John Oliver: When Municipal Fines Go Bad

Many cities are funding their comfy salaries and stately buildings on the backs of poor people caught committing minor infractions by asking large fines, plus fees, plus even larger penalties when working class people, heck even middle class people can't pay the shake down charges. So glad he has dealt with this, but will it get buried in 1000s of other issues that bloggers, Twittervists, and news media, even comedians bring up every week. You only get a very small viewing size here unless your go for full screen, which I recommend.

Just a Quick Look Around Will Show Why Texas Is repeating It's Real Life Disaster Movie In the Face of Heavy Rains

The mind wanders to why Texas has repeated flooding problems and occasional massive flooding disasters.  After all, the storm moving through isn't Katrina and Texas isn't partially below sea level like areas of New Orleans.

I was wondering if anyone else noted that maybe this years tragedy didn't have to happen. Besides a damn breaking (yes, LA had a big dam break but that was the dark ages of 1963, surely dam construction has advanced quite a bit since..) drainage is certainly not what it should be.

But as reported by CityLab from The Atlantic a mainstream source, Texas won't spend the money to make their state safer.

Even after deadly floods in 1981.

Why doesn't Texas spend more to keep it's residents and citizens safe.

It basically collects taxes on the backs of the lowest earning workers. (Make no mistake that most non-citizen are contributing to the tax base.)  But higher earners are not carrying their fair share of taxation load.

This is freedom?  It's as if the pilgrims and pioneers took poor people from cities and hooked them unwillingly to pull their wagons.

It's a form of slavery in fact.

Now it's killing folks because poor people can never make up for what the wealthy who make money off the work of the less powerful, won't pay their fair share in taxes as long as they can buy off state legislators, and spam airwaves to maintain their lower tax privilege.

Next time your GOP neighbor talks about low taxes creating prosperity, ask him or her "for whom?" and "How can you enjoy any prosperity when your life is tossed upside down or even ended by poor infrastructure spending?"

Was The Pennsylvania Crash of #Amtrak188 Set Up? Projectiles Shot at It and Two Other Trains Using Tracks in Same Area Just Before Crash

It has been established that the front windshield of the train running the Amtrak 188 has the typical break pattern found when projected objects hit glass at great force.

But the news was released yesterday "two other trains were hit by projectiles along the same line" (1) in the minutes before the deadly derailment.

Someone was apparently deliberately hoping to disturb a train. 

Who would do such a thing.

Okay, I had my Ayn Rand period (lasted less than half a year) enticed by her strong female characters.

In Atlas Shrugged a major train tragedy caused (caution: snark ensuing) wonderful and dynamic female industrialist woman who at one time had been running the family railroad while pretending her brother was the miracle working boss to come down from a mountain hideaway where the "Atlasses" (really big rich and powerful industry runners had hidden to show the world we couldn't do without them) and reclaim her legacy.

So we do well to remember that railroad funding in the GOP controlled House was to be voted on the next day.  Was someone hoping that the GOP would wrench the railroads from the American people and hand it to the "makers" (or in reality the frakking oil extracting & money from the middle & working class mining great gods we have in their place today)?

I do not ask this question lightly.  I do it because the last thing the US media or investigators will do (Basil Fawlty is in my brain saying "Don't Mention the Guns!") is get to the bottom of the "projectiles" question.

Plus, there's the curious question of the right wing clown Chuck C Johnson getting a dump of info on what he claims is the Amtrak engineers' sexual inclination (complete with dick pics) and using it to say the man's lifestyle caused the the killer crash. No kidding.

Projectiles.  Now what throws a projectile with the speed and force that could at least leave a shatter pattern in a tough train window? Hmmm

Below is source for top link in this post.  It was inserted by the source.  I link to it above, but thought I should let this rest down here as well, though it has no right to interupt my words above in prime space.

(1) from: Read more: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/2-Trains-Hit-by-Projectiles-Minutes-Before-Amtrak-Derailment-SEPTA-303820821.html#ixzz3aK1XdZ76

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John Oliver: Last Week Tonight (March 7, 2015) on Racism Towards the People of US Territories

Yeah, it's a bit old, but important to remember. Basically I think current powerful parties fear what territory citizens might vote for. So the centuries old prejudicial game goes on.

