Tea Party to Republicans: Shut Down the Government, or You're a Sellout

[The Tea Party has split the GOP into two separate groups, so that it is nonfunctional as a majority. The GOP keeps trying to hide this split but the result is that they can not come up with a majority for anything except Tea Party agenda items, which are so unrealistic that, in effect, there is no real majority IN ALMOST ALL LEGISLATION to vote for anything that resembles a passable law. This is my take and has been for quite some time. md]

 Tea Party to Republicans: Shut Down the Government, or You're a Sellout

BY JONATHAN COHN  The New Republic

 

The Tea Party movement got its start in February, 2009, when CNBC commentator Rick Santelli stood on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and went on a rant about government bailouts. But the movement didn’t really establish itself as a political force until that August, when conservative activists confronted Democratic lawmakers at town hall meetings across the country, in order to denounce health care reform.

Four years later, it looks like conservative rabble-rousers are at it again—only this time, they’re not going after Democrats who believe in Obamacare. They’re going after Republicans who won’t shut down the government in order to block Obamacare’s funding.

ThinkProgress has posted videos of three such meetings. In one, which you can see in the clip below, a constituent asks Republican Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois whether he is willing “to vote against any funding bill that includes funding for Obamacare.” The question draws strong applause from the audience. Schock says he shares the frustration with Obamacare, calling it “an extremely flawed bill” and supporting repeal. But shutting down the government, Schock goes on to explain, would be an extreme step—one that would have harsh consequences for average Americans. “If you’re going to take a hostage," Schock says, "you gotta be willing to shoot it.” Another attendee quickly quipped, “kill it.”

 

If you remember those raucous meetings from 2009, you’ll notice that these more recent exchanges aren't nearly as rowdy or hostile. And it's entirely possible health care won't garner much attention at other meetings, given all of the other topics (like immigration) for voters to discuss. But the tension between the base and party leaders over Obamacare is very real. Groups like FreedomWorks and Heritage Action are demanding Republicans refuse to authorize spending bills that don’t eliminate Obamacare funding. So are some high-profile Republican lawmakers, chief among them Senators Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. And it’s not making GOP leaders happy, for obvious reasons.

A series of new polls confirm that most voters disapprove of Obamacare, much to the chagrin of the law’s supporters. But a chunk of those voters aren’t happy because the law isn’t generous or expansive enough. They’d like to strengthen it, not eliminate it. When pollsters ask people whether they support repealing the law outright, majorities usually say no, particularly if it means allowing insurers to continue practices like denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. As for shutting down the government over Obamacare, even a poll sponsored by a Tea Party group suggested voters would hold Republicans, not Democrats, responsible if it came to that.

None of this should be surprising. Public opinion on Obamacare actually hasn’t shifted a whole lot since it became law. And while Democrats struggled to articulate a defense for the law in 2010, when they were basically justifying their votes, they seemed to have an easier time in 2012, when they could play off Republican proposals that would strip away parts of the law voters liked. (Greg Sargent has been following the polling, and adds some analysis from public opinion experts here.) The politics of the law could change, of course. But nothing in recent history suggests it will.

A few Republicans have denounced the shutdown push: It’s “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina said recently, echoing what several of his colleagues had already said publicly and many more had said privately. But Republican leaders, the ones in ostensibly charge of their caucuses in the House and Senate, are treading more carefully—because they know they could be the next victims of Obamacare blowback.

Look no further than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell has never said a kind word about Obamacare, famously united his Republican caucus around opposition to it, and has called for its repeal as loudly as anybody. But he hasn’t committed to the defunding strategy—and he’s getting all kinds of grief over it. It’s coming from his more conservative colleagues and it’s coming from his more conservative primary challenger, Matt Bevin. At a recent town hall meeting, Bevin challenged McConnell to take a position, saying “be a man.”

McConnell has only himself to blame for his predicament. Like other Republicans, he happily stoked anti-Obamacare sentiment on the right, knowing that it would produce both intense support and donations. But now, to borrow Steve Benen’s phrasing, that movement has turned into a Frankenstein monster leaders can’t control. It’s enough to make an Obamacare supporter who remembers August 2009—say, somebody like me—feel a little schadenfreude. But there’s no joy in contemplating another government shutdown, or the possibility that one of our major parties is under the control of extremists.

