Category Archives: news

Ohio Governor Strickland Signs Umbilical Cord Blood Bill

On March 31, 2010, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland signed H.B. 102. The new law, which was sponsored by Rep. Todd Book (D, McDermott), requires the Ohio Department of Health to place printable information on umbilical cord blood banking and donation on its website. The Department of Health also will encourage health care professionals to provide the information to pregnant women.

H.B. 102 passed the Ohio Senate by a vote of 32-0 on March 24, 2010. The Ohio House then voted 97-0 to concur in the Senate amendments to the bill. Umbilical cord blood is an ethical and non-controversial source of stem cells that can be obtained with no risk to the mother or child. Stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood have been used to successfully treat over 70 diseases including sickle cell anemia, leukemia, and lymphoma. Unfortunately, most umbilical cord blood is currently being discarded after birth.

Banking cord blood for personal or family use with a private bank can involve significant expense. However, donations to public cord blood banks involve no expense for the donor.

“We are delighted that Ohio has adopted this important life-saving legislation,” said Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director of Ohio Right to Life. “By Improving public awareness about cord blood donation, this law should increase the number and diversity of cord blood donations and thus increase the number of patients who can obtain the match they need,” Gonidakis said.

The new law takes effect in 90 days.

Source:Ohio Right to Life, 4/1/10

Maryellen O’Shaugnnessy Hosted At Greene County Democratic Party HQ

The Greene County Democratic Party (GCDP) candidates hosted Maryellen O’Shaugnnessy at the GCDP Headquarters at 87 E. Main Street in Xenia on Tuesday 4/6/10. O’Shughnessy is unopposed Democratic candidate for Ohio Secretary of State in the May 4th primary election.

Pictured left to right with O’Shaughnessy are party Executive Committee members Mike Watters, GCDP Chair Don Hollister, Doris Totty, Jean Nixon, Mike Gardner, O’Shaughnessy, Jan Goodwin, Don Brezine, and GCDP Vice Chair Bill Conner. Watters is a candidate for the Ohio Legislature, Hollister for Ohio Democratic Central Committee, and Conner for U.S. Congress.

Scientists discover world’s smallest superconductor

Scientists have discovered the world’s smallest superconductor, a sheet of four pairs of molecules less than one nanometer wide. The Ohio University-led study, published today as an advance online publication in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, provides the first evidence that nanoscale molecular superconducting wires can be fabricated, which could be used for nanoscale electronic devices and energy applications.

“Researchers have said that it’s almost impossible to make nanoscale interconnects using metallic conductors because the resistance increases as the size of wire becomes smaller. The nanowires become so hot that they can melt and destruct. That issue, Joule heating, has been a major barrier for making nanoscale devices a reality,” said lead author Saw-Wai Hla, an associate professor of physics and astronomy with Ohio University’s Nanoscale and Quantum Phenomena Institute.

Superconducting materials have an electrical resistance of zero, and so can carry large electrical currents without power dissipation or heat generation. Superconductivity was first discovered in 1911, and until recently, was considered a macroscopic phenomenon. The current finding suggests, however, that it exists at the molecular scale, which opens up a novel route for studying this phenomenon, Hla said. Superconductors currently are used in applications ranging from supercomputers to brain imaging devices.

In the new study, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Hla’s team examined synthesized molecules of a type of organic salt, (BETS)2-GaCl4, placed on a surface of silver. Using scanning tunneling spectroscopy, the scientists observed superconductivity in molecular chains of various lengths. For chains below 50 nanometers in length, superconductivity decreased as the chains became shorter. However, the researchers were still able to observe the phenomenon in chains as small as four pairs of molecules, or 3.5 nanometers in length.

To observe superconductivity at this scale, the scientists needed to cool the molecules to a temperature of 10 Kelvin. Warmer temperatures reduced the activity. In future studies, scientists can test different types of materials that might be able to form nanoscale superconducting wires at higher temperatures, Hla said.

