Crumbling American Dreams

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

Andrew Borowiec for The New York TimesThe demolition of the old Port Clinton Middle and Jefferson Elementary Schools in Port Clinton, Ohio.

My hometown — Port Clinton, Ohio, population 6,050 — was in the 1950s a passable embodiment of the American dream, a place that offered decent opportunity for the children of bankers and factory workers alike.

But a half-century later, wealthy kids park BMW convertibles in the Port Clinton High School lot next to decrepit “junkers” in which homeless classmates live. The American dream has morphed into a split-screen American nightmare. And the story of this small town, and the divergent destinies of its children, turns out to be sadly representative of America.

Growing up, almost all my classmates lived with two parents in homes their parents owned and in neighborhoods where everyone knew everyone else’s first name. Some dads worked in the local auto-part factories or gypsum mines, while others, like my dad, were small businessmen. In that era of strong unions and full employment, few families experienced joblessness or serious economic insecurity. Very few P.C.H.S. students came from wealthy backgrounds, and those few made every effort to hide that fact.

Half a century later, my classmates, now mostly retired, have experienced astonishing upward mobility. Nearly three-quarters of them surpassed their parents in education and in that way advanced economically as well. One-third of my classmates came from homes...

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OSHA reminds outdoor workers of dangers of heat-related illnesses

Today's post was shared by US Dept. of Labor and comes from www.mywesttexas.com

Fall may be close, but Texans continue to experience summer temperatures, including a recent string of triple-digit days.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is urging employers to emphasize the hazards of heat illnesses to their employees who work outdoors. The agency has launched a public awareness campaign amid the warm temperatures about the consequences, whether heat stress, dehydration, heat stroke or death, that extreme heat can have on those working outdoors.

OSHA is investigating the death of an oilfield worker in Big Spring in early June as heat-related. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in 2011, the most recent data available, Texas saw nine heat-related workplace fatalities and workers missed 600 days away from work due to heat-related illnesses.

Anthony Zacniewski, Health, Safety and Environment Director with Abilene-based Bandera Drilling, said rig moves were an issue during hot weather. Before the company built a comfort trailer in 2008, he said, there were four heat-related incidents.

"We have trained our personnel in hydration and breaks," he said by email. "During the extended hours of moving a rig, we bring out our comfort trailer. It is equipped with refrigerated air for cooling off. It is also stocked with water, Gatorade and fruit."

Since the trailer was implemented, he said, the company has not experienced one heat-related incident.

As part of its heat awareness campaign, OSHA is stressing three words: Water, Rest and Shade. Those working...

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GOP Still Embroiled In Intra-Party Split Over Govt. Shutdown And Efforts To Defund The Health Law

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from www.kaiserhealthnews.org

Some Republican governors are urging members of Congress to step away from the government shutdown threat. And while some GOP leaders are signaling that efforts to gut health law funding will not be considered in this fall's budget battle, rank-and-file lawmakers have opinions of their own.

The New York Times: G.O.P. Governors Warn Party Members In Congress Not To Shut Government

Worried about the potential impact on the fragile economies in their states, Republican governors this weekend warned their counterparts in Congress not to shut down the federal government as part of an effort to block financing for President Obama’s health care law (Martin, 8/4).

The Wall Street Journal: GOP Leaders Signal Health-Care Card Not In Play In Budget Battle

Two top House Republicans suggested Sunday that they don't plan to use the threat of a partial government shutdown this fall to demand a repeal of President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul. Many rank-and-file Republicans have pledged to block any bill funding the government for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 if it includes funds to implement the health-care law. GOP leaders, however, have appeared wary of using the health-care legislation as a negotiating tool as Washington nears another fiscal crisis (Peterson, 8/4).

Medpage Today: GOP Split On Plan To Kill ACA Funding

Hard-line conservatives are rounding up support to hold up the spending bill that will fund the federal government after next month unless money to fund the...

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Federal regulators emphasize safety at Nebraska grain elevators

Today's post was shared by US Dept. of Labor and comes from www.omaha.com

The big tanker full of corn rumbled into the Frontier Cooperative grain elevator in Mead, Neb., deposited a few hundred bushels into the underground receiving pit and was gone in less than five minutes.

The driver spoke with no one — the receiving, weighing and documentation are all automated via digital scanners at the handling facility about 30 miles west of Omaha, one of 13 in the farmer-owned cooperative's family of grain elevators.

