Tuesday, January 28, 2014


News Clips For The Day




Iconic folk singer and activist Pete Seeger dead at 94 – NBC
F. Brinley Bruton and Christopher Nelson, NBC News



Pete Seeger, the iconic banjo-strumming folk singer and activist who performed for migrant workers and presidents, died on Monday. He was 94.

Seeger, whose songwriting credits included "If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," died of natural causes in a New York City hospital, his grandson Kitama Cahill-Jackson confirmed to NBC News early Tuesday.  
“He thought everyone could be heroic,” Seeger's grandson said. “He got the world to sing. I think he was a role model to his family, to the whole world.”

As a member of the Communist Party in the 1940s, Seeger's skepticism of those in power carried through his career. He was a longtime supporter of the labor movement, and supported the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Seeger was also convicted of contempt of Congress after refusing to answer questions at the House Un-American Activities Committee.

"Be wary of great leaders," he told The Associated Press after a 2011 Manhattan Occupy march. "Hope that there are many, many small leaders."
Nevertheless, he performed for presidents as well, including at a concert marking President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

President Bill Clinton hailed him as "an inconvenient artist who dared to sing things as he saw them."

Seeger was born on May 3, 1919, to an artistic family in New York City. He dropped out of Harvard and took to the road in 1938.

"The sociology professor said, 'Don't think that you can change the world. The only thing you can do is study it,'" Seeger said in October 2011, according to the AP.
Seeger was credited with popularizing what became the anthem for the civil rights movement, "We Shall Overcome," although he said his contribution to the actual song was minimal. 

In 1996, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ten years later, Bruce Springsteen honored him with "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions," a rollicking reinterpretation of songs sung by Seeger.

"Every kid who ever sat around a campfire singing an old song is indebted in some way to Pete Seeger," fellow folk singer Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie, told the AP.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. 




Pete Seeger is an icon. He will live forever, not merely in the history of popular music, but also the history of the country as he sang about labor issues, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. I am deeply sorry to see that he died. There are fewer and fewer leaders from the 1970's left. That music was the backdrop of my young adult years, and brings back many memories.




U.K.'s Queen Elizabeth down to last $1.6 million in reserves after royal overspend – NBC
By Alexander Smith, NBC News contributor

LONDON --  Britain's Queen Elizabeth has just £1 million ($1.6 million) left in financial reserves after the royal household overspent on its budget last year, according to a report by British lawmakers released Tuesday.

The royal household had to dip into its reserves after overspending £2.3 million ($3.8 million) on the £31 million ($51.4 million) it was given by the taxpayer in 2012/13. 

The report by the Public Accounts Committee said the amount was "historically low" and that it was "concerned that the household has reduced its balances to such an extent that it could be unable to cover its expenditure on any unforeseen events."

This paltry figure of £1 million is in contrast to 2001 when the royal household had £35 million ($58 million) in its reserves. The royals spend the money on costs such as staff wages, maintaining their palaces and travel.

A restructuring in 2012 of the way the royals receive public money allowed the royal family's finances to come under scrutiny from lawmakers for the first time.
"The household needs to get better at planning and managing its budgets for the longer term -- and the Treasury should be more actively involved in reviewing what the household is doing," said Margaret Hodge, the member of parliament who chairs the Public Accounts Committee.

The report also criticized the royals' "complacency" in allowing some 39 percent of royal buildings and land to slip into a state of disrepair. It said the 60-year-old heating system in Buckingham Palace alone will cost between £500,000 and £1 million to replace.

"The Household must get a much firmer grip on how it plans to address its maintenance backlog," Hodge said.

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson described maintaining  the royal family's estate, such as the recent renewal of a roof over at Windsor Castle and the removal of asbestos from Buckingham Palace, as a "priority."




I am very fond of the British Royals, but I agree with this article that it's time they went on a budget. It may even be time for Britain to stop having a royal family, as opposed to a President and Vice President. A number of the royal family members draw money from the government, not just the queen and her consort. There are a growing number of calls inside and outside Britain for the monarchy to be abolished. It makes sense, but I do have an emotional attachment to the the royal family, though they have their scandals and don't contribute much to the life of the country except for their charitable endeavors. If they are demoted to the rank of citizens I will be sorry.





