Fighting Covid

Oregon State University and the University of Chicago have conducted studies that analyzed whether non-psychoactive compounds found in hemp could prevent infection and replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human cells. And what are these non-psychoactive compounds? Cannabis Compound CBD.

Did they work? Yes, but in mice, not humans. Some other issues:

Each study tested pure, specially formulated doses of these compounds, not commercially available products with CBD additives. Researchers say that further study is required to determine how, or if, CBD, CBDA, and CBGA can prevent or treat COVID-19 infection in human beings.

Canada is doing better than the U.S.

In terms of Covid. Or, so says Wall Street on Parade. Canada reports that 66.3 percent of its population is fully vaccinated while the CDC is reporting that just 52 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated.

 
Here are some quotes:

 
"As of this past Friday, August 27, the U.S. had 330 COVID-19 infections per 100,000 over the last 7 days, according to the Reuters COVID-19 tracker. Canada had 6.3 times fewer cases, reporting only 52 per 100,000 over the past 7 days. The U.S. stood at 62 percent of its prior peak of cases on Friday while Canada stood at 32 percent of its prior peak."

 
"The U.S. and Canada confirmed their first cases of the virus within a week of each other in January of 2020. Both countries began vaccinating their population at roughly the same time, in December of 2020. The majority of shots in both countries came from the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses to be considered fully vaccinated. But the U.S. fell dramatically behind Canada in the early days of testing for the virus." 

“Canada was ahead of the North American curve on testing because its federal government once again made the right choices. In mid-March, Canadian federal authorities launched a large-scale testing procurement program aimed at ensuring the country could test early and often. By contrast, Trump put his unqualified son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in charge of the country’s testing ramp-up. Kushner proceeded to hype a Google testing website that didn’t exist and spearhead a drive-through push that, as of early April, had built a grand total of five testing centers across the entire country.”

"There was also a more disciplined approach to mask wearing and social distancing practiced in Canada this past summer. In Canada, the majority of the large concerts and music festivals were cancelled. But as we reported earlier this month, the Lollapalooza Music Festival at Chicago’s Grant Park from July 29 through August 1 packed an estimated 100,000 people into the event on each of its four days. Social distancing was non-existent and a large segment of those attending were not wearing masks."

Are unions coming back?

Unions were a major economic force in the 20th century. Today, they are not. They seemed to be in the news constantly. Now, you seldom see an article about them in the media. But, maybe that will change. Finally, at Kickstarter United the workers have started the first union of full-time white collar employees at a major tech company. Also, it seems that workers across the industry have been ramping up organizing efforts over the past several years. For example, over 2,000 cafeteria workers at Google's Bay Area offices voted to join a union last December and Google contract workers in Pittsburgh voted to unionize last August, while Chicago employees of the food delivery service Instacart also unionized earlier this month.

United Students Achievers Program

About twenty years ago, the United Student Achievers Program was founded in Zimbabwe by an American, Rebecca Zeigler Mano, who married a native. The program identifies disadvantaged high school students of enormous promise and coaches them through applying to top-notch colleges outside of their country and steers them toward futures they never imagined.They provide students with the guidance necessary to apply to foreign colleges and also help with application fees and financial aid forms. Over 400 students have gone abroad to schools such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale, M.I.T., the University of Chicago, Duke, Pomona. Many went on to earn Ph.D.s. Many became physicians. Six won Rhodes scholarships.

This dime is worth more than 10 cents

It was minted in 1894 and is one of only 24 that were ever made. A Utah businessman paid $1.32 million for it last week at a Chicago coin auction. The businessman is working toward a collection that includes an example of every coin ever made by the US Mint from 1792 to the present.

From our Florida correspondent

We all make mistakes

As you have probably gathered, I am not a Trump fan. Some of the sites I frequent are up in arms over a tweet by Ivanka Trump about last weekend's shootings in Chicago. Here's what she wrote:

"With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City- and little national outrage or media coverage- we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day."

Okay, she made a mistake in the number (52 vs. 55) and the location (near a playground vs. all over the city). Are these serious mistakes? I don't think so. Why the brouhaha? She did mention the lack of media coverage, which says a lot.

If we're going to escape our declining spiral, we have to focus on the important not the trivial.

Deciding what is newsworthy

The media has been filled with tales about events at El Paso and Dayton this weekend. Yet, this weekend in Chicago left 55 people as victims of shootings. But, I've seen almost nothing about it.

Was that because only seven died? Or, was it because most shootings were gang-related? Thus, in the words of the police superintendent, “Some of our victims have quite honestly been less than forthcoming in cooperating with us.” Or, was it because racism was seemingly not a factor in the shootings?

Getting into college

The world has changed a lot since I went to college. I applied to a few, was accepted by most of them and my parents paid for my college education. No big deal. This year we've seen parents bribing people to get their child into college; some of the bribes were pretty hefty, like a million dollars or more. Pro Publica has discovered another way parents can get out of paying for their child's education - give up legal guardianship of their children during their junior or senior year in high school to someone else — a friend, aunt, cousin or grandparent. The guardianship status then allows the students to declare themselves financially independent of their families so they can qualify for federal, state and university aid.

