Why not just let the private sector deliver the mail
Currently FedEx, and UPS deliver the mail faster and better then the US Post Office despite a Federal law requiring that they charge 3 times what the US Post Office charges for the same services.Repeal that silly law and the private sector will almost certainly be able to deliver the mail, faster, better and cheaper then the US Post Office.
Tue, Jul 23, 2013, 1:33 PM EDT
Postal Service Moving Away From At-Your-Door Delivery
CNNMoney.comBy Jennifer Liberto | CNNMoney.com
If you're moving to a newly built house, say goodbye to mail delivery at your door.
And if some House Republicans get their way, all door-to-door mail delivery will go away.
The U.S. Postal Service is marching towards a more "centralized delivery," where residents pick up their own mail from clusters of mail boxes located in their neighborhood. Local postmasters are sending hundreds of letters to fast-growing communities, warning that cluster boxes will be the way mail will be delivered to new developments.
In the past year, the cash-strapped Postal Service has been asking companies in industrial parks and shopping malls to also adopt this form of mail delivery.
But Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican leading the House effort to save the postal service, wants more. He has made doing away with doorstep delivery a key part of his bill, which would require everyone to get mail at a curbside box or from a cluster box.
"A balanced approach to saving the Postal Service means allowing USPS to adapt to America's changing use of mail," said Issa, who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Moving away from door-to-door delivery saves a lot of money. Right now, 35 million residences and businesses get mail delivered to their doorstep.
It costs $353 per stop for a delivery in most American cities, taking into account such things as salaries and cost of transport. By contrast, curbside mail box delivery costs $224, while cluster boxes cost $160, according to a report from the Postal Service's Office of Inspector General.
Delivering mail is the agency's largest fixed cost -- $30 billion. Ending such deliveries would save $4.5 billion a year. That's more than the $3 billion it would have saved from ending Saturday mail service, according to government reports.
That's why ending door delivery has drawn industry support from groups like the Greeting Card Association, which supports Saturday service.
But unions say it's a bad idea to end delivery to doorsteps and will be disruptive for the elderly and disabled. [but mostly to the high salaries of the over paid and under worked union members]
"It's madness," said Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers. "The idea that somebody is going to walk down to their mailbox in Buffalo, New York, in the winter snow to get their mail is just crazy." [Well, not if a non-union, non-government postal worker can deliver the mail for a third or less what a US Postal employee can. Currently Federal law makes it illegal for the private sector to deliver mail unless they charge 3 that's THREE times what the US Post Office charges, or if they deliver the mail for free]
Yet postal officials say everything's on the table, when it comes to cost-cutting. [Well everything except letting the private sector compete with the US Post Office] Earlier this year, it tried to end Saturday mail delivery, but later reversed its decision.
The Postal Service continues to struggle with mail volume, especially drops in first-class mail, its big revenue driver, as more Americans move to electronic billing and e-mailing.
In 2012, the agency lost $16 billion. Last year, the agency twice defaulted on payments owed to the federal government to prefund retiree health care benefits totaling $11 billion. The agency has also exhausted a $15 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.
Ending a Congressional mandate to make large annual payments toward retiree health care benefits would help solve the agency's woes.
As it awaits for help from Congress, the postal agency has been trying to do what it can on its own. One of the initiatives is pushing cluster boxes on new developments.
"Prior to this spring, we'd work with the construction companies and they could decide if the houses would get cluster boxes or curbline delivery --- now the Postal Service makes that decision," said Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan.
In Cranberry, Pa., the community is up in arms after getting a letter in April from the Postal Service saying cluster boxes would be going in new developments.
Community leaders say they understand the boxes are cheaper but they want a better plan that takes into account safety, access and maintenance. Township leaders and the postal service are holding talks over the boxes.
"We understand what's driving this is a cost savings," said Cranberry Township Manager Jerry Andree. "But you can't just take a cluster box and drop it into the community without planning for its safety, use and access."
Harassment claim is latest blow to San Diego mayor
Associated Press Tue Jul 23, 2013 7:33 PM
SAN DIEGO — Irene McCormack Jackson says she endured months of harassment from Mayor Bob Filner while serving as his communications director. The turning point came at a staff meeting in June when another top aide confronted the mayor over his behavior and quit.
“You are running a terrible office. You are treating women in a horrible manner. What you are doing may even be illegal,” Allen Jones, then Filner’s deputy chief of staff and a longtime confidante, is quoted saying in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by McCormack.
McCormack chimed in, “I agree with Allen. You are horrible.” When the mayor challenged her for an example, she said she replied, “How about when you said that I should take my panties off and work without them.”
The episode is described in the lawsuit McCormack filed Monday against Filner, dealing another blow to San Diego’s first Democratic leader in 20 years. His own party appears split on his leadership, though many Democrats have joined Republicans in calling for the former 10-term congressman to resign less than eight months into a four-year term.
McCormack was the first person to publicly identify herself as a target of Filner’s advances, suing nearly two weeks after some of the mayor’s prominent former supporters said he sexually harassed women and demanded he resign.
A second woman, Laura Fink, told KPBS in an interview that aired Tuesday that Filner patted her buttocks at a campaign event when he was a congressman in February 2005. When an attendee told the congressman that Fink was working her tail off for him as deputy campaign manager, Filner allegedly told her to turn around, patted her, laughed, and said, “No, it’s still there!”
Fink, who is now a political consultant, wrote Filner at the time to ask that he apologize for “totally unacceptable” behavior, according to her email posted on KPBS’ website. She told KPBS that Filner told her he was sorry but never responded to the email.
A Filner spokeswoman, Lena Lewis, didn’t answer phone calls or immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Fink’s allegations.
Filner rejected McCormack’s claims in a brief statement Monday that once again signaled he had no plans to step down. He didn’t address any specific allegations.
“I do not believe these claims are valid. That is why due process is so important. I intend to defend myself vigorously and I know that justice will prevail,” he said.
McCormack worked for nine years at the Port of San Diego, most recently earning $175,000 a year as vice president of public policy, and was previously a journalist for 25 years. She took an annual pay cut of $50,000 to join Filner’s inner circle in January.
U-T San Diego, the city’s dominant newspaper and her onetime employer, editorialized that she came across as “composed and highly credible” at a news conference Monday with her high-profile attorney, Gloria Allred.
“She is well-known, liked and respected in the city’s political, business and media circles,” the newspaper wrote in an editorial that concluded, “Unless there is a dramatic development helping Filner, we suspect the conventional wisdom about the difficulty of mounting a successful mayoral recall will soon change.”
The lawsuit brought renewed calls from two city councilmen for Filner to step aside. Kevin Faulconer and Todd Gloria said the mayor’s office was paralyzed.
“This is taking critical attention from the issues that affect San Diego families,” said Gloria, a Democrat who, as council president, would be interim mayor if Filner resigned.
McCormack says in her lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court that the leader of the nation’s eighth-largest city demanded kisses and dragged her around in headlocks while whispering sexual advances.
In February, he allegedly put McCormack in a headlock while they rode an elevator with a police officer who was adjusting his handcuffs, prompting him to tell her, “You know what I would like to do with those handcuffs?” On another elevator ride, Filner allegedly said, “Wouldn’t it be great if you took off your panties and worked without them on?”
The lawsuit says Filner asked McCormack to marry him, including once while he had her in a strong headlock during a doughnut break at a constituent event in April. The 70-year-old divorced man was engaged at the time to Bronwyn Ingram, who announced this month that she ended the relationship.
While reviewing a draft press release in June, Filner allegedly asked McCormack for a kiss and said, “I am infatuated with you. When are you going to get naked?” When she asked him to leave her office, the lawsuit says he responded, “I can go anywhere I want, any time I want.”
No one had publicly identified herself as a target of Filner’s advances until Monday. Last week, former supporters said Filner forcibly kissed a campaign volunteer on a public sidewalk and groped her in her car. Another constituent who attended a mayoral event at City Hall said Filner took her to an enclosed area, dismissed a staff member, asked her on a date and kissed her, they said.
An employee who worked for the mayor for six months complained that Filner grabbed her buttocks and touched her chest, according to the former supporters.
McCormack, who now works for the city in a job that doesn’t report to the mayor, said she saw Filner “place his hands where they did not belong on numerous women.” Her lawsuit said, without elaborating, that three women had to be driven home because of his “abusive treatment” and five schedulers resigned over his behavior.
After the initial allegations surfaced, Filner apologized for disrespecting and sometimes intimidating women. “I need help,” he declared.
On Friday, he welcomed the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department’s decision to open a hotline to take calls from any possible victims of his misconduct, saying “some of these allegations will finally be addressed by an appropriate investigative authority rather than by press conference and innuendo.”
This article is a great example of how to really screw things up it takes government idiots.
227,000 Names on List Vie for Rare Vacancies in City’s Public Housing
By MIREYA NAVARRO
Published: July 23, 2013
Lottie Mitchell made her regular pilgrimage the other week, riding the subway for 45 minutes, then transferring to a bus to reach her destination: an office of the New York City Housing Authority.
When her turn came, Ms. Mitchell, 57, using a cane, hobbled to the counter with the same request that she has made for the last four years.
“I want to check the status on my housing,” she said.
As always, the clerk responded: “You’re on the waiting list.”
It is called the Tenant Selection and Assignment Plan, but to hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers seeking a home, it is “the list.”
Prosperous city residents may consider public housing to be a place of last resort. The waiting list indicates otherwise.
The growth in the list — and the stories of those who struggle to move up on it to gain subsidized apartments — underscores how the city continues to face a shortage of housing for the poor and the working class.
There are now 227,000 individuals and families on the waiting list for Housing Authority apartments, totaling roughly half a million people, and the queue moves slowly. The apartments are so coveted that few leave them. Only 5,400 to 5,800 open up annually.
The odds, never good, are getting worse. This year, after the agency began accepting applications online, the waiting list reached a milestone: for the first time, the number of applicants exceeded the 178,900 apartments in the public housing stock.
“It’s become harder and harder to be able to afford a rental unit in the open market,” said Victor Bach, a senior housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society, a research and advocacy group for the poor. “Whether employment is up or down, the rents keep rising inexorably.”
Federal law prevents housing authorities from building additional units. With federal aid declining, the New York City agency also faces difficulty maintaining the projects that it has.
The average monthly rent for a public housing apartment is $436, officials said. The average household’s income is $23,000. (Tenants are required to pay up to 30 percent of their household income in rent.)
But low income alone does not determine who gets an apartment, and the waiting list is not run on a first-come-first-served basis.
Officials favor groups of applicants in order to further policy goals. Some, like victims of domestic violence, are given priority. Others, like working families, are preferred because they can pay higher rents and also help diversify the projects so they do not segregate the poor.
Those with a high priority can jump the line and may get an apartment in as little as three months. Others will wait years — with little if any prospect of getting off the list.
In 2005, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took away preferences for homeless people staying in city shelters, arguing that the policy was an incentive for them to enter the shelter system in order to obtain public housing more easily.
As a result, the number of homeless families who enter public housing from shelters dropped to about 100 last year from an average of 1,600 a year before the policy changed, according to city figures.
Waiting times also depend on the type of apartment. An applicant who needs a two-bedroom will be on the list for less time than a single person who needs a studio, because only 3.5 percent of the authority’s apartments are studios, compared with 48 percent that have two bedrooms.
Manhattan is more difficult to move into because of high demand and because there is not as much public housing as in other boroughs. Staten Island is the easiest.
Ms. Mitchell has been on the waiting list since 2009. Once, she got plucked from the line for an eligibility interview.
“We were so excited,” said Ms. Mitchell, who lives with her 35-year-old disabled son in a city homeless shelter. “They said they’d call me back real soon.”
That was a year and a half ago.
Since then, Ms. Mitchell has gone twice a year to a Housing Authority office in the Bronx to check on her application.
She also has called. She has sent letters of reference. She has prodded the staffs of both the Bronx and Manhattan borough presidents to inquire on her behalf.
Still, an apartment remains out of reach.
Because some people can jump ahead, no one ever knows his or her place on the list or how long the wait will be.
“Every time I call, they don’t say anything,” said Maria Almonte, 42, who said she was behind in the rent for the $1,300-a-month, two-bedroom apartment she shares with two daughters in Washington Heights. Her monthly income of $1,800 is from child support, disability payments and food stamps.
“They say, ‘You’re on the waiting list, you’re on the waiting list,’ ” she said. “Sometimes I feel such anxiety because of the uncertainty.”
Applicants said they felt as if they were playing the lottery.
Kolaundria Gee, who lives in a shelter with her 3-year-old son while working full time at a day care center, said she checked on her application so often that she developed a rapport with an authority worker who answered her calls.
“He said to think positive,” Ms. Gee said. “Sometimes, we talked for up to two minutes.”
In May, she learned that the worker had retired.
“I cried,” Ms. Gee, 27, said. “With him, I felt a little hope.”
The most resourceful applicants turn to an ecosystem of helpers — legal aid lawyers, advocacy groups, borough president offices, City Council members — to try to move things along.
But advocates from several organizations said the most they could do was to get the authority to review an application to find out if any documents were missing, causing a holdup, or if the person forgot to include details that would mean a higher place on the list.
“They think I can get them an apartment faster,” said Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, the chairwoman of the subcommittee on public housing. “We tell them there’s no way.”
In a few cases, people have forged police and financial records to gain an edge, housing officials said.
But the officials maintained that their computerized system helps deter corruption.
“People can’t manipulate the list,” said Alan Pelikow, assistant director in the office of resident policy and administration. “It assures that people get a fair shake at housing.”
But any change in circumstance — losing a job, gaining a job, having a baby — can shift a priority, or affect eligibility for an available apartment of a certain size.
Hurricane Sandy showed how precarious a place in the line can be. To respond to the emergency, city officials temporarily froze the waiting list this year and set aside 470 apartments for evacuees who lost their homes.
When she had her eligibility interview in 2011, Ms. Mitchell was stunned to learn that because she had stopped working for health reasons between the date she applied for an apartment and the interview, she and her son were downgraded a notch — from homeless working family to just plain homeless — and lost an edge.
On her visit to the Housing Authority’s customer center in the Bronx last month, the woman on the other side of the counter looked at her computer and told Ms. Mitchell that her application had expired in April.
She asked how much time she had to reapply, to avoid losing her place on the list. Probably six months, the worker said. (In fact, the grace period is only 30 days, housing officials said.)
Later, Ms. Mitchell, who suffers from scoliosis, seemed deflated but no less persistent.
“You have to find out the hard way,” she said. “You really have to stay on top of it yourself or you lose it.”
Last this is a damn good example of why we need the Second Amendment,
which is our right to keep and bear arms. The politicians and government bureaucrats
can't be trusted to obey the Constitution and the "people" need to have some means
to force them to.
State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law
Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:26 pm | Updated: 2:16 pm, Tue Jul 23, 2013.
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 0 comments
PHOENIX — Legislators are free to ignore a voter mandate to boost education funding each year to account for inflation, an attorney for the state told the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Kathleen Sweeney, an assistant attorney general, conceded voters did approve the inflation adjustment in 2000, and she also did not dispute that the Arizona Constitution prohibits legislators from repealing or altering voter-approved laws.
But Sweeney, seeking to allow the Legislature to disregard the 2000 law, told the justices voters had no constitutional right to enact the funding mandate in the first place.
That brought a somewhat surprised reaction from Chief Justice Rebecca Berch. She pointed out it was the Legislature that put the inflation adjustment provision on the ballot in the first place.
"They got the voters to vote on their bad language,'' she said. “And now they're trying to disavow their bad language.''
Sweeney did not exactly contest the question of whether lawmakers essentially had pulled a fast one on voters, getting them to approve a law that had no legal standing.
"Perhaps, your honor,'' she replied to Berch.
And Sweeney gave essentially the same response to a query by Justice John Pelander, who asked if she was arguing that the 2000 vote was "a fruitless, useless act.''
The fight most immediately affects whether lawmakers are required to annually adjust education funding.
