Lily Salter's Blog, page 1012

Shannen Doherty says insurance negligence allowed her invasive breast cancer to spread

In L.A. court Wednesday, "Beverly Hills 90201” star Shannen Doherty revealed that she has invasive breast cancer that she says went untreated due to a lack of insurance.

Doherty is suing Tanner Mainstain Glynn & Johnston, a business management firm who was tasked with paying out her Screen Actors Guild medical insurance premiums. According to the suit, the company neglected to pay her insurance premiums during 2014, so she was unable to visit a doctor during this time, as she normally would have done. 

When she finally got her insurance back this year, the actress discovered that she had invasive breast cancer that had metastatized to her lymph nodes.

“Plaintiff was informed that her cancer had spread during 2014 (when she was not insured),” the lawsuit continues. "Plaintiff was also informed that, had she been insured and able to visit her doctor, the cancer could potentially have been stopped, thus obviating the need for future treatment (including mastectomy and chemotherapy) that Plaintiff will likely have to suffer through now.”

The suit alleges another a series of other grievances, including "strange and unexplained" use of funds, overcharging of professional fees and negligence. "After gaining control of all of their clients' cash and assets, they find a way to lose it, sometimes by gross incompetence, sometimes by self-dealing and outright theft. Along the way, they habitually deceive their clients, going so far as to set up bogus transactions, to conceal their misdeeds, errors and omissions. The firm has hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme,” the suit claims. Doherty is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. 

In L.A. court Wednesday, "Beverly Hills 90201” star Shannen Doherty revealed that she has invasive breast cancer that she says went untreated due to a lack of insurance.

Doherty is suing Tanner Mainstain Glynn & Johnston, a business management firm who was tasked with paying out her Screen Actors Guild medical insurance premiums. According to the suit, the company neglected to pay her insurance premiums during 2014, so she was unable to visit a doctor during this time, as she normally would have done. 

When she finally got her insurance back this year, the actress discovered that she had invasive breast cancer that had metastatized to her lymph nodes.

“Plaintiff was informed that her cancer had spread during 2014 (when she was not insured),” the lawsuit continues. "Plaintiff was also informed that, had she been insured and able to visit her doctor, the cancer could potentially have been stopped, thus obviating the need for future treatment (including mastectomy and chemotherapy) that Plaintiff will likely have to suffer through now.”

The suit alleges another a series of other grievances, including "strange and unexplained" use of funds, overcharging of professional fees and negligence. "After gaining control of all of their clients' cash and assets, they find a way to lose it, sometimes by gross incompetence, sometimes by self-dealing and outright theft. Along the way, they habitually deceive their clients, going so far as to set up bogus transactions, to conceal their misdeeds, errors and omissions. The firm has hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme,” the suit claims. Doherty is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. 

In L.A. court Wednesday, "Beverly Hills 90201” star Shannen Doherty revealed that she has invasive breast cancer that she says went untreated due to a lack of insurance.

Doherty is suing Tanner Mainstain Glynn & Johnston, a business management firm who was tasked with paying out her Screen Actors Guild medical insurance premiums. According to the suit, the company neglected to pay her insurance premiums during 2014, so she was unable to visit a doctor during this time, as she normally would have done. 

When she finally got her insurance back this year, the actress discovered that she had invasive breast cancer that had metastatized to her lymph nodes.

“Plaintiff was informed that her cancer had spread during 2014 (when she was not insured),” the lawsuit continues. "Plaintiff was also informed that, had she been insured and able to visit her doctor, the cancer could potentially have been stopped, thus obviating the need for future treatment (including mastectomy and chemotherapy) that Plaintiff will likely have to suffer through now.”

The suit alleges another a series of other grievances, including "strange and unexplained" use of funds, overcharging of professional fees and negligence. "After gaining control of all of their clients' cash and assets, they find a way to lose it, sometimes by gross incompetence, sometimes by self-dealing and outright theft. Along the way, they habitually deceive their clients, going so far as to set up bogus transactions, to conceal their misdeeds, errors and omissions. The firm has hallmarks of a Ponzi scheme,” the suit claims. Doherty is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. 

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Rise & fall of the anti-Trumps: Why these GOP pretenders don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell

In the immediate aftermath of the GOP’s first debate a handful of winners emerged. In the first 3 post-debate polls, Donald Trump maintained his lead, though his numbers showed little movement. Surviving yet another supposedly campaign episode—his clash with Megan Kelly and Fox News more generally—he once again grabbed the lion’s share of attention. But there were three big winners in terms of percentage gain: Carly Fiorina, whose 3-poll average jumped 325% from 1.33% before the debate to 5.67% after, Ben Carson whose average jumped 115% from 4.33% to 9.33%, and John Kaisich, whose average jumped 80% from 1.67 to 3%. Since then, Fiorina seems destined for the main stage debate, Carson has surged to second place in Iowa, and Kasich has surged to a stastical tie with Bush in New Hampshire. Could these three winners be signs of hope for the GOP? Some in the pundit class might like you to believe that—especially when it comes to Fiorina and Kaisich. But Fiorina and Carson are both “outsider candidates,” non-career politicians, like Trump, whose rise might better be read as more trouble for the GOP. What’s more, they’ve all got major flaws, which haven't gotten much attention previously. Now that they've got some fresh wind in their sails, what better time to knock it out? To begin with: Fiorina is both a business disaster (“HP’s stock declined some 50% during Fiorina’s tenure while the overall market, as measured by the S&P 500, fell 7%”) and a double-digit political loser who tries, but fails, to combat the GOP's war-on-women reputation. Carson's a highly respected neurosurgeon who, as we’ll see, is viewed by many black Americans as having embarrassed himself and tarnished his legacy. Kaisich has a mediocre record as governor, and his cagey efforts to seem "reasonable" have turned both activists and donors against him, making his primary prospects poor. If they all sound lackluster at best, that’s because they are. So what does it say that they’re on the rise? Fiorina garnered the greatest buzz of all the non-Trump candidates with her performance in the "kiddie table" debate, so it makes sense to focus first on her. But she also deserves a much deeper look because of how much the GOP needs to push back against its well-deserved “war on women” image. When Fiorina announced her candidacy, Media Matters pointed out that promoting Fiorina as a “rebuttal” to the “war on women” narrative ignores the anti-women impact of her policies, citing her positions on the gender pay gap, the minimum wage, and access to reproductive health services. But her hostility particularly impacts working women, and reflects a broader antagonist attitude towards workers, as well see below. Relatedly, Fiorina claims to understand the populist anger Trump is tamping into. In a 2006 InformationWeek interview, talking about her time as CEO of Hewlett Packard, she said, “In the course of my time there, we laid off over 30,000 people. That's why I understand where the anger came from.” Of course she understands the anger: She caused it! Fiorina is Trump-like in her views of money and politics, too. Michael Hiltzik, one of the sharpest writers at the LA Times, also has a helpful summary of Fiorina's woefully sub-par record, not just as a failed CEO, but as a failed citizen—"she had failed to cast a ballot in 75% of the California elections for which she was an eligible voter"—offering the excuse that "I felt disconnected from the decisions made in Washington and, to be honest, really didn't think my vote mattered," even as HP spent millions lobbying and supporting candidates, while she and her husband "have made more than $100,000 in political donations personally since 2000," leading Hiltzik to conclude, "In other words, she believes in the political system, just not the one that non-millionaires have to use." A good overview of Fiorina's failure as a business leader can be gotten from a recent commentary in Fortune, "Carly Fiorina as a boss: The disappointing truth," by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at the Yale School of Management. Sonnenfeld first points out that it’s erroneous to cite Fiorina as the first woman to head a Fortune 500 company—citing much more substantive pioneers, starting with Katharine Graham, and followed by the likes of “Beechcraft’s Olive Ann Beech, Mattel’s Ruth Handler, Beatrice Food’s Loida Nicolas-Lewis, the Body Shop’s Anita Roddick, Martha Stewart, and Oprah Winfrey.” Figures like Winfrey, Stewart and Roddick indelibly shaped their companies. In sharp contrast, Fiorina took a company already shaped by its founders’ collaborative ethos, known as “the HP Way,” and viciously attacked, if not destroyed that defining ethos. “Fired in 2005, after six years in office, several leading publications titled her one of the worst technology CEOs of all time,” Sonnenfeld notes. “In fact, the stock popped 10% on the news of her firing and closed the day up 7%.” That’s one way to create shareholder value! A broader, more extensive picture can be found in a 2009 summary post at Media Matter's Political Correction site, although the post actually understates how damaging her record was—citing 18,000 workers fired, when Fiorina herself has admitted to 30,000. A few highlights from the record recounted there are: (1) The centerpiece of Fiorina's tenure at HP, the merger with Compaq, was described in a Fortune cover story as “a big bet that didn't pay off, that didn't even come close to attaining what Fiorina and HP's board said was in store." (2) Before the merger, the company was floundering under Fiorina, with a massive wave of 6,000 layoffs—after 80,000 employees had voluntarily signed up for cuts in pay and vacation time with the expectation of avoiding layoffs—and there was talk of her being fired, as noted by the Economist in September 2001:

She has had to warn repeatedly of disappointing results. In the nine months to July, HP saw its net profit fall by 82%, to $506m. The company has slashed costs and asked staff to volunteer for a temporary 10% pay cut.

(3) The merger was only approved by a razor-thin margin, as a result of unethical dealings by Fiorina to pressure shareholders for support. Sonnenfeld provides a succinct summary of the messier details collected at Political Correction, including how Fiorina used Deutsche Bank’s commercial bankers to pressure the purportedly independent Deutsche Bank fund managers to reverse their vote of 17 million shares against the deal. One thing Sonnenfeld leaves out: the SEC imposed a $750,000 fine on Deutsche Bank’s investment unit “for failing to disclose a material conflict of interest in its voting of client proxies for the 2002 merger.” (4) HP kept billions in profits overseas, to avoid paying US taxes:

By the end of its 2003 fiscal year, Hewlett-Packard Co. had "indefinitely" deferred taxation on $14.4 billion of foreign earnings, according to SEC filings, a move that helped lower its effective tax rate from the statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent to 12 percent.

Other companies did this, too, but HP went even farther, joining a smaller group of companies who knowingly circumvent US law (via Dubai, and other cut-out nests) to sell its products into Iran. Yes, Iran! Although HP began the practice before Fiorina took over, it flourished under her. In short, there’s more than enough in Fiorina’s record to sink three or four “anti-Hillary” dream candidates. But there’s so much wrong with her, it can be challenging to organize it coherently. Fortunately, there’s a cure for that. A deeply thoughtful, focused critique of Fiorina’s leadership tenure at HP, which should be required reading for any journalist covering her, comes from Craig Johnson's article in the Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, “The Rise and Fall of Carly Fiorina: An Ethical Case Study.” Johnson uses a framework known as the ethical leadership construct, and finds fault with HP’s board as well as Fiorina—a clear signal of a serious study, not a hit job. The ethical leadership construct has two main aspects: first, “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships,” and second, “the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making.” Fiorina’s clash with “The HP Way” figures prominently in Johnson’s account, so it’s worth noting that while Fiorina arrived during trying times for HP, which became her pretext for the attack, this was not the first time HP had known hard times. The concluding passage of a contemporary account in the Palo Alto Weekly, began thus:

Some have argued it is easier for a company to promote a strong corporate culture when times are good. And, conversely, that in rough times, companies don't have the luxury of adhering to core values. But those who lived through decades of the HP Way would disagree, pointing out that some of the most trying times in the company's history were also the times when the HP Way was demonstrated most clearly. In fact, Stanford emeritus professor Jerry Porras wrote in his book, "Built to Last," that a strong, almost "cult-like" culture is one of the factors contributing to the overall financial success of visionary companies.

