Source: Energy Security In The United States, Congressional Budget Office

Different regions source their electricity differently. In percentage of 2009 electricity production by region, the West relied most heavily on wind power versus any of the seven other regions, while the North Central and Great Lakes regions leaned most on coal. Nuclear power to generate electricity was most prevalent in the Northeast, and natural gas in Florida.

Source: Energy Security In The United States, Congressional Budget Office

Whereas U.S. consumers have some protection against sharp electricity price spikes because of diverse sources, the same is not true in the transportation sector, says the CBO report.

Source: Energy Security In The United States, Congressional Budget Office

The report says that among policy options elected leaders can examine more closely to limit consumer vulnerability to transportation energy price spikes, one is to increase transit in major metro regions and raise the gas tax. CBO warns that rail transit carries especially high infrastructure costs versus expanded bus service, and that in any event, broader transit adoption in metro regions depends heavily on door-to-door travel times and service reliability. CBO also suggests policymakers consider how to develop greater incentives for telecommuting and urban density although both have been slow to truly take hold in many U.S. metro regions.

The report also mentions further subsidies for research and development of alternative fuels to power passenger vehicles but says that whole endeavor involves “significant uncertainties” around economic feasibility and implementation. Reaching into the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve is also an option, but that would likely be counteracted by a tightening of oil supply to the U.S. from major producer nations, says CBO.

A stipulated order of dismissal in a related civil case orders all funds in two of his accounts to be returned to his mother Christiane Raffard, now 82. According to a restitution agreement cited by Raffard and county officials, Downer had removed at least another $85,000 from the joint account for the care of Raffard. It has mostly now been returned to her under the civil settlement; but he still owes her $13,750, according to the agreement. His sentence requires the restitution be fully repaid within five years of his release. He had spent about $16,000 altogether from her nest egg funds before his accounts were frozen following the engagement by Raffard of an attorney for her civil action. Snohomish County prosecuted Downer on behalf of the state in the criminal case. He had no previous criminal record.

The affidavit of probable cause prepared by county prosecutors for charging him with felony theft says that according to Everett Police Department reports Downer without his mother’s permission made expenditures to benefit himself only from a retirement account he helped her open at Bank of America. Among unallowed personal expenditures he made from the account established to care for his mother were purchases at Poulsbo RV, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Everett West Marine, Port of Everett Marina, Lowe’s, Target, Half Price Books, and Scuttlebutt Brewing Co. in Everett. Raffard told police her son owns a boat, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit also states that according to police, Downer persuaded his mother to move to Everett from California so he could take care of her, and after setting up the joint account in April 2010, told an employee at her Everett apartment complex he had moved funds out of her account “only because she had too much money to qualify for a caretaker.” After making the $85,000 transfer from the joint account to his own in mid-May 2010, he one week later secured power of attorney, subsequently revoked, to oversee all banking and financial transaction’s for his mother’s “use and benefit.”

Reached by Public Data Ferret, Raffard, who speaks with a pronounced French accent, said she remained appalled at what had transpired. “He stole money from me. I will never forgive him. I’ll never forget what he did. I never raised him like that. From a son, you should not have this. I have nothing to do with him and when I die, my money goes to somebody else.”

Downer is also facing administrative charges of unprofessional conduct from the Washington State Department of Health for misappropriating funds from a patient under his care (Raffard). He got his nursing assistant license from the state in late September of 2006 and it expired in August 2011.

The new legislative language, about which the council would like to hear from constituents during the public hearing portion of the meeting, makes several changes to existing rules for keeping backyard chickens. Key are proposed new regulations in Table 2 which ease current restrictions requiring a 20,000 square foot minimum residential lot size for the first outdoor chicken and another 5,000 square feet for each extra one. The new language would permit up to eight chickens on a single-family lot of up to 10,000 square feet, and one more chicken for each additional 2,500 square feet, with up to 15 chickens on a single-family lot of 25,000 square feet or more.

But there are some new rules for these homes on the range. No roosters are permitted. Structures housing chickens must be at least 10 feet from the owner’s home or any neighboring home, and cannot be more than 120 square feet and eight feet tall.

The draft ordinance would also amend regulations on residential beekeeping. Existing city code allows no more than four hives per 10,000 square foot residential property, with one additional hive for each additional 2,500 square feet of property, and up to 10 hives total. The new language allows up to two hives on lots smaller than 10,000 square feet, four on lots between 10,001 and 12,500 square feet, and one more for each additional 2,500 square feet of property, also up to 10 hives total. As previously, just one swarm per hive is allowed. The ordinance also includes new language on feeding wildlife, human conduct toward wildlife, traps, poison and animal housing.

The proposed new rules stem from city Planning Commission recommendations, and a broader look at regulation of urban wildlife by a city Wildlife Task Force which developed a Wildlife Management Plan. The City Council is expected to vote on the code revisions at a meeting following the public hearing.