That 2000 ballot measure boosted the state's 5-percent sales tax by six-tenths of a cent. It also requires the Legislature to increase funding for schools by 2 percent or the change in the gross domestic price deflator, whichever is less.
Lawmakers did that until the 2010 when, facing a budget deficit, they reinterpreted what the law requires. The result is that, since then, schools have lost anywhere from $189 million to $240 million, depending on whose figures are used. Don Peters, representing several school districts, filed suit.
Legislators did add $82 million in inflation funding for the new fiscal year that began July 1 after the state Court of Appeals sided with challengers. But they are hoping the Supreme Court concludes that mandate is legally unenforceable.
The outcome of this fight has larger implications — and not only for future education funding. It also could set the precedent for what voters have the right to tell the Legislature to do.
Sweeney argued there are limits, despite the constitutional right of voters to approve their own laws and despite the Voter Protection Act that shields these laws from legislative tinkering.
She said the 2000 measure sets the formula for increasing state aid — and then tells the Legislature to find the money from somewhere. Sweeney argued that infringes on the constitutional right of lawmakers to decide funding priorities.
Justice Scott Bales pointed out the inflation formula is a statute. He said while it was enacted by voters, it should have the same legal status as a law approved by legislators themselves.
"Do you think the Legislature can simply ignore statutes providing that it shall do certain things?'' he asked.
"Yes,'' Sweeney responded.
Peters disagreed.
"The statute that requires inflation adjustments is the law,'' he told the justices. “The Legislature has to obey the law like all the rest of us.''
And Peters said the constitutional Voter Protection Act precludes the Legislature from altering that law without first asking voter permission.
"Therefore, it must do what the statute required unless the people change it,'' he said.
Pelander questioned whether there are limits on what voters can tell the Legislature to do. Peters responded that the Arizona Constitution gives voters broad powers to make their own laws as long as those measures do not "offend'' other state or federal constitutional provisions.
"So they can do pretty much anything they want to,'' Peters told the justices. “And that includes giving instructions to the Legislature.''
Peters acknowledged the Supreme Court has previously said a law approved by one Legislature cannot bind future lawmakers.
But he argued that, as far as voter-approved laws, all that changed in 1998 with enactment of the Voter Protection Act.
"That balance of power is different,'' Peters said.
The justices gave no indication when they will rule.
Peters acknowledged after Tuesday's hearing that he could win his legal argument and still have a problem.
The high court could rule that lawmakers cannot ignore the 2000 law. But the justices have consistently refused to actually order the Legislature to find the additional dollars to fully fund the formula.
That could result in a situation where schools get the higher per-student funding as the formula requires, at least until the cash appropriated by the Legislature runs out. But Peters said he doubts lawmakers are willing to endure the wrath of voters if schools need to shut their doors before the end of the school year.
Last this is a damn good example of why we need the Second Amendment,
which is our right to keep and bear arms. The politicians and government bureaucrats
can't be trusted to obey the Constitution and the "people" need to have some means
to force them to.
State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law
Posted: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 1:26 pm | Updated: 2:16 pm, Tue Jul 23, 2013.
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services | 0 comments
PHOENIX — Legislators are free to ignore a voter mandate to boost education funding each year to account for inflation, an attorney for the state told the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Kathleen Sweeney, an assistant attorney general, conceded voters did approve the inflation adjustment in 2000, and she also did not dispute that the Arizona Constitution prohibits legislators from repealing or altering voter-approved laws.
But Sweeney, seeking to allow the Legislature to disregard the 2000 law, told the justices voters had no constitutional right to enact the funding mandate in the first place.
That brought a somewhat surprised reaction from Chief Justice Rebecca Berch. She pointed out it was the Legislature that put the inflation adjustment provision on the ballot in the first place.
"They got the voters to vote on their bad language,'' she said. “And now they're trying to disavow their bad language.''
Sweeney did not exactly contest the question of whether lawmakers essentially had pulled a fast one on voters, getting them to approve a law that had no legal standing.
"Perhaps, your honor,'' she replied to Berch.
And Sweeney gave essentially the same response to a query by Justice John Pelander, who asked if she was arguing that the 2000 vote was "a fruitless, useless act.''
The fight most immediately affects whether lawmakers are required to annually adjust education funding.
That 2000 ballot measure boosted the state's 5-percent sales tax by six-tenths of a cent. It also requires the Legislature to increase funding for schools by 2 percent or the change in the gross domestic price deflator, whichever is less.
Lawmakers did that until the 2010 when, facing a budget deficit, they reinterpreted what the law requires. The result is that, since then, schools have lost anywhere from $189 million to $240 million, depending on whose figures are used. Don Peters, representing several school districts, filed suit.
Legislators did add $82 million in inflation funding for the new fiscal year that began July 1 after the state Court of Appeals sided with challengers. But they are hoping the Supreme Court concludes that mandate is legally unenforceable.
The outcome of this fight has larger implications — and not only for future education funding. It also could set the precedent for what voters have the right to tell the Legislature to do.
Sweeney argued there are limits, despite the constitutional right of voters to approve their own laws and despite the Voter Protection Act that shields these laws from legislative tinkering.
She said the 2000 measure sets the formula for increasing state aid — and then tells the Legislature to find the money from somewhere. Sweeney argued that infringes on the constitutional right of lawmakers to decide funding priorities.
Justice Scott Bales pointed out the inflation formula is a statute. He said while it was enacted by voters, it should have the same legal status as a law approved by legislators themselves.
"Do you think the Legislature can simply ignore statutes providing that it shall do certain things?'' he asked.
"Yes,'' Sweeney responded.
Peters disagreed.
"The statute that requires inflation adjustments is the law,'' he told the justices. “The Legislature has to obey the law like all the rest of us.''
And Peters said the constitutional Voter Protection Act precludes the Legislature from altering that law without first asking voter permission.
"Therefore, it must do what the statute required unless the people change it,'' he said.
Pelander questioned whether there are limits on what voters can tell the Legislature to do. Peters responded that the Arizona Constitution gives voters broad powers to make their own laws as long as those measures do not "offend'' other state or federal constitutional provisions.
"So they can do pretty much anything they want to,'' Peters told the justices. “And that includes giving instructions to the Legislature.''
Peters acknowledged the Supreme Court has previously said a law approved by one Legislature cannot bind future lawmakers.
But he argued that, as far as voter-approved laws, all that changed in 1998 with enactment of the Voter Protection Act.
"That balance of power is different,'' Peters said.
The justices gave no indication when they will rule.
Peters acknowledged after Tuesday's hearing that he could win his legal argument and still have a problem.
The high court could rule that lawmakers cannot ignore the 2000 law. But the justices have consistently refused to actually order the Legislature to find the additional dollars to fully fund the formula.
That could result in a situation where schools get the higher per-student funding as the formula requires, at least until the cash appropriated by the Legislature runs out. But Peters said he doubts lawmakers are willing to endure the wrath of voters if schools need to shut their doors before the end of the school year.
Personally I am against the death penalty, because mistakes have been made and innocent people have been executed.
But still I find it ridiculously silly that the FDA must approve drugs that are used to murder people as being safe????
The real question is now will anybody that helped execute Jeffrey Landrigan be punished for using an "unsafe" drug to murder him with????
I suspect this silliness is a good indication that government is more about providing high paying do nothing jobs for our government masters then serving the people.
Last but not least isn't this the same Federal government that says marijuana is an absolutely useless drug with absolutely not medical use? And that marijuana is a dangerous drug that is addictive and will kill you.
Court: FDA erred in allowing Arizona to import execution drugs
By Michael Kiefer The Republic | azcentral.com Tue Jul 23, 2013 5:20 PM
A U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has upheld a lower-court ruling that the Food and Drug Administration broke the law by allowing Arizona and two other states to illegally import drugs used to carry out executions by lethal injection.
In October 2010, days before Arizona inmate Jeffrey Landrigan was to be executed, The Arizona Republic revealed that the state corrections department had obtained some of the execution drugs from overseas.
The FDA insisted there was no legal mechanism to import the drug, a fast-acting barbiturate named sodium thiopental. The Arizona Department of Corrections denied it had obtained the drug illegally.
Landrigan was executed with the drug.
By December of that year, the FDA changed its story and claimed it would exercise “enforcement discretion” and not enforce laws prohibiting the drug’s import. Meanwhile, the British and Italian governments banned the export of thiopental for executions.
Freedom of Information Act requests by The Republic and others later revealed that the FDA officials and the White House were aware of and facilitating the imports.
But in June 2011, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Adminstration told the Arizona Department of Corrections that it could no longer use thiopental, one day before it was to execute murderer Donald Beaty. The execution was performed using the drug pentobarbital.
Then, in March 2012, reacting to a lawsuit filed on behalf of death-row prisoners in Arizona, California and Tennessee, a U.S. District Court Judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the FDA had violated the law by allowing those states to bypass regulations to import the unapproved drugs for executions.
The FDA appealed the ruling on the grounds that its ability to admit and reject drug shipments into the country is not subject to judicial review and that it indeed has enforcement discretion. Part of that discretion, it argued, was to deal with domestic shortages, as had occurred with thiopental, an older-generation drug used for anesthesia.
Because the FDA had not tested or analyzed the imported drug, and because there was no mechanism for its import, it was classified under law as an unbranded or unapproved new drug.
The three Arizona plaintiffs initially named in the federal lawsuit, Beaty, Eric King and Daniel Cook, have all been executed since the lawsuit was filed.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the lower-court decision, stating that the FDA has duties under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and that “The FDA acted in derogation of those duties by permitting the importation of thiopental, a concededly misbranded and unapproved new drug, and by declaring that it would not in the future sample and examine foreign shipments of the drug despite knowing they may have been prepared in an unregistered establishment.”
The Court of Appeals, however, vacated the lower-court ruling that the FDA collect all remaining quantities of the drug that had been allowed into the country.
By and large, thiopental has been replaced in clinical settings by the newer drug propofol. Arizona and most other states that carry out execution by lethal injection now use pentobarbital, but the European manufacturer of that drug has curtailed sales for executions, and the Arizona supply has reportedly passed its expiration date.
Key Homeland official facing ethics inquiry
By Alicia A. Caldwell Associated Press Tue Jul 23, 2013 10:31 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s choice to be the No. 2 official at the Homeland Security Department is under investigation for his role in helping a company run by a brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Associated Press has learned.
Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is being investigated for his role in helping the company secure an international investor visa for a Chinese executive, according to congressional officials briefed on the investigation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details of the investigation.
Mayorkas was named by Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office as a target in an investigation involving the foreign investor program run by USCIS, according to an e-mail sent to lawmakers late Monday.
In that e-mail, the IG’s office said, “At this point in our investigation, we do not have any findings of criminal misconduct.” The e-mail did not specify any criminal allegations it might be investigating.
White House press secretary Jay Carney referred questions to the inspector general’s office, which said that the probe is in its preliminary stage and that it doesn’t comment on the specifics of investigations.
The program, known as EB-5, allows foreigners to get visas if they invest $500,000 to $1 million in projects or businesses that create jobs for U.S. citizens. The amount of the investment required depends on the type of project. Investors who are approved for the program can become legal permanent residents after two years and can later be eligible to become citizens.
If Mayorkas were confirmed as Homeland Security’s deputy secretary, he probably would run the department until a permanent replacement was approved to take over for departing Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The e-mail to lawmakers said the primary complaint against Mayorkas was that he helped a financing company run by Anthony Rodham, a brother of Hillary Clinton, to win approval for an investor visa, even after the application was denied and an appeal was rejected.
Mayorkas, a former U.S. attorney in California, previously came under criticism for his involvement in the commutation by President Bill Clinton of the prison sentence of the son of a Democratic Party donor. Another of Hillary Clinton’s brothers, Hugh Rodham, had been hired by the donor to lobby for the commutation. Mayorkas told lawmakers during his 2009 confirmation hearing that “it was a mistake” to talk to the White House about the request.
Hillary Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of State on Feb. 1, is considered a possible contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
According to the Inspector General’s e-mail, the investigation of the investor visa program also includes allegations that other USCIS Office of General Counsel officials obstructed an audit of the visa program by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The e-mail did not name any specific official from the general counsel’s office.
The e-mail says investigators did not know whether Mayorkas was aware of the investigation. The FBI’s Washington Field Office was told about the investigation in June after it inquired about Mayorkas as part of the White House background investigation for his nomination as deputy DHS secretary.
The FBI in Washington has been concerned about the investor visa program and the projects funded by foreign sources since at least March, according to e-mails obtained by the AP.
The bureau wanted details of all of the limited liability companies that had invested in the EB-5 visa program. Of particular concern, the FBI official wrote, was Chinese investment in projects, including the building of an FBI facility.
“Let’s just say that we have a significant issue that my higher ups are really concerned about and this may be addressed way above my pay grade,” an official wrote in one e-mail. The FBI official’s name was redacted in that e-mail.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent the FBI a lengthy letter Tuesday asking for details of its review of the foreign investor visa program and Chinese investment in U.S. infrastructure projects.
Chinese investment in infrastructure projects has long been a concern of the U.S. government. In September, the Obama administration blocked a Chinese company from owning four wind farm projects in northern Oregon that were near a Navy base used to fly unmanned drones and electronic-warfare planes on training missions. And in October, the House Intelligence Committee warned that two leading Chinese technology firms, Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp., posed a major security threat to the U.S. Both firms have denied being influenced by the Chinese government.
The most routine users of the EB-5 program are Chinese investors. According to an undated, unclassified State Department report about the program obtained by the AP, the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, processed more investor visas in the 2011 fiscal year than any other consulate or embassy. The document says “applicants are usually coached and prepped for their interviews, making it difficult to take at face value applicants’ claims” about where their money comes from and whether they hold membership in the Chinese Communist Party. Party membership would make an applicant ineligible for the investor visa.
Anthony Rodham is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Funds Management LLC in McLean, Va. The firm is one of hundreds of “Regional Centers” that pool investments from foreign nationals looking to invest in U.S. businesses or industries as part of the foreign investor visa program.
There was no immediate response to an e-mail sent to Gulf Coast requesting comment.
It is unclear from the IG’s e-mail why the investor visa application was denied. Visa requests can be denied for a number of reasons, including a circumstance where an applicant has a criminal background or is considered a threat to national security or public safety.
How a secretive panel uses data that distorts doctors’ pay
By Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating, Published: July 20 E-mail the writers
When Harinath Sheela was busiest at his gastroenterology clinic, it seemed he could bend the limits of time.
Twelve colonoscopies and four other procedures was a typical day for him, according to Florida records for 2012. If the American Medical Association’s assumptions about procedure times are correct, that much work would take about 26 hours. Sheela’s typical day was nine or 10.
“I have experience,” the Yale-trained, Orlando-based doctor said. “I’m not that slow; I’m not fast. I’m thorough.”
This seemingly miraculous proficiency, which yields good pay for doctors who perform colonoscopies, reveals one of the fundamental flaws in the pricing of U.S. health care, a Washington Post investigation has found.
Unknown to most, a single committee of the AMA, the chief lobbying group for physicians, meets confidentially every year to come up with values for most of the services a doctor performs.
Those values are required under federal law to be based on the time and intensity of the procedures. The values, in turn, determine what Medicare and most private insurers pay doctors.
But the AMA’s estimates of the time involved in many procedures are exaggerated, sometimes by as much as 100 percent, according to an analysis of doctors’ time, as well as interviews and reviews of medical journals.
If the time estimates are to be believed, some doctors would have to be averaging more than 24 hours a day to perform all of the procedures that they are reporting. This volume of work does not mean these doctors are doing anything wrong. They are just getting paid at the rates set by the government, under the guidance of the AMA.
In fact, in comparison with some doctors, Sheela’s pace is moderate.
Take, for example, those colonoscopies.
In justifying the value it assigns to a colonoscopy, the AMA estimates that the basic procedure takes 75 minutes of a physician’s time, including work performed before, during and after the scoping.
But in reality, the total time the physician spends with each patient is about half the AMA’s estimate — roughly 30 minutes, according to medical journals, interviews and doctors’ records.
Indeed, the standard appointment slot is half an hour.
To more broadly examine the validity of the AMA valuations, The Post conducted interviews, reviewed academic research and conducted two numerical analyses: one that tracked how the AMA valuations changed over 10 years and another that counted how many procedures physicians were conducting on a typical day.
It turns out that the nation’s system for estimating the value of a doctor’s services, a critical piece of U.S. health-care economics, is fraught with inaccuracies that appear to be inflating the value of many procedures:
●To determine how long a procedure takes, the AMA relies on surveys of doctors conducted by the associations representing specialists and primary care physicians. The doctors who fill out the surveys are informed that the reason for the survey is to set pay. Increasingly, the survey estimates have been found so improbable that the AMA has had to significantly lower them, according to federal documents.
●The AMA committee, in conjunction with Medicare, has been seven times as likely to raise estimates of work value than to lower them, according to a Post analysis of federal records for 5,700 procedures. This happened despite productivity and technology advances that should have cut the time required.
●If AMA estimates of time are correct, hundreds of doctors are working improbable hours, according to an analysis of records from surgery centers in Florida and Pennsylvania. In some specialties, more than one in five doctors would have to have been working more than 12 hours on average on a single day — much longer than the 10 hours or so a typical surgery center is open.
Florida records show 78 doctors — gastroenterologists, ophthalmologists, orthopedic surgeons and others — who performed at least 24 hours worth of procedures on an average workday.
Some former Medicare chiefs say the problem arises from giving the AMA and specialty societies too much influence over physician pay. Hospital fees are determined separately.
“What started as an advisory group has taken on a life of its own,” said Tom Scully, who was Medicare chief during the George W. Bush administration and is now a partner in a private equity firm that invests in health care. “The idea that $100 billion in federal spending is based on fixed prices that go through an industry trade association in a process that is not open to the public is pretty wild.”
He said that, every now and again, former Medicare chiefs — Republicans and Democrats — gather for a lunch and that, when they do, they agree that the process is, at best, unseemly.
“The concept of having the AMA run the process of fixing prices for Medicare was crazy from the beginning,” Scully said. “It was a fundamental mistake.”
In response, the chair of the AMA committee that sets the values, Barbara Levy, a physician, acknowledged that “all of the times are inflated by some factor” — though not by the same amount.
But she defended the accuracy of the values assigned to procedures, saying that the committee is careful to make sure that the relative values of the procedures are accurate — that is, procedures involving more work are assigned larger values than those that involve less. It is up to Congress and private insurers then to assign prices based on those values.
“None of us believe the numbers are fine-tuned,” Levy said. “We do believe we get them right with respect to each other.”
Moreover, the committee has reduced the valuations of more than 400 procedures in recent years to address such concerns, AMA officials said.
Over that time, Medicare officials have increasingly looked askance at the AMA estimates.
But even though the AMA figures shape billions in federal Medicare spending and billions more in spending from private insurers, the government is ill-positioned to judge their accuracy.
For one thing, the government doesn’t appear to have the manpower. The government has about six to eight people reviewing the estimates provided by the AMA, government officials said, but none of them do it full time.
By contrast, hundreds of people from the AMA and specialty societies contribute to the AMA effort. The association “conservatively” has estimated the costs of developing the values at about $7 million in time and expense annually. The AMA and the medical societies, not the government, develop the raw data upon which the analysis is based.
Over the past decade, Medicare’s payments to doctors have risen quickly. Medicare spending on physician fees per patient grew 58 percent between 2001 and 2011, mostly because doctors increased the number of procedures performed but also because the price of those procedures rose, according to MedPAC, an independent federal agency that advises Congress about Medicare.
Members of the public may attend committee meetings if they get the approval of the chairman, but even when they’re invited, attendees must sign a confidentiality agreement. That is meant to prevent interim decisions from spurring inappropriate market speculation and industry confusion, AMA officials said.
Other groups that make recommendations to the government are governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires that meetings be public and that documents be publicly available. But those requirements do not apply to the AMA committee, officials said, because the AMA is not formally considered an advisory committee.
Even so, the committee’s influence on federal spending over time has been expansive: In some years, Medicare officials have accepted the AMA numbers at rates as high as 95 percent.
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The fundamental question is difficult, even philosophically: What should a doctor make?
The forces that normally determine prices — haggling between buyers and sellers — often don’t apply in health care. Prices are hard to come by; insurers do most of the buying; sick patients are unlikely to shop around much.
At its inception, the Medicare system paid doctors what was described as “usual, customary and reasonable” charges. But that vague standard was soon blamed for a rapid escalation in physician fees.
In the late 1980s and early ’90s, the United States called on a group at Harvard University to develop a more deliberate system for paying doctors.
What they came up with, basically, is the current point system. Every procedure is assigned a number of points — called “relative value units” — based on the work involved, the staff and supplies, and a smaller portion for malpractice insurance.
Every year, Congress decides how much to pay for each point — this year, for example, the government initially assigned $34.02 per point, though prices vary somewhat with location and other factors.
This point system is critical in U.S. health-care economics because it doesn’t just rule Medicare payments. Roughly four out of five insurance companies use the point system for the basis of their own physician fees, according to the AMA. The private insurers typically pay somewhat more per point than does Medicare.
Once the system developed by the Harvard researchers was initiated, however, the Medicare system faced a critical problem: As medicine evolved, the point system had to be updated. Who could do that?
The AMA offered to do the work for free.
Today, the 31-member AMA committee that makes the update recommendations to Medicare — it is known as the Relative Value Update Committee, or RUC — consists of 25 members appointed by medical societies and six others. The chair is appointed by the AMA.
To inform its decisions, the committee relies on surveys submitted by the relevant professional societies. For example, in setting the value for a colonoscopy, the committee has turned to the American Gastroenterological Association and a similar group for information.
Typically, the surveys ask doctors about the time and intensity of the procedure under study.
The survey “is important to you and other physicians,” the standard form tells doctors, “because these values determine the rate at which Medicare and other payers reimburse.”
Sometimes the doctors within a specialty will overestimate the value of their work, Levy said. When that happens, the committee has increasingly decided to significantly lower their estimates of the work involved.
“Suppose I am a cardiologist, and I think I am the most important thing on Earth,” Levy said.
The RUC, she said, may have to say, “We know you’re really important but” you’ve overestimated the work involved on the survey.
“The 31 voting people around that table can be really harsh,” Levy said. “Someone can come to us with data that looks skewed, and we tell them, ‘It doesn’t pass the smell test.’ ”
But critics of the AMA process, including former Medicare chiefs and the Harvard researchers who created the system, say that biased surveys and other conflicts of interest make the results unreliable.
In developing the point system, the Harvard researchers and the government made available their raw data and statistical methods and held public meetings; they also limited the role of the AMA and specialist societies, participants in that process said.
The AMA process is not so open.
The current set of values “seems to be distorted,” said William Hsiao, an economist at the Harvard School of Public Health who helped develop the point system. “The AMA fought very hard to take over this updating process. I said this had to be done by an impartial group of people. This is highly political.”
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Federal law makes the importance of time explicit: The work points assigned to a procedure will reflect the “physician time and intensity in furnishing the service” and includes the physician’s time before, during and after a procedure. Every year, the Medicare system publishes its time estimates for every service, which are based on AMA surveys.
“Improving the accuracy of procedure time assumptions used in physician fee schedule ratesetting continues to be a high priority,” agency officials wrote last year. “Procedure time is a critical measure.”
To examine the plausibility of the estimated times, The Post analyzed the records for doctors who work in outpatient surgery clinics in Florida.
The doctors included ophthalmologists, hand surgeons, orthopedic surgeons and gastroenterologists.
The Post chose the outpatient surgery clinics for review because their surgery records for Medicare and private payers were publicly available. The calculations of physician time used by The Post are conservative because they do not include the procedures that the doctors performed at hospitals, where many such doctors also see patients. The counts also exclude secondary procedures performed on a given patient, as well as follow-up visits.
Even so, for this group of doctors, the time estimates made by Medicare and the AMA appear significantly exaggerated.
If the AMA time estimates are correct, then 41 percent of gastroenterologists, 23 percent of ophthalmologists and 17 percent of orthopedic surgeons were typically performing 12 hours or more of procedures in a day, which is longer than the typical outpatient surgery center is open, The Post found in the Florida data.
Additionally, if the AMA estimates are correct, more than 3 percent of ophthalmologists and internists and more than 2 percent of orthopedic surgeons are squeezing more than 24 hours of procedures into a single day.
Florida is not unique. In a similar review of nine endoscopy clinics in Pennsylvania, The Post found 25 of 59 doctors at nine Pennsylvania gastroenterology clinics performed an average 12 hours or more of procedure time at least one day per week, with two totaling over 24 hours, rates similar to the Florida pattern.
Ophthalmologist David Shoemaker is among the busiest doctors in Florida, performing 3,594 cataract surgeries and similar procedures last year. His workload of 30 to 40 surgeries per day on Mondays and Tuesdays amounts to 30-plus-hour workdays if AMA time estimates are correct. Yet he works about 101 / 2 hours those days.
Shoemaker’s seven locations of Centers for Sight have an all-in-one integration with testing, anesthesiology, preparation, surgery and post-operative care, said James Dawes, chief administration officer.
“We shun the word ‘assembly line,’ ” Dawes said. “We’re in the patient care business, and every patient is unique. Every eye is unique. We’ve worked hard to make sure it doesn’t feel like an assembly line.”
The finding that doctors are working much more quickly than AMA assumes is supported by research by MedPAC that shows that the actual times of surgery were quite a bit less than the AMA-Medicare estimates.
Using operating room logs, researchers calculated the average times of 60 key surgeries and invasive diagnostic procedures. For all but two of the procedures, the AMA estimates were longer. For example, while an abdominal hysterectomy took 138 minutes on average, the AMA said it takes nearly twice that long.
“Surgical times for other related services are likely to be overstated as well,” researchers Nancy McCall, Jerry Cromwell and Peter Braun concluded. Braun helped create the point system with Harvard’s Hsiao.
The AMA’s Levy said the committee has developed other ways to estimate values that don’t depend on time.
The critics don’t “get the concept of where the [committee] is in 2013,” Levy said. “We’ve evolved a bunch of processes that make them better than they were when Harvard did it.”
Whatever its methods, however, the AMA panel has been raising the work points for procedures.
Between 2003 and 2013, the AMA and Medicare have increased the work values for 68 percent of the 5,700 codes analyzed by The Post, while decreasing them for only 10 percent.
While advances in technology and skill should have reduced the amount of work required, the average work value for a code rose 7 percent over that decade, largely because officials raised the value of doctors’ visits. The rise came in addition to allowances for inflation and other economic factors.
When discussing the rise in the nation’s bills for physicians, AMA officials note that they only assign points to procedures — so the Medicare bill depends upon how much the federal government decides to spend for each point.
Officials determine that spending by several complex formulas laid out in federal rules. One of them forces Medicare to lower how much it pays per point when work values rise significantly. Every year since 2003, however, the other formulas have been overridden by Congress, which has adjusted the payments independently.
That means it’s difficult to definitively link the nation’s rising Medicare bill to the increasing work values set by the AMA. However, critics say the AMA’s time exaggerations undoubtedly help inflate the prices of many procedures.
Medicare officials have been trying to develop ways to more accurately quantify doctor work and are conducting two studies to refine its measurement.
The Medicare bureaucracy “takes into account a number of different factors and sources of information, including the RUC recommendations, when setting reimbursement rates for physicians,” said agency spokeswoman Tami S. Holzman. The acceptance rate of the AMA’s values has fallen in recent years from 90 percent to about 70 percent.
“We want to ensure that relative payment rates for physicians’ services are appropriate and fair,” she said.
****
Most people don’t time their own colonoscopies.
But Robert Berenson, a physician, a former Medicare official and now a fellow at the Urban Institute, has been a longtime skeptic of the time measurements.
When he had his own, Berenson checked his watch.
The actual procedure time — “scope in to scope out” — was exactly half of what Medicare estimates.
“It reminds me of the Marx Brothers line: ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?’ ” Berenson said.
An estimated 15 million colonoscopies are performed annually in the United States, mainly to detect and prevent cancer in people older than 50. In the procedure, a tube with a video camera at the tip is inserted through the anus into the colon. Pictures from the inside appear on a screen.
In calculating how much should be paid for a procedure, the AMA and Medicare make some very specific time estimates.
For a colonoscopy, the total physician time is 75 minutes. This includes 25 minutes of evaluating and positioning the patient; five minutes for the physician to dress, scrub and wait; as well as 15 minutes afterward. The procedure itself is timed at 30 minutes.
Berenson counted 15 minutes in his own procedure.
Likewise, a New England Journal of Medicine article reported that in a study of 2,000 different colonoscopies, the average duration of the basic screening procedure was 13.5 minutes — not the 30 minutes estimated by the AMA. Similarly, it found that a colonoscopy with polyp removal took 18 minutes — as opposed to the 43 minutes estimated by the AMA.
The Post asked gastroenterologists if the procedure takes the 75 minutes estimated by the AMA.
“Of my time?” said Frederick Ruthardt, a gastroenterologists in Uniontown, Pa., shaking his head. He performed hundreds of them in 2011, according to state records. “That sounds pretty high.”
It is possible that in 1992, critics allow, when the price list was first developed, a colonoscopy actually took something close to 75 minutes. But in the decades since, the technology has undergone a revolution.
The tubular instruments are now far easier to move through the colon — the physician can stiffen or weaken the probe as necessary.
Meanwhile, digital technology has vastly improved the doctor’s view. In the early 1990s, doctors had to hunch over an eyepiece similar to that of a microscope for a look; now the images are displayed on a large screen in high-definition video.
“The evolution has saved labor and improved accuracy,” said David Barlow, who has worked on developing the devices for decades and is now a vice president at Olympus America.
Indeed, some doctors said it has cut the time and discomfort in half.
Yet despite these advances, the AMA and Medicare say the amount of work estimated in a colonoscopy essentially hasn’t budged. The work involved was 3.7 “relative value units” or points in the early 1990s; after more than two decades of labor-saving advances, it is still worth 3.7 points. The typical Medicare price including overhead is about $220.
The American Gastroenterology Association, a specialty group that advocates on behalf of the doctors who perform colonoscopies, said the number is justified despite the improvement in technology.
“The paradox is that we are spending more time than what you might assume,” said Joel V. Brill, a gastroenterologist who served as a liaison between the association and the RUC. “Things that you might not have been able to see through the scope, you can see now.”
Levy said the RUC is slated to review the code again in the coming year.
Two problems arise when some procedures are overvalued, according to the critics.
First, it means some patients and insurers are paying too much.
Second, doctors may be more likely to perform those procedures than they otherwise would be.
Indeed, while health experts worry that many people who should be getting colonoscopies are not, it appears that some patients are getting too many.
Average-risk patients who have a colonoscopy that shows no signs of trouble are not supposed to receive another for 10 years, according to Medicare guidelines.
But according to researchers at the University of Texas Medical School, about 46 percent of patients were getting another colonoscopy within seven years.
The finding, based on a review of 24,000 patient records and reported last year in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said that such colonoscopies were more likely to be performed by doctors rated as “high volume” providers.
One of the study’s authors, James S. Goodwin, a geriatrician at the University of Texas in Galveston, said doctors make decisions based on a large number of factors. But it’s foolish, he said, to ignore the financial angles.
“Economic incentives in medicine are like the force of gravity,” Goodwin said. “To pretend they don’t exist is crazy. They’re there.”
So how much does a physician make on a basic colonoscopy?
A good place to look is Pennsylvania, where the state tracks medical procedures and the profits of the doctor-owned surgery centers.
Even in an otherwise down-at-the-heels former coal town, the procedure can be big business.
At Schuylkill Endoscopy, located in a tidy green building behind the McDonald’s in Pottsville, Pa., three doctors performed thousands of colonoscopies in 2011, taking in more than $700,000, along with hundreds of thousands more for other similar procedures. On top of those physician fees, the endoscopy clinic, which is owned by two of the physicians and a management company, took in $1.5 million in operating profits in 2011, according to state records.
“I am very comfortable — very grateful,” said one of the owner-doctors, Amrit Narula, who lives in a modern-style, 5,000-square-foot house atop a ridge here.
Like other doctors interviewed for the story, Narula noted that he has no role in setting the Medicare value. He does not lobby Medicare and has never filled out one of the RUC surveys. He agreed that the time estimates in his field sound exaggerated.
By itself, the professional fee for a colonoscopy makes him about $260 an hour after his expenses. (That’s a figure that’s based on the clinics’ mix of patients and the Medicare assumptions about overhead.)
Is that too much? In the past, the loudest criticism of the point system has come from primary care physicians who think their work has been undervalued.
The median salary for a gastroenterologist was $481,000 in 2011, according to data from the Medical Group Management Association. By contrast, the median salary for a pediatrician was $204,000 and that of a general internal medicine doctor was $216,000. Those kinds of disparities are leading medical students away from primary care, critics say.
“I didn’t know they got that many RVUs [points] for a colonoscopy — that’s kind of amazing,” said Cynthia Lubinsky, a family practitioner in the next county over from Narula. “Do I believe that the payment system is fair? I would have to say no.”
Even if the method that the government uses for setting values is haphazard, however, the question of what doctors ought to be earning is unanswered.
It is an occupation, Narula said, that consumes one’s life.
It has required more than a decade of training: college, medical school, an internship and a fellowship.
He visits patients every day after his work at the surgery center. He does rounds there every third weekend. He is on call every third night.
When the subject turns to fair compensation, he draws comparisons to other lines of work.
“What is the right price?” Narula asked. “Who can tell? A lawyer can charge $400 an hour. My accountant charges me for 15 minutes of time even if he just opens an e-mail from me. And what about the bankers? . . . Ultimately, this is for society to decide.”
No charges against state Arizona Sen. Rick Murphy in sex inquiry
By Mary K. Reinhart The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 24, 2013 11:39 AM
Peoria police won’t recommend charges against state Sen. Rick Murphy in connection with allegations he sexually abused two boys in his care.
In a police report released today, investigators deemed the case “inactive” because one of the teens has recanted, there were no witnesses to any of the alleged incidents and Murphy has refused to be interviewed.
Police and state Child Protective Services launched a joint investigation on June 22, after an older teen reported repeated incidents of alleged abuse by Murphy going back at least six years. The teen also self-reported his own inappropriate sexual contact with another child in the home, according to the police report.
According to the report, the adopted son who made the most recent allegations later “‘retracted’ his statements and is choosing not to speak about either incident.”
Murphy was not interviewed as part of the investigation. The reports quotes his attorney, Craig Mehrens: “On my advice he (Murphy) will respectfully decline an interview at this time. [Senator Murphy is taking the 5th, which is what ANY defense lawyer will tell you to do] In any event all he could tell you is that he has never abused anyone, let alone a child in his care.”
CPS removed the two young foster children living at the Peoria home of Murphy, 41, and his wife, Penny, 48. The couple’s four adopted daughters also were briefly removed June 22, interviewed by forensic interviewers, and returned to the Murphy home. The 18-year-old who made the allegations against Murphy moved out, police said.
According to the police report, CPS told investigators that they removed Murphy’s adopted children from the home last week and a dependency hearing in juvenile court was scheduled this week.
The allegations prompted police to reopen an inactive 2011 case involving Murphy and another boy, a foster child who was 13 years old at the time. According to a Peoria police report, the teen accused Murphy of fondling him underneath his clothing every other day for more than a month and offering to buy him a bicycle if he kept quiet.
The foster child, who now lives at a group home, was reinterviewed by police on July 10 and stood by his allegations.
Taxation Vexation: Phoenix-area home values went down; property taxes stayed up
By Ronald J. Hansen and Catherine Reagor The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:55 AM
During the epic housing crash, property values fell by almost 50 percent in Maricopa County. Did property taxes fall a similar amount? Not by a long shot.
As homeowners clung to the idea that lower tax bills would be one small consolation of the bust, schools and cities and fire districts and hundreds of other government entities stared down their own financial crises in the five years from 2008 to 2012.
With property valuations in general dropping by double-digit percentages each year, equally less taxpayer money would be collected. But demands for education, city services and fire protection for essentially the same number of residents weren’t abating.
School boards, city councils and other government entities, scrambling to avoid the full effects of the property-value crash, wielded their power to raise tax rates to collect more money.
The rising tax rates created a vexing disconnect between values and taxes for all property owners, commercial and residential.
For homeowners, the frustration was felt with every payment of every tax bill, even though Maricopa County easily had the lowest residential property taxes among the nation’s 20 most populous counties in a national Tax Foundation survey.
Every year, many property owners expected to receive the bill that would drop in lockstep with their falling property value.
For most people, that bill never came. County residential-property values declined, on average, three times faster than tax bills between 2008 and 2012, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of county data.
Among 970,000 residential properties that were on the tax rolls in those five years, overall property taxes declined 16 percent on average, according to The Republic’s analysis of county tax and property records. Property values plummeted 49 percent over the same period.
This trend generally applied to most houses in the county. But another factor plays into each homeowner’s tax bill: the region’s decentralized tax system, created in the 1980s to allow each taxing body to manage its own costs and to make growing areas essentially pay for their own infrastructure.
Individual tax bills varied wildly — even within adjacent neighborhoods — lending a maddeningly random quality to the system. With a patchwork of school districts, municipalities and more than 1,000 special taxing districts across the county, even houses with identical values could have tax bills that vary by more than 300 percent, according to The Republic’s analysis.
For example, owners of a house assessed at $150,000 in Cave Creek owed $1,005 in taxes in 2012; owners of a house in Laveen with the same assessed value owed $2,361. Owners of a Scottsdale house assessed at $300,000 owed $1,831 in taxes; owners of a Glendale house with the same assessed value owed $4,504.
“During the past few years, many metro Phoenix homeowners have been opening their property-tax bills and thinking, ‘What the hell?’” said Mark Stapp, executive director of Real Estate Development at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. “Their home’s value has dropped. But their taxes haven’t because local governments have to raise money, even when home prices are down.”
For nearly 150,000 homeowners, tax bills were higher in 2012 than they were in 2008. More than 7,000 homeowners saw their bill rise every year in that span, according to The Republic’s analysis of county records. At the same time, small pockets of homeowners saw their bills drop almost in step with the decline in their valuations. Cave Creek homeowners had among the lowest tax burdens.
Because of higher tax rates, homeowners saw their bills rise in Phoenix’s posh Biltmore area, in swaths of southeast Mesa, in the area surrounding Arizona State University in Tempe, in Ahwatukee Foothills’ newer neighborhoods, in new communities in Surprise and in golf-course communities in north Scottsdale.
Homeowners in lower-income areas often felt the sting of higher school tax rates as values fell and perennially cash-strapped districts raised their assessments. By the end of the recession, residents of the relatively low-income Roosevelt Elementary School District in south Phoenix paid one of the higher school tax rates in the Valley.
Kevin McCarthy, president of the Arizona Tax Research Association, said widespread apathy about tax policy, from city budgets to school bonding issues, has helped create a system in which few people connect their voting decisions to their pocketbook.
“Your property taxes aren’t simply based on the value of your property. They’re based on the budgets of the many jurisdictions that tax your property, and they’re also based on voter activity,” said McCarthy, a lobbyist for commercial-property owners and an expert on the state’s property-tax system.
Property-tax bills are composed of two dozen different categories, some of which can include multiple taxing entities levying taxes annually.
School taxes for elementary, secondary and community colleges make up more than two-thirds of an average property owner’s tax bill, according to Maricopa County officials.
In many — but hardly all — cases, school taxes are the main reason for higher-than-expected bills as districts raised rates to counter the drop in property values. And voters in many districts added to their school taxes by approving overrides — measures that raised extra cash for classroom operations — and construction bonds.
For other homeowners, special taxing districts can be the reason behind their higher-than-expected taxes. Homeowners, often on the region’s fringes, live in newer communities where the developer established special districts to pay for roads, fire protection, water, lights and other services. Homeowners in long-established areas may be part of irrigation or improvement districts they may barely be aware of. Taxes from those districts boost homeowners’ property bills, creating tax gaps between them and others nearby who aren’t in those districts.
Unlike city boundaries or neighborhood signs that help visualize communities for the public, there are no obvious markers for taxing districts. One neighborhood may have multiple tax overrides and bonds to pay for each year, while homeowners less than a mile away belong to separate school districts and pay different special taxes.
It’s rarely the type of detail most prospective buyers check before closing on a home.
While some frustrated homeowners may view the system as a conspiracy to suck more money from their pockets, it may be more fairly viewed as the bill for a la carte government. If roads or lighting or school-spending increases were desired, those in the area, not the broader population, were saddled with the tax expense.
Every year, the county treasurer sends out bills based on tax rates set every summer by every taxing district. Few people challenge the system. Perhaps one reason for that: Compared with California or New Jersey or Connecticut, taxes here are relatively low.
The Tax Foundation, a Washington-based nonpartisan tax-research organization, analyzed nationwide Census Bureau data on property taxes between 2005 and 2009.
Maricopa County’s median property tax in that span was $1,346, slightly less than Pima County in Arizona and 849th highest in the nation. In property taxes as a percentage of household income, the county ranked 1,351 out of about 2,900 counties examined by the Tax Foundation; in property taxes as a percentage of the median home value, it ranked 2,140.
In Scottsdale: Retiree feels bite of system’s disparity
Retiree Jim Stafford, a Scottsdale homeowner on a fixed income, says his taxes increased 22 percent last year for a variety of reasons, including higher city, county and school levies.
“While I fully appreciate and value county services, it would appear a more realistic budget model might be in order for county government to address wild increases year over year,” Stafford said. “My home continues to drop in value, which increases the pain.”
The beginning: An effort to deal with growth.
The simple math of property taxes, and the system created to manage growth, are two keys to understanding tax trends in Maricopa County.
Two numbers are multiplied to create the tax bill: a house’s assessed value, and the tax rate for each of the many taxing districts in which a house is located. Tax rates, not the property’s assessed value, are by far the most important figures in determining final bills.
Across the country, property-tax systems vary. In a few states, including California and South Carolina, property taxes are set by the state. In others, such as Arizona, Georgia and Texas, property taxes are set by county. Maricopa County’s current decentralized property-tax system was created in the 1980s to modernize education funding and cope with the state’s rapid population growth.
Property-tax bills can include two dozen different categories of taxing districts, from schools to water to community facilities districts to specialized categories such as lighting and irrigation. A typical homeowner’s bill has more than a dozen taxing entities levying taxes annually.
That localization means costs often are funneled directly to those who are using the services instead of spreading them citywide, countywide or statewide. The impact of education taxes, and taxes tied to development, can create profound disparities between tax bills.
Built into the decentralized system is the ability to adjust tax rates as needed to provide enough cash for these services regardless of property valuations, McCarthy said. In the boom years of the past decade, tax rates often were lowered to reflect the growing base of property owners and the rising value of their houses.
In Madison district: School taxes a burden
The valuation on Tom Rich’s North-Central Phoenix home has dropped 29 percent since 2008. But with eight different school taxes, overrides and bonds, his taxes had jumped 22 percent by 2012, adding $1,037 to his bill.
“This is price gouging. A monopoly by our local governments, and I have no choice (but) to pay,” said Rich, who paid $5,700 in property taxes last year, about $4,300, or 75 percent of it, for schools. He lives in the Madison Elementary School District. Almost $1,900 of his taxes went to Madison, and almost $2,000 went to Phoenix Union High School District taxes, bonds and overrides. The balance of his school taxes went to the Maricopa County Community College District.
He doesn’t have children but said he doesn’t mind paying school taxes.
“I just question all the overrides and bond interest,” Rich said. “I could vote no on the overrides, but they would still go through. It’s become ludicrous.”
It could be worse. Across the street, the tax bill for Rich’s neighbor jumped 53 percent, or $1,580, in the five-year period.
Jay Mann, a spokesman for the Madison district, said its budgets have fallen from $6,800 per pupil in 2007-08 to $6,090 in 2011-12, in part because state funding — another casualty of the recession — was scaled back. The district, he said, has tried to preserve a quality education for its diverse student needs, whether that involved assisting low-income families or high-tech job training for future workers.
“For us, it’s largely been preservation of what we were doing,” Mann said. That task has been difficult, he said, with higher energy costs and reduced state funds for capital needs.
The cost of education: In many school districts, the combined tax rates have gone up nearly every year since the recession began.
And education, by far, accounts for the largest chunk of property-tax bills. Between 2008 and 2012, primary taxes earmarked for elementary, high school and community college accounted for 48 percent of tax bills, according to state treasurer records.
Add in voter-approved bonding issues and overrides that allow specific school districts to boost per-pupil funding, and education costs were responsible for, on average, 73 percent of a property-tax bill in 2012, according to The Republic’s analysis. In 2012, some voters reached their limits. Nearly half the bond and override measures in 28 districts failed in November.
School budgets are tied more to enrollment than real estate. Each district’s budget is a mix of federal, state and local tax dollars. What the state and Washington don’t cover comes from local homeowners.
Tax rates for operations in districts such as Creighton and Kyrene Elementary and Mesa Unified went up three successive years beginning in 2010. Tax rates for bonds and overrides went up four years in a row in districts such as Madison and Roosevelt Elementary and Dysart Unified.
“With school bonds and overrides, there’s no mechanism that those taxes go down when the values go down,” said McCarthy. “It matters little if bonded debt was based on an overly optimistic view of taxpayer growth because bonds that have been sold need to be paid back.”
Dysart’s school tax rates, including bonds and overrides, have climbed almost 33 percent since 2008.
“We were stunned with a 16 percent increase in our taxes during 2012,” said Surprise homeowner Brad Whitman. “The increase came in spite of a drastically reduced assessed value on our home. Many of us are just paying too much to schools.”
Whitman’s house’s value dropped from $205,000 in 2010 to $174,000 in 2012.
About $1,400 of his $1,990 tax bill went to the Dysart school district. Whitman also owed nearly $225 to three special tax districts.
In north-central Phoenix: Irrigation taxes
Raymond Santoyas, 85, who lives on Northern Avenue in north-central Phoenix, paid more than $1,000 in special-district taxes last year.
Across the street, his neighbor paid $7.
The disparity is due to the boundary of the Berridge Ridge irrigation district. Santoyas is in it; his neighbor isn’t.
“It doesn’t make sense. My property bill keeps going up, but my values aren’t,” Santoyas said. “I am mad, but what can I do about it?”
Santoyas is allotted about 2 hours and 15 minutes to open the water valve and flood his property each year. His home is much smaller than his neighbor’s, but his yard is bigger.
“I have about one-sixth of an acre,” he said. “I don’t understand the irrigation tax because I pay a water bill.”
The irrigation district, set up to flood yards a few times a year, is separate from what he pays for city of Phoenix water.
Thousands of special districts: While education usually tops the property-tax expenses, special districts can double the final bill for some homeowners.
Countywide, there are more than 1,000 of these districts, which collect taxes for services confined to the areas that need them. The services range from fire protection to street lighting to water services. Districts are created on a case-by-case basis by residents or a real-estate developer and essentially act as financing mechanisms for residents to pay taxes for a range of services in their own geographic area.
Once authorized, these entities are inconsistently regulated. Some of the district’s governing boards file elaborate, audited annual reports; others file single-page, handwritten summaries of their activities. There is no indication anyone in local, county or state government routinely reviews these documents.
“Most developers come in and create special districts, sell out the communities and then give the debt to the city to bond. No one really regulates special districts,” said Charles Hoskins, Maricopa County treasurer. “A homeowner’s first step to checking out why they are being billed by a special district is to call that district.”
If special-district activities generally go unnoticed, their impact on property-tax bills is not.
Consider the example of two homeowners two houses apart in the Agua Fria Ranch subdivision of Youngtown.
In 2004, nearly identical-sized homes were built on identical-sized lots.
In 2012, one of the houses was assessed at $80,200. The other was assessed at $80,600. Despite the similarities, one property’s tax bill was $1,523 and the other’s was $1,923.
The main reason for the disparity is a special district called the Central Arizona Groundwater Replenishment District. One of the homes was taxed $89 for the year from that district. The other was taxed $355.
Most other houses nearly the same size, built the same year and on the same block — with swimming pools — had bills below $100 from the special district.
The owners of the house with the high water bill, who bought it in December, declined to comment on the bill.
Central Arizona Groundwater collects money from homeowners to buy water and recharge groundwater and taxes homeowners based on usage. More than 1,000 subdivisions in the southwest and southeast Valley are part of this special district, which was created in the mid-1990s. The district is currently trying to raise its rates 4 percent.
How to read your property tax bill (p. 1)
Confused about how to interpret your property tax bill? Click the above for a quick primer.
In the southeast Valley: Costly fire service
Real-estate developer and investor Michael Pollack is savvy to the Arizona property-tax system. He has successfully appealed valuations on several of his neighborhood shopping centers.
“One of the concerns I have is that property taxes went up when values went down,” he said. “Now, what’s going to happen as property values go up again?”
On his Chandler home, Pollack has paid $73,000 in special-district taxes since 2006, the most in Maricopa County in that time. About one-quarter of his annual property-tax bill goes to the Sun Lakes Volunteer Fire Department.
Pollack’s house, valued at more than $3 million, is one of the area’s most expensive, so he must pay much more to the special district than many other homeowners in the community, with houses valued at $300,000.
“I haven’t gone deep into research on the fire districts,” Pollack said. “If you live in the county or a city, you would think fire services would be paid for. However, there are areas throughout the Valley that have very different fire-protection situations. It doesn’t seem equitable.”
Lots of moving parts. Homeowners wanting to have a true influence on the size of their tax bill would have to attend a half-dozen or more tax-rate-setting meetings and successfully make their case to their particular school boards, the county supervisors and to any special districts in which they may live as well.
They also can appeal their home’s valuation, but the tax rates they pay influence their final bill the most — a fact recognized by Keith Russell, the former Maricopa County assessor, who resigned this month to become East Mesa justice of the peace. In recent years, the County Assessor’s Office began valuing houses 10 to 20 percent below market value in an effort to save people the time and money of appealing, he said.
Typically, fewer than 5,000 residential homeowners appeal their assessments each year in a county with more than 1 million parcels. Fewer than 1,000 receive a changed valuation.
Fewer than 2,500 Maricopa County homeowners appealed last year, and fewer than 500 were successful.
“A homeowner only saves about a penny in taxes for every $1 they get knocked off their valuation,” Russell said. “Some homeowners go to small-claims court and pay almost $150 to appeal their valuations and end up losing money.”
In Willo: Fed up
Daisy Delaney owns a home in the historic Willo District in central Phoenix. Though her $358,000 house was built to look historic, it doesn’t carry the designation because it was built in the early 1990s.
The historic designation matters because it cuts tax bills in half.
Her tax bill climbed $600 last year to $5,305, largely because of school taxes aimed at improving central Phoenix schools, including nearby Kenilworth Elementary.
Down the block from Delaney, a neighbor with a house valued at $30,000 more than hers pays about $3,000 in property taxes because it’s designated as historic.
“Why aren’t there groups of homeowners getting together to protest these tax increases?” Delaney said. “I have found it impossible to negotiate taxes or assessments in the past. I come from New Mexico, and there, at least, homeowners could get some consideration.
“I am trying to sell just because my taxes are so high,” she said.
Includes information from Republic reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee and data analysis by Republic reporter Rob O’Dell. Technical assistance by Republic data reporter Ryan Konig.
Harassment claim is latest blow to San Diego mayor
And another one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" lines from our government masters.
227,000 people think YOU should pay for their housing in NYC????
Currently the taxpayers pay for the housing of half a million people in NYC
Proof elected officials can't be trusted???
State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law
Sadly no matter how tightly you write a Constitution or laws limiting what government can do, the politicians and government bureaucrats that run the government are always going to come up with a lame excuse on why THEY don't have to obey those restrictions.
Proof elected officials can't be trusted???
State attorney argues legislators can ignore voter-mandated education funding law
Sadly no matter how tightly you write a Constitution or laws limiting what government can do, the politicians and government bureaucrats that run the government are always going to come up with a lame excuse on why THEY don't have to obey those restrictions.
FDA must approve drugs used to murder????
How silly, FDA must approve drugs used in executions as being safe????
Key Homeland official facing ethics inquiry
More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our government masters
Will doctors set the prices you pay under Obamacare???
I suspect Obamacare will be a government welfare program for doctors, and the doctors will set the prices the government pays them for work done under Obamacare.
No charges against Senator Rick Murphy in sex inquiry
Source
Home values go down, taxes go up
Source
Is it time to end the war on drugs????
Police No!!! Bigger budgets Banks No!!! Money Laundering Drug cartels No!!! Bigger profits
The problem isn't the Patriot Act, it's the people that passed it.
If the Founders were here I suspect they would tell us that is why they gave us the Second Amendment.Of course just a few days ago a good number of Congressmen and Senators said they were SHOCKED that NSA and the Homeland Security were spying on Americans.
Of course that was just 100 percent political BS to help them get re-elected next time around.
Sadly the members of Congress and the Senate don't work for the American people, they work for the entrenched government bureaucrats like the folks in the NSA, CIA, and Homeland Security. And of course this vote shows their loyalty to the bureaucrats in the NSA, CIA, and Homeland Security.
House votes to continue NSA surveillance program
Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:02 PM
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to continue the collection of hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records in the fight against terrorism.
The chamber rejected a measure to end the program’s authority. The vote was 217-205 on Wednesday.
Republican Rep. Justin Amash had challenged the program as an indiscriminate collection of phone records. His measure, if approved by the full House and Senate and signed by the president, would have ended the program’s statutory authority.
The White House, national security experts in Congress and the Republican establishment had lobbied hard against Amash’s effort.
Libertarian-leaning conservatives and some liberal Democrats had supported Amash’s effort.
The vote was unlikely to settle the debate over privacy rights and government efforts to thwart terrorism.
Bill to halt casino moves forward
Uncle Sam to screw Indians again????
Source
Bill to halt casino moves forward
By Caitlin McGlade The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:39 PM
A U.S. House committee on Wednesday approved a bill that would block development of a West Valley casino on land the Tohono O’odham Nation bought near Glendale.
The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., passed the House Committee on Natural Resources on a 35-5 vote.
It now heads to the full House for consideration, and the bill’s proponents are hoping for swift passage. Opponents say the project violates an agreement among tribes not to build new casinos in metro Phoenix.
The committee nixed a proposed amendment by Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., that would have essentially nullified the bill’s impact.
The bill seeks to prevent more casinos on Phoenix-area land designated as a reservation after April 2013. The prohibition would expire in 2027.
The bill takes direct aim at the Tohono O’odham Nation, which announced plans to build a casino near Glendale’s sports and entertainment district in 2009. The plans prompted a string of lawsuits and legislation. The tribe’s opponents, including two Valley tribes that operate casinos, have argued that a 2002 voter-backed compact barred more casinos from opening in the Valley.
The Tohono O’odham Reservation is based in southern Arizona, but leaders purchased the West Valley land in 2003 using a shell corporation and then sought to designate the vacant field as a reservation. That status is important because tribes can operate casinos only on reservations.
The U.S. Department of the Interior had approved the tribe’s request to create the reservation based on a 1986 federal law that allowed the tribe to take more land into its reservation to make up for tribal land damaged by a federal dam. But finalizing the designation has been stalled in court.
Thus, the very name of Franks’ bill, Keep the Promise Act of 2013, is contentious. Tohono O’odham proponents see the bill as breaking a promise that congressional leaders made to the tribe, while opponents see the measure as honoring a promise made to voters in 2002. Campaign literature at the time had asserted that voting for the proposition would cap Phoenix-area casinos.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said the measure’s swift passage is critical to the future of gaming in Arizona, arguing that the bill’s defeat would lead to a “dangerous precedent” of off-reservation gaming.
Gosar told his colleagues that a key part of the compact was a tribal agreement barring more Valley casinos.
But that’s a point of controversy, as the compact does not include such a prohibition. U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell pointed to that when he ruled last month that the tribe’s casino plans do not violate the compact.
Officials in the Gila River Indian Community this week appealed Campbell’s decision.
“It’s been difficult to overcome some of the misinformation generated by those working on behalf of the opponents of the O’odham tribe,” Grijalva said.
Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., also spoke against the bill, saying it would break promises to the tribe and would kill future jobs.
The legislation’s next move depends on whether the House majority leader adds it to theschedule for a vote. Last year, the House passed a similar bill sponsored by Franks but the Senate never considered it. The latest bill could meet the same fate, but Franks previously said his second attempt would attract more support because he removed any direct changes to the Tohono O’odham’s congressional settlement and added the sunset clause.
Gila River Indian Community Gov. Gregory Mendoza said Wednesday in a written statement that the “bill protects the credibility of Arizona tribes who will have to negotiate and obtain voter approval for the future of tribal gaming in just a decade.”
Tohono O’odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. has called the bill “special-interest legislation which would create a no-competition zone for the Gila River Indian Community and the Salt River (Pima-Maricopa) Indian Community.”
The only constant in today’s politics: Pessimism
Good news!!!! People are starting to realized government sucks!!!
Source
The only constant in today’s politics: Pessimism
By Sean Sullivan, Published: July 25 at 6:30 am
There is a lot of uncertainty in politics. But this much is clear: for the past 20 years, Americans have taken a consistently pessimistic view of the direction of the country.
Six in 10 Americans say they think things have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Just 36 percent say things are headed in the right direction.
The findings are remarkably consistent with the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in which 61 percent say the country is off on the wrong track.
The pessimism that has seized the nation is not a new development. For the overwhelming majority of the the past 20 years, most Americans have expressed the belief that the country is on the wrong track. The main exception? The late 1990s.
It wasn’t always this way. Trust in government was higher in the 1960s and 1970s. These days, increasing partisanship seems to be an obvious culprit. With the two parties as polarized as ever, a substantial portion of the public will necessarily be unhappy when the opposing party is is power. Also, while the nation’s economy is on the rebound, it has not fully recovered.
And to top it off, confidence in government leaders is bad. More than eight in 10 Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, according to the NBC/WSJ poll. And President Obama’s approval rating clocks in at the lowest level since the summer of 2011.
Like any election cycle, many candidates will promise a new way forward during the next 16 months. But what’s been clear the last two decades is that regardless of who is in power, Americans won’t like what they see in the path forward.
And for now at least, there are no signs that is going to change.
SNIP
US almost certain to lose money on GM rescue
By Tom Krisher Associated Press Wed Jul 24, 2013 6:18 PM
DETROIT — General Motors stock would have to sell for $95.51 per share for the U.S. government to break even on bailing out the company, according to a government watchdog’s report Wednesday.
That price is about three times what GM shares are selling for now, even after a 25 percent increase in the price so far this year.
“There’s no question that Treasury, the taxpayers, are going to lose money on the GM investment,” said Special Inspector General Christy Romero, author of the quarterly report to Congress.
GM needed the $49.5 billion bailout to survive its trip through bankruptcy restructuring in 2009. Since emerging from bankruptcy, the restructured company has piled up $17.2 billion in profits. In exchange for the bailout, the government got 61 percent of GM’s stock. It cut that to 33 percent in GM’s November 2010 initial public offering.
Shedding shares
The government has gradually been selling off the rest of the stock, with the goal of exiting the investment by April next year. As of June 6 it still owned 189 million shares, or about 14 percent of the company, according to the report.
The government is still $18.1 billion in the hole on the $49.5 billion bailout, including interest and dividends, according to the report.
If the government sells its remaining shares of GM for the current stock price of $36.61, it would get just more than $6.9 billion, meaning it would lose about $11.2 billion on the bailout.
The report says taxpayers still are owed $14.6 billion for bailing out Ally Financial Inc., which once was GM’s auto lending arm. Treasury still owns 74 percent of the company, plus $5.9 billion worth of preferred stock.
Ally has made one principal payment of $2.5 billion since the bailout 4 1/2 years ago. It also has paid the government $3.4 billion in dividends, according to the report.
Romero: Treasury lacks clear plan
Residential Capital LLC, or ResCap, Ally’s troubled mortgage arm, filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Romero criticized the Treasury Department for having no clear plan to deal with mortgage liabilities, which she said is preventing the government from selling its stock.
“We really want to see what’s the plan here. How are taxpayers going to recoup our money? Are we taking a loss?” Romero asked.
Overall, the government allocated $474.8 billion to the TARP program to bail out banks, insurers, auto companies and others during the financial crisis. Taxpayers are still owed $57.6 billion, the report stated. Of that, the Treasury Department has written off losses of $29.6 billion, leaving a balance of $28.6 billion outstanding.
That figure excludes $8.6 billion spent on the government’s bailout program for struggling homeowners. That money is designated as government subsidies and no repayment is expected, the report said. Romero said Treasury has yet to spend $29.9 billion available for the housing program.
RELATED INFO
TAXPAYERS LOST $2.9B ON CHRYSLER RESCUE
When GM was bailed out in 2008 and 2009, the government said it was necessary to stop the industrial Midwest economy from collapsing.
Chrysler was bailed out for $12.5 billion at the same time. Taxpayers wound up losing $2.9 billion on that bailout, Special Inspector General Christy Romero’s report said.
REPORT TAKES AIM AT MORTGAGE AID PROGRAM
Special Inspector General Christy Romero’s report also cited continuing problems with the mortgage aid program, which has been criticized for years for failing to help enough homeowners at risk of foreclosure. The program allows modifications of mortgages for eligible homeowners. The report says the longer homeowners have stayed in the program, the greater their chance of missing payments and defaulting on their modified mortgages.
The Treasury Department said there will always be a risk of defaults in such a program. But it disputed the idea that homeowners are more likely to default the longer they’re in the program, saying that in fact the longer they remain in it, the more likely they are to keep up payments and avoid default.
The Treasury Department has taken steps to improve its ability to give “as many struggling homeowners as possible the chance to keep their home while recognizing that not all will succeed,” Mark McArdle, the acting chief of homeownership preservation, said in a post on the department’s website.
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton seems to be owned by the police and fire department unions.
When Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton was running for Mayor he promised to end a sales tax which goes mostly for public safety, or the police. That promise was a LIE.
I suspect that Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton claim that he wants to end spiking is just another lie designed to help him get reelected.
Mayor seeks to end pension ‘spiking’
By Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 24, 2013 10:15 PM
Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and two City Council members have asked the city manager to end a policy that allows pension “spiking” by police officers and firefighters, but no changes are imminent because the city must honor its labor-contract obligations until next fiscal year.
The practice of pension spiking in Phoenix, disclosed by The Arizona Republic in 2010 and earlier this year, has allowed a few senior public-safety retirees to become millionaires by adding the value of some unused benefits into final salary calculations, substantially elevating their annual pension payments. The practice is prohibited for most other city employees.
“We want to end any of the abuses in the system,” Stanton said in an interview this week with The Republic.
The mayor said he wants to change the practice, put in place at least a decade ago by city management, through labor negotiations that will begin later this year between City Manager David Cavazos and public-safety unions.
A police-union official said if the city takes away pension benefits, then Phoenix must increase other forms of compensation for public-safety officers. The firefighters’ union president said upper-level managers are typically receiving the large pensions, which puts rank-and-file employees in a negative light with the public.
The city allows public-safety officers at the end of their careers to cash in unused sick leave and vacation, deferred compensation, payment for emergency shifts, bonuses, and vehicle and cellphone allowances, counting all as compensation. The inflated compensation significantly increases or “spikes” annual retirement benefits — and the cost to taxpayers. All public-safety employees are allowed to spike, though the most costly cases have been top managers at the high end of the pay range.
The Republic in early May reported that the spiking, which may violate state law, allowed 10 retirees to boost their lump-sum retirement benefits to more than $700,000 each through the Deferred Retirement Option Plan. All also receive annual pensions greater than $114,000 a year, and some also cashed out additional unused sick leave and vacation for more than $100,000 each.
Stanton spoke to The Republic about ending the practice after he sent a memo to Cavazos last week calling for a handful of fiscal reforms and compensation enhancements for some exceptional city employees.
The memo took to task “executive level” employees who, it said, have abused the pension system and “given a bad name to all employees.” But the City Council and City Manager’s Office until now have allowed the pay spiking to occur for all other public-safety employees as well through contract negotiations with labor groups.
Councilman Sal DiCiccio, a vocal critic of spiking, said the city could immediately end the practice for upper-level public-safety managers because they are not subject to union contracts.
“The people at the top are the beneficiaries of spiking, and they’re winning,” he said. “Everyone on the bottom doesn’t win and it’s taking their money away.”
The memo to Cavazos said spiking “inflates costs, harms the city’s long-term financial health and seriously undermines public confidence that the city’s compensation for employees is fair.” It was signed by Stanton and council members Thelda Williams and Daniel Valenzuela.
The letter is the most aggressive public stance Stanton and the two council members have taken on pension reform for public-safety officers, many of whom supported Stanton’s 2011 mayoral campaign. It also comes after the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative watchdog group, in late May threatened to sue the city if Phoenix did not end the legally questionable policy allowing pension spiking.
“We are very glad to see that the mayor is asserting that pension spiking is unacceptable,” said Jon Riches, an attorney for Goldwater. “But it is still our position that the practice of pension spiking is illegal.”
Riches said his organization continues to do research on a potential lawsuit against the city.
State law says “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” cannot be used as compensation to compute retirement benefits.
State law also says that only “base salary, overtime pay, shift differential pay, military differential wage pay, compensatory time used by an employee in lieu of overtime not otherwise paid by an employer and holiday pay” may be used to calculate pension benefits.
A prospective Arizona retiree’s ending pay and length of service are key components in determining the amount of the public pension. Salary spiking, therefore, increases pensions.
Cavazos said he does not believe the city is breaking the law by allowing pension spiking, but he added, “That does not mean it’s the best practice.
“What we need to do is focus on the relationships we have with collective bargaining — we have contracts in place,” Cavazos said.
Cavazos cited an opinion by the city’s legal department that employees are receiving a higher salary in exchange for a “lessened benefit package,” and therefore that counts as the “definition of compensation” by state law.
However, public records obtained by The Republic show Phoenix has calculated pension benefits for public-safety officers by counting pay in lieu of vacation accrual and pay in lieu of sick accrual (unused sick leave), and other fringe benefits such as vehicle and cell-phone allowances.
DiCiccio believes state law is clear and that what the city is doing is illegal.
“What the city of Phoenix is doing in allowing pension spiking is robbing taxpayers,” DiCiccio said. “It needs to stop altogether.”
The city’s public-safety retirement cost is budgeted at roughly $129 million this fiscal year. In fiscal 2003, the city paid $7.2 million. Investment losses have been one of the biggest reasons for the increased cost, though pension spiking also has contributed.
Joe Clure, president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, said the union of more than 2,000 members never would have agreed to the practice of pension spiking had officers thought it was illegal.
Clure said if city managers do not like the way public-safety officers receive pension benefits, they should find other ways to compensate officers.
“Unless you are willing to talk about an alternative pay and benefits package, then you fundamentally believe police officers make too much money,” Clure said. “I don’t think they do.”
Pete Gorraiz, president of the United Phoenix Fire Fighters Association, said it was curious that Stanton would send out a letter six months before labor negotiations started. But, he added, firefighters will come to a “reasonable agreement” with the city.
US almost certain to lose money on GM rescue
GM's stock would have to triple in value for the US government to break even on the money it spent bailing out GM.
Greg Stanton seeks to end pension ‘spiking’ - Yea, sure!!!!!! - Trust me!!!!!
I suspect that Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton is just shoveling the BS in this article to get votes.
Arizona Taxi drivers now subject to random drug testing
Source
Arizona Taxi drivers now subject to random drug testing
Posted: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 11:31 am
By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services
For the first time ever, drivers of taxi cabs and limousines in Arizona will soon be subject to random drug testing.
Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday signed legislation which will require those who own or lease out taxis and other vehicle for hire to screen applicants for drugs at the time they are hired or allowed to lease one of the vehicles. That is on top of an existing requirement for a criminal background check. And drivers also will be subject to random tests at least once a year.
The measure takes effect later this year.
Kevin Tyne, director of the Department of Weights and Measures, stressed this is not some new government program with the state going out and stopping drivers. Instead, he said it's designed to make the owners of these vehicles more responsible.
But he said it is up to them to decide what to do with that information: Nothing in the new law prohibits a company from hiring or refusing to fire a driver who tests positive. That mirrors the existing laws on background checks, with no prohibition against hiring certain felons.
Tyne said, though, this is a big step for Arizona.
"Nearly every other jurisdiction that regulates and oversees and licenses 'for hire' vehicles like taxis and liveries and limousines have some sort of a basic drug testing requirement,'' he said. "Arizona was noticeably absent in that regard.''
He said many people use taxis and limousines, both local residents and visitors.
"Patrons ought to have some basic sense that the driver has at least been drug tested,'' Tyne said.
The legislation is unrelated to the mishap Saturday where five people riding in a limousine on the San Mateo Bridge south of San Francisco were killed in a fire. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation and there has been no indication at this point that the driver, who also was burned, was in any way responsible.
California officials said it appears the vehicle, which was licensed for eight passengers, had one more than the permitted number. There appears to be no similar laws in Arizona governing how many passengers can be in any particular vehicle.
Chandler Vice Mayor Lowell Huggins arrested
SourceFormer Chandler Vice Mayor Lowell Huggins arrested in gunshot incident, police say
By Thomas Hawthorne The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Wed Jul 24, 2013 1:30 PM
Lowell Huggins, a former vice mayor of Chandler, was arrested Tuesday after being accused of disorderly conduct, according to a court document.
According to Huggins’ wife, the 70-year-old said he attempted to shoot himself after he and his wife argued about financial issues, the document states.
Huggins and his wife had been arguing when he told her to call 911 before walking into their backyard, police said. When his wife was on the phone with an operator, she heard a gunshot from the backyard. Moments later Huggins returned to the home and told her he had tried to shoot himself in the chin.
Officers responding to the call persuaded Lowell to leave the home, but he refused to be handcuffed and was subsequently forced into handcuffs, police said. A small handgun was found in his front pocket, police said.
It is unknown whether Huggins injured himself.
Huggins, who left his final term in office in January 2009, went down in municipal history as the only person to serve three terms as vice mayor. He served on the council from 1988 to 1996 and was re-elected in 2000 and 2004.
A resident of the city since 1956 and a Chandler High School graduate, he is a former Chandler police officer and worked as a barber since 1960.
Even police pay has limits
SourceEven police pay has limits
By Editorial board The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 25, 2013 6:43 PM
Police officers — indeed, all first responders — perform dangerous, difficult work for which they justifiably should earn fair, even generous, compensation from the citizens they protect and serve.
But there are limits. Or should be.
In fiscal 2003, taxpayers in Phoenix spent $7.2 million toward public-safety pension plans. This fiscal year, the tab is $129 million. It is expected to grow further, and fast. Should taxpayers simply accept whatever costs they are instructed to shoulder? Or should there be limits?
The limits question gains still more clarity when a couple of related issues are thrown in:
Pension “spiking” is one. The practice allows soon-to-retire officers, especially supervisory officers, to add the value of unused benefits to their base salary to spike their retirement income. As reported by The Arizona Republic’s Craig Harris, pension spiking has allowed a handful of retired police and fire officials to become millionaires.
It scarcely seems wrong for taxpayers to wish to limit that practice, which on its face appears to violate Arizona law prohibiting “unused sick leave, payment in lieu of vacation, payment for unused compensatory time or payment for any fringe benefits” to be used to compute retirement benefits.
Yet it has taken years for City Hall to take pension-spiking reform seriously. And, even now, Mayor Greg Stanton has declared his intent to end spiking ... when the current contract expires in another year. If it’s illegal, a contract doesn’t protect it.
The other cost issue is union-negotiated “release time” for union activities, which allows sworn officers to conduct union business on city time.
However dubious or unjustified, release-time clauses in union contracts are fairly common, although evidence shows that Phoenix’s primary police union has thoroughly abused it by lobbying the Legislature in opposition to City Council-set policies, campaigning for candidates and urging unrest against the police chief, according to Goldwater Institute litigator Clint Bolick, who sued to stop the practice.
If they want to do that on their own time, the First Amendment protects them. But doing it on the taxpayers’ dime? That’s an affront.
In April, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge found that using taxpayer money to fund union activity was not in the public interest and ordered an end to release-time activity on the part of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, or PLEA.
According to Judge Katherine Cooper, the practice cost taxpayers $852,000 a year, thus diverting “resources away from the mission of the Phoenix Police Department.”
The union is appealing.
Pension spiking and release time for PLEA officers are, obviously, related issues. They involve contracts between public-sector unions and city officials that raise troubling questions about who, if anyone, represented the interests of taxpayers during negotiations.
If PLEA had not so obnoxiously abused the release-time benefit, it is possible it may have escaped the scrutiny of critics, even the spending hawks at Goldwater.
Which brings us back to the question of limits. Do taxpayers have a right to ask for reasonable limits on what they pay their first responders? The line-of-duty officers who risk their lives on their behalf?
It is not an easy question to ask, considering the jeopardy public-safety officers face every day.
But here is the part of the equation that union officials and their abettors at City Hall are missing: By defending the indefensible, they are making the answer to that question easier for taxpayers every day.
Security firm head pleads guilty to 2 felony counts
By Peter Corbett The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Jul 25, 2013 4:01 PM
The president of a security company has pleaded guilty to two felony counts in a scheme that netted him nearly $750,000 from the state and his Scottsdale landlord.
Jacques Davis, 26, who was facing 12 felony counts, pleaded guilty last week in Maricopa County Superior Court to theft and illegal control of an enterprise.
Operating as AT Security Service, Davis obtained a $250,000 grant in September 2011 from the Governor’s Office of Economic Recovery to relocate his security company from Irvine, Calif., to Scottsdale.
The Arizona Commerce Authority and Greater Phoenix Economic Council in a news release announced that AT Security was initially bringing 100 jobs for security guards and support staff to Scottsdale and would create 100 more within three years.
But there was no AT Security office in California and Davis created phony employee files to mislead the state, according to an Arizona Auditor General report issued in October 2012, following a six-month investigation.
The Arizona Republic began investigating AT Security a year earlier, acting on a tip from a former employee.
Davis was also accused of misusing nearly $500,000 that his office landlord earmarked for AT Security’s relocation and tenant improvements.
The office complex landlord, affiliated with Desert Troon Cos., won a $5.8 million default judgment against Davis in May 2012.
The state auditor’s report said Davis spent some of the money from the state and his landlord on a $65,000 Lincoln Navigator, a $36,642 Lexus IS 250 and $15,000 on a Hawaiian vacation.
The report criticized the Governor’s Office of Economic Recovery for failing to perform an adequate background check on AT Security. The job-creation funds given to AT Security were part of $1 billion allocated to Arizona through the federal Recovery Act of 2009.
Davis’ sentencing is scheduled Aug. 21 before Judge Daniel Kiley in Maricopa County Superior Court.
Under the plea agreement, Davis will be sentenced to serve a prison term of 2 1/2 years and up to five years of probation upon his release. Davis will also be required to pay restitution of $250,000 to the state and $493,765 to Desert Troon Cos., said Theodore Campagnolo, Arizona assistant attorney general.
Davis’ attorney, Chris Winchell, did not return calls for comment.
Light-rail train strikes, kills pedestrian in Tempe
By D.S. Woodfill The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Jul 26, 2013 2:30 PM
The last 2 1/2 miles of light-rail line in the East Valley has been shut down due to a fatal accident Friday involving a pedestrian.
Dispatchers reported an accident of a train striking a pedestrian at 12:50 p.m. At 1:10 p.m. transit officials had announced service was suspended between McClintock Drive in Tempe and Sycamore in Mesa.
Valley Metro spokeswoman Susan Tierney said the incident occurred along the light rail tracks near McClintock Drive and Apache Boulevard in Tempe.
Tierney said bus service will replace light rail between Sycamore Drive and Priest Drive.
Tierney advised light-rail passengers to look for bus service to connect them to the areas normally served by light-rail service. The buses will have “Bus Rail Bridge” in the head sign above the windshield, she said.
The bus bridge will follow the light-rail line between Priest Drive to Washington Street, she said.
The buses will continue on University Drive just north of Apache Drive to serve all stations east of University Drive and Rural Road. Buses will use Dobson Road to connect to the Sycamore Transit Center. The bus bridge will travel both eastbound and westbound.
Information about the length of the service suspension is forthcoming as details about the incident are still being provided to Valley Metro. Passengers can check for updates on Twitter @InsideMETROlightrail.
[I took all the articles on this gruesome lightrail accident and
put them at this URL]
'Bikini bar' in downtown San Jose worries leaders ahead of opening
By George Avalos
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 07/28/2013 12:00:00 PM PDT
SAN JOSE -- Even before its opening next month, a "bikini bar" slated for downtown San Jose has stirred opposition and angst.
The Gold Club San Jose, whose grand opening hosted by porn star Katie Morgan is scheduled for Aug. 8 to 10, will feature scantily clad dancers on platforms that double as tables for guests. City rules prohibit nudity in clubs, but it remains unclear just how little the dancers will wear and what entertainment they would perform.
"San Jose is a great city, but it doesn't have an upscale club like this in that market," Mike Rose, chief executive officer of the South Carolina-based PML Clubs, which has licensed the operator of the club to use The Gold Club brand, told this newspaper. "There
A bikini bar called the Gold Club is set to open in August 2013 in the old San Jose Building and Loan Association building on Santa Clara Street in downtown San Jose. (Sal Pizarro)
is a demand for upscale-type entertainment such as ours."
But the prospect of a bikini club in the heart of downtown on Santa Clara Street has drawn criticism from some, including Councilman Sam Liccardo, who represents the downtown area.
"Nothing about The Gold Club is consistent with the common ambition we have in San Jose to take the city and the downtown to the next level," Liccardo said in an interview. "Put simply, this is a lame idea. We already have no shortage of men in their 20s with ample testosterone."
Liccardo is consulting with city staff members to explore what measures might be taken to greatly limit the scope of entertainment at the club.
"The focus would be health and safety issues," Liccardo said,
noting that the city can't impose an outright ban on exotic dancing. U.S. Supreme Court rulings have defined that sort of entertainment as protected expressions under the First Amendment.
"We don't regulate dancing, but we do regulate nudity and there will be no nudity as defined by what is allowed under city ordinances," said Laurel Prevetti, San Jose's assistant planning director. "The Gold Club is working closely with the Police Department to get a permit. This is definitely a new type of enterprise coming to San Jose that we haven't seen before."
Sharing Liccardo's concerns about the club is Matthew Mahood, president of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. "We're disappointed that this type of business would be allowed to operate in the downtown city core," he said.
The owner of the club is Jenny Wolfes, who operated the former Vault nightclub at the same historic bank building where The Gold Club will open. Wolfes also owns Studio 8, a nightclub on South First Street near Santa Clara Street.
Rick Jensen, spokesman for the Downtown San Jose Association, declined to take a position on the club, though he said he expects it to be "good neighbors" with other downtown businesses. But Edwing Flores, owner of Picasso's, a restaurant across the street from the new club, is doubtful.
"It will be a big problem for the downtown and it may bring prostitution to this area," Flores said. "Customers will see a girl they like, have a drink, then have more entertainment after the doors close for the evening."
Tasha Mistry, a Fremont resident who works in downtown San Jose, agrees that the club is "inappropriate" at that location. "This area is supposed to be more corporate. I didn't even know this was going to be here," she said.
The Gold Club, which will operate across the street from a future residential high-rise that is under construction at Market and West Santa Clara streets, will likely have about 100 employees, Rose estimated. It is advertising online for cocktail waitresses, cashiers, bartenders and security personnel.
Contact George Avalos at 408-373-3556 or 925-977-8477. Follow him at Twitter.com/george_avalos.
Pedestrian killed in incident with light-rail train in East Valley
By Sean Holstege, Erin O'Connor and Cecilia Chan The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Fri Jul 26, 2013 9:07 PM
The last 2 1/2 miles of light-rail line in the East Valley was shut down Friday after a pedestrian was dragged and killed, the first fatality since light rail began operating in 2008, officials said.
Someone called police because he or she noticed a body on the light rail about 12:40 p.m.
At 1:10 p.m. transit officials had announced service was suspended between Sycamore Drive in Mesa and Priest Drive in Tempe.
By the time the light rail stopped at the Priest Drive station in Tempe, only the body’s upper torso was with the train, said Detective Steve Berry of the Mesa Police Department. The incident appears to have started at the Sycamore Drive stop in Mesa.
The Mesa Police Department will investigate the death and officers are looking for evidence along the light rail to determine what happened, Berry said. Officers are picking up clothing and the rest of the body along the track.
It’s too early in the investigation to determine what lead up to incident. Detectives are checking the cameras from the light-rail stations and the train itself to try and determine what happened.
Valley Metro spokeswoman Susan Tierney said the incident occurred along the light-rail tracks near McClintock Drive and Apache Boulevard in Tempe.
Immediate details of the crash are unknown, but Metro trains were specifically designed to prevent fatalities when trains strike pedestrians. Nationally, pedestrians are often killed when they get trapped in the wheels of a train. Metro added a skirt to the bottom of the vehicles to push pedestrians off to the side rather than under the chassis.
Since Metro opened in late 2008, it has logged at least 152 collisions. None were fatal, until Friday.
Nationally, there were 78 fatalities on light-rail systems in the last five years for which data is available, ending with 2011, according to the Federal Transit Administration.
Hillary Foose, a spokeswoman for Valley Metro, said the light-rail operator has driven the trains since it first opened and has never had any accidents. The driver has told police she will cooperate with the investigation. She was placed on paid administrative leave and was drug and alcohol tested, Foose said.
Mesa Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh said Friday afternoon that it appeared the pedestrian played a role in his own death.
“From what I hear the light rail train did not strike the person,” Kavanaugh said in an e-mail. “The person allegedly was climbing in and around and between the light rail cars at Sycamore station. The train took off and him with it, presumably crushing him and dragging the body for some time until it disengaged from the train.”
Light-rail service has been fully restored between the Sycamore and Priest stations as of 6 p.m.
Valley Metro suspended light-rail activity shortly after the incident was reported and diverted passengers to a “Bus Rail Bridge,” Tierney said.
Details about the incident are still being provided to Valley Metro.
[I took all the articles on this gruesome lightrail accident and
put them at this URL]
Va. first lady McDonnell spent thousands from husband’s PAC on clothes, other items
By Laura Vozzella, Published: July 27 E-mail the writer
RICHMOND — Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell bought nearly $9,800 in clothing with money from her husband’s political action committee and tapped into his campaign and inaugural funds to buy $7,600 in mostly unspecified items, according to records and a representative for the PAC.
The spending is legal under Virginia’s lax campaign finance laws, which prohibit the conversion of political funds for private use only when a PAC or campaign committee disbands — not while it is operating.
But the purchases are unusual in Virginia, where campaign finance records indicate that candidates do not routinely dip into political funds to buy personal items such as clothing for themselves or their spouses.
Maureen McDonnell’s use of political donations comes to light at a time when she and her husband, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), are under intense scrutiny for accepting luxury items and $120,000 in loans from wealthy Virginia businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Federal and state investigators are probing the Star Scientific executive’s ties to the McDonnells, who promoted his firm’s nutritional supplement, Anatabloc. Last week the governor apologized for embarrassing the commonwealth and repaid the loans.
Several gifts that have drawn investigators’ attention seem aimed at polishing Maureen McDonnell’s image as first lady. They are looking into whether the former Washington Redskins cheerleader and mother of five received free cosmetic dental work from a Richmond-area dentist, jewelry from a state delegate and a $15,000 Bergdorf Goodman shopping spree from Williams.
Using political money for clothes helped McDonnell step up her style while her family’s finances were hit by the plunging real estate market.
Bob McDonnell won the 2009 governor’s race as several properties that he and his family bought for a combined $3.84 million at the height of the real estate boom had lost value. Maureen McDonnell complained to officials at Opportunity Virginia PAC that she didn’t have the wardrobe or resources necessary for her new role as first lady, according to a person familiar with the PAC’s operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to maintain a relationship with the McDonnells. [Look lady, just because your husband is the governor of Virginia, doesn't mean you are the royal Queen of Virginia!!!]
Maureen McDonnell was given a PAC credit card, according to that person. A representative of the PAC confirmed Friday that the card was provided to the first lady, but he added that she no longer has it. The representative answered questions on behalf of the committee on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigations.
Rich Galen, a private spokesman for the governor and first lady on matters related to the investigations, said that Maureen McDonnell was borrowing the clothes, which would be donated to charity after Bob McDonnell completes his term in January. The PAC also said that the items will be returned to the committee and then donated to charity.
Asked in a brief phone interview whether the committee spent money on department-store clothing, Phil Cox, director of the PAC and executive director of the Republican Governors Association, said: “All of the PAC expenditures are publicly available. What’s there is there.” Cox does not sign off on the PAC’s expense reports.
Maureen McDonnell has charged about $9,800 in clothing to the PAC, but that is not obvious from campaign finance reports filed by the committee.
None of the items the first lady put on the PAC credit card was identified as clothing in public records available online through the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. The purchases are billed as “event expenses” and “travel expenses.” At times, however, the vendor listed suggests clothing: Nordstrom, Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor and Ann Taylor. In all, the PAC spent $6,300 at those stores.
In those cases where the stores are identified, nothing in the public record links the purchases to Maureen McDonnell.
Her name is listed on three additional PAC expenses totaling about $3,500. But in those instances, the records do not indicate what was bought or where. Instead of clothing stores, the vendor listed is “Maureen McDonnell.” The purchases are identified as “travel expenses” and “event expenses.”
But the PAC representative confirmed that $9,800 in purchases — all of those publicly linked either to the clothing stores or to the first lady — were clothing for her. He said they were bought for official gubernatorial or political events.
She spent $2,379 at Nordstrom over two days in March 2012 and another $535 there a month before that, all to prepare for a trip to California to market Virginia products and attend a Republican Governors Association meeting.
She spent $1,121 in July 2012 at Saks to buy clothes for a gala celebrating the bicentennial of the governor’s mansion.
She spent about $6,000 around the time of McDonnell’s January 2010 inauguration, about half of that for clothing charged to the PAC. The other half: $3,087 that Bob McDonnell’s inaugural committee paid to her for unspecified “event expenses.”
The PAC representative said it was not clear what she bought with the inaugural funds. With the committee now closed and original receipts and other records in storage, he said the answer was not readily available.
Maureen McDonnell also received payments from two other committees associated with her husband. The Bob McDonnell for Governor committee paid her $2,369 in unspecified “event” and “travel” expenses in July and September 2009. Bob McDonnell for Attorney General reimbursed her $1,021 for a camera in August 2007 and $1,104 that December for unspecified “event supplies.”
The representative said he did not know what the camera was for. The nature of the other reimbursements also was unclear because records from those now-closed committees also are in storage, he said. Also unexplained was the $1,100 that Bob McDonnell for Governor spent at Dick’s Sporting Goods over three days in late October 2009.
‘No restriction’
When a campaign committee or PAC is being disbanded, candidates are prohibited from converting any surplus funds to personal use for themselves or immediate relatives. But while a political committee is running, “there are no restrictions,” said Nikki Sheridan, spokeswoman for the Virginia State Board of Elections.
“If they wanted to use the money to send their kids to college, they could probably do that,” she said. “There is no restriction on clothing, grooming or legal fees unless you’re shutting down your PAC.”
The law is one of the nation’s most lax. Most states restrict personal use at any stage in the life of a political committee, according to Karen Shanton, a legislative studies specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures. But it is in keeping with Virginia’s no-limits, full-disclosure approach to campaign finance generally. The state has no caps on political contributions. And officeholders are allowed to take personal gifts of any value as long as they report those worth more than $50.
State elections officials said it is not unusual for candidates to call asking if they can charge their campaigns for the clothing they wear in the course of running for office. They are told that it is not illegal.
Whether it is a wise public relations move is another matter.
Del. Onzlee Ware (D-Roanoke) drew attention in 2009 for using campaign funds for personal items, including a YMCA membership.
State Board of Elections officials reviewed his spending but concluded there was no violation of the law after the attorney general’s office advised them in writing that the law “does not prohibit the personal use of campaign contributions by candidates or office holders unless or until” they disband their committees.
Even so, it appears to be more the exception than the rule that Virginia politicians use political funds to fill their closets.
U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine (D) has had one clothing expense paid for with campaign funds — $708 at Nordstrom — since he ran for governor in 2004.
State Sen. A. Donald McEachin (D-Richmond), charged a $794 tuxedo from Franco’s Fine Clothier to his campaign account in early 2009 but refunded his campaign in mid-2010. McEachin said he had meant to pay personally for the tuxedo, which he was buying for an Urban League dinner, but accidentally pulled out his campaign credit card. He said he made the refund after discovering the error.
At least a handful of other Virginia candidates have billed their campaigns for relatively modest clothing or tailoring services.
The man Bob McDonnell defeated in 2009, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) charged $42 at Macy’s, $38 in Kohl’s and $84 at Dick’s Sporting Goods in the course of his campaign. All of the purchases were identified on his reports as clothing. He also billed his campaign for more than $500 in dry cleaning charges while he was on the campaign trail.
Deeds said he couldn’t recall what any of the clothing purchases were for, but said they were small and probably related to the difficulties of the hectic campaign pace.
“You’re out and you spill coffee on a necktie in the morning and you have big things to do the rest of the day,” he said, speaking hypothetically. “You’ve got to go out and buy a new necktie.”
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II’s gubernatorial campaign spent $182 at Macy’s in May after the Republican showed up to shoot a TV commercial with two blue shirts.
“[W]e needed the AG in various color shirts, so a staffer went to Macy’s and purchased what was needed,” campaign spokeswoman Anna Nix said via e-mail. “As a practice, the AG does not believe [in using] nor use campaign funds for personal use.”
Of course they didn't even ask for the statistics on the "war on drugs". Despite the "war on drugs" being almost 100 years old, since the passage of the "1914 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act" you can go to almost any high school in American and buy any illegal drug you want.
Border statistics demanded by Arizona's congressional delegation
By Daniel González The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:19 AM
Several members of Arizona’s congressional delegation have called on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to release data the government collects about immigrants crossing the border illegally but refuses to make public.
The demands for more information about illegal immigration along the southern border follow an article in The Arizona Republic published July 21.
The article reported that the Department of Homeland Security routinely points to data about the number of Border Patrol apprehensions as a measure of success in reducing illegal immigration. However, the DHS refuses to release or discuss other information gathered on how many migrants evade capture, how many are caught multiple times, and what percentage of migrants successfully enter the U.S. illegally.
Republicans and Democrats from the Arizona delegation expressed concern that the refusal to release data about illegal crossings creates an incomplete and possibly misleading picture of border security. The information is particularly important now as Congress debates an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system. Part of that overhaul includes giving undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship contingent on improvements in border security.
“This important article illustrated the fact that one of the most devastating contributors to an unsecure border is the shortage of information,” U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., wrote in a July 25 letter to Napolitano.
His letter, prompted by the article, asks for DHS data and studies pertaining to border-crossing recidivism rates, apprehensions and the effectiveness of several strategies the government used to deter illegal immigration and drug trafficking, including fencing, vehicle barriers, electronic alert systems and additional Border Patrol agents.
Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican, and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, also said they plan to contact the DHS asking that more information about illegal border crossings be released.
“In Congress, there is finally a bipartisan, common-sense effort to address immigration reform. Let's seize this moment, it's good for Arizona,” Kirkpatrick said in an e-mail. “I expect a rigorous debate around measurability standards and what constitutes a secure border. Let’s make sure we have all the data and information in front of us, so we can craft good and fair policy.”
Republican Reps. David Schweikert and Trent Franks and Rep. Ron Barber, a Tucson Democrat whose district includes Arizona’s southeastern border with Mexico, said they believe the DHS needs to do a better job of sharing information to ensure that border security is achieved.
“I have been raising this issue since I went to Congress one year ago,” Barber said in an e-mail. “As a ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee, I have questioned officials of the department about their poor communications with the American public and repeatedly called for greater transparency and accountability.”
Barber said he has filed amendments to a border-security bill pending in the House that would require the DHS to hold public meetings to provide critical information to border residents, other community members and the media. The bill would require the DHS to develop a comprehensive strategy for securing the border.
“This process must be followed as DHS develops its border-security strategy and establishes credible and honest measurements of success,” Barber said in the e-mail.
DHS acting press secretary Peter Boogaard said the department would respond directly to members of Congress requesting information about illegal border crossings, “not through the media.”
He said, however, that the DHS relies on multiple methods to measure border security, “each of which paints a different portion of the overall border-security picture and each of which informs tactical decision making.
“In line with this broad focus, the Administration has made significant investments in border security on a number of fronts,” Boogaard said in a written statement. “While no single metric can individually assess the state of border security, the dozens of metrics we use every day clearly demonstrate significant progress and improved quality of life at the border.”
The Republic article by reporter Bob Ortega reported that the DHS has refused to respond to the newspaper’s request for data on the number of migrants who were turned back after crossing the border illegally or got away from the Border Patrol and thus were able to successfully enter the U.S. illegally.
The Border Patrol releases information on the number of apprehensions by agents, but not on the number of migrants apprehended more than once or how many of those apprehensions are the same migrant caught multiple times. The Border Patrol does not release data on “turn-backs” or “got-aways” — people detected by agents or surveillance equipment but not caught.
The article also showed that the DHS has refused to release the same data to outside researchers, including a panel of leading statisticians, economists and demographers at the National Academy of Sciences that conducted a taxpayer-funded study on illegal immigration at the request of the DHS.
The DHS also has refused to release the results of a 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute that studied border-crossing recidivism and the likelihood of apprehending migrants attempting to cross the border illegally, the article reported. That study, which has been updated annually, also was federally funded.
The article quoted critics who say the DHS’ failure to fully release information about illegal border crossings makes it difficult for outside researchers to analyze the effectiveness of the department’s strategy for securing the border at a time when spending on border security has soared. In the past seven years, the DHS has spent more than $106 billion on border security.
The immigration bill passed by the Senate in late June, and now languishing in the House, would provide an additional $46 billion in border-security spending and add 19,200 more Border Patrol agents along the Mexico border over the next eight years, doubling the current number.
The additional spending and agents would be used to achieve the bill’s goal of achieving an effectiveness rate of “90 percent,” meaning the DHS would capture or turn back nine migrants for every person who got away and successfully entered the country illegally.
Brian Rogers, a spokesman for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said McCain has “long been troubled by the failure of DHS to develop and make public appropriate metrics to measure our success in border security.”
“This lack of disclosure has exacerbated the lack of trust in DHS and this Administration,” Rogers said in an e-mail.
McCain and Arizona’s other senator, Republican Jeff Flake, helped add language in the immigration bill passed by the Senate that includes provisions that require the Border Patrol to report to Congress on a biannual basis objective metrics to help Congress and the public determine how successful the Border Patrol is at apprehending illegal border-crossers.
When he was a member of the House, Flake also tried to get the DHS to develop better ways to measure border security.
“It’s going to be impossible for Congress to tackle immigration reform without achieving operational control of our southern border, and the federal government can’t achieve operational control if they aren’t even using it as a metric,” Flake said in a press release in November 2012, after the House passed a bill requiring the DHS to create for congressional approval a strategy for gaining operational control of the northern and southern U.S. borders.
When Bill Clinton denied having sex with Monica Lewinsky after he received some oral sex he said:
Glendale denies unlawful ‘meetings’
By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:00 AM
Glendale’s interim city attorney responded Friday to the state’s investigation of possible Open Meeting Law violations by the Glendale City Council by saying no “meetings” took place.
Glendale interim City Attorney Nick DiPiazza called them “meet and greet opportunities,” rather than meetings as defined by state law.
The attorney general’s investigation focuses on a series of private back-to-back meetings on May 28 at City Hall among council members, National Hockey League executives and the prospective buyers of the Phoenix Coyotes franchise.
Six of the council’s seven members participated in the meetings in groups of one, two or three, which avoided a four-member quorum and the Open Meeting Law.
The Arizona Republic wrote about the potential violation last month.
Attorney General’s Office spokesman Doug Nick declined to provide details about the inquiry.
“That investigation is ongoing, and that’s all I can say right now,” he said.
The state launched the investigation in response to several complaints, according to a July 2 letter by assistant Attorney General Christopher Munns to interim City Manager Dick Bowers.
“The complaints allege that the council violated the Open Meetings Law by conducting sequential meetings of council members in a number less than a quorum in order to discuss official town business without needing to comply with the requirements of the law,” Munns states in the letter.
Mayor Jerry Weiers met with the hockey executives at 9 a.m. Bowers was next at 10 a.m. Vice Mayor Yvonne Knaack and Councilman Ian Hugh went at 11 a.m. Council members Sam Chavira, Manny Martinez and Gary Sherwood followed at noon.
Councilwoman Norma Alvarez was invited to the 11 a.m. meeting, but declined to attend and later criticized her colleagues for agreeing to meet with the hockey executives.
The group included NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, other top NHL executives, and prospective Coyotes buyers George Gosbee and Anthony LeBlanc.
The meetings set into motion negotiations that resulted in the council approving a 15-year, $225 million contract with the prospective team owners to operate Jobing.com Arena, which is owned by the city.
The council approved the contract on a 4-3 vote on July 2, the same day the Attorney General’s Office opened the investigation.
DiPiazza, in his letter of response, said the separate meetings with small groups of council members were “to avoid the appearance that a meeting within the meaning of the statute was being conducted.”
State law defines a meeting as a gathering of a “quorum of members of a public body at which they discuss, propose or take legal action, including any deliberations by a quorum with respect to such action.”
Later in the letter, DiPiazza said the gatherings were “not serial meetings of Councilmembers in a number less than a quorum conducted to circumvent the law.”
DiPiazza said meetings were “simply for the NHL Commissioner and his Deputy to personally introduce (the potential team buyers) to city officials.”
He said no business was conducted: “Councilmembers knew to not to conduct any deliberations at the gatherings.”
Weiers previously told The Republic that the prospective Coyotes buyers outlined their financial requirements in broad terms during the private meeting he attended.
Following the meetings, the NHL issued a statement that said, in part: “Everyone involved in today’s discussion shares the desire and ultimate objective of transitioning the ownership of the Coyotes and safeguarding the franchise’s long-term future in Glendale.”
The crux appears to be whether the council splintered a quorum, a practice then-Attorney General Bruce Babbitt discussed in a 1975 legal opinion.
“Discussions and deliberations between less than a majority of the members of a governing body ... when used to circumvent the purposes of the Act, would constitute a violation,” Babbitt wrote.
That standard should be applied to all discussions among a majority of the members of a governing body when those matters may lead to a final action or final decision by the members, Babbitt wrote.
If violations are found, penalties could include removal from office, fines of $500 per person and assessment of the state’s attorney fees, the Attorney General’s Office said.
It appears Glendale’s sequential meetings were scheduled to keep the public in the dark, said media attorney David Bodney, of the Phoenix office of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson.
“It is difficult to know if any violation occurred because we don’t know what they discussed and whether they discussed the same things when they met sequentially with different members of the council,” said Bodney, who represents The Republic in First Amendment matters.
“If they discussed the same matters, albeit sequentially, then there would appear to be a violation of the Open Meeting Law.”
State opens meeting law probe of Glendale
By Paul Giblin The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:16 PM
The State Attorney General’s Office has launched an investigation into possible violations of Arizona’s Open Meeting Law by the Glendale City Council.
The investigation focuses on a series of private back-to-back meetings at Glendale City Hall among council members, National Hockey League executives and the prospective buyers of the Phoenix Coyotes franchise on May 28.
The Attorney General’s Office launched the investigation in response to several complaints, according to a July 2 letter by Assistant Attorney General Christopher Munns to interim City Manager Dick Bowers.
“The complaints allege that the council violated the Open Meetings Law by conducting sequential meetings of council members in a number less than a quorum in order to discuss official town business without needing to comply with the requirements of the law,” Munns states in the letter.
Munns asked Bowers to provide additional information about the serial meetings by July 26.
The Arizona Republic, which wrote about the potential violation last month, obtained Munns’ letter through a public records request.
Attorney general spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham declined to specify how many people filed complaints about the matter.
“It’s an ongoing investigation, so we won’t be making any comments about it,” she said.
In general, Open Meeting Law investigations take one to six months to complete, Grisham said.
If violations are found, penalties could include fines of as much as $500 per person, assessment of the state’s attorney fees and removal from public office, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Six of the council’s seven members participated in the serial meetings, but in groups of one, two and three, which maneuvered around the Open Meeting Law by avoiding a four-member quorum.
The meetings set into motion negotiations that resulted in the council approving a 15-year, $225 million contract with the prospective Coyotes owners to operate Jobing.com Arena, where the team has played since 2003.
The council approved the contract on a 4-3 vote on the day the Attorney General’s Office opened the investigation.
Munns’ letter notes that no agendas were posted for the serial meetings, nor were minutes from the meetings made available for the public.
Councilwoman Norma Alvarez was invited to one meeting, but declined to attend. Later, she criticized her colleagues.
Glendale interim City Attorney Nick DiPiazza said he interviewed the council members who participated in the meetings and is preparing a response to the Attorney General’s Office.
“I don’t believe any meetings were conducted within the meaning of a meeting under the Arizona Open Meeting Law,” he told The Republic. “The meetings were — as described by council members — meet and greet. They were introductions and I don’t believe any business was conducted and I don’t believe any violations of the law were intended or occurred.”
Mayor Jerry Weiers previously told The Republic that the prospective Coyotes buyers outlined their financial requirements in broad terms during the private meeting he attended.
Glendale resident Ken Sturgis, who said he filed a complaint, believes the private meetings amounted to far more than introductory sessions.
“It’s hard to believe that this kind of contract that was put together and presented later wasn’t talked about. I find that very hard to believe,” he said.
Of course if we were to do the same thing and say we didn't have to obey the drug laws because they are unconstitutional we would be instantly thrown in jail for breaking the law.
Judge to rule on pay for Phoenix officers’ union work
By JJ Hensley The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:03 AM
The long-running dispute about whether Phoenix police employees should be compensated for work they do on behalf of a labor union is finally in the hands of a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.
Those involved, including two competing conservative think tanks and one representing the police union and Phoenix, presented their final arguments Friday before Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper, who cut off several of the attorneys during their presentations to ask the same question: Why should I rule in your clients’ favor?
The city’s agreement with the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, approved on a split council vote last year, authorizes the labor group to place six police officers in full-time roles with the union and allows a bank of hours those union officials can offer to other officers to perform union work.
The bank of hours includes more than 1,800 for training and conferences, and the contract authorizes full-time union employees to receive straight-time pay when they work overtime. Estimates put the cost of the practice at about $850,000 each year.
Cooper enjoined the practice before the union’s contract expired last year, following a lawsuit from the Goldwater Institute, and she again halted “release time” after a new contract was approved in 2012 that reauthorized the practice.
Goldwater sued the city and the union, arguing that the practice violated the state Constitution’s gift clause. The gift clause requires that public entities receive substantial benefit from any public money they spend.
The trio of attorneys representing the city, police union and conservative-advocacy group Judicial Watch argued that the City Council has the authority to approve such agreements. The attorneys told the judge that the release-time payments are a pittance compared to the entire labor agreement and that release time is part of the union members’ overall compensation package, like an insurance policy, which they should control.
The Goldwater Institute has invoked the gift clause in the past five years to oppose shopping developments, financing for a professional hockey team and tax incentives for an aquarium in Tempe.
State law prohibits public entities from making donations, grants or subsidies to private corporations or associations. But the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that public bodies do not violate the clause if the expenditure has a public purpose and does not amount to an abuse of the government’s discretion.
Putting payments to police officers in the same category as tax incentives to real-estate moguls seems odd to supporters of the union’s position, but Goldwater Institute attorney Clint Bolick told Cooper on Friday that release time clearly fits the clause’s definition.
“Release time is a gratuity for PLEA,” Bolick said. “Release time is owned by PLEA, controlled by PLEA and used for the benefit of PLEA. As a result, it must be analyzed under the gift clause.”
The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the labor union that represents the majority of Phoenix officers and negotiates the contract with the city, has had the agreement allowing release time in place for 37 years, Mike Napier, the group’s attorney, told Cooper.
Other jurisdictions around the nation take different approaches to allow officers time off to represent one another during grievance proceedings, to respond to emergencies such as an officer-involved shooting and to conduct negotiations with city officials.
Some cities, including Chicago and Los Angeles, allow labor groups to reimburse the city for the union release time, according to court documents the Goldwater Institute filed. Houston and Fort Worth, Texas, have a bank of release-time hours to which officers can donate vacation time.
In Dallas, where Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia rose to the rank of assistant chief in a 33-year career, the leaders of the largest labor group request “business leave” from their supervisors to conduct union business and are paid for their time through union dues.
After Cooper’s initial injunction, Phoenix officials proposed a system that would require full-time union officers to create a log of their hours and activities and that would require the union to reimburse the city for hours spent doing work that was not determined to be for a public purpose.
The union rejected those proposals, and the contract was approved through 2014 with few changes.
Attorneys for the union, the city and Judicial Watch said Cooper would need to determine that the City Council abused its discretion when it kept release time in the contract.
“Do not substitute your judgment for that of the council,” Napier said.
Cooper didn’t indicate when she might rule on the case.
Don't think you have an airtight alibi, some prosecutor will get a dumb jury to convict like like they did to Deon Patrick.
I have posted a number of articles of innocent people like Deon Patrick who had air tight alibis but were still framed by the police and convicted of murders or other crimes they didn't do.
Last but not least the bogus confession given by Deon Patrick sounds like on that was obtained using the "9 Step Reid Method"
State inmate Deon Patrick hopes for freedom as co-defendant exonerated
By Steve Mills, Chicago Tribune reporter
July 27, 2013
MENARD, Ill. — On the day late last month that an exonerated Daniel Taylor walked out of the state prison here, Deon Patrick held an emotional farewell meeting with his close friend, expressing hope that he, too, would be freed soon.
After all, both were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 1992 double murder. The cases against them and six co-defendants were built on confessions in which all eight incriminated each other.
Patrick and his lawyers believe that the fatal flaw in Taylor's case — that he was being held in a police station lockup when the murders took place — would unravel Patrick's conviction as well since the cases were so tightly intertwined through the interlocking confessions.
In a lengthy interview this week at Menard Correctional Center in southern Illinois, Patrick struck a bittersweet note, elated for his friend but frustrated that he remains locked up.
"It was hard to watch him leave," said Patrick, 41, who has been imprisoned for about half his life. "But by the same token I wanted this to happen because it meant finally somebody was listening."
Patrick finds himself in the same position as other inmates whose co-defendants had been exonerated — left behind but not without hope.
After death row inmate Aaron Patterson was pardoned by then-Gov. George Ryan in 2003, co-defendant Eric Caine waited eight years until his release, even though both cases were built on confessions obtained by the police through torture. Just this week the Chicago City Council approved a payout of $10 million to Caine to settle his wrongful-conviction lawsuit.
Herbert Whitlock was released in 2008, four years after co-defendant Gordon "Randy" Steidl was set free, despite the fact that the evidence against both in a 1986 double murder in Edgar County in east central Illinois depended on witnesses whose testimony had been undermined.
For Patrick, much like in those cases, the lion's share of attention had long been directed at Taylor, whose alibi that he was in custody at the time of the murders was unusual and powerful.
After Taylor's release June 28, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said her office began an in-depth review of Patrick's conviction and vowed to work with urgency since Patrick remains in prison.
Alvarez's words are cold comfort for Patrick, though. He said he had watched with dismay as prosecutors fought for close to two decades to keep Taylor in prison, despite police records showing he was locked up when the murders occurred.
"It sometimes makes you wonder how they do the things they do and then go to sleep at night," Patrick said in a small prison room separated by glass from a reporter.
Patrick is a thick-set man with gray creeping into his neatly trimmed beard. He has a deep voice, and his dark eyes sometimes give him an almost baleful expression. But that is belied by the easy smile that frequently breaks out across his face and his warm manner.
Patrick recalled how after the death of his mother when he was 16 he spent a lot of time on the street, at one point picking up a robbery conviction that sent him to a boot camp for four months.
"It changed the course of my life," he said of her death. "It made me have to become grown when I wasn't ready for it."
Patrick was 20 when he was arrested with Taylor and six others for the fatal shootings of Jeffrey Lassiter and Sharon Haugabook in Lassiter's apartment, not far from Clarendon Park on Chicago's North Side.
Patrick said he asked police to call a lawyer who had represented him on another case but they refused. [5th Amendment rights??? You ain't go no stinking 5th Amendment rights around cops!!!] He said the detectives and a prosecutor, Assistant State's Attorney Joe Magats, pressed him to admit his role in the murders but that he repeatedly refused.
"I'm telling them I didn't know nothing about the crime," he said.
Patrick said the detectives showed him statements from some of his co-defendants implicating him in the murders and even brought some of them into the interrogation room and told him they had identified him as being involved in the crime. Still, Patrick said, he insisted he was innocent. After about 30 hours in custody, though, Patrick said he started to lose all hope of ever being released and signed a four-page confession that Magats wrote out for him. [This sounds like a typical confession obtained using the "9 Step Reid Method". The police question the suspect for many long hours, and get this promise to let them go home after they sign a confession. Yea, sure they get to go home - home to prison. But the pressure exerted by the cops is usually enough to get the confession and for the cops all they care about is the confession so they can get another raise by saying they solved another crime.]
"It was a mental strain, the threats of never seeing your kids again, the threats of going to death row," Patrick said.
Magats, who also took Taylor's longer formal confession, now is a deputy chief of the criminal prosecutions bureau, a high-ranking post in the state's attorney's office. He declined to comment for this story through an office spokeswoman.
In the confession, Patrick identified himself as a member of the Conservative Vice Lords street gang since he was about 9 and said that he, Taylor and two others went inside Lassiter's apartment while four other teens stayed outside and acted as lookouts. According to Patrick's confession, co-defendant Dennis Mixon gave him a gun and Patrick shot Lassiter. Mixon then shot Haugabook, the confession said.
Taylor's confession, though, claimed that Patrick shot both victims.
"The sole piece of evidence against Deon was his confession. There wasn't any physical evidence. And nothing else," said Nicole Auerbach, Patrick's attorney. "And what we know now is that this couldn't possibly have happened the way they said it happened."
Patrick said he could not offer police an alibi after his arrest two weeks following the murders because he could not recall where he was that night. Later, though, he said he remembered he had been at the home of a friend's sister watching a football game on TV.
At Patrick's trial, his attorney did not call the friend's sister as a witness to support his alibi, and Patrick did not testify in his own defense. Years later, the woman provided Patrick an affidavit confirming his alibi.
Patrick was convicted by a jury. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, but he was sentenced to life in prison.
Three of the co-defendants either had their charges thrown out or were acquitted at trial, but Taylor, Mixon and two others were convicted with Patrick. The two others received shorter sentences and are free. But Mixon, who is serving a life sentence, has since admitted taking