Probable U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush delivers the commencement address at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia May 9, 2015.
Republican Jeb Bush sought to bolster his support among evangelical Christians on Saturday in remarks at a Christian university, accusing liberals of trying to undermine religious freedom.
The potential presidential candidate in the November 2016 election gave the commencement speech to 34,000 people in the football stadium at Liberty University, a school founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell.
The former Florida governor, who is competing with a variety of Republican rivals for support from the Christian right, cited a series of cases that, he said, showed religious freedom was under assault and considered by some to be an "obstacle to enlightened thought."
One was an attempt by President Barack Obama's administration to require businesses to include contraception coverage in their employees' health insurance as part of Obama's signature healthcare law.
The decision was challenged in court by two companies owned by Christian families who felt that providing contraception violated their religious beliefs. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the businesses last June in a case known as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.
"The progressive political agenda is ready for its next great leap forward, and religious people or churches are getting in the way. Our friends on the Left like to view themselves as the agents of change and reform, and you and I are supposed to just get with the program," Bush said.
Another example he cited was a subpoena sent to five pastors last year by the city of Houston asking them to turn over speeches or sermons related to Houston's non-discrimination ordinance. After an outcry, the city dropped the subpoenas.
He said "fashionable opinion" has a problem with Christians and the only proper response is "a forthright defense" of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
Bush's appearance allowed him to demonstrate to evangelicals his deeply held Catholic faith and reiterate his opposition to abortion.
He is held in suspicion by some conservatives, evangelicals included, for moderate positions on immigration reform and Common Core national education standards.
Bush, whose father and brother both served as president, gave a strong hint as to his plans in saying he was happy to meet Jonathan Falwell, son of Jerry Falwell and brother of Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr.
"His father used to be president, and then his brother became president. Somehow, I don’t know what it was, we really hit it off," Bush chuckled.
Competition for the Christian right is active. Senator Ted Cruz, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former Texas Governor Rick Perry are all competing for evangelical support seen as critical in Iowa and South Carolina, which will hold two early contests ahead of next year's November election.
Tropical Storm Ana threatens Carolinas with rough surf, rain
Sub-tropical storm Ana, located about 170 miles (275 kms) south-southeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, United States, is seen in a NOAA GOES satellite image taken at 07:15 am EDT (11:15 GMT) May 8, 2015.
Winds from Tropical Storm Ana, the first named storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season, picked up onshore in the Carolinas on Saturday and beachgoers were warned of expected dangerous rip currents and heavy rain.
Ana was moving slightly faster toward the U.S. Southeast coast with maximum sustained winds of 60 miles per hour after it transitioned overnight into a tropical storm, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
The storm was positioned Saturday morning about 65 miles south of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina , the weather agency said.
The storm had slowed slightly, moving at about 3 mph, and the center of the storm was forecast to be "very near" the coasts of North Carolina and South Carolina by Sunday morning, according to the hurricane center.
It is predicted to begin weakening as it moves over cooler waters near the coastline.
Tropical storm warnings were in effect for areas along a 275-mile swath from South Santee River in South Carolina to Cape Lookout in North Carolina, at the southern end of the Outer Banks.
The tropical storm conditions were due to hit within 12 to 24 hours, the weather agency said.
The U.S. National Weather Service office in Wilmington said a wind gust of 40 mph was recorded at the local airport, the highest its staff had observed so far on land from Ana.
Emergency management officials and forecasters urged caution for beachgoers and boaters, saying it was best to stay out of the water when the rip currents were strongest.
The hurricane center said the storm would bring anywhere from one to five inches of rain, and the storm surge could bring flooding of up to two feet in some coastal areas.
Ana's formation is the earliest appearance of a named storm in the Atlantic since a previous incarnation of Subtropical Storm Ana on April 20, 2003, said Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist for Weather Underground, a commercial weather service.
The Atlantic hurricane season typically runs from June 1 through Nov. 30.
Tornado kills one in north Texas, several twisters touch down in Colorado
A tornado killed one person in a rural part of north Texas on Saturday and destroyed at least two houses, a local emergency official said, just days after a series of twisters tore through several Great Plains states.
The twister touched down about 5 miles (8 km) south of the town of Cisco, an area of farms and small ranches, where it traveled in a straight line and tore through several houses in its path, said Eastland County Judge Rex Fields, the local emergency management coordinator.
One person was killed by the twister, Fields said. He could not immediately provide more information on the victim.
At least two houses were destroyed in the area about 130 miles (210 km) west of Dallas, and other dwellings might have been damaged, Fields said. Roads were partly flooded because of the storm, he said.
"We can't exactly tell what all we've got just yet," Fields said. "We don’t even have everybody accounted for."
In eastern Colorado, three tornadoes touched down in rural areas on Saturday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Kalina. There were no reports of injuries or property damage from the weak twisters, he said.
"These touched down on the Eastern Plains where there is a lot of open space," Kalina said.
Tornadoes also touched down on Saturday in western Kansas and on the border with Oklahoma and Texas, but no injuries were immediately reported, said meteorologist Liz Leitman of the weather service's Storm Prediction Center.
Residents in parts of Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas had been bracing for severe thunderstorms that could spawn tornadoes, after the weather service issued a warning of an enhanced risk of twisters along with hail, strong winds and flash floods.
But the instability capable of generating strong supercell storms that produce major tornadoes did not materialize on Saturday afternoon, lessening the effects of the severe weather, Leitman said.
