Hollywood's Child Star, Shirley Temple Black Dead at 85

by Nomad

The BBC is reporting the death of one of Hollywood's most famous child stars:

Shirley Temple, who has died aged 85, was that rare example of a Hollywood child star who, when the cameras stopped rolling, carved out a new career.

With her ringlets, dimples and precocious talent, America's "Little Princess", charmed audiences during the 1930s Depression.

Here's one of her signature tunes: Animal Crackers

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Tenn. School Features Drag Show to Pay for Field Trip to Washington

by Nomad

Heartland America may not be quite a narrow-minded and straight-laced as conservatives and the Religious Right would have us believe. Especially when it comes to a good cause. Here's an example from rural Tennessee.

Next Saturday Coker Creek Elementary School in Tellico Plains, Tennessee will be hosting a rather unconventional fundraiser. It will include familiar names in the community. The hope is to raise $1000 in order to send 27 of the school's sixth, seventh and eighth graders on a trip to the nation's capital next May. 

The event is called a "Womanless Beauty Contest." In other words, a drag show, ala RuPaul.

Gov. Rick Perry, Obamacare and The Morality of Rejecting Medicaid Expansion

by Nomad

Texas Governor Rick Perry's decision not to expand Medicaid, a provision of Obamacare that each state can accept or reject, will have serious consequences for the uninsured and the poor of that state. 

Here's a moral question for you:

Suppose you found that you possessed the power to save the lives of three thousand strangers, without doing anything except changing your mind, would you do it? Would you do it even if it required you to reverse a strong personal viewpoint or a core philosophy? Could any one of your personal beliefs really be so strong that you would allow the deaths of thousands and the suffering of many more? 

Those are the questions that the citizens of Texas should be asking their governor, Rick Perry.

The Cost of Perry's Resistance

In a recent article for the Dallas Observer, Eric Nicholson points out:

Governor Rick Perry's decision to opt out of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion has been well-documented. Billions in federal funds are off the table. More than a million poor adults won't have access to health coverage. Texas businesses will wind up paying an estimated $400 million in tax penalties.

Useful numbers, but none really captures the human toll of Perry's decision. A better figure for that purpose is 3,035, as in the number of people who will die as a result of Texas' refusal to expand Medicaid.

Nicholson cites a study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and CUNY School of Public Health. Admittedly this is a worst case scenario but even the best case scenario puts the number of people who will die at 1,840. That's not all.

Even for those who don't die, the outcome won't be good. The researchers predict that 184,192 Texans suffering from depression will go undiagnosed, 109,307 diabetics won't get medication, 40,562 women won't get mammograms and 62,610 uninsured individuals will have catastrophic medical expenditures.

Critics of the study say the study cannot be taken to prove a causal relationship between Medicaid expansion and lower mortality rates.

When the ACA was passed back in 2010, a requirement in the law required states to expand Medicaid for all households whose incomes fell below a certain level. A fairly generous level too. However in June 2012, the Supreme Court decided that states should be given an option to decide whether they wish to expand the Medicaid rolls. It could not be forced on the states by the federal government.

The Lone Star legislators in their wisdom then decided that expanding Medicaid was in the the great state of Texas was simply not going to happen. No way, Jose.

OSHA, Condoms and The Porn Industry: A Matter of Worker Safety?

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The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 : The History and the Song

by Nomad

The story of the Lawrence Mill Strike of 1912 has - like most of the history of the labor movement- received very little coverage in the mainstream media.  

With that in mind, I offer this summary of the events that occurred over one hundred years ago in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts.

History always provides both interesting parallels and contrasts to our own age. Before we look back, therefore, let's take a quick examination at our own times as a kind of reference.