Public Data Ferret’s Construction and Land Use archive

Mapped events and resources, dynamic prevention messaging
Part of the job is to create a database to display the SGC calendar events on a Google Maps-like interface, along with static links to research and prevention sites. A second and more dynamic database would also likely be developed, project managers say, to distribute prevention messages through the mobile app.

According to the vendor Q&A, “one of the goals of this project is to see if an app targeted to men who have sex with men (MSM) in Seattle can increase research recruitment or referral to partner sites providing HIV/STD prevention and care.”

Light on social features, at first
Vendors asked if the app’s first iteration would include added social media features like messaging, or content sharing directly to users’ RSS or Twitter feeds, or Facebook accounts. The answer was no, not to begin with, but if the app is successful and more funding is secured, then such features could be added.

New approaches welcomed to HIV prevention
Aware of the gains made against HIV and AIDS through anti-retroviral drug therapy but still concerned about continuing risk-prone behavior among some MSM in Seattle and King County, public health and communications experts here have continued to try new approaches to HIV prevention.

Ongoing effort to address high-risk behavior
One experiment used gift card vouchers to try to reduce meth use and high risk sex among Seattle area MSM, but a related study by UW Harborview researchers found it wasn’t successful. A report last fall by the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System found the Seattle region ranked high in behaviors which increase the risk of getting HIV.

The deadline for responding to the mobile app RFP is May 10, by email only to Marianne Dizard at mdizard (at) uw (dot) edu. The work on the contract will run to May 2013. The contractor will work with UW Medicine’s Strategic Marketing and Communications and IT Services Web Development teams.

Public Data Ferret is a news knowledge base program of the Seattle-based 501c3 public charity, Public Eye Northwest. Ferret In The News; Donate.

Washington not a “breeder state” like Utah, California, Hawaii, Texas
According to the “Households and Families 2010″ U.S. Census report which was issued in April 2012, Washington was far closer to the middle of the pack in average size of household and family. There were 2.51 people per Washington household versus 2.58 nationally, and 3.06 people per Washington family versus 3.14 nationally. The states with the biggest average households and families were Utah (3.1 and 3.56 respectively); California (2.9 and 3.45); Hawaii (2.89 and 3.42) and Texas (2.75 and 3.31). Of the 52 state and related jurisdictions covered in the report, those with the smallest average household and family sizes were the District of Columbia (2.11 and 3.01); North Carolina (2.3 and 2.91); Maine (2.32 and 2.83); Vermont (2.34 and 2.85); and Montana (2.35 and 2.91).

Husband-wife households are less than half of the total
Overall there were 116.7 million households counted nationally in the 2010 census, up 10.7 percent from the last census in 2000. Almost 301 million people lived in those households; another eight million Americans lived in group facilities such as nursing homes, military barracks, or dorms. Two-thirds of households were classified as family households, with two or more related individuals, but just 48.4 percent were husband-wife households, a small gain of 3.7 percent from 2000.

One big U.S. household trend: not married – and no children – thanks very much
The only type of household to decrease over the 10 years was husband-wife with children, which dropped five percent. In percentage terms, the biggest increases from 2000 to 2010 were in unmarried couple households (up 41.4); followed by male-headed households with no spouse or children (up 35.6); female-headed households with no spouse or children (up 29); and male-headed households with no spouse but with children (up 27.3).

Solo In Seattle
Seattle earns a special mention in the report for ranking eighth out of 282 U.S. cities of 100,000 population or more in percentage of one-person households. More than 117,000 of Seattle’s 283,510 households, or 41.3 percent, were inhabited by just one person.

Disparities among U.S. households of spouseless women, and spouseless moms
In the 2010 Census, households headed by a female with no spouse accounted for 13.1 percent of the whole; while 7.2 percent of all U.S. households were headed by spouseless females who also had children. Notably, that last figure is three times more than the percent of households headed by spouseless males with kids.

The percentages of households led respectively by spouseless women, and spouseless women with kids, were lower than the national average for whites (9.9, 5.2) and Asians (9.5, 4.1) but higher for blacks (30.1, 17.4), Latinos (19.2, 12.1), Native Americans (21.4, 12.3), and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (17, 9.8) and for various mixed-race groupings.

Same-sex households up 80 percent in 2010, but were just .6 percent of all
Same-sex households grew a whopping 80.4 percent from 2000 to 2010, to 646,464 nationally. However this represented just six-tenths of a percent of all 2010 U.S. households. As noted in a Census Bureau technical/statistical paper (see p. 27), this count included same-sex households where the partners categorized themselves as spouses; and households with unmarried same-sex partners. States or related jurisdictions with the highest percentage of total same-sex partner households were District of Columbia (1.8), followed by Delaware, Massachusetts, California and Vermont (each .8 percent). In Washington, .7 percent of households included same-sex partners.

The 2010 Census did not include categories for sexual orientation of individuals, so there is no U.S. LGBT population count resulting from it. As the Washington Blade reported last fall though, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force more than 140,000 2010 U.S. Census respondents attached stickers to their forms and more than 30,000 individuals singed petitions urging the inclusion of individual LGBT counts in future Census takings and in similar efforts (such as the ongoing, American Community Survey).

Public Data Ferret’s Demographics archive

Public Data Ferret is a news knowledge base program of the Seattle-based 501c3 public charity, Public Eye Northwest. Ferret In The News; Donate.

The work is part of the broader Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors 2010 Study which updates similar work last completed in 1996, and aims to give researchers and decision makers better data to guide policy. The life expectancy data for all U.S. counties are given additional context by a series of three visualizations from IHME. An especially useful one allows comparisons of life expectancies in individual U.S. counties with other nations.

Average life expectancy for women in King County in 2009 (the most recent year for which data were provided) was 83.2 years, which tied for 46th nationally out of 3,147 and ranks within the top two percent. Average life expectancy for men in King County was 79.2 years in 2009, or tied for 43rd nationally, also within the top two percent.

Public Data Ferret’s University of Washington+Public Health+Open Science archive

But because life expectancies and other public health indicators can vary widely with a county, IHME is digging in deeper to health disparities on its home turf through the Monitoring Disparities in Chronic Conditions Study in partnership with Public Health – Seattle & King County. According to a news release which accompanied the new national life expectancy data, the King County study is examining socioeconomic and health risk factors in connection with frequency of visits to hospitals and outpatient clinics and with how well prescribed remedies are implemented.

“What makes the difference is getting the right medication at the right dose. We screen people for diseases but don’t always follow through to manage the diseases,” said Mokdad. IHME also says that U.S. health disparities including differences in life expectancy are most often driven by “preventable causes of death” such as tobacco use, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity and alcohol.

King County was not the only one in Washington state to rank near the top nationally in life expectancy. Island County was 14th nationally out of 3,147 counties or county equivalents in 2009 average female life expectancy, at 84.1 years; and Jefferson County was 33rd of 3,147 at 83.4 years. Island County also ranked 5th nationally in 2009 average life expectancy for men at 80.9 years. Three other Washington counties also ranked within the top five percent nationally in 2009 life expectancy for men; Benton, Chelan and Jefferson.

In Washington state as a whole, average life expectancy for men in 2009 was 77.8 years versus 76.2 years in the U.S.. For women it was 81.9 years, against 81.3 nationally. Overall, the IHME data shows many more U.S. counties with longer average life expectancies than in recent decades, but researchers sound a cautionary note that for women life expectancy has plateaued or decreased from 1989 to 2009 in 661 counties nationwide, and for men, in 166 counties. The problem is particularly prevalent in states such as Oklahoma, Tennessee and Georgia.

Among U.S. counties in 2009, average life expectancies were longest for women in Collier (FL) – 85.8; Marin (CA) – 85.1; Montgomery (MD) – 85; San Mateo (CA) – 84.9; Santa Clara (CA) and Stearns (MN) – both 84.6. For men, top counties were Marin (CA) – 81.6; Montgomery (MD) – 81.4; Fairfax (VA) – 81.3; Douglas (CO) – 81; and Island (WA) 80.9.
Public Data Ferret is a news knowledge base program of the Seattle-based 501c3 public charity, Public Eye Northwest. Ferret In The News; Donate.

The 94 participants who died ranged in age from 41 to 101, and 94 percent were white. Almost three-quarters had at least some college education. Seventy-eight percent had cancer, 12 percent had neuro-degenerative disease including Amytrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), and 10 percent had either heart or respiratory disease or another illness.

Of the 94 participants who died, 70 did so after taking their lethal medication dosage, most within 90 minutes. Nineteen died without taking their prescribed dosage. For five of the 94 who died, it was unclear whether or not they had ingested the prescribed medicine. Of the remaining nine participants, there was no documentation they had died.

The 103 participants and 94 deaths in 2011 compared to 87 and 84, respectively, in 2010; and 65 and 63 in 2009, the year the state law went into effect on March 5.

For the third year running, the split between male and female participants was nearly even, and only slightly more than one-tenth of participants either lacked health insurance or had unknown insurance status.

The state’s Death With Dignity Act allows Washington residents who’ve been determined to have six months or less to live, to choose physician-assisted suicide. The report only covers assisted suicides, or requests for it, which occurred in compliance with the law’s notification and documentation requirements involving patients, doctors, pharmacists and coroners.

RELATED: “One Story Behind Washington 2011 Death With Dignity Act Statistics,” Colin Fogarty, KPLU-FM, NPR.

Public Data Ferret is a news knowledge base program of the Seattle-based 501c3 public charity, Public Eye Northwest. Ferret In The News; Donate.

Parents Guardado and Campos assert Dr. Kerri R. Fitzgerald, then of Valley Medical Center, ignored their repeated requests before and after the premature birth of their son Diego Esteban Campos Perez in February 2008 at the gestational age of 23 weeks, that every possible measure be taken to keep him alive. Their successful reversal of Judge Carey’s dismissal of the case hinged on expert testimony given during that earlier court proceeding by Nashua, N.H. neonatologist Dr. Marcus C. Hermansen that there was a 30 to 40 percent chance the baby could have survived despite complications, if resuscitation efforts had been made; and related testimony by Chicago, Ill. maternal/fetal medicine specialist Dr. Michael Hussey that the standard of care dictates those efforts should have been made.

Mother “very adamant” about wanting resuscitation for her premature baby, if needed
According to the state appeals court ruling, Guardaro, then 23 weeks pregnant, began to suffer cramping and went with her husband Campos to Valley Medical on February 18, 2008 where despite efforts of an admitting obstetrician she went into labor prematurely but was assured by the obstetrician via an interpreter that “they were going to do everything they could to save the baby when it was born.” The following morning a labor nurse spoke through an interpreter to Campos who agin insisted and was assured all efforts would be made to keep the baby alive. The nurse noted Guardero was “‘very adamant’ that she wanted resuscitation,” which was added to her medical chart.

Valley Medical doctor urged no resuscitation, said Mom accepted
But neonatologist and pediatrician Dr. Kerri R. Fitzgerald met with Campos and urged her to reconsider, asserting that an infant born at 23 weeks would have less than a 9 percent chance of survival without severe complications, and that it was not in the infant’s best interest to be kept alive. According to Fitzgerald’s chart notes, Guardero “expressed understanding that neonatology will be present at delivery but will not resuscitate her infant.”

Parents say repeated requests for aid to baby after birth were ignored; file suit
Baby Diego was born at 11:45 a.m. with an Apgar score of “1″ and a heart rate of 80 beats per minute and “no respiratory effort, tone, or spontaneous movement.” Fitzgerald blanketed the baby and gave him to be held by Guardero. Diego’s heart rate declined by half in the next 10 minutes and he had made a few breaths. in coming hours the parents “repeatedly asked” the labor nurse to check his heart rate, which the chart notes say stayed at 40 bpm. The appeals court ruling adds, “Dr. Fitzgerald made no effort to resuscitate the baby,” who was pronounced dead at 2:15 p.m., two-and-a-half hours after birth. Eleven months later, Guardero initiated a medical negligence claim against Fitzgerald and Valley Medical for failing to try to keep Baby Diego alive, and alleging wrongful death and “loss of a chance for a better outcome.” In their depositions, both the mother Guardero and the father Campos emphasized that after Baby Diego was born and before he died, they repeatedly asked Fitzgerald and other medical personnel to resuscitate him but were consistently refused.

According to the appeals court ruling, “Campos testified that ‘as soon as the baby was born, (the doctor) said that the baby was going to die. And I told her to help him, to put him in an incubator, and they said no, they didn’t want to do it.’ Campos said that ‘I was talking to the nurses and with the other doctor that was there, and I was telling them to hlp my son because he was alive…and they always refused to help him.’” The interpreter then present gave testimony the family expressed related concerns to her and asked “who can they call, what an they do.”

Claim was initially dismissed
Fitzgerald and Valley Medical later won from King County’s Judge Carey a requested summary judgement to dismiss the case, arguing the parents presented no expert testimony linking Baby Diego’s death to lack of resuscitation effort and that even it it had been tried he wouldn’t have survived.

But state appeals court finds convincing the original expert testimony for Baby Diego
The appeals court reversal of the case’s dismissal centered on testimony that was given during the county court proceeding on behalf of the parents and baby that in fact he would have had a 30 to 40 percent chance of survival if efforts had been made, and that the “standard of care” requires the effort be made for a fetus of that age if the parents request.

The opinion written by State Appeals Court Division 1 Judge Ann Schindler concludes, “Viewing the facts and all reasonable inferences in the light most favorable to (the mother) Guardero, Dr. Hermansen’s opinion that had Dr. Fitzgerald provided resuscitation, Diego would have had a 30 to 40 percent chance of long-term survival supports Guardero’s cause of action for the lost chance of a better outcome.” The ruling cancels the dismissal in the lower court and returns the case there for trial. The successful appeal of Carey’s dismissal was filed with the state April 1, 2011 by Burien attorney Georgia Trejo Locher.

Public Data Ferret is a news knowledge base program of the Seattle-based 501c3 public charity, Public Eye Northwest. Ferret In The News; Donate.