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Archive for the 'ACA' tag
Legal experts rip judge's rationale for declaring Obamacare law invalid
The Washington Post reports:
The 2,000-page law, however, covers a vast array of other health-care issues, touching almost every part of the health-care industry in the United States.
For that reason, if the ruling were to take effect, it could create major disruptions across the U.S. health-care system — affecting which drugs patients can buy, preventive services for older Americans, the expansion of Medicaid in most states and the structure of the Indian Health Service.
"There's really no American that's not affected by this law," said Yale law professor Abbe Gluck, who filed an amicus brief with other lawyers in the Texas case.
The judge's ruling, she said, flouts settled legal doctrine and places key acts of Congress in reverse order.
By ignoring that Congress specifically declined to strike down the ACA in 2017 when it chose to alter only one portion of the bill, she said, the judge decreed that the 2010 Congress, which first passed the law, has more authority than the same legislative body in 2017.
(click here to continue reading Legal experts rip judge's rationale for declaring Obamacare law invalid – The Washington Post.)
But because of this activist Republican judge, the country will be unsettled until his ruling gets studied by the next level of judicial review. Crazy. And who is supporting the ACA in court? Certainly not Trump's Justice Department, they want the bill to be overturned as well.
The Justice Department, which had been defending the law in court for years, announced in June that it would no longer argue for the mandate, and, as a result, the Trump administration said, a separate requirement that insurance companies cannot reject people who have preexisting conditions was also invalid.
But we won't know for a while. Lovely.
Medicare For All, anyone?
Posted in government,health
Tagged with ACA, GOP, Obamacare
What's the Matter With Trumpland?
No One Will Know How Things Are Between Us
Paul Krugman writes:
Many of the states that have refused to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would foot the great bulk of the bill — and would create jobs in the process — are also among America's poorest.
Or consider how some states, like Kansas and Oklahoma — both of which were relatively affluent in the 1970s, but have now fallen far behind — have gone in for radical tax cuts, and ended up savaging their education systems. External forces have put them in a hole, but they're digging it deeper.
And when it comes to national politics, let's face it: Trumpland is in effect voting for its own impoverishment. New Deal programs and public investment played a significant role in the great postwar convergence; conservative efforts to downsize government will hurt people all across America, but it will disproportionately hurt the very regions that put the G.O.P. in power.
(click here to continue reading Opinion | What's the Matter With Trumpland? – The New York Times.)
Not a brand new phenomena, but relatively new. I call it the Fox News effect: the conservative red states who have been bamboozled to reflexively refuse the exact government help that would assist them in their lives because their spiritual/cultural leaders yelling at them on the tee-vee have convinced them that tax cuts and a smaller government is panacea, plus it will "trigger the liberals". Yeah, those liberals, always trying to help, what's wrong with them?
So Kansas1 and Oklahoma have cut taxes so much that teachers are having to strike for living wages. In my ideal world, teachers would be paid as much as least as much as investment bankers. Teachers should at least get a living wage, preferably more so that the "best and brightest" choose the teaching profession. Good teachers are important to our civil society, essential even, why should they get sub-poverty wages just so the Koch Brothers can pay slightly less in taxes?
South River Public School
While Oklahoma has the country's lowest tax on oil and natural gas production, teachers' salaries remain stubbornly low, at 49th in the nation. According to data provided by the National Education Association (NEA), teachers make $45,276, nearly $13,077 below the nationwide average of $58,353 and well below the nationwide high of New York at $79,152.
"Over a decade of neglect by the legislature has given our students broken chairs in classrooms, outdated textbooks that are duct-taped together, four-day school weeks, classes that have exploded in size and teachers who have been forced to donate plasma, work multiple jobs and go to food pantries to provide for their families," said the Oklahoma Education Association in a statement. "We are saying enough. No more empty promises. The governor and legislature need to act now to fix this."
It's a feeling shared by teachers in places like Arizona, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and other states, who are all also considering action.
The strikes are unique in that they are not being called for by the leadership of the unions, but often through direct appeals of rank-and-file members using social media and their own personal networks to organize across entire states and now the country.
(click here to continue reading Wave of teachers' wildcat strikes spreads to Oklahoma and Kentucky | US news | The Guardian.)
Not to mention the whole conservative pushback to the Affordable Care Act:
A new wave of teacher strikes has highlighted a growing problem for all US workers – growing health costs which have become a "hungry tapeworm" on Americans' wages.
In the most expensive health system in the world and the only industrialized nation without universal healthcare, more than 177 million Americans get health insurance through an employer. But insurance is rarely free.
"They've shifted the healthcare costs and the pension costs on to employees, so employees are making less and they're spending less," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 million members. "It's a double whammy."
Conservative legislatures' push to shift health and pension costs on to individual teachers means in some states, teachers take home less pay than they did five years ago.
(click here to continue reading 'Double whammy': teachers strike as healthcare costs cut into earnings | US news | The Guardian.)
I hope these teachers get their raises, and that they vote in 2018 for Democrats.
which we've discussed before [↩]
Posted in government,politics
Tagged with ACA, Obamacare, tax, teachers
Ryan Plans to Phase Out Medicare in 2017
Speaking of Shock and Awe, I wonder if the Tea Party types realize that by voting for Trump and his GOP buddies, they are about to get their wish fulfilled, and get government hands off of their Medicare. Because Medicare will cease to exist as soon as Trump takes office. Oopsie…
BRET BAIER: Your solution has always been to put things together including entitlement reform. That is Paul Ryan's plan. That's not Donald Trump's plan.
PAUL RYAN: Well, you have to remember, when Obamacare became Obamacare, Obamacare rewrote medicare, rewrote medicaid. If you are going to repeal and replace Obamacare, you have to address those issues as well. What a lot of folks don't realize is this 21-person board called the ipap is about to kick in with price controls on Medicare. What people don't realize is because of Obamacare, medicare is going broke, medicare is going to have price controls because of Obamacare, medicaid is in fiscal straits. You have to deal with those issues if you are going to repeal and replace obamacare. Medicare has serious problems [because of] Obamacare. Those are part of our plan.
First, Ryan claims that Obamacare has put Medicare under deeper financial stress. Precisely the opposite is true. And it's so straightforward Ryan unquestionably knows this. The Affordable Care Act actually extended Medicare's solvency by more than a decade. Ryan's claim is flat out false.
Second, I've heard a few people say that it's not 100% clear here that Ryan is calling for Medicare Phase Out. It is 100% clear. Ryan has a standard, openly enunciated position in favor of Medicare Phase Out. It's on his website. It's explained explicitly right there.
Ryan says current beneficiaries will be allowed to keep their Medicare. Says. But after the cord is cut between current and future beneficiaries, everything is fair game. For those entering the system, Ryan proposes phasing out Medicare and replacing it private insurance with subsidies to help seniors afford the private insurance. That is unquestionably what it means because that is what Ryan says. So if you're nearing retirement and looking forward to going on Medicare, good luck. You're going to get private insurance but you'll get some subsidies from the government to pay the bill.
(click here to continue reading Ryan Plans to Phase Out Medicare in 2017.)
Nah, probably not. Many don't seem to be particularly well-informed.
Posted in government,health,politics
Tagged with ACA, Medicare, Paul Ryan, Tea_Baggers, trump
Al Franken Ran As A Liberal, and Won
Everything Is Political
Senator Al Franken won re-election with a novel strategy; he campaigned as he votes: as a Liberal! And won! Sadly, too many of his party tried to win by playing up their conservative side for some reason, and then lost. Seriously, what is the point of presenting oneself as Republican-Lite? Won't voters just vote for the actual Republican?
Luckily for the Wellstone wing of the Democratic Party, there are a few smart guys, like Senator Franken:
Across the country, other Democratic Senate candidates distanced themselves from President Obama and the Democratic Party platform. Mark Warner, who squeaked by in Virginia, preferred to talk about how he'd tweak the Affordable Care Act than his vote for the bill, while arguing that he hasn't actually voted with President Obama all that often. Mark Udall in Colorado decided he didn't want to be seen with Obama. Challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky wouldn't even say if she voted for Obama in 2012—after serving as one of his delegates to the national convention.
Franken took the opposite approach.
Instead of running away from the progressive accomplishments of the Obama era, he embraced them, railing against bankers, advocating for student loan reform—even defending the Affordable Care Act. Franken ran as an Elizabeth Warren-style Democrat, running a populist campaign that didn't shirk discussion of the specific policies Democrats could pursue to help the middle class. And voters rewarded him. "This wasn't a safe seat," Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said in an e-mail. "He earned his victory by being a proud populist Democrat for six years and inspiring voters."
Franken's Republican opponent, investment banker Mike McFadden, centered his campaign on painting Franken as an Obama shill. But Franken didn't deny his ties to the president and the Democratic party—and he would have had a hard time of it if he tried. Franken was a favorite of the liberal base before entering politics thanks to his combative, unabashed left-winger radio persona on Air America and his anti-Fox News books. He joined Congress in 2009 as the Democrats' 60th, filibuster-breaking vote, allowing the party to pass the Affordable Care Act. Since then he's racked up a clear lefty record, regularly ranking among the most liberal members in the Senate.
(click here to continue reading Al Franken Was Liberal Enough, Tough Enough, and Doggone It, People Reelected Him | Mother Jones.)
Maybe in 2016, more Democrats will decide to run as liberals. Shocking concept, eh?
Democratic Strategists Are Clueless – Tom Tomorrow
– via http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/10/1342914/-Cartoon-Midterm-mayhem
Tagged with ACA, Democrats, Liberal, Minnesota, Obama, Obamacare, Senate
Hospitals See Troubles In Red States That Snubbed Obamacare's Medicaid Deal
St Mary Nazareth Hospital
While record numbers of Americans sign up for the larger Medicaid health insurance program for the poor, financial issues are emerging for medical care providers in the two dozen states that didn't go along with the expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Reports out in the last week indicate the gap between those with health care coverage is widening between states that agreed to go along with the health law's Medicaid expansion and those generally led by Republican legislatures and GOP governors that are balking at the expansion.
The moves against expansion are "beginning to hurt hospitals in states that opted out," a report last week from Fitch Ratings said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human services has said Medicaid enrollment in the 26 states and the District of Columbia that agreed to go along with and implemented the expansion by the end of May "rose by 17 percent, while states that have not expanded reported only a 3 percent increase," HHS said in an enrollment update for the Medicaid program.
"We expect providers in states that have chosen not to participate in expanded Medicaid eligibility to face increasing financial challenges in 2014 and beyond," Fitch said in its July 16 report. "Nonprofit hospitals and healthcare systems in states that have expanded their Medicaid coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have begun to realize the benefit from increased insurance coverage."
(click here to continue reading Hospitals See Troubles In Red States That Snubbed Obamacare's Medicaid Deal – Forbes.)
Not Proclaiming Our Fall
What consistently boggles my mind is that the poor, uninsured people in Republican-leaning states still vote for Republicans. Self-hating folk presumedly. Or else the Tea-Bagger propaganda is so powerful, it has convinced them to vote against their own interests.
A report last week from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute described the coverage difference as a "gulf in percentage of people without health insurance" that is growing larger between states that expanded Medicaid and those that did not.
As of June, the report said 60 percent of the nation's uninsured residents live in states that did not expand Medicaid. That figure was up from 49.7 percent in September of last year.
Tagged with ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, Obamacare
Remember all those Obamacare horror stories
Doctor of Thinkology
Shocking! Shocking, I say…
Statisticians dismiss the practice of using personal stories to argue about an objective reality as "anecdata", but it might be more accurate to call the "Obamacare horror stories" that have taken over social media "urban legends". There are urban legends about a lot of things – from spiders in hairdos to red velvet cake. Some are funny, some feature a satisfying come-uppance, but folklorists agree that the stickiest of them, the ones that last for generations and resist debunking are the ones that live off ignorance and feed off fear. As one researcher put it: It's a lack of information coupled with these fears that tends to give rise to new legends. When demand exceeds supply, people will fill in the gaps with their own information … they'll just make it up.
I can't think of a better description of the conservative media ecosystem at the moment.
The failure of the exchanges created an information vacuum as far as Obamacare successes went; in rushed the individual stories of those who claimed to have been hurt by the changes to the market. It didn't matter that these stories are, even without enrollment numbers from the exchanges, demonstrably unrepresentative! Only a fraction of Americans, 5%, even have the kind of policies that could have been cancelled – these were the people who could claim to have been "lied to"… or worse. Their stories became part of an Obamacare horror story canon.
(click here to continue reading Remember all those Obamacare horror stories? Not looking so bad now | Ana Marie Cox | Comment is free | theguardian.com.)
