attendance in 1991 and Tony Blair's in 1993. Time magazine reported in 2004 that John Edwards impressed attendees at the Bilderberg session in Italy, after which John Kerry asked him to join his presidential ticket.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Rising Energy Prices and the Falling Dollar
Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk--
Oil prices are on the minds of many Americans as gas hits $4 a gallon, and continues to surge. How high can prices go? How can we solve these problems? What, or who, is to blame?
Part of the answer lies in understanding bubbles and monetary inflation, but especially the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve is charged with controlling inflation through interest rate manipulation, however, many fail to realize that creating money, and therefore inflation, is really its only tool. When the Federal Reserve inflates the dollar as drastically as it has in the past few decades, the first users of the newly created money go in search of investments for their dollars. They must invest this money quickly and aggressively before it loses value. This causes certain sectors to expand beyond what would naturally occur in the free market. Eventually the sector overheats and the bubble bursts. Overinvestment in dotcoms eventually led to a collapse of the NASDAQ. Next we had the housing bubble, and now we are seeing the price of oil being bid up in the creation of another new bubble. Investors are now looking to commodities like oil, for stability and growth as they pull capital out of real estate. This increased demand for investment vehicles related to oil contributes to driving up the price of the actual product.
If the Fed continues with its bubble blowing policies of the past, the new commodities bubble will continue to grow, gas prices will continue to go up, as the value of your dollars go down. We will see an overinvestment in these commodities as solutions are desperately sought for a supply shortage, which is only part of the problem. Make no mistake, though, this is not the free market at work. Government manipulations have added levels of complication and unintended consequences to the marketplace.
This is not the time for members of Congress to take political potshots at each other, or to imagine that the free market is somehow to blame. This is the time to understand and fix problems. That begins with making sure the decision makers have a firm grasp on the causes of the problems and possible effects of their decisions. This is absolutely crucial if we want to get it right this time. That is why I am in the process of calling for hearings on Capitol Hill on how the falling value of the dollar affects energy prices.
Governments need to get out of the way and let the people get back to work so that we can get our economy back on stable footing. Our destructive regulatory environment, confiscatory tax policies, and managed, rather than free trade have chased many businesses overseas. The bottom line is average Americans are being seriously hurt by these flawed policies, and they are not getting good information about the true dynamics at work. The important thing now is to get the diagnosis absolutely correct so we can administer the appropriate treatment and move on to a healthier economic future. To do this it is absolutely necessary to address the subjects of central banking and fiat money.
Oil prices are on the minds of many Americans as gas hits $4 a gallon, and continues to surge. How high can prices go? How can we solve these problems? What, or who, is to blame?
Part of the answer lies in understanding bubbles and monetary inflation, but especially the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve is charged with controlling inflation through interest rate manipulation, however, many fail to realize that creating money, and therefore inflation, is really its only tool. When the Federal Reserve inflates the dollar as drastically as it has in the past few decades, the first users of the newly created money go in search of investments for their dollars. They must invest this money quickly and aggressively before it loses value. This causes certain sectors to expand beyond what would naturally occur in the free market. Eventually the sector overheats and the bubble bursts. Overinvestment in dotcoms eventually led to a collapse of the NASDAQ. Next we had the housing bubble, and now we are seeing the price of oil being bid up in the creation of another new bubble. Investors are now looking to commodities like oil, for stability and growth as they pull capital out of real estate. This increased demand for investment vehicles related to oil contributes to driving up the price of the actual product.
If the Fed continues with its bubble blowing policies of the past, the new commodities bubble will continue to grow, gas prices will continue to go up, as the value of your dollars go down. We will see an overinvestment in these commodities as solutions are desperately sought for a supply shortage, which is only part of the problem. Make no mistake, though, this is not the free market at work. Government manipulations have added levels of complication and unintended consequences to the marketplace.
This is not the time for members of Congress to take political potshots at each other, or to imagine that the free market is somehow to blame. This is the time to understand and fix problems. That begins with making sure the decision makers have a firm grasp on the causes of the problems and possible effects of their decisions. This is absolutely crucial if we want to get it right this time. That is why I am in the process of calling for hearings on Capitol Hill on how the falling value of the dollar affects energy prices.
