Second-Hand Smoke and Heart Attacks

From: Seeing the Forest

Doctors did a study in Peublo, Colorado after the city banned smoking in workplaces and indoor public areas. They compared hospital admissions for heart attacks for a year before and three years after the ban, and compared the results with two nearby areas that did not have similar bans.

The study found a 41 percent drop in hospital admissions for heart attacks resulting from the public smoking ban.

It turns out that tobacco companies started studying this in 1971 and knew about these results. But instead of doing something about it "Philip Morris masterminded a massive global effort to confuse and deceive the public about the health hazards of secondhand smoke and to delay laws restricting smoking in indoor public places."

Read about the techniques they used to prevent smoking bans at: Deadly Deception: The Tobacco Industry's Secondhand Smoke Cover Up | Center for Media and Democracy

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Stimulus Two-Step: Implementation in the Real-World

From: Taking Note

by Anthony Shorris

When it comes to jump-starting the US economy, there are a few things everyone seems to agree on: we need to invest in projects that can get started right now and which will have a long-term benefit to the nation’s economic vitality. The only problem is that these two ends are increasingly contradictory: the kinds of transformative infrastructure projects we need for our future are not the kinds of the projects we can start quickly enough to benefit the economy today.

Great public works take longer to build today than ever. Just look around the New York region: we built the George Washington Bridge in two years, the Empire State Building in eighteen months, and even the Erie Canal in eight years, and today we can’t build a new subway line in under a decade and, if all goes well, a new tunnel under the Hudson River will be completed a mere 25 years after it was first proposed.

Some of the reasons are good ones: we build more safely than we used to, think harder about the environment that we once did, have a fairer process for choosing contractors, and allow many more voices to be heard in the debate about how to plan and execute projects. But the costs are clear too – project budgets skyrockets as delays drive up prices, public frustration grows and confidence erodes, technologies change between the start of design and construction leaving some work outdated even before it has even begun. It’s these realities that forced some of the nation’s governors to admit to the President-elect that choosing projects for the stimulus is more complicated than they had thought.

And then there is the even bigger problem with transformational public works: bigger projects are harder because they often affect many jurisdictions, requiring political coordination and even consensus among cities, counties, and sometimes states that is harder than ever to achieve in the world of instant polls and 24-hour news cycles. Yet the bigger the project, the more likely it will have a significant effect on the future of the nation’s economic health.

Given these challenges, it’s tempting to simply fund projects already in the pipeline as part of a “stimulus” program – freeing up some money for states and localities to use for other things and perhaps making ourselves feel a bit better, but accomplishing little for either our long-term or short-term goals. But do we have to surrender the notion of creating work on projects now that will benefit the country in the future? No, but we have to think about it differently. We need to be clear about our goals and create an approach that is realistic in the face of these hurdles.

Go over to Taking Note and read the whole post...........

We Need H.R. 677 Now!

What is H.R. 676?

H.R. 676, also called the United States National Health Insurance Act, is a bill to create a single-payer, publicly-financed, privately-delivered universal health care program that would cover all Americans without charging co-pays or deductibles. It guarantees access to the highest quality and most affordable health care services regardless of employment, ability to pay or pre-existing health conditions.

What is "single-payer"?

The term single-payer describes the kind of financing system that H.R. 676 uses. It means that one entity--in this case, established by the government--handles all billing and payment for health care services. Right now, there are thousands upon thousands of "payers"-- HMOs, PPOs, bill collection agencies, etc. The sheer volume of paperwork required by our current system means that administrative waste accounts for roughly 31% of the money spent on health care. The single-payer system would eliminate the wasteful paperwork and administrative costs, redirecting more of our health care dollars to providing care.

Medicare is perhaps the best known single-payer system. Essentially, H.R. 676 would improve Medicare and expand it, so that it covers all Americans, regardless of their income.

Go over to John Conyers.com to read more

David Horsey discovers the source of GM's difficulties.

Thanks to The Seattle Post-Intelligence

Downed Elephant

Thanks to McClatchy.com