Johnson describes Fiorina as an “ethically neutral” leader, according to the dictates of the construct, but in the end he questions whether this category is really valid. Fiorina’s focus on results, regardless of how they were achieved, had a truly toxic effect. They lead to billing practices at Lucent sales, where she served before HP, which included financing purchases by customers with no clear ability to pay—a variation on the subprime mortgage theme. When customers went under as the dot-com bubble burst, the results proved catastrophic for the company Fiorina had left behind:

Unethical sales practices were a major contributor to Lucent’s financial woes. By late 2002, 100,000 employees were laid off and its stock sank to $1. The SEC accused Lucent of improperly booking $1.1 billion in revenue in 2002.

In short, disastrous as Fiorina’s tenure at HP was, she’s fortunate that it distracts people from her even more destructive record at Lucent. But the broader point is that such a results-only focus is deeply damaging to a whole corporate culture, even when less overtly toxic. He explains:

The experience of Carly Fiorina demonstrates that, when it comes to moral management, there is no neutral ground. Unethical leaders actively promote immoral behavior; ethically neutral leaders foster unethical organizational climates through neglect.

This was Fiorina’s legacy. In the discussion section, he summarizes:

Fiorina acted as an ethically neutral leader who gained a reputation for being self-centered. She was perceived as lacking compassion, integrity, and humility. Her focus on the bottom line and individual rewards weakened the firm’s ethical culture.

It’s ironic that “character” used to be the conservative’s favorite club for bashing progressives, and crafting an individualistic narrative that downplayed or ignored systemic factors. Nowadays, its conservatives whose character defects are most glaring, and most directly related to the larger social problems we face as a nation. Compared to Fiorina, the problems with Ben Carson are relatively easy to grasp: He’s yet another example of a “black conservative” superstar who’s dramatically out-of-touch with the vast majority of black America—and thus the perfect vehicle for white conservatives to diss African-Americans as an entire people, while at the same time pretending not to be racist. What’s particularly notable about the “black conservative” superstar is his denial of racism, a central example of how his thinking reflects the white conservative audience he plays to, and how alien he is to the actual black conservative tradition, dating back to its origins with Booker T. Washington. While white conservatives seeking a “some of my best friends are black people” figure find this deeply appealing, everyone else should not: The fact that Carson is profoundly out of touch with the vast majority of people whose lives, concerns, hopes, fears, and aspirations he should be most in tune with makes him even more ill-suited to lead any broader polity. It's true that unlike others, such as Hermain Cain or Allen Keyes, Carson’s distinguished career as a neurosurgeon has earned him broad respect in the black community. But that only makes his recent emergence as a darling of white conservatives all the more painful in many quarters. In May, Pulitzer Prize-winner Cynthia Tucker Haynes analyzed the situation expertly in a piece bluntly titled, “Ben Carson Is In Danger Of Losing All Respect.” She began by noting that Carson has a diverse legion of admirers over his decades-long career as a brain surgeon, and rightly so:

His story is the stuff of legend, the awe-inspiring tale of a poor black boy in Detroit who overcame daunting obstacles and vaulted to the very top of his profession. Given that his profession was pediatric neurosurgery, black Americans were particularly proud. Carson, who was the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins attached at the head, stood as stark repudiation of invidious stereotypes about black intellectual capacity. His memoir, Gifted Hands, has been passed through countless black households.

But then she warns that Carson’s presidential run puts all of this at risk, threatening "to become his epitaph,” overshadowing all that he has achieved:

He will likely be remembered as the GOP’s latest black mascot, a court jester, a minstrel show. He’ll be the Herman Cain of 2016.

She notes that Carson has no chance of winning the GOP nomination, but is a darling of hardcore conservatives. It may be unfathomable why Carson is running, but it’s painfully clear where his popularity with the white conservative base comes from:

Carson catapulted to stardom in the ultraconservative firmament in 2013, when he addressed the National Prayer Breakfast with a speech in which he lashed out at the Affordable Care Act as President Obama sat nearby. Though the breakfast has a long history of nonpartisanship, Carson chose to criticize many of the policies that the president supports, including progressive taxation. That was enough to cause conservatives to swoon. Since Obama’s election, Republicans have been sensitive to charges that their small tent of aging voters has become a bastion of white resentment, a cauldron of bigotry, nativism and fear of the other. They want to show that their fierce resistance to all things Obama has nothing to do with race. That promotes a special affection for black conservatives who are willing to viciously criticize the president. As with Cain before him, Carson garners the most enthusiastic cheers from conservative audiences when he’s excoriating Obama, the most rapturous applause when he seems to absolve them of charges of bigotry. Why would Carson trade on his reputation to become their token?

There really is no good answer to this. “He grew up Seventh-Day Adventist, a conservative religious tradition,” Haynes writes, and he has adopted the white conservative view “that black Democrats give short shrift to traditional values such as thrift, hard work and sacrifice.” But then she points out that “Carson hardly represents the long and honorable tradition of black conservatism in America,” which has always “had a healthy appreciation for the reality of racism in America,” whereas Carson has compared Obamacare to slavery. More generally, she notes, “black conservatism has promoted self-reliance, but it hasn’t been a font of right-wing intolerance and know-nothingism.” And so we are ultimately left with an enigma. There is no clear logic as to why Carson would put his reputation so at risk. But the reason he’s as competitive in the race as he is? That much is crystal clear: It’s a powerful way for today’s crop of racists to portray themselves as totally free of racism. The more fervently they embrace him, the more they prove their claim is a lie. It is worth noting that before he became a conservative icon, Carson had some distinctly heretical views. In a 2009 interview with Mega Diversities, Carson said:

"The first thing that we have to recognize is that in the US we spend twice as much per capita for health care as the next closest nation…. The entire thing is completely out of control. The entire concept of for profits for the insurance companies makes absolutely no sense. 'I deny that you need care and I will make more money.' This is totally ridiculous. The first thing we need to do is get rid of for profit insurance companies. We have a lack of policies and we need to make the government responsible for catastrophic health care. We have to make the insurance companies responsible only for routine health care.

