Monday, February 10, 2014


News Clips For The Day


How America became the land of the low-wage breadwinner – CBS
ByAimee PicchiMoney

America’s the land of opportunity, right? Well, for families that increasingly rely on low-wage jobs as their main source of income, that ideal may seem like a cruel joke.

The number of American workers who are low-wage and low-income earners jumped 94 percent from 1979 to 2011, reaching 20.9 million workers, according to a new study from University of Massachusetts Boston economists Randy Albelda and Michael Carr. 
That means that 1 in 7 U.S. workers lives in a household whose main source of income is a low-paying job, such as working as a retail sales clerk or a fast-food restaurant cashier. The findings may go some way to explain why fewer Americans today identify as middle class, while those calling themselves lower or lower-middle class has jumped to 40 percent, up from only one-quarter in 2008. 

“It wasn’t just single mothers” who rely on low-paying jobs for their main source of income, Albelda said. “Over the last 30 years, a lot of men have fallen down into it.”
The report strips out higher-income families that may have one member working in a low-income job, such as a high-school student making minimum wage flipping burgers. While states have different definitions of what qualifies for a low wage, the median cut-off is $11.22 per hour, the study found.

While single women make up a disproportionately large share of the nation's low-paid workers, men are increasingly also falling into the category. That “is consistent with the earnings literature that finds wage stagnation of male earners at the bottom of the wage ladder,” according to the study, which will be published this spring in the journal Feminist Economics.

Men “are becoming more like women,” Albelda said. “They are doing these jobs that are precarious jobs. They don’t have full hours, so there are a lot of people falling down into that position.” 

Out of all low-wage, low-income earners, about 17 percent were single men without children, compared with 11.6 percent for single women with children, for example. Still, women comprised 54.4 percent of these workers, compared with 45.6 percent of men.

So how has America gotten to this point? Income inequality is making the rich even wealthier, while wages have stagnated for average workers. Much of the job growth in the economic recovery has come from low-paying industries, such as the hotel and restaurant fields. 

Government aid programs were tailored to help the unemployed, the elderly or the disabled, so that working, able-bodied Americans may find it difficult to qualify for Medicaid or other safety-net programs. At the same time, many low-paying jobs don’t provide benefits such as health-care or retirement plans, the study pointed out. 
“One thing we could do in the U.S. is to think more clearly about what are the minimum standards we need for employment,” Albelda noted. “Employers will balk -- they always do. They didn’t want to go to a 40-hour work week.”

Of course, these workers at least have jobs. In December, about 17 percent of working-age men weren’t employed, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. And the recovery is moving at a crawl, with only 113,000 jobs added in January, below consensus forecasts of about 185,000. 

The January job numbers, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Shepherdson, were “grim.” 




Of course, I'm not only female, I'm 68 years old, but I did search steadily every day a good six months for job openings before I decided to try to live on Social Security payments and retire. I was unhappy with the fact that 99.9% of jobs were no longer even mentioned in the local newspaper and the only way to apply is by computer. I miss calling a phone number, getting an interview time and meeting a real person who would be my supervisor if I were hired. This person-to-person contact with time to ask a few questions about the job, in retrospect, is warm, informative and is not often subject to that ubiquitous computer phenomenon known as the scam. The only thing near a scam when you are reading newspaper ads is when you go and it turns out to be a sales job – though they were advertising for office skills and experience and calling it “office assistant” or “customer service”– and you find that you would have to do numerous cold calls to set up appointments for yourself or somebody else 80% of your time. Almost all of those “customer service” jobs are at least partially sales.

Then after all that, you decide to take a sales job and find that you get paid a very low figure with commission paid according to how many widgets or charity donations you get, and a requirement of making a certain number of sales to keep from being fired. Let's say you are either a shy or rather timid person and not a “go getter,” or maybe you just have a high standard of personal honesty and do not want to tell what amounts to outright lies about your product or service – you may even be expected to try to intimidate the mark into giving you money. Let's say the mark is an eighty year old dementia patient who is unfortunately at home on a pension or social security, and you know they are confused by your sales spiel and/or just soft-hearted enough to give in and help you out. You get a sale from them, but you know in your heart that they can't really afford the expenditure. It's hard for an honest person to do that, and it shouldn't be “business as usual.” The world of sales should not be so cut-throat.

But say you can make the quota to stay in the job and you get inured to the basic dishonesty of what you are doing and it is now time to live on the pay. The commissions paid to you rarely equal the large, enticing money figures you were promised, and you are stuck with $7.25 an hour too often, since the federal minimum wage is still $7.25. You find an ad in the newspaper for apartments and are lucky enough to get into a house share with four other housemates. You apply for food stamps and medicaid, but find that you make too much money to qualify. So you try to make a budget with your income and end up having to forego all meat except hot dogs and bologna and are certainly unable to afford much at all of fresh vegetables and fruit. You buy a very basic stock of food that will fill your stomach and make you fat, but not give you the nutrients and fiber you need, so you have to buy daily vitamins to make up the difference. How long will you have to live on this budget? Until some other employer hires you for a $9.00 an hour true office job. That's a happy ending to the story, but the story can be very long indeed before it's finished. Good luck!




Doctor to release findings on toxic dust from Iraq
ByJeff Glor CBS News February 9, 2014

There are new developments coming this week in a story CBS News has been reporting on since last spring. A mysterious lung illness is affecting veterans who were exposed to open burn pits, which the U.S. military used in Iraq and Afghanistan to torch everything from batteries to body parts.

This week, those veterans, including Army combat medic Will Thompson, may finally get some answers.

Thompson was often the life of the party while stationed in Iraq in 2004.
Today, at age 43, he's an outpatient at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia. The recipient of a double lung transplant, he is struggling to stay alive.
"I want to live as long as I can, and if this mask can give me a couple more years, then that's what I am going to do," he said.

Thompson says the issues began during his second Iraqi deployment near Camp Victory in 2009.

"We did notice a couple of times when I was Skyping with him, 'Why are you coughing so much?'" said his wife, Suzanne.

Thompson was initially diagnosed with pneumonia. But once back home in West Virginia with his wife and their two children, he saw his own doctor.
"He said, 'This is way worse than pneumonia. This is something else. Your lungs look like an 80-year-old smoker, coal miner,'" Suzanne said.

By the spring of 2010, doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center had diagnosed Thompson with severe pulmonary fibrosis. Their biopsy revealed titanium, magnesium and iron in his lung tissue.

Suzanne Thompson called Dr. Anthony Szema, a professor at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, who has been analyzing dust from Iraq and its impact on veterans’ lung function.

"I wanted to  make sure he got some of Will's old lung tissue because I said, ‘What happened to Will, happened to Will, and we can't change that. But if there's anything we can do to help other soldiers, we want to do that.'"

In March 2013, Szema told CBS News that dust from Camp Victory was “very toxic.”
Fourteen percent of the veterans he studied return with some sort of lung complication.

This week, Szema will present the result of his team's analysis of Camp Victory dust to a Pentagon subcommittee.

"After one month of exposure of sub-lethal doses of this dust, we can see septate thickening or lung fibrosis in the mice lungs," Szema said. "So, if we give a larger dose, it will kill the mouse. Eventually in a human, that would lead to a lung transplant."

Suzanne Thompson says she has no doubt her husband's illness was contracted in Iraq.
"I truly believe this happened in Iraq. He was fine before he left. He was perfectly healthy," she said.

"I hope and pray that my husband will be here with me to grow old and gray," she said, fighting tears. "This has changed me by just taking each day at a time," she said.

The Pentagon told CBS News that "nothing is more important to us than the health and well-being of our people."

"We take seriously the concerns associated with exposure to airborne hazards and continue to study the possible long-term health effects of this type of exposure during deployments," said the statement from Pentagon press secretary Navy Rear Adm. John F. Kirby.




They will “study it.” I wonder what would happen if hundreds of men sued them – or can you sue the Pentagon? This is one of those cases when the damage is done now, and the men will have to live with the results or get lung transplants. The military should be made to foot the bill for their surgeries. Soldiers deal with all kinds of toxic substances under orders from their superiors, and, at least in this case, they didn't take any safety precautions. It's like the agent orange problem. They will probably try to shift the blame to the soldier himself. I imagine there will be more about this in the news in the next few years. I will try to keep up with it here.