Another band of storms was due over the same region on Sunday, but was not expected to be as severe, forecasters said.
On Wednesday, a weather system battered a region from Texas to Nebraska and produced dozens of reported tornadoes, including several that touched down in Oklahoma, causing one death, injuring 12 and flattening buildings.
Tornado season in the Southern Plains states normally lasts from May to early June.
(Story corrects location of Cisco to west of Dallas)
A tornado is seen in Cisco, Texas in this handout photo provided by Brian Khoury taken May 9, 2015.
Exclusive: Why a company chairman supported a Prophet Mohammad cartoon event
An aerial view shows the car that was used the previous night by two gunmen, who were killed by police, as it is investigated by local police and the FBI in Garland, Texas May 4, 2015.
Robert Shillman heads a publicly traded American technology company called Cognex Corp with a market value of $4 billion. He also says he is a big supporter of last Sunday’s Prophet Mohammad cartoon contest in Texas that was attacked by two gunmen who opened fire before being shot dead by police.
In a telephone interview with Reuters from his home near San Diego, California, Shillman said America’s free speech is under threat. He added that violent attacks on such events are making people fearful and prone to self censorship. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet – such as the caricatures displayed at the event - as offensive and against the religion’s teachings.
“It was a terrorist attack on the American way of life,” says Shillman, who says he isn’t anti-Muslim.
Shillman said he remains a director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, whose Jihad Watch website helped organize the cartoon event in a Dallas suburb with activist Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks what it describes as extremist groups, has called the Freedom Center’s founder, the right-wing commentator David Horowitz, "the godfather of the anti-Muslim Movement." The Freedom Center says it “combats the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values.”
The SPLC also calls Geller’s AFDI a hate group because of the way it talks about and depicts Muslims.
Horowitz, in an email, called Shillman “an American hero” who is entirely transparent in his agenda. Horowitz also said the SPLC couldn’t produce one statement of his own that was anti-Muslim.
Geller did not return messages seeking comment.
PARIS ATTACK
Sunday’s attack had some echoes of the January assault on the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 dead in what was said to be revenge for its cartoons of the prophet.
As founder of Natick, Massachusetts-based Cognex (CGNX.O), which makes machine vision products that help automate manufacturing, Shillman says he is more outspoken than a typical U.S. corporate leader. "Most CEOs are hired guns and their future depends on what their boards think of them. I don’t give a fuck.”
The Freedom Center, whose P.O. Box address is in Sherman Oaks, California, runs several blogs and websites, including the online FrontPage Magazine and Jihad Watch. Shillman has funded four fellowships for journalists who have have worked on the FrontPage, which is the center’s online journal for news and political commentary. He declined to comment when asked if he helped pay for the cartoon contest. Shillman, who grew up in Boston, says he is an admirer of Geller for her defense of free speech and American democracy. “Blaming Pamela Geller for inciting violence is like blaming a victim of rape for wearing high heels,” he said
Dr. Bob, as he calls himself, has the additional title of chief culture officer at Cognex, whose stock has produced a 373 percent return over the past five years. Shillman calls Cognex's 1,300 employees Cognoids and rewards those who reach certain long-service milestones with trips to any one of the Wonders of the World. On their birthdays, U.S. employees get a cake delivered to their homes.
For years, Shillman – who owns about 5 percent of the company’s shares – has foregone millions of dollars in salary, bonus and stock options. Cognex donates the money to charity.
Anthony Sun, lead director on the Cognex board, could not be reached for comment.
FUNDS PRO-ISRAEL GROUPS
Shillman has in the past withdrawn support from organizations whose behavior he disagrees with. In 2002, he pulled funding from WBUR, a National Public Radio station in Boston, for what he perceived as anti-Israel sentiment.
His Shillman Foundation has funded a number of conservative and pro-Israeli groups, including the Zionist Organization of America. The ZOA has targeted both academics it perceives have been teaching anti-Israel doctrine and Palestine student groups accused of intimidating Jewish students on U.S. campuses, including a campaign at Shillman’s alma mater, Northeastern University in Boston.
Shillman is an emeritus trustee at the university and has given it substantial amounts of money, including $3 million for a classroom building that was then named after him.
Transformer fire causes shut-down of nuclear reactor north of New York City
Smoke is seen over the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York, in this handout photo provided by Gustavus Gricius taken May 9, 2015.
A nuclear power reactor 40 miles (65 km) north of New York City was shut down on Saturday after a transformer fire, but officials said the Indian Point plant was stable and there was no threat to residents nearby.
People in the area reported an explosion and smoke coming from the plant at Buchanan in New York state. But the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the fire had been quickly extinguished.
"These events happen occasionally. They are not unheard of and the plant responded as designed," NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said in a statement. He added the fire occurred at 5:50 p.m. (2150 GMT) and was put out 25 minutes later.
The NRC designated the incident an "unusual event," which is the lowest of four categories the agency gives to potential safety or security threats at nuclear plants.
Entergy Corp, which runs the facility and is one of the largest U.S. nuclear power operators, also said the plant was stable and there was no danger to the public or to employees.
Several police units responded to the plant after receiving emergency calls from people who heard an explosion and saw smoke over the facility, which is on the east bank of the Hudson River, said New York State police spokesman Kenneth Bozier. No injuries were reported.
