A few days ago, The New York Times had a lighthearted story about how Bronx residents like to saunter down to the Cross Bronx Expressway, or stare at it contemplatively from their windows, as a source of entertainment or an inspired, quiet reverie. They used a study showing that the highway has three of the […]
Monica Potts
Monica Potts is a former senior writer at The American Prospect. She is working on a book about low-income women in her rural Arkansas hometown. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York, Vogue.com, The Daily Beast, The Trace, and Democracy.
Posted inEducation in America
Contradictions in Sex Ed.
It wasn’t until after the breathless passage of the health-care bill that we all noticed the $250 million set aside to restore abstinence-only education funding. The programs had been allowed to expire in 2010 by Obama, who instead started programs to prevent teenage pregnancy. The inclusion was especially odd because it was inserted by Republican […]
Posted inArticle
More Simple Steps to Save on Health Care.
A new study published in the journal Pediatrics today shows just how important it is to breast feed babies in the first six months of life. Because doing so is linked to a reduction in several costly illnesses and deaths, encouraging 90 percent of women to breast feed would save $13 billion a year, the […]
Posted inArticle
The Long Lost Soda Tax.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about New York Gov. David Paterson’s efforts to add a penny-per-ounce tax on sugared beverages in order to help close a Department of Health budget gap and to curb obesity. That effort faces an uphill battle among residents, according to local polls. It also was not a part of […]
Posted inArticle
After Roeder’s Sentencing.
Scott Roeder, the 52-year-old convicted of killing Kansas abortion-provider Dr. George Tiller, was given a sentence yesterday that means he will spend the rest of his life in prison. The judge could have decided to make Roeder eligible for parole after 25 years but agreed with the prosecutors that there were aggravating factors, such as […]
Posted inArticle
Flexibility in the Workplace.
The White House Council on Women and Girls is holding a forum on workplace flexibility yesterday afternoon, on the heels of a report on how much businesses can gain by creating workplace atmospheres that allow workers to, within parameters, pick their own work schedules, take more leaves, or work from home. Workers should be assured […]
Posted inArticle
Creating Sickness, Not Health.
The drug maker AstraZeneca will now be able to market its cholesterol drug, Crestor, as a preventative drug to people who don’t have cholesterol problems. While the drug’s backers — including a doctor who led the study, patented the test that will determine whether patients qualify for use of the drug, and thusly stands to […]
Posted inArticle
Why Are We Still Surprised By Women Suicide Bombers?
Part of The New York Times’ second-day coverage of the Moscow subway bombings was a story dissecting a renewed fear of female suicide bombers. Known as Black Widows, the Chechen separatists have been deploying women as suicide bombers since 2000. Though that’s when female suicide bombers began in earnest in Russia, a Palestinian girl led […]
Posted inArticle
Incentivizing Adoption
Black children in the United States face longer stays in foster care than white children. Is money the way to change this?
Posted inArticle
Forcing Nonsense.
The Kansas House is considering passing a resolution that would require that state’s attorney general, Steve Six, to join the 13 states that have filed lawsuits over the new health-care reform bill. Apparently, either chamber of Kansas’ Congress can force the AG to take action, and the resolution doesn’t need to pass in the second […]