James Brown: Michael Sam announcement on sexuality is a "watershed moment" for NFL
By Shoshana Davis CBS News February 10, 2014

Reaction is pouring in from the sports world and beyond after Michael Sam announced yesterday that he is gay. Sam says he decided to come forward now because he knew there were already rumors about his sexuality, and he wanted to come out proudly, and on his own terms.

 However, in a sport where no other player has done so before, it's a bold move and a potential risk. The University of Missouri defensive lineman is a solid NFL prospect, and is now in line to become pro football's only openly gay player. He was first team All-American, SEC defensive player of the year and was voted the University’s M.V.P. by his teammates.

James Brown, the host of "The NFL Today" on CBS Sports and a CBS News special corespondent, told the “CBS This Morning” co-hosts that there is “no question” that this is a “watershed” moment for the league.

“I think any time you have a first in any segment of society, it is a watershed moment,” he said. “While there may be those who suspect that there are players in the league currently that are (gay), the fact that young Mr. Sam is publicly stating this, is a first and there will be a significant test.”

One player, New Orleans Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma has already said that he could be uncomfortable in a locker room with a gay teammate and Brown said that he’s “not in the minority with respect to that attitude.”

“That will be the kind of environment by and large that Mr. Sam, if he makes a team, will be walking into,” said Brown. “A very macho environment, testosterone laden and players will be looking with raised eyebrows, by and large, for sure.”

When asked, Brown also discussed how this announcement could impact Sam’s chances during the NFL draft. He said that his “suspicion” was it would “absolutely” have an effect.

“The brain-trust of any team will have to make the determination … whether they want the ongoing scrutiny that will attend any team signing him and that’s not only in their local community where the team is based, but also around the league and whether or not the team is capable of handling that kind of distraction,” said Brown.

The NFL released a statement saying "We admire Michael Sam's honesty and courage ... And look forward to welcoming and supporting him in 2014."




I think in any environment composed largely or entirely of one sex or the other, especially if they are thrown together en masse, there will be a certain number of them who wanted to join that group because of the opportunity to be around so many of their own sex. That includes the priesthood, the army and team sports. The gays are already there undercover, I am sure, but this openness about it is what's new.

I think the sport would be changed by the presence of a vocal minority of gay people, perhaps for the better, since football is such a rough sport. Many times gay people seem to be more intelligent than their peers, having had to think so deeply about life in order to adjust. Football could use a boost in logical thinkers among their population. Maybe there would be fewer incidents like the recent bullying case involving the football player Richie Incognito. Maybe if the coach ordered a more intelligent player to bully another to toughen him up, the intelligent man would think it through and see the wrongness of it, and even have the courage to refuse. Thank goodness that coach was fired and the NFL disavowed such practices. Time will tell whether Michael Sam will be evaluated for his ability to play football and hired, or will end up having to go into another field.





India's killer tiger thwarts hunters, strikes again – CBS
AP February 10, 2014

LUCKNOW, India -- A tiger prowling near villages in northern India killed its 10th person in six weeks, a day after eluding a trap set by hunters with a live calf as bait.

The female tiger is believed to have strayed from Jim Corbett National Park, India's oldest national park, which was established in 1936 to provide endangered Bengal tigers with safe territory.

The big cat's latest victim was a 50-year-old man who was collecting firewood Sunday night in the forest outside Kalgarh village in Uttarakhand state, according to Saket Badola, deputy director of the national park.

The animal ate parts of the man's leg and abdomen before being scared away by villagers waving shovels and metal rods.

Hunters had almost nabbed the tiger a day earlier with a bovine calf.
"On Saturday night the tigress almost fell in trap and was close to the calf," Badola said. "But she did not attack the bait and left silently."

Reports that a killer tiger was on the loose began circulating Dec. 29, when a 65-year-old man was mauled in Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh state, across the border from Uttarakhand. Since then, thousands of terrified villagers have been told to watch out for the animal and to avoid the forests.

The tiger has been on the prowl across an area spanning some 80 miles.
"The animal has started attacking humans because it is not getting its natural prey," said Rupek De, chief wildlife warden of Uttar Pradesh. "The tigress must be tired because it is not getting adequate rest."

He said the hunters hired to kill the animal were having trouble tracking it in dense forests. The team also was understaffed; only three of the six hunters hired for the job showed up for work, De said.

