TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalCOVID-19 breaking point: Northern California hospitals, ICUs filling up with virus patients
The coronavirus has found a weak spot in the California healthcare system. It’s the intensive care unit.
With the COVID-19 surge causing record hospitalizations, and with fears that Thanksgiving get-togethers are about to result in even more extremely ill patients, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned this week he may order another stay-at-home rule at any moment to stop a Christmas crisis in hospitals, particularly in acute care units where capacity is extremely limited.
Already this week, one Sacramento-area hospital in Marysville reported just two ICU beds left. In Placer County, health officials say COVID-19 patients are taking up more than 15% of beds, a worry heading into winter when hospitals are typically most busy. In Sacramento County, health officials on Tuesday said they already are seeing the first reports of Thanksgiving week infections leading to early hospitalizations.
While a hospital may have 100 beds for patients, only a small percentage of those are available for extreme care, with the type of equipment and specially trained doctors and nurses to handle patients that require, for instance, a ventilator to keep them breathing because their lungs have failed.
Read more: https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article247506665.html
Gov. Kate Brown's Budget Includes Cuts for Oregon Hospitals, Which Are Not Happy
The budget Gov. Kate Brown's released today brought cries of pain from Oregon's hospitals, which are currently dealing with an unprecedented number of COVID-19 patients. (Five hundred seventy-seven patients are hospitalized with COVID as of Dec. 1, up from 171 on Nov. 1.)
The Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems spent heavily to pass Measure 108 in November. That measure increased the tax on cigarettes by $2 a pack and will generate more than $100 million a year in new revenue for the Oregon Health Authority, which provides funding to hospitals through the state's Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan.
Brown's proposed budget would reduce hospital system revenue by a similar amount through reduced reimbursement rates and a lower assumed medical inflation rate.
Becky Hultberg, CEO of the hospital association, says Brown's budget, released Nov. 30, takes money away from OAHHS members when they need it most.
Read more: https://www.wweek.com/news/state/2020/12/01/gov-kate-browns-budget-includes-cuts-for-oregon-hospitals-who-are-not-happy/
(Williamette Week)
Caucus fracas? Opposition to Madigan's speaker bid reaches his own leadership team
The chair of the House Democratic Caucus said Tuesday she won’t vote for Michael Madigan to retain the speaker’s gavel, making her the 19th House Democrat — and the first member of the chamber’s party leadership — to break ranks with the besieged veteran legislative leader.
State Rep. Kathleen Willis said in a statement to her fellow Democratic legislators that she made the decision to oppose Madigan’s bid to be speaker in the next General Assembly after “a lot of thought and discussion with my family.”
The west suburban Democrat pointedly did not use the title that Madigan has held for nearly four decades, referring to the man known in Springfield as “The Speaker” or “Mr. Speaker” as simply “Representative Madigan.”
“As the House Democratic Caucus Chair, this decision was not made lightly,” Willis wrote. “I feel strongly that our caucus has a lot of hard work to accomplish in the upcoming legislative session and we need to put the distraction that has been created by Representative Madigan behind us and move forward in mending the State of Illinois.”
Read more: https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/12/1/21802937/michael-mike-madigan-kathleen-willis-leadership-team-house-speaker-comed-probe
Indiana will end 2020 in a state of emergency as Holcomb again extends public health order
The state of Indiana will close out 2020 in a state of emergency.
On Tuesday, the office of Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that Holcomb has signed an executive order extending the public health emergency first declared in March through at least Dec. 31.
Executive Order 20-02, which was first issued by Holcomb on March 6 alongside the announcement of the state's first confirmed case, declared a public health emergency to ensure the state receives additional funding if needed.
That order has now been extended nine times, and Indiana has been under a public health emergency for 270 days.
Read more: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/health/2020/12/01/indiana-gov-eric-holcomb-signs-9th-extension-coronavirus-emergency/3780103001/
Plant that could make billions of aluminum cans in Waco gets nod for $6.8M in incentives
A Mexico-based company will make Waco its first greenfield manufacturing site in the United States, announcing plans to invest $100 million locally, create 121 jobs and produce as many as a few billion aluminum cans per year for customers along Interstate 35.
The Waco City Council and McLennan County Commissioners Court greased the skids to the tune of $6.8 million in economic development incentives Tuesday for Envases Group's foray into Central Texas. Each panel signed off on their part of a $4 million grant, and the Waco City Council signed off an an additional grant covering half the plan's expected real and personal property taxes for 10 years.
Envases' city and county tax payments would amount to a 26% return on the economic development grants in less than three years, Kris Collins, the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce's industry recruiter, told commissioners. Waco's plant would be comparable to an Envases facility in Hidalgo, Mexico, that can produce 3 billion cans a year at full capacity, Collins said. The company has clients in the Dallas area and in San Antonio, she said.
The Envases project continues a string of positives that includes Amazon's confirmation it will place a fulfillment center in Texas Central Park that will employ 1,000 people, more during seasonal peaks, and pay at least $15 an hour, Collins said in a monthly report on economic development.
Read more: https://wacotrib.com/business/local/plant-that-could-make-billions-of-aluminum-cans-in-waco-gets-nod-for-6-8m/article_2072f452-340f-11eb-991c-b7fbefb2117f.html#tracking-source=home-the-latest
Hewlett Packard to leave Silicon Valley, move HQ to Texas
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. will move its headquarters to Houston, a major shift for a founding Silicon Valley computer maker now seeking haven in a lower-cost region while making way for a new generation of nimbler mobile and consumer-web giants.
