The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 95, No. 44, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 12, 2015 Page: 4 of 10
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4 The Baytown Sun
Viewpoints
Thursday
March 12, 2015
STATE VIEW
Voting rights
act inaction
not excusable
Fifty vears ago, marchers young and old, black and
white, male and female linked arms in a historic protest
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
The result was one of the liiost shameful moments in
American history, as police officers brutally beat nonvi-
olent marchers seeking their constitutional rights. The
entire nation saw' it. and horror helped give rise to ac-
tion: Within months. Congress passed the Voting Rights
Act of l %5 w ith bipartisan support.
fhe commemoration last weekend of that "Bloody
Sunday" reminds us that today's Congress needs les-
sons in history and leadership. There is a gaping hole
in the Voting Rights Act. and lawmakers refuse,to fix it.
Two years ago. in Shelby County vs. Holder, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled that the formula spelled out in
Section 4 of the act w as outdated and unconstitutional.
That section determined which states. Texas included,
needed to obtain federal "pre-clearance" before chang-
ing voting laws. However, voting rights protections are
still needed, the court said, and prodded Congress to
fix the formula. This newspaper solidly agreed with the
court, but like the court, we're still waiting for Congress
to do its job.
The threat to voting fairness is real. Gone are the dis-
gusting state literacy tests and poll taxes used to deny
blacks the v ote in the 1960s. In their place now are oner-
ous state voter II) requirements, reduced poll hours and
inconveniently located polling places intended to dis-
courage voting. These new impediments are subtle and
nuanced barriers to a basic constitutional right.
Rep. Janies Sensenbrenner, R-Wis.. and Rep. John
Conyers. D-Mich., have taken up the torch. They re-
cently reintroduced a bill that updates the pre-clearance
formula to use much more current data, based on voting
violations in the last 15 years. It also carves out exemp-
tions to allow certain voter ID law s.
Congress has renew ed the act repeatedly since 1965,
with nearly unanimous bipartisan support each time.
Even in the racially heated climate of 1965, Congress
took just four months to enact what President Lyndon
Johnson called "one of the most monumental laws in the
entire history of American freedom " Vet in 2015, Con-
gress is inexcusably holding the act hostage to inaction.
Every person has a right to shape his or her destiny
at the ballot box. The right to vote is the foundation of
American democracy. The blood spilled at Selma de-
serves a Congress that stands up for that principle.
Dallas Morning Avir.v
High court s own
standing in jeopardy
It's said that a bad ruling from the U.S; Supreme Court
on the Affordable Care Act will cause its death spiral, g'n
arguable outcome though parts of the law would survive.
But there is something else momentous at stake.
• That would be the high court's standing as a non-parti-
san. impartial arbiter of U.S. law and policy , a perception
. already under challenge. This is true, as many others have
noted, because the court would have to throw out its own
interpretation of how law s enacted by Congress ought to
be weighed when they come before the nine justices.
Those challenging the federal government’s ability to
prov ide subsidies to consumers in states that did not set
up their own exchanges, rely on four words in the legis-
lation: "established by the state." This is said by the law’s
foes to mean that only' those residents in states with their
ojjen. exchanges, or marketplaces, are eligible for subsi-
dies..
But 7.5 million people have signed up in federal ex-
changes in those 34 states without their own marketplac-
es. Their subsidies indeed, their ability to have afford-
able coverage ~ is in jeopardy. Any court majority arguing
that "established by the state" ought to be so interpreted is
essentially arguing that covering as many people as pos-
sible. with subsidies for those without sufficient means,
was not the law’s clear intent.
As Supreme Court observer Linda Greenhouse wrote,
one of the full titles for the law was “Quality, Affordable
Health Care for All Americans.'' Emphasis ours. It is a
stretch that the federal government would penalize states ’
that didn't set up their own exchanges by denying them
the subsidies available to the other states.
As Justice Anthony Kennedy noted in questioning
during oral arguments last week, such action would be
coercive, constitutionally speaking. And. as the four
liberal justices explained, the Supreme Court interprets
law according to the entirety of such measures. Justice
Antonin Scalia departs from this long-standing practice
when he argues that these four words are to be interpreted
precisely and literally, the rest of the act notwithstanding.'
Chief Justice John Roberts, who provided a key vole
in propping up the ACA in the last challenge, gave no
clue to how he might vote this time. Kennedy sided with
the dissenters the last time. It appears this vote will be
close. But, if the court majority rules against the ACA
here, what the nation might be witnessing is the erasure
of even any pretense that the court is anything but another
partisan outfit, black robes notwithstanding.
San Antonia Express-News
TUAT4A
Y06A
RKiTtOM.
DELETE,
Don’t believe everything you read
Our email delivers all sorts of
things, from our friends' latest news,
jokes and funny pictures to scams
from criminal strangers, from sales
pitches from businesses to pleas for
support ■from non-profits. If you arc
like me, a whole lot of it ends up in
the email trash without ever being
read. I get lots of interesting emails
though, and some of them have even
contained information that could
change or save lives.
The email that sparked this col-
umn is not one of the latter, though
it claimed to be just' that. When 1
checked out the information it con-
tained. 1 found out that doing what
the email recommended could actu-
ally be downright dangerous.
An old friend sent the email, which
arrived under the heading “please
send this one out."
It explained that many people arc
alone w hen they suffer a heart attack,
and so no one is around to do CPR
until an ambulance arrives.
You can't do CPR (cardiopulmo-
nary resuscitation) on yourself, it
said. ' tf-
Or can you?
“These v ictims’ can help them-
selves by coughing repeatedly and
v cry vigorously. A deep breath
should be taken before each couch
and the cough must be deep and pro-
longed."
It went on to say “a breath and a
cough must be repeated about ev-
ery two seconds w ithout let up until
help arrives or until the heart is felt
JANE
HOWARD
LEE
to be beating nor-
mally again."
The theory is
that deep breaths
get oxygen into the
lungs and coughing
movements squeeze
the heart and keep
the blood circulat-
ing. The squeez-
ing pressure on the:
heart also helps
it regain normal
rhythm, giv ing the person time to get
to a hospital.
That’s not quite true.
I checked this out on the Snopes
w ebsite and some other places.
Apparently this email has been float-
ing around the internet since 1999 and
while there is a bit of truth to the cough
CPR technique, it should not be per-
formed except under medical supervi-
sion.
You see, this, coughing technique
must be done just right, in exactly the
right rhythm to do any good and if done
incorrectly, could do more damage.
Also, there are different kinds of car-
diac ev ents and i f the technique is done
while some of those are taking place,
it could actually turn a mild event into
something much worse.
There are some doctors in the world
who are teaching the proper technique
to some of their patients who are at
great risk of future heart attacks but
there are no statistics available to show
whether those efforts have paid off.
And the key there was that the doc-
tors arc TEACHING their patients just
how to do it. The American Heart As-
sociation does not recommend the pub-
lic use this method in a situation where
there is no direct medical supervision.
In fact, this coughing technique
email has had many incarnations and
some versions claim that the technique
is endorsed by some serious institu-
tions and health professionals. Appar-
ently all such claims arc untrue.
Anyone who thinks they are having
a heart attack should call 911 for help
then sit down and chew up a 325 mg.
aspirin and wait quietly until that help
arrives.
Aspirin can help save the lives ot
those having heart attacks, giving them
more time during for emergency medi-
cal help to get there.
This rhythmic coughing technique
just might kill them.
So please, no matter how good it
sounds, how easy it seems (and we
all love easy, don't we?), don't try the
coughing technique unless your cardi-
ologist or an emergency room doctor is
right there and tells you to do it.
As for those other emails and inter-
net posts about miracle cures and sure-
fire life-savers, please, please, please
check them out with experts before you
try them or recommend them to anyone
else.
You'll be glad you did.
Jane Howard. Lee is a contribut-
ing writer at The Sun. She can be
reached at viewpoints(d baytownsun.
coni A item ion: Jane Lee
Survey finds record low confidence in government
BY EMILY SWANSON
The Associated Press
Americans' confidence in all three branches of govern-
ment is at or near record lows, according to a major sur-
vey that has measured attitudes for 40 years.
The survey is conducted by the independent research
organization NORC at the University of Chicago, Be-
cause of its long-running and comprehensive set of ques-
tions about the public, it is a highly regarded source of
data about social trends.
Five things to know about Americans' low' confidence
in the government and other institutions:
President near record low
The 11 percent who say they're confident in the pres-
idency approaches a record low measured by the same
survey in 1996, when just 10 percent said they had a great'
deal of confidence in the executive branch. The 44 per-
cent who now say they have hardly any confidence at all
is at a record high.
Supreme court down
The 2014 survey finds that confidence in the Supreme
Court has fallen among Democrats, Republicans and in-
dependents since 2012, driving confidence in the court to
a 40-year low overall. The 26 percent of Democrats with
a lot of confidence in the court is a record low in the histo-
ry of the survey, while Republican confidence in the high
court, at 22 percent, is also near an all-time low.
Independents are the least likely to have a great deal of
confidence in the court, at 20 percent.
Nobody likes Congress
If there’s one issue than unites Americans, it’s that
hardly anyone has much confidence in Congress, the sur-
vey shows. Over half of Americans express hardly any
confidence at all, while only 7 percent of Democrats, 5
percent of independents and 3 percent of Republicans
have a great deal of confidence in Congress.
Poor marks for media, too
Confidence has decreased since the 1970s, when about
a quarter of Americans expressed a great deal of confi-
dence in the press. Now, a record low of 7 percent have a
lot of confidence, while 44 percent have hardly any con-
fidence at all.
Only 1 in 10 has a lot of confidence in television, which
is also near a record low.
Financial institutions improve
Americans’ confidence in banks and financial institu-
tions reached an all-time low of 11 percent in 2010. but
has rebounded slightly since then, with 15 percent now
expressing a great deal of confidence. That’s still far from
the survey’s all-time high of 42 percent in 1977.
Just 18 percent have a great deal of confidence in major
companies, up a bit from 13 percent who said so in 2010.
Today is Thursday, March 12,
the 71 st day of 2015. There are 294
days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 12, 1933, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered
the first of his 30 radio addresses
that came to be known as "fireside
chats,” telling Americans what was
being done to deal with the nation’s
economic crisis.
On this date:
In 1664, England’s King Charles
II granted an area of land on the
Last Coast of present-day North
TODAY IN HISTORY
America known as New Netherland
to his brother James, the Duke of
York.
In 1912, the Girl Scouts of the
USA had its beginnings as Juliette
Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia,
founded the first American troop of
the Girl Guides.
In 1994, the Church of England
ordained its first women priests.
Five years ago: Two suicide
bombers killed 55 people in near
simultaneous blasts in Lahore,
Pakistan, the fourth attack in r
week. Lindsey Vonn capped a his-
toric season with her third straigh
overall World Cup title in Gar-
misch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
One year ago: In New York City
a gas explosion destroyed twe
five-story East Harlem apartmeni
buildings, killing eight people anc
injuring more than 60.
Thought for Today: “If powei
corrupts, being out of power cor-
rupts absolutely.”
Douglass Cater
American author and educator
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Bloom, David. The Baytown Sun (Baytown, Tex.), Vol. 95, No. 44, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 12, 2015, newspaper, March 12, 2015; Baytown, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1066643/m1/4/: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Sterling Municipal Library.