Reliable iPhone leaker Sonny Dickson just shared new design schematics for the upcoming iPhone. The most interesting thing is that the leak clearly shows a spot on the rear of the device for the Touch ID sensor. Rumor has it that Apple is going to release three new devices in September — upgraded versions of the iPhone 7 with better specs, and a brand new phone with a new form factor.… Read More
We see a ton of deals on affordable Bluetooth earbuds, but if you’ve been waiting for a solid discount on noise-cancelling on-ears before you cut the cord, you’re in luck today.
North Korea is a weird country. Heck, so is the United States of America. But the USA doesn’t play creepy, Blade Runner-like Theremin music in the nation’s capital each morning just after dawn. North Korea does.
Listen, scientists. I appreciate what you do, and boy I sure do love that evidence-based pursuit of knowledge, but did you have to make mutant wasps? Did you?
Marvel has announced the much-anticipated soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and it looks like James Gunn and the Guardians crew have outdone themselves, with an impressive and eclectic set list that truly earns the name “Awesome Mix.”
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By Jeffrey Lazarus, Georgia State University
The past month has been fun for me.
Not only am I a political scientist who researches Congress and congressional elections, but I also live in Georgia’s 6th House district, which has been the focus of national attention for the past month or so. On April 18, the district held a special election to replace Tom Price, who left the House to become Secretary of Health and Human Services.
The election was held under an unusual format known as a “jungle primary” in which all candidates appear on the same ballot. In this format, if one candidate gets 50 percent of the vote, he or she wins the election outright. If not, the top two candidates appear in a runoff election.
The frontrunner, Democrat Jon Ossoff, fell just short of the threshold. He won approximately 48.6 percent of the vote, and will face the second place finisher Republican Karen Handel, who got almost 20 percent of the vote, in the runoff on June 20.
At first glance, the Georgia 6th appears to be a solidly Republican district. It is located in the northern part of the Atlanta metro area, and consists of a diverse group of neighborhoods in parts of three counties. Cobb county is suburban, majority white and strongly Republican. DeKalb county is more urban in nature, strongly African American and leans Democrat. Fulton, the same county where most of Atlanta lies, is also urban, but more evenly balanced politically.
In the past, the district has leaned strongly Republican. It hasn’t elected a Democrat to the House of Representatives since the Carter administration, and it was Newt Gingrich’s district when he was Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. Republican Mitt Romney won 60.8 percent of the district’s voters in the 2012 presidential election, and more recently Tom Price got 61.6 percent of the vote and won reelection to the House by 23 points.
But even from the beginning of the special election campaigns, there were signs that the district is changing. For one, Price’s vote margin from last November is a bit deceiving. His Democratic opponent spent zero dollars on the campaign and still managed to win 38.4 percent of the vote. He also benefited from the fact that incumbents always do better than challengers in elections because of their increased name recognition and media exposure. Scholars debate how much incumbency is worth, but most estimates put it at between four and eight percentage points. Either way, a Republican other than Tom Price has a handicap compared to Price running for re-election.
A second positive sign for Democrats is that even though Romney and Price ran strong in the district, this past November Trump only beat Clinton by 1.5 percent here.
Finally, presidential approval has a strong influence on down-ballot races like this one. Trump’s approval is low, hovering around 40 percent nationally.
Taken together, everything seemed to point to this race being tight, and that’s exactly what happened. Ossoff’s strong first-place showing is nice for Democrats, but not a true indication of where the district is, or what will happen in the runoff on June 20.
A much better indicator is the total number of votes for all Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively. And these numbers are pretty close. Ossoff was a runaway first-place finisher with 48.6 percent of the vote, but only because he locked up nearly all of the Democratic support in the district. All other Democratic candidates got less than one percent of the vote altogether. On the other side, the four main Republicans in the field split 48 percent of the vote between them. This means Georgia will likely be treated to another close election on June 20.