Last Week Tonght (last week's) How Elected Judgeships May Skew Judicial Decisions: John Oliver's Hilarious Explanation

Bingo: We Can Stop Blaming California for the Anti-Vaxxer Movement in the Nation

Big Sur: California likes to export pictures of purple sage, green trees and sparkling blue water, not diseases and dangerous anti-vaccine philosophy. (Attribution at bottom)

After a month or more of us West Coast dwellers being punched around by the media over "California's elitist anti-vaxxer movement" screwing up the nation's "herd immunity", one Twitter poster (who does a lot of this kind of stuff on important subjects) published a list of where immunity in children was the lowest, and it wasn't California.  It was the Midwest and South.

I don't know about you, but most of what I hear about the MidWest and South about California is not a worshipful pledge to do everything California style.  Mostly it sounds like barely controlled cuss word replacements.  So telling people that all those anti-vaxxers in the MidWest and South are influenced by people they consider "hippies" doesn't fly.

I failed apparently to save the graphic on that, but found some info tonight from the CDC on vaccination levels in various states instead of lumping them into regions, but California isn't even mentioned.

Again the states mentioned as low vaccination spots are not places that people sit around and wonder how most to be "Californian".  They might throw you out of the house if you implied they did.

So this doesn't lump states into the regions of the chart I failed to save, but it's enlightening.

In 2013, wide geographic variation in vaccination coverage was observed among the states (Table 3). Coverage for ≥1 MMR dose ranged from 86.0% (Colorado, Ohio, and West Virginia) to 96.3% (New Hampshire). Coverage ranged from 74.3% (Arkansas) to 93.3% (Massachusetts) for ≥4 DTaP doses, from 44.8% (Vermont) to 88.0% (Kentucky) for HepB (birth dose), from 33.6% (Wyoming) to 72.1% (Connecticut) for ≥2 HepA doses, from 56.0% (Arkansas) to 84.4% (Rhode Island) for rotavirus, and from 57.1% (Arkansas) to 82.1% (Rhode Island) for the combined vaccine series.

Unknown to me is the demographics of the mentioned state. For instance I lower the measles immunization rate in California because I was born before they were given even at the age of 7, and like most in my day gained by future immunity the "natural way" because I had no choice.  I'd have taken the shots if I could. Compared to the disease, it's a holiday.


But the state most effectively keeping children from vaccinations is Poverty:

DTaP, PCV, and Hib coverage were 8 to 12 percentage points lower for children living below the poverty level compared with children living at or above the poverty level. Parents and caregivers of children living below poverty might face additional challenges in maintaining well-child visits and thus be more likely to fall behind on booster doses. Children living below poverty also had rotavirus coverage that was 13 percentage points lower than that of children living at or above the poverty level. The first dose of rotavirus vaccine should be given before age 14 weeks and 6 days, and the final dose should be given by 8 months (3). Children living below poverty might be more likely to miss these milestones and thus not able to start or complete the series. The Vaccines for Children program likely has been successful in reducing differences in vaccination coverage between children living at or above poverty level compared with those below the poverty level for these vaccines and in removing poverty differences for vaccines such as MMR and varicella (1). To further reduce disparities, clinician and system-based interventions should be targeted to communities with a high proportion of the population living below the poverty level. Interventions to improve parental knowledge about vaccines and to further facilitate access to vaccinations can also help to reduce disparities in coverage.

So, can we please give California a break, stop blaming it for lapses in vaccination, and GTF together to make sure that children have the transportation, and access to medical care including vaccinations they need and their parents even want, but can't find time or energy to get their children to the doctor after working 1-2 jobs and lacking help around the house.

And how about a nice pin saying "Because my parents love me they D'tapped me 2 (or 1 to 4 whatever) times!"

Hopefully someone can explain what that means before the cops show up at your door, but it might get some attention and let people know that vaccination is considered good, not evil by most families.

Picture at top clipped and used by permission CC by 2.0 thanks to flickr user Dawn Ellner aka flickr name *~Dawn~* who has no connection to this blog or blogger

Lower picture (stop sign) clipped and used via Creative Commons License Attribution CC by 2.0 thanks to Steve Johnson aka flickr name Steve A Johnson who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Many flickr users have two names representing them on flickr.  I assume the reason is that they want to be known by their real name for future acknowledgement, fame, but flickr requires a unique name for search purposes.  I try to comply with using both names of those who have two such identifications.

Pre-term Birth Subtly Affects Memory Function. Why this is important in the Fight Against Racism

What if we held a cute pig race, but some of the racers had 10lb weights strapped to their hind legs. Would that be fair?