Governments need to get out of the way and let the people get back to work so that we can get our economy back on stable footing. Our destructive regulatory environment, confiscatory tax policies, and managed, rather than free trade have chased many businesses overseas. The bottom line is average Americans are being seriously hurt by these flawed policies, and they are not getting good information about the true dynamics at work. The important thing now is to get the diagnosis absolutely correct so we can administer the appropriate treatment and move on to a healthier economic future. To do this it is absolutely necessary to address the subjects of central banking and fiat money.
Spanish truckers on strike, will U.S. be next?
Tens of thousands of Spanish lorry drivers have begun an indefinite strike over the soaring price of diesel, which has risen by 20% this year.
After stopping work at midnight, many disrupted traffic at one of the border crossings between Spain and France.
A number of lorries crossing the picket lines had their windscreens broken, lights ripped out and tyres slashed.
The government is preparing a package to assist the sector, with emergency loans and more flexible contracts.
It would also offer cash payments to older lorry drivers who are willing to retire.
French fishermen from Mediterranean ports have, meanwhile, joined fleets from other French ports in suspending their action pending an EU summit in Brussels later this month.
After stopping work at midnight, many disrupted traffic at one of the border crossings between Spain and France.
A number of lorries crossing the picket lines had their windscreens broken, lights ripped out and tyres slashed.
The government is preparing a package to assist the sector, with emergency loans and more flexible contracts.
It would also offer cash payments to older lorry drivers who are willing to retire.
French fishermen from Mediterranean ports have, meanwhile, joined fleets from other French ports in suspending their action pending an EU summit in Brussels later this month.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Immunizations in NJ Mandatory?
Government mulls if parents can opt-out, but what about the Autism link?
TRENTON — A state Senate panel Thursday debated whether to let New Jersey parents exempt their children from vaccines, but took no action on a proposed bill.
Republican Sens. Anthony Bucco and Gerald Cardinale contend the legislation — discussed Thursday by the Senate health committee — would give parents the right to manage their child's health as they deem appropriate.
But medical experts fear such conscientious exemption laws — which have been approved in 19 other states — might allow fatal diseases to make a comeback.
State law requires immunizations as a condition for attending public and private schools, preschools and day care facilities.
This includes immunizations for diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, rubella, polio, mumps, chickenpox, the flu and hepatitis B.
While medical experts hail the vaccines for successfully quelling the spread of deadly diseases, some parents fret about giving children dozens of vaccine doses and don't want government dictating their medical decisions.
Barbara Flynn of Summit said her son suffered post-vaccine neurological problems.
"Unvaccinated children are nothing to be afraid of," Flynn said.
The bill would allow the state to keep unvaccinated students from attending school during a disease outbreak. The state health commissioner could also suspend conscientious exemptions in an emergency.
About 81 percent of New Jersey children ages 19 to 35 months have been immunized, tying the state with five others for the 23rd-lowest rate in the nation, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health care data.
Lawmakers were skeptical. Sen. Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, contrasted claims of how vaccines have prevented diseases with worries by parents the vaccines could cause problems.
"It leaves people like me very confused." Gordon said.
TRENTON — A state Senate panel Thursday debated whether to let New Jersey parents exempt their children from vaccines, but took no action on a proposed bill.
Republican Sens. Anthony Bucco and Gerald Cardinale contend the legislation — discussed Thursday by the Senate health committee — would give parents the right to manage their child's health as they deem appropriate.
But medical experts fear such conscientious exemption laws — which have been approved in 19 other states — might allow fatal diseases to make a comeback.
State law requires immunizations as a condition for attending public and private schools, preschools and day care facilities.
This includes immunizations for diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles, rubella, polio, mumps, chickenpox, the flu and hepatitis B.
While medical experts hail the vaccines for successfully quelling the spread of deadly diseases, some parents fret about giving children dozens of vaccine doses and don't want government dictating their medical decisions.
Barbara Flynn of Summit said her son suffered post-vaccine neurological problems.
"Unvaccinated children are nothing to be afraid of," Flynn said.
The bill would allow the state to keep unvaccinated students from attending school during a disease outbreak. The state health commissioner could also suspend conscientious exemptions in an emergency.
About 81 percent of New Jersey children ages 19 to 35 months have been immunized, tying the state with five others for the 23rd-lowest rate in the nation, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health care data.
