“We Are Better Than This”: Facing A New Epidemic With The Lives Of Our Children At Risk
In June 1944, polio was sweeping across the country with devastating swiftness.
Children would leap out of bed in the morning, and by nightfall, they were unable to feed themselves. It was only a matter of time before it swept through Hickory, NC “like a tidal wave.”
“Youngsters with painful, useless limbs,” Life magazine reported at the time, “some unable to swallow or scarcely able to breathe, they came from mining villages up in the hills, mill towns in the valley, from outlying farms and urban centers.”
Fear reigned, but it was no match for the citizens of Hickory.
The lives of their children were at risk. They could lock up their homes, isolate their children and hope for the best. Or they could spring into action to fight a peril with no known cause and no certain outcome.
David M. Oshinsky, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Polio: An American Story, describes what happened next in the Miracle of Hickory:
“A call went out for volunteers. Hundreds showed up, ‘hiding the fear,’ said one, ‘that had [us] quaking in our boots.’ Merchants donated building material made scarce by wartime rationing. Carpenters, plumbers and electricians brought their own tools to the site.
“Floodlights were installed to allow round-the-clock construction. The telephone company installed a switchboard. Families loaned their electric washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Carloads of toys appeared. Farmers trucked in meat and vegetables. County convicts cleared brush and dug water mains, watched by shotgun-toting guards. The governor paroled 32 female prisoners to help with the domestic chores.
“It was up and running in 54 hours: a ‘rough pine board hospital’ containing an admissions center, a kitchen, and a laundry; a laboratory and an operating room; isolation wards, dormitories and a therapy wing …”
The hospital treated 454 patients before closing its doors at the end of summer. Two-thirds of them, Oshinsky writes, “were said to have ‘recovered completely.’”
The people of Hickory were scared, but they harnessed their fears to save their children.
We are still that America. We just have to act like it.
Our country is facing a new epidemic. President Obama described it in a news conference Wednesday as an “epidemic of gun violence.” We must learn many lessons from the massacre of those young children in Connecticut, but the immediate threat is clear: If this can happen in Newtown, it can happen anywhere.
Once again, we face tough choices. We can throw up our hands and surrender to a gun culture fueled by one of the most powerful lobbies in the country, or we can spring into action. By “we,” I mean we the citizens, because it is up to us to embolden our legislators to stand up to the National Rifle Association and make them pay if they don’t.
This is not the first time children have died of gun wounds, and too many of those names are known only to those who loved them. This is also not the first time a troubled man has unleashed a nightmare of firepower on innocent people.
Each time, the crisis swells and dissipates. That is a sad fact of our past, not a predictor of our future.
There are signs that this time, this moment, could be different. President Obama supports a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity ammunition clips. He also wants to close the gun show loophole that allows some weapons to be sold without buyer background checks.
U.S. senator Joe Manchin — a conservative Democrat and ardently pro-gun in the past — said he’s committed to bringing “the dialogue that would bring a total change.” For emphasis, he added, “And I mean a total change.”
Michigan governor Rick Snyder just vetoed legislation that would have allowed guns in schools and churches.
There are seismic shifts in corporate America, too. Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, for example, announced it’s selling the Freedom Group, maker of the .223 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle used in the Newtown shootings.
The New York Times reported that Cerberus made this decision after the California Teachers Retirement System said it was reviewing its investment in Cerberus because of its holding in Freedom Group.
“It is apparent that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level,” Cerberus said in a statement.
Maybe you’ve never thought of yourself as political. The thought of writing, calling and visiting your elected officials might even make your skin crawl. If so, I ask you to recall how you felt the moment you found out 20 first-graders were gunned down in Newtown, CT.
Let’s get busy and brave.
It’s not too late to be the Americans we want to be.
By: Connie Schultz, The National Memo, December 20, 2012
In Penn State’s Scandal, Where Was The Leadership?
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno said, “I did what I was supposed to.” In fact, nobody at Penn State did what basic human decency requires — and as a result, according to prosecutors, an alleged sexual predator who could have been stopped years ago was allowed to continue molesting young boys.
The arrest Saturday of Jerry Sandusky, the school’s former defensive coordinator, on felony child sex abuse charges, involving at least eight victims, has sent university officials scrambling to justify a pattern of self-serving inattention and inaction.
University Vice President Gary Schultz and Athletic Director Tim Curley also face charges — for failing to report what they knew about Sandusky and for allegedly perjuring themselves before a grand jury. Both proclaim their innocence. After an emergency meeting of the university Board of Trustees, it was announced Sunday that the two officials would be stepping away from their jobs.