Turns out in nearly every case, the reported facts were erroneous, or there were significant details left out. I'm sure you are as surprised as I am that there is gambling in this casino…1
and the really scary part of this story is how quickly these fake stories spread, even on the so-called corporate media. For instance, CBS, Yahoo, and Mediate all reported on Ashley Dionne's complaint without fact-checking it.
There is the one about Ashley Dionne, who claimed that Obamacare "raped" her generation:
I have asthma, ulcers, and mild cerebral palsy. Obamacare takes my monthly rate from $75 a month for full coverage on my "Young Adult Plan" to $319 a month. After $6,000 in deductibles, of course.
It turned out that her own Tumblr post contained evidence that she would be eligible for a low-cost, "silver" plan for $22.17 per month, with out-of-pocket spending capped at $2,250. (Also, with her medical conditions, it's hard to believe that she ever found a company to cover her pre-ACA.)
or however that cliché goes [↩]
Tagged with ACA, corporate_media, Obamacare
Supreme Court To Decide If Corporations Are Religious People Too
Jesus Hoards
The Supreme Court inexplicably ruled recently that corporations are people when it comes to spending political money; now this same court is going to rule whether for-profit corporations have religious rights as well. Rights that then would trickle down to the employees, squashing the employee's rights. If this law passes, the religious affiliation of businesses will have to become a factor for workers deciding where to work. Will the corporation have to disclose the religious affiliations of each and every shareholder? Just the C.E.O. and President? The Board of Directors? Who controls the "Corporate Personhood"? How does Hobby Lobby take communion wafers and confession? Does Hobby Wine only drink grape juice like some Protestants?
Buzzfeed needs to make a listicle: 23 Odd Religious Practices Your Boss Might Insist Upon. I can imagine some of them now, like what if your boss was a Rastafarian, and insisted you treat cannabis as a sacrament each and every day? A Christian Scientist? You couldn't go to the doctor at all, only pray for God to intervene. Orthodox Jewish boss? Better keep kosher, including paying attention to Shatnez– meaning you cannot mix wool and other fibers in the same clothing. If you worked for Staples when Mitt Romney owned it, would you have to wear the magic underwear? And be forbidden from drinking coffee? How about if your company's board has members of Digambara Jain? Would you have to be nude all the time after you reached a certain age? If you worked for a Jehovah's Witness like Prince, could your boss prohibit you from getting a blood transfusion? A Scientologist boss would prohibit you from Prozac and other psychiatric drugs and treatment. A Quaker corporation might not want its taxes to go to support building of war machines, would that be ok for the Court? What about wearing ornaments? God has railed against the wearing of ornaments in Exodus 33.
These are jokes, almost, but depending upon how the Supreme Court rules, the joke might turn to ashes in our mouths. I know the prospect scares me, and I'm self-employed. I really don't want to live in the Christian Theocracy these zealots are trying to create…
God Is Ugly
Some coverage regarding this scary, scary issue that I read today, including this overview from Adam Liptak, New York Times:
In June, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in Denver, ruled for Hobby Lobby (PDF), a corporation owned by a family whose members have said they try to run the business on Christian principles. The company, which operates a chain of arts-and-crafts stores and has more than 15,000 full-time employees of many faiths, objected to a requirement in the health care law that large employers provide their workers with comprehensive insurance coverage for contraception.
Hobby Lobby told the justices that it had no problem with offering coverage for many forms of contraception, including condoms, diaphragms, sponges, several kinds of birth control pills and sterilization surgery. But drugs and devices that can prevent embryos from implanting in the womb are another matter, and make it complicit in a form of abortion, the company said.
The law presents companies with difficult choices, Hobby Lobby told the justices. Failing to offer comprehensive coverage could subject it to fines of $1.3 million a day, it said, while dropping insurance coverage for its employees entirely could lead to fines of $26 million a year.
The Tenth Circuit ruled that Hobby Lobby was a "person" under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, and that its religious beliefs had been compromised without good reason.
Kyle Duncan, a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby, said he was pleased that the justices had agreed to resolve the split among the federal appeals courts. "We hope the Supreme Court will vindicate the rights of family business owners," he said.
Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement that "the right to religious freedom belongs to individuals, not for-profit institutions."
"These for-profit companies," she said, "are no more entitled to deny women insurance coverage for essential health care than they are to dictate how any of us can and cannot spend our paychecks."
In July, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ruled against the Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation (PDF), which makes wood cabinets and is owned by a Mennonite family that had similar objections to the law. The Third Circuit concluded that "for-profit, secular corporations cannot engage in religious exercise."
David Cortman, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the company and its owners, said the ruling was misguided. "The administration has no business forcing citizens to make a choice between making a living and living free," he said.
The Third Circuit rejected an analogy to the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United, which ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to free speech. Though the First Amendment also protects the free exercise of religion, Judge Robert E. Cowen wrote for the majority of a divided three-judge panel, "it does not automatically follow that all clauses of the First Amendment must be interpreted identically."
But a five-judge majority of an eight-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit, in the Hobby Lobby case, said that "the First Amendment logic of Citizens United" extended to religious freedom.
"We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation's political expression but not its religious expression," Judge Timothy M. Tymkovich wrote for the majority.
(click here to continue reading Justices to Hear Contraception Cases Challenging Health Law – NYTimes.com.)
I AM GOD YOU ARE GOD
Amelia Thomson-Deveaux notes that neither of these businesses are even Catholic, so why would they object to contraception?
Oddly enough, neither of the business owners involved are Catholic, even though the first objections to the contraception mandate were raised by Catholic leaders, who didn't want religiously affiliated hospitals and schools to provide birth control, which the Catholic hierarchy considers taboo. One case—Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, documented extensively for the Prospect by Sarah Posner earlier this summer—deals with an arts-and-crafts chain owned by evangelical Christians. The other—Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius—hones in on a smaller, Mennonite-owned cabinet door manufacturer.
Neither of the plaintiffs' arguments mention doctrinal objections to contraception. That's because Protestants, unlike Catholics, don't believe that birth control is immoral. In fact, the denominations' divergent views on the two issues created a kind of intra-Christian culture war throughout much of the twentieth century. Haunted, in part, by neo-Malthusian fears about the world's rapid descent into overpopulation, the Church of England officially moderated its stance on contraception in 1930. Over the course of the following decade, most American Protestant denominations followed suit. The Mennonite Church does not have an official stance on birth control.
When evangelical Christians decided to throw in their lot alongside the Catholic hospitals and schools seeking an exemption from the contraceptive mandate, their argument was, to put it mildly, a stretch. When Wheaton College, an evangelical liberal arts school in Illinois, asked the Obama administration for an emergency injunction against the contraception mandate last year, it emerged that the college was not eligible because it had "inadvertently" been including emergency contraception in its student health plan.
It should also be noted that neither of the cases that will appear before the Supreme Court are founded on sound science; both allege that emergency contraception—and, in the Hobby Lobby case, the IUD—is a form of abortion. This relies on the notion that pregnancy begins when the egg is fertilized—not, as the medical community contends, when a fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall. This means that regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, the facts of the case will be based on junk science, not theology. The Catholic Church, whether you agree with it or not, has consistently maintained that birth control is a fundamental evil. Protestant attempts to overturn the contraception mandate aren't about theological objections to birth control—they're an effort to dramatically expand religious freedom rights for conservative Christians.
(click here to continue reading The Contraception-Mandate Cases Aren't Really About Contraception.)
The Devil and Pope
Jessica Valenti writes
Today the Supreme Court announced it will hear two cases concerning the Affordable Care Act's requirement that companies' insurance plans cover birth control. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties claim the mandate violates their belief against certain kinds of contraception—pitting female employees' right to a nondiscriminatory health plan against a company's religious freedom. (I also fervently hope these companies are fighting as hard to ensure that their unmarried male employees don't have access to sin-pills like Viagra.)
Most American women—99 percent—will use birth control at some point in their lives. Twenty-seven million women are being covered by this provision right now. So I have to wonder what companies that don't want to cover birth control will tell their female employees should the contraception mandate be struck down. Abstinence? Aspirin between the knees, perhaps?
There's also an incredibly slippery slope here—if employees' health plans have to adhere to company owners' religious beliefs, what happens if your boss doesn't believe in vaccinations? Or as Guardian columnist Jill Filipovic tweeted, "What if your blood transfusions violate your employer's religious beliefs? No surgery coverage?" Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America said in a statement, "Allowing this intrusion into personal decisions by their bosses opens a door that won't easily be shut."
(click here to continue reading Birth Control Coverage: It's the Misogyny, Stupid | The Nation.)
Katie McDonough:
"The corporations that brought these cases have views that are far outside the mainstream, and the outcome of these cases could have extreme consequences for millions of Americans," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in response to the news. "For the first time ever, the court could decide that corporations have the right to opt out of a legal requirement — based entirely on the personal beliefs of their owners."
"The right to religious freedom belongs to individuals, not for-profit institutions," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "These for-profit companies are no more entitled to deny women insurance coverage for essential health care than they are to dictate how any of us can and cannot spend our paychecks."
But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in its ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, suggested it believes that the Supreme Court will rule to protect the so-called religious expression of for-profit corporations, citing the 2010 Citizens United decision as an example of the court defining corporate personhood. "We see no reason the Supreme Court would recognize constitutional protection for a corporation's political expression but not its religious expression," the court wrote.
(click here to continue reading Supreme Court to hear cases challenging contraception mandate – Salon.com.)
I AM Temple Faux Lomo
The president of Hobby Lobby is a member of the Christian Taliban if there ever was one:
Among his more controversial beliefs: Gothard thinks he can determine a person's character simply by staring into their eyes, that disease has spiritual causes and that men are the sovereign rulers of the household. His books provide detailed instructions on how women ought to stand, in addition to diagrams of the appropriate length of men's pants and illustrations of suitable female hairstyles.
In 2002, Green, acting through his family trust, purchased and then leased a vacant college campus to Gothard's ministry. A year later, Green, this time acting through Hobby Lobby itself, purchased a shuttered hospital in Little Rock, Ark., and donated it to Gothard for the purposes of building a local training center.
These weren't mere business transactions, either. The website of one of Gothard's many ministries features video of Steve Green describing Hobby Lobby's "desire to share Christ and Disciple others." And in a review of Gothard's book, The Amazing Way, David Green, father of Steve Green and founder of Hobby Lobby, wrote that, "Through the example and teachings of Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles, we have benefited both as a family and in our business. It is as we take those lessons from God s Word that Bill clearly articulates that we live the full life that God intends."
Objective courses about the Bible are permissible in public schools, but Sunday School lessons are a different matter entirely. Green's past statements and Religious Right connections indicate that he's actually trying to promote a specific perspective on the Bible: his own.
(click here to continue reading Curricular Controversy: Hobby Lobby President Proposes Bible Elective in Okla. Public School | Americans United.)
I know I'm never setting foot in a Hobby Lobby again:
Hobby Lobby, the giant craft retailer known for providing knitting wool, holiday trinkets, fake flowers, and just about any other craft-centric material one could need, balks at providing certain types of medical care for its employees. That is because the company, which has 559 stores across the country and brings in $3 billion in revenue each year, is owned by the Green family—devout Christians who believe that human life begins at conception and that using certain types of birth control violates their religious beliefs.
The Greens, who often have Hobby Lobby buy newspaper ads encouraging people to "know Jesus as Lord and Savior," also think that their religious beliefs should be imposed on Hobby Lobby's 22,000 employees. Because of their religious convictions, the Greens have asked a federal court, in a case called Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, to exempt their for-profit corporation from the Affordable Care Act's requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer health plans covering contraception.
In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that minimum standards for employer health plans would include preventive care for women, including mammograms, cervical-cancer screenings, prenatal care, and contraceptives—all services that are vital to women's health and well-being. The Obama administration provided an exemption from the contraception-coverage requirement for "religious employers"—churches and nonprofit religious organizations—but not for for-profit, secular corporations such as Hobby Lobby.
Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius is one of 40 lawsuits filed across the country asking federal courts to exempt a for-profit corporation from the Affordable Care Act's contraception requirement. It is also one part of a coordinated effort led by conservative legal groups to undermine the Affordable Care Act and avoid complying with other laws.
(click here to continue reading Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius: Crafting a Dangerous Precedent | Center for American Progress.)
Iota Eta Sigma
So if a for-profit corporation is religious, is it based on its board members? Share holders? Founders? Who gets to decide what religion a company is?
Even if one assumes that the mandate represents a "substantial burden," another problem with the argument being made against the mandate is that the free exercise of religion is an inherently individual act. As Sarah Posner argued, the idea that a secular, for-profit corporation can "exercise" religion is a strange concept that would be inconsistent with a substantial body of precedent. Some have argued that the Court's Citizens United decision should be seen as changing the legal context, the issues involved are very different. Corporations must have some free speech rights because the dissemination of speech often involves corporate entities—Congress cannot ban the showing of Masters of Sex just because it's distributed by Viacom. Religious exercise, conversely, is inherently personal. Some shareholders in the Hobby Lobby may have religious beliefs that contradict the religious mandate, but the corporation itself cannot.
What about closely held corporations?
One potential argument, recently made by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, is that a corporation itself cannot exercise religion, but a corporation's owners can. Since one argument made by Conestoga Wood is that the religious rights of the company's owners have been violated even if those of the company cannot be, the case is presumably a vehicle for the Court to examine this legal question as well. In my judgement, this argument is no more convincing than Hobby Lobby's. The owner of a business cannot obtain the advantages of a corporate form (including substantial insulation from personal liability) while remaining an individual when it is advantageous to do so. Nonetheless, it would not be surprising for the Supreme Court to split the baby by rejecting the Hobbby Lobby's claim while accepting the ones raised by the owners of Conestoga.
(click here to continue reading The Affordable Care Act v. Supreme Court, Round 2.)
Jill Filipovic of the Guardian, U.K.
On its face, it seems odd to even consider the question seriously. After all, no one is forcing the owners of the company to take contraception or purchase contraception. The belief in question – that certain types of contraception are "abortifacients" – is also far from scientific fact. Also, the company owners issue their employees a pay check and have no say over how the employees spend it; they have no say over the activities their employees participate in on a vacation day.
It's certainly not violating the company's religious freedom for an employee to use the money paid to them by the company for a whole series of things that the company owner may find religiously objectionable, including buying contraception. It's certainly not violating the company's religious freedom for an employee to use a company-issued vacation day to enjoy a whole series of things that the company owner may find religiously objectionable, including, say, a full-day contracepted sex-fest, a trip to Mecca or a pork barbecue.
So why is it a problem for employees to use their health insurance for the care they and their doctors agree upon?
The cases the supreme court will hear were brought under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which bars the government from "substantially burden[ing] a person's exercise of religion" unless that burden is justified by a "compelling reason". Free religious exercise is burdened when the government forces an individual to participate in activities that violate their religious beliefs, but not every infringement on religious beliefs is a substantial burden. As the ACLU points out in their amicus brief to the supreme court, the contraception law doesn't force the owners of the Hobby Lobby craft store to violate their own religious beliefs. It requires them to cover health insurance, which may subsidize someone else's activities that violate the Hobby Lobby owners' religious values – but again, the same could be said for issuing a pay check.
By refusing to cover contraception, the Hobby Lobby owners (and the owners of the other companies claiming the healthcare law infringes upon their religious freedom) are in fact using their own religious beliefs to deny benefits to their employees who may not share those beliefs at all. That's not religious freedom; it's religious tyranny.
The company heads bringing these claims want to have it both ways. By incorporating, owners and shareholders create separate entities and are not personally liable for their employees' salaries or health insurance costs – the entire point of incorporating is to create a legal entity separate from the individuals who created it. Yet these owners and shareholders want the court to consider their personal religious beliefs indistinguishable from those of the corporation, and allow those beliefs to dictate the kind of healthcare coverage their employees receive.
(click here to continue reading Get real: covering contraception doesn't violate employers' religious freedom | Jill Filipovic | Comment is free | theguardian.com.)
At least my corporation is atheist (because I am)
Posted in Business,politics,religion
Tagged with abortion, ACA, Christian_Taliban, contraception, Obamacare, Theocracy
Suzanne Somers's Factually Challenged WSJ Obamacare Critique
Pippen Peruses the WSJ
And the slow, sad decline of the Wall Street Journal continues under Rupert Murchoch's helm. Today's edition of Punditry Gone Wrong is via an OpEd from noted policy expert Suzanne Somers.
Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine writes:
Reminder: This appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
In addition to offering her "down and dirty" advice for retirees, Somers has strong views on socialism:
And then there is another consideration: It's the dark underbelly of the Affordable Care Act reminiscent of what Lenin and Churchill both said. Lenin: "Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state." Churchill: "Control your citizens' health care and you control your citizens."
Unsurprisingly, Lenin never said that line — it's a decades-old right-wing fabrication. The more curious line is the Churchill quote. It's almost certainly fake, too; it does not appear in the LexisNexis database or in Google. Unless Somers has done original archival work on Churchill, she seems to have fabricated that quote on her own, or possibly received it via chain e-mail.
But the more interesting question is what does Somers think it means? Does she believe Churchill was warning the world of the dangers of a national health-care system? If so, that's weird, because he strongly favored such a system. Given the latter, is she holding up Churchill as another European despot who, like Lenin, sought to impose universal health care on his citizens? Somers's side-by-side listing of Churchill with Lenin, along with Churchill's actual support for nationalized health care, makes the latter more plausible.
(click here to continue reading Suzanne Somers's Strong WSJ Obamacare Critique — Daily Intelligencer.)
News You Can't Use
Philip Bump of the Atlantic adds:
Her argument bounces around a bit, but centers on three things. First: Canadian health care doesn't work and Canadian doctors want to come to the United States because "they want to reap financial rewards." Second: Pre-existing condition coverage is good for seniors, but nothing else is. And, third: Lenin and Churchill saw health care as a tool to control the public.
The Canadian stuff is based mostly on an anecdote. That her sister-in-law had to wait to see a doctor is sad! But an old Maclean's article isn't terribly compelling, nor would be the idea that Canadian doctors want to come to America to make money. That's the whole point! Doctors here have far fewer limitations on their ability to make money, which is one factor in increasing health care costs. If you were told you could make way more money doing the same thing somewhere else, you might move, too. That doesn't mean you're doing bad work where you are. Regardless, Somers' claim is not true.
As for the elderly, Somers is very concerned about their health coverage, though in generally vague ways. She acknowledges the value of covering preexisting conditions, but then segues into "let's get down and dirty; the word 'affordable' is a misnomer." Why? Because premiums are "doubling and tripling" as you "hear on the news" and "most frightening of all, your most intimate and personal information is now up for grabs." In this case, "the news" probably means Hannity, and "personal information" means … no idea. No idea what that means. She of course misses the whole point about pre-existing conditions: yes, premiums for some people with pre-existing conditions will go up — since many pay no premiums, since they can't get coverage. And that's good for kids with cancer just as it is for the elderly.
(click here to continue reading Having Conquered Cellulite, Suzanne Somers Takes On Obamacare – Philip Bump – The Atlantic Wire.)
update: apparently, Mr. Murdoch's fact checker army had been furloughed, but are now back in the office. The WSJ appended this to the bottom of the story later on today:
CORRECTIONS AND AMPLIFICATIONS:
An earlier version of this post contained a quotation attributed to Lenin ("Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state") that has been widely disputed. And it included a quotation attributed to Churchill ("Control your citizens' health care and you control your citizens") that the Journal has been unable to confirm.
Also, the cover of a Maclean's magazine issue in 2008 showed a picture of a dog on an examining table with the headline "Your Dog Can Get Better Health Care Than You." An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the photo showed and headline referred to a horse.
(click here to continue reading Suzanne Somers: The Affordable Care Act Is a Socialist Ponzi Scheme – The Experts – WSJ.)
Tagged with ACA, history, Murdoch, Obamacare
Organic Eden Foods' quiet right-wing agenda
Personally, Eden Foods' political stance gives Eden Organic beans a musty, old fashioned flavor, a flavor of the 15th century, a time when the Catholic Church decided for you what was legal or illegal, accepted or unaccepted.
The slogan for Eden Foods, which describes itself as the "oldest natural and organic food company in North America," is "creation and maintenance of purity in food." Its CEO and founder, Michael Potter, has been prominent in debates over labeling of organic food and GMOs. But the company has been quietly seeking in court another form of purity — to Catholic doctrine about sex being solely for procreation. That goes not just for Potter, but for all 128 of his employees.
That is, Eden Foods — an organic food company with no shortage of liberal customers — has quietly pursued a decidedly right-wing agenda, suing the Obama administration for exemption from the mandate to cover contraception for its employees under the Affordable Care Act. In court filings, Eden Foods, represented by the conservative Thomas More Law Center, alleges that its rights have been violated under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Eden Foods, which did not respond to a request for comment, says in its filing that the company believes of birth control that "these procedures almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices." The complaint also says that "Plaintiffs believe that Plan B and 'ella' can cause the death of the embryo, which is a person." (Studies show that neither Plan B nor Ella interfere with fertilization, which is the Catholic definition of the beginning of life, if not the medical one. In other words, not the death of an embryo. Also, at that stage, it's a zygote, not an embryo — let alone a "person.")
But once Potter became aware that the company's plan had begun to cover contraception in accordance with the Obamacare regulations, he teamed up with Thomas More Law Center to sue. The Center focuses on violations of "religious freedom," including in connection with the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. They also represented Pastor Terry Jones, who became famous for his plan to burn Korans on the anniversary of 9/11.
They filed suit on March 20, 2013, against Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and other government parties, demanding an exemption, despite the fact that Eden Foods is a for-profit company. Two days later, District Court Judge Denise Page Hood denied an emergency motion to be exempted, writing, "Courts have held that the Mandate in question applies only to the corporate entity, not to its officers or owners, and that as to the individual owners, any burden imposed on them individually by the contraception mandate is remote[.]" She added, "The purpose of the Women's Preventive Healthcare Regulations is not to target religion, but instead to promote public health and gender equality." A hearing has been set for May 10.
(click here to continue reading Organic Eden Foods' quiet right-wing agenda – Salon.com.)
Eden Foods: Another company that deserves to lose in the marketplace. I'll no longer purchase any product of theirs, that's for damn sure, and I don't even have a uterus, pure or not.
Katie Baker of Jezebel adds:
Eden Foods, an independently owned natural food company, is just as interested in the "Creation and Maintenance of Purity in Food®" as the maintenance of purity in your uterus: the company is suing the Obama administration for exemption from the contraceptive mandate. Owner Michael Potter believes sex is for baby-making alone, and hopes to force his 128 employees to follow suit.
In court filings, the plaintiffs (Eden Foods and Potter) lay out the reasons why Potter's personal and nonsensical beliefs regarding birth control and emergency contraception — which Eden Foods has historically referred to as "Lifestyle Drugs" (we hear all the It Girls will be popping Yasmin at Coachella this year!) — should take precedence over reproductive choice. Examples: the company believes that contraception and abortifacients "almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices" and that the morning-after pill "can cause the death of the embryo, which is a person." (No, it can't, and if an embryo is a person, I'm a bag of "organic whole leaf dulse.")
It's unsurprising when Christian publishing companies and craft supply stores fight the contraception mandate. (We covered the first 18 for-profit companies that fought to eliminate the birth control benefit earlier this year; now 25 have filed suit.) But doesn't it seem rather misleading for Eden Foods, which says it's the "oldest natural and organic food company in North America," to hide its conservative agenda?
(click here to continue reading Organic Eden Foods Isn't Progressive Enough to Pay For Its Employees' Birth Control.)
I don't care about your religious beliefs, but I don't have to support them with my dollars. Women who want their insurance company to cover contraceptives shouldn't be at the mercy of jerks like Michael Potter.
Posted in Advertising,Food and Drink,religion
Tagged with ACA, Obamacare, religious nutjobs
Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
— Ambrose Bierce


