Former NY State Senator and NY State Civil Service Commission Karen Burstein speaks at "Older Women and Midlife" conference.

General note: Title and date provided by Bettye Lane.

The Affordable Care Act and the Transformation of US Health Care

The neoliberal period was accompanied by a momentous transformation within the US health care system.�� As the result of a number of political and historical dynamics, the healthcare law signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 ���the Affordable Care Act (ACA)��� drew less on universal models from abroad than it did on earlier conservative healthcare reform proposals. This was in part the result of the influence of powerful corporate healthcare interests. While the ACA expands healthcare coverage, it does so incompletely and unevenly, with persistent uninsurance and disparities in access based on insurance status. Additionally, the law accommodates an overall shift towards a consumerist model of care characterized by high cost sharing at time of use. Finally, the law encourages the further consolidation of the healthcare sector, for instance into units named ���Accountable Care Organizations��� that closely resemble the health maintenance organizations favored by managed care advocates. The overall effect has been to maintain a fragmented system that is neither equitable nor efficient. A single payer universal system would, in contrast, help transform healthcare into a social right.

Report on the Iowa State Civil Rights Commission for the year ended June 30, 2015

Report on the Iowa State Civil Rights Commission for the year ended June 30, 2015

Interim report of the South Carolina State Health and Human Services Finance Commission

This report summarizes the Commission's activities through June 30, 1984.

Annual report of the State Health and Human Services Finance Commission ... 1984-1985

This report summarizes the Commission's activities during the fiscal year which ended on June 30, 1985.

Between Nation and State: Albanian Associations from Ottoman Origins to a Communist Party, 1880 - 1945

This dissertation addresses the broader antecedents of the Communist Party of Albania (CPA) as one of a number of associations whose experience was central to Albanian political history. This long experience dates back to the informal national associations formed in the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century. The dissertation examines the role of these associations which, pursuing language rights and political representation through imperial state reforms, set a pattern that struggled to connect nation and state, rather than asserting the territorial demands for a nation-state familiar across the region. Starting out in the Ottoman Empire, but then maturing in the Albanian diaspora in Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt and the United States, this dissertation shows politically significant processes of longer-term adaptation that created informal associations as institutional structures able to channel collective action. It then traces the reframing of these patterns through their destruction in the Balkan Wars and the First World War to the emergence of communist associations in the interwar period and beyond. This dissertation is a sustained study that traces long-term Ottoman imperial political legacies in the Albanian successor state. The story of the associations, based on hitherto unexamined archival documents, shows that the Albanians possessed a far greater capacity for political mobilization that previously acknowledged by historians. Moreover, the dissertation successfully challenges the conventional wisdom that portrays the Albanians as irreparably divided along sectarian and regional faultlines. It finds that Albanian national activism was civic in character rather than ethnic as elsewhere in the Balkans. The Albanians fought to remain within a multinational framework because this afforded them political security, social advancement and potential economic growth. In the late Ottoman period, this political objective was manifested in the acceptance of the supranational imperial order whereas during the Second World War, in the aspiration to become members of the Comintern internationalist movement. Another important find, is the newly-discovered evidence concerning the founding of the CPA and its wartime conduct as an organization created and led by the Albanians themselves, albeit with Yugoslav ideological assistance under the transnational umbrella of the Comintern.

MULTI-UNIT ACCIDENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION QUANTITATIVE HEALTH OBJECTIVES: A SAFETY GOAL POLICY ANALYSIS USING MODELS FROM STATE-OF-THE-ART REACTOR CONSEQUENCE ANALYSES

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission implemented a safety goal policy in response to the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. This policy addresses the question ���How safe is safe enough?��� by specifying quantitative health objectives (QHOs) for comparison with results from nuclear power plant (NPP) probabilistic risk analyses (PRAs) to determine whether proposed regulatory actions are justified based on potential safety benefit. Lessons learned from recent operating experience���including the 2011 Fukushima accident���indicate that accidents involving multiple units at a shared site can occur with non-negligible frequency. Yet risk contributions from such scenarios are excluded by policy from safety goal evaluations���even for the nearly 60% of U.S. NPP sites that include multiple units. This research develops and applies methods for estimating risk metrics for comparison with safety goal QHOs using models from state-of-the-art consequence analyses to evaluate the effect of including multi-unit accident risk contributions in safety goal evaluations.