Health care reform will survive this August, just like it did four years ago. But the prospects for a functional government may take yet another hit.

Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at the New Republic.

Glass-Steagall now: Because the banks own Washington

The Glass-Steagall Act provided financial security for Americans and now is the time to revive the legislation. by Dean Baker for Al Jazeera  Dean Baker is a US macroeconomist and co-founder of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research.

A bipartisan group of senators recently put forward a proposal for new Glass-Steagall legislation that would restore a strict separation between commercial banks and speculative trading.

Anyone familiar with the ways of Washington knows that such legislation is badly needed. It is the only way to prevent the Wall Street gang from continuing to rip off the public and subjecting the rest of us to the risks of their speculation.

The idea of the original Glass-Steagall was to create two completely distinct types of banks. On the one hand there would be the standard commercial banks with which most of us are familiar. These are the banks where people have checking and savings accounts and where they might go to take out a mortgage or small business loan.

Because of the central role that commercial banks play in the day-to-day workings of the economy, the government established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to guarantee the vast majority of accounts in full. The goal was to let people know that their money is safe in the bank.

Since the government guaranteed the money they need never worry about racing to the bank to get their money before the bank vault is empty. As a result we have not seen the sort of old-fashioned bank-runs that were a mainstay of the pre-FDIC era.  

The quid pro quo for having government guarantee deposits was that commercial banks were supposed to restrict their loans to a limited number of relatively safe activities, such as mortgage loans, small business loans, car loans and other simple and standardised forms of credit. These restrictions are essential, because if customers know their money is guaranteed by the government, they won't care if their bank is taking enormous risks. The government must act to impose discipline on bank behavior that will not come from the market when deposits are insured.

By contrast, investment banks were set free to engage in whatever risky behavior they liked. Investment banks did not take deposits but rather raised money through issuing bonds or other forms of borrowing. In principle, their potential failure did not pose the same risk to the economy.

The ending of Glass-Steagall removed the separation between investment banks and commercial banks, raising the possibility that banks would make risky investments with government-guaranteed deposits. In principle, even after the ending of Glass-Steagall banks were supposed to keep a strict separation between their commercial banking and the risky bets taken by their investment banking divisions, but this depends on the ability of regulators to enforce this restriction.

The Volcker Rule provision in Dodd-Frank was an effort to re-establish a Glass-Steagall-type separation, but the industry is making Swiss cheese out of this regulation in the rule-writing process. Serious people cannot believe that this will keep the Wall Street banks from using their government-guaranteed deposits as a cushion to support their speculative game playing.   

If anyone questions how this story is likely to play out in practice, we need only go back a few years to the financial crisis of 2008-2009. At that time, most of the major banks, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, almost surely would have failed without government support.

In fact, some of the top economic advisors in the Obama administration wanted to let them fail and have the government take them over, as the FDIC does all the time with insolvent banks. However Larry Summers managed to carry the day by arguing that such a move would be far too risky at a time when the financial markets were so unsettled. As a result, the big banks got their government money and were allowed to consolidate so that they are now bigger than ever.

This was primarily a problem of banks that are too big and too interconnected to fail, not just a problem of commercial banks merging with investment banks. But these mergers certainly help banks to reach too-big-to-fail status.

Some may argue that the crisis of 2008-2009 involved extraordinary circumstances. However when banks fail it is generally because the economy faces a crisis. They do not typically fail in good times. And it is a safe bet that there will always be a smart and belligerent Larry Summers on the scene aggressively arguing the case against anyone who wants to subject the banks to market discipline.

What is striking about the argument on re-instating Glass-Steagall is that there really is no downside. The banks argue that it will be inconvenient to separate their divisions, but companies sell off divisions all the time.

They also argue that foreign banks are not generally required to adhere to this sort of separation. This is in part true, but irrelevant.

Stronger regulations might lead us to do more business with foreign-owned banks since weaker regulations could give them some competitive edge. That should bother us as much as it does that we buy clothes and toys from Bangladesh and China.

If foreign governments want to subject themselves and their economies to greater risk as a result of bad financial regulation, that is not an argument for us to do the same. Are we anxious to be the next Iceland or Cyprus?

In short, the senators are on the right track pushing for a new Glass-Steagall. The public should hope that the bankers' lobby doesn't derail their efforts.

What Happened When My Son Wore A Pink Headband To Walmart by Katie Vyktorah

What Happened When My Son Wore A Pink Headband To Walmart

by Katie Vyktoriah

Stay-at-home mom and blogger, amotherthing.com

This is Dexter. He is 2 years old. He loves to be Batman and Superman and Spiderman. He's a real boys' boy. He pretends he is flying, and he captures the baddies who threaten us.

He is the sweetest little troublemaker you'll ever meet.

Some other things you might like to know about Dexter:

He is a fabulous big brother. He was a later bloomer vocabulary-wise. He used to be terribly shy but has recently begun to come out of his shell. He loves new people and enjoys greeting them with a big "HI!" when he meets them.

His favorite color is pink. He loves Dora the Explorer. He has been known to wear my skirt as a dress, and he delights in cuddling with his mama.

Last night, I took my two boys out to pick up a couple of things from Walmart. Mark had to catch up on some work, so I ventured out on my own, which is something I don't do very often. It takes a lot of work to get the kids ready, get them in and out of the car, find a shopping cart, keep them happy while I shop and get them home in one piece. You parents will understand this.

After struggling to get him dressed and get his shoes on, I had to pry an overlarge teddy bear out of Dexter's arms, as he was set on taking him with us. This brought on tears and tantrums, which I somehow managed to calm very quickly. But when I attempted to remove my discarded lace flower headband from his head (which he'd been wearing all day), I saw him getting ready to fight, so I left him to it. Who was he hurting?

We got to the store, and amazingly I managed to get him to sit in the shopping cart with no issues. The fact that he was wearing a cute girly headband made him feel good, and he was charming all the old ladies by waving like a little pageant prince. I snapped his photo after two old birds came up to tell me just how adorable he was.

He rocked that headband.

Soon enough, we were done with our shop and were making our way toward the front. As we passed through the produce section, two teenage girls began giggling and one of them asked, "Is that a boy or a girl?" I smiled and said, "He's a boy." I looked on at him adoringly as they continued to giggle.

Out of nowhere a big booming voice rang out. "THAT'S a BOY?!" The man was overly large with a bushy beard and a camouflage shirt with the arms cut off. He had tattered shorts and lace-up work boots with no laces. I could smell the fug of cigarette smoke surrounding him, and there was a definite pong of beer on him.

"Yes," I said simply, still smiling.

With no notice, the man stepped forward, grabbed the headband off of Dexter's head and threw it to the bottom of our shopping cart. He then cuffed Dexter around the side of his head (not hard, but that is not the point) and said with a big laugh, "You'll thank me later, little man!"

At the same time as I stepped forward, Dexter grabbed his head where the man had smacked him and threw his other hand forward, stomping his foot and shouting, "NO!" I got between my son and this man and said very firmly, "If you touch my son again, I will cut your damn hands off."

The guy snarled at me, looked at Dexter with disgust and said, "Your son is a f*cking fa***t." He then started sauntering out, but not before he threw over his shoulder, "He'll get shot for it one day."

I stood there, shaking, fists clenched, waiting for the man to disappear out the door, and then I fell apart. I was shaking so hard, holding back tears and comforting Dexter.

Not a single person said or did anything. There were several people who had witnessed the encounter, but not one of them came over to offer support or console me or my son.

Let me repeat to you: Dexter is 2 YEARS OLD.

I was there with a 2-year-old and a 5-month-old baby, and my kid had been verbally and physically assaulted by a man. And no one did a thing.

I made my way to the front, still in shock, and I paid for my items and left. I did not report it to the management nor to the authorities, though I am considering doing both. But as I live in a tourist area, I doubt there is anything I can do to find the man -- he could be anyone from anywhere.

It's been almost 24 hours, and I've vented on Facebook and had many supportive comments. I have calmed down. I am able to look at the situation with as much objectivity as I am capable of.

There is so much wrong with what happened that I don't even know where to begin.

This man removed an article of clothing that my son was wearing. It doesn't matter that it was a headband. It is never OK.

This man forcefully touched my child without permission. He thought he was being funny. I did NOT think he was.

He called my son an extremely derogatory word AND suggested that he deserved to die.

How is ANY of this okay?!

THIS is what bigotry looks like.

A grown man who should know better decided it was OK to step in and "teach" my child what it is to be manly. He thought it was OK to judge my child because he was not adhering to HIS idea of what a little boy should be. Clearly, the man was a homophobe, which is bad enough -- but to attribute gay tendencies to a 2-year-old is as RIDICULOUS as attributing STRAIGHT tendencies to a 2-year-old. It just doesn't compute!

A 2-year-old HAS no sexuality.

To think you can "teach" a child to be a certain way is unbelievable. Even if being gay is a lifestyle choice (which I don't believe for a second), it is not a choice that a toddler can ever make. And much like little girls can play baseball or enjoy monster trucks, little boys can and do play dress up with mommy's clothes, accessories, makeup, etc. Everything is new and exciting to a kid, and they learn by trying new things.

Mark and I are both completely supportive of love in all forms. Be you gay, straight, bisexual, transsexual or polygamous, it is YOUR business. I don't judge, and I don't try and change you.

And if one or both of my kids grow up to realize they are any of these things, it will not change a thing about how I feel toward them.

But right now, the fact that homophobia is so rampant, that gay marriage is still seen as dirty because homosexuals are "lesser" somehow and don't deserve to have the same rights as straight folk, that people like that man in Walmart even EXIST makes me fear for my kids and their futures.

While we may accept and support whoever our kids turn out to be, I am scared beyond words at what it would mean for them if they ARE gay. Why should anyone have to live in fear because they fall in love with someone that you or someone else doesn't agree with? Why should mothers and fathers of gay kids have to have an extra layer of terror at night because they know that the world at large is against their child?

Why does it matter? Do you really think your God or your Jesus or your deity of choice would be as judgemental as you seem to be? Even the POPE has come out and said it's OK to be gay.

But all of this aside, whatever stance you take on the debate, it is a complete farce to ever allow your fear or disgust with an ADULT lifestyle color your view of a child!

And it is NEVER EVER OK to touch a kid who isn't yours without permission. ALL people, even children, deserve respect.

This post originally appeared on A Mother Thing. Read an update from Katie Vyktoriah here.

Or, McDonald's Could Double Wages For Employees, Not Raise Price Of Big Macs, And Just Make Less Money ...

HENRY BLODGET Business Insider JULY 30, 2013

Everyone's going nuts about a Huffington Post story that McDonald's could double wages for all of its employees, including its very well-paid CEO, and pay for this increase by raising the price of a Big Mac by only 68 cents.

Those who would like McDonald's to pay its employees enough to live on love this idea.

And what's not to love?

Finally, McDonald's full-time restaurant employees would not have to suffer the ignominy and hardship of being poor in addition to having to work at McDonald's. Finally, McDonald'srestaurants would be staffed by folks who felt proud and lucky to work there. Finally, America's "McJobs" problem, in which middle-class manufacturing jobs are being replaced by low-paying retail service jobs, would be getting addressed at the source. And, finally, America's strapped consumers, some of whom are McDonald's employees, would have more money to spend — and that money might accelerate revenue growth for not just McDonald's (employees eat there, too), but many other companies.

Those who have bought into the "profit maximization" obsession that has taken over American business culture over the past 30 years, however, hate this idea.

McDonald's shouldn't pay its employees a penny more than it absolutely has to, these folks say. It's not McDonald's fault that those employees have no skills and aren't worth more than $7.25 an hour. McDonald's should pay those people as little as possible and deliver as much profit as possible to its shareholders. The only purpose of a company, after all, is to make money for its shareholders. And McDonald's should absolutely not raise the price of its Big Macs by so much as a penny, because then it would sell fewer of them!

Those are the two schools of thought on the McDonald's-doubling-wages talk.

But there is another possibility here — one that, in this profit-obsessed country, no one is even considering.