The company said it was already building a "state-of-the-art" new campus in Houston, the fourth-largest U.S. city. HPE also reported quarterly revenue that topped analysts' predictions, suggesting that businesses are upgrading their data-center hardware during the coronavirus pandemic.
HPE was created in the 2015 split of one of the consummate Bay Area technology companies, Hewlett-Packard Co., which was founded in 1939 in a Palo Alto garage. The move to Texas comes amid a broader re-evaluation, motivated by pandemic-enforced work-from-anywhere arrangements, by individuals and companies opting to leave behind a region known for its high cost of living and difficult commute.
Chief Executive Officer Antonio Neri has been working to turn around HPE, a maker of servers, storage hardware and networking gear, which had reported declining revenue in all but one quarter since separating from personal-computer maker HP Inc. Neri is reducing the company's overhead costs, exiting unprofitable businesses and chasing the hybrid-cloud market, in which businesses store and process some of their information in corporate data centers and some with public cloud companies.
Read more: https://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/texas/story/2020/dec/02/hewlett-packard-leave-silicon-valley-move-hq-texas/851107/
What I wonder is who told them that commuting in Houston is easy? 
Ex-Arizona politician sentenced to 6 years in Arkansas for illegal adoption scheme
PHOENIX — A former Arizona politician who admitted running an illegal adoption scheme in three states involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced in Arkansas to six years in federal prison. It was the first of three punishments he'll face for arranging adoptions prohibited by an international compact.
Paul Petersen, a Republican who served as metro Phoenix's assessor for six years and also worked as an adoption attorney, illegally paid women from the Pacific island nation to come to the U.S. to give up their babies in at least 70 adoptions cases in Arizona, Utah and Arkansas, prosecutors said.
Marshall Islands citizens have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003 and prosecutors said Petersen's scheme lasted three years.
Judge Timothy Brooks, who imposed the sentence from Fayetteville, Arkansas, said Petersen abused his position as an attorney by misleading or instructing others to lie to courts in adoptions that wouldn't have been approved had the truth been told to them.
Read more: https://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/arkansas/story/2020/dec/02/ex-arizona-politician-sentenced-6-years-arkansas-illegal-adoption-scheme/851108/
Facebook silences local Republican (Live Oak County GOP FB host)
A crackdown by Facebook on some social media posts for political content has resulted in a 30-day ban for Roberta Dobie, a member of the Live Oak County Republicans who also updates the party’s Facebook page, which has resulted in scrambling to make sure area residents stay informed on political developments.
“I did share information about the election and what’s going on,” she said. “I posted about whether President Trump has a right to protest the election.
“I can see posts but I cannot comment, post or share,” she said. “It’s unfortunate because I was the one running the local Republican Party Facebook page, and I can’t do that either.
“There have been so many changes in 2020 it’s mind boggling. It’s torture for me because I’m so hooked on it. I only got one message (from Facebook) and no other warnings – it was really strange. I had an inkling it was going to be happening.”
Read more: https://www.mysoutex.com/the_progress/facebook-silences-local-republican/article_445509c6-2e5d-11eb-a294-3faedbcd9961.html
News from my childhood home. BTW, Ms. Dobie has signed up for MeWe and Parler.
Texas to shutter three more prisons as units face critical staffing shortages
As the state prison system sees fewer inmates and a critical shortage of officers in the pandemic, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is permanently closing another prison and shuttering two more at least temporarily.
The Scott prison in Brazoria County will be closed on Dec. 15, and the Gurney and Neal units, near Palestine and Amarillo, respectively, will be emptied and temporarily closed by the end of the year, a TDCJ spokesperson told The Texas Tribune Tuesday. Inmates and desperately needed staff will be transferred to nearby lockups, according to TDCJ.
The agency already closed three lockups in September as the inmate population plummeted during the pandemic to the lowest number seen in decades, according to state budget reports. From March to October, 18,000 fewer inmates resided in the Texas prison system after the coronavirus caused a months-long halt of transfers from county jails and a backlogged, sluggish court system.
“The population is 122,000 and change, and it’s been fairly stable in the 121 to 122,000 range for a couple months now,” said TDCJ spokesperson Jeremy Desel. “But that’s the lowest prison population for TDCJ since 1995.”
Read more: https://theeagle.com/news/state-and-regional/texas-to-shutter-three-more-prisons-as-units-face-critical-staffing-shortages/article_c5b48505-8a6f-5d8c-8e81-4baaea5247e8.html
(Bryan-College Station Eagle)
Manchin among senators urge mine safety agency to do more to protect coal miners from silica exposur
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., was one of five senators — all Democrats — to urge the Mine Safety and Health Administration to do more to protect coal miners from a potentially life-threatening carcinogen and contributing cause of black lung disease.
Manchin, along with Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Mark Warner of Virginia, said in a news release Monday that a report, stating the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General found that MSHA has not sufficiently protected coal miners from exposure to respirable crystalline silica, was cause for “urgent action.”
The OIG report found that MSHA’s silica exposure limit is out of date, as the agency has maintained essentially the same silica limit established in the 1960s.
Issued Nov. 12, the report recommended that Assistant Secretary for Mine Safety and Health David Zatezalo adopt a lower legal exposure limit for silica in coal mines based on recent scientific evidence, establish a separate standard for silica that allows MSHA to issue a citation and monetary penalty when violations of its silica exposure limit occur, and enhance its sampling program to increase the frequency of inspector samples where needed.
Read more: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/energy_and_environment/manchin-among-senators-urge-mine-safety-agency-to-do-more-to-protect-coal-miners-from/article_1715abcd-9a72-548d-8232-d5294d0f7195.html
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
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