A recent study found that preterm births affect a person's memory functions.

“Our study provides evidence that prematurity can result in problems with a particular subprocess of recollection,” according to Kerstin H. Kipp, principal investigator of the research project when she was at the University of the Saarland (Kipp is now with the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart and the University of Ulm.)
“The specific modification in the memory network is so subtle that it could be overlooked because it doesn’t manifest itself in clear memory impairment. But memory deficits can appear in situations in which retrieving contextual information is essential,”

 So what does this mean when conservatives say that all children must be treated equally or we're biased against white people?

To keep this quick and simple, statistics show black children are more than 50%  likely to be born prematurely than whites and Asians and more likely than other ethnicities, though Native Americans are close. (Original source CDC)

Throwing all the kids in the pool to sink or swim is like organizing a deep end race between a shark baby, a whale baby, and a human baby.  It isn't fair.  Saying it's fair is a way to continue to encode racism.  Treating all children the same as conservatives want to pretend they do (though only small amounts of time are needed to discover natural advantages of more affluent communities) is a way to continue racism.

The study was on a form of memory that is not normally associated with "learning" in school. First of all was it the narrowness of subject (which scientists love to use to quell blow-back). Or will we learn later that it's at the core of learning instead of somewhere out in the wilderness? Scientists are always revising those kinds of findings.  Meanwhile there are children who need a good education.

And the info gleaned from the recent study and the CDC graphic show this starts at birth.

End of story, unless, of course, you are Bill O'Reilly or other right wing scammer promoting the continued ability of the richest to take from society at the expense of the poor (and paid to do so by the same wealthy folk).

In our real life we need to show the real statistics when confronted about treating all ethnicities alike "to be fair". Tell them that's incorrect until society fixes conditions that forces certain minorities, from birth, to fight against problems that harm their ability to learn.

Picture at top used via Creative Commons License (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user krgjumper (only name identified by Flickr).

Did The Bush Administration Cause Widespread Distrust in Vaccines?

Americans used to feel they could trust their government to be working for them, not high end political donors. Where did that break down into a feeling that powerful people are only using Americans to enrich and further empower themselves and their big financial backers? Maybe somewhere in the harsh lands of Iraq and Afghanistan during a couple of wars in which our government abandoned our troops and our trust for war profiteering. (Attribution at bottom)


The reality of our recent past is that measles was declared eliminated in the US in the year 2000.

Of course,  more can come in from immigration and travel, but essentially the US had eliminated the threat.

So what happened?

Anti-vaccination has a history over 200 years long as a small interest and vague worry.  That may have been a good thing given the unsterile conditions of medicine of earlier centuries, but did the current US movement gain it's strength as people realized that their government could be producing huge lies that would harm even kill large number of citizens, to enrich and empower their friends and allies?

Until I can find the numbers by year of the anti-vaxxer movement, not just some outraged internet hack yelling at me, I believe that the Bush-Cheney (Cheney-Bush) administration did major damage to the faith that Americans have in people in important, informed, and powerful places to act in their best interests instead of the bank accounts of their own political and financial partners.

Neither the former president nor vice president seem to be harmed themselves from any of this.  Bush's brother is planning on carrying on the family tradition of inhabiting the White House, and Cheney's daughters look to be trying to get themselves into powerful positions, as well.

There is a song that we used to sing as kids (okay scouts) that ended with "We're all the broker's men".  Just place the Koch bros in the slot for "brokers" (and recognize that women are now considered part of the human race or "men" in most states) and you have the reality of most of the Republican party.

Whatever they say publicly, the Republicans greed for wealth and power may have literally killed kids, even without missiles, and guns by destroying the faith of Americans in their government to promote the common good.

I hope that people can regain their trust in government or at least their realization that they need the vaccinations for their children before great damage is done to more children.

And get those

Top picture of soldier used with permission via CC by 2.0 thanks to Flickr user DVIDSHUB who has no connection to this blog or blogger. Located here with further information including name of pictured soldier. Bottom picture used via CC by 2.0 thanks to Flickr user Blake Patterson (flickr name: blakespot) who is providing the arm and who has no connection to this blog or blogger see here.

