++++++++++++++++
A friendly reminder from Prevent Child Abuse New York to fill out your 2010 census form and, if applicable, include all of your children.
According to The Annie E. Casey Foundation, children have been undercounted in every census since the first one in 1790. Since local communities rely on census information in planning for schools, child care, health, and other critical services, accurate data is essential for the proper availability and provision of community services. This Casey report explains why young children are so often missed in the census.
The U.S. Census Bureau has developed a Parents and Child Care Providers toolkit, designed to help organizations that reach children communicate the benefits of census participation.
++++++++++++++++
SOMEONE SENT ME THIS THE OTHER DAY:
The CDC analysis shows that deaths during pregnancy and childbirth have doubled for all U.S. women in the past 20 years.
In 1987, there were 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies. The number of deaths had climbed to 13.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the last year for which figures were available.
A report called “Healthy People 2010” by the Department of Health and Human Services says that number should be around four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies.
Statistics for other highly industrialized countries show that the U.S. goal of four deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies is attainable. Great Britain, for example, has fewer than four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies, Main said.
“Women’s health is at risk,” said Strauss. “We spend the most, and yet women are more likely to die than in 40 other countries. And that disconnect is what makes it such a problem.”
Note that this is tucked way, way down on the CNN front page – way below the news about a few Prius owners and their problems, way, way, way below the Death of Peter Graves or the induction of Abba into some hall of fame. Decline and fall stuff always is.
As the States struggle with their budgets, the easiest places to cut are with those who have no power – the disabled, the poor, children. The usual first victims. Here’s a good example, in Virginia (I’m not singling them out, they just happened to settle their budget the other day):
Funding for schools will drop $646 million over the next two years; the state will also cut more than $1 billion from health programs. Class sizes will rise. A prison will close, judges who die or retire won’t be replaced and funding for local sheriff’s offices will drop 6 percent.
Only 250 more mentally disabled adults will receive money to get community-based services, in a state where the waiting list for such services numbers 6,000 and is growing. Employees will take a furlough day this year, the state will borrow $620 million in cash from its retirement plan for employees and future employees will be asked to retire later and contribute more to their pensions.
Medical care providers will see Medicaid payments from the state trimmed, and fewer poor children will be enrolled in state health care, although those health cuts could be tempered by anticipated federal funds
States are between a rock and hard place, but refusing to raise taxes on the middle class and upper classes while stripping the most vulnerable of the basics is particularly charming – and fairly typical. I expect New York to do the same, if it can ever pass a budget. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, there’s some proof that there’s more fat to cut in state budgets – they don’t have to wholly screw the poor.
++++++++++++++++
Check out this webpage on decision making and the brain:
Exploring status quo bias in the human brain
This study, published March 15, 2010 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), looked at the decision-making of participants taking part in a tennis ‘line judgement’ game while their brains were scanned using functional MRI (fMRI).
First author Stephen Fleming, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, said: “When faced with a complex decision people tend to accept the status quo, hence the old saying ‘When in doubt, do nothing.’
“Whether it’s moving house or changing TV channel, there is a considerable tendency to stick with the current situation and choose not to act, and we wanted to explore this bias towards inaction in our study and examine the regions of the brain involved.” READ FULL ARTICLE HERE
++++++++++++++++
Stop the Storm 