“But we’ve opened up a new way to understand this phenomenon, which could lead to new materials that could be engineered to work at higher temperatures,” he said.

The study also is noteworthy for providing evidence that superconducting organic salts can grow on a substrate material.

“This is also vital if one wants to fabricate nanoscale electronic circuits using organic molecules,” Hla added.

Collaborators on the paper include Kandal Clark, a doctoral student in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University; Sajida Khan, a graduate student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ohio University; Abdou Hassanien, a researcher with the Nanotechnology Research Institute, Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency’s Core Research of Evolutional Science & Technology (JST-CREST) in Japan who conducted the work as a visiting scientist at Ohio University; Hisashi Tanaka, a scientist at AIST and JST-CREST who synthesized the molecules; and Kai-Felix Braun, a scientist with the Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig, Germany, who conducted the calculations at the Ohio Supercomputing Center.

Scientists cannot figure out why type 1 diabetes is rising three percent every year

Back in 1890, about one American child out of every 100,000 died each year from type 1 diabetes. Fast forward to the 21st century and the number is as high as 24. Each year, scientists estimate that the number of deaths among children due to type 1, or juvenile, diabetes increases by three percent with no signs of slowing down.

Type 2 diabetes, the kind most often associated with obesity and excessive sugar consumption, is often referenced in media reports and medical journals as increasing at a dangerously high rate, but type 1 is rarely addressed despite the fact that it is rising at a similar rate.

Dan Hurley, an investigative journalist who was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1975, is compiling a report on his findings about the disease, noting that it is much more prevalent than people have been led to believe. Evidence is showing that, despite the widespread belief that type 1 diabetes is rare and develops from a genetic predisposition, juvenile diabetes is probably being triggered by environmental or lifestyle factors in a similar manner as type 2.

In his book, Hurley outlines five potential causes of the disease and its rapid increase. These include a lack of natural sunlight exposure, the destruction of natural skin pathogens that create immunity, exposure to cow’s milk at a young age, persistent exposure to pollutants and carcinogens, and the accelerated production of insulin-producing beta cells due to overall growth in height and weight averages among children.

Someday western medicine will catch up to the truth that the natural health community already knows: That drinking pasteurized, processed cow’s milk can promote autoimmune disorders such as type-1 diabetes.

Conventional medicine, as usual, remains entirely clueless about the real causes of type-1 diabetes (or even cancer or diabetes, for that matter). And because the medical system refuses to acknowledge the fact that environmental influences (chemicals, dietary choices, etc.) can cause these conditions, it is unable to offer any solutions for patients. So patients are simply put on a lifetime regimen of dangerous pharmaceutical chemicals instead of being taught real solutions for avoiding autoimmune disorders altogether, according to Health Ranger Mike Adams.

Another interesting comment by Adams is a reference to an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency in western society. The common cold, flu, and now type 1 diabetes all result from a deficiency of vitamin D, at least in part.

From Natural News, March 26, 2010

Tax Freedom Day 2010 Is April 9

Ohio Tax Freedom Day—the day on which Americans have earned enough money to pay all federal, state, and local taxes for the year—was celebrated yesterday. Today, the official Tax Freedom Day falls on the 99th day of 2010.

Americans will work well over three months of the year before they have earned enough money to pay the nation’s tax bill for the year, and they will pay more taxes in 2010 than they will spend on food, clothing and shelter combined.

This year’s Tax Freedom Day is one day later than in 2009, but more than two weeks earlier than in 2007. The shift toward a lower tax burden since 2007 has been driven by three factors:

(1) The recession has reduced tax collections even faster than it has reduced income.
(2) President Obama and the Congress have enacted large but temporary income tax cuts for 2009 and 2010, just as President Bush did in 2008.
(3) Two significant taxes were repealed for 2010 as part of previous legislation, the estate tax and the so-called PEP and Pease provisions of the income tax.

