I ask this because my university (University of Missouri-St. Louis) just sent out a memo saying "We have had one case of H1N1 on our campus." I found this strange because two students in one of my classes have already told me they were diagnosed with it, and a third said she might have the flu and hasn't returned to class yet. This is out of 16 students in the class!

Now, if students don't report it to campus health services, that office won't know the real number, so no criticism of the memo. But the point is that there could be substantial under-reporting of H1N1 incidence in local areas or nationally, if cases don't get notified to the right people. So my question to TPM readers is what you're seeing on the ground.

I also have one policy question related to vaccine priorities. Although people under 24 are one of the main priority groups, university and school staffs, who are surrounded by under-24's on a daily basis, are not on the list at all, which seems strange to me. I think CDC should consider adding university and school staffs to the list.

Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post has a great article today on how badly the media has done on the ACORN controversy. You can find it here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092303679.html?referrer=emailarticle

And if you want to go direct to the study he references, it's here: http://departments.oxy.edu/uepi/acornstudy/

Instead of piling on with the faux outrage over ACORN, Stewart would do a lot better by sending someone into KPMG or other top accounting firms, and to tax havens, wearing a wire and hidden camera. It would be a lot more illuminating to see who took the bait of helping a prospective "client" set up an offshore account and give advice on illegal tax evasion than to see the penny-ante stuff ACORN workers did. Individuals are estimated by the Tax Justice Network to have $11.5 trillion (with a T) in offshore accounts, costing world governments about $250 billion a year in tax revenue. http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=103

Given what we know about 2006's and 2008's "voter registration fraud" baseless accusations, I am really surprised that Steward bit on this right-wing crap that illustrates nothing and may turn out to be more manipulation than reality.

And yes, I'm biased, ACORN was my first job out of college, June 1978-December 1979. But I'm still right.