A State of War: Florida from 1939 to 1945

World War II profoundly impacted Florida. The military geography of the State is essential to an understanding the war. The geostrategic concerns of place and space determined that Florida would become a statewide military base. Florida���s attributes of place such as climate and topography determined its use as a military academy hosting over two million soldiers, nearly 15 percent of the GI Army, the largest force theUS ever raised. One-in-eight Floridians went into uniform. Equally,Florida���s space on the planet made it central for both defensive and offensive strategies. The Second World War was a war of movement, and Florida was a major jump off point forUSforce projection world-wide, especially of air power. Florida���s demography facilitated its use as a base camp for the assembly and engagement of this military power. In 1940, less than two percent of the US population lived in Florida, a quiet, barely populated backwater of the United States.[1] But owing to its critical place and space, over the next few years it became a 65,000 square mile training ground, supply dump, and embarkation site vital to the US war effort. Because of its place astride some of the most important sea lanes in the Atlantic World,Florida was the scene of one of the few Western Hemisphere battles of the war. The militarization ofFloridabegan long before Pearl Harbor. The pre-war buildup conformed to theUSstrategy of the war. The strategy of theUS was then (and remains today) one of forward defense: harden the frontier, then take the battle to the enemy, rather than fight them inNorth America. The policy of ���Europe First,��� focused the main US war effort on the defeat of Hitler���sGermany, evaluated to be the most dangerous enemy. In Florida were established the military forces requiring the longest time to develop, and most needed to defeat the Axis. Those were a naval aviation force for sea-borne hostilities, a heavy bombing force for reducing enemy industrial states, and an aerial logistics train for overseas supply of expeditionary campaigns. The unique Florida coastline made possible the seaborne invasion training demanded for USvictory. The civilian population was employed assembling mass-produced first-generation container ships, while Floridahosted casualties, Prisoners-of-War, and transient personnel moving between the Atlantic and Pacific. By the end of hostilities and the lifting of Unlimited Emergency, officially on December 31, 1946, Floridahad become a transportation nexus. Florida accommodated a return of demobilized soldiers, a migration of displaced persons, and evolved into a modern veterans��� colonia. It was instrumental in fashioning the modern US military, while remaining a center of the active National Defense establishment. Those are the themes of this work. [1] US Census of Florida 1940. Table 4 ��� Race, By Nativity and Sex, For the State. 14.

2016 Road Use Tax Fund (RUTF) Study

A key component of Iowa���s transportation system is the public roadway system owned and maintained by the state, cities and counties. In order to regularly evaluate the conditions of Iowa���s public roadway infrastructure and assess the ability of existing revenues to meet the needs of the system, the Iowa Department of Transportation���s 2006 Road Use Tax Fund (RUTF) report to the legislature included a recommendation that a study be conducted every five years. That recommendation was included in legislation adopted in 2007 and signed into law. The law specifically requires the following (2016 Iowa Code Section 307.31): ��� ���The department shall periodically review the current revenue levels of the road use tax fund and the sufficiency of those revenues for the projected construction and maintenance needs of city, county, and state governments in the future. The department shall submit a written report to the general assembly regarding its findings by December 31 every five years, beginning in 2011. The report may include recommendations concerning funding levels needed to support the future mobility and accessibility for users of Iowa's public road system.��� ��� ���The department shall evaluate alternative funding sources for road maintenance and construction and report to the general assembly at least every five years on the advantages and disadvantages and the viability of alternative funding mechanisms.��� To comply with this requirement, the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) prepared a 2011 RUTF Study (www.iowadot.gov/pdf_files/RUTFStudy2011.pdf). This study relied heavily on the work of the Governor���s Transportation 2020 Citizen Advisory Commission (CAC), established by Governor Terry E. Branstad to assist the Iowa DOT as it assessed the condition of Iowa���s roadway system and evaluated current and future funding available to best address system needs. The 2011 RUTF Study ultimately led to the passage of Senate File 257 in the 2015 legislative session that was signed into law on February 25, 2015. The major component of this bill was the increase of the state fuel tax rate on March 1, 2015, in order to meet the critical need funding shortfall identified in the study. With the recent increase in the state fuel tax rate, jurisdictions across Iowa are now putting those additional funds into road and bridge construction projects. With one full construction season complete following the increase in funding, it is difficult to accurately assess the long-term impact on construction needs. Therefore, this 2016 RUTF Study focuses on the actions taken since the 2011 RUTF Study and on alternative funding mechanisms.

Sixty-Seventh Annual Report of the Public Service Commission of South Carolina 1944-45

Each year the South Carolina Public Service Commission reports to the Office of State Budget that includes the agency's mission, goals and objectives to accomplish the mission, and performance measures regarding the goals and objectives.

If it's encrypted it's secure! The viability of US state-based encryption exemptions

US state-based data breach notification laws have unveiled serious corporate and government failures regarding the security of personal information. These laws require organisations to notify persons who may be affected by an unauthorized acquisition of their personal information. Safe harbours to notification exist if personal information is encrypted. Three types of safe harbour have been identified in the literature: exemptions, rebuttable presumptions and factors. The underlying assumption of exemptions is that encrypted personal information is secure and therefore unauthorized access does not pose a risk. However, the viability of this assumption is questionable when examined against data breaches involving encrypted information and the demanding practical requirements of effective encryption management. Recent recommendations by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) would amend the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) to implement a data breach scheme that includes a different type of safe harbour, factor based analysis. The authors examine the potential capability of the ALRC���s proposed encryption safe harbour in relation to the US experience at the state legislature level.

Didiman: Australian agricultural extension officers in the territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1945-1975

Historically, the development philosophy for the two Territories of Papua and New Guinea (known as TPNG, formerly two territories, Papua and New Guinea) was equated with economic development, with a focus on agricultural development. To achieve the modification or complete change in indigenous farming systems the Australian Government���s Department of External Territories adopted and utilised a programme based on agricultural extension. Prior to World War II, under Australian administration, the economic development of these two territories, as in many colonies of the time, was based on the institution of the plantation. Little was initiated in agriculture development for indigenous people. This changed after World War II to a rationale based on the promotion and advancement of primary industry, but also came to include indigenous farmers. To develop agriculture within a colony it was thought that a modification to, or in some cases the complete transformation of, existing farming systems was necessary to improve the material welfare of the population. It was also seen to be a guarantee for the future national interest of the sovereign state after independence was granted. The Didiman and Didimisis became the frontline, field operatives of this theoretical model of development. This thesis examines the Didiman���s field operations, the structural organisation of agricultural administration and the application of policy in the two territories.