That possibility is that McDonald's could double its restaurant-worker wages and not increase its prices at all ... but instead just make a little less money. In other words, it could better balance the interests of all three of its stakeholders — shareholders, customers, and employees — instead of shafting employees to deliver as much profit as possible to shareholders.

According to the Kansas City researcher who did the original wages-to-Big Mac study, McDonald's spends about 17% of U.S. revenue on employee salaries and benefits.

If that ratio holds true worldwide, McDonald's would have spent about $4.7 billion on salaries and benefits last year, on revenue of $27 billion. Meanwhile, the company made about $8.5 billion of operating income. (This is for the corporate parent, not the franchises.).

If McDonald's doubled the wages of its restaurant employees (not management, which is presumably very well-compensated), it might add, say, another $3 billion of annual expenses. This would knock its operating profit down to a still healthy $5.5 billion.

Importantly, however, $5.5 billion is still a lot of money. McDonald's would still be very profitable.

Big Macs would still cost the same as they do today (billions and billions would still be served!)

McDonald's managers would still take home their impressive salaries.

And McDonald's restaurant employees would, finally, rise above the poverty line. And their extra spending money would quickly be spent on other products and services, thus helping the whole economy.

By paying these higher wages, McDonald's would also be able to hire the best restaurant workers in the whole economy, thus presumably improving the McDonald's experience for customers and reducing turnover and retraining costs.

So, how about it McDonald's? How about doubling your restaurant employees' wages and just making less money? Your employees will be in great shape. And your shareholders will still do just fine.

Read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-could-double-wages-for-employees-and-make-less-money-2013-7#ixzz2agJmTDbK

Bank Repos Wrong House, Destroys Contents, Then Refuses To Pay Owner's Losses

Rick Unger  -Forbes

Katie Barnett, a 36 year old nurse from McArthur, Ohio, made the mistake of taking her family on a two week trip last month, never realizing when they left home that they would return to find the family residence ransacked, emptied and, for good measure, the locks to the doors changed.

A burglary? Or maybe, as the local police theorized, the work of squatters who had taken advantage of the open domicile to have a two-week vacation of their own?

It turns out, the home invasion was far more insidious than either the Barnett family or the local crime sleuths could imagine.

You see, the Barnett family had fallen victim to one of the most dangerous, dreaded and ethically challenged genres of home invaders in the nation—bankerus moronicus piggius.

Apparently, The First National Bank in Wellston, Ohio had set their sights on repossessing a home whose owner had fallen behind on the  mortgage payments. That home was located on the Barnett’s street at number 509—a number clearly marked on the mailbox that sits out front of the house.  However, when the bank sent Moe, Curley and Larry to take possession and empty out the contents of the foreclosed home, they somehow ended up at a property situated across-the-street and two houses up from the target; a home where the mailbox out in front is clearly marked 514.

That, of course, is the home that belongs to the Barnett clan.

How did this happen?

According to bank president, Tony Thorne, the error was a result of the bank’s representatives (that would be Moe, Curly and Larry) using a faulty GPS to locate the home that was to be repossessed.

Well, that explains it. After all, why would anyone bother to look at the mailbox in front of a home to confirm an address before breaking and entering and then emptying the contents of the residence when you’ve got a GPS?

Of course, had someone with minimally functioning brain cells bothered to actually look at the address, there might be a chance that they would have been tipped off to a potential error by noticing that the Barnett mailbox revealed an even number address—which means that the home must necessarily be on the opposite side of the street of the actual target residence whose address sports an odd number.

But, hey, mistakes will happen—or so says Bank President Thorne in a statement released yesterday.

“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” he wrote. “The situation was a mistake on the part of our bank.”

Certainly, one would expect that Ms. Barnett has been holed up ever since discussing the invasion of her home with the many attorneys in the area who would love to get their hooks into a juicy case like this, yes?

Nope. It turns out, all Ms. Barnett wanted was $18,000—a sum that included $9,000 worth of car engines and parts along with the loss of furniture, clothing, etc. — which Barnett estimated to be the amount required to replace what the bank had taken or destroyed.

You have to admit that she makes more than a few good points.