The outcome of the runoff is important for both parties, but especially for Democrats. The Georgia 6th is part of their effort to win a majority in the House in 2018. It’s not exactly a must-win district for Democrats, but failing to pick it up would be a bad sign. To gain a majority in the House Democrats need 25 additional seats. They currently hold 193, and 218 is a majority. In 2018, they will almost certainly target the 24 Republican seats where Clinton out-polled Trump in 2016.
The Georgia 6th is not in this category, but it’s close – again, Trump only won the district by 1.5 percent. And other conditions are favorable for Democrats here more than they will be elsewhere. Ossoff raised a staggering $8.3 million for a House race, and the Republican incumbent isn’t defending the seat. Democrats probably won’t see such favorable conditions in districts as moderate as this one.
On the other hand, it’s important to not read too much significance into the outcome of a single race. Rather than bellwethers, special elections historically tend to be determined by the same factors and influences as normal open seat elections. They just happen to take place at an unusual place in the calendar.
There’s a year and a half between now and November 2018. A lot of things we can’t anticipate now will happen in the interim and influence those races.
Jeffrey Lazarus, Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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You best start believing in ghost stories, Ms. Turner. You’re in another one!
Despite previously denying a return to the new “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, Keira Knightley is back! The actress makes a shocking appearance in a new international trailer for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.”
The thing about pirates is they’re fibbers, and Knightley sure proved that. So you know what that means …
The actress reportedly started filming for the first installment of the franchise when she was just 17, so it’s understandable why she’d want to walk away. It’s been around 15 years since then.
Perhaps she still has cursed Aztec gold on her, and that’s what’s keeping her around?
Whatever the reason, the return means Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp and Knightley are all reuniting in the film. And that probably indicates the script was good enough to get them there. Or, you know, the money was. (They are pirates after all.)
”Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” hits theaters May 26.
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Bill O’Reilly’s days appear to be literally numbered.
The Fox host’s rumored departure from the network could come as early as this week, The Wall Street Journal reported. Board members at the networks’ parent company are meeting on Thursday amid growing reports that O’Reilly sexually harassed multiple colleagues.
The New York Times revealed this month that Fox had paid at least $13 million in settlements from people accusing O’Reilly of inappropriate behavior. In the weeks since that report came out, the charges against O’Reilly have continued to pile up and scores of advertisers have dropped his show as a result.
Among the newest allegations are reports that O’Reilly, who has denied all claims, referred to a black female colleague as “hot chocolate.”
The final nail in O’Reilly’s coffin may be the loss of support from Rupert Murdoch’s two sons, James and Lachlan. According to New York Magazine’s Gabe Sherman, the two men have urged their father to drop the embattled longtime host.
Rupert Murdoch took over as Acting CEO of Fox News after the networks’ founder Roger Ailes left the company amid his own sexual harassment scandal.
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At jails and prisons around the U.S., inmates who seek medical care must pay a fee of a few dollars or more before seeing a doctor, dentist or other health professional. Now, a new report shows how these copays can restrict access to care for incarcerated people who often make just cents for an hour of work ― and nothing at all in some states.
A total of 42 states allow for some form of copay for non-emergency, patient-initiated visits with jail or prison medical staff, according to the report that the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative published Wednesday. Fees in most states range between $2 to $8 per appointment. In Texas, inmates must pay $100 per year for medical care. Federal prisons require a $2 copay.
These fees don’t apply to most indigent inmates and, thanks in part to a 1976 Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing “adequate” health care for prisoners, correctional facilities can’t deny care to inmates for lack of payment. Copays are also typically waived for chronic treatment, or jail or prison-mandated screenings.
In a world of rising health care costs, some people might wish they only had copays of a few bucks. Behind bars, however, inmates pay these fees with general commissary funds, which they also use to buy items like snacks, medicine, stationary and other supplies.
With prison jobs serving as the only source of spending money for many incarcerated people, the Prison Policy Initiative calculated what percentage of a monthly minimum-wage prison income an inmate in each state would have to spend on a single copay.
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas don’t guarantee prisoners any payment for their work, so it’s possible they’d never make enough money to see a doctor. In West Virginia, for example, the hourly minimum wage for a prison job is a mere 4 cents, meaning a $5 copay would cost an incarcerated person almost an entire month’s pay.
The Prison Policy Initiative also calculated the “free world” cost of a prison copay by assessing the total number of hours it would take an inmate to make that money in each state and comparing it to the state’s minimum wage.
Copays are just part of a broader program of fees that jails and prisons heap on incarcerated people and their families.
“They’re another way of nickel and diming people who don’t have anything,” said report author Wendy Sawyer, a policy analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative.
Although copays come at a huge cost to inmates, they provide very little in the way of direct financial returns to state correctional systems. For example, Michigan collected less than $200,000 on these fees in 2014, according to a Pew report, recouping just a tiny portion of its $300 million prison health care budget. The Michigan auditor general responded to those numbers by pressuring the state’s Department of Corrections to be more aggressive in collecting copays from inmates.
Corrections officials often cite copays as a way to save money because they discourage inmates from making frivolous requests for medical attention.
Jails and prisons tend to be filled with people “who have not put their health as a priority” and who may attempt to abuse sick call, said Brooke Keast, public information officer at the Nevada Department of Corrections. With a prison copay of $8, Nevada is second to Texas as the most expensive state for incarcerated individuals seeking medical care.
“If you don’t have guidelines, it’s a constant guess as to whether they’re really hurting,” Keast said.
“It’s up to the officers to make sure that the people who need to get seen get seen,” she added.
Making inmates tap into their limited funds to receive medical care may cut down on feigned illness in jails and prisons, but copays can also make such care cost-prohibitive for inmates in legitimate need.
“Correctional people may think it’s a deterrent for this annoying population who just wants attention, but in reality they probably have a lot of legitimate health concerns to be addressed,” Sawyer said.
Medical copays for incarcerated individuals have gotten increasingly popular as prisons and jails look for ways to cut costs and, in the case of privately run facilities, maximize profits. In effect, the goal of this system is to allow administrators to get away with providing less overall care to inmates, said Brad Brockmann, executive director for the nonprofit Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights.
“One of the few areas where correctional facilities have control over the budget is providing health care,” Brockmann said. “Somebody who doesn’t come in is somebody who isn’t costing them anything.”
The health of the prison population is worse on average — if not much worse — than the general public, so to have this in place in any prison is unethical.
But this approach may ultimately end up costing the prison health care system more by leading incarcerated individuals to put off routine preventive care, potentially until health problems get much worse.
“By the time they absolutely have to see a doctor, it’s way more expensive, way harder to treat and it puts them at greater risk,” Sawyer said.
Copayments can also compound existing inequities in correctional facilities.
Prison populations tend to be split into two tiers, explains the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights in a paper laying out its opposition to copays. On one end are inmates with families or support networks that have the means to provide them with spending money. Even these individuals may choose to forgo medical care if they decide the funds could be better spent on essential commissary items.
On the other end are inmates who are indigent or completely reliant on prison jobs for income. Many of them may not even consider using their funds on a luxury like a doctor’s visit.
All of these factors disproportionately restrict access to care for an already marginalized population not just of incarcerated individuals, but of those who tend to be poorer, less health literate and perhaps already less healthy.
“The health of the prison population is worse on average ― if not much worse ― than the general public, so to have this in place in any prison is unethical,” said J. Wesley Boyd, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard University and a member of the school’s Center for Bioethics.
Boyd co-authored a 2009 study that documented pervasive deficiencies in correctional health care. He says that our approach to public health policy, especially toward the prison population, continues to suffer from a lack of empathy.
“There’s a lot of sentiment in this country that there are undeserving people who are getting stuff for free that I have to pay for,” he said. “That applies to poor people in this country who are not imprisoned and it no doubt applies to people who are imprisoned. It’s just another way of stripping away rights.”
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