The shift toward an earlier Tax Freedom Day since 2007 is not necessarily cause for celebration. That’s because Tax Freedom Day does not count the deficit even though deficits must eventually be financed. Since 1948, when Tax Freedom Day was first calculated, the difference between what governments are spending and what they’re collecting has never been as great as during 2009 and 2010. If Americans were required to pay for all government spending this year, including the $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit, they would be working until May 17 before they had earned enough to pay their taxes—an additional 38 days of work.

This May 17 date for a deficit-inclusive measure is the second latest since World War II. Only in 2009 was it later, when an unprecedented budget deficit of close to $1.5 trillion produced a deficit-inclusive date of May 21, fully 43 days later than Tax Freedom Day.

Source: The Tax Foundation, March 30, 2010.

Eugenics in 2010: Obamacare Cost-Cutting Genetic Discrimination

In the March 31st edition of LifeNews, Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life, wrote how Obamacare further the eugenics the Left introduced in the United States through abortion.

Hawkins interest in the current health care reform stems from her infant son’s battle with Cystic fibrosis, an expensive-to-treat and fatal genetic disease. Obamacare threatens to ration top notch healthcare for children like her son.

The question is does she have any support for her concern?

The following quote is from her LifeNews article:

A week before the doomed healthcare vote, Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) admitted to the National Review Online that Congressional Democrats argued that passing his pro-life amendment which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion will result in more children and therefore higher healthcare costs. They’re saying: “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more.”

This argument isn’t new but in fact is the same old 1970’s argument that John Holdren (the President’s Science Czar) used when saying that the more people there are, the less food there will be. This 1970’s argument has been regurgitated in 2010 with a healthcare slant: the more people, the less healthcare available for you and me.

Democrats in Congress know that incentivizing abortions by making them cheaper and more accessible will lead to higher abortion rates costing less healthcare dollars and making those limited funds available for some other person.

When the state is involved in the cost of healthcare, it knows that it is dealing with scare resources and that rationing will have to occur. This fact has already been reiterated multiple times by President Obama’s Comparative Effectiveness Research Council appointee and brother to his Chief-of-Staff, Dr. Zeke Emanuel.

Emanuel admitted in The Lancet medical journal last January that cost-cutting measures in healthcare reform are merely “lipstick” and rationing will have to occur in any government healthcare system.

He even went so far as to describe his ideal rationing plan where those at the beginning and end of life would receive 2nd tier healthcare when scarcity develops. In the article, he further talks about his sense of “communitarianism” and how those who are unproductive members of society are a burden and healthcare dollars could be best spent elsewhere. Bottom line Message: We only want the “genetically” superior people and less is better.

To Dr. Emanuel, my son Gunner is an excess burden on society.

Yet, he has been appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Comparative Effectiveness Research Council, the body that will make “recommendations” to doctors as to how to treat their patients in the most cost-effective way.

Today, new advances being made with prenatal genetic testing aren’t for the benefit of the family, but for the destruction of the pre-born child within the mother. The ability to diagnose diseases such as Cystic Fibrosis, Down Syndrome, and others while the child is still in the womb means a greater chance a woman will be encouraged and pressured to abort, thus limiting that child’s “burden” on society.

It is shocking what you find if you Google search the phrase “cost benefit analysis of prenatal testing” and read the medical journal articles (especially those coming out of Europe on this issue).

Now that Obamacare has passed, will prenatal genetic tests eventually move from being voluntary to mandatory, in the name of cost-savings? Down the road, will abortions be encouraged by the state or even forced on those children who will have special needs or will need life-long medical care?

Further, what will happen to children to who are born with costly diseases? Will they receive the best medical care or just enough to “make them comfortable?” Today, in America, this rationing is already happening to many babies born with Trisomy 18 and 13, as parents have gone on the record proving medical doctors told them they had to think about “resources” when making the decision as to how to treat their children. Thankfully, the cases today aren’t uniform but the misjudgment of one or two doctors. What will happen if people like Dr. Emanuel are writing the guidelines of care for all doctors?