Still, Mr. Thorne saw it very differently, writing—

“However, the written list of items that she provided to us – and the value she assigned to those items – is inconsistent with the list and descriptions of items removed that was prepared by the employees who did the work, and with the list and values of missing items provided by the homeowner herself as recorded in an earlier telephone conversation with one of our representatives.” In a meeting with me in my office, I indicated to the homeowner that we wanted to compensate her but would have to look further into the differences in the lists. We heard nothing more from her or otherwise about this situation until being contacted by a local television station, which subsequently broadcast a story that, from our perspective, did not accurately reflect the facts or the good faith actions of the First National Bank to resolve the situation.”

So, apparently, Mr. Thorne believed that the inventory prepared by Moe, Larry and Curly—they being the geniuses who couldn’t figure out that they had broken into the wrong house because they supposedly had use of a faulty GPS which interfered with the precise part of their brains that would think to look at the mailbox to confirm the address—could be trusted to prepare an accurate inventory of what they destroyed or took, despite being incapable of locating a clearly marked address.

Mr. Thorne—who presumably has a fair amount of money under his control given that he is the president of a bank—also appears to have skipped class in bank president’s school the day they were discussing the concept of replacement value as he does not appear to believe that Barnett should be entitled to the same.

But then, Mr. Thorne has arguably also never heard of the potential damages, both compensatory and punitive, his bank could face for negligently breaking and entering into private property and destroying the contents therein— just as he has never heard of what happens to a bank, or any other business, when you allow your present and future customers to know how they will be treated by your business should you, once again, put on so remarkable a display of incompetence. I think it particularly reasonable to point this out when the negligent and incompetent business is one where they are asking customers to park all of their money!

What astounds is that any board of directors would allow this bank president to keep his job after turning down an opportunity to settle out a case involving breaking and entering, and then trashing the contents of the home—and all the result of what can only be described as grossly negligent behavior—for a mere $18,000.00. Were this bank run by someone using some semblance of judgment, he or she would have taken Ms. Barnett’s eighteen thousand dollar request, written her a check for twice that amount and put up a plaque of gratitude on the bank’s wall proclaiming her citizen of the year.

Instead, Thorne is complaining that, since his last interaction with Ms. Burnett, he has not heard from her and would like to resolve the matter fairly.

Too late, Mr. Thorne.

Katie Barnett confirms that she has now hired at attorney. “We are definitely going to bring a lawsuit,” she said. “I gave them a chance and they are not willing to work with me.”

Let’s hope that when this lawsuit is all over, Katie Barnett is the new owner of the First National Bank in Wellston. Maybe she’ll give Tony Thorne the job of being the ‘bank representative’ in charge of locating the banks foreclosed properties and emptying them out.  She might even buy him a new GPS.

Then again, given the remarkably poor judgment displayed by Thorne in dealing with Ms. Barnett, he probably would only blow any such assignment even if the GPS was in proper working order.

Beside, if history has taught us anything it is that tone deaf business operators, seemingly without a shred of good judgment, are only cut out for one kind of work—running banks. How else do you explain how bank presidents throughout the world nearly succeeded in completely destroy the world’s economy through their stunningly bad judgement and greed?

Maybe the directors of the First National Bank in Wellston have exactly who they want in the position of running their bank after all.

Zimmerman Juror B29 : 'He got away with murder'

Zimmerman Juror B29 to ABC News: 'He got away with murder'

By Benjamin Mueller

July 25, 2013, 3:08 p.m.

The only minority member of the six-woman jury that acquitted George Zimmerman said Thursday that Zimmerman “got away with murder” and that she aches for Trayvon Martin’s grieving parents,ABC News reports.

"You can't put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty," said the woman, who called herself only Maddy and was earlier identified as Juror B29 during the trial. "But we had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence."

Juror B29, who became the first juror to show her face in the interview with “Good Morning America” anchor Robin Roberts, said there wasn’t enough proof under Florida law to convict Zimmerman.

• Protests across the nation for Trayvon Martin
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"George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can't get away from God. And at the end of the day, he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with," the juror said. "[But] the law couldn't prove it.”