Penn State President Graham Spanier has said that Schultz and Curley have his “unconditional support.” If he believes the way they acted was right, or even remotely acceptable, then he needs to go, too — as does Paterno, who can only destroy his legacy by hanging on and trying to excuse the inexcusable.
Assuming that even half of what Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelly alleges is true, Sandusky is a patient and calculating pedophile who used his insider status with the glamorous Penn State football program to lure boys as young as 10. Sandusky allegedly met his victims through the Second Mile, a charity he founded that provides programs for troubled — and vulnerable — youth.
The investigation that led to the charges was launched in 2009 after the mother of a boy — a Second Mile participant — reported allegations of sexual assault to officials at a high school where Sandusky, now 67, volunteered. But Penn State officials knew at least 11 years earlier that there were disturbing questions about physical contact between Sandusky and young boys.
In 1998, Sandusky was famous in the college football world as the defensive wizard who gave Penn State the nickname “Linebacker U,” and he was often mentioned as Paterno’s likely successor.
That year, the university police department conducted what a grand jury report calls a “lengthy investigation” of allegations that Sandusky had hugged, rubbed against and inappropriately touched two 11-year-old boys while they were naked with him in the showers of a Penn State locker room.
Detectives listened in as the mother of one of the boys called Sandusky to confront him. According to the grand jury report, Sandusky told her: “I understand. I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”
The local district attorney declined to prosecute, and the investigation was closed. Paterno was Sandusky’s immediate boss, and Curley was Paterno’s. Perhaps all who were involved did, in the narrowest sense, what they were “supposed to.” But imagine how much better it would have been if someone had done the right thing and taken that 1998 incident seriously — better for the victims, but also better for the university’s reputation and ultimately better for Sandusky himself.
It gets much worse: In 2002, after Sandusky had retired — although he still had an office and enjoyed the run of the Penn State athletic facilities — a football team “graduate assistant” saw Sandusky raping a young boy in the showers, according to the grand jury report.
The assistant — widely identified in news reports as Mike McQueary, a former Penn State quarterback who is now the team’s wide receivers coach and top recruiter — told Paterno what he had seen. Paterno told Curley. The assistant was eventually summoned to a meeting with Curley and Schultz at which he says he described the rape in graphic detail.
The two officials claim they were only told about behavior that was “not that serious.” They took it seriously enough, however, to decree that Sandusky could no longer bring Second Mile children into the football building.
But they “never attempted to learn the identity of the child in the shower,” according to the grand jury. “No one from the university did so.”
Unbelievable.
According to the grand jury, the assistant, Paterno, Curley, Schultz and Spanier all knew about the incident. Each covered his own behind. None lifted a finger to find out who the alleged victim was or what had become of him.
Tell us again: How did you do everything you were supposed to do?
Michele Bachmann: ‘Anti-Vaccine Wingnut’?
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) earned glowing reviews for her performance in Monday’s CNN/Tea Party presidential debate. Her perceived finest moment: Hammering Texas Gov. Rick Perry over his (quickly overruled) 2007 executive order mandating that “innocent little 12-year-old girls” in Texas get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted infection HPV. Bachmann didn’t fare as well, however, in her post-debate media blitz, ill-advisedly repeating the cautionary tale of a mother who claimed her daughter “suffered from mental retardation” because of the HPV vaccine. Has Bachmann “jumped the shark” (as Rush Limbaugh suggests) by attacking vaccines instead of just Perry?
Bachmann is sabotaging herself: Bachmann’s odd assertion sounds a lot like the “thoroughly debunked” claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. And as with the autism “nonsense,” there is no evidence that the HPV vaccine has ever caused anything like “mental retardation.” Bachmann really blew it here, quickly fleeing the debate’s winner’s circle for the fringe camp of “anti-vaccine wingnuts like Jenny McCarthy.”
This is just Bachmann being Bachmann: “News flash: Vaccine luddism is rather widespread,” says Dave Weigel at Slate. And the fact that it’s Bachmann who’s tapped into it is “totally unsurprising,” given her penchant for “endorsing or ‘just asking questions’ about dark theories that she’s overheard.” Really, such claims are just par for the course with Bachmann.
Whatever her reasons, this will cost Bachmann: “I liked Michele Bachmann. A lot,” says Lori Ziganto at RedState. That ends now. I don’t care if she’s “actually cuckoo pants or if she’s just lying and using children and the fears of their parents to score political points,” but this “tall tale” about a 12-year-old absurdly “catching” mental retardation — something you’re born with — tells me all I need to know: Bachmann’s “not very bright” and she’s a “Jenny McCarthyist.” Let’s not forget: “Vaccinations save lives.”
By: The Week, Opinion Brief, September 14, 2011
Quality Vs Quantity: Yes, We Need Jobs. But What Kind?
On Thursday, President Obama will deliver a major speech on America’s employment crisis. But too often, what is lost in the call for job creation is a clear idea of what jobs we want to create.
I recently led a research team to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where Gov. Rick Perry, a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, has advertised his track record of creating jobs. From January 2000 to January 2010, employment in the Valley grew by a remarkable 42 percent, compared with our nation’s anemic 1 percent job growth.
But the median wage for adults in the Valley between 2005 and 2008 was a stunningly low $8.14 an hour (in 2008 dollars). One in four employed adults earned less than $6.19 an hour. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported that the per capita income in the two metropolitan statistical areas spanning the Valley ranked lowest and second lowest in the nation.
These workers aren’t alone. Last year, one in five American adults worked in jobs that paid poverty-level wages. Worker displacement contributes to the problem. People who are laid off from previously stable employment, if they are lucky enough to find work, take a median wage hit of over 20 percent, which can persist for decades.
To understand the impact of low wages, in the Valley and elsewhere, we interviewed a wide range of people, including two directors of public health clinics, three priests, a school principal and four focus groups of residents. Everyone described a life of constantly trying to scrape by. One month they might pay for the phone, another, for utilities. Everyone knew how long each company would carry unpaid bills before cutting service. People spoke not only of their fear of an unexpected crisis — an illness, a broken car — but also of the challenge of paying for basic needs like school supplies. Many used the phrase “one paycheck away from homelessness.”
Because their parents cannot afford child care, children move among relatives and neighbors. They watch too much TV. They don’t finish their homework. Older children grow up too fast from parenting their younger siblings. As one person observed, “All you think about is which bill is more important.”
Economic stress strains marriages. Parents cannot afford quinceañeras for their daughters. In church youth groups, teenagers ask why they should stay in school if all they can get are low wages.
Many children are latchkey kids. Accidents are frequent; we heard of an elementary school student who badly burned himself in a science experiment, with his older brother watching. Their father couldn’t take time off from work to visit his son in the hospital. Children come to school sick. Parents miss teacher conferences because they can’t afford time off. Type 2 diabetes is a scourge in the Valley. Since Type 2 diabetics can be asymptomatic for years, many don’t buy medicine; as time passes, they become severely ill, often losing sight or a limb.
The director at one clinic, with nearly 70,000 visits a year, estimated that half of its patients had anxiety or depression. Often people can’t get to the clinic because they cannot afford to lose work time or because gas costs too much. When they go, they take their families, because they have no child care.
And yet the Valley is not hopeless. Teachers stay late to help with homework. They make home visits to meet parents. Health clinic employees work overtime. The community organization Valley Interfaith has pushed for training opportunities and living-wage jobs. There is no “culture of poverty,” but the low-wage economy has corrosive and tragic consequences.
Must we choose between job quality and quantity? We have solid evidence that when employees are paid better and given more opportunities within a company, the gains outweigh the costs. For example, after a living wage ordinance took effect for employees at the San Francisco International Airport, in 1999, turnover fell and productivity rose.
Contrary to the antigovernment rhetoric, there is much that the public sector can do to improve the quality of jobs.
A recent analysis by the Economic Policy Institute reported that 20 percent of federal contract employees earned less than the poverty level for a family of four, as opposed to 8 percent of traditional federal workers. Many low-wage jobs in the private sector (notably, the health care industry) are financed by taxpayers. The government can set an example by setting and enforcing wage standards for contractors.
When states and localities use their zoning powers to approve commercial projects, or offer tax incentives to attract new employers, they can require that workers be paid living wages; research shows this will not hurt job growth.
Labor standards have to be upgraded and enforced, particularly for those employers, typically in low-wage industries, who engage in “wage theft,” by failing to pay required overtime wages or misclassifying workers as independent contractors so that they do not receive the benefits to which they are entitled.
Americans have long believed that there should be a floor below which job quality does not fall. Today, polls show widespread support for upgrading employment standards, including raising the minimum wage — which is lower, in inflation-adjusted terms, than it was in 1968. It’s time for the federal government to take the lead in creating not just more jobs, but more good jobs. The job-growth mirage of the Rio Grande Valley cannot be our model.
By: Paul Osterman, Op-Ed Contributor, The New York Times, September 5, 2011
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