Let me offer some additional observations.

Obamacare as depicted above is a cost-benefit application of Darwin’s survival of the fittest, but one imposed by the socialist state. This is not much different than Hilter’s Darwinian-based eugenic program to create a superior Aryan race. The difference is not in principle but rather one of goal. Unlike Hitler, the goal of the socialist Left may not be creating the perfect race. Their goal may be more practical: Forcing on America one world socialism–their version of perfect economics and governance.

Now, that the courts and Left have declared abortion is a Constitutional right with many true believers, the Left funded by those like billionaire Soros and led by Pelosi, Reed, and Obama are seeking to further the original agenda of creating the Great Society by bankrupting the nation while promising to decrease the budget at the great expense of more innocent lives. (Remember, the reason for the Great Recession was over-indebtedness.)

The loud proponents of anti-discrimination it turns out are the most hideous of discriminators. They obstruct the right to life because they are fully prejudiced against any who they deem unworthy of it. Just as the CIA has been used to destroy uncooperative regimes, the Left uses courts and deceit to convince the masses that killing the unwanted is a right to the good life. Irresponsibility, immorality and killing is part of the Left’s definition of freedom. Freedom has thus been perverted for the benefit of killing those who may cost the socialist state too much money.

Yet, no one seems to question whether the genetic diseases of those like Hawkin’s son, Gunner, who will be discriminated against are preventable. That is, are they merely the result of genetic accidents or are they induced by a polluted environment, contaminated food, stress resulting from an unjust political economy, or other factors?
If the later, one solution maybe be in public policy that is based on a holistic view of the common good for all citizens rather than imposing ideological party or special interest agendas though piecemeal problem solving policies.

Most Americans Favor Repeal of Health Care Bill

Ramussen’s latest national telephone survey shows most Americans (54%) want Congress’ health care law repealed. Just before the passage of the legislation, the same amount of people said they opposed the law.

Repeal is favored by 84% of Republicans and 59% of unaffiliated voters. Among white Democrats, 25% favor repeal, but only one percent (1%) of black Democrats share that view.

Why do they want the onerous health care law repealed? Most believe the law will increase both health care costs and the federal deficit. Fifty-five percent think it will increase the cost of care. Sixty percent said it will increase the federal budget deficit. Moreover, 49 percent believe it will decrease the quality of health care.

Source: Ramussen Reports, March 29, 2010.

UNHRC hammers away at Israel again in series of resolutions

The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday approved a resolution calling for Israel to pay Palestinians reparations for loss and damages suffered during last year’s Operation Cast Lead. The 47-nation council did not call for similar payments by Palestinians to Israelis. The vote comes one day after the same UNHRC approved three more anti-Israel resolutions, with the US being the only member to cast dissenting votes on all three. One resolution on “grave human rights violations” by Israeli forces in the Palestinian territories passed by 31 to 9, with 7 abstentions. Another resolution called on Israel to stop building in the territories and uproot those communities now there was passed by 45 votes, with the EU supporting it and only the US opposing. The third condemned Israel for what it called violation of the rights of the people of the formerly Syrian Golan Heights. Also on Wednesday, the UNHRC website posted a report issued by a Libyan NGO which accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed during operations in the Territories. The report also accused Israel of engaging in “ethnic cleansing and massacres” against the Palestinians. “The most preposterous, ridiculous and horrendous of all lies can gain respectability at the UN,” responded Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. The Council was founded in 2006 after the UN Human Rights Commission had lost credibility for its obsessive focus on Israel. However, the new forum has continued that record, with more than two-thirds of its resolutions which have condemned human rights abuses targeting the Jewish state.

Source: IECJ News, March 25, 2010.