If this doesn’t quite put him in Bernie Sanders territory, it surely puts him to the left of Obama. Now, of course, he’s compared Obamacare to slavery. And conservative plaudits have followed. The day after the Prayer Breakfast speech in 2013, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial, “Ben Carson for President,” Two weeks after the Prayer Breakfast speech in 2013, a Media Matters post, “Ben Carson's Moment,” marked the unfolding dynamic:

Dr. Benjamin Carson is the latest in a long line of black conservatives -- from Clarence Thomas to Herman Cain -- relentlessly promoted and propped up by right-wing voices in the media. After Carson used a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of President Obama to trumpet conservative arguments about economics and health care, News Corp. properties rushed to anoint him as the newest political "star." Fox News and Fox Business hosted Carson eight times in the days following his speech, and he has been praised by Fox personalities as a courageous leader who is "saving America" and by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial headlined, "Ben Carson For President."

What made Carson “presidential” were two 1990s-era ideas Carson trotted out: medical savings accounts, and a flat tax. A year later, in April 2014, a Media Matters post by Oliver Willis ran down “6 Things You Should Know About Conservative Media Darling Dr. Ben Carson,” which remains a good introductory guide. Two tendencies appeared in these examples: First, Carson’s sweeping acts of moral judgment, reducing complex, contentious issues to simplistic matters of good versus evil. Second, his reflexive tendency to blame-shift, a key underpinning of all conservative victimhood narratives, also present in his invocation of slavery (as in “Obamacare, worse than”), a common thread in conservative blame-shifting narratives around race and claims of moral authority. Over time, Carson has absorbed more and more of conventional rightwing narratives, and repeatedly boiled them down into these two formulas. Good-vs-evil narratives are commonly focused around abortion, as seen most recently in the deceitful videos used to try to defund Planned Parenthood. Carson’s recent involvement produced a deep unexpected contradiction, when Dr. Jen Gunter, an OB/GYN and a pain medicine physician, revealed on her blog that despite his categorical condemnations of fetal tissue research, Carson had actually done such research himself, citing a paper he published in 1992 (“Ben Carson did research on 17 week fetal tissue”). The contrast between Carson’s sweeping dogmatic certitude and Gunter’s detail-oriented, nuanced view of complex issues can be vividly illustrated by quoting the first three paragraphs of her post:

Dr. Ben Carson, GOP nominee hopeful, told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that “There’s nothing that can’t be done without fetal tissue” and that the benefits of fetal tissue have been “over promised” and the results have “very much under-delivered.” Carson also said, “At 17 weeks, you’ve got a nice little nose and little fingers and hands and the heart’s beating. It can respond to environmental stimulus. How can you believe that that’s just a[n] irrelevant mass of cells? That’s what they want you to believe, when in fact it is a human being.” Dr. Carson, like everyone, is entitled to an opinion no matter how wrong, What he says doesn’t change the fact that fetal tissue  plays a vital role in medical research. For example it is being used to develop a vaccine against Ebola. Many researchers depend on fetal tissue to understand and hopefully develop treatment for a myriad of conditions from blindness to HIV. Without fetal tissue neurosciences research, something essential for the development of neurosurgical techniques, would be far less developed. Dr. Carson should be intimately aware of this fact.

When the Washington Post interviewed Carson about his research the next day, Gunter posted a followup, "Ben Carson has still not answered the right questions about his fetal tissue research," in which she wrote:

Defending his work, he told David Weigel, “If you’re killing babies and taking the tissue, that’s a very different thing than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it.” But the tissue he used was from an abortion. That is what the Materials section says. It doesn’t say when but it says what. That abortion might have happened 10 years before and it is true the tissue could have been retrieved from a tissue bank and so not obtained for his specific study, but how exactly does Dr. Carson think it got into the tissue bank in the first place? His response makes no sense at all.

The incoherence of Carson’s response was noted here at Salon by Simon Maloy:

I’ve read through Carson’s statement several times and I’m still not entirely sure what he is trying to say. Thankfully, I don’t seem to be the only person who is baffled by his attempt at explaining this. The Post’s Amber Phillips writes that Carson seems to be alleging that Planned Parenthood is performing abortions specifically so that fetal tissue will be available for medical research, but that’s an allegation that “Planned Parenthood has flatly rejected and isn’t proven by the videos.” At the very least, Carson is trapped in an inconsistency and he’s having a great deal of difficulty explaining it. And while that doesn’t make Carson look particularly good, his involvement with fetal tissue research and his tortured defense of it  also cause problems for the other candidates and conservatives who are trying to demagogue the issue.

The problem with trying to pretend science is on your side when it isn’t—which is part of Carson’s over-all appeal—is that it inadvertently makes your ridiculous anti-science claims subject to a stickier kind of scrutiny than anti-science liars are accustomed to dealing with. As Maloy goes on to observe, “It’s tough to make the political case that the donation of fetal tissue for medical research is un-American and potentially criminal when celebrated physician and conservative hero Ben Carson is complicit in the act.” But then it gets even worse, Maloy notes, as “Carson’s defense of his involvement with that research ended up turning into a broader defense of fetal tissue research and the role it has played in advancing medical science,” ultimately articulating “a compelling moral case for fetal tissue research, and it’s coming from a Republican presidential candidate.” Ouch! To misquote Talking Heads, “This is not my beautiful black conservative superstar.” No, not at all. In contrast to Fiorina and Carson, Kaisich is a tried-and-tested politician. His number one problem is that—contrary to the popular “base vs donor” narrative—his style of practical, let’s-get-something-done conservatism is no more popular with the donor class than it is with the activist conservative base. The signature—but by no means sole—example of this was reported by Politico:

Kasich’s temper has made it harder to endear himself to the GOP’s wealthy benefactors. Last year, he traveled to Southern California to appear on a panel at a conference sponsored by the Republican mega-donors Charles and David Koch. At one point, according to accounts provided by two sources present, Randy Kendrick, a major contributor and the wife of Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, rose to say she disagreed with Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid coverage, and questioned why he’d expressed the view it was what God wanted. The governor’s response was fiery. “I don’t know about you, lady,” he said as he pointed at Kendrick, his voice rising. “But when I get to the pearly gates, I’m going to have an answer for what I’ve done for the poor.” The exchange left many stunned. About 20 audience members walked out of the room, and two governors also on the panel, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, told Kasich they disagreed with him. The Ohio governor has not been invited back to a Koch seminar — opportunities for presidential aspirants to mingle with the party’s rich and powerful — in the months since.

While Politico framed this in terms of temper, it’s hard to imagine any tone Kasich could have taken to get that crowd to swallow his serving of “compassionate conservatism.” Conservatives today simply don’t believe in that anymore—well, except for Donald, perhaps. But he’s not a “real conservative” after all. But even if Kasich could somehow jump that impossibly high hurdle, there’s another problem he’ll have to face sooner or later, and that’s his decidedly mediocre economic record as governor. In June, the Columbus Dispatch reported, "Ohio’s economy strongest among Great Lakes states but lags U.S." Specifically, Ohio’s economy grew by 2.1% compared to 2.2% for the US as a whole last year. “Ohio’s growth rate was the 18th best in the country last year,” meaning a third of the nation’s governors can claim a better record than Kasich. But it gets worse. When it comes to jobs, Ohio is still well below its pre-recession high. As of May 2015, Ohio had just 96.4% of the jobs it had pre-recession, while the Midwest as a whole stood at 99%, and the national total topped 102.2%. Looked at another way, since Kasich took office, jobs are up 3.86% compared to 4.61% in the Midwest as a whole and 6.23% nationwide. As I’ve written about before Ohio under Kasich is mired in cronyism just like many other GOP-run states on the economic development front:

Months after after winning his gubernatorial bid in 2010, Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed his very first bill into law, replacing the state’s development department with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called JobsOhio that would “move at the speed of business.” Critics slam JobsOhio for a lack of transparency. Although nearly all of its revenue comes from state liquor profits, JobsOhio is exempt from public records laws, its annual disclosures to the Ohio Ethics Commission are confidential, and state ethics laws do not apply to it…. In its first year, JobsOhio also pocketed nearly $7 million from five private donors, but the Ohio supreme court later ruled the group didn’t have to release emails or records detailing the sources of those donations. JobsOhio has faced charges of political favoritism and pay-to-play. Its board of directors,

Donald Trump cited as potential influence in brutal attack on homeless Hispanic man

Two Boston men have been charged with assault after attacking a sleeping homeless Hispanic man and telling police that "Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported." The Boston Globe reports that brothers, Scott and Steve Leader of South Boston, cited the leading the Republican presidential candidate after they were arrested and charged on multiple assault charges, indecent exposure, and malicious destruction of property:

The Leader brothers were heading home after a Red Sox game when they approached a 58-year-old homeless man who was in a sleeping bag near the JFK/UMass T station. The brothers allegedly urinated on the man, punched him multiple times, and struck him with a metal pole. [...] The victim suffered a broken nose and bruises to his head and torso was taken to Boston Medical Center.

According to the police report filed in court, “Scott also stated Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported” and complained that he was only being arrested "because white people always are and never the minorities.” The brothers, 38 and 30, have both pled not guilty. This week, Trump released his highly anticipated anti-immigration plan after kicking off his presidential campaign with charges that Mexican immigrants are "criminals" and "rapists." Trump's plan called for the deportation of all undocumented immigrants, the building of a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and the revocation of birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants born in the U.S.

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Fashion’s toxic rules: Cara Delivingne’s just the latest to push back against super-thin, highly-sexualized ideal