Lawmakers were skeptical. Sen. Robert Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, contrasted claims of how vaccines have prevented diseases with worries by parents the vaccines could cause problems.
"It leaves people like me very confused." Gordon said.
bad old days in N. Ireland?
5 June 2008--
Intense behind-the-scenes discussions were being held Wednesday in Northern Ireland to avert a new political crisis as Protestant First Minister Ian Paisley prepared to retire from his office. Sinn Fein, the Catholic partner in the power-sharing government, has refused to say whether it will block the election of Paisley's would-be successor, Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party. It could do so legally by declining to renominate his deputy, Martin McGuinness, leaving both posts unfilled. On his final day in office, Paisley said such a move would be "evil" and would risk bringing the province "back to the bad old days."
Intense behind-the-scenes discussions were being held Wednesday in Northern Ireland to avert a new political crisis as Protestant First Minister Ian Paisley prepared to retire from his office. Sinn Fein, the Catholic partner in the power-sharing government, has refused to say whether it will block the election of Paisley's would-be successor, Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party. It could do so legally by declining to renominate his deputy, Martin McGuinness, leaving both posts unfilled. On his final day in office, Paisley said such a move would be "evil" and would risk bringing the province "back to the bad old days."
Al Franken wins US Senate seat
I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!
ROCHESTER - U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken took the DFL endorsement by acclamation on Saturday, after a day of questions, speeches and fretting by some activists over whether the controversial satirist can wage a focused campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.
After being publicly and privately urged to do so, Franken tackled the issue of his sometimes sexually explicit humor head on, with the outright apology that many had been waiting for.
"It kills me that things I said and wrote sent a message ... that they can't count on me to be a champion for women, for all Minnesotans. I'm sorry for that. Because that's not who I am," Franken told delegates.
Franken acknowledged that in his often edgy career as a comedian. "I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that."
Franken then turned attention to Coleman, saying that "there are some people in Washington who could afford to feel a little less comfortable." Drawing on his strength as an acerbic critic of Republicans, Franken said that he would "stand up to Norm Coleman in a way he's never been stood up to before."
In the end, DFLers agreed with Franken and were preparing to endorse him on the first ballot when Franken's rival, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer withdrew. Franken had garnered nearly 62 percent of the votes, slightly more than needed for endorsement.
Franken said he accepted endorsement in a "spirit of tremendous gratitude and tremendous humility" and would dedicate himself to the tasks of securing universal health care, leveling the economic playing field, improving educational opportunities and withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
ROCHESTER - U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken took the DFL endorsement by acclamation on Saturday, after a day of questions, speeches and fretting by some activists over whether the controversial satirist can wage a focused campaign to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.
After being publicly and privately urged to do so, Franken tackled the issue of his sometimes sexually explicit humor head on, with the outright apology that many had been waiting for.
"It kills me that things I said and wrote sent a message ... that they can't count on me to be a champion for women, for all Minnesotans. I'm sorry for that. Because that's not who I am," Franken told delegates.
Franken acknowledged that in his often edgy career as a comedian. "I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that."
Franken then turned attention to Coleman, saying that "there are some people in Washington who could afford to feel a little less comfortable." Drawing on his strength as an acerbic critic of Republicans, Franken said that he would "stand up to Norm Coleman in a way he's never been stood up to before."
In the end, DFLers agreed with Franken and were preparing to endorse him on the first ballot when Franken's rival, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer withdrew. Franken had garnered nearly 62 percent of the votes, slightly more than needed for endorsement.
Franken said he accepted endorsement in a "spirit of tremendous gratitude and tremendous humility" and would dedicate himself to the tasks of securing universal health care, leveling the economic playing field, improving educational opportunities and withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
cigarettes $10 in NY
In my day, a pack of smokes cost a nickel. I'm not a smoker, but I think it's wrong how people are now cordoned off like rats! Not to mention $8 to $10 for smokes is crazy.
--Z
New Yorkers start paying the highest cigarette taxes in the nation Tuesday with the latest $1.25 spike per pack that officials expect to bring in $265 million a year.
Convenience stores across the state and the smokers who will be paying the price are angry about the change, but health officials hail the tax increase as a success. Cigarette taxes will raise a total of $1.3 billion for the state budget in fiscal year 2008-2009, including the new tax.