Public Perception of Political and Business Ethics

In the March AEI Political Report, a compilation of various polls of public opinion is presented to give a composite view of America’s perception of its current state of affairs. The Report includes perceptions about Obama, personal finance as well as economic trends, taxation, global warming, balance of power, the current international hot spots Iran, Cuba, and Afghanistan, job satisfaction, and even a parental do and don’t list.

In this post, ethics will be the focus.

The trend of public opinion about honesty in politics has has steadily declined since the 1940s. In 1948, Americans were asked whether it was almost impossible for a person to stay honest after entering into politics. Forty-eight percent (48%) agreed that it was. By 1997, 55% said it was nearly impossible to remain honest in politics. Twelve years later 55% said the ethical standards of Congressmen and Congresswomen were very low, while only 9% said they were high. Although the question was different, the perception of political corruption remained the same.

I wonder whether the 36% were too afraid to say what they believed.

The general public perception of business ethics didn’t fare any better.
Although the survey data did not provide a historical perspective like was seen above, it did reveal how low a view Americans have of business management compared to helping profession like nursing and law enforcement.

In 2002, Americans (34%) regarded CEOs more ethical than they did in 2009. In fact, the percent of Americans who regarded CEOs as ethical dropped to 22 percent. Maybe the Enron scandal was factor. Nevertheless, the figures also reveal that 66% American regard CEOs are scoundrels.

Compared to bankers, car salesmen, stockbrokers, politicians, HMO managers, and insurance sales people, CEOs are nearly saints. Of the lot, 12% of Americans said bankers were ethical. Less than 10% of American considered any of the rest as ethical.

These poll results tell us that Americans are willing to put up with both a corrupt system of governance as well as corrupt marketplace. Why?

Fee Increases Are Not A Budget Solution

by Representative Jarrod B. Martin

Ohio’s economic crisis has presented lawmakers with the unique opportunity to examine state spending, rein in costs and create a more efficient, effective government structure. However, many of Ohio’s leaders chose to maintain the tax-and-spend status quo by placing a heavier financial burden on the people of our state.

Instead of creating a sustainable state budget, Governor Strickland and House Democrats raised taxes and created more than 150 new fines, fees and penalties to support Ohio’s ever-growing government spending. Specifically, these fees will affect each and every Ohioan because they will be imposed on everything from court costs and birth certificates to real estate licenses and hospice applications.

One way the Democrats are nickel-and-diming their way to a balanced budget is through a $20 late fee for renewing your vehicle registration and driver’s license. Since October, 400,000 individuals have been forced to pay this late fee, which has fattened the budget by more than $6 million to benefit the tax and spend party that is in control.

In times of economic hardship, state government should shrink its spending to fit its means, not grab at constituents’ pocketbooks to feed its growth. For this reason, I cosponsored legislation to repeal this $20 BMV late fee on motor vehicle registrations, driver’s licenses and motorcycle endorsements. House Bill 428, introduced by Representatives Ron Amstutz and Terry Boose, has bipartisan support in the House and will help keep Ohio’s government accountable to the public.

It is my belief that the government should serve the people, not the other way around. The day we start squeezing petty dollars out of hardworking families is the day we should finally commit to cost-saving measures to rein in state spending. There is no excuse to justify robbing the taxpayers of money that could have been used to put food on the table or help pay their bills-especially when there are so many alternatives on the table.

Since the beginning of the General Assembly, House Republicans have proposed numerous bills that would streamline state spending, reduce Medicaid waste and audit state agencies. Most of all, these bills would hold Ohio’s elected officials accountable for their expenditures and ensure that each dollar spent has a dollar’s return. Together, our bills would increase government efficiency by saving the taxpayers more than $1 billion annually, which would not only put our state on track toward a balanced budget but also eliminate the temptation to raid the wallets of our constituents.

Ohio has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. It is long overdue that state leaders stop pilfering money from individuals who are just trying to make an honest living and provide for their families. As always, I will continue the fight for an accountable, efficient state government.