The transformer fire, which triggered the closure of the plant's Unit 3 reactor, was extinguished with no damage to the unit, an Entergy spokesman said. The other Unit 2 reactor continued to operate, spokesman Jerry Nappi said.
He said there was no information yet as to what caused the transformer failure. On Friday, Entergy returned the 1,031-megawatt Unit 3 back to service after shutting it down the previous day to repair a steam leak on the non-nuclear side of the plant.
The fire was put out by the sprinkler system at the transformer and on-site personnel, he said. The transformers are located around 300-400 feet (90-120 meters) away from the reactor.
Emergency sirens in the area did not sound following the incident, Nicholas Zachary, a governing trustee in the village of Buchanan, said in a phone interview.
"I don’t foresee any kind of issue," he said. "It’s happened before, they’ll get it fixed and back and running fairly soon I imagine."
Disruptions to power in the New York City area were unlikely. Power plants often trip off, and the power shortfall is met by other plants on the grid.
EXPLOSION FOLLOWED BY SMOKE
Witnesses took to Twitter to report hearing an explosion and photographs posted on the site showed large plumes of gray and black smoke billowing from the plant.
"I was a mile away from Indian Point when the transformer explosion occurred. Yikes...," said one Twitter user, Kevin Daly.
But some local residents were apparently unaware of the incident. A woman named Crystal who answered the phone at Fat Sal’s Bar & Grill, about a mile away from the plant, said she neither heard the explosion or knew anything about it.
The plant, whose origin dates back to the 1960s, has around 1,000 employees and has long been controversial because of its proximity to the largest U.S. city.
It is one of 99 nuclear power plants licensed to operate in the United States and which generate about 20 percent of U.S. electricity use, according to the NRC's website.
Large transformer explosions or fires are unusual but not unheard of, with rarely more than one or two a year occurring. While they can be shocking to witness, recent incidents have caused minimal disruption at the facilities.
In early 2009, for instance, Exelon Corp's Oyster Creek nuclear power station in New Jersey resumed operations three days after a transformer fire. In December 2013, another transformer fire triggered the temporary closure of a unit at Entergy's Arkansas nuclear power plant. Neither caused any injuries or public health risks.
But Saturday's blast may fuel the debate surrounding the expiration of the 40-year operating licenses for its two remaining reactors.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and others have long called for the plant’s closure because it is so close to New York City, though state authorities have little sway over the federally regulated nuclear sector. Cuomo's efforts have been more muted lately, however.
The license for Unit 2 expired in 2013 and Unit 3 will expire at the end of this year. Both continue operating during the NRC review process, which may take several more years.
Several environmental groups have called for the plant to be permanently shut down.
A Flame Retardant That Came With Its Own Threat to Health
Safety on Fire
There are over 80,000 chemicals in use today. The story of TRIS, removed from children’s pajamas in the 1970s, illustrates just how hard it is to regulate chemicals, or to even know if they’re safe. By RetroReport on Publish DateMay 3, 2015.
If you closely examine your living room couch, your favorite easy chair or your child’s car seat, the odds are strong that you will find upholstery that is filled with polyurethane foam treated with a chemical flame retardant. Some may find that comforting: Isn’t it desirable to hold an accidental fire at bay, one caused by, say, a burning cigarette or faulty electrical wiring? But studies show that many flame-resistant chemicals loom as potential health menaces, associated with cancers, memory loss, lower I.Q.s and impaired motor skills in children, to name a few woes. Isn’t it just as desirable, some would also say, to keep such substances out of people’s lives?
Retro Report
Essays and documentary videos that re-examine the leading stories of decades past.
On the surface, this may seem like a struggle between worthy goals of equal merit: forestalling household fires on one hand, preventing toxic contamination on the other. But this new installment of Retro Report, a series of video documentaries examining major news stories of the past and their consequences, suggests that the surface impression presents a false equivalence. Health risks linked to some of these chemical compounds have been growing while their fire-deterring value has been called into serious doubt.
To frame the issue, the video goes back to the early 1970s and a controversy that older Americans may recognize from a single word: Tris. Chemists know it as Tris(2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate. Under the shorter sobriquet, it gained national fame as a flame retardant in children’s pajamas. Its purpose was to buy precious seconds that, in a fire, might spell the difference between survival and death.
But fame turned to notoriety later that decade when research by two scientists, Arlene Blum and Bruce N. Ames, concluded that Tris is a mutagen, a gene-altering agent. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, a new agency in the ’70s, promptly prohibited its use in the sleepwear. Even though the courts then struck down the ban, children’s clothing manufacturers in effect enforced it by agreeing to keep that form of Tris out of their products. They then did the same with a new version of the compound, chlorinated Tris. But chlorinated Tris itself was never banned. As time passed, it made its way, along with an array of other chlorinated and brominated flame retardants, into the furniture found in most American homes.
The gateway for this development was a 1975 California regulation known as Technical Bulletin 117. Upholstery foam is highly combustible. The California regulation required it to withstand a small flame — from a cigarette lighter, for instance, or a candle — for 12 seconds. To pass that test, furniture makers treated naked foam with large quantities of chemical retardants. By dint of the sheer size of California’s marketplace, the 12-second flame rule effectively became the national standard.
The problem with this mandate, researchers later concluded, was that it did not reflect real life. Who takes a match directly to the foam inside a sofa cushion? What catches fire first is the fabric encasing the foam. And when that fabric is ablaze, the flames are intense enough to overwhelm whatever retardants coat the foam. So much for any fire-deterrence benefit.
As for the chemicals’ health impact, concerns kept growing. That is because the retardants do not chemically bond with the foam. Thus, they do not stay snugly inside cushions and mattresses. They escape into the environment. When someone sits on a couch, air that bears chemical traces is expelled from the upholstery. Those substances settle on household dust, or drift outdoors, or find their way into rivers and even into mothers’breast milk. Small children, known to put almost anything in their mouths, are particularly vulnerable as they play on floors that have veils of chemically tainted dust.
“Some of the effects that we’re seeing are effects on the developing nervous system,” Linda S. Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, told Retro Report in discussing some of the chemicals. “We’re seeing effects on the developing reproductive system. In a population of children that have been exposed to the flame retardants, those children have lower I.Q., more difficulty in learning.”
Nonetheless, chemical manufacturers assert that flame retardants are proven lifesavers. “The number of reported home fires has dropped by 50 percent since these products were introduced to the market,” said Steve Risotto, a senior director of the American Chemistry Council, an industry group. “Flame retardants delay the start of a fire, you know, by half a minute or longer.”
Other factors, though, also explain the decline in house fires. For one thing, a principal culprit in such fires has long been carelessness with cigarettes. But smoking habits have greatly changed; the share of American adults who puff away dropped to 17 percent in 2014 from 42 percent in 1965, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also, some cigarettes today are self-extinguishing. Smoke detectors, too, save lives.
David X Yesterday
American Chemistry Council: oh yeah, they'll be objective. What's flame retardant business worth right now? Over $5 billion?Thank you...
Frank Language Yesterday
Flame retardants are also a significant part of ocean pollution; they wash out in the laundry and are carried out to sea. http://cen.acs...
stoptoxics Yesterday
Thank you for this important story. The same tactics used by the flame retardant chemical corporations are being used in Congress right now...
SEE ALL COMMENTS
A series of articles by The Chicago Tribune in 2012 brought new attention to flame retardants, much of it damning. In the wake of those reports, California (to the chemical industry’s dismay) amended its standard for fire resistance. The test now is whether a couch or chair can withstand not an open flame but, instead, a smoldering object like a cigarette. With this change, the need to pump chemicals into upholstery was reduced. Indeed, some newer furniture being brought to market is retardant-free.
Still, unknowns abound. Regulating chemicals has always been a thorny proposition. More than 80,000 of them are registered for use in the United States, including flame retardants, but federal inspectors have tested only a tiny fraction. Lately, environmental researchers have expressed health concerns about a new generation of chemicals known as PFASs, short for poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, which are commonly found in footwear, electronics, sleeping bags and many other consumer products. Although the chemical industry insists that these materials are safe, Dr. Birnbaum and other scientists have questioned whether that is in fact so.
The prevailing law, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, authorizes the government to step in only after a substance’s potential for harm has been demonstrated. The industry is under no requirement to submit its products for federal blessing in advance of marketing them. Nor is the chemical structure of these compounds detailed in consumer labels. In the main, any regulation has been left largely to the states. While legislation now before Congress would strengthen the federal government’s hand, it would also block states from setting tougher regulations of their own.
Not a single flame retardant has ever been banned outright by the government. Any phasing out of a substance like Tris was done voluntarily by the industry, albeit usually only after the hazards were clearly demonstrated. Now, new generations of compounds are in play, pronounced safe by Mr. Risotto of the chemistry council. “If you look at the products that are currently available today,” he told Retro Report, “there is not a scientific consensus that there is an impact on human health at the levels that we encounter in homes.” Of course, one reason for the absence of scientific consensus is that few of those substances have been tested by independent researchers. With newer chemicals, “scientists have struggled to keep pace with studying their health risks,” an article published inScientific American observed in 2013.
In the meantime, children’s sleepwear must still be treated with flame retardants, one exception being if it fits tightly on their bodies. And countless couches and chairs that consumers bought years ago remain in use, their cushions and padding awash in suspect chemicals. Couches are not, like pajamas, easily tossed out. Families tend to hold on to them for decades. To go by the warnings from scientists like Dr. Birnbaum, people on their sofas have no reason to believe they are sitting pretty.
How the New York Times/CBS News Poll Was Conducted
The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted April 30 to May 3 with 1,027 adults throughout the United States. Of these, 868 said they were registered to vote.
SSRS of Media, Pa., conducted sampling, interviewing and tabulation for the survey. Interviews were in English or Spanish.
The sample of landline telephone exchanges called was randomly selected by a computer from a complete list of more than 81,000 active residential exchanges across the country. The exchanges were chosen so as to ensure that each region of the country was represented in its proper proportion.
Within each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to listed and unlisted numbers alike. Within each landline household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey.
Cellphone numbers were generated by a similar random process. The two samples were then combined and adjusted to ensure the proper ratio of landline-only, cellphone-only and dual phone users.
Interviewers made multiple attempts to reach every phone number in the survey, calling back unanswered numbers on different days at different times, day and night.
The combined results have been weighted to adjust for variation in the sample relating to geographic region, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, age, education and (for landline households) the number of adults and number of phone lines. In addition, the sample was adjusted to reflect the percentage of the population residing in mostly Democratic counties, mostly Republican counties and counties more closely balanced politically.
In theory, in 19 cases out of 20, overall results based on such samples will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking to interview all American adults. For smaller subgroups, the margin of sampling error is larger. Shifts in results between polls over time also have a larger sampling error.
In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of public opinion may introduce other sources of error into the poll. Variation in the wording, order and translation of questions, for example, may lead to somewhat different results.
Michael R. Kagay of Princeton, N.J., assisted The Times in its polling analysis. Complete questions and results are available atnytimes.com/polls.
Hillary Clinton’s Appeal Survives Scrutiny, Poll Says
Hillary Rodham Clinton at Columbia University in New York last week. CreditMichael Appleton for The New York Times
Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to have initially weathered a barrage of news about her use of a private email account when she was secretary of state and the practices of her family’s foundation, an indication that she is starting her second presidential bid with an unusual durability among Democratic voters.
Americans now view Mrs. Clinton more favorably and more see her as a strong leader than they did earlier in the year, despite weeks of scrutiny about her ethics, a New York Times/CBS News poll has found. And nearly nine in 10 Democrats say the nation is ready to elect a woman president.
Republican voters showed the most openness to considering Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and former Govs. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Jeb Bush of Florida among their party’s presidential contenders, the survey found.
Mrs. Clinton remains a polarizing figure — nearly the same percentage of Americans view her positively as negatively — but her favorability rating has improved by nine percentage points since the disclosure in late March that she did not use a government email account as secretary of state.
See what Americans think about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Republican candidates and issues like the health care law and same-sex marriage.
OPEN INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC
And the number of Americans who think Mrs. Clinton has strong qualities of leadership has risen by eight percentage points, to 65 percent from 57 percent, in that period. Still, Mrs. Clinton begins this campaign with fewer voters saying she possesses such qualities than did in July 2007, near the outset of her first presidential bid.
Mrs. Clinton has one primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and more Democrats are likely to enter the race, but her party seems particularly unbothered by questions relating to the emails and to the foundation that she, her husband and their daughter oversee.
While roughly 48 percent of Americans say Mrs. Clinton is honest and trustworthy, about four of five Democrats think she has those traits — and about the same numbers of Democrats say she shares the values most Americans try to live by.
Fifty-two percent of Democrats said they knew nothing or very little about the Clinton Foundation, and only 10 percent said foreign donations to the foundation affected Mrs. Clinton’s decisions while she was the nation’s top diplomat. Just 9 percent of Democratic voters said they would not consider voting for Mrs. Clinton.
”I think the whole thing is political and it’s going to wash away eventually,” Herbert Levengard, 83, a Democratic retiree from Maryland, said in a follow-up interview. “There are always going to be people who mess around and look for things to yell about, but I don’t care.”Photo
Jeb Bush in Puerto Rico last week. CreditDennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The New York Times
Mrs. Clinton is also helped in her own party by the enduring popularity of former President Bill Clinton: Seventy-six percent of Democrats have a favorable view of him, and only 4 percent view him unfavorably.
Democrats also assume that Mr. Clinton — who memorably said in his 1992 presidential bid that he and Mrs. Clinton represented “two for the price of one” — would play a substantial role were Mrs. Clinton to win the White House. Seven in 10 Democratic voters said he would have a great deal or some influence on Mrs. Clinton if she became president.
If Democrats seem largely content with the prospect of another Clinton in the White House, Republicans do not seem quite as certain about electing a third member of the Bush family president.
Nearly three-quarters of Republican voters view George W. Bush favorably, but almost 70 percent have not yet formed an opinion of his brother Jeb, a likely presidential candidate.
The Republican primary is largely unformed, with many Republicans indicating openness to a variety of candidates in a large and still growing field.
Document: A New York Times/CBS News Poll on the 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Issues
There is positive news for Jeb Bush, though. Forty-nine percent of conservative Republican voters think his stance on the issues is about right.
While Mr. Bush has faced questions about whether he is conservative enough to win a Republican primary, only 22 percent of Republican voters said his views were not conservative enough. Further, 60 percent of Republican voters said having the right experience was more important in a presidential candidate, while only 27 percent said they thought offering fresh ideas was more valuable.
What could also help Mr. Bush — along with the other governors or former governors seeking the G.O.P. nomination — is that 73 percent of Republican voters said they preferred candidates with experience outside Washington.
Mark Crozier 1 hour ago
Hillary will likely prevail in 2016 because of several key advantages: a) She has more experience on the world stage than all of the other...
Hanan 1 hour ago
I think its too early to say this; she just announced and survived what scrutiny yet? There is a long way to go in the 2016 campaign. HRC,...
Lilburne 1 hour ago
I just don't understand why reporters feel required to write that Hillary Clinton is "polarizing" as if that is something new, strange and...
“I would really prefer a candidate who has been a governor,” said Vinton Ernest, an 85-year-old Republican retiree from Las Vegas. “Running a state is just as difficult as running a government. It’s just multiplied when you’re running the country.”
Still, Mr. Rubio, 43, a first-term senator, seems to have more room to gain in popularity than Mr. Huckabee or Mr. Bush: Only 17 percent of Republicans said they would not consider supporting him, while 26 percent said they would not back Mr. Huckabee and 23 percent ruled out supporting Mr. Bush.
Republican voters were least resistant toGov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin: Only 13 percent said they would not consider voting for him. At the opposite extreme, 42 percent of Republicans said they would not consider voting for Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.
