Caution: Hormonal Female at the Keyboard!

Just came back from a HeadStart conference and met lots of really great, really committed parents and educators.  I am thankful today that the federal budget does not include a 22.8% retroactive cut for this important and universally beneficial program.  What's to come remains to be seen, as with all things, but for today, we can breathe a sigh of relief.

And then get back to work.

I met and observed parents and teachers who deal with kids on a daily basis that have things like ADHD and autism and their desire for answers and help was palpable.  Maybe I'm more sensitive to it now, maybe I'm projecting my own emotions - I'm never sure.  But I can't help but feel that what's there is something I can understand.  That all of you can understand.  So I ask again that all of you broaden your scope, open your weary hearts just a little wider, and recognize that whatever ails your family - because childhood illness is a familial ailment - there's a whole lot of people out there going through a very similar thing.  It just has a different name, that's all.

So the topic for today, as you might have guessed from the title, is hormones.  While I'm trying to include the call to action in every post, I feel like I'm failing to remain true to my original inspiration, and seeing those moms tear up as they talked about their autism struggles brought me back a little bit.  Hearing about little Noah's struggle to hang on as cancer takes over his little body . . . brought me back.  We have to do better for these kids.  I don't know that pressing for more research is necessarily THE answer.  It's an answer, but maybe there isn't just one question, you know?  We have to be relentless, creative, practical, open-minded, and multi-pronged in our approach.  For all kids.  For our kids' kids.  Whatever crazy shit I might come up with, please know that it's all for them, and mine.  Yours.  Ours.

Anyway,  hormones.

Health Care Reform HELPS our sick kids - all of them!

One of the most controversial legislative successes of the current administration is healthcare reform.  Some of those provisions — which would prevent insurers from denying children coverage because of preexisting conditions, allow young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, and gradually raise the allowable annual caps on coverage — have already begun to take effect, even as Congress expects to revisit the issue before the session is out. 

McConnell Inhofe failed . . . this time.

Had the amendment gotten just ten more votes, it would have passed.

If you don't know about the McConnell Amendment, let me tell you.  McConnell seeks to eliminate the Clean Air Act's tighter restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions by taking away the EPA's authority to act altogether. 

How does it do that, you may ask?  Well . . . it just says that the EPA can't do it.  But there's more.  If you read the Definitions section carefully, you'll see that "greenhouse gases" (GHGs) includes more than the standard six known GHGs, such as methane and carbon dioxide.  Under the McConnell Amendment, it - the term "greenhouse gases" - includes any substance covered by the Clean Air Act.  This, my friends, includes a number of things, obviously, but most disturbing is that somehow under the McConnell definition GHG also includes . . . mercury.

There's not a climate scientist on Earth that considers mercury a GHG.