News and Issues: Get Ready, Political Fans: Convention Facts for the GOP
Fasten your seatbelts, its going to be a bumpy night! as Bette Davis says in All About Eve: To become the Republican nominee, a candidate must secure the votes of a majority of the 2,472 delegates at Convention. A candidate that receives the vote of 1,237 delegates or more wins the nomination. Every delegate has only one vote and a majority of delegates will be "bound" to vote for a certain candidate on the first ballot.
Culture and Arts: Culture Watch Reviews by Joan L. Cannon: The Railway Man's Wife and The Yoga of Max's Discontent
Joan L. Cannon reviews: Hay describes loves lost, pasts savaged by shock and horror, hopes defeated in the wake of happenings not yet consigned to experience. She describes vividly a landscape that enriches each of the main characters, and that beguiles the reader as brilliantly as any travel brochure. Bajaj is a master at creating suspense; it's hard to put the story down. The journey with Max will leave memories and likely questions for a very long time.
Authors: Hospices Inappropriately Billed Medicare Over $250 Million for General Inpatient Care
Recent investigations by the Office of Inspector General [of the US Department of Health and Human Services] have shown a number of instances in which hospices inappropriately billed Medicare for hospice general inpatient care (GIP). Misuse of GIP includes care being billed but not provided and beneficiaries receiving care they do not need. We found that hospices billed one-third of GIP stays inappropriately, costing Medicare $268 million in 2012. Hospices commonly billed for GIP when the beneficiary did not have uncontrolled pain or unmanaged symptoms.
News and Issues: Congressional Hearings and Bills Introduced: Opioid Abuse, WASPs' Burial Bill; INSPIRE Act, Training and Counseling to Women Entrepreneurs
A bill seeks to reauthorize and modernize the Small Business Development Centers, Women's Business Centers (WBCs), and Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) programs. Another bill would authorize the National Science Foundation to "encourage its entrepreneurial programs to recruit and support women to extend their focus beyond the laboratory and into the commercial world." And A bill to revise the crime of sexual assault under Article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice to include committing a sexual act upon another person by using position, rank, or authority to obtain compliance by the other person.
Money and Computing: The Outlook, Uncertainty, and Monetary Policy; Janet Yellen's Speech to the Economic Club of New York
"The labor market has added an average of almost 230,000 jobs a month over the past three months. In addition, the unemployment rate has edged down further, more people are joining the workforce as the prospects for finding jobs have improved, and the employment-to-population ratio has increased by almost 1/2 percentage point. The housing market continues its gradual recovery, and fiscal policy at all levels of government is now modestly boosting economic activity after exerting a considerable drag in recent years."
Style and Fashion: Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity
The Late Antique textile owners, in choosing from a vast repertory of motifs, represented the prosperity and well-being of their households. The owners represented themselves through the distinctively gendered imagery of manly and womanly virtues in mythological and Christian subjects so that in these textiles, we see distinctly personal manifestations of the religious transformation of the Roman Empire into a Christian Empire.
News and Issues: Reproductive Rights Back Before the Court: Should Health Plans Offer Contraceptive Coverage?
Jo Freeman writes: Rules written by the Department of Health and Human Services for the ACA provided a way for religious organizations, such as universities, hospitals and social service groups, to opt-out of providing coverage by notifying their insurer or the government that their religious beliefs preclude contraceptive coverage.
Travel: Eight Presidents Who Shaped America's Public Lands: From the Roosevelts to Barack Obama
Consider the legacies of eight presidents who made a difference in American conservation. For one, Theodore Roosevelt created five national parks, 18 national monuments, 51 bird sanctuaries, began the National Wildlife Refuge system and set aside 100 million acres for national forests. Another Roosevelt, FDR, put millions of people to work under the CCC building infrastructure in national parks and forests, planting billions of trees, building roads and trails, and combating soil erosion. Obama has established 22 national monuments and expanded others to set aside more than 265 million acres of land and water — that’s more than any other president.