text:
Rock the Boat beating lockdown blues
By Rosalia David
THE first episode of Rock the Boat, a music TV series promoting local artists, has premiered on YouTube with musical group Mighty Ill Game (M.I.G) kick-starting the show.
Rock the Boat is a TV series availing opportunities to different musicians to perform live on a boat at the Kavango River while also giving exposure to local designers as they style and dress the performing artists.
"The show's debut stars the hip-hop group, Mighty Ill Game, widely known as M.I.G, who provided a raw performance which should not be missed out on. Adding an even more local touch, the talent has Sirenga and Nandii Martin to thank for their outfits and styling during their appearance on the show," said executive producer, Andreas Gustav.
He said, unlike anything ever done before in the Land of the Brave, Rock the Boat, premiered last week for 30 minutes on YouTube channel Ngandu TV, a subsidiary project of Ngandu Events, the company responsible for Ngandu Festival.
Now that the first episode has premiered, Rock the Boat producer Michael Kayunde told Confidente that they have identified the next performers but cannot reveal the names yet to build up more suspense.
"At the moment we are focused on pushing the current episode so that the masses get to see it. We don't want to give away the surprise element by announcing the next performers now already," he said.
Explaining more on Rock the Boat, Kayunde said the show is going to be in seasons; with each installment expected to have 10 episodes.
"Each episode will also have its own behind the scenes episode, to show our viewers what it takes to bring an episode to life."
The show was shot at the verdant Samsitu Campsite, a few kilometres west of Rundu while produced and directed by Kayunde and shot by Silas Film World and Hompa Sitentu from Black Cat Films.
"While the (Ngandu) festival is focused on providing a platform for Namibian artists and entrepreneurs mainly in the arts space, Rock the Boat is all about providing a platform to the aforementioned communities, further encompassing musical performances as the main theme".