Video: Anti-vaccine movement is giving diseases a 2nd life

Also see here for more information

The History of Subsidies Shows Why Joni Ernst is Wrong On Her Farm Belt "Self Reliance" Stance

Iowa cornfields in all their subsidized glory. Thanks to you, Taxpayer! (And thanks to flicker user Carl Wycoff for picture.  See permissions, full attribution, at bottom of page.)

I'm a little older than Senator Ernst though I dress younger, but that's not hard to do.

I remember the 70s though as a teen watching the horror stories coming out from the heartland on the news.  Various scams, crop failures, etc causing a mass exodus from agriculture, especially among minorities though I doubt MSM paid much attention to minorities losing their jobs, farms.  It sounded like another dust bowl, but one created by man, when loan officers either scammed farmers or were too inflexible in the face of crop failures, price drops, etc. 

Though subsidies had been given to farmers since the 30s according to The Library of Economics, substantial hikes in payments have have happened since the 90s (the time period I can find firm data on). I'm assuming that the 70s and early 80s in Iowa, the belle of the corn belt, were tough.

The point is that the reason that farm kids don't have to wear bread bags over their everyday shoes (probably sturdy, American made ones because of the time period of Ernst's youth) is because the government stepped in and boosted farm subsidies.

In fact, the the farm states are propped us by massive government handouts.

The New York Times posted a piece the other week about how much more affluent red states are than blue states.  It, of course, left out the fact that high per-capita government welfare in red states through the farm subsidies program is part of the reason.  So, in fact, blue states help prop up red states, and the calorie producing corn and wheat belts are the biggest winners though our modern populations need more fruits and vegetables.

I could only find a listing of farm subsidies since the 90s, but the growth has been substantial,  See chart on right from The history of American business

Calculator Soup says natural inflation from 1990- 2006 would make 9.7 billion equal to 15 billion. So the basic increased value of subsidies would have been 6.4 billion. If workers wages had fared so well we might not have half the problems that we do these days.

All thanks to government handouts to farmers those icons of self reliance.  We're reminded about that every Super Bowl it seems.

Back to you Senator.  Please make your information more complete,next time, and stop insinuating our kids should wear bread bags to school.

Further info on picture: Clipped and used via Creative Commons License CC by 2.0 thanks to flickr user Carl Wycoff (cwwycoff1 flickr id)

Former Right Wing Blogger, Now Working Fox, Admits She Was Doing it for Hidden Contributions

Lets say Blogger Heaven is somewhere out there in the sky.

We've all heard of blogger heaven, but few of us ever see it. Is that fair?

At least one blogger has acknowledged that blogging without extra C notes (beyond the small amounts creepy Internet ads bring) in are just not worth it.

I've heard about groups who fund bloggers and Internet news sites without ads showing up.  It seems a bit unfair that they get to pick and chose who gets money to survive and improve while the rest  of us bang away and hope someone reads.

I've been assured by other small time bloggers that Internet ads are not worth the effort  and Lauren Ashburn certainly seconds that opinion, but mostly secret elite groups certainly crammed with people who made big money in IT or news opinion and other businesses are handing the funding needed out left and right to favored people.

Until one of them falls through the "favored" cracks.  Of course, down here under the cracks one wonders how to get up there.

Having money invested would mean more time and resources to do a better job.

Luckily for her, Laura had a Fox News gig to fall back on.

But so much for the free speech on the Internet system the rest of us were counting on.

And we wonder why people are so extreme on the Web.

For big money, bloggers have to prove they can build the equivalent of a spaceship on the equivalent of a rowboat's cost.  Or make a big enough crazy enough splash (like Ed Snowden and co) to be lofted into blogger heaven immediately.

While I am dealing with my own problems with overwriting, I also have been working on finding new information, what others aren't already talking about.

Also I'm trying to figure out whether the good numbers Blogger reports are actually accurate.  (I never equaled them with any other blogging system, but are they true numbers or some vestige of how Blogger counts)?

And how and why are some bloggers lofted into money-pot heaven while the rest of us trudge through the mud.  Oh, and BTW is it ethical to write while having unacknowledged funders in the first place? (At least I don't have to worry about that one, since I have no funding).  At least with ads the source of funds and the reason they are offered are obvious.

But hidden donors?

That sounds creepy.

Picture at top is cut from a flickr CC x 2.0 offering by user VinothChandar (thanks so much) who has no connection with this blog or blogger). (I cut it  from a lovely composition showing Interlaken Valley, a place that this blogger though having traveled little since a child has actually been).