You can regard this is as either a depressing affirmation of all the worst ideas you probably already have about the fashion industry, or you can optimistically choose to believe that maybe this is a sign — this time for real — that something's got to change. In a recent interview with the London Times, "Paper Towns" star and genetic jackpot winning model Cara Delevingne spoke out about just how toxic the fashion industry has been to her. "I am a bit of a feminist and it makes me feel sick," she says. She developed stress-related psoriasis and said that her reactions to the pressures of her work were "a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse.” And when she recalls the pressure she felt to pose provocatively while still in her teens, she declares, "It’s horrible and it’s disgusting. [We’re talking about] young girls. You start when you are really young and you do, you get subjected to …not great stuff." She claims the industry "didn't make me grow at all as a human being. And I kind of forgot how young I was. I felt so old." And she says that while she's already experienced sexual harassment in her new career as an actress, it's still "worse in modeling." Delevingne's comments echoed those of Miley Cyrus, who also talked this month about her experience as a very young person in a very punishing profession, telling Marie Claire, "I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on that show. I was made to look like someone that I wasn't, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn't on that show, it was like, Who the f__k am I?… When you look at retouched, perfect photos, you feel like sh_t." And if you look at any high fashion magazine or ad campaign, like Vera Wang's of earlier this year that featured a rail thin woman with legs that redefined the thigh gap, you'd have to say that the industry's ideal of beauty has become massively warped. In a blistering feature for the Guardian two years ago, former Australian Vogue editor Kirstie Clements admitted, "There was a period in the last three years when some of the girls on the runways were so young and thin, and the shoes they were modeling so high, it actually seemed barbaric." And she recalled that "When a model who was getting good work in Australia starved herself down two sizes in order to be cast in the overseas shows – the first step to an international career – we would say in the office that she'd become 'Paris thin.'" But other things seem to be improving. Spurred by Clements' frustration with the industry, three years ago, nineteen Vogue editors around the world pledged to "not knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder." Since 2012, Vogue cover models have included a broad range of body types, including icons like Adele, Lena Dunham, Serena Williams and Kim Kardashian. Earlier this year, the UK banned an Yves Saint Laurent ad because her ribs were so prominent and her legs "looked very thin." And France, meanwhile, joined Israel, Spain and Italy in issuing a ban on ultra thin models "whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is lower than levels proposed by health authorities and decreed by the ministers of health and labor." Agencies that violate the edict can face penalties and jail time. Starvation: Not actually a good look. Conversely, larger sized models like Ashley Graham have been stepping into the spotlight, and retailers — though certainly not the haute couture level — have begun heeding the demand for realistically sized clothing. We come in all sizes — including tall and thin. But when the pendulum swings to an extreme, it becomes unsustainable. And with tough, smart women like Delevingne calling out the damaging standards imposed on young and vulnerable girls and consumers demanding more diversity, it may finally be getting better. The message is clear — the definition of beauty doesn't have to be so painfully narrow.You can regard this is as either a depressing affirmation of all the worst ideas you probably already have about the fashion industry, or you can optimistically choose to believe that maybe this is a sign — this time for real — that something's got to change. In a recent interview with the London Times, "Paper Towns" star and genetic jackpot winning model Cara Delevingne spoke out about just how toxic the fashion industry has been to her. "I am a bit of a feminist and it makes me feel sick," she says. She developed stress-related psoriasis and said that her reactions to the pressures of her work were "a mental thing as well because if you hate yourself and your body and the way you look, it just gets worse and worse.” And when she recalls the pressure she felt to pose provocatively while still in her teens, she declares, "It’s horrible and it’s disgusting. [We’re talking about] young girls. You start when you are really young and you do, you get subjected to …not great stuff." She claims the industry "didn't make me grow at all as a human being. And I kind of forgot how young I was. I felt so old." And she says that while she's already experienced sexual harassment in her new career as an actress, it's still "worse in modeling." Delevingne's comments echoed those of Miley Cyrus, who also talked this month about her experience as a very young person in a very punishing profession, telling Marie Claire, "I was told for so long what a girl is supposed to be from being on that show. I was made to look like someone that I wasn't, which probably caused some body dysmorphia because I had been made pretty every day for so long, and then when I wasn't on that show, it was like, Who the f__k am I?… When you look at retouched, perfect photos, you feel like sh_t." And if you look at any high fashion magazine or ad campaign, like Vera Wang's of earlier this year that featured a rail thin woman with legs that redefined the thigh gap, you'd have to say that the industry's ideal of beauty has become massively warped. In a blistering feature for the Guardian two years ago, former Australian Vogue editor Kirstie Clements admitted, "There was a period in the last three years when some of the girls on the runways were so young and thin, and the shoes they were modeling so high, it actually seemed barbaric." And she recalled that "When a model who was getting good work in Australia starved herself down two sizes in order to be cast in the overseas shows – the first step to an international career – we would say in the office that she'd become 'Paris thin.'" But other things seem to be improving. Spurred by Clements' frustration with the industry, three years ago, nineteen Vogue editors around the world pledged to "not knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder." Since 2012, Vogue cover models have included a broad range of body types, including icons like Adele, Lena Dunham, Serena Williams and Kim Kardashian. Earlier this year, the UK banned an Yves Saint Laurent ad because her ribs were so prominent and her legs "looked very thin." And France, meanwhile, joined Israel, Spain and Italy in issuing a ban on ultra thin models "whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is lower than levels proposed by health authorities and decreed by the ministers of health and labor." Agencies that violate the edict can face penalties and jail time. Starvation: Not actually a good look. Conversely, larger sized models like Ashley Graham have been stepping into the spotlight, and retailers — though certainly not the haute couture level — have begun heeding the demand for realistically sized clothing. We come in all sizes — including tall and thin. But when the pendulum swings to an extreme, it becomes unsustainable. And with tough, smart women like Delevingne calling out the damaging standards imposed on young and vulnerable girls and consumers demanding more diversity, it may finally be getting better. The message is clear — the definition of beauty doesn't have to be so painfully narrow.

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Ben Carson takes immigration debate to insane new low, floats drone strikes at border

After drawing a larger crowd at his hastily announced Phoenix rally than celebrity presidential aspirant Donald Trump did back in July, neurosurgeon Ben Carson one-upped his rival by suggesting the use of drone strikes to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. Carson toured the border with controversial Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu today and according to Dennis Welch, who was covering the event for KTVK-TV Phoenix, Carson seemed to suggest that he supported drone strikes on U.S. soil in order to protect the border: https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... Tami Houey of KPHO reported that Carson further clarified his thoughts on drone strikes on the border, "The take home point is this. We have excellent military leaders," he said. "We need to employ their expertise because this is a war we are fighting. That's the bottom line." Carson previously suggested securing the border by use of drones in a World Net Daily interview last month:

This is a problem. It's a huge problem. And we've allowed it to become a political football, instead of solving it. Could we seal the border? Of course. We have all kinds of technology, including drones

Carson, who has surged into second place only to Trump in a recent poll, criticized Trump's plan to deport undocumented immigrants and build a massive wall at the border as expensive and unrealistic but did agree with the GOP frontrunner on at least one aspect of his extreme anti-immigration platform -- the need to revoke birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. “I know the 14th Amendment has been brought up recently, about anchor babies—and it doesn’t make any sense to me that people could come in here, have a baby and that baby becomes an American citizen,” Carson said at a Phoenix rally in front of 6,000 supporters Tuesday evening. "There are many countries in the world where they simply have recognized that and don’t allow that to occur."

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Watch 70 horrific instances of Fox News sexism in under 6 minutes

In case any of us needed further proof that Fox News is the foremost sexist news network of the moment, this supercut -- stitched together by the folks over at Media Matters -- is it. While most supercuts are engineered to make you feel, well, super!, this one leaves much to be desired in that department. Think: 70 (7-0) displays of sexism in under 6 minutes. Watch the clip courtesy of Media Matters below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEoWS...

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Monsanto has a new pesticide that manipulates genes. What could go wrong?

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Treatment-resistant “super lice” have taken over 25 U.S. states

"Superbugs" are bacteria that have become resistant to the drugs commonly used to treat them -- and in some cases, even the drugs used as measures of last resort -- spurring a growing public health crisis. "Super lice" are kind of like that, except they may be crawling on your scalp right now. According to new research presented at the 250th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society, lice populations in at least 25 U.S. states have become resistant to the over-the-counter drugs commonly used to treat them. These are those states:

Lice populations in the states in pink have developed a high level of resistance to some of the most common treatments (Kyong Yoon, Ph.D.).

"We are the first group to collect lice samples from a large number of populations across the U.S.," explained Kyong Yoon, a researcher withwith Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, in a statement. "What we found was that 104 out of the 109 lice populations we tested had high levels of gene mutations, which have been linked to resistance to pyrethroids" -- a family of insecticides that include permethrin, the active ingredient in many common head lice treatments. Michigan, for some reason that's yet to be worked out, was the only the state whose lice populations remained easy to vanquish. An estimated 6 to 12 million lice infestations occur each year in the U.S., according to the CDC, and that's only in children between the ages of 3 to 11. So the threat of "super lice" is certainly a worrisome one -- although Yoon is quick to point out while gross and annoying and itchy, the pests fortunately don't spread disease. And there do exist other chemicals that can still effectively fight head lice -- they just require a prescription. Of course, if we start over-using those drugs as well, there's no promising that we'll be able to keep staying one step ahead.

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Black Lives Matter activist strikes back against smear campaign: “Glenn Beck and Breitbart don’t give a sh*t about my race. They just want me to shut up.”

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The terrifying unanswered questions of the Ashley Madison hack

My bank cards keep getting hacked. It feels like every six months or so, I'll get a call or an email and my bank will tell me that my card has been "compromised." One time, someone used my card to pay a gas bill in Kentucky. I think another time it was some place in Texas. The last couple of times, the bank hasn't even told me what the specific problem was—just that some unknown entity reached into my account and tried to steal my money.

My response has mostly been to shrug my shoulders and get on with my life. I always get the money back, so it's no harm done, I suppose. The fact that my bank account—which, last I checked, was pretty important to me!—gets broken into all the time has not been especially troubling to me. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Everyone's had to deal with their card getting hacked. It's just the way things are now.

If I'd turned up in 1995 and told everyone that, two decades later, we would all regard such repeated assaults on our finances as a relatively trivial inconvenience, I'd have been thrown into a padded cell. But it's the truth. As a society, we have decided that the pleasures and conveniences of technology far outweigh the risks inherent in handing over vast quantities of private information to mostly unaccountable entities. We live in a world where entering your Social Security number into some random website's form is treated with the same level of introspection as giving your name when you're ordering takeout.

Essentially, we've all decided we don't really care—or that it's too difficult to do anything about it—and there's been little to change that feeling. The Edward Snowden revelations were hugely significant, but they didn't make us alter our behavior very much. (My own biggest response was to put a piece of tape over my computer's built-in camera.) The hacking of Target and Sony didn't give anybody much pause either.

The news that hackers have released a gigantic trove of data from the servers of infidelity enthusiasts Ashley Madison provides us with another chance to see how we really feel about this brave new world of ours. It's easy to laugh off this particular hack—the users of a super-skeezy website whose motto is "Life is short. Have an affair" do not immediately elicit sympathy—but that would be a mistake. Feeling untroubled about such a massive breach of privacy is as misguided as thinking that government surveillance is only a problem if you've "done something wrong." The point isn't the morality of the players; it's our loss of control over our lives. We can't function without the internet, so does everyone's tolerance of privacy invasion mean that the standards around our expectation of privacy have been lowered?

The hack raises all sorts of questions for the media. Should journalists comb through the files to see if there are any public figures in there? It was mostly defensible when they looked through the Sony files after they'd been dumped online, but what about something this personal? Some organizations are already posting about some of the revelations. Even though I can see a public interest defense of this, is this the kind of world we want to live in? If the media shows that hackers will be rewarded in this way, how will that impact future invasions of privacy?

News outlets have to do some work on answering these questions, because they're not going away. Hacking is the present and the future. For one, our governments are hacking us around the clock. Activists are likely to respond in kind, seeking to use hacking as a form of civil disobedience. What are reporters to do when one of those activists brings them information gleaned through such activity? What about when corporations are the target? What's a tabloid going to do when a hacker uncovers hidden evidence that a celebrity's been cheating?

And that's just one side of the equation. It's easy to foresee a situation when some unsavory hackers target journalists too. Reporters could find themselves blackmailed or threatened. What's a news organization going to do in that case?

There are obviously no easy answers to any of this. The media should not be in the business of suppressing information, but everybody has lines that they draw. Where are the lines now? It seems clear that nobody has the faintest clue, but both the media and the broader public are going to have to try and figure this stuff out. Today, it's Ashley Madison. Tomorrow, it's us. What are we going to do?

My bank cards keep getting hacked. It feels like every six months or so, I'll get a call or an email and my bank will tell me that my card has been "compromised." One time, someone used my card to pay a gas bill in Kentucky. I think another time it was some place in Texas. The last couple of times, the bank hasn't even told me what the specific problem was—just that some unknown entity reached into my account and tried to steal my money.

My response has mostly been to shrug my shoulders and get on with my life. I always get the money back, so it's no harm done, I suppose. The fact that my bank account—which, last I checked, was pretty important to me!—gets broken into all the time has not been especially troubling to me. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Everyone's had to deal with their card getting hacked. It's just the way things are now.

If I'd turned up in 1995 and told everyone that, two decades later, we would all regard such repeated assaults on our finances as a relatively trivial inconvenience, I'd have been thrown into a padded cell. But it's the truth. As a society, we have decided that the pleasures and conveniences of technology far outweigh the risks inherent in handing over vast quantities of private information to mostly unaccountable entities. We live in a world where entering your Social Security number into some random website's form is treated with the same level of introspection as giving your name when you're ordering takeout.

Essentially, we've all decided we don't really care—or that it's too difficult to do anything about it—and there's been little to change that feeling. The Edward Snowden revelations were hugely significant, but they didn't make us alter our behavior very much. (My own biggest response was to put a piece of tape over my computer's built-in camera.) The hacking of Target and Sony didn't give anybody much pause either.

The news that hackers have released a gigantic trove of data from the servers of infidelity enthusiasts Ashley Madison provides us with another chance to see how we really feel about this brave new world of ours. It's easy to laugh off this particular hack—the users of a super-skeezy website whose motto is "Life is short. Have an affair" do not immediately elicit sympathy—but that would be a mistake. Feeling untroubled about such a massive breach of privacy is as misguided as thinking that government surveillance is only a problem if you've "done something wrong." The point isn't the morality of the players; it's our loss of control over our lives. We can't function without the internet, so does everyone's tolerance of privacy invasion mean that the standards around our expectation of privacy have been lowered?

The hack raises all sorts of questions for the media. Should journalists comb through the files to see if there are any public figures in there? It was mostly defensible when they looked through the Sony files after they'd been dumped online, but what about something this personal? Some organizations are already posting about some of the revelations. Even though I can see a public interest defense of this, is this the kind of world we want to live in? If the media shows that hackers will be rewarded in this way, how will that impact future invasions of privacy?

News outlets have to do some work on answering these questions, because they're not going away. Hacking is the present and the future. For one, our governments are hacking us around the clock. Activists are likely to respond in kind, seeking to use hacking as a form of civil disobedience. What are reporters to do when one of those activists brings them information gleaned through such activity? What about when corporations are the target? What's a tabloid going to do when a hacker uncovers hidden evidence that a celebrity's been cheating?

And that's just one side of the equation. It's easy to foresee a situation when some unsavory hackers target journalists too. Reporters could find themselves blackmailed or threatened. What's a news organization going to do in that case?

There are obviously no easy answers to any of this. The media should not be in the business of suppressing information, but everybody has lines that they draw. Where are the lines now? It seems clear that nobody has the faintest clue, but both the media and the broader public are going to have to try and figure this stuff out. Today, it's Ashley Madison. Tomorrow, it's us. What are we going to do?

My bank cards keep getting hacked. It feels like every six months or so, I'll get a call or an email and my bank will tell me that my card has been "compromised." One time, someone used my card to pay a gas bill in Kentucky. I think another time it was some place in Texas. The last couple of times, the bank hasn't even told me what the specific problem was—just that some unknown entity reached into my account and tried to steal my money.

My response has mostly been to shrug my shoulders and get on with my life. I always get the money back, so it's no harm done, I suppose. The fact that my bank account—which, last I checked, was pretty important to me!—gets broken into all the time has not been especially troubling to me. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Everyone's had to deal with their card getting hacked. It's just the way things are now.

If I'd turned up in 1995 and told everyone that, two decades later, we would all regard such repeated assaults on our finances as a relatively trivial inconvenience, I'd have been thrown into a padded cell. But it's the truth. As a society, we have decided that the pleasures and conveniences of technology far outweigh the risks inherent in handing over vast quantities of private information to mostly unaccountable entities. We live in a world where entering your Social Security number into some random website's form is treated with the same level of introspection as giving your name when you're ordering takeout.

Essentially, we've all decided we don't really care—or that it's too difficult to do anything about it—and there's been little to change that feeling. The Edward Snowden revelations were hugely significant, but they didn't make us alter our behavior very much. (My own biggest response was to put a piece of tape over my computer's built-in camera.) The hacking of Target and Sony didn't give anybody much pause either.

The news that hackers have released a gigantic trove of data from the servers of infidelity enthusiasts Ashley Madison provides us with another chance to see how we really feel about this brave new world of ours. It's easy to laugh off this particular hack—the users of a super-skeezy website whose motto is "Life is short. Have an affair" do not immediately elicit sympathy—but that would be a mistake. Feeling untroubled about such a massive breach of privacy is as misguided as thinking that government surveillance is only a problem if you've "done something wrong." The point isn't the morality of the players; it's our loss of control over our lives. We can't function without the internet, so does everyone's tolerance of privacy invasion mean that the standards around our expectation of privacy have been lowered?

The hack raises all sorts of questions for the media. Should journalists comb through the files to see if there are any public figures in there? It was mostly defensible when they looked through the Sony files after they'd been dumped online, but what about something this personal? Some organizations are already posting about some of the revelations. Even though I can see a public interest defense of this, is this the kind of world we want to live in? If the media shows that hackers will be rewarded in this way, how will that impact future invasions of privacy?

News outlets have to do some work on answering these questions, because they're not going away. Hacking is the present and the future. For one, our governments are hacking us around the clock. Activists are likely to respond in kind, seeking to use hacking as a form of civil disobedience. What are reporters to do when one of those activists brings them information gleaned through such activity? What about when corporations are the target? What's a tabloid going to do when a hacker uncovers hidden evidence that a celebrity's been cheating?

And that's just one side of the equation. It's easy to foresee a situation when some unsavory hackers target journalists too. Reporters could find themselves blackmailed or threatened. What's a news organization going to do in that case?

There are obviously no easy answers to any of this. The media should not be in the business of suppressing information, but everybody has lines that they draw. Where are the lines now? It seems clear that nobody has the faintest clue, but both the media and the broader public are going to have to try and figure this stuff out. Today, it's Ashley Madison. Tomorrow, it's us. What are we going to do?

Continue Reading...