ProPublica Illinois found more than 40 guardianship cases fitting this profile filed between January 2018 and June 2019 in the Chicago suburbs of Lake County alone. The parents involved in these cases include lawyers, a doctor, an assistant school superintendent, as well as insurance and real estate agents. A number of the children are high-achieving scholars, athletes and musicians who attend or have been accepted to a range of universities, from large public institutions, including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Missouri and Indiana University, to smaller private colleges.

Supporting your pet

Some people do a lot for their pets - and spend $69.5 billion on their pets, according to the American Pet Products Association. Petplan, an insurance company, estimates that pet parents dropped $62 million in 2011 on plastic surgery for their little angels.

Some things that are done for pets in America: 

Provide prosthetic testicles for neutered pets. Altogether over 500,000 animals have been surgically implanted with the silicone testes, according to Gregg A. Miller, who invented them in 1995.
Replace a diabetes-ravaged eyeball with a fake eye that cost roughly 15 times the price for the do in the first place.
Tummy tucks
Nose jobs
Eyebrow and chin lifts.
Hip replacements
Heart surgery
Gender reassignment
Tresses colored, straightened, curled and waved
Chill session at the spa
Mud baths and detox wraps, hot oil treatments and blueberry facials. 

There are even pet hotels where four-legged guests can sprawl on wrought iron beds and watch DOGTV on flat screens. Stay Dog Hotel, in Chicago, has riverfront suites and a lap pool; Oh My Dog!, in Scottsdale, Ariz., offers dog yoga (“doga”) and a retail boutique with handmade, locally sourced apparel.)

Hate Crimes in the U.S.

Hate crime victims in 2016

African-Americans were the most-targeted group in 2016, comprising more than a quarter of all hate crime victims.

African-Americans

28.4%

Lesbian, gay or bisexual

17.5%

Whites

11.8%

Jews

11.2%

Latinos

6.1%

Muslims

5%

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND  Source: FBI  G

Most frequent hate crime bias types

The motivations for hate crimes varied significantly across major US cities in 2017.

City	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5
New York City, NY	Anti-Jewish	Sexual Orientation	Anti-Muslim	Anti-Black	Other
Los Angeles, CA	Anti-Gay (M)	Anti-Black	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Hispanic	Anti-Transgender
Chicago, IL	Anti-Black	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Islamic	Anti-Gay (M)	Anti-White
Houston, TX	Anti-Religion	Sexual Orientation	Race/Ethnicity	Gender Identity
Philadelphia, PA	Anti-Race	Anti-Religion	Anti-Sexual Orientation	Gender Identity
Phoenix, AZ	Anti-Black	Anti-Gay (M)	Anti-White	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Hispanic
San Antonio, TX	Anti-Black	Anti-Muslim	Other
San Diego, CA	Anti-Black	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Sexual Orientation	Anti-Islamic	Anti-Gay (M)
Dallas, TX	Anti-Gay (M)	Anti-Black	Anti-Race/Ethnicity
San Jose, CA	Anti-Black	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Gay (M)	Anti-Hispanic/Latino	Anti-Islamic/Muslim
San Francisco, CA	Anti-Race/Ethnicity	Anti-Sexual Orientation	Anti-Religion	Anti-Gender
Seattle, WA	Anti-LGBTQ	Anti-Black	Anti-Transgender	Anti-Hispanic	Anti-White
Denver, CO	Anti-Black	Anti-Jewish	Anti-Gay/Lesbian	Anti-Transgender	Anti-Homosexual
District of Columbia	Anti-Sexual Orientation	Anti-Race	Anti-Ethnicity	Anti-Gender Identity	Anti-Religion
Boston, MA	Anti-Black	Anti-Sexual Orientation	Anti-Indian (Asian)	Anti-Islamic	Anti-Hispanic
Detroit, MI	Anti-Homosexual	Anti-Black	Anti-White	Anti-Multi Racial	Anti-Other Ethnicity

And it continues

"It" is the number of incidents of gun violence that happens every day in this country. On New Years Day 64 people were killed, and another 146 were injured. The cities with the most (at 24) were Chicago and Jacksonville. New Years Day is a more dangerous day as the average number of incidents per day for the past two years was 112.

4 days travel, $3.6 million spent

The GAO analyzed the costs of a trip by Obama to Chicago and Palm Beach in February 2013. It reported $2.8 million in costs "by DOD and $0.77 million by DHS (specifically, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Secret Service). These costs consisted of the (1) operating expenses of the President’s aircraft, supporting aircraft, and U.S. Coast Guard small boats; and (2) travel expenses, which include per diem (lodging and meals), commercial airfare, and rental cars for DOD and DHS personnel supporting the trip. They exclude certain classified DOD costs."

Controlling the police

In Chicago that is very difficult as I've shown many times. The latest is their creating a slush fund outside of the regular budget; the funds were kept in a secret bank account. Since 2009 the department has generated almost $72,000,000 and has not told a soul outside the department. They raised the money via civil asset forfeiture, which allows police to seize property including vehicles, cash, or real estate that they allege was used for a crime. Interestingly, the property owner does not have to be “arrested or convicted of a crime” for their property to be seized permanently and either kept or resold.

The police did share the money. They kept only $47,000,000; they gave the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office $18 million amd the State Police almost $7.2 million. 

Murder in Chicago

467 murders so far this year; more than NYC and LA combined.
Its murder rate from 2010 to 2014 is almost 4 times the national average.
On track for doubling the number of murders in 2016 compared to 2015.
African-Americans: a third of the population, 75% of the killings.
Last weekend saw 11 murders.

McCarthyism and Trumpism

Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago has an incisive article in today's Washington Post which argues that Trump's scuffle with the Kahns will likely lead to the same result as McCarthy's scuffle with Joseph Welch, a Boston attorney. McCarthy's question, "Have you no decency, sir?" sank one demagogue. Will Khan's do the same? The following video covers McCarthy's attempt to label a junior lawyer in Welch's office as a Communist.

More on the Chicago police

I've written a fair amount about the Chicago police in the past year of two; most of the postings are not favorable to the police. The Chicago Reporter has written an extensive article on the city's attitude toward police misconduct; the attitude is mainly 'ignore it', although it has cost taxpayers about $263,000,000. Some major cities spend a fair amount of time analyzing the lawsuits for trends, identify the officers most frequently sued, or determine ways to reduce both the cost of the cases and officer misconduct. Chicago does not.

The Reporter looked at 655 police misconduct lawsuits that paid out from 2012 to 2015 and concluded that police misconduct extends beyond a few “bad apples” to department-wide practices. 

"In the small fraction of cases where officers and the city admit liability, the officers rarely are disciplined.

Nearly half of the lawsuits claim that officers filed false reports—and sometimes committed perjury on the witness stand—to cover up their misconduct.

More than one-quarter of lawsuits allege that two or more officers conspired to violate a person’s civil rights.

Nearly one-third allege that some officers on the scene could have but didn’t intervene to prevent misconduct.

In one-quarter of excessive force lawsuits, the person who alleged police abuse was also charged with either resisting arrest or assault of a police officer.

One in 10 cases involves minors. Officers have pointed guns at children, shot at teenagers and left toddlers alone while their parents were arrested. 

Roughly 1 in 6 cases alleges that an incident is part of a pattern of misconduct, fortified by specific Police Department policies or the city’s general failure to adequately investigate officer misconduct."

Flint is not alone

The Guardian asked 81 Eastern cities for water testing information; 43 replied. Of the 43, 33 were found to have inadequate and dangerous testing methods; 21 used the same water testing methods as Flint. And the EPA has done little to correct this problem. 

The cities affected are not all failed cities like Flint; they include Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee.

Move to a big city and live longer?

That's one conclusion you can come to from a study of mortality by the Washington Post. The study points out that mortality rates were most likely to decline in the Northeast corridor and in large cities that anchor metropolitan areas of more than a million people, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, St. Louis and Houston. 

And for some reason women are not living as long when compared to men as they used to. In the 20th century, the average white American woman lived eight years longer than the average white American man. Today, that health advantage has narrowed to just five years.

Another anomaly: From 1990 through 2014, the mortality rate for white women rose in most parts of the country, particularly around small cities and in rural areas. Rates often went up by more than 40 percent and, in some places, doubled. Women in their late 40s were especially hurt. In 2000 for every 100,000 women in their late 40s, 228 died. Today, 296 are dying. Since 1990 death rates for rural white women in midlife have risen by nearly 50 percent. In the hardest-hit places — 21 counties arrayed across the South and Midwest — the death rate has doubled, or worse, since the turn of the century for white women in midlife.

The experts think the increasing mortality rates have come about because the women are far more likely than their grandmothers to be smokers, suffer from obesity or drink themselves to death. We are among the heaviest people in the world; more than a third of adults in the United States are considered obese. The average American woman today weighs as much as an American man did in the early 1960s.

Another Weird Lawsuit

Responding to a domestic disturbance call, a Chicago police office killed two people in December, one was a 19-year-old college student, the other the student's neighbor. The neighbor was killed by accident, the student because the cop feared for his life. Now the cop is suing the student's family for $10,000,000 because the shooting of the student traumatized the officer. Doesn't being a police officer means being placed in threatening and difficult situations that could involve responding with deadly force?

More on Homan Square

About six months ago I wrote about Homan Square, a warehouse used by the Chicago Police. The thrust of the article was that at that site the police are breaking the law and violating the Constitution.  My source, The Guardian, has continued to push - via Freedom of Information requests - the police to reveal just what is going on there.

Here are some more findings: 

• At least 3,500 Americans have been detained at Homan Square. 82% were black. Only three received documented visits from an attorney.
• The charges are mostly forms of drug possession but also for minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seat belt. 
• Over two-thirds of the arrests at Homan Square thus far revealed occurred under the tenure of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to Barack Obama who has said of Homan Square that the police working under him “follow all the rules”.