"Isn't that something — to say that I'm excited about a tax increase? But I am," said Dr. Richard Daines, the New York health commissioner. "This is a public health victory. We know one of the really effective tools to get people off of their nicotine addiction is to the raise the price."
Smokers will be paying $2.75 per pack in state taxes, a jump from the previous tax of $1.50. Before the new tax, the average price of a pack of cigarettes was $5.82 statewide, and about $8 a pack in New York City, which levies its own taxes, Daines said. The new retail price for a pack in the city could now soar past $10 depending on the store.
By VALERIE BAUMAN Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. June 3, 2008 (AP)
--Z
New Yorkers start paying the highest cigarette taxes in the nation Tuesday with the latest $1.25 spike per pack that officials expect to bring in $265 million a year.
Convenience stores across the state and the smokers who will be paying the price are angry about the change, but health officials hail the tax increase as a success. Cigarette taxes will raise a total of $1.3 billion for the state budget in fiscal year 2008-2009, including the new tax.
"Isn't that something — to say that I'm excited about a tax increase? But I am," said Dr. Richard Daines, the New York health commissioner. "This is a public health victory. We know one of the really effective tools to get people off of their nicotine addiction is to the raise the price."
Smokers will be paying $2.75 per pack in state taxes, a jump from the previous tax of $1.50. Before the new tax, the average price of a pack of cigarettes was $5.82 statewide, and about $8 a pack in New York City, which levies its own taxes, Daines said. The new retail price for a pack in the city could now soar past $10 depending on the store.
By VALERIE BAUMAN Associated Press Writer
ALBANY, N.Y. June 3, 2008 (AP)
The Telectroscope
Now this is pretty cool...
From a distance, it looks as if one of Jules Verne's imagined flying contraptions has crashed in to the South Bank of the Thames. Next to Tower Bridge, the massive brown-and-gold item pokes up from the walkway, like the front end of a B-movie UFO – or perhaps some part of a ship's hull from 200 years ago – winning weird looks from passers-by. Is it a plane? Is it a time machine?
No, it's the Telectroscope, the wacky, wonderful invention of British artist Paul St. George. The story: Mr. St. George happened upon a stack of dusty papers in his grandmother's attic, which revealed that his great-grandfather – an eccentric Victorian engineer – had planned to bore a 3,471-mile tunnel from London to New York, allowing us Brits to gawk at you Yanks through the world's longest telescope. Now, St. George has made his great-gramp's dream a reality.
Ed McMahon fights foreclosure on Beverly Hills home
Okay, now it's getting scary.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick to U.S. talk show host Johnny Carson, is fighting to save his multimillion dollar Beverly Hills home from foreclosure, McMahon's spokesman said on Wednesday.
McMahon, 85, most famous for his "Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny" introduction to "The Tonight Show" for 30 years, is one of the most high-profile people to be caught up in the U.S. housing downturn and credit squeeze. Beyond his "Tonight Show" duties, McMahon also hosted popular U.S. TV talent show "Star Search."
Spokesman Howard Bragman said the jovial TV personality was having "very fruitful discussions" with his mortgage lenders after a notice of default was filed in February.
According to public records, McMahon was then about $644,000 in arrears on the mortgage for the six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in an exclusive area of Beverly Hills. The house has been on the market for about two years and the current asking price is $5.75 million.
Bragman said McMahon fell and broke his neck about 18 months ago, preventing him from working. His health problems and the weak housing market forced him into foreclosure proceedings.
McMahon and his wife Pamela "understand that they are in the same situation as hundreds of thousands of other hard-working Americans, and their hearts go out to them," Bragman said.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 14.5 percent or one in seven homes for sale across the nation in April were the result of foreclosure
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick to U.S. talk show host Johnny Carson, is fighting to save his multimillion dollar Beverly Hills home from foreclosure, McMahon's spokesman said on Wednesday.
McMahon, 85, most famous for his "Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny" introduction to "The Tonight Show" for 30 years, is one of the most high-profile people to be caught up in the U.S. housing downturn and credit squeeze. Beyond his "Tonight Show" duties, McMahon also hosted popular U.S. TV talent show "Star Search."
Spokesman Howard Bragman said the jovial TV personality was having "very fruitful discussions" with his mortgage lenders after a notice of default was filed in February.
According to public records, McMahon was then about $644,000 in arrears on the mortgage for the six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in an exclusive area of Beverly Hills. The house has been on the market for about two years and the current asking price is $5.75 million.
Bragman said McMahon fell and broke his neck about 18 months ago, preventing him from working. His health problems and the weak housing market forced him into foreclosure proceedings.
McMahon and his wife Pamela "understand that they are in the same situation as hundreds of thousands of other hard-working Americans, and their hearts go out to them," Bragman said.
According to the National Association of Realtors, 14.5 percent or one in seven homes for sale across the nation in April were the result of foreclosure
Sabrin finishes third. Back to business as usual in NJ
Murray Sabrin, a former Libertarian gubernatorial candidate turned “Ron Paul Republican” candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey, finished a distant third tonight in the GOP primary.
Sabrin, despite raising well over a half-million dollars to fund his campaign, is polling at only 14%… far behind former Congressman Dick Zimmer (46%) and State Senator Joe Pennacchio (40%).
Impressively, Sabrin managed to raised in excess of $30,000 during the final day of the campaign. Since there will be no general election campaign, it’s not clear if that money is going to be directed to expenses that were already incurred or if it will be returned or used for another purpose.
Sabrin, despite raising well over a half-million dollars to fund his campaign, is polling at only 14%… far behind former Congressman Dick Zimmer (46%) and State Senator Joe Pennacchio (40%).
Impressively, Sabrin managed to raised in excess of $30,000 during the final day of the campaign. Since there will be no general election campaign, it’s not clear if that money is going to be directed to expenses that were already incurred or if it will be returned or used for another purpose.
26-year-old supporter of Ron Paul runs for congress
In the 11th Congressional District, Republican incumbent Rodney Freylinghuysen beat back a Libertarian-inspired challenge to earn a shot at an eighth term.
Freylinghuysen, 62, of Harding, disposed of a challenge by Kate Erber, a 26-year-old student and supporter of Ron Paul, the Republican and former Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
Freylinghuysen, the senior member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, will face Democrat Tom Wyka in November. Wyka, a 41-year-old software developer from Parsippany-Troy Hills, faced Freylinghuysen in 2006 and lost by a 2-1 ratio in the heavily Republican district.
Wyka defeated Democratic challengers Ellen Greenberg, 59, a real estate lawyer from Mendham, and Gary "Harry" Hager, a 68-year-old retired banker from Chester.
The Iraq war and the economy are the two issues that both parties are talking about. Freylinghuysen supports the war and Wyka opposes it, calling for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Freylinghuysen says that would be a mistake.
"It would be a drastic mistake if we pulled our troops out," Freylinghuysen said. "I’m not saying we’re going to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq forever, but if we pull out now, we’d make ourselves extremely vulnerable to terrorism."
Wyka has called for a troop pullout, and has stressed "accountability" for the conduct of the war among U.S. military and government officials.
The 11th includes all of Morris County, which is heavily Republican, plus part of Bloomingdale in Passaic County. It also includes parts of Essex, Somerset and Sussex counties. No Democrat has won in the district since the boundaries were redrawn in 1984.
Freylinghuysen, 62, of Harding, disposed of a challenge by Kate Erber, a 26-year-old student and supporter of Ron Paul, the Republican and former Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
Freylinghuysen, the senior member of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, will face Democrat Tom Wyka in November. Wyka, a 41-year-old software developer from Parsippany-Troy Hills, faced Freylinghuysen in 2006 and lost by a 2-1 ratio in the heavily Republican district.
Wyka defeated Democratic challengers Ellen Greenberg, 59, a real estate lawyer from Mendham, and Gary "Harry" Hager, a 68-year-old retired banker from Chester.
The Iraq war and the economy are the two issues that both parties are talking about. Freylinghuysen supports the war and Wyka opposes it, calling for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Freylinghuysen says that would be a mistake.
"It would be a drastic mistake if we pulled our troops out," Freylinghuysen said. "I’m not saying we’re going to stay in Afghanistan and Iraq forever, but if we pull out now, we’d make ourselves extremely vulnerable to terrorism."
Wyka has called for a troop pullout, and has stressed "accountability" for the conduct of the war among U.S. military and government officials.
The 11th includes all of Morris County, which is heavily Republican, plus part of Bloomingdale in Passaic County. It also includes parts of Essex, Somerset and Sussex counties. No Democrat has won in the district since the boundaries were redrawn in 1984.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Credit crunch affects student loans
Driven by the credit crunch, big banks are cutting back student loan programs, nixing cash access for students at community colleges and small four-year colleges deemed "less competitive."
The mortgage industry crisis, says Robert Shireman of the Project on Student
Debt, has affected college lending as well, even though most college loans are
federally guaranteed. "The problems in the mortgage industry caused a virus of
sorts, which upset the way that a lot of different types of loans were financed,
even these very secure loans that are essentially co-signed by the federal
government," he said.
The mortgage industry crisis, says Robert Shireman of the Project on Student
Debt, has affected college lending as well, even though most college loans are
federally guaranteed. "The problems in the mortgage industry caused a virus of
sorts, which upset the way that a lot of different types of loans were financed,
even these very secure loans that are essentially co-signed by the federal
government," he said.
Welcome to Jewish Iran
Iran is home to the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside Israel, with a history dating back 3,000 years to the time of Cyrus the Great. The Shrine of Esther and two of the sites purported to be the Tomb of Daniel are both in Iran.
Tuneful Jewish prayers echoed off the elaborate blue tiles inside the synagogue – an interior that could pass for a mosque were it not for the Hebrew inscriptions and menorah – as the worshippers bowed left and right.
The men, with their yarmulkes, were packed on the benches downstairs, while upstairs the women, in brightly coloured headscarves, alternated between praying and gossiping. Their chit-chat grew so loud that the rabbi broke off several times to shush them.
The Friday night ceremony over, they poured out into the leafy street. “Shabbat Shalom,” they said, before launching into the long Farsi pleasantries that constitute an Iranian greeting.
Welcome to Jewish Iran – a 25,000-strong community in a country whose populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, has denied the Holocaust and called for the Jewish state’s demise.
Tuneful Jewish prayers echoed off the elaborate blue tiles inside the synagogue – an interior that could pass for a mosque were it not for the Hebrew inscriptions and menorah – as the worshippers bowed left and right.
The men, with their yarmulkes, were packed on the benches downstairs, while upstairs the women, in brightly coloured headscarves, alternated between praying and gossiping. Their chit-chat grew so loud that the rabbi broke off several times to shush them.
The Friday night ceremony over, they poured out into the leafy street. “Shabbat Shalom,” they said, before launching into the long Farsi pleasantries that constitute an Iranian greeting.
Welcome to Jewish Iran – a 25,000-strong community in a country whose populist president, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, has denied the Holocaust and called for the Jewish state’s demise.
contacts between the US and Iran would be useful
The top US naval commander in the Middle East says contacts between the US and Iranian navies would be useful once Tehran stopped sponsoring violence inside Iraq.
Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the US Fifth Fleet, made his comments as Barack Obama and John McCain, the presumptive Democratic and Republican candidates for president, spar aggressively over whether the US should engage with Tehran.
In an interview, Adm Cosgriff told the FT that the US and Soviet navies had benefited from contacts during the Cold War. Asked whether similar contacts between the US and Iran navies would be useful, he said: “I think they would”.
Robert Gates, defence secretary, has recently adopted a less rigid tone on talks with Iran than either the White House or Mr McCain. He recently advocated opening new channels between the countries, though he added that the US should try to gain more leverage before holding talks with Tehran.
Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the US Fifth Fleet, made his comments as Barack Obama and John McCain, the presumptive Democratic and Republican candidates for president, spar aggressively over whether the US should engage with Tehran.
In an interview, Adm Cosgriff told the FT that the US and Soviet navies had benefited from contacts during the Cold War. Asked whether similar contacts between the US and Iran navies would be useful, he said: “I think they would”.
Robert Gates, defence secretary, has recently adopted a less rigid tone on talks with Iran than either the White House or Mr McCain. He recently advocated opening new channels between the countries, though he added that the US should try to gain more leverage before holding talks with Tehran.
Lose your job. Lose your home. Lose your best four-legged friend.
Pets have become the latest casualties of the economy as their owners struggle with foreclosures, tight job markets and the soaring costs of life’s staples.
In a random sampling of more than a dozen North Jersey shelters and umbrella rescue groups, at least three quarters report more animals abandoned to their services. And the situation is stretching them to the breaking point.
“In the past week we had two dogs relinquished back to us after four years because the owners lost their home,” Christine Taylor, executive director of the Ramapo Bergen Animal Refuge Inc., in Oakland said recently. “We’ve been getting phone calls about people losing their homes and moving in with family where they can’t take their pets.”
The scope of the problem is difficult to quantify — many animals are abandoned to the streets or people are too embarrassed to give their reasons for surrendering their beloved companion.
But for those like Luz Pastrana of Paterson, it’s simply about raw priorities: Estranged from her husband, she and her six children were forced onto the street after losing their home. She felt she had no choice but to bring Minnie, their 12-year-old Great Pyrenees, to the Paterson Animal Shelter.
“I thought I’d have to go into a shelter myself and couldn’t take the dog,” she said, near tears. “But it was very hard; I wished there was a way to keep her — we had her since she was a puppy.”
It’s a story growing more common.
In a random sampling of more than a dozen North Jersey shelters and umbrella rescue groups, at least three quarters report more animals abandoned to their services. And the situation is stretching them to the breaking point.
“In the past week we had two dogs relinquished back to us after four years because the owners lost their home,” Christine Taylor, executive director of the Ramapo Bergen Animal Refuge Inc., in Oakland said recently. “We’ve been getting phone calls about people losing their homes and moving in with family where they can’t take their pets.”
The scope of the problem is difficult to quantify — many animals are abandoned to the streets or people are too embarrassed to give their reasons for surrendering their beloved companion.
But for those like Luz Pastrana of Paterson, it’s simply about raw priorities: Estranged from her husband, she and her six children were forced onto the street after losing their home. She felt she had no choice but to bring Minnie, their 12-year-old Great Pyrenees, to the Paterson Animal Shelter.
“I thought I’d have to go into a shelter myself and couldn’t take the dog,” she said, near tears. “But it was very hard; I wished there was a way to keep her — we had her since she was a puppy.”
It’s a story growing more common.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Young adults living below the poverty line booms in NJ
About 12 percent of New Jersey young people aged 18-to-24 lived below the poverty line in 2006, a new report says.
That’s up 20 percent from 2002, says the New Jersey Kids Count 2008 report released Monday by the Association for Children of New Jersey.
The nonprofit advocacy group also noted that 28 percent of this age group lacked health insurance in 2006, including many who had jobs.
This annual report noted that many young adults reach legal adulthood before they develop emotional maturity and financial self-sufficiency. “Problems may be most severe for young people from low-income families,” said ACNJ Executive Director Cecilia Zalkind. “They may be less likely to get financial support from parents as they move into adulthood.”
Other highlights:
A disturbingly high rate of children – 28 percent – live in families where no parent has stable employment.
New Jersey’s high housing costs place a tremendous burden on families. Among families that rent, almost half spend more than the recommended 30 percent of their income on rent checks, leaving little for other essentials.
One the positive side, the state’s public schools are narrowing the achievement gap between low-income elementary students and their more affluent peers. The group of low-income third-graders passing the state math test rose from 58 percent in 2004 to 76 percent in 2007.
For more information, see acnj.org.
That’s up 20 percent from 2002, says the New Jersey Kids Count 2008 report released Monday by the Association for Children of New Jersey.
The nonprofit advocacy group also noted that 28 percent of this age group lacked health insurance in 2006, including many who had jobs.
This annual report noted that many young adults reach legal adulthood before they develop emotional maturity and financial self-sufficiency. “Problems may be most severe for young people from low-income families,” said ACNJ Executive Director Cecilia Zalkind. “They may be less likely to get financial support from parents as they move into adulthood.”
Other highlights:
A disturbingly high rate of children – 28 percent – live in families where no parent has stable employment.
New Jersey’s high housing costs place a tremendous burden on families. Among families that rent, almost half spend more than the recommended 30 percent of their income on rent checks, leaving little for other essentials.
One the positive side, the state’s public schools are narrowing the achievement gap between low-income elementary students and their more affluent peers. The group of low-income third-graders passing the state math test rose from 58 percent in 2004 to 76 percent in 2007.
For more information, see acnj.org.
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