Midday open thread: STDs soar as clinics close; gender wage gap real and can't be explained away
Today’s comic by Mark Fiore is The Orange Giant:
Eighteen days remain until the election. Click here to make sure you're registered to vote. In the majority of states, if you haven’t yet registered, you’ve missed the deadline. Below is a list of deadlines in the 23 states where there is still time to register, including the 13 where you can register on Election Day or don’t need to register.
A federal judge on Tuesday extended voter registration in Virginia until midnight tonight.
Alabama: Oct. 24 on line, by mail, and in person; California: Oct. 24 on line, by mail, and in person; Colorado: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 31 on line and by mail; Connecticut: Nov. 8 in person, Nov. 1 on line and by mail; Idaho: Nov. 8 in person; Illinois: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 23 on line; Iowa: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 24 by mail, Oct. 29 on line; Maine: Nov. 8 in person; Maryland: Nov. 3 in person; Minnesota: Nov. 8 in person; Montana: Nov. 8 in person; Nebraska: Oct. 28 in person; New Hampshire: Nov. 8 in person, Oct. 29 by mail; North Carolina: Nov. 5 in person; North Dakota: No registration required; South Dakota: Oct. 24 by mail and in person; Utah: Nov. 1 on line and in person; Vermont: Nov. 2 on line, by mail, and in person; Washington: Oct. 31 in person; Washington, DC: Nov. 8 in person; Wisconsin: Nov. 8 in person; Wyoming: Nov. 8 in person: Oct. 25 by mail.
What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- ‘Man of the World’: An interview with Joe Conason on his new book about Bill Clinton, by Armando
- What does it mean that the Philippines just dumped the U.S. and embraced China and Russia, by Ian Reifowitz
- Paul Ryan has three great ideas to improve Obamacare*, by Jon Perr
- Damn those dress codes! Young feminists are taking a stand, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Dear baby boomers: Success comes with more responsibility, not less, by David Akadjian
- Why will Hillary Clinton be a good president? She knows how to listen, by Sher Watts Spooner
- This is an exciting year to be a woman, by Susan Grigsby
- Book review: Earth in Human Hands, by DarkSyde
- The poorly educated made a poorly informed decision, by Propane Jane
- Selling fear … because they have no ideas, by Mark E Andersen
- Gerrymandering could cost Democrats the House in 2016. Why? Because it probably did in 2012, by Stephen Wolf
- Despite the polls, I am still uneasy about this election, by Egberto Willies
• As budget cuts force screening clinics close, STDs reach a new high: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that cases of chlamydia rose by 6 percent to 1.5 million in 2015, the latest available data. Gonorrhea cases hit 400,000, a nearly 13 percent increase, and 24,000 cases of syphilis were reported, a 19 percent increase. These diseases are curable, but gonorrhea is becoming resistant to antibiotics. The rise coincides with budget cuts in more than half of state and local programs for STD prevention. Officials reported that more than 20 health department STD clinics closed in a single year. Half of the estimated 20 million new STD cases infecting Americans each year strike people aged 15 to 24. Most of these cases go undetected and untreated, which places people at risk of severe health consequences, some of which are irreversible. The CDC reported that the deluge of STD cases costs the U.S. health-care system nearly $16 billion.
• Gender pay gap is real reports the Economic Policy Institute: The think-tank offers a “complete guide to how women are paid less than men and why it can’t be explained away.” Among the findings:
Asian and white women at the median actually experience the biggest gaps relative to Asian and white men, respectively. But that is due, in part, to the fact that Asian and white men make much more than black or Hispanic men. Relative to white non-Hispanic men, black and Hispanic women workers are paid only 65 cents and 58 cents on the dollar, respectively, compared with 81 cents for white, non-Hispanic women workers and 90 cents for Asian women.
• Germany will soon have the world's first wind-hydro farm supplying electricity even when there's no wind: GE Electric and the German construction company Max Bögl are teaming up to develop a wind farm that includes an integrated hydropower plant that can generate electricity when the wind isn’t blowing. Each of the four wind turbines will stand 584 feet above the Swabian-Franconian Forest and be paired with a water reservoir containing 1.6 million gallons of water. The four towers will be connected to one another by a channel that carries water to a valley with a 16-megawatt pump/generator hydropower plant. The turbines will generate electricity when it’s windy, says GE Reports, and the water will “act as a giant battery that will discharge and modulate output when it stops blowing.” Water will flow downhill to power the hydro plant, and when energy is plentiful the hydro plant will pump water back up the hill. Thus, the combined plant will be generating electricity all the time.
• Former RNC chief Michael Steele says he won’t support Trump.
• Sharona Coutts gives us a window into Texas’ publicly funded fake abortion clinics: The state’s "Alternatives to Abortion" provided $2 million in 2015 to these fake clinics just as Texas was working to shutter as many abortion clinics as it could. Expectations are that this year the amount has doubled.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin reviews Trump’s Al Smith Dinner bomb & continued cratering in the polls. Yet more sordid tales of Trump connections with Euro-mobsters surface. Josie Duffy Rice spotlights the worst DAs in America, facing the voters in November.
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