Tag: record
Week Of Deadly Weather Ends With Record Rain In Northeast

Week Of Deadly Weather Ends With Record Rain In Northeast

By Alana Semuels and Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK — A week that started with deadly tornadoes ripping through the Midwest and South is ending with rain falling in almost biblical volumes in some states.

The major storm system causing the problems moved northward Thursday after causing 37 deaths and cutting a wide swath of destruction through Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi earlier in the week, and then deluging the Florida Panhandle and the Alabama shore Wednesday.

Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York reported heavy downpours, and television stations broadcast images of flooded cars and streets severely damaged by the water.

“The storm system that brought heavy rain to parts of the eastern U.S. over the past couple of days will continue to produce showers and thunderstorms from parts of the Mid-Atlantic southward to the Southeast coast on Thursday,” the National Weather Service reported. “The system will slowly move off the Mid-Atlantic Coast by Friday morning.”

As of 9:44 a.m., EDT, the storm had dumped 5.12 inches on New York’s Central Park. Parts of Nassau County got nearly 6 inches.

Commuters in New York had a tough ride into the city Thursday morning; a retaining wall at an apartment building collapsed in a mudslide, putting two tracks on the Hudson Line out of service. Speed restrictions were in place on a third rail line as crews worked to repair the track. Meanwhile, cars got stuck in flooded roads Wednesday night and had to be towed by police through the day.

The severe weather began on Sunday as tornadoes formed in Oklahoma. One person died there, and the inclement weather then spread to Arkansas, where 15 deaths were reported.

In all, at least 65 tornadoes hit the United States as a result of the storm system, according to a preliminary estimate from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. At least 37 deaths in eight states were blamed on the storm.

At least 16 states, most in the South and the Midwest, were hit by the storm system in some way, officials said.

After the tornadoes, fierce rain hammered Florida and Alabama in what officials described as a deluge that occurs perhaps once every 25 years. Pensacola, Fla., saw about 22 inches, about a third of its annual rainfall, in a 24-hour period.

There was no immediate damage estimates from the widespread damage destruction, which included toppled buildings, roads blown apart and vehicles destroyed.

Governors in the affected states have issued declarations of emergency and are expected to seek federal aid.

U.S. Geological Survey via Flickr.com 

Number Of Americans Without Health Insurance Reaches New Low

Number Of Americans Without Health Insurance Reaches New Low

By Noam N. Levey, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The share of Americans without health insurance has dropped to the lowest level since before President Barack Obama took office, according to a new national survey that provides more evidence the health care law is extending coverage to millions of the previously uninsured.

Just 14.7 percent of adults lacked coverage in the second half of March, down from 18 percent in the last quarter of 2013, the survey from Gallup found.

The survey results, which track with other recent polling data and enrollment reports, indicate that about eight million people have gained health insurance since September. That figure takes into account any losses in coverage the law may have brought about by the cancellation of health plans that did not meet the new standards.

Gallup’s survey highlights a historic expansion in coverage unparalleled since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid half a century ago.

It also undermines critics’ persistent claims that the law has done little to expand health insurance.

“The uninsured rate has been falling since the fourth quarter of 2013 … a sign that the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, appears to be accomplishing its goal of increasing the percentage of Americans with health insurance coverage,” Gallup’s Jenna Levy wrote in an article describing the new poll results.

The gains found by the survey would include several new sources of coverage.

Under the law, Americans could begin shopping Oct. 1 for health coverage on new marketplaces in which insurers could no longer turn away sick customers. As of the end of March, about 7.1 million people had signed up that way, the administration said. Some of them previously had no insurance.

In addition, in about half the states, low-income Americans could sign up for government Medicaid coverage for the first time, an option the law provides to states.

Even more Americans probably gained coverage under provisions of the health care law that took effect earlier. Those gains would not be reflected in the survey if people got covered before September.

For example, as many as three million young people gained coverage by staying on their parents’ health plans until they turn 26.

And more low-income Americans got coverage in states that expanded their safety net programs ahead of 2014.

Without those earlier expansions, the nation’s uninsured rate would have been even higher before the marketplaces opened last fall. The percentage of Americans without insurance began climbing in the last year of the George W. Bush administration as the economy slid into recession, and it continued to rise over the following years.

The exact effect of the health law on insurance coverage remains difficult to pinpoint. The insurance market normally experiences substantial churn as Americans switch among different types of health coverage.

Gallup acknowledged the likelihood that not all of the new enrollees would pay their premiums and remain covered, a point that critics of the law emphasize. Failure to pay would return people to the ranks of the uninsured.

Others probably will gain coverage as the year goes on since some states, including Michigan and New Hampshire, are just starting to expand their Medicaid programs.

In addition, people who began applying for coverage by March 31 have until April 15 to complete their applications, which probably will add to the enrollment figures.

That “could further drive down the uninsured rate in the second quarter of 2014,” Gallup noted.

The Gallup survey provides strong evidence of a major national shift in coverage linked to the law.

The drop in uninsured rates was most pronounced among African-Americans, Latinos and households earning less than $36,000 a year, three demographic groups targeted by the Obama administration and others working to enroll people under the health care law.

Gallup’s results closely parallel other surveys, including one from the Rand Corp. scheduled to be released this week, which was previously shared with the Los Angeles Times.

As part of its Gallup-Healthway Well-Being Index, Gallup surveys Americans throughout the year to produce quarterly estimates of the share of Americans without coverage as well as other data on the health care system.

The estimate for the whole first quarter of 2014, an average of 15.6 percent, is higher than the 14.7 percent estimated for late March because millions of Americans have been gaining coverage throughout the last three months during the law’s open enrollment period.

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad

Maybe Rick Perry Just Likes Killing People

Whether it’s his long record of accelerating executions and refusing except when compelled by courts to commute death sentences, his promotion of incompetent, flagrantly political lawyers to top posts in Texas’ legal system where they prevent exoneration, or his comments recently that Texans might treat “treasonous” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “pretty ugly,” one has to wonder if the governor’s approach to these issues isn’t so much the product of conservative legal theory or a right-wing attitude about law and order but simply a carnal attachment to state-sanctioned murder.

Consider that Perry has overseen in excess of 230 executions as governor, far more than the executive of any other state in recent history. This figure accounts for about 40 percent of all executions in America since Perry first took office in 2000. He makes George W. Bush seem warm and fuzzy.