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
El alma se serena es una obra de teatro de Juan José Alonso Millán estrenada en el Teatro de la Comedia de Madrid en 1968. Alonso Millán tomó el título del espacio diario de literatura El alma se serena, que era dirigido por el escritor y periodista Juan Van-Halen y que cerraba las emisiones de TVE desde 1966 hasta 1969.

Argumento
Consuelo es una joven provinciana preocupada por la vida que lleva Manolo, su novio, instalado en Madrid. Ante las dudas que la acechan, se traslada a la capital y allí descubre que el sujeto está plenamente dedicado a conquistar bellas mujeres.

Representaciones destacadas
 Teatro (estreno, en 1968). Intérpretes: Concha Velasco, Alfredo Landa, Rosario García Ortega, Josele Román, Julia Caba Alba, Ricardo Merino, Elena Arnao.
 Teatro (estreno en Barcelona, en 1969). Intérpretes: Licia Calderón, Cassen, Mercedes Borque, Pepe Ruiz, Ana María Simón.
 Cine (1970). Dirección: José Luis Sáenz de Heredia. Intérpretes: Concha Velasco, Alfredo Landa, José Sacristán, Margot Cottens, Josele Román, Xan Das Bolas, Erasmo Pascual, Emilio Laguna, Julia Caba Alba.
 Televisión (8 de septiembre de 1975, en el espacio Estudio 1, de TVE). Intérpretes: Fiorella Faltoyano, Manuel Galiana, Conchita Bardem.

Notas y referencias

 Crítica del estreno, en el número del 22 de diciembre de 1968 del diario ABC.

 Ficha de la película, en IMDb.

Obras de teatro de Juan José Alonso Millán
Obras de teatro de 1968
Obras de teatro adaptadas al cine
Obras de teatro adaptadas a la televisión
Obras de teatro ambientadas en Madrid
Obras de teatro ambientadas en el siglo XX

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
What killed the writer Mark Baumer?
The publishing industry's troubled relationship with writers
Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander Naughton
You likely haven't heard of him. He was not famous, and only 33 at the age of his death. Merely an aspiring writer and devoted environmentalist. Though the automobile crash that took his life back in 2017 did make a few headlines due to its extremely unusual circumstances. Even without those circumstances it was a notable event for me personally, since I had been following his relatively obscure blog. At the time the tragedy seemed to me emblematic of something significant just out of sight, although it has taken me years to even glimpse it through a glass darkly.
What's so interesting about this one man's death? Let's start with the fact he was a young writer who once taught a class at Brown University called "Everything is Fiction," and was later struck dead by a gas-guzzling carbon-monoxide spewing beast of an SUV while he was walking on the side of the highway during the 101st day of his attempt to cross America barefoot, an effort to raise money online to combat climate change, and all this, his death, the accident, occurred on the day Donald Trump took the office of the president in 2017. The collision itself happened just hours after Marc had posted a photo to his blog, the ominous www.notgoingtomakeit.com, of his bare feet next to yellow graffiti letters that read "KILLED" with an arrow pointing forward to his immediate future.
His death was reported in The New York Times, although the ironies, the layer of facts so darkly comic it was tragic, the extremely American nature of it all, were only hinted at.
What the headlines naturally focused on at the time of his death was his goal to walk across America barefoot to raise awareness and money for climate change. Eventually the documentary Barefoot: the Baumer Story came out in 2019. In the documentary, his girlfriend at the time described his motivation to go on the walk, which he would never complete, as "He sort of felt a kind of sense of urgency about changing his life in some way."
It's not made explicit in the coverage or the documentary, but from their perspective he seemed similar to Christopher McCandless from Into the Wild, another saintly young man dispossessed of the modern world who would eventually meet a tragic end.
There wasn't much mention of his writing by the press. Which makes sense, since it wasn't well known. At the time Baumer was mainly a self-published writer of experimental poems and novellas, although he had won a few awards for his poetry in literary magazines. He also had professional success locally at Brown University, where he taught a fiction class known for being weird and, paradoxically, for being without criticism.
"Mark takes a different tact than most professors," said Kelsey Shimamoto '13, who took Baumer's class last fall. She said students wrote profusely and explored new literature styles through reading assignments like Urs Alleman's "Babyfucker," but that the class never used the conventional method of collectively critiquing students' work. "We had almost no criticism for the entire course."
His gentleness comes across clearly through his videos in his attention to animals and inanimate objects. At the same time, there is an element of violence in the footage he took during his walk, like he is trying to force the worst of America onto himself, as if he could take it into his body and purge it. He wrote dark prose on his blog in those last few days, the ones just before his death and as Trump's arrive to the White House edged closer:
Remove your tongue. Burn it in a tiny aluminum can fire. Sew the crispy tongue back inside your mouth. Staple every piece of garbage you create to your forehead as a reminder you're alive in this historical moment of death.
I'm ashamed of the majority of white men of america to the point I want to remove all evidence of being a white male from my body.
The footage he took during his barefoot walk, of which is quite a lot, contains a level of mania and fatalism that comes across even before Trump won the election in November. Because it is a crazy thing to do to walk barefoot across America. Your feet swell up to enormous sizes, they become scorched by pavement.
Baumer had read the book Born to Run, about how humans had evolved to run barefoot over long distances. It convinced him he would be safe shoeless. I too once read Born to Run, and started running barefoot down the hills and grasses and through the streets of my sleepy college town, just like our ancient ancestors. I fucked up my knee and never fully recovered.
Yet none of this, the environmentalism, the bare feet, was how I knew him. Which I didn't, not personally. But before his death I was aware of him in that online way. There was a sense at the time he was traveling on a path parallel to me. Not the path of activism, but of literature and publication.
See, I had been looking for a literary agent. And when you do that, you start researching them, like finding old Youtube videos to see what they like and their tastes. And these strange Youtube videos kept popping up whenever I typed in a big-name agent into Youtube, a series called "I called an agent because I am an unpublished author and I need a massive book deal." It contained titles like "Mark Baumer calls Susan Golomb ," or "Mark Baumer calls Claudia Ballard." No one ever picked up his calls, because literary agencies don't, as a rule, answer their phones. He'd call, and then, in an odd voice not quite his own, riff into the answering machine. Sometimes he'd be in his room, sometimes at a busy intersection, sometimes in an aisle at Staples. The calls are like weird pieces of performance art. He'd start with: " SUUUUUSSSSSSSAAAAANNNNN!!!!" and eventually get to rambles like "Jonathan Franzen does words better than anyone!" (editorial disclosure: Susan Golomb, who is Jonathan Franzen's agent, along with many others, is also my agent). He'd often end with a litany of his own failures, like mentioning that "none of [my videos] have gone viral, they've literally gotten one or two views."
To be honest these videos contain a level of aggression are hard to dismiss entirely as performance art or quirkiness. But me touting some amateur outside diagnosis would, I think, be a too-easy dismissal of what Mark was doing, which was trying to reconcile himself to the publishing industry, processing it through the kind of online performativity that he'd come to make so much use of. At the time I found many of the videos jarring but also funny, because it's easy to demonize gatekeepers when you feel, as all unpublished authors do, that you are being ignored. Looking back at those phone calls now, published yes, but also years older, what I think is: you know, that agent probably double-checked the windows were locked that night.
The driving desire of a book deal crops up all the time in Mark's output and blog. But he couldn't get one. Instead, in an experiment, he self-published 50 books on Amazon in a year. These short books, which are mostly quirky poetry and prose, are almost a parody of the publishing industry, like he's saying "If I can publish fifty books then what is publication anyways?" The titles are things like A Weather Balloon on Saturn: A book about a weather balloon on Saturn and The Day I Died And Left America: A book about the day I died and left america.
One saw clearly his honest desire for publication when there was a rare drop in the performance mask. For example, when Mark Baumer responded in an interview to why he didn't give up his barefoot quest to walk across America, he answers seriously that:
Deep down I still hold out hope I can convince someone to give me a book deal for this. I don't know if I'm supposed to think that way or be honest about it but I've kind of thought this way my whole life. I keep doing things imagining they will lead to book deals and then I don't ever get book deals.
According to his father, Mark "wanted to be famous." For if the writer Tao Lin could be famous, also an author of quirky short books with strange titles like Eeeee Eee Eeee: A Novel, and whose persona has the same awkward and lilting tint of performance art, why not Mark Baumer?
It's easy to mistake a "hippie" demeanor for being easy-going, but Mark was competitive (all artists are). He played hockey in high school, then played baseball in college and his team made it to the Division III finals. He liked the hardcore encouragement of the Navy SEAL Youtuber David Goggins. I mean could you walk 1,000 miles barefoot, with your feet fucked up with tar and blisters, without being an extremely competitive person? Even if it's just with yourself?
All this is just to say that Mark didn't remind me of Chris Mccandless going to find himself in Alaska, ethereally non-materialist, verging on Christ-like. No, even before the accident, who Baumer reminded me of, in his own strange way, was Gatsby.1 Because when you're not in the publishing industry, you're out across the harbor in West Egg, looking at that green light bobbing across the waves. If only I were in East Egg. . .
Of course, maybe this was the lens I understood Mark through because I was looking out at the water in the same way. There's a whole host of people standing there on those docks, waiting to be published, and occasionally, just occasionally, one transcends, uplifted into The Green. People are standing there now. And it's easy for those inside the industry to forget that longing, that feeling of impossibility, and the unfairness of it all.
Most literary agents receives dozens, if not literally hundreds, of queries every single day. Of which they take on something like 0.0001% of everything that's sent. Writers must pitch hundreds of personalized query emails to get, at best, a handful or a dozen requests for full manuscripts, most of which are, in turn, never responded to. And agents face the same difficulties! For they must in turn submit to an editor, hoping to hear back. And that editor is in turn behold to some senior editor, and so on, forever really—there's not any individual to actually blame in this process. It's just kind of the system we have.
Yet if you ever publicly complain about the arbitrariness of the pipeline as a whole that leads from undiscovered manuscript to published novel, be aware that your fellow discourser is probably contemplating a variant of William F. Buckley's quip about why Robert Kennedy never appeared on the debate show, Firing Line: "Why does bologna fear the grinder?"
That's the easy rejoinder: maybe your work just sucks. Your bologna fears the grinder. Your prose doesn't have that magic publishable quality. It's an easy answer because it's protective. The system works. Like Leibniz's/Panglosses' idea that this is the best of all possible worlds (or Ayn Rand's defense of capitalism), it's a seductive belief because it switches is to ought. You are published, therefore you ought to be published.
As a published novelist now at least somewhat immunized from the response, let me say: the publishing process is brutally unfair. So many brilliant writers either almost failed, or did fail. Some killed themselves. Probably way more than we know. Of course there are the famous cases like John Kennedy Toole, who ran a garden hose from his car exhaust after just a handful of rejections of his manuscript A Confederacy of Dunces. When it was posthumously published due to his mother's efforts, it won the Pulitzer Prize. For a more contemporary example, consider Hellen DeWitt, a brilliantly intellectual heavy-hitter of a writer, who at some point called her agent threatening to commit suicide over some editorial rejection. Or consider Dow Mossman, who was put in a mental asylum after the publication of The Stones of Summer, which only sold 3,000 copies when it first came out in 1972 (although it was reissued in 2000, since the book has some of the most explosively lyrical prose ever written). Mossman worked odd jobs for the rest of his life and never published again. I could go on, dragging out literature's dirty laundry, but I think the point is made and everyone can come up with their own examples, both great and small.
I'm not saying Mark Baumer had some genius manuscript hidden away like Toole. Mark's writing strikes me sometimes shockingly good, but also uneven, sometimes over-the-top—but that's not my point. It just seems to me that the literary world breaks people sometimes. Psychologically. And not because they are driven insane by their beautiful minds, but because they are ignored, or feel they are ignored. And more often than not the people the industry breaks are not the elites with their Ivy League degree who come to NYC to intern for The Paris Review after their parent's helping checks clear. No, it breaks the outsiders who want in on the bright lights and no one told them the publishing industry, like almost everything in life, is all about who you know. When Mark got into Brown University, his father incredulously told him "Baumers don't go to Brown."
It's hard to think of a contemporary writer who's done the equivalent of working 12-hour days at a plastics factory, like Mark did. While the publishing industry has become much more diverse in many ways, its growing reliance on an elite MFA system to do the selective work for agents and editors has made it even less economically diverse than decades ago. I don't have an MFA, and only got published because I literally moved to New York City, which by itself wasn't enough, so I also had to get lucky with some literary awards. If I had stayed elsewhere, or moved but been unlucky with awards, I wouldn't have been published. Of this I am sure. And I personally know a half-dozen writers who are unpublished but produce high quality material, better than many of those who are published. So I am convinced that the number of great unpublished authors in America may rival the number of great published ones. If this is true, and nothing I have seen of the pipeline has convinced me otherwise, this represents a failure—from top to bottom.
To be clear: I have no idea what to do about this. I have zero specific proposals for industry change, no new best practices. Neither do I actually have any unique insight into Mark's personal motivations either. All I know is what everyone else knows. Mark had many sides. Like everyone's true self, he cannot be located from the extrinsic perspective. All we end up with is a cipher that reflects back our own subjectivity. The environmental activism that led to his walk was real. So were all his political convictions. And the material cause of what actually killed Mark Baumer is known—the woman driver of the SUV was charged with straying out of her lane on a straight road. When she hit Mark his body flew 120 feet. Yet it somehow seems to me that what loomed behind him as he walked those dangerous highways, pushing him on with its invisible pressures, was a vast system of indifference that we never discuss. It's a system that no individual can be blamed for, but that, collectively, maybe we all should be. And I'm not talking about climate change.
It's worth ending on the ultimate irony. If someone were to pitch one last book deal in the form of a novelized version of Mark Baumer's life, I suspect I know what the reply would be.
Too unrealistic.
Please consider donating to the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund.
Consider preordering an upcoming book of Mark's selected writing, edited by Blake Butler and Shane Jones, released tomorrow (6/22).
The comparison to Gatsby holds moreso now. For both would be killed, in a way, by automobile accidents.
Zia Haider Rahman
Jun 22, 2021Liked by Erik Hoel
Thank you for a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece. Much to consider there and plenty for good conversation at some point.
1 reply by Erik Hoel
Sean Sakamoto
Writes Thought Launcher ·Jun 24, 2021Liked by Erik Hoel
Thanks for your thoughtful essay on the shortcomings of the publishing process and the painful and frustrating process of seeking an audience and getting past the gatekeepers.
I've been writing for a living for most of my professional life. I've written columns, documentaries, novels (unpublished), scripts, screenplays, marketing copywriting and more. I've studied writing at school, in workshops, and attended conferences. It's fair to say writing has been at the center of my life.
Something I recognized in your piece about Mark Baumer was a sense of desperation and expectation that I see in myself and that I've seen in other writers.
The intersection of art and commerce is well-known as a source of frustration for writers. That's where agents and publishers live. But what is less discussed is the intersection of craft and the desire to be recognized, or even celebrated, that can torment writers. When we entangle craft with the need to be seen, we do so at our peril.
As a writer, I have the usual frustrations that come with craft. I'm always trying to find better ways to get a character into a scene or make dialogue feel more authentic. From sentence work to rhythm and endless editing, I strive to make my writing shine. When I'm fully dedicated to that pursuit, I feel great. A day at my desk spent on storytelling is a good day indeed.
But then there's the matter of how my work will be received. The matter of audience, money, accolades, the desire for recognition. Fantasies in the shower of speeches and notable mentions in the New Yorker and reviews in The New York Times. With every rejection I receive, there is a growing feeling of being left out of a conversation, and an endless, clawing need to be invited to the party, any party.
This insatiable desire is really not writing at all. In fact, it has nothing to do with writing. This is the fantasy of getting in and out of limousines. If there is any defense of this thirst for fame, it's the hope that it would provide an environment where I can dwell for even longer in the life of my fiction, and be less distracted by the mundane problems of making a living. But that's not really what drives it.
The more I feed the endless need to be recognized and praised for my work, the harder it becomes to write. The more desperate I feel about my life, scribbling away in obscurity with little or no external validation, the easier it is to fixate on agents and publishers as my only possible saviors. They are no longer people who sell products, they are the cure for what ails me. This state of helplessness is built on the premise that I'm miserable because nobody is reading my work, and that if I had literary success I would be happy. This is the fatal lie, I believe, that drives writers to early deaths.
I already know from my limited experience with success that I immediately want more success. And I also know from watching successful people that their recognition doesn't seem to have provided them the relief I seek either. Graveyards are filled with famous artists who died miserable. Hemmingway, David Foster Wallace, the list goes on and on. It might feel like I'm just one big book deal away from feeling whole, but that's not how happiness works. Does that stop me from daydreaming of success or wishing I would sell my work? No, not at all. But it does provide me with just enough self-awareness to know that my craving for success is my problem, not my lack of fame.
And the solution to that problem? For me, it's to once again get back to writing. Because when I write something that I think succeeds as a piece of art, I feel a satisfaction and a serenity that nothing else can provide. Writing, for me, is and always will be, its own reward. It's OK to want success, and it's OK to feel the frustration that comes with rejection. That's only human. But to confuse it with what it means for me to be a writer is to enter into a delusion that only deepens my desperation and diminishes my work.
So, in answer to your question, "What killed Mark Baumer?" I posit that his misconception that getting a book deal would kill a pain that comes from elsewhere is what killed him. I want things too, desperately, but shutting that voice out and getting back to work is all I've found that works.
3 replies by Erik Hoel and others
TopNewCommunityWhat is The Intrinsic Perspective?AboutAbout


