Not everyone is convined that global warming is anthrogenic. For another side to this story, please consult: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims (minority report from the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works); Climate Change Reconsidered (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change); An Experiment That Hints We Were Wrong on Climate Change (article from London Times); Earth’s Heat Source – The Sun (from Energy & Environment); Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural? (Buckeye Institute); and Climate Change: Sources of Warming in the Late 20th Century.
Archive for June, 2009
Text of New Jersey Budget & NJCU Funding
The full text of the 2009/10 NJ budget is now available. To see the state support for NJCU, go to this section on the Department of State and scroll to page D-332. It makes for depressing reading.
Summer Reading Lists
Don’t know what to read for the summer?(Luckily, we don’t have that problem; there is a stack of naval fiction, science fiction, and history awaiting us. Also, as we have for the past decade, we will re-read some classic works which we read as callow youths, but to which we now bring years’ worth of experience. This year we’ll be tackling afresh Plutarch and Thomas Paine. We recommend that everyone do the same. Re-read with fresh eyes.) This site, Rebecca’s Pocket, has over 100 links to various reading lists, from Stephen King: 7 Great Books for Summer to 10 Best Summer Cookbooks of 2009 to Independent Booksellers Pick Summer’s Best Reads. There are lists for everyone! Enjoy your summer reading.
New Jersey and Climate Change
Flooded coastlines, destroyed cranberry crops, longer summers, shorter winters, the dread spectre of annual droughts: these are but some of the scenarios depicted in two recently released government reports. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States examines how global warming will affect the various portions of the country; New Jersey is thoroughly examined in the chapter devoted to the Northeast. Another report, Coastal Sensitivity to Sea-Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region, shows the varying degrees of depredation which will occur along the coasts as sea-levels rise in different increments. The Union of Concerned Scientists presents its views in Confronting Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast. Read a recent interview with New Jersey’s state climatologist David Robinson as he discusses the changes global warming will inflict on the Garden State.(A Garden State no longer?) Other relevant reads include: How NJ Rose to #2 in US Solar Power; Sustaining the Garden State(this deals with the Sustainable Jersey program); and U.S. Awards Four Leases to Explore Wind Energy Off Jersey Coast. And do not forget to check the State of New Jersey Global Warming page.
Key Players in the Obama Administration
In concert with previous entries (here, here , and here) which have dealt with Obama’s advisers and appointees, the National Journal offers us Decision Makers on those important individuals within his administration. Biographical information as well as indicators of prior work in past presidential terms are included.
Status of Autism Legislation in New Jersey
The New Jersey Senate passed bill #S1651 which requires health benefits coverage for autism and related disoders. Having been previously passed by the Assembly, this bill winds its way back to that body for a second reading. For those interested in this reiteration, please consult bill #A2238. And do not forget to look at the Autism Legislation Database for bills from all the fifty states.
Health Insurance Reform
That there is something wrong with the healthcare industry in this country is obvious. We spend almost 1/6 of our GDP on healthcare, ranking us with such nations as Malawi, Nauru, Timor, and the Marshall Islands, and still millions are without coverage. There is no way a blog entry is going to cover every area of concern, but what we can do is point you, gentle reader, to some sites of importance which will inform our discussion of this topic. There are various remedies to this situation being floated in Congress; this site from the Kaiser Family Foundation allows a side-by-side comparison of them. Included on this comprehensive site are poll results, reports, histories, timelines, and testimonies. A great place to start looking. The Obama administration has HealthReform.gov highlighting their efforts on this topic. You will find a weekly video update on health reform as well as a plethora of reports. On this American Medical Association site, see Obama’s speech at its 2009 annual meeting as well as read a transcript of his remarks on health reform. This AMA site also presents its case for health reform. The Congressional plan getting the most scrutiny at the moment is the Senate HELP’s(Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee, chaired by Senator Kennedy) Affordable Health Choice Act of 2009. This 615 page document has been examined by the Congressional Budget Office, whose Preliminary Analysis should be read. The always reliable, non-partisan Congressional Research Service(essentially a private research branch of the Library of Congress) has issued some salient reports: Health Care Reform: An Introduction (April 2009); Unemployment and Health Insurance: Current Legislation and Issues (March 2009); Health Insurance Reform and the 111th Congress (May 2009); Health Insurance Coverage of People Aged 55 to 64 (July 2008); and Health Insurance: A Primer (January 2008). Other governmental reports: Paying for Health Care Reform (White House); Economic Case for Health Reform (Council of Economic Advisers); The Budgetary Treatment of Proposals to Change the Nation’s Health Insurance System (CBO); Financing Comprehensive Health Care Reform (Senate Finance Committee); and Expanding Health Care Coverage (Senate Finance Committee). Additional sources of information include: Health Insurance Mandates in the States 2009 (Council for Affordable Health Insurance); State Health Programs to Cover the Uninsured and Access to Health Care (both from the National Conference of State Legislatures); and Health Reform (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). A current, informative site in health care reform is found at the New York Times. Key Players: Health Care Reform and the similarly-titled Key Players in Health Care Reform Debate should be used by those of us who need a scorecard. And do not forget MSNBC’s Decoding the Health Care Debate – A Glossary. CNN’s What You Need to Know About Health Care Reform presents much information in a Q&A format.A couple of good articles to read: The Cost Conundrum(The New Yorker) and Slowing the Growth of Health Care Costs – Lessons from Regional Variation (New England Journal of Medicine).
