New "lean look" edition.
Esquire:
Merle Savage was an "outdoors person" who found joy in the big things Mother Nature had to offer. She climbed Alaska's mountains and hiked the Grand Canyon. But then the big spill hit, and there would be no more climbing, no more hiking, and very little joy.
As a cleanup worker in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez disaster, Savage says she breathed crude- and dispersant-laced mist for weeks. (This photograph speaks for itself.) She was healthy for age fifty — she looked healthy — but soon experienced crippling health problems that have lasted for two decades: coughing spells, violent diarrhea, pneumonia, obstructed blood vessels. Her liver cirrhosis onset baffled doctors.
"We were all coughing and vomiting for months," says Savage, who had no prior history of drinking or smoking and did not wear a respirator during the cleanup. "We thought it was the flu. Exxon told us crude oil was non-toxic and we believed them."
She has limited legal recourse — a court sealed Exxon's medical records until 2023, she says — but now, twenty-one years later, her primary concern is not herself. Savage's "quest," and that of several environmental activists and locals taking a hard look at the aftershocks of the 2010 disaster, has become protecting the health of her modern counterparts in the Gulf of Mexico, who have been exposed to a variation of the same dispersant — and even more toxic oil. Because she doesn't want any of them to live her waking nightmare, and no one wants the BP spill to become for local volunteers and fisherman what 9/11 became for workers at the World Trade Center.
McClatchy:
A group of doctors who have tracked Sept. 11 rescue workers' illnesses urged the Obama administration to "prevent a repetition of costly mistakes" made after the terrorist attacks by protecting Gulf Coast oil spill workers from toxic exposure.
In a letter McClatchy Newspapers obtained that was sent to health and safety officials this month, 14 doctors said oil spill workers should get the maximum level of protection from exposure in an effort to avoid the problems that arose after the Sept. 11 attacks.
See also The Pump Handle (public health blog) for ongoing coverage of Gulf health issues.
WSJ:
Amid continued concern about errors by overworked medical residents, hospitals would be forced to sharply curtail shifts and increase supervision of some doctors-in-training under proposed new guidelines for residency programs released Wednesday.
The plan from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, which certifies residency programs, goes well beyond previous efforts to limit work hours. Many patient advocates and physicians hailed it as a step in the right direction, but it will likely pose logistical and financial challenges for teaching hospitals.
It's about time, though improvements like this raise the cost of medical care.
Tom Schaller
The Center for American Politics' Ruy Teixeira, one of the top political demographers in the country, has a new paper out in which he examines the two major party coalitions, with a focus on the current and future prospects of the Republican Party. For the GOP, says Teixeira, things look grim, in large part because the country is becoming less white and more educated. He provides specific data showing how college educated voters are growing, and non-college educated shrinking, as shares of the electorate; likewise for the growing non-white v. shrinking white populations.
"The Democratic Party will become even more dominated by the emerging constituencies that gave Barack Obama his historic 2008 victory, while the Republican Party will be forced to move toward the center to compete for these constituencies. As a result, modern conservatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP," he writes, adding that "the Republican Party as currently constituted is in need of serious and substantial changes in approach."(Emphasis mine; will return to this point momentarily)
and Andrew Gelman
According to Tom, Ruy Teixeira recommends that Republicans move to the center on social issues. Based on my analysis with Jeff Cai of 2004 survey data, though, we don't see much gains from either party by moving to the center on social issues (although, yes, the evidence is that the Republicans would benefit, ever-so-slightly, by a move to the left). The real gains would come if the Republicans move to the left on economic issues. Again, this is from 2004 data, and, even beyond timeliness issues, I'd like to see some replication of this result before I fully believe it. Still, I'm surprised that Teixeira seems to be prioritizing social issues and demographic/ideological appeals over more basic taxing-and-spending issues.
Discuss Ruy Teixeira's new paper, Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties. We'll be interviewing Ruy this Sunday, same topic.
Tamar Jacoby:
SB 1070 is an abomination, no doubt about it, and the White House is under intense pressure to act. But a Justice Department lawsuit would be a horrendous mistake — one that could end all hope of passing comprehensive immigration reform as long as Barack Obama is president.
From the piece: "Tamar Jacoby is president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a national federation of small-business owners advocating immigration reform."
Gallup:
Although there are some specific complaints about issues, the most prevalent explanations for why Americans think most members of Congress do not deserve to be re-elected deal with broader concerns.
• The most frequently given response, mentioned by 29%, is fairly straightforward and direct, if not a bit tautological: Members of Congress are doing a bad job or just are not doing their job, period.
• The next-most prevalent responses focus on the perception that members of Congress are making decisions based on inappropriate or ineffective criteria (self-interest, partisanship, special interests), with the result that they are not working for all Americans and the interests of the entire country.
• Fifteen percent of those who believe most members of Congress do not deserve to be re-elected say it is because they have been there too long and that there is a need for new blood. This is not a new complaint. In 1996, for example, 74% of Americans were in favor of a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms that members of Congress and the U.S. Senate could serve.
• The final category of responses -- representing only a minority of all anti-incumbency explanations given -- contains a broad list of specific
criticisms, including debt, economic issues, healthcare legislation, financial bailouts, wars, and immigration issues.
Is it taxes? Nah. Health care? Nah. It's their performance on any and every available camera.
Post Mortem:
Edith Shain, 91, a retired kindergarten teacher who is widely believed to be the uniformed nurse whose lip-locking embrace with a Navy sailor on V-J Day in August 1945 was captured in a photograph that became one of the most iconic images of the World War II era, died June 20 in Los Angeles, her family announced.