Reading gap between wealthy and poor students widens, study says – NBC
By Alessandra Malito, NBC News

The gap in reading proficiency between lower- and higher-income fourth graders has grown by 20 percent in the past decade, says a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Eighty percent of lower-income fourth-graders do not read at their grade level compared to 49 percent of their wealthier counterparts, according to the report, "Early Reading Proficiency in the United States," which was released on Tuesday and is based on data from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Overall, although improvements have been made in the last 10 years, 66 percent of all fourth graders are not proficient in reading, a level the researchers called “unacceptably low in an economic environment that requires increasing levels of education and skills for family-sustaining jobs.”

2020, the United States is expected to face a shortage of 1.5 million workers with college degrees and a surplus of 6 million unemployed people without a high school diploma, the report says.

"The research is pretty clear – grade level reading by the end of third grade is a pretty good predictor of which children will have the most success in middle school and high school, and which children will end up graduating from high school,” said Ralph Smith, senior vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Kids who read on grade level by the end of third grade can graduate from high school at higher rates and this includes low-income children.”

That can make all the difference for a child’s future prospects, Smith said. “In the world we live in today, high school graduation is the portal to college and careers and post-secondary credentials needed to succeed in a global economy, to succeed in military service, to succeed in college and in many respects to succeed in life.”
According to the Casey Foundation report, by the time children are 8-years-old, especially those living in low-income families, many have not met the developmental “milestones” they need for future success. To reach these milestones, children need to be physically healthy, socially and emotionally on track and exposed to language as often as possible, research shows.

“There’s what we call an inconvenient truth: That there is a significant number of kids who will find it difficult to succeed even in good schools with effective teachers,” Smith said. “Those are the kids who start out so far behind that it is difficult if not impossible for them to catch up by third grade.”

The key to preventing kids from falling behind later on, he said, is to make sure that fewer start kindergarten with undetected and untreated social-emotional challenges, developmental delays, hearing and vision impairment and other correctable health issues.

In nearly every state, the reading gap between lower- and higher-income students increased in the last 10 years. In 12 states and the District of Columbia, the gap widened by more than 30 percent, with the largest increases in D.C., Hawaii and Tennessee.

Disparities are also apparent among the five largest racial groups. According to the study, 83 percent of black students, 81 percent of Latino students, 78 percent of American Indian students, 55 percent of white students and 49 percent of Asian students are not proficient.

Students who are dual-language learners had a significantly higher percentage of non-proficiency in reading with 93 percent. According to the study, dual-language learners are one of only a few groups that did not see an improvement in the last 10 years. Children with disabilities had a rate of 89 percent.




This racial breakdown looks like the social class system in the US is probably partially responsible for these differences in achievement. I think growing up lower class and very poor discourages the students from trying to learn rapidly as they face competition from wealthier and more socially advanced students in their classes. They aren't keeping up and their teachers don't give them enough extra help when they are very young and they simply give up and become negative.

It seems to me to parallel the greater number of delinquent or violent kids among poorer and lower class young people. I think most kids start out in the world with comparable IQ's, but as soon as they enter a family where the parents don't have one-on-one time for them, squelch their individuality in an attempt to achieve discipline, too often, and don't converse within the family with an educated vocabulary, they just don't progress intellectually as fast and as far as more privileged children. A recent article was on the vocabulary of students before they start learning to read. There is a need to understand more words in order to learn to spell and read them.

Then they hit the school system and the teachers are too often burned out and lack hopeful expectations for the lower class students, and therefore don't challenge and work with them as much as their “favorites,” who are more advanced and more wealthy. In small Southern towns it can make a great deal of difference to the teachers who the kids parents are, as social class is still a real issue there.

It would help if schools went to a more rigorous mode of academic expectations from the beginning, hired more teachers to decrease class size, maybe had more schools with smaller enrollments, possibly even instituted a requirement that the kids wear uniforms and focus more on discipline, and hired teachers with higher levels of training. The schools are overwhelmed by the number of kids due to population pressure, and the task of giving the needed extra help to too many of the students. The dual language problem may mean that the kids would learn better in bilingual classes, or with bilingual teacher helpers. It's a large and complex problem, but we have to soldier on with it.





Farm bill deal reached; cuts SNAP by $800m per year – NBC
By Luke Russert and Frank Thorp, NBC News

Lawmakers have reached a deal on a sweeping farm bill that would cut food stamps by about $800 million per year.  

Senate and House negotiators have been hammering out compromise legislation on the massive agriculture legislation since last year.

A GOP aide tells NBC News that a preliminary estimate shows that the cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by about $8 billion over a decade – roughly a one percent cut.

The food stamp cuts had been a major sticking point in the negotiations. A House-passed bill cut $20 billion from SNAP over 10 years, while the Senate’s legislation cut $4.1 billion over that same period.

"Today's bipartisan agreement puts us on the verge of enacting a five-year Farm Bill that saves taxpayers billions, eliminates unnecessary subsidies, creates a more effective farm safety-net and helps farmers and businesses create jobs," said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat and the head of the Senate Agriculture Committee.
The House is expected to vote on the bill on Wednesday. 



Well, the Senate negotiated this cut down from $20 billion, but it is still a problem for very poor people. I understand and accept the need to make cuts. What about cutting the military or foreign aid to countries whose allegiance we want to gain? We could have fewer wars, maybe. That would cost less.






Scientists link two plagues of the past — and warn of future outbreaks – NBC
Maria Cheng The Associated Press

LONDON — Scientists say two of the deadliest pandemics in history were caused by strains of the same plague and warn that new versions of the bacteria could spark future outbreaks.

Researchers found tiny bits of DNA in the teeth of two German victims killed by the Plague of Justinian about 1,500 years ago. With those fragments, they reconstructed the genome of the oldest bacteria known.

They concluded the Plague of Justinian was caused by a strain of Yersinia pestis, the same pathogen responsible for the Black Death that struck medieval Europe. The study was published online Tuesday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Plague made multiple jumps
The two plagues packed quite a punch. The Plague of Justinian is thought to have wiped out half the globe as it spread across Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The Black Death killed about 50 million Europeans in just four years during the 14th century.

"What this shows is that the plague jumped into humans on several different occasions and has gone on a rampage," said Tom Gilbert, a professor at the Natural History Museum of Denmark who wrote an accompanying commentary. "That shows the jump is not that difficult to make and wasn't a wild fluke."

The plague is usually spread to humans by rodents whose fleas carry the bacteria.
"Humans are infringing on rodents' territory, so it's only a matter of time before we get more exposure to them," Gilbert said.

Will antibiotics save us?
Still, he and other experts doubted a modern plague epidemic would be as devastating.
"Plague is something that will continue to happen, but modern-day antibiotics should be able to stop it," said Hendrik Poinar, director of the Ancient DNA Center at McMaster University in Canada, who led the new research. He said about 200 rodent species carry the plague and could potentially infect other animals or humans.
Poinar warned that if the plague transforms into an airborne version — which can happen if the bacteria reaches the lungs and its droplets are spread by coughing — it would be much harder to snuff out. That type of plague can kill people within 24 hours of being infected.

Poinar said scientists need to sharpen their surveillance of plague in rodent populations to try averting future human infections.

"If we happen to see a massive die-off of rodents somewhere with (the plague), then it would become alarming," he said.

There are several thousand human cases of plague every year, most often in central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and parts of the Americas.




I do remember in the news when I was a young adult that there was one case of bubonic plague. As I remember it was in New York City. There was no panic about it, so I assume it was an isolated incident and antibiotics cured it. It was scary to hear about it, though, and makes me think that poverty stricken people in cities are still living too close to rats and mice. I think on farms, there are always a certain number of rats and mice. That's why some farms to this day keep cats in their barn. A hungry cat can eat lots of mice. I do hope we don't have massive outbreaks of plague in the future. Sometimes antibiotics are failing to work these days, due to overuse by doctors.



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­ One Way Lawmakers Are Trying To Prevent Government IT Disasters – NPR
by Elise Hu
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HealthCare.gov's infamous failure to launch has inspired some fresh legislation that aims to organize and streamline the currently scattered — and expensive — approach to multimillion-dollar technology projects built by the government and its contractors.

Specifically, the measure, which is co-sponsored by Reps Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Gerry Connolly, D-Va., calls for the creation a U.S. Digital Government Office, charged with reviewing and guiding major IT projects of all federal agencies. It also makes permanent the role of U.S. Chief Technology Officer, a position that has only existed in recent years under the Obama administration.

HealthCare.gov's disastrous debut brought to light long-festering issues with how the government handles technology projects — contracting processes favor entrenched vendors who don't deliver efficiently or effectively, tech talent that's available inside government is lacking and there are hundreds of agencies running in several directions on services that duplicate efforts and resources.

"In the 21st century, effective governance is inextricably linked with how well government leverages technology to serve its citizens," Connolly said in a statement. "The bottom line is that large-scale federal IT program failures continue to waste taxpayers' dollars, while jeopardizing our nation's ability to carry out fundamental constitutional responsibilities, from conducting a census to securing our borders."

In Britain, a string of costly tech project failures led to the creation of the cabinet level position of "Executive Director of Digital," currently held by Mike Bracken, who we talked with last fall.
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"One of the issues that you have here, and other countries have, is the absence of a delivery capacity — the absence of being able to put your hand on teams of highly skilled, multidisciplinary technical and digital and policy people and deploy them at points of real urgency," says Bracken, of America's current government tech-deployment system. The Eshoo-Connolly bill calls for putting that team at the heart of government, with the new digital office out of the White House. Bracken calls this draft bill "a great start" in solving the delivery problem.

A few notable provisions in the bill:
1. The Digital Government Office would have authority over all agencies' large IT projects. (Currently these are run by the individual agencies and not overseen by a tech-savvy office that knows what it's doing/buying.)
2. It gives the Chief Technology Officer the power to hire people outside of the standard government pay schedule, allowing government agencies to pay people at salaries competitive to jobs in the tech private sector.
3. The bill also seeks to increase competition for contracting work, which is currently a field made up of the same handful of players who tend to get expensive and often unsuccessful results. Currently, agencies have to go through a rigorous process to buy the work/start contracts for technology projects that cost more than $150,000. Projects smaller than that are comparatively simple to hire for and more agile companies bid for those. So the bill increases "small acquisition thresholds" from $150,000 to $500,000 — making it easier for government to buy small technology projects.

This won't be the final form the bill takes; it's only a draft right now. Lawmakers released it to invite discussion, which will be happening in the coming weeks and months.

Clay Johnson, a critic of existing government technology procurement processes, says he's excited.
"Having procurement reform happening means creating more opportunities, improving the way government can deliver services, and for thousands of small businesses, unlocking the largest customer in the world," Johnson wrote in a blog post.

Connolly says the bill pairs well with the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act, known as FITARA, which passed in the House but stalled in the Senate. Connolly is a co-sponsor of FITARA, with his Republican colleague and sparring-partner, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. FITARA would give more authority to the chief tech officers within agencies, among other things.


http://www.openhealthnews.com/hotnews/house-republicans-and-democrats-find-rare-bipartisan-agreement-open-source-it-procurement

House Republicans and Democrats Find Rare Bipartisan Agreement on Open Source IT Procurement
By Roger A. Maduro | April 9, 2013

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITAR) —sponsored by California Republican Darrell Issa along with Virginia Democrat Gerry Connolly, and supported by every member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee—threatens to put open-source software on par with proprietary by labeling it a “commercial item” in federal procurement policies. The proposal wouldn’t give open source a privileged position, just an equal one.

The legislation would also limit CIOs in federal agencies to one where there are sometimes many. And it would give the president the power to appoint these IT leaders. In short, FITAR would enable the president to act like a CEO and give agency CIOs the responsibility and flexibility to cut costs where they are cut-able.
Issa and Connelly’s proposed legislation was inspired by a 2010 Government Accountability Office report that identified 37 of 810 IT investments in the departments of Defense and Energy alone as possibly redundant. The GAO estimated potential savings over five years from eliminating these redundancies at $1.2 billion. Issa and Connelly did the math and saw billions more—an estimated $20 billion annually—in potential IT savings across the sprawling and expanding federal government complex.

Proprietary technology firms are fighting the natural history of technology evolution. Commoditization and acceptance of open source is the norm across most all private technology markets. Issa and Connelly’s legislation applies these commonly held principles to the federal marketplace. Whether they know it or not, U.S. taxpayers stand to benefit from the competition, innovation and savings it will bring.




Hopefully this will organize the federal efforts better and cost less. Having duplication of efforts across agencies is really not good, and according to this NPR article there have been other tech failures than just the health care IT. Maybe now they can keep track better of what is going on and hire more effective companies to do the IT. I noticed that the first Executive Branch head to manage IT was named by Obama, so that was a good idea on his part.