Early childhood education advocates called out state lawmakers Wednesday to put aside their differences and reach a bipartisan compromise that invests in pre-kindergarten programs for at-risk children.

The call was made in the lobby of the Statehouse, where the heads of three organizations met to urge lawmakers to implement a statewide policy to measure the progress of children participating in early childhood education programs. More than a dozen organizations, including the United Way and Institute for Child Success, joined the effort dubbed South Carolina’s Early Childhood Common Agenda.

“We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars in this state on early childhood education, and we haven’t been able to prove that the way we’re doing is effective in every case,” said Tim Ervolina, president of the United Way, during the conference. “We’re just asking the people upstairs spend the money smartly.”

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On the euthanasia front, legalization of assisting suicide is under consideration in New Jersey, while the Minnesota Supreme Court is set to hear an important related case.

In New Jersey, the so-called “Death With Dignity Act,” A3328, has been voted out of committee and awaits floor consideration. Along with its companion Senate Bill, S2259, it could be considered by the legislature at any time until the end of the year.

Minnesota is facing a different problem. In Minnesota, the “Final Exit Network” has been in legal trouble because of its roll in several suicides. The Final Exit Network is a network of volunteer activists that assist in people’s suicides using counseling, guidance, and information on suicide techniques.

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…a new program initiated five years ago in Georgia suggests, these hurdles aren’t insurmountable. The nonprofit FaithBridge was started by Bill Hancock, a director of counseling programs who had lived on the streets as a teenager, and Rick Jackson, an Atlanta businessman who had spent time in the foster-care system.

Hancock wondered why churches weren’t more involved in finding solutions. He said he noticed that in Cobb County, Georgia, there were 1,100 churches and 300 children in foster care. He liked the odds. Plenty of people he knew had an extra bedroom and understood the needs of children. He began to break down the problem.

He would find out the number of children in a particular zip code in need of a foster home, go to a church in the area to present their stories without using their names, and see what happened. He announced at one church that there were 11 kids in his own zip code, representing four sibling groups. Four dozen people showed up at a meeting to volunteer. Read it all.

Legalisation is just the first step. Pot must also be regulated. Because it is more dangerous than chocolate or chips, it needs to be subject to more stringent safety checks than food. As with alcohol, anybody who wants to produce it for sale, or sell it, should be licensed, as they will be in Colorado. It should carry clear labels showing its tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, just as cans of beer display their alcoholic strength””consumers should know what they are smoking. Colorado seems to be handling this well: labels are clear, safety rules stringent.

Deciding how to tax the stuff means asking some fundamental questions. Where governments want to raise revenue without distorting markets, the best approach is to charge businesses a flat fee, like a cab licence. Firms then have an incentive to do as much business as they can. But where governments want to discourage consumption””as with cigarettes and alcohol””they should tax each unit sold.

Although marijuana does not harm people as reliably as cigarettes do, nor””as alcohol does””incite citizens to kill each other, it is not good for you. And although too little research has been done on the extent of the harm it can do, it is thought to raise the risk of schizophrenia and undermine motivation. This argues for a consumption tax, and a fairly stiff one at that.

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Governor [Peter] Shumlin hauled out his own list of grim statistics. In Vermont, treatment for opiate abuse has risen 770 percent since 2000. In just the past year, treatment for heroin addiction has risen a dramatic 40 percent, and deaths from heroin overdoses have doubled. Nearly 80 percent of those jailed in Vermont, he said, are now or have been drug addicts.

Perhaps even more sobering were the stories he told of lives ruined by drug addiction. One Vermont teen started using Oxycontin in the 10th grade and was soon addicted to a $500-a-day habit. He stole $20,000 in farm equipment from his own family to pay for his drugs. And not long ago another young man, an undergraduate at the University of Vermont who was a science major and member of the school’s ski team, died of a heroin overdose. Because the quality and potency of each batch of black-market heroin varies widely, even those who think they are cautious users can accidentally and suddenly overdose at any time.

Both stories sought to shatter perceptions that heroin addiction is a problem only for large urban areas. In fact, Vermont represents a particularly lucrative market for heroin dealers, the governor said, who find that they can sell a bag of heroin that would fetch $6 on the streets of New York City for $30 or more there. Each Vermont addict yields five times the income from the same amount of “product.”

Read it all and you call find the full text of Governor Peter Shumlin’s 2014 State of the State Address there.

A gleaming white Apple store of weed is how Andy Williams sees his new Denver marijuana dispensary.

Two floors of pot-growing rooms will have windows showing the shopping public how the mind-altering plant is grown. Shoppers will be able to peruse drying marijuana buds and see pot trimmers at work separating the valuable flowers from the less-prized stems and leaves.

“It’s going to be all white and beautiful,” the 45-year-old ex-industrial engineer explains, excitedly gesturing around what just a few weeks ago was an empty warehouse space that will eventually house 40,000 square feet of cannabis strains.

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Read it all and take the time to read the court document also.

The campaign to stop compulsory labelling of genetically modified (GM) food in Washington broke state records for fund-raising. The campaign to force labelling must have come close to breaking state records for squandering poll leads. In September 66% of Washington’s voters said they intended to vote for Initiative 522, which would have placed a conspicuous label on most foods containing GM ingredients sold in retail outlets. Final results are not yet in (and the “yes” campaign has not conceded), but the measure appears to have lost by about ten percentage points.

Those who decry the influence of money in politics will find a lot to chew over here. Proponents of the measure could stake a reasonable claim to have run a grassroots campaign. They raised about $8.4m; this included large donations from such august bodies as Dr Bronner’s Magic Soaps of California, but also 13,000 individual contributions (median contribution: $25). In outraising them by about three to one, meanwhile, their opponents relied heavily on contributions from food companies and biotech firms (and broke campaign-finance laws, according to the state’s attorney-general). They raised money from just four individuals. (All figures date from late October.)

All that money paid for a slick, well-run campaign and a lot of television ads, focused on the costs and inconsistencies of I-522….

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Grocery aisles in Washington state could look a little different in 2015 if voters approve a ballot measure on Tuesday (Nov. 5) to require product labels to disclose when genetically modified crops are included.

Most of the processed foods and beverages that dominate the shelves are made with some sort of genetically modified crop, like soy or corn.

Campbell Soup Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Kellogg Co. are among the companies pumping money into the fight against the referendum, known as Initiative 522, claiming the measure is misleading, would hurt farmers and raise grocery costs.

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From here:

On November 5th, New York voters will be presented with Proposal 1, the New York Casino Gambling Amendment, which would allow the legislature to authorize up to seven new casinos in the state. The stated purposes of this constitutional amendment are to promote job growth, increase funding to schools, and permit local governments to lower property taxes. These are more than reasonable goals, but what is not said is that in places where casino gambling has been introduced, almost all gains have come at the high social cost of addiction and family disintegration, and deepening poverty. Some of these casinos are targeted for regions in New York, including in our diocese, characterized by entrenched poverty. The infusion of such false hopes into communities of economic desperation will, we are convinced, prove ruinous to people and families who will turn to the empty promises of casino gambling. There are no quick fixes to the challenges of struggling cities and towns, and we call on our elected leaders instead to focus on the kind of investment and hard work that build sound, long-term economic health and the self-sufficiency of communities. The Episcopal Church has long opposed casino gambling for all of these reasons, and so we stand in opposition to Proposal 1.

The Right Reverend Andrew M. L. Dietsche
Bishop of New York

The state lottery functions as a voluntary tax with a disproportionate burden on the poor.

This is especially onerous in Florida, which is one of the most regressive tax states in the nation, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Because Florida relies on raising money from sales tax and excise taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and gasoline instead of a progressive income tax, the poorest 20 percent of the population pay about 13.5 percent of their income in taxes, while the middle 60 percent pay 7.8 percent and the top 1 percent pay 2.6 percent, the institute found in a 2009 study.

The lottery makes that regressive tax burden even worse.

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Despite President Barack Obama’s promise that those who like their health plans will be able to keep it, residents across the country are being notified they must switch to a more comprehensive, and often more expensive, policy that complies with the federal law.

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The Episcopal Diocese of Hawai”˜i on Saturday voted to encourage the state Legislature to pass marriage equality, the largest denomination to announce its support of an issue that has divided people of faith.

A resolution was approved by acclamation of the 180 Episcopalians who attended the diocese’s annual convention at the Cathedral of St. Andrew, including 44 clergy. The diocese has 40 worshipping sites and about 9,000 parishioners statewide.

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Disney, a powerhouse in Florida because of its financial might and its sway over the tourism industry, has long led the fight against the expansion of casinos in the state, arguing successfully that gambling tarnishes Florida’s coveted family-friendly brand.

This year is no exception. For the second time in two years, state lawmakers are preparing to decide whether Las Vegas-style resort casinos should be allowed to open in Florida, a move that Disney hopes to thwart again. The company is so opposed to gambling that not even Disney cruise ships offer casinos, a mainstay of major cruise liners.

But in a nation increasingly awash in various forms of gambling, Disney is finding that keeping a constantly growing entertainment conglomerate completely removed from gambling is far more challenging than it used to be.

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Fifth-graders’ desks in Vicki Robertson’s class are arranged in clusters for two reasons: It’s easier for students to do group work, and it gives her 29 students more space to move around the room.

That’s one of the adjustments the Pinckney Elementary teacher has made to accommodate her large classes. She has 30 students in one English lesson, which is the maximum allowed by state regulation.

So what does Robertson think about the state potentially eliminating the cap on the size of some classes statewide?

“Oh wow! I’m making it work with the space I have,” she said. “But when you have more students, they have more needs and challenges.”

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The next big movement in Massachusetts health care may come not from the state’s world-famous hospitals or its cutting-edge research labs, but from houses of worship.

Stepping up pressure on the health care industry to control spiraling costs, which are crimping family and government budgets, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization will host a forum next Tuesday at Temple Israel in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area to grill hospital and insurance leaders about the affordability of medical care.

Top executives of major hospital groups, such as Partners HealthCare System, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Steward Health Care System, and leading insurers, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Tufts Health Plan, have accepted invitations to the event, which is scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m.

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Anyone who still doubts that the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage will represent a seismic shift in the culture at large needs only to look to New Mexico to see that nothing less than religious liberty is now under threat””and in a big way….The court’s ruling sets a very dangerous precedent: “If a commercial photography business believes that the [New Mexico Human Rights Act] stifles its creativity, it can remain in business, but it can cease to offer its services to the public at large. Elane Photography’s choice to offer its services to the public is a business decision, not a decision about its freedom of speech.”

A business decision, but not a decision about freedom of speech? The New Mexico Supreme Court’s ruling points to the comprehensive scope of the moral and legal realignment likely required by same-sex marriage””and eagerly demanded by its proponents. The addition of sexual orientation as a denominator of a protected class was sufficient to drag the Huguenins before a court in a state that itself does not legally recognize same-sex marriage.

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South Carolina has, once again, landed near the top of a new list of fattest states.

But here’s a silver lining: Other Southern states have shown ways to improve childhood obesity in just a few years.

“The signs of progress that we’re seeing around the country are very, very encouraging,” said Dwayne Proctor, director of childhood obesity programs at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Read it all from the local paper.

The report, by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, is a follow-up to Cato’s 1995 study of the subject, which found that packages of welfare benefits for a typical recipient in the 50 states and the District of Columbia not only was well above the poverty level, but also more than a recipient’s annual wages from an entry-level job.

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In rejecting the bill Aug. 13, Brown, a Democrat, expressed concerns about the potential risks to women who undergo invasive techniques for their eggs to be harvested.

“Not everything in life is for sale nor should it be,” Brown said in his veto message.

“In medical procedures of this kind, genuinely informed consent is difficult because the long-term risks are not adequately known,” he wrote. “Putting thousands of dollars on the table only compounds the problem.”

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Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has vetoed a bill that would have made his state the seventh in the nation to prohibit judges from considering Shari’ah, or Islamic law, and other “foreign laws” in their decisions.

But rather than citing the usual arguments about anti-Muslim discrimination and the freedom of religion, Nixon introduced a new argument against such legislation, asserting it would make it harder for Missouri families to adopt children from overseas.

Nixon said if state judges would not be able to consider foreign decrees that are sometimes required to finalize adoptions, adoptive families and children would be left stranded.

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The way some schools in Nevada teach sex education could be changing.

A bill moving its way through the Nevada Legislature would require all districts to provide uniform, medically accurate and age-appropriate sex education lessons. Topics would include abstinence, abortion, contraceptives, domestic violence and sex trafficking. Students would be automatically enrolled in sex education classes under the proposed law, and parents would need to sign a document for their children to opt out of the instruction.

Currently, sex education instruction varies by county, although all counties have sex education advisory boards by law.

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First, like many others, I am profoundly disappointed that Rhode Island has approved legislation that seeks to legitimize “same-sex marriage.” The Catholic Church has fought very hard to oppose this immoral and unnecessary proposition, and we are most grateful to all those who have courageously joined us in this effort. When all is said and done, however, we know that God will be the final judge of our actions.

As I have emphasized consistently in the past, the Catholic Church has respect, love and pastoral concern for our brothers and sisters who have same-sex attraction. I sincerely pray for God’s blessings upon them, that they will enjoy much health, happiness and peace. We also offer our prayerful support to families, especially parents, who often struggle with this issue when it occurs in their own homes.

Our respect and pastoral care, however, does not mean that we are free to endorse or ignore immoral or destructive behavior, whenever or however it occurs. Indeed, as St. Paul urges us, we are required to “speak the truth in love.” (Eph 4:15)

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A state House bill aimed at giving S.C. courts clearer guidelines on when to terminate parental rights, especially in cases where parents or guardians have a history of child or drug abuse, passed a key vote in the House Thursday.

The House voted 104-0 to give second reading to the bill, named Jaidon’s Law after a toddler who died from a drug overdose a week after the state returned him to his parents, who had prior drug charges.

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This week, legislators here will consider excise and sales taxes on marijuana of up to 30 percent combined. The proposal emerged from a task force of health officials, representatives of the state’s rapidly developing marijuana industry and others that was commissioned last year to help develop rules for marijuana.

The goal, task force members and lawmakers say, is to set taxes high enough to finance the administration of new laws, but not so high that customers are driven back to the black market.

“We should see a financial benefit as a state that can help pay for enforcement and other fundamental issues,” said Christian Sederberg, a Denver lawyer on the panel whose firm helped draft Amendment 64, the measure legalizing recreational marijuana. “The other side is that if you tax something too high, then you simply crowd out the regulated market. We’re confident we’ll find the right balance.”

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Whatever struck you, provoked you, moved you; whatever part of it which you believe is most significant or worthy of further consideration. Remember the more specific you are, the more other blog reads can participate in what you say–KSH.

In the waning moments of daylight, police descended Friday on a shrouded boat in a Watertown backyard to capture the suspected terrorist who had eluded their enormous dragnet for a tumultuous day, ending a dark week in Boston that began with the bombing of the world’s most prestigious road race.

The arrest of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of Cambridge ended an unprecedented daylong siege of Greater Boston, after a frantic night of violence that left one MIT police officer dead, an MBTA Transit Police officer wounded, and an embattled public ”” rattled again by the touch of terrorism ”” huddled inside homes….

“It’s a proud day to be a Boston police officer,” Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told his force over the radio moments after the arrest. “Thank you all.”

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Thank you–KSH.

The desperate 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon terror bombings ran over his own wounded brother as he fled police, officials said. Considered armed and dangerous and possibly wearing a suicide vest, he remains on the loose, sought by legions of heavily armed police as nearly a million residents of Boston hunker down behind locked doors, in an unprecedented security measure.

The search for Dzhokhor A. Tsarnaev of Cambridge comes after a chaotic, violent night in which his brother died in a firefight with police, and one police officer was killed and another was seriously wounded.

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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, one of the health reform law’s chief authors, says he’s worried about a “huge train wreck coming down” if the Obama administration doesn’t improve its public outreach about the legislation.

Baucus, a Montana Democrat who is up for reelection in 2014, sharply criticized the administration’s outreach efforts in a budget hearing on Wednesday. He told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that people and businesses “have no idea what to do, what to expect” from the law.

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