text:
Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) ship with a null default password
Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Data Engine ship with a null default password on the administrative account sa. If the system administrator does not set the password, the system may be vulnerable to attack.
Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL) and Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) ship without a default password on the administrative account sa, permitting unauthorized access via port 1433 TCP/UDP. As long as the server has a null password, gaining access to the sa account is trivial. While it may not be enabled under a default configuration, MSDE ships as a component of several applications such as Microsoft Office 2000 and Tumbleweed's Secure Mail (MMS). Tumbleweed's Secure Mail (MMS) Releases 4.3, 4.5, and 4.6 all ship with MSDE enabled and are vulnerable under the default configuration. A patch has been released to address this vulnerability on these versions of MMS and incorporated into the release of 4.7.
If the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSSQLServer\MSSQLServer is defined, then you have MS SQL Server or MSDE installed. You should check to see if the sa account exists and ensure that a password is set. Instructions to change the password are located at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/ en-us/modadmin/html/deconchangingsqlserveradministratorlogin.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/ en-us/adminsql/ad_1_server_5un8.asp
An NT administrator has the option to install MS SQL or MSDE with integrated security or in mixed mode. If you select integrated security you are not vulnerable; however, when mixed mode is chosen, the sa account is created without a password. For more information about this selection and how to change the password in mixed mode, please see
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/techinfo/productdoc/2002/ en/access/AboutEnablingMixedModeSecurityInAnAc.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/sql
It should be noted that when installing Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (formerly MSDE), the application prompts for an sa password. If a blank password is entered, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 will display a warning but permit a blank password.
The CERT/CC is interested in receiving reports related to the "Kaiten" or "SQL Worm Spida" activity. If machines under your administrative control are compromised, please send mail to cert@cert.org with the following text included in the subject line: "[CERT#38873]".
Through the use of various procedures such as xp_cmdshell(), an attacker can execute arbitrary commands on the system with whatever user privileges the Microsoft SQL services are running under. This is typically a user with "NT Authority\System".
Set a password for your SQL Server on the sa adminitration account.
Following best practices, passwords should never be left at their default value. Ensure that a password has been assigned to the sa account on MS-SQL servers under your control.
Notified: November 26, 2001 Updated: November 27, 2001
The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.
Tumbleweed Secure Mail (MMS) releases 4.3, 4.5, and 4.6 all ship with MSDE enabled and are vulnerable under the default configuration. A patch has been released to address this vulnerability on these versions of MMS and incorporated into the release of 4.7.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q322336
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/modadmin/html/deconchangingsqlserveradministratorlogin.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/adminsql/ad_1_server_5un8.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/techinfo/productdoc/2002/en/access/AboutEnablingMixedModeSecurityInAnAc.htm
http://thompson.tumbleweed.com/NewKB/bulletin/UPFiles/sa-official.htm
http://www.tumbleweed.com/en/products/docs/mms/MMSRN.html
http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=7840
http://www.iss.net/security_center/static/1459.php
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/4797
This document was written by Jason Rafail.
CVE IDs: None


text:
Зале́сье — деревня в Вындиноостровском сельском поселении Волховского района Ленинградской области.

История
Впервые упоминается в Писцовой книге Водской пятины 1500 года, как деревня Заполье Залесье  в Михайловском на Пороге погосте Ладожского уезда.

Затем, деревня Залесье упоминается на карте Санкт-Петербургской губернии 1792 года, А. М. Вильбрехта.

На карте Санкт-Петербургской губернии Ф. Ф. Шуберта 1834 года обозначена деревня Залесье, состоящая из 24 крестьянских дворов.

ЗАЛЕСЬЕ — деревня принадлежит Казённому ведомству, число жителей по ревизии: 63 м. п., 65 ж. п. (1838 год)

На карте профессора С. С. Куторги 1852 года отмечена деревня Залесье из 24 дворов.

ЗАЛЕСЬЕ — деревня Ведомства государственного имущества, по просёлочной дороге, число дворов — 26, число душ — 79 м. п. (1856 год)

ЗАЛЕСЬЕ — деревня казённая при колодцах, число дворов — 26, число жителей: 78 м. п., 78 ж. п. (1862 год)

В конце XIX — начале XX века деревня административно относилась к Глажевской волости 1-го стана Новоладожского уезда Санкт-Петербургской губернии.

По данным «Памятной книжки Санкт-Петербургской губернии» за 1905 год деревня называлась Залисье и входила в Залисское сельское общество.

Согласно военно-топографической карте Петроградской и Новгородской губерний издания 1915 года в деревня называлась Залесье, в ней была ветряная мельница.

С 1917 по 1923 год деревня Залесье входила в состав Залесского сельсовета Глажевской волости Новоладожского уезда.

С 1923 года, в составе Чернецкого сельсовета Пролетарской волости Волховского уезда.

С 1924 года, в составе Вольковского сельсовета.

С 1927 года, в составе Волховского района.

В 1928 году население деревни Залесье составляло 240 человека.

По данным 1933 года деревня Залесье входила в состав Вольковского сельсовета Волховского района.

В 1958 году население деревни Залесье составляло 53 человека.

С 1960 года, в составе Волховского сельсовета.

По данным 1966, 1973 и 1990 годов деревня Залесье также входила в состав Волховского сельсовета.

В 1997 году в деревне Залесье Вындиноостровской волости проживали 2 человека, в 2002 году — 5 человек (русские — 80 %).

В 2007 году в деревне Залесье Вындиноостровского СП не было постоянного населения.

География
Деревня расположена в юго-западной части района на автодороге  (Заднево — Хотово).

Расстояние до административного центра поселения — 21 км.

Расстояние до ближайшей железнодорожной станции Пупышево — 11 км.

Демография

Примечания

Населённые пункты Волховского района


There are certain basic cosmetic improvements you will need to make to your home in order to be able to sell it through a realtor. Most, if not all, rooms in the home will need a fresh coat of paint to look their best. There may be issues with flooring, cabinets, or other areas of the home that you have grown used to, but a prospective buyer will heavily scrutinize.
The exterior of the home will need to be addressed, too. Curb appeal is critical to simply getting someone into the home for a formal viewing, so landscaping, paint, and other outdoor features will also need to be addressed.
If you're taking a DIY approach to these, you're facing expensive materials costs, plus a serious time commitment. If you plan on paying a contractor or handyman service, you may be saving some time but you'll be spending even more money.
However, when you choose to sell your St. Louis property as-is, you do not need to make repairs, freshen up paint, or worry about landscaping. FasterHouse will take your home in its current condition, saving you money, time, and probably headaches!
Beyond basic cosmetic repairs, there is a whole other world of larger repairs. Your home will need to pass inspection to be sold through a realtor, and that inspection often reveals damage that you didn't even know existed. Your roof may seem fine to you, but a realtor might recommend it be replaced in order to sell the house. That crack in your driveway that you've been ignoring? An inspector may want it repaired in order to pass inspection. Your carpet seems fine, that is until you move a couch while staging the home, only to notice that spill from a few years ago that you'd been covering up. Now you're staring at a bill for replacing the carpet in the entire room.
Those types of repairs can easily total several thousand dollars. Why spend that additional money when you could save it by selling your home as-is for cash?
Your realtor is going to take a percentage of the sale price of your home as their fee for helping to sell your home. And while it is certainly fair for them to do so, that doesn't make it any less frustrating to have to give away more of your earnings.
Furthermore, sales often include multiple agents, as the new owners of your home probably used a different real estate agent than you used to sell the home. So they will be taking a percentage as well. And most realtor-driven home sales involve negotiations, with buyers offering less than your original asking price or requesting that you, the seller, cover closing costs.
All of those are avoided in an as-is sale. We pay you directly, and our first offer is our best offer, so you don't need to worry about negotiations.
Another cost-saving benefit of selling your home as-is comes in the money you will save on bills. Since the process of selling through a realtor often takes several months, that means that you will be paying your mortgage and utility bills that entire time. Those bills can add up quickly, and are especially frustrating to pay if you have already moved into another home. By selling your house as-is, you'll have greatly expedited the sales process and, in turn, avoided all those additional bills.
If saving money and making money at the same time sounds like something you'd like to do, contact FasterHouse today via our simple online form or by calling us at 314-926-0660. We'll start you down the path to saving on repairs, paint, fees, and bills with an as-is sale of your St. Louis house.
PS We also buy As-Is houses in Jefferson county and St Charles county areas.


Tweens and teens aren't immune to the allure of treatments that aim to make their skin tanner, their teeth whiter, and their eyebrows shapelier. So what should parents consider before allowing their children to indulge in various techniques they think would improve their physical appearance?
First, parents should discuss with the child why they want to use a treatment and understand what he or she hopes to gain, says Victor Fornari, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in the US. "Teens don't need gel manicures and they don't need teeth whitening," Fornari says. "On a case-by-case basis, the parents have to use their judgment and decide if this is something they can support. The question is, is there anything that's potentially harmful?"
We asked the medical and beauty experts to weigh in, and here is there advice on 12 common treatments.
The most common piercing is, of course, the earlobe. But people also pierce the cartilage at the top of the ear and the tragus, the nose, the lip, the tongue, the eyebrow, the belly button and more.
"Body piercing is permanent," says Pamela Basuk, vice president of the Long Island Dermatological Society and a dermatologist in private practice in New York. While the jewellery can be removed, it leaves a hole, and maybe a scar, she says. "That's critical to me."
Cleanliness is paramount when choosing a piercing business, to avoid infections, Basuk says. Christian Reilly, a body piercer at Tattoo Lou's Selden, recommends only having piercings done with sterile, one-time-use needles, not with piercing guns, because needles part the tissue more gently.
Reilly prefers waiting until the teenage years for piercings other than earlobes. Teens have to keep their piercings clean. "If the child isn't mature enough to handle that part, maybe piercing isn't for them," Reilly says. If a tragus piercing gets infected, for instance, the infection could move to the nerve endings, he says.
The belly button shouldn't be pierced until the child is done "growing vertically," Reilly says. Otherwise, as the body stretches, "you end up with a horrible scar," he says.
He's not a fan of tongue piercing for anyone. "I make it a point to warn people and tell them the risks to their teeth," he says. "While you're sleeping, your body tries to spit it out. It wears on the enamel of the teeth. You could bite it and chip your teeth. If the back of the jewellery meets the gum line, it can tear it."
Howard Schneider, a pediatric dentist, echoes the warnings about piercings in the mouth area. "Don't do it," he says. In addition, because antibiotic creams can't be applied to the tongue, for instance, there's a higher risk of infection post-piercing, he says. "If you don't place it right, it can damage nerves and cause severe bleeding," he says.
Teens should avoid tanning salons "at all costs," says Adrienne Haughton, a dermatologist and residency programme director at Stony Brook Medical Center. Studies show that using a tanning salon prior to age 18 increases the risk of melanoma, Haughton says. Some people may feel it's safe because they don't get a sunburn, but that's a misconception, she says.
As for spray tans as an alternative for someone determined to be bronze for, say, a prom or other special event, "I actually encourage patients to have spray tans done," she says. But she reminds them that the spray tan won't protect them from the sun's rays, so they still need to use sunscreen outdoors.
Different options exist for different parts of the body, and children often start to express a desire for hair removal once they hit puberty, says Janet Trabosh, a physician's assistant who is associate director of the Bellavie Medspa at Stony Brook University. "That's when hair becomes an issue," she says.
Shaving is the least invasive, least expensive and least painful route for removing hair on the legs and underarms, and for boys shaving their faces, but kids should be old enough to be able to handle the razor without cutting themselves. They should consider using a multiple-blade razor because it can be gentler on the skin and should use shaving cream or other sudsy substance instead of shaving on dry skin, dermatologist Basuk says. They should never share razors, which can spread disease.
Hair removal creams also are pain-free methods of hair removal for the legs, as long as the cream doesn't irritate your skin, Basuk says. She suggests testing a small area first to make sure there's no allergic reaction.
As far as the face, threading is a possibility for smaller areas such as shaping eyebrows, Basuk says. Threading has been done in India, Turkey and the Middle East for hundreds of years and involves looping unwanted hair in a cotton thread to pluck it. The practitioner should employ a clean thread for each spot being threaded, and also between customers, Basuk says.
Waxing is another option for most body parts, including the back. Heated wax is applied and covered by a paper that, when yanked off, pulls the hairs out, which can hurt. Kids using acne medication or other skin-care medication should check with their doctor prior to having areas waxed, Trabosh says.
The wax shouldn't be so hot that it burns the skin, Basuk says. Waxing can also spread infections such as warts from customer to customer if the practitioner is applying the wax with a stick and double-dips it into the wax between patients, Basuk says.
Waxing can cause temporary redness, irritation and sensitivity, and kids should stay out of the sun for several days before and after treatments to avoid unwanted pigmentation.
Laser hair removal is the most permanent option, as follicles are destroyed by the concentrated heat, Trabosh says. It usually entails six to eight treatments over the course of a year or more to complete and can cost hundreds. Laser zaps can feel like the snap of a rubber band, so the child should be willing and able to tolerate the discomfort. Parents should be sure their teens understand that the hair removal can be irreversible; for this reason Trabosh won't use lasers to shape eyebrows, for instance, because styles may change.
Most Australian states have laws that forbid a child under the age of 18 from being tattooed, with the exception of the Northern Territory. Alternatives for children include henna or other temporary tattoos.
"Henna tattoos are fine," dermatologist Haughton says. She recommends testing a small area of skin before doing a large tattoo to ensure the child isn't allergic to the henna. Also, henna tattoos fade away and aren't easily removed, so getting one means having it for several weeks.
Glitter tattoos are popular among younger kids and are easily applied and removed, says Lisa Formato, owner of the Darlings & Divas spa for kids in New York.
Teens need to be careful to keep false eyelashes clean prior to application to avoid eye infection from dirt or bacteria, says Steve Rubin, chief of pediatric ophthalmology.. They also need to be careful with the lash adhesive, and test it first on a small area of skin to make sure they aren't allergic to it. Know that the adhesives may contain formaldehyde or cyanoacrylate. While formaldehyde is a carcinogen, the amounts in the adhesive won't likely cause cancer, Rubin says. But the solution could cause a chemical conjunctivitis if accidentally applied to the surface of the eye, and, if the user is sloppy, the cyanoacrylate could even accidentally glue the lids together, Rubin says.
"The main hazard would be if they get the glue in their eye," Rubin says. Kids should also be careful not to stab themselves in the eye with any implement such as a tweezer that they may be using to place the lashes, he says.
Lashes should be removed at the end of the day. They can be reused, but should be stored in the container they came in, says salon owner Sandy Oringer. Using care when removing the lashes will avoid inadvertently tugging out real lashes as well. If mascara is desired, apply it only to the tips of the lash to avoid clumping.
Some teens go for individually applied lashes done at a boutique, where the same caveats regarding cleanliness and allergy testing apply. The person applying the eyelashes should be licensed to do so, says Joann Donnelly, owner of Little Lash Boutique. "Our youngest client is probably 16," Donnelly says. Her protocol is that teens need parental permission to have the lashes applied. The fake lashes "piggyback" on the natural lashes, Donnelly says, and grow out and shed with the natural lash.
The two concerns with gel manicures are the ultraviolet lights used to seal the gel, and the tendency of the manicures to dry out, thin or otherwise damage the natural nails, says dermatologist Haughton.
She recommends applying broad-spectrum sunscreen to the hands prior to a gel manicure or wearing UV protective gloves during the UV light exposure to reduce the risk of skin cancer and premature aging.
The tools used to remove the gel can thin or damage the nails, so she also recommends taking a "nail polish holiday" every month to give nails a chance to rehydrate and strengthen, applying petroleum jelly to the nailbed and cuticles during the time off. She says she recommends that kids and teens only get four gel manicures a year, perhaps only for special occasions. Make sure kids don't start peeling the gel polish off if it chips, which can damage the natural nail. Parents need to also consider the cost of maintaining the nails every couple of weeks.
Avoiding infection is the main concern. "It's very important not to shave within 24 hours prior to the procedure," Haughton says. Shaving nicks in the skin might allow an infection that would need to be treated with systemic antibiotics, she says. People should wash their legs thoroughly after the pedicure, and also should avoid shaving for two to three days post pedicure, says Jill Creighton, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Stony Brook University Hospital.
Creighton recommends using plastic liners in the pedicure tub that are changed between each user, and she recommends bringing your own instruments. Haughton agrees, and she even recommends bringing your own polish to avoid using brushes used on someone else and then dipped in the polish bottle. "To be a purist, that would be safest," she says. "You're recreating your own pedicure at the salon."
Whitening strips aren't safe for kids younger than 15. That's because adult teeth and roots are still forming, and it's not known how bleaching might affect their development, says Ron Kosinski, a pediatric dentist.
Once using the white strips, which contain a low percentage of peroxide, the teen should be sure to follow the directions on the package. They shouldn't leave the strips on for longer than instructed, and should avoid swallowing the bleaching agent, for instance. Side effects can include tooth sensitivity.
Bleaching in a dentist's office is more dramatic and faster because the concentration of peroxide is higher, Kosinski says, but it's also more costly and most kids don't need it. "I always say to kids, 'Start off with the white strips,' " Kosinski says.
Kosinski says he doesn't want to see kids be overzealous, using white strips too frequently or using them at the same time as whitening toothpaste.
Studies are under way to see if hair dyes increase the risk of certain cancers, pediatrician Creighton says. Kids can also have an allergic reaction to hair dye, and it can be caustic to the scalp.
"It's best if you only colour your hair within three shades lighter than your natural colour," dermatologist Haughton says.
That's because changing it further requires more peroxide, which can damage the hair. "People don't realise that once you damage your hair, there's not a lot you can do. It has to grow out," she says.
Creighton favours the idea of going to a salon rather than teens doing it themselves at home. At-home box dyes are "very instruction dependent," Creighton says. Kids need to follow the directions for mixing and for how long to leave it in, and they shouldn't use it "off-label," for instance to colour their eyebrows. "I've had kids burn their scalp. They don't know what they're doing," Creighton says. "Licensed salons really know how to handle dyes better." If kids are going to dye at home, parental supervision is important, Creighton says.
"I would say they could start doing a touch of colour at 13, 14," says Sandy Oringer - pink cheeks, lip gloss. More makeup would be OK for a party or special occasion - adding mascara, eye pencil. "I still don't like them loaded with makeup," she says. "I don't want big royal blue eyes and false eyelashes. What would be a nice touch of mascara becomes a big blog of eyelashes. It takes away from their youth and freshness."
Cynthia Latorre, director of the Long Island Beauty School's Hempstead campus, is not a fan of hair straightening procedures such as Brazilian, Japanese or Keratin treatments or relaxers for minors. "Whatever product that straightens or changes the texture of the hair is a chemical," Latorre says.
Even if a process claims to be formaldehyde free, for instance, it may still have chemicals that release formaldehyde when they are heated, dermatologist Basuk says. Because the processes use heat applied through a straightening iron, the carcinogen can be released, Basuk says. Parents should research the ingredients in the formula they choose, she says.
The processes work by breaking the bonds of the hair shaft to straighten it, Basuk says. That's not as much of a problem as the chemical ingredients, she says, though repeated treatments can cause hair to become brittle.
"I don't do anybody under 13 years old," says salon owner Judy Abreu, and parents must sign a waiver, she says.
Parents also have to consider the costs of the processes, which can run into hundreds of dollars.
Most kids who come to her salon are more interested in extensions to add a streak of colour to their hair rather than whole-head extensions that add to the length, says Beautiful People owner Abreu.
Adding a neon streak, for instance, only entails attaching a couple of strands of extensions. Adding a whole head of hair lengthening extensions costs $150 or so a bundle, and several bundles may be necessary depending on the client's hair. Extensions can stay in for several months.
Parents should ask about what kind of bond is being used to attach the extension. "My suggestion is beaded extensions," she says. A less expensive alternative may be clip-on extensions that are taken on and off at will and can be purchased at beauty product stores.
"Hair extensions are pretty safe," dermatologist Basuk says. "As long as it doesn't create tension on the roots."