De said he asked wildlife officials in Uttarakhand for help, saying there seems to be lack of co-ordination.

On Sunday, angry villagers seized a national forestry office, demanding protection and compensation for the families of the dead.

"We can understand the predicament of the villagers," Badola said. "The villagers do not have toilets in their homes. They go out in the open or forest areas to answer nature's call. In this scenario it is difficult to give protection to each and every villager. We have advised them to move in groups."

India's wild tigers are considered endangered because of rampant poaching and shrinking habitat as India undergoes breakneck development to accommodate the staggering growth of its 1.2 billion people.

India today has more than half of the 3,200 tigers estimated to be left in the wild. Despite dozens of tiger reserves across the country, however, the numbers have sunk from an estimated 5,000-7,000 in the 1990s, when the big cats' habitat was twice as large.




It doesn't surprise me that half the hunters hired to kill the tiger failed to show up for work. They probably had second thoughts about facing the animal. Our ever shrinking animal population conflicts with mankind in such places as India. Gorillas were in the news in Africa some years ago for raiding the local farmers crops. They especially like banana trees – the whole tree, not just the banana. Elephants do the same thing. Here in the US it is bears, mountain lions and coyotes. People are taking up lots of the available land surface now, and animals will come into the towns to scrounge on garbage which is temptingly left outside in garbage bags or cans. They will also sometimes attack a human who comes too close. I still think we need to preserve as much of the wildlife as possible, though. This earth would not be as beautiful and exciting with only cows, sheep, dogs and cats left alive.




­ New Heat Treatment Has Changed Lives For Some With Severe Asthma – NPR
by Lauren Silverman
­
If you've ever tried to drink something through one of those little red coffee stirrers instead of a full-sized straw, you know what it's like to breathe with asthma.

Twenty-five million Americans have been diagnosed with asthma. And for 10 percent of them, medications like inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta agonists aren't enough to keep them out of the hospital.

In 2010, the FDA approved bronchial thermoplasty, the first nonpharmaceutical treatment for severe asthma. People are starting to try it. Virginia Rady is one of them.

Rady has had asthma since she was a toddler. She tried to go away for college, but after a bad flare-up first semester, she moved back home. She's now 28, but her lungs are like those of a 65–year-old. If something triggers her airways to twitch and close up, it could be deadly. That means avoiding everything from cats and dogs to exercise and stress.

"If I were to get really emotional," says Rady, who lives outside Dallas with her husband, "I could actually trigger an asthma attack."

Inhaled drugs and other medications offer temporary relief for most asthma patients. Bronchial thermoplasty, on the other hand, is intended to reduce asthma symptoms permanently.

So when Rady heard that bronchial thermoplasty that might help her decrease the number of pills she takes, she was intrigued.

The procedure attacks the problem at its very root — the muscles in the lungs' airways. During an asthma attack, muscle cells contract and restrict airflow. To keep the muscles from constricting, a catheter is used to deliver heated zaps of energy that essentially burn off the outer layer of smooth muscle cells. That way there's less muscle to contract.

Studies of the procedure have not shown that it reduces airway hyperresponsiveness or the amount of air a person can exhale. But it does seem to improve people's quality of life.

One study found that patients who underwent the procedure, which requires three sessions, saw the number of asthma attacks drop by a third, on average, and emergency room visits decline by 70 percent. They also lost far fewer days from work and school. The study was funded by Boston Scientific, the company that created bronchial thermoplasty and sells the machines.

"We go into airways that are 3 millimeters or bigger," says Dr. Gary Weinstein, a pulmonologist at Texas Health Presbyterian. "And we're heating them up. It doesn't get that hot — about as hot as a cup of coffee."

Weinstein has performed bronchial thermoplasty on more than two-dozen patients, including Rady.

Studies haven't found major safety issues so far. But more research is needed to figure out which patients might benefit, how long the effect lasts and long-term safety.

The biggest drawback to bronchial thermoplasty seems to be the immediate response to the treatment, which can temporarily make symptoms worse. "It's like shoving a stick at a hornets' nest," Rady says. "In the days afterwards, you're wheezing. It's not pleasant."

But for Rady and other patients, when the symptoms caused by the treatment subside, it's life-changing.

Rady has been waiting to have children until she can taper off her steroids. Now that she has decreased her medications and is able to go outside and exercise regularly, Rady says, she's building up the stamina to be a mother.

"I'm up to 30 minutes on the elliptical and can walk a half-hour after," Rady says. "I can actually do all of that without the inhaler. And that to me is the awesome thing — not needing the drug."

Bronchial thermoplasty isn't a magic wand. It doesn't cure severe asthma, and it can be costly — treatment can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Many insurers don't cover it because they consider it an experimental treatment.

But in 2012, Medicare agreed to pay for the catheters used in the treatment, and other insurers may follow.

Rady did persuade her health insurance provider to cover the majority of the cost — she paid a total of $5,000 out of pocket — but says she was denied coverage at first.
"I would think that anything they could do to keep me out of the hospital is worth it," Rady says. "One of my hospital bills in high school was $40,000. So in my opinion if you can get this and avoid just one hospitalization, it would more than pay for itself."

The procedure may be part of a move toward tailoring treatment based on the type of asthma a person has, according to Dr. Gaetane Michaud, an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine who has been researching bronchial thermoplasty for more than a decade.

"Bronchial thermoplasty certainly has its place," Michaud says. "I think we just need to understand more who it is right for."




Kids with asthma are often among those who are bullied when young. They can't keep up with the others to play outside, can't “get emotional” and often are allergic to dust or other substances. They may not even be able to eat everything they are served, or touch an animal. Sickness is weakness, and as such is not admired by the young. To violate the many things they have to be careful about may end them up in the hospital.

This new treatment offers a new life, almost, for asthma sufferers. The article didn't make clear whether asthma sufferers are born with more muscle inside their lungs than normal people (I never knew before that we had muscles in our lungs) or whether their muscle is just too reactive to the various triggers. Whatever, to get rid of some of the muscle is as amazing a cure as the new lasik surgery is for the eyes. Many people who have been doomed to wearing thick glasses all the time can be restored to perfect vision. This is very good news.




­
Oil, Gas Drilling Seems To Make The Earth Slip And Go Boom
by Mose Buchele
February 09, 2014
­
There's been a surge in earthquakes in the U.S. over the last few years. In Texas, there are 10 times the number of earthquakes now than just a few years ago.
Scientists say it's likely linked to the boom in oil and gas activity, meaning that people who never felt the ground shake are starting to.

Here's how Pat Jones of Snyder, Texas, describes the earthquake that struck her town in 2010: "It just sounded like some car hit the back of our house. We got up and checked around and we didn't see anything or hear anything else."

In 2012 in Alvaredo, Craig Bender called 911 about a quake and told the operator, "There was an explosion-type sound somewhere which kind of concerns me, but I haven't seen anything burning anywhere."

In a public forum with state oil and gas regulators, Greg Morrison described the feeling of a quake in Reno as "a semi truck hitting your house with a bomb going off."
Outside Texas, people are hearing those booms as well, often in states where there's been an upsurge in drilling and the use of disposal wells to store drilling waste. Scientists have linked those wells to quakes, and some quakes can get loud.

"They're actually hearing the wave that traveled through the rock all the way to the Earth's surface," says William Ellsworth, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "When a fault slips suddenly underground, it radiates two different kinds of seismic waves."

One is a P wave, an acoustic wave that you can actually hear. The other is an S wave.

"It's the wave that carries most of the energy, and it's the one that we typically feel," Ellsworth says.

The P wave travels faster than the S wave, so before the ground even starts to shake, people may hear something.

"It's a little bit like thunder," he says. "You may see the flash in the distance, and then it takes a while for the wave — the air wave, in this case — to propagate. That makes the boom that you associate with lightening."

The U.S. Geological Survey even keeps an online catalog of earthquake noises. They range from a rumbling boom to a sound almost like a bass drum.

Most of the quakes in Texas are weak — but those are the kind that make the loudest noise. Ellsworth says stronger quakes often register at a frequency too low for people to hear.




One more thing to worry about concerning drilling in the ground. These scientists didn't seem to think the quakes were likely to be dangerous, though. No citizen's group is raising an outcry about the matter. Hopefully there will be no more news about this. It's like sonic booms from jet planes – a little scary, but harmless.