Shrimp and Grits

Recently, the EPA announced some new ozone standards, lowering the allowable amount of ozone pollution from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion. That doesn’t sound like a lot, and indeed the EPA’s scientists recommended a much tougher ozone standard - from 60 to 70 parts per billion:

Nearly a year ago, EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee reiterated in writing that its members were “unanimous in recommending” that the agency set the standard no higher than 70 parts per billion (ppb) and to consider a limit as low as 60 ppb. EPA’s Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee and public health advocates lobbied for the 60-ppb limit because children are more vulnerable to air pollution.

EPA and other scientists have shown that ozone has a direct impact on rates of heart and respiratory disease and resulting premature deaths. The agency calculates that the new standard of 75 ppb would prevent 1,300 to 3,500 premature deaths a year, whereas 65 ppb would avoid 3,000 to 9,200 deaths annually.

There’s a bit of a scandal here, since the Bush administration forced the EPA to go against its own science and issue less strict ozone standards.

So the new standard is too lax and fails to adequately protect public health. But it’s better than nothing, right? Maybe. If you’re a lobbyist for the chemical manufacturing industry, you might think that even the old 80 parts per billion standard was too restrictive.

“The available science is largely unchanged since the 1997 standard was issued and demonstrates that there is no clear and substantial basis for making the standard stricter at this time,” [the American Chemistry Council] said in a statement. Lowering the ozone standard “unnecessarily will impose significant new burdens on states and others even as they continue to try and comply with the 1997 standard.”

It all depends on your point of view.

South Carolina has just about finished up with the primaries on both sides, and on the Democratic side, Obama crushed Clinton. more than doubling her vote count.288,820 to 138,758 (with 98% reporting in).

About the only thing that surprises me about these results is the magnitude of Obama’s win.  This election wasn’t even close. According to CNN’s exit polls, lots of people liked Obama: men, women, young folks, black folks, churchgoers, the non-religious. Clinton did best among old people, and Edwards was a hit with white people over 30.

520,627+ came out to vote for one of the Democratic candidates.  That’s a pretty nice turnout for this red state.  Compare to the Republican numbers: 442,918 total votes. Obama alone got more voters to come out for him than both leading Republicans (McCain and Huckabee) put together.  That goes along with what I’ve been seeing in my community - which is both quite conservative and quite religious. People are excited about the Democratic candidates. The Republican field is simply uninspiring - even to a state as red as South Carolina.

From the New York Times science section:

Although it’s impossible to calculate the pain that terrorist attacks inflict on victims and society, when statisticians look at cold numbers, they have variously estimated the chances of the average person dying in America at the hands of international terrorists to be comparable to the risk of dying from eating peanuts, being struck by an asteroid or drowning in a toilet.

(emphasis mine)

The rest of the article is more serious, telling you that panicking over terrorism might hurt you - citing an increased risk of heart problems among the more fearful.

Still, though, I can’t help but wonder if upcoming political ads might feature one of the presidential hopefuls boldly announcing his plan to protect us from our toilets.

“We’ll flush them over there so we don’t have to flush them here!”

It’s a week old, but The State has an article up about what South Carolina’s GOP voters are most worried about in this election cycle. Apparently, the big issue is illegal immigration.

Polls have shown immigration is more important to Republican voters in South Carolina than it is to Democrats. In fact, S.C. GOP backers have made immigration their top issue in choosing a president.

What do South Carolina Republicans have to say about the issue?

“This is the new Confederate flag issue in South Carolina on the Republican side,” said Neal Thigpen, a political science professor at Francis Marion University and a Republican.

The new Confederate flag issue? Oh, dear.
By rallying their voters around immigration, it’s as if the Republicans are admitting that they’ve got nothing worthwhile to offer on health care, or the war in Iraq, or education, or the economy, or … you name it. Instead, they’ll bravely protect us from Dora and Diego.

The fast growth is something South Carolinians notice in their daily activities whether they see Hispanics at the grocery store or working on a neighbor’s roof, Thigpen said. They begin to wonder if another ethnic group is taking over.

Wow. Just … wow.

It looks like we’ve just unleashed a whole boatload of stupidity here in South Carolina:

Kristin Maguire of Clemson was elected today to be the leader of the state Board of Education in 2009.

Maguire, who teaches her four daughters at home, was nominated from the floor during the panel’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting.

Who’s to blame? I blame the whole board - who elected Maguire via voice vote. I can only hope we regain some sense in South Carolina before my own daughter is old enough to attend school.

Sheesh.

Why is this a problem, aside from the obvious? See the causes Maguire supports here.

(Via the Rev BigDumbChimp)

Via Think Progress, here’s an ad that makes you think a bit about our health care system:

If he were anyone else, he’d probably be dead by now. The patient’s history and prognosis were grim: four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, angioplasty, an implanted defibrillator and now an emergency procedure to treat an irregular heartbeat. For millions of Americans, this might be a death sentence. For [him], it was just another medical treatment. And it cost him very little.

Who’s “he”?  If you didn’t click the link to the ad, “he” is Vice President Dick Cheney, who likely doesn’t have a fraction of the trouble you or I do getting access to health care.  Or paying the avalanche of bills that come after.

The rest of the ad talks about a house bill proposing a single-payer health care system for the US.   While I don’t think we’ll get single payer in the very near future, it seems like a good thing to work towards.   We should be ashamed - as a society - that any American has to go without health care.

What’s wrong with education in South Carolina? This article in The State sheds a little light on the subject:

A woman who teaches her children at home could be nominated to lead the state Education Board.

Kristin Maguire of Clemson said she has several commitments from other board members.

While the article makes it clear that it’s not likely that Maguire will actually be elected chair, you might be wondering:

1. Why would you want to make someone who’s given up on South Carolina schools to head a board that’s supposed to oversee those schools?
2. Who put such a person on this board in the first place?

I don’t have an answer for #1. It seems like sheer lunacy to me.

As for #2, Maguire is a gift to the educators of South Carolina from…

Maguire is Gov. Mark Sanford’s representative on the board and her term expires in December 2008.

… our governor - who’s not exactly what you’d call a friend of education.

So who’s Maguire? She’s involved with SC PIE, which I’ve mentioned on this blog before. In short, they’re a group that pushes for abstinence-only sex ed, creationism in the classroom, and vouchers. Such people should never be allowed anywhere near the management offices of a public education system.

While my students are taking their final exams, I’ve been catching up with the news online. Here’s an opinion piece from the Greenville News talking up abstinence-only sex “education”:

A 2007 Zogby International poll showed parents prefer abstinence education over comprehensive sex education by a 2 to 1 margin. In addition, a 2007 survey by the S.C. Palmetto Family Council and the University of South Carolina found that 83 percent of white parents and 72 percent of black parents believe schools should emphasize abstinence as the first and best option for youth.

Of course, just because something sounds good to people doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually works or is realistic. But if you’re wanting to know how well abstinence-only works, you don’t have to look hard to find out. The current administration has very heavily favored abstinence-only for a number of years now. The New York Times reports on how well that’s been working out for us.

But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that [abstinence-only programs] have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates.

Teen pregnancy rates are going up … for the first time in fifteen years. Guess that taking the “education” out of “sex education” didn’t work out too well, did it?

As I understand it, one of the arguments that folks who are against the availability of legal abortion is that they value a “culture of life” - the idea that what they consider to be “human” life is sacred and should be protected by society. For example, here’s South Carolina Representative Gresham Barrett (emphasis mine):

Culture of life: Representative Barrett is a firm believer that life begins at conception, and that any attempt to harm or endanger the life of an innocent child, born or unborn, is wrong. He is a co-sponsor of several pieces of legislation supporting life and helped push for the passage of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban signed into law by President Bush.

Here’s a similar statement by one of South Carolina’s Senators - Jim DeMint: (Again, emphasis mine)

The role of government is to ensure that each life, whether young or old, born or unborn, independent or vulnerable, is valued and protected.

The right to life is not something that begins or ends at our time of choosing. Rather, this unalienable right begins at conception and ends at natural death.

You would expect senators and representatives who express the belief that it is the government’s job to ensure that life, as they define it, is valued and protected to vote their conscience. That would mean voting against legal access to abortion and some other birth control techniques.

You would also expect that these same senators and representatives would work very hard to ensure that children, once born, would have access to medical care. Supporting legislation like the expansion of SCHIP, a program to increase the availability of health care to lower-income children, would be a no-brainer for principled people who believes that human life is precious and must be protected. Such people, you would assume, would find it intolerable that our system allows even one child to go without medical care. Right?

Except that both Representative Barrett and Senator DeMint both voted against the SCHIP bill.

Can someone who is more acquainted with the “culture of life” than I am explain why the unborn must be protected, while children who are out of the womb should be allowed to go without health care? It doesn’t make much sense to me

Living where I do in South Carolina - between the suburbs and the sticks - I don’t get many political canvassers. The ones that do show up at my door are almost always from the more rabid side of the Republican party. Since I’m usually not home when they come by, I just get a packet of scary literature left at my door.

A little while ago, I had a visit from a canvasser that surprised me. He was representing a Democratic candidate. For president, even. This in spite of the fact that South Carolina going Democratic in 2008 is about as likely as a collision with a giant Earth-obliterating asteroid. Maybe I exaggerate, but I remember how … depressing the Democratic booth at the State Fair was during the last presidential election cycle.

So, what Democrat is getting the word out to the “sticks” here in South Carolina?

Obama!

I like Obama. He realizes that the Iraq war was a bad idea, and he realizes that we’ve got a serious problem with our heathcare delivery system here in the USA. I don’t think he goes far enough to address our healthcare problems (his proposal isn’t a single-payer system and doesn’t get rid of bloodsucking for-profit insurance companies), but it’s a start. And a start is all we’re likely to be able to get in the short term.

About the only thing that bothers me about Obama is, well, “faith, faith, faith“! I realize that here in the Deep South, politicians have to pander to the pious, but … sheesh! Look at the Obama events in the link above. How about a “environment forum” or a “healthcare forum” instead of an endless stream of “faith forum”s?

Unlike some voters, I’m not really interested in what god Obama worships - as long as he understands the concept of separation of church and state. I do care about the policies he plans to put into action if elected. More works, less faith, please!