And for farmers, time is money, especially at harvest time, when the trucks will be lined up onto County Road 10 to get the grain on the train. The corn is California-bound, where it goes to feed dairy cows. As for the soybeans, they ride the rails to pressing plants to be turned into soy oil, which Randy Robeson said is in about everything these days.

MONEY TALKS

Find the latest in local business and development, from who's saying what to what's going in at that corner, in the Money Talks blog.

“We are getting more done in an hour here than we ever used to,” said Robeson, Frontier Cooperative's general manager. “We can receive 1,000 bushels in 30 seconds and can load a 100-car train in 10 hours.”

It is all part of the nation's grain elevator system, one part of the world's most productive agricultural economy. Grain elevators are the concrete and steel sculptures found on rural roads all over Nebraska, the bins, tanks and silos where corn and soybeans are received, sorted, sometimes dried and eventually stored until...

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What To Say When Mom Or Dad Has Cancer

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from www.kaiserhealthnews.org

HOUSTON -- At any one time, an estimated 2.9 million children have a parent who has, or has had, cancer.

Dozens of studies show that many of these children experience worry and stress, but that good communication can ease their fears and isolation, even up to the point of a parent’s death. Still, figuring out what to tell the kids – and when – is not an easy decision, and many parents who have cancer get little to no advice from their doctors about how to handle it.

Two hospitals in Houston are tackling the issue with support groups for parents and children. The Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and MD Anderson Cancer Center work with The Children’s Treehouse Foundation to offer emotional and practical support for families dealing with the disease.

Martha Aschenbrenner, a hospice counselor at MD Anderson, says that a very natural response to a cancer diagnosis is to try to protect children by hiding the facts or keeping them vague. But she urges parents to tell their children what’s happening in age-appropriate ways. Whether Mom or Dad is going to die is usually one of the first things a pre-teen will ask, she says.

“The wrong way to answer the question is ‘No, no, I’m not going to die.’ Because you can’t promise that,” Aschenbrenner says. “A better way that also invites more conversation is: ‘That is not my plan. And I’m going to a hospital where they’re going to give me very strong medicine,...

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How to protect gay workers

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

IN THE politically charged election year of 1996 — the same year the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed both houses of Congress with veto-proof margins — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) reached the Senate floor and was defeated by a single vote.

Reading the tea leaves then, it might have seemed that employment discrimination against gay workers would become illegal long before 17 years would pass. It was same-sex marriage that seemed unlikely. But a nation that has evolved rapidly toward supporting marriage equality continues to drag its feet on workforce fairness. The rejection of ENDA, a version of which was proposed as far back as the mid-1970s, has become something of a ritual: The act has been introduced in every Congress since 1994, save one.

Recently, however, there have been promising signs. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved ENDA by a 2 to 1 margin, with support from all Democrats and from Republicans Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Especially in a year when the Supreme Court has overturned a key part of DOMA and civil rights groups have launched a major campaign for ENDA, that bodes well for the act’s appearance on the Senate floor in the near future.

In the meantime, President Obama could sign an executive order that would immediately protect gay and transgender employees of federal contractors from workplace discrimination.

Those contractors, which employ...

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Examples of risk factors for lung cancer include—

Today's post was shared by CDC Cancer and comes from www.cdc.gov

Risk Factors

Research has found several risk factors for lung cancer. A risk factor is anything that increases the chance of getting a disease.

Examples of risk factors for lung cancer include—

• Smoking tobacco and being around others' smoke.
• Exposures at home or work (such as radon gas or asbestos).
• Personal history (such as having radiation therapy or a family history of lung cancer).

We know a lot about risk factors, but they don't tell us everything. Some people who get cancer don't seem to have any known risk factors. Other people have one or more risk factors and do not get cancer. If a person has several risk factors and develops lung cancer, we don’t know how much each risk factor contributed to the cancer.

Smoking and Secondhand Smoke

Cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for lung cancer. In the United States, cigarette smoking causes about 90% of lung cancers. Tobacco smoke is a toxic mix of more than 7,000 chemicals. Many are poisons. At least 70 are known to cause cancer in people or animals. People who smoke are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer or die from lung cancer than people who do not smoke. Even smoking a few cigarettes a day or smoking occasionally increases the risk of lung cancer. The more years a person smokes and the more cigarettes smoked each day, the more risk goes up.

People who quit smoking have a lower risk of lung cancer than if they had continued to smoke, but their risk is higher than the risk for people who...

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