Florida's Govenor Rick Scott

This past November, Republican Rick Scott was elected Florida's Govenor, beating out Democrat Alex Sink by a small margine.

Scott, the former CEO of the Columbia/HCA hospital chain, held no previous political office before running for govenor. His motto was: "Let's Get to Work." During Scott's time as HCA's CEO, the chain defrauded the federal government by falsely adding Medicare charges for work that was never done to the tune of several BILLION dollars.

Since becoming governor, Scott has cut entire departments in an effort to cut spending, thereby adding more Floridians to the unemployment ranks. He has also rejected federal money for a high-speed rail system which would have put the so-called "Bullet-train" between Orlando and Tampa. This would have added thousands of desperately needed jobs, as well as federal money to the local economy. He is also pushing to have the time a person can receive unemployment in Florida from 26 to 20 weeks.

And now this: he has proudly pushed through cuts for funding for the state's disabled.

Here is the article, taken from the Orlando Sentinel:
orlandosentinel.com/features/os-scott-cuts-disabled-20110331,0,7724142.story

OrlandoSentinel.com
Gov. Rick Scott orders immediate cuts to programs for disabled
By Kate Santich, Orlando Sentinel

8:33 PM EDT, March 31, 2011


Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered deep cuts Thursday to programs that serve tens of thousands of residents with Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism and other developmental disabilities.

Though a range of state services face cuts from this year's Legislature, the governor invoked his emergency powers to order the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities to immediately roll back payments to group homes and social workers by 15 percent — an amount providers say could put them out of business and threaten their clients' safety.

"lt's not like, 'Gee, does this mean I have to skip a vacation this year?'" said Amy Van Bergen, executive director of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Florida. "Potentially, these cuts have life and death implications for these people."

An estimated 30,000 Floridians with severe developmental disabilities receive services that help them live outside of nursing homes — typically with family or in small group homes. Aides help them eat, bathe, take medication and otherwise care for themselves.

But the governor said the Agency for Persons with Disabilities' ongoing budget deficit — currently at $170 million — had reached a critical point and needed to be addressed immediately.

The cuts go into effect Friday and last at least through the fiscal year, which ends June 30. Lawmakers are currently debating what will happen after that.

Providers had not been informed of the cuts.

"No one has gotten any notice," said Linda Cumbie, an Orlando social worker who coordinates services that clients need to live outside of a nursing home — which would be a more expensive arrangement for the state. "We have to find out through the newspapers."

Cumbie said funds for the disabled already had been pared back to skeletal levels. She personally is holding a carwash and bake sale to help out one young disabled client so he can attend a daily workshop program.

Katie Porta, president of Quest Inc., which operates a series of group homes and programs for those with disabilities, said provider rates in Florida already rank in the bottom 10 percent for all states.

"We are almost to the point of impossibility in providing for our clients' basic health and safety needs," she said. "I just fear for our people."

She wasn't the only one. Alan McIntosh, a 57-year-old Orlando man with cerebral palsy, relies on an aide to do just about anything requiring movement. "I don't know what he [Gov. Scott] is thinking," McIntosh said. "As it is, I'm just trying to survive."

His aide, Debbie Pascascio, works 24 hours a day, four days in a row, to care for McIntosh and two other people with severe disabilities. Though she did not want to reveal her salary, other aides say $800 a week for round-the-clock care is typical, and many workers receive no health insurance, sick leave or retirement benefits.

APD Chief of Staff Bryan Vaughan said his department had no choice. "These actions are necessary … so that we are not forced to eliminate services to this vulnerable population," he said in a news release issued late Thursday. "APD is committed to protecting the health and safety of Floridians with developmental disabilities while living within our budget."

But at the Threshold Center for Autism in Winter Park, former CEO and current board member Bob Wright said something has to give. Staffers there work with children and adults who are severely impaired and sometimes violent.

"If this were any other workplace, you would consider it a war zone," Wright said. "My staff gets bitten, hit, kicked, spat upon, defecated on, urinated on — for $8.23 an hour. And every time we start talking about giving our guys a pay raise, the governor comes along and cuts the rates."

The center has not had a rate increase for its services since 2005, and it has had several rounds of cuts since then. At the same time, training requirements for staffers have increased.

"The state can cut my rates by 15 percent, but I can't cut my staffing 15 percent or I'll be in violation of staffing ratios," Wright added. "This may break our backs."

ksantich@tribune.com or 407-420-5503

Copyright © 2011, Orlando Sentinel

Miep Gies Dies; Helped Hide Anne Frank's family

Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank's family during World War II, died Monday January 11, 2009. She was a month shy of her 101st birtday.

According to Main Online, "Miep was Anne's confidante and the last of the handful of 'helpers' who enabled the Franks to hide for nearly two years before their capture. Her death is the final chapter in a tragic, but inspirational story."

The holocaust brought out among the worst that humanity has ever seen, along with some of the bravest people who ever lived.

To read more, please go to: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1242725/Painfully-shy-awesomely-brave-unknown-heroine-Anne-Franks-diary.html#ixzz0cRtiJaLE

Jackson (FL) Health System halts dialysis for poor patients

According to an article in today's Miami Herald, "Dozens of patients are facing a life-or-death situation after Jackson Health System stopped paying for treatment for their failing kidneys.

"The financially strapped Jackson Health System has stopped paying for dialysis treatments for 175 poor patients with failing kidneys -- a decision that experts say could be deadly."

The above article by John Dorschner and Juan Carlos Chavez, titled Jackson Health System halts dialysis for poor patients, may be found in today's Miami Herald. To read the article in its entirety, please go to: http://www.miamiherald.com/486/story/1413134.html .

Guess ethics and medicine no longer coexist.

46th Anniversary

Quick, what were you doing when you heard the news?

If you're asking What news?, you're probably under 50 years old. Today, November 22, is the 46th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assasination in Dallas, Texas.

Those of us old enough can attest that it had the same effect on us as the 9/11 attacks of 2001 had on us--and those born in the interim--all those years ago.

I was in school, getting ready to head home. As a "walker", I had to wait with the other walkers until the buses left with the bus kids. This was a yin/yang type situation: the bus kids got to leave a few minutes before the walkers, but the walkers usually managed to get home before the bus kids. We also got to do stuff for our respective teachers, such as running the day's roll to the office, clapping the dust off the erasers (way cool when you're 6 or 7 and the teacher has given you this responsibility).

The bus kids had were in the process of boarding their rides as I ran the roll to the office for my fifth grade teacher. Another walker, heading back to her classroom from the office, tears on her horrified face, sobbed, "The president's been shot." No way, I thought, unable to fathom such a horrible deed. I knew Lincoln had been assasinated almost a century earlier. But Kennedy? Who would do such a thing?

I had to announce myself several times to the office staff, as students were to physically hand the day's roll to one of the secretaries. Everyone in the office, secretaries, principal, teachers, were listening to a radio in stunned silence.

At home, minutes after leaving school, I found my mom with the TV on, something she rarely watched during the day. She had tears in her eyes and her voice was shaky as she told me the news.

The television stayed on the rest of the day. In a move that was unprecidented for the time, the networks broke from their daily schedules to bring updates on the assasination.

The remainder of the day went by in a numbing blur, the same numbing blur that most of us remember all too well during the days following the 9/11 attacks. Most of us were in shock, wanting this to be a horrible nightmare.

Since JFK's assasination, many things have changed--46 years worth of change. The only JFK sibling left alive is his sister Jean Ann Kennedy.

It is our duty, whether in memory of that fateful November day in 1963 or the September morning in 2001, to try to make this world a better place for all of us.

If not for the memory of the past, then do it for the future.

Exxon-Mobil Pleads Guilty to Killing Migratory Birds in Five States

Exxon-Mobil Pleads Guilty to Killing Migratory Birds in Five States

WASHINGTON – Exxon-Mobil Corporation, the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Denver to violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) in five states during the past five years, the Justice Department announced today.

The company has agreed to pay fines and community service payments totaling $600,000 and will implement an environmental compliance plan over the next three years aimed at preventing bird deaths on the company’s facilities in the affected states. According to papers filed in court, the company has already spent over $2.5 million to begin implementation of the plan.

The charges stem from the deaths of approximately 85 protected birds, including waterfowl, hawks and owls, at Exxon-Mobil drilling and production facilities in Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas between 2004 and 2009. According to the charges and other information presented in court, most of the birds died after exposure to hydrocarbons in uncovered natural gas well reserve pits and waste water storage facilities at Exxon-Mobil sites in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

The company has entered into a plea agreement with the government, calling for guilty pleas to the five charges and a sentence of $400,000 in fines and $200,000 in community service payments. The fines will be deposited into the federally-administered North American Wetlands Conservation Fund. The community service payments will be made to a non-profit waterfowl rehabilitation foundation in Colorado and the congressionally-chartered National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, designated for waterfowl preservation work in each of the affected states. During a three-year probationary period, Exxon-Mobil must also implement an "environmental compliance plan" designed to keep birds from coming into contact with oily waters at its facilities in the five affected states.

"The environmental compliance plan that Exxon-Mobil has agreed to in this multi-district plea agreement is an important step in protecting migratory birds in these five states," said John C. Cruden, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.

"We are all responsible for protecting our wildlife, even the largest of corporations," said Colorado U.S. Attorney David M. Gaouette. "An important part of this case is the implementation of an environmental compliance plan that will help prevent future migratory bird deaths."

The Migratory Bird Treaty Act, enacted in 1918, implements this country’s commitments under avian protection treaties with Great Britain (for Canada), Mexico, Japan and Russia. The Act creates a misdemeanor criminal sanction for the unpermitted taking of listed species by any means and in any manner regardless of fault. The maximum penalty for a corporate taking under the MBTA is $15,000, or twice the gross gain or loss resulting from the offense, and five years probation. The birds killed in the five cases include ducks, grebes, ibis, passerines, shorebirds, owls, martin and a hawk. None of these species is listed as endangered or threatened under federal law.

Migratory birds often land on open wastewater ponds at oil and gas facilities and become coated with, or ingest, fatal amounts of hydrocarbons discharged into the water during drilling or production operations. Such killings can be prevented by scrubbing the water of contaminants before discharge, removing the ponds, placing an obstruction such as netting or plastic "bird balls" over the water to prevent contact, or installing commercially-manufactured electronic hazing devices which detect incoming flights of migratory birds and deploy noise and lights to scare them away from the area. Exxon-Mobil’s environmental compliance plan will employ these techniques, tailored to each facility, to prevent future mortality.

The cases were investigated by Special Agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and are being prosecuted by Senior Trial Attorney Robert S. Anderson of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Carey of the District of Colorado.


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This article was taken from the Department of Justice website. The press release, posted here in its entirety, may be found at http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/August/09-enrd-795.html . For more news from the Department of Justice, go to www.usdoj.gov .

Scholar's Arrest: How Far Has Equality Come?

One of America's most prominent African-American scholars was arrested last week after an incident with police.

Henry Louis Gates had arrived home from a trip abroad to find the front door to his Cambridge, Mass. house stuck shut. Entering his home from the back door, he managed to force the door open with the help of a car service driver. Gates was on the phone with the Harvard leasing office when a white police sergeant arrived. Stories differ as to what exactly happened next, but the end result was that Gates was charged with disorderly conduct after repeatedly demanding the sergeant's name and badge number. The charges were later dropped.

Gates is a Harvard professor, PBS documentarian, acclaimed historian, recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant" and Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale.

My question is this: Would Gates have been arrested if he had been all of the afforementioned and white? If the answer is a resounding yes, that's one thing. But if the answer is no, then maybe, just maybe, we ought to reexamine how far we've come over the last few decades.

Equality doesn't mean treated better than. Women shouldn't have more rights than men, blacks shouldn't be treated better than whites, the GBLT community shouldn't be seen as needing more rights than straights. The flip side is that women, blacks and the GBLT community shouldn't have less rights, either.

Try this: how about treating each other as human. Now there's a thought for you.


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The information on Mr. Gates' arrest came from MSNBC and can be found at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32077998/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/?GT1=43001.

FBI, KCSO (TN) Looking for Bank Robbery Suspect

FBI, KPD, and KCSO, as Part of the Safe Streets Task Force, and the KCSO Major Crimes Unit are Searching for Man who Robbed a Knoxville Bank Late Today

The Knoxville Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Sheriff Jimmy “J.J.” Jones of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO) are asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the man who robbed a Knoxville bank late this afternoon, according to a press release issued Friday by the FBI.

At approximately 5:20 p.m., a man entered the First Tennessee Bank located at 10606 Hardin Valley Road, in Knoxville, Tennessee. After displaying a dark, large frame revolver with wooden grips, the suspect jumped the teller counter, obtained an undetermined amount of money, and fled the scene on foot headed east into nearby woods.

Witnesses described the suspect as an unshaven white male in his 50s to early 60s with gray facial hair, tanned arms, approximately 5’7” tall, with a slim build, and weighing approximately 160 pounds. The suspect was wearing blue jeans, a yellow or gold shirt, black gloves, black dress shoes and a black ski mask.

A reward is being offered for information which leads to the arrest of this individual. Anyone with information is asked to call the FBI at 865-544-0751 or the KSCO at 865-215-2243. This matter is being investigated jointly by the FBI Safe Streets Task Force and KCSO Major Crimes Unit.

All defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in a court of law.








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The article above was taken directly (via cut-and-paste) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (Knoxville, TN)web site. To view the article on the FBI's site, go to http://knoxville.fbi.gov/pressrel/2009/kx062509.htm.

Other news items from the FBI's Knoxville site can be viewed at http://knoxville.fbi.gov/press.htm.