Zimmerman was accused of second-degree murder for fatally shooting Martin once in the chest. The defense said Zimmerman feared for his life when the two got into an altercation in a gated community in Sanford, Fla. Critics said Zimmerman profiled Martin and that his unfounded suspicion of the 17-year-old   led to the confrontation. Martin was black, and Zimmerman is of Latino ancestry.

A 36-year-old nursing assistant and mother of eight, Juror 29B was the only minority on the all-female jury. She is Puerto Rican.

Like Juror B37, who spoke last week on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, Juror B29 maintained that race wasn’t a factor in her deliberations.

She said she pushed for Zimmerman to be convicted of second-degree murder until she decided on the second day of deliberations that there wasn't enough definitive proof.

Zimmerman's defense team argued that he killed Martin in self-defense. The jury was also allowed to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter.

"I was the juror that was going to give them the hung jury. I fought to the end," she said.

She said she doubted that the case should have been brought to trial, calling it a “publicity stunt.” But once it was, she said, the lack of evidence and Florida law left the jury no choice but to acquit.

"The truth is that there was nothing that we could do about it," she said. “I feel the verdict was already told."

She said she owes an apology to Martin’s parents because she feels “like I let them down.”

Now, in the trial’s aftermath, she said she struggles to sleep and sympathizes with the grief Martin’s parents have endured. She said she’s not sure she made the right decision.

“It's hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin's death. And as I carry him on my back, I'm hurting as much [as] Trayvon's Martin's mother because there's no way that any mother should feel that pain," she said.

Since Juror B37’s interview with Cooper last week, a group of four other jurors released a request for privacy and said B37’s opinions were “not in any way representative” of their own. Juror B29 was not among those four jurors.

She had kept her silence but now has become the first to express doubts about her decision.

How Adding Iodine To Salt Resulted In A Decade's Worth Of IQ Gains For The United States

MAX NISEN JUL. 22, 2013    business insider

flickr/orphanjones

Iodized salt is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it. Few people know why it even exists. Iodine deficiency remains the world's leading cause of preventable mental retardation. According to a new study, its introduction in America in 1924 had an effect so profound that it raised the country's IQ.

A new NBER working paper from James Feyrer, Dimitra Politi, and David N. Weil finds that the population in iodine-deficient areas saw IQs rise by a full standard deviation, which is 15 points, after iodized salt was introduced.

Since one quarter of the population lived in those areas, that corresponds to a 3.5 point increase nationwide. We've seen IQs go up by about 3 points every decade, something called the Flynn effect, so iodization of salt may be responsible for a full decade's worth of increasing IQ in the U.S. 

If a mother is iodine deficient while she's pregnant, the cognitive development of the fetus is impeded, and the effects are irreversible. To this day, the World Health Organization estimates that nearly 50 million people suffer some kind of mental impairment related to iodine deficiency. 

Before iodized salt, people were deficient based almost entirely on geography, whether the water and soil in their area had enough of the micronutrient. Diseases resulting from the deficiency, most commonly goiter, or swelling of the thyroid, were extremely common. 

The differences by geography were vast, making the effects easy to isolate. Seawater, for example, is rich in iodine, but glaciers depleted iodine rich soil in places like Michigan:

Feyrer, Politi, and Weil

The mental impacts were unknown, the program was started to fight goiter, so these effects were an extremely fortunate unintended side effect.  

To figure out the effects, the researchers used the data from the Army General Classi cation Test (AGCT) given to people who enlisted during World War 2. That covers a wide group of men born precisely at the time iodized salt was introduced (1920-1927), which allowed comparison of low and high iodine areas.

The Air Force received enlistees who scored significantly higher on the AGCT, and the number of men who scored well and went to the Air Force from low iodine areas dramatically increased after iodized salt was introduced. The estimates of intelligence increases are based on that data.

Here's the author's chart that shows the boost in Air Force enlistment rates:

NBER

Despite these positive effects, there were some negative side effects as well. People who suffer long-term iodine deficiency can actually end up with from hyperthyroidism when it's introduced to their diet, so deaths spiked for a few years. However, the aggregate effect has been extremely positive. 

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/iodization-effect-on-iq-2013-7#ixzz2ZqdX87Sz