SCOTUS Upholds Obama’s Healthcare Plan – and the Winners Are …

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The Real Winners

by Paul Krugman

June 28, 2012

So the Supreme Court — defying many expectations — upheld the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare. There will, no doubt, be many headlines declaring this a big victory for President Obama, which it is. But the real winners are ordinary Americans — people like you.

How many people are we talking about? You might say 30 million, the number of additional people the Congressional Budget Office says will have health insurance thanks to Obamacare. But that vastly understates the true number of winners because millions of other Americans — including many who oppose the act — would have been at risk of being one of those 30 million.

So add in every American who currently works for a company that offers good health insurance but is at risk of losing that job (and who isn’t in this world of outsourcing and private equity buyouts?); every American who would have found health insurance unaffordable but will now receive crucial financial help; every American with a pre-existing condition who would have been flatly denied coverage in many states.

In short, unless you belong to that tiny class of wealthy Americans who are insulated and isolated from the realities of most people’s lives, the winners from that Supreme Court decision are your friends, your relatives, the people you work with — and, very likely, you. For almost all of us stand to benefit from making America a kinder and more decent society.

But what about the cost? Put it this way: the budget office’s estimate of the cost over the next decade of Obamacare’s “coverage provisions” — basically, the subsidies needed to make insurance affordable for all — is about only a third of the cost of the tax cuts, overwhelmingly favoring the wealthy, that Mitt Romney is proposing over the same period. True, Mr. Romney says that he would offset that cost, but he has failed to provide any plausible explanation of how he’d do that. The Affordable Care Act, by contrast, is fully paid for, with an explicit combination of tax increases and spending cuts elsewhere.

So the law that the Supreme Court upheld is an act of human decency that is also fiscally responsible. It’s not perfect, by a long shot — it is, after all, originally a Republican plan, devised long ago as a way to forestall the obvious alternative of extending Medicare to cover everyone. As a result, it’s an awkward hybrid of public and private insurance that isn’t the way anyone would have designed a system from scratch. And there will be a long struggle to make it better, just as there was for Social Security. (Bring back the public option!) But it’s still a big step toward a better — and by that I mean morally better — society.

Which brings us to the nature of the people who tried to kill health reform — and who will, of course, continue their efforts despite this unexpected defeat.

At one level, the most striking thing about the campaign against reform was its dishonesty. Remember “death panels”? Remember how reform’s opponents would, in the same breath, accuse Mr. Obama of promoting big government and denounce him for cutting Medicare? Politics ain’t beanbag, but, even in these partisan times, the unscrupulous nature of the campaign against reform was exceptional. And, rest assured, all the old lies and probably a bunch of new ones will be rolled out again in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. Let’s hope the Democrats are ready.

But what was and is really striking about the anti-reformers is their cruelty. It would be one thing if, at any point, they had offered any hint of an alternative proposal to help Americans with pre-existing conditions, Americans who simply can’t afford expensive individual insurance, Americans who lose coverage along with their jobs. But it has long been obvious that the opposition’s goal is simply to kill reform, never mind the human consequences. We should all be thankful that, for the moment at least, that effort has failed.

Let me add a final word on the Supreme Court.

Before the arguments began, the overwhelming consensus among legal experts who aren’t hard-core conservatives — and even among some who are — was that Obamacare was clearly constitutional. And, in the end, thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., the court upheld that view. But four justices dissented, and did so in extreme terms, proclaiming not just the much-disputed individual mandate but the whole act unconstitutional. Given prevailing legal opinion, it’s hard to see that position as anything but naked partisanship.

The point is that this isn’t over — not on health care, not on the broader shape of American society. The cruelty and ruthlessness that made this court decision such a nail-biter aren’t going away.

But, for now, let’s celebrate. This was a big day, a victory for due process, decency and the American people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/opinion/the-real-winners.html?ref=opinion

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Who Said This – Obama or Romney?

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Election 2012 Pop Quiz!

By Nicholas D. Kristoff

June 27, 2012

Now that it’s clear that the presidential election will be between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, let’s see how much you know of the candidates. Take my presidential quiz, and if you get them all right, I nominate you to be a White House aide.

In each case, identify whether it was Obama or Romney who made the statement.

1. On abortion: “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.”

2. “I am fighting for an overturning of Roe v. Wade.”

3. On gay rights: “As we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.”

4. On the 2009 economic stimulus: “No time, nowhere, no how.”

5. “There is need for economic stimulus. Americans have lost about $11 trillion in net worth. That translates into about $400 billion a year less spending that they’ll be doing. ... Government can help make that up in a very difficult time. And that’s one of the reasons why I think a stimulus program is needed.”

6. On climate science: “I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor.”

7. “Do I think the world’s getting hotter? Yeah, I don’t know that, but I think that it is. ... I don’t know if it’s mostly caused by humans. ... What I’m not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don’t know the answer to.”

8. On health care: “It’s critical to insure more people in this country. It doesn’t make sense to have 45 million people without insurance. It’s not good for them because they don’t get good preventative care ... but it’s not good for the rest of the citizens either, because if people aren’t insured, they go to the emergency room for their care when they get very sick. That’s expensive. They don’t have any insurance to cover it. So guess who pays? Everybody else.”

9. On financial bailouts: “The idea of trying to bail out an institution to protect the shareholders or to protect a certain interest group, that’s a terrible idea. And that shouldn’t happen.”

10. “TARP got paid back, and it kept the financial system from collapsing. ... Well, it was the right thing to do.”

The answers? I’ll tell you in a moment, but first let me say that, by now, we have a pretty good feel for how I governs. Democrats and Republicans may disagree about him, but they largely know what they’re getting.

In contrast, Romney is an enigma. He was a moderate governor of Massachusetts, but he has tried very hard to prove to right-wing conservatives that he is one of them. So a crucial question for voters: Which is the real Romney?

Personally, my hunch is that the real Romney is the pragmatist, the nonideological problem-solver. I can imagine him as the political equivalent of a management consultant, where your job is to go in and fix messes without worrying too much about partisanship or ideology. Romney’s old friends and colleagues tell me that’s the Romney they know — and that the one in the Republican primaries was a fraud.

Further evidence for the moderate Romney: Before entering politics, he was a registered independent, and in 2002 he declared, “People recognize that I am not a partisan Republican, that I’m someone who is moderate, and that my views are progressive.”

I’m also reassured by many of Romney’s advisers. He mostly seeks advice from smart center-rightists, such as Gregory Mankiw of Harvard or Glenn Hubbard of Columbia among economists.

Yet there are strong counterarguments that worry me. The first is that the early Romney may have been the false one. He may have been a centrist only to be viable in a liberal state like Massachusetts. Or Romney may have evolved, with the Republican Party itself, to become more ideological. Or after all his time in the Republican primary echo chamber, he may have come to believe his own rhetoric.

A broader worry is that presidents inevitably empower their political parties, and, in Romney’s case, that would be a Republican Party that today makes no pretense of moderation. As Jeb Bush suggested recently, Republicans today would not provide a comfortable home even for President Ronald Reagan — and that will be even more true without centrists like Senators Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe in office.

So, Governor Romney, a simple question: Who are you? Which of these quotations above reflect the real you? If you’re elected, will we get Moderate Romney or Hard-liner Romney?

And the quiz? It illustrates the problem: Every single statement was made by Romney.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/opinion/election-2012-pop-quiz.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120628

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How to Bring Manhattan Traffic to a Standstill

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How to Stop Traffic

by BRUCE MCCALL

June 26, 2012

THE dream of bringing Manhattan traffic flow to a total standstill draws nearer every day, and if everybody does his part, these new regulations will speed its realization.

1. No-drive zones denoted by special painted lanes are reserved exclusively for participants in the new Citi Bike bike-sharing system. Those riders are required to pound, whack, kick, spit on or key any vehicle entering or crossing a lane.

2. FedEx, U.P.S. and United States Postal Service trucks must double-park to maximize traffic obstruction at major intersections.

3. Nannies on cellphones, pushing baby strollers, always have the right of way against red lights, stop signs, ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and snowplows. Sounding your horn if you are about to run over a nanny will incur a $500 fine.

4. Left-turning taxicabs must stay in the lane farthest to the right before crossing all traffic lanes to their left at intersections. Left-turn signal must be off.

5. Right-turning taxicabs must stay in the lane farthest to the left before crossing all traffic lanes to their right at intersections. Right-turn signal must be off.

6. Each M.T.A. driver must ensure that his or her bus joins a three-, four- or five-bus herd before starting the route. If there are not three, four or five buses directly ahead or directly behind, the driver must stop and wait to be joined by other buses in the herd.

7. Pedicabs must proceed on the exact median line of the street and make U-turns without signaling. Pedicab drivers exceeding 3 m.p.h. will have their licenses, if they have them, revoked.

8. Cyclists riding after dark with visible front and/or rear lights, lamps or other illumination will have their bicycles confiscated.

9. All complaints regarding garbage pickup — crews blocking streets, strewing refuse, sneering at motorists, etc. — should be registered with a cruising Sanitation Department car.

10. Sanitation Department cars have no purpose.

11. Police cruisers that stop to ticket vehicles for blocking traffic must themselves block traffic.

12. Motorists must honk and swear at traffic officers who are standing in busy intersections making wild arm and hand motions. That will motivate these dedicated professionals to fulfill their duty to impede normal vehicular flow.

13. Chauffeured limousines, high-end S.U.V.’s and imported luxury sedans must double- or triple-park and keep their engines running whenever and wherever they stop. Note: There is a $65 fine for disturbing the driver’s sleep, unless the driver has arranged for a wake-up call.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/opinion/bruce-mccall-how-to-stop-new-york-city-traffic.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120627

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The World Economy – Failing to Learn from History, We’re Doomed to Repeat It

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The Great Abdication

by PAUL KRUGMAN

June 24, 2012

Among economists who know their history, the mere mention of certain years evokes shivers. For example, three years ago Christina Romer, then the head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned politicians not to re-enact 1937 — the year F.D.R. shifted, far too soon, from fiscal stimulus to austerity, plunging the recovering economy back into recession. Unfortunately, this advice was ignored.

But now I’m hearing more and more about an even more fateful year. Suddenly normally calm economists are talking about 1931, the year everything fell apart.

It started with a banking crisis in a small European country (Austria). Austria tried to step in with a bank rescue — but the spiraling cost of the rescue put the government’s own solvency in doubt. Austria’s troubles shouldn’t have been big enough to have large effects on the world economy, but in practice they created a panic that spread around the world. Sound familiar?

The really crucial lesson of 1931, however, was about the dangers of policy abdication. Stronger European governments could have helped Austria manage its problems. Central banks, notably the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve, could have done much more to limit the damage. But nobody with the power to contain the crisis stepped up to the plate; everyone who could and should have acted declared that it was someone else’s responsibility.

And it’s happening again, both in Europe and in America.

Consider first how European leaders have been handling the banking crisis in Spain. (Forget about Greece, which is pretty much a lost cause; Spain is where the fate of Europe will be decided.) Like Austria in 1931, Spain has troubled banks that desperately need more capital, but the Spanish government now, like Austria’s government then, faces questions about its own solvency.

So what should European leaders — who have an overwhelming interest in containing the Spanish crisis — do? It seems obvious that European creditor nations need, one way or another, to assume some of the financial risks facing Spanish banks. No, Germany won’t like it — but with the very survival of the euro at stake, a bit of financial risk should be a small consideration.

But no. Europe’s “solution” was to lend money to the Spanish government, and tell that government to bail out its own banks. It took financial markets no time at all to figure out that this solved nothing, that it just put Spain’s government more deeply in debt. And the European crisis is now deeper than ever.

Yet let’s not ridicule the Europeans, since many of our own policy makers are acting just as irresponsibly. And I’m not just talking about Congressional Republicans, who often seem as if they are deliberately trying to sabotage the economy.

Let’s talk instead about the Federal Reserve. The Fed has a so-called dual mandate: it’s supposed to seek both price stability and full employment. And last week the Fed released its latest set of economic projections, showing that it expects to fail on both parts of its mandate, with inflation below target and unemployment far above target for years to come.

This is a terrible prospect, and the Fed knows it. Ben Bernanke, the Fed’s chairman, has warned in particular about the damage being done to America by the unprecedented level of long-term unemployment.

So what does the Fed propose doing about the situation? Almost nothing. True, last week the Fed announced some actions that would supposedly boost the economy. But I think it’s fair to say that everyone at all familiar with the situation regards these actions as pathetically inadequate — the bare minimum the Fed could do to deflect accusations that it is doing nothing at all.

Why won’t the Fed act? My guess is that it’s intimidated by those Congressional Republicans, that it’s afraid to do anything that might be seen as providing political aid to President Obama, that is, anything that might help the economy. Maybe there’s some other explanation, but the fact is that the Fed, like the European Central Bank, like the U.S. Congress, like the government of Germany, has decided that avoiding economic disaster is somebody else’s responsibility.

None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them.

And that’s what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren’t, in themselves, all that scary; it’s the almost universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/krugman-the-great-abdication.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120625

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Romney: First Thing We Do Let’s Fire the Teachers

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We Don’t Need No Education

by PAUL KRUGMAN

June 14, 2012

Hope springs eternal. For a few hours I was ready to applaud Mitt Romney for speaking honestly about what his calls for smaller government actually mean.

Never mind. Soon the candidate was being his normal self, denying having said what he said and serving up a bunch of self-contradictory excuses. But let’s talk about his accidental truth-telling, and what it reveals.

In the remarks Mr. Romney later tried to deny, he derided President Obama: “He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.” Then he declared, “It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.”

You can see why I was ready to give points for honesty. For once, he actually admitted what he and his allies mean when they talk about shrinking government. Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; in reality, a majority of government workers are employed providing either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers and firefighters).

So would getting rid of teachers, police officers, and firefighters help the American people? Well, some Republicans would prefer to see Americans get less education; remember Rick Santorum’s description of colleges as “indoctrination mills”? Still, neither less education nor worse protection are issues the G.O.P. wants to run on.

But the more relevant question for the moment is whether the public job cuts Mr. Romney applauds are good or bad for the economy. And we now have a lot of evidence bearing on that question.

First of all, there’s our own experience. Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush.

And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people.

The really decisive evidence on government cuts, however, comes from Europe. Consider the case of Ireland, which has reduced public employment by 28,000 since 2008 — the equivalent, as a share of population, of laying off 1.9 million workers here. These cuts were hailed by conservatives, who predicted great results. “The Irish economy is showing encouraging signs of recovery,” declared Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute in June 2010.

But recovery never came; Irish unemployment is currently more than 14 percent. Ireland’s experience shows that austerity in the face of a depressed economy is a terrible mistake to be avoided if possible.

And the point is that in America it is possible. You can argue that countries like Ireland had and have very limited policy choices. But America — which unlike Europe has a federal government — has an easy way to reverse the job cuts that are killing the recovery: have the feds, who can borrow at historically low rates, provide aid that helps state and local governments weather the hard times. That, in essence, is what the president was proposing and Mr. Romney was deriding.

So the former governor of Massachusetts was telling the truth the first time: by opposing aid to beleaguered state and local governments, he is, in effect, calling for more layoffs of teachers, policemen and firemen.

Actually, it’s kind of ironic. While Republicans love to engage in Europe-bashing, they’re actually the ones who want us to emulate European-style austerity and experience a European-style depression.

And that’s not just an inference. Last week R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University, a top Romney adviser, published an article in a German newspaper urging the Germans to ignore advice from Mr. Obama and continue pushing their hard-line policies. In so doing, Mr. Hubbard was deliberately undercutting a sitting president’s foreign policy. More important, however, he was throwing his support behind a policy that is collapsing as you read this.

In fact, almost everyone following the situation now realizes that Germany’s austerity obsession has brought Europe to the edge of catastrophe — almost everyone, that is, except the Germans themselves and, it turns out, the Romney economic team.

Needless to say, this bodes ill if Mr. Romney wins in November. For all indications are that his idea of smart policy is to double down on the very spending cuts that have hobbled recovery here and sent Europe into an economic and political tailspin. [emphasis added]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/opinion/krugman-we-dont-need-no-education.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120615

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House Republican Have No Interest in Governing

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 The Bills to Nowhere

June 7, 2012

This is now the pattern of business in the House of Representatives: Spend most of the time passing bills designed not to become law but to satisfy the ideological desires of conservative voters. And block laws that actually need to get passed.

This colossal waste of time, punctuated by moments of real destruction, has been going on since early last year, and is well-illustrated this month. The House voted Thursday to repeal crucial parts of the health care reform law, and an upcoming bill would make government regulation virtually impossible. None of these bills have a chance of enactment. In the meantime, though, House Republicans won’t bring up a desperately needed transportation bill.

Political-message bills have sprouted like weeds in the last few years, the product of extreme polarization and stalemate. Elected officials have to show that they’re doing something, so they propose bills designed only to create a talking point against the other side. Senate Democrats do it, too. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which was predictably filibustered to death by Republicans on Tuesday, was the latest example. We supported that bill as an important vehicle for reducing the wage gap between men and women, but the principal reason Democrats introduced it was to embarrass Mitt Romney and other Republicans over their pronounced indifference to the issue.

Nonetheless, House Republicans have refined this practice into an art and have passed nearly two dozen of these bills. The latest example was Thursday’s vote to repeal the tax on companies that sell more than $5 million in medical devices, a component of the health care reform law. Another provision in the bill would let people use health savings accounts to pay for over-the-counter drugs, changing an aspect of the health care law in a way that would primarily benefit higher-income taxpayers.

Both provisions would cut the amount of revenue the government will need to subsidize health insurance for low-income people, though Republicans (and 37 Democrats) voted to make up for the loss with disincentives for people to accept health care subsidies. The device industry will recoup the tax with new business from currently uninsured people. The bill is designed to please conservative voters, and will not be taken up by the Senate.

Another ridiculous bill coming up would prohibit the adoption of any major new government regulation until the unemployment rate falls to 6 percent or less.

Yet the House, so eager to take these kinds of votes, won’t move the stalled transportation bill, holding up billions of dollars — and millions of jobs — on road and transit projects, apparently out of fear it might help the economy and thus the political fortunes of Democrats. Because of internal Republican divisions, the House could pass only a 90-day bill extending existing highway programs. But when the Senate overwhelmingly approved a two-year bill (on a 74-to-22 vote), House leaders held it up in conference committee, while insisting on attaching unrelated provisions, like approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline and restricting any regulations on toxic coal ash from power plants.

So far, the House Republicans have done little but show that they have no real interest in governing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/opinion/the-bills-to-nowhere.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120608

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Why Can’t These Boys Hold Hands?

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http://youtu.be/lrJxqvalFxM

From the youtube blurb:

Irish anti homophobic bullying advertisement, created as part of BeLonG To Youth Services annual Stand Up! LGBT Awareness Weeks. The campaign promotes friendship amongst young people as a way to combat homophobic bullying.

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Same Sex Marriage Supported by Most Americans

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CNN Poll: Americans' attitudes toward gay community changing

by CNN Political Unit

June 6, 2012

Washington (CNN) - A majority of Americans say they support legally recognizing same-sex marriage amid growing evidence that the public's become more comfortable with gays and lesbians, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/ORC International survey released Wednesday also indicates that the number of Americans who say they have a close friend or family member who is gay has jumped from 49% in 2010 to 60% today, the first time in CNN polling that a majority of Americans have said that. In the 1990s, most Americans said they did not know anyone close to them who was gay.

See full results (PDF)

"Attitudes toward sexual orientation have also changed over that same time period," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "In 1998, a majority believed that someone who is gay or lesbian could change their sexual orientation if they choose to do so. Today, only a third feel that way, and the number who say that gays and lesbians cannot change their orientation is almost six in ten. Those shifts probably explain the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage."

According to the survey, 54% now say that marriages between gay and lesbian couples should be recognized as valid by law, with 42% opposed. Sentiment is strong on both sides of the debate, with more than three-quarters of supporters and opponents of same-sex marriage saying that they feel strongly about that issue.

The poll indicates a partisan divide, with seven in ten Democrats as well as six in ten independent voters saying same-sex marriages should be recognized by the law as valid, and 72% of Republicans opposed. The survey also indicates a generational divide, with nearly two-thirds of those under 50 in favor of legal same sex marriages and 55% of those 50 and older opposed.

The poll's release comes one day after a federal appeals court in San Francisco refused to revisit the issue of same-sex marriage, months after judges gave gay and lesbian couples the constitutional blessing to wed in the state, by ruling California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional. A stay on same-sex marriages in California remains in place until the issue is exhausted in the courts. Supporters of Proposition 8 vow to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from May 29-31, with 1,009 adults nationwide were questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points, with a sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for registered voters.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/06/cnn-poll-americans-attitudes-toward-gay-community-changing/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_politicalticker+%28Blog%3A+Political+Ticker%29

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Decision 2012

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Bullied NYC Teen Hangs Himself

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

'Happy kid' kills himself over bullying at two NYC schools

by NBCNewYork.com

June 1, 2012

NEW YORK CITY -- A 12-year-old boy harassed by school bullies about his intelligence, his height and his deceased father killed himself in the New York City apartment he shared with his mother, according to relatives and those who knew him, NBCNewYork.com reported.

"I want to remember him as a happy kid," his anguished sister told NBC 4 New York on Thursday.

Joel Morales, of East Harlem, moved to a different school after enduring incessant taunting for months, but the bullying persisted, the fifth-grader’s family said.

Kids chased Morales, threw sticks and pipes at him and teased him for his smarts and his 4-foot-9 stature, his family said.

Morales’ anguish reached a breaking point when bullies taunted him about his father, who died when he was four years old, according to relatives.

His mother, Lisbeth Babilonia, found him hanging in their apartment at about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, hours after she had organized a search party when he didn’t return home on time from an after-school club.

An occupational therapist who worked with Morales at one of the schools because of his diminutive size told NBC 4 New York the boy only reluctantly talked about his problems.

"It was very difficult, especially with a child like Joel who wants so badly to please everyone, to see that he was really in pain, that he was struggling," said Maria Ubiles.

Family: Bullying by 'wolf pack' led to Texas teen's suicide

Arlene Gago, a youth minister from a church group, said she spoke with Morales regularly at the Jefferson Houses where he lived but never knew of his distress.

NY teen killed by bus had suicide note, police say; family alleges bullying

"I always asked him, 'How you doing? How's school?'" she said. "We talked but he'd never tell me what was going on."

Was 15-year-old Lennon Baldwin's death a result of bullying?

A classmate told Morales’ family that the boy had said he was tired of the bullying and told them the details of the remark about his father that sent him over the edge.

Bullied girl's suicide has ongoing impact

School officials declined to comment on the alleged bullying, citing privacy issues.

Police said Morales left no suicide note.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/01/12002590-happy-kid-kills-himself-over-bullying-at-two-nyc-schools?lite

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