Over all, Democrats enter the next presidential campaign with a better image than Republicans. Forty-three percent of Americans said they had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party while only 29 percent said the same of the Republican Party.
But as Democrats seek to retain the White House for a third consecutive term, many Americans are dissatisfied with the country’s direction. Sixty-three percent of Americans said the country had gotten off track, and 66 percent said the economy was growing worse or staying the same.
The candidates will make their case to an increasingly polarized electorate: Two-thirds of Democrats support legalizing same-sex marriage, while about the same percentage of Republicans do not think same-sex marriagesshould be legal.CONTINUE READING THE MAIN STORY352COMMENTS
In addition, 69 percent of Republicans say small-business owners who provide wedding-related services should be able to refuse, on the basis of their religious belief, such services to same-sex couples. But 58 percent of Democrats think the businesses should be required to provide those services.
On immigration, 46 percent of Republicans said illegal immigrants should be required to leave the United States, while only 16 percent of Democrats said the same. And while 71 percent of Democrats said illegal immigrants should be able to stay in the country and apply for citizenship, just 38 percent of Republicans said they should be allowed to remain in America and pursue citizenship.
The poll was conducted by telephone, on landlines and cellphones nationwide, from April 30 to May 3 with 1,027 adults, of whom 868 were registered to vote. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all adults and registered voters.
Rural Indiana Struggles to Contend With H.I.V. Outbreak
Sherry McNeely, right, a nurse, testing for H.I.V. on Monday in a mobile testing unit in Austin, Ind.CreditAaron P. Bernstein for The New York Times
AUSTIN, Ind. — She became addicted to painkillers over a decade ago, when a car wreck left her with a broken back and doctors prescribed OxyContin during her recovery. Then came a new prescription opiate, Opana, easily obtained on the street and more potent when crushed, dissolved in water and injected. She did just that, many times a day, sometimes sharing needles with other addicts.
Last month, the thin, 45-year-old woman learned the unforgiving consequences. She tested positive for H.I.V., one of nearly 150 cases in this socially conservative, largely rural region just north of the Kentucky border. Now a life long hobbled by addiction is, like so many others here, consumed by fear.
She is afraid to start antiretroviral therapy because she does not want to be spotted entering the clinic on Main Street, she says, and afraid to learn her prognosis after hearing a rumor — false, it turns out — that someone else with the virus was given six months to live. Other drug users have refused to be tested at all.Photo
Scott County is offering free tests for the virus that causes AIDS.CreditAaron P. Bernstein for The New York Times
“I thought it was just a homosexual disease,” the woman said one recent evening, twisting a tissue in her manicured hands as tears filled her eyes. She asked that her name not be published out of concerns about being stigmatized. “I didn’t ever think it would be in my small hometown.”
The crisis would test even a large metropolis; Austin, population 4,200, is overwhelmed despite help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state and nonprofit groups like the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. H.I.V. had been all but unknown here, and misinformation is rife. Attempts to halt the outbreak have been hindered by strong but misguided local beliefs about how to address it, according to people involved in the response.
Gov. Mike Pence reluctantly authorized a needle exchange program last month, but local officials are not running it according to best practices, outside experts say. Austin residents still must wait for addiction treatment, even though they have been given priority. And getting those who are H.I.V.-positive on medication, and making sure they adhere to the protocol, has been difficult.
Officials here say the need for education is urgent and deep; even local health workers are learning as they go. Brittany Combs, the public health nurse for Scott County, said she was stunned to discover from talking to addicts that many were using the same needle up to 300 times, until it broke off in their arms. Some were in the habit of using nail polish to mark syringes as their own, but with needles scarce and houses full of people frequently shooting up together, efforts to avoid sharing often failed.
Ms. Combs also learned that many addicts were uncomfortable visiting a needle distribution center that opened April 4 on the outskirts of town. So she started taking needles directly to users in their neighborhoods.
At the same time, H.I.V. specialists from Indianapolis — who have evaluated about 50 people with the virus here so far and started about 20 of them on antiretroviral drugs — are fighting a barrage of misinformation about the virus in Scott County, where almost all residents are white, few go to college and one in five live in poverty, according to the census.
“There are still a significant proportion of people in Austin who have biases about H.I.V. and are contributing to the stigma and subsequent fear,” said Dr. Diane Janowicz, an infectious disease specialist at Indiana University, who is treating H.I.V. patients here. “I have to reassure them: If your grandkid wants a sip of your drink, you can share it. It’s O.K. to eat at the same table. You can use the same bathroom.”
Many whose H.I.V. has been newly diagnosed here have strikingly high amounts of it in their blood, Dr. Janowicz said, and in one patient the H.I.V. has progressed to AIDS. Nonetheless, she said, “if they take their medicine for H.I.V., this is a chronic disease, not something they have to die from.”
Another complication is that the needle exchange has faced strong local resistance. Mr. Pence, a Republican, generally opposes such programs, saying they perpetuate drug use. Many residents here feel the same.Photo
Containers holding discarded syringes as part of a needle exchange program in Austin, Ind.CreditAaron P. Bernstein for The New York Times
“If you would have asked me last year if I was for a needle exchange program, I would have said you’re nuts,” Ms. Combs said. “I thought, just like a lot of people do, that it’s enabling — that you’re just giving needles out and assisting them in their drug habit. But then I did the research on it, and there’s 28 years of research to prove that it actually works.”
But researchers say Scott County’s hastily created exchange has several features that could sharply curb its effectiveness. To get clean needles, drug users have to register, using their birth date and a few letters from their name to create an identification number that goes on a laminated card. The police are arresting anyone found with needles but no card, saying it will prod more people to participate.
Shortly after the needle exchange began, sheriff’s deputies visited a house in Austin and found a man who had joined the program and a woman who had not. They did not arrest the man, Sheriff Dan McClain said, although they confiscated a number of clean needles he had received from a volunteer group that was not part of the official program. But they did arrest the woman, who had “a freshly used needle lying next to her” in a bed spattered with blood, Sheriff McClain said.
“If they’ve got one needle and they’re not in the program, they’re going to jail,” Sheriff McClain said.
Dr. Don Des Jarlais, the director of research for the chemical dependency institute at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in New York, said the most successful needle exchange programs let participants pass out syringes to peers who remain in the shadows instead of requiring everyone to sign up. Arresting drug users who are not officially enrolled in the program “makes it hard to build trust,” Dr. Des Jarlais said, adding, “You’re not going to be able to get enough syringes out to really stop the epidemic if you have those types of restrictions.”
Local supporters of the needle exchange say a limited program is better than none, and believe that improvements will come with time. Last week, the state legislature sent a bill to Mr. Pence that would allow communities to create needle exchange programs for up to a year if they are experiencing an epidemic of H.I.V. or hepatitis C because of intravenous drug use. Mr. Pence said he would sign the measure, noting in a statement that it would allow only “limited and accountable” needle exchange programs, and only “where public health emergencies warrant such action.”
For now, the program here is giving out a maximum of 140 clean needles per user per week to whoever goes to the outreach center or accepts them from the roaming minivan. Ms. Combs said some people told her they injected as often as 15 times a day, and the exchange is erring on the side of providing slightly more than people need. She has passed out needles at a house where the owner, an older woman known as Momma, sits on the porch while a steady stream of visitors comes to shoot up inside. She has knocked on the door of a trailer where, she said, “multiple family members live and the daughters all prostitute themselves out and everyone is doing drugs.” One recent afternoon, on a street fragrant with lilacs, a young woman on a bicycle declined Ms. Combs’s offer of clean needles, saying she already had some — and H.I.V.
“I know I need the medicine to slow it down,” she murmured.
At a run-down house with a wheelchair on the porch, Tiffany Prater, 27, walked out to greet the van, saying, “The needles ain’t lasting me long enough.” She beckoned two men out of the house to get some, too.Photo
Brittany Combs, the public health nurse for Scott County, which includes Austin, Ind., with a needle exchange kit being made available to drug users after an outbreak of H.I.V.CreditAaron P. Bernstein for The New York Times
“This little boy right here needs a card,” she told Ms. Combs, gesturing toward an expressionless friend whose eyes kept slipping shut. “You got some extra Neosporin and stuff? Because look how bad his arms is.”
The van moved on, stopping as someone yelled from a white house with a broad lawn. A woman in a pink tank top emerged, saying a neighbor had taken some of her clean needles and her daughter’s, too.
The daughter could not come out of the house — she had just injected and “can’t get up from the kitchen table,” the mother said. Ms. Combs gave the woman needles for her and her daughter.
“Spread the word that this white vehicle is a friendly mobile,” she said.
As of Tuesday, the exchange had distributed 9,491 needles to 223 people, including many repeat customers. About 8,300 needles had been returned to the exchange, but not all of them came from the exchange program.
Some participants say they are happy to have clean needles but would be happier in treatment. While some intravenous drug users from Austin have recently gone into treatment at a residential center in Jeffersonville, about 30 miles away, others are still waiting for a bed.
A 23-year-old user with H.I.V. said he had gone to the community outreach center to get clean needles and seek addiction treatment, but was put on a waiting list. Two weeks later, he is still waiting.
Opana remains easy to get, he added, a quarter of a pill selling for $40 — enough of a dose to ease his withdrawal symptoms and enable him to get out of bed.
One unexpected benefit of the H.I.V. outbreak, according to the woman who tested positive and fears starting treatment, is that the men who used to stream into town daily, seeking young female addicts who would prostitute themselves in exchange for drug money, have all but disappeared.
“It took H.I.V. to change our town,” she said. “Those of us who are affected are devastated, but I’m glad H.I.V. is here.”
Police Struggle With Loss of Privileged Position
Baltimore police officers last week after the announcement of charges against officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray. CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Early this year, Megan E. Green, a St. Louis alderwoman, met with officials of a local police union to discuss a proposal for a civilian oversight board that would look into accusations of police misconduct. After Ms. Green refused to soften her support for the proposal, the union backed an aggressive mailing campaign against her.
But Ms. Green won her primary with over 70 percent of the vote, and the Board of Aldermen approved the oversight board by a large margin. “All that stuff backfired,” Ms. Green said. “The more they attacked me for it, the more people seemed to rally around me.”
During the urban crime epidemic of the 1970s and ’80s and the sharp decline in crime that began in the 1990s, the unions representing police officers in many cities enjoyed a nearly unassailable political position. Their opposition could cripple political candidates and kill police-reform proposals in gestation.
But amid a rash of high-profile encounters involving allegations of police overreach in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and North Charleston, S.C., the political context in which the police unions have enjoyed a privileged position is rapidly changing. And the unions are struggling to adapt.
“There was a time in this country when elected officials — legislators, chief executives — were willing to contextualize what police do,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and prosecutor who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And that time is mostly gone.”
In Baltimore, the local police union president accused protesters angry at the death of Freddie Gray of participating in a “lynch mob.” In South Carolina, the head of the police union where an officer had shot and killed an unarmed black man who was fleeing fulminated against “professional race agitators.” In New York, Patrick Lynch, a local police union chief, accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of having blood on his hands after the shooting death of two police officers last December.
If voters’ reactions to Mr. Lynch’s statements are any indication, the provocative language has largely served to alienate the public and isolate the police politically. According to a Quinnipiac University poll in January, 77 percent of New York City voters disapproved of Mr. Lynch’s comments. Sixty-nine percent disapproved of police officers turning their backs on Mr. de Blasio at funerals for the two slain officers, a protest seen as orchestrated by the union.
In Baltimore, too, the police union has been less than sure-footed in navigating the more hostile political terrain of the past few years. The union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, has responded with open resistance to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s proposals to make it easier to remove misbehaving police officers, and to give the city’s police civilian review board a “more impactful” role in disciplining officers.
The union also opposed the decision by Ms. Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts to invite the Justice Department in to help overhaul the city’s Police Department after an investigation by The Baltimore Sun produced numerous allegations of police brutality.
Union officials say they have been fulfilling their mandate to protect their members, airing legitimate concerns about overreach on the part of their civilian overseers. And sympathetic observers have questioned the political motivations of the mayor.
“She seems to suggest that the blame lies elsewhere, when the buck should stop with the mayor, always,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “She’s been there five years. The thing is an institutional disaster. It’s your institution.”
A spokesman for the mayor said that some of her efforts, like disbanding a plainclothes unit linked to an unusual number of excessive-force complaints, began shortly after she took office.
In some cases, the union’s hostility to scrutiny has been self-defeating. In 2014, the Fraternal Order of Police declined to endorse Gregg Bernstein, then the state’s attorney for Baltimore, after members of the union’s endorsement committee complained that Mr. Bernstein had been too aggressive in prosecuting police misconduct, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
Mr. Bernstein, who suffered from diminishing support in districts where the union has long been influential, lost his re-election bid to the current state’s attorney, Marilyn J. Mosby, who has made prosecuting police misconduct a priority. Ms. Mosby recently charged six Baltimore police officers in the death of Mr. Gray, the resident whose death last month set off tumultuous protests around the city.
St. Louis offers a particularly vivid example of the inability of police unions to update their tactics amid widespread frustration with policing. The St. Louis Board of Aldermen first passed a measure creating a civilian oversight board back in 2006. Mayor Francis G. Slay, a Democrat, vetoed the bill at the time, citing its “inflammatory antipolice” language and questioning whether it would survive a legal challenge given that the State of Missouri still formally controlled the local Police Department.
But, in December, after months of outrage following the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in nearby Ferguson, Mr. Slay agreed to support a bill similar to the one he vetoed a decade ago. A spokeswoman for the mayor said that local control of the Police Department now made the bill legally defensible.
Jason Shapiro 1 hour ago
Let's be clear, the police did not "lose" their privileged position, they threw it away with their own violence and arrogance. They were too...
Luckycharms 2 hours ago
The police lost all its credibility. No doubt there are great cops who take their jobs seriously and do believe in, "To protect and serve."...
Jeff 2 hours ago
I think what has been lost, or forgotten by too many, and should be remembered above everything else, is the notion that police officers...
The St. Louis Fraternal Order of Police, one of two prominent local unions, was not persuaded. Although the alderman involved in drafting the legislation met with union officials around the same time and asked them for input, the union offered suggestions in writing only on April 13, two days before the board was set to vote on the bill, and far too late to incorporate any of its changes.
“When we met with them in December, I was honestly interested in their thoughts,” said Alderman Terry Kennedy, who sponsored the legislation. “I would have tried to incorporate as much as I could have.” But, Mr. Kennedy said, the union’s objections proved to be a “constantly moving target.”
Jeff Roorda, a spokesman for the union, said that once it became clear that the Board of Aldermen was determined to give the oversight board investigative authority, rather than simply review powers, the union felt it was better to save its reservations for a future legal challenge.
“It put us in a tough spot, to tip our hand about what our legal objections were, telling them how to write legislation within the legal parameters,” Mr. Roorda said. The measure will become law this week.
In contrast to the unions’ hard-line public stance, many can be pragmatic behind the scenes when dealing with prosecutors over individual allegations of misconduct. In Baltimore, for example, there have been several recent instances when the police union declined to fund the legal defense of an officer whose behavior it had concluded was beyond the pale.
“People have the impression, when it comes to police unions, that there’s never an unwarranted case of police abuse,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois. “The public would be surprised by the level of rational behavior on the part of union grievance officers.”
But when it comes to what the unions perceive as larger, institutional threats, they are characteristically unrelenting, even when a more nuanced response might better serve their long-term interests.
There may be no better example than the creation of New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board two decades ago. In September 1992, after a monthslong standoff between the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins and the city’s police over his proposal for an independent review agency, a union-organized protest degenerated into what the news media called a “riot,” as thousands of police officers overwhelmed barricades blocking the steps of City Hall.
“It was a very bad inning for the unions,” Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said. “Most people view that as being the incident that pushed civilian oversight over the line.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment