Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff To Undergo Colon Surgery After Malignant Tumor Was Found On Appendix; Prognosis Good

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has announced that he will undergo surgery to remove a portion of his colon after a tumor was found on his appendix following an appendectomy. The tumor was determined to be malignant. Stories published by the Salt Lake Tribune and KTVX Channel 4 and KSL Channel 5. Shurtleff has not addressed this issue on his personal blog.

Shurtleff first sought medical treatment after having some unspecified stomach problems and had an emergency appendectomy last week. He describes it further on the video embedded below (the audio is rather faint):



After surgery, doctors will biopsy the portion of the colon to make sure the cancer hasn’t spread. It is believed to have been confined to the appendix, but when a tumor is found on the appendix, it is considered standard procedure to remove part of the colon to ensure it has not spread. Shurtleff is not expected to be sidelined for more than a couple of weeks.

Mark Shurtleff has been required to confront other health problems involving both himself and family members. After shattering his left leg while practicing for a charity motorcycle ride to raise money for a memorial for slain police officers, Shurtleff required 11 separate surgeries to heal his leg. In one case, he had his leg placed in metal halos with wires and pins being used to affix the bones to the rings; amputation was not ruled out. But he and his leg survived.

He also found it necessary to bow out of a U.S. Senate campaign against Bob Bennett because his adopted daughter Danielle, who had previously struggled with substance abuse issues, experienced a relapse.

Update December 16th: After performing the colon surgery, doctors found cancer cells in three of the 20 lymph nodes examined. Shurtleff will now undergo twelve sessions of chemotherapy over a six month period, beginning at the first of the year. Prognosis still appears good.

Two Pilots Attempted Unsuccessful Landings At Ogden Hinckley Airport Before Clayton Roop's Crash Into A Home In Roy, Utah

Update December 14th: The NTSB has issued a preliminary report indicating that the pilot hit a power pole during final approach, which triggered the crash sequence. Updated post HERE.

KSL Channel 5 is reporting that two pilots had unsuccessfully attempted to land at Ogden Hinckley Airport before a Cessna 210 piloted by 47-year-old West Haven resident Clayton Roop clipped a power line and crashed in nearby Roy on Sunday December 5th, 2010, seriously damaging Pat Newman's home and setting the attic of Darrell Gamble's home alight (the damage was confined to the attic). Roop remains in critical but stable condition at the University of Utah Burn Center with burns over about 15 percent of his body; he will need skin grafts and is expected to remain in hospital for up to a month. The video embedded below includes an aerial shot of the area:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

-- KSL gallery of 38 photos available HERE. Additional significant stories published by the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News.

One of the two was contract commercial pilot Steve Lindquist, who was flying a 10-seat Cessna from Oakland to Ogden. While making his initial approach, he said the sky above Ogden-Hinckley was clear but there was a heavy layer of low-lying fog obscuring the airfield. With a ceiling of 200 feet and visibility around 3/4 miles, he lost sight of the runway, so he executed a missed approach and tried again. After a second unsuccessful try, he flew to Provo, where there was no fog. While Lindquist doesn't want to second-guess Roop, he said there are minimum visibility requirements for instrument landing procedures, and visibility had been going up and down. Although it was still above minimums when he started his first approach, it had gone down during the approach. Airport manager Ed Rich said that even if visibility was a factor in Roop's crash, the airport tower cannot deny pilots on approach.

Airport management and pilots who use Ogden-Hinckley Airport say it has a good reputation. Ed Rich said that considering the number of planes that fly there, the airport has a solid safety record compared with other airports over the last 20 years -- despite four crashes into a nearby neighborhood. He noted that they have about 100,000 takeoffs and landings a year; over 20 years, he cumulatively estimates a couple million takeoffs and landings. Two of the four crashes have occurred during takeoffs. Greenbelt once surrounding the airport has been swallowed up by development, increasing the risk factor.

Some local residents would like to see changes to the runway or landing patterns. Marné Bowden is unhappy about the situation, saying "This is the third plane that's crashed in this exact same neighborhood. The one plane hit a house two houses away from where it crashed today [Sunday]." Bowden recommends that the flight approach pattern should be changed so that planes attempting to land at Ogden-Hinckley Airport travel northerly over open fields and industrial areas instead of homes.

But many Roy residents are more concerned about the pilots' welfare. One rescuer described finding Roop as "burnt pretty well on his hands and his face, he had skin hanging on those parts, and his right side hurt pretty good, probably has a bunch of broken ribs and stuff". But although Roop was confused and dazed, he was still able to answer questions. As for Pat Newman, after running from her burning home, her thoughts weren't about her half-burned house, but of Clayton Roop.

The Ogden Standard-Examiner provides more extensive details about the damaged homes. Fire from the crash left massive holes in the ceiling of Darrel Gamble's bedroom, bathroom and a sunroom where, as a master gardener, he kept several plants, including a prized orchid. Oddly, while most of the sunroom was in shambles, several items, including a porcelain doll and decorative plates from Denmark, remained on a shelf, unscathed. Debris falling from the plane hit the garage of Gamble's neighbors, Pat and Ned Newman, causing several propane tanks to explode and producing a massive wall of flames. The remains of a splayed tree with blackened, broken branches stood next to a charred trailer and twisted metal.

How Globalization And International Labor Arbitrage Undermine The American Economy And Marginalize The American Worker

One of the most controversial aspects of globalization is international labor arbitrage. International labor arbitrage is an economic phenomenon where, as a result of the removal of international trade barriers, jobs move to nations where labor and the cost of doing business (such as environmental regulations) is inexpensive and/or impoverished labor moves to nations with higher paying jobs. In many cases, the foreign workers are willing to labor for as little as 10 percent of what Americans would be paid, placing American workers in the impossible position of competing directly against the foreigners. Naturally, a company will move jobs outside the United States if they can realize significant labor savings; who wouldn't?

However, there's another aspect to this phenomenom. Not only do jobs move where people are willing to work for less money, but people willing to work for less money are moving to the United States to take jobs from Americans. This is permitted under the H-1B and H-2B immigrant programs. Ideally, the immigrants are supposed to be limited to jobs not taken by Americans; companies desiring to employ H-1B immigrants are technically required to advertise the jobs to Americans. But often the ads are posted in obscure locations where few Americans will see them, or they will offer a wage that's too low for an American, particularly one fresh out of college and saddled with a substantial student loan debt, to accept. But the wage is fine for the immigrant, so the immigrant is hired. This marginalizes the American worker. As word of this problem spreads, the next batch of college students will pursue majors in less vulnerable professions, leaving us with fewer American workers in the more vulnerable professions. The IT industry in the United States is in the process of being taken over by foreigners; over 25 percent of all startups in the Bay Area during the past 15 years were by immigrants (most likely former or current H-1Bs, and 40 percent of all publicly traded and venture founded companies in high tech manufacturing were started by immigrants.

In addition, there are accounts of H-1B immigrants performing substandard or slipshod work or rendering faulty service. In addition, once one of these immigrants works hid way into a managerial position, they have a tendency to reach back into their home countries for workers rather than hire Americans. This problem starkly manifested itself in the wake of a February 2008 raid on the Universal Industrial Sales factory in Lindon, Utah, where at least 50 illegal immigrants were found. It turned out that the human resource director, a 39-year-old naturalized American citizen named Alejandro Alex Urrutia-Garcia, was the pipeline for the illegal immigrants. Instead of making a genuine effort to hire Americans, he was reaching out to his compadres in Mexico, and not asking any questions about their paperwork.

More problems with the H-1B program are documented by NumbersUSA and H1BScam and Watchdog Politics Examiner.

Another example is posted on Stormfront by a computer programmer identified only as Lord Jim. Here's his story (after the jump):