New Jersey’s 2009/2010 Budget and Higher Education
Hearings are underway on the almost-identically worded Senate (S2010) and Assembly (A4100) proposed bills for this year’s upcoming budget. As far as higher education is concerned, some highlights include a 3% cap on in-state tuition and fees for institutions to qualify for federal stimulus monies (found on page 272 of S2010) and the establishmnet of a voluntary employee furlough program (page 168 of S2010). Review how much monies are being allocated to NJCU and look at the Office of Legislative Services analysis of the budget as it pertains to higher education services. And do not forget to peruse the Accountability Sourcebook 2009 from the New Jersey Association of Colleges and Universities.
Disparities in Women’s Health Care
This important report, Putting Women’s Health Care Disparities on the Map, from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the wide gaps in health care between white women and women of color. Many indicators of health(AIDS, cancer, diabetes, etc) and well-being(access to medical providers, coverage by health insurance) are scrutinized, and the results are tabulated by state. Here is what New Jersey looks like. Read this in conjunction with the 2008 National Healthcare Disparities Report.
TARP – Who Got What?
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, this Bailout Tracker traces which companies received monies from the various programs under TARP. The information can be sorted by company, program, money, or state. Find out what companies in New Jersey benefited from TARP. And speaking of TARP, here is the document outlining the Obama administration’s limit on executive compensation: TARP Standards for Compensation and Corporate Governance. Here is a related fact sheet. And please consult The Wall Street Journal Survey of CEO Compensation, sortable by company, industry, executive, salary, compensation, or incemtive. Compare that table to the one put out by forbes.com: CEO Compensation, which also gives a five-year tally of compensation. And from Business Week, we can peruse thousands of articles from multiplicity of sources on CEO compensation.
The Return of Captain Sully
The three-day National Transportation Safety Board hearing on Flight 1549 and its ditching into the Hudson River is currently underway. Among the documents released is an animation of the flight after it was struck by geese; this presentation is accompanied by selected comments from the cockpit voice recorder. Other documents of value: interviews with the flight crew; factual report of the group chairman; passenger questionnaires(part 1 and part 2); and transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. Watch this brief YouTube video of Captain Sullenberger and these videos from CNN. And follow this hearing via the New York Times.
Judge Sotomayor’s Published Writings
Thanks to Judge Sotomayor’s 173 page response to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questionnaire, we readers now have access to a great number of her writings(which were previously unavailable freely), speeches, and interviews. In addition, you, gentle reader, may go to the Second Circuit Court’s homepage, type in “Sotomayor” in the dialog box, and then view the hundreds of opinions she has written during her tenure.
CWA Tentative Agreement with the State of New Jersey
Here is a summary of the agreement from the CWA website. And please look at these reports or editorials from: Asbury Park Press, Cherry Hill Courier Post, Press of Atlantic City, The Star-Ledger, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and PolitickerNJ.
Obama’s Speech to the Muslim World.
Read the transcript of the speech; view a video of the speech as well. And read the reportage from the BBC, New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian.
Supreme Court Nominating Process
Try this site from the U.S. Courts which has some basic information and background material. A great place to look is Georgetown’s Supreme Court Nominations Research Guide which is replete with free links. The first resource mentioned in this guide is SCOTUSblog, one of the best ways of keeping up with the daily work of that Court. FindLaw’s Supreme Court Center offers, among other features, the opinions of the Court back to 1893. And please look at the Oyez Project which contains, inter alia, biographies of all the justices who have served, and over 5000 hours of digital audio of Supreme Court hearings back to 1955 along with transcripts of these arguments as well. An amazing resource. These recent articles are of interest: The Supreme Court, Critical Nominations, and the Senate Confirmation Process; Presidential Capital and the Supreme Court Confirmation Process; Changing Dynamics of Senate Voting in Supreme Court Nominees; The Effects of Information on the Accuracy of Presidential Assessments of Supreme Court Nominee Preferences; Choosing the Next Supreme Court Judge; Advising and Consenting in the 60-Vote Senate: Strategic Appointments to the Supreme Court; and The Regulation of Turnover on the Supreme Court. These CRS reports are also very useful: Proper Scope of Questioning of Supreme Court Nominees; Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary Committee, and Senate; Supreme Court Nominations Not Confirmed, 1789-2007; Evolution of the Senate’s Role in the Nomination and Confirmation Process: A Brief History; Supreme Court Nominations, 1789-2005: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, and the President; Speed of Presidential and Senate Actions on Supreme Court Nominations, 1900-2005; and Senate Confirmation Process: A Brief Overview.
A Day in the Life of the President
View this video and read the accompanying special features outlining a typical day in the Obama presidency.
You Are What You Eat
Did you ever wonder how much salt, fat, calories, and sugar go into your diet from fast food purveyors or restaurant chains? Wonder no more. Check out: Xtreme Eating 2009(subtitled Care for an Entree with Your Entree?); Time to Focus on Healthier Drinks; and Heart Attack Entrees and Side Orders of Stroke. Maybe this article – Comparison of Weight-Loss Diets with Different Compositions of Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates from the New England Journal of Medicine along with this editorial from NEJM – Weight-Loss Diets for the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity can provide some solace. Fruit and vegetables anyone?
Senate Hearings on Supreme Court Nominations
Today Judge Sotomayor began the initial steps in an exhaustive review of her credentials and worthiness by visiting with key senators from both major political parties. This informal procedure procedes the much more rigorous hearings she wil undergo later this summer from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Previous hearings are available online back to 1971.
BBC Interview with President Obama
In case you missed it, here is a full transcript of Obama’s interview with the BBC as he discusses the Middle East.
General Motors Bankruptcy Filing
Read the full text of the bankruptcy filing. More information on this can be found at this New York Times topics section. The Wall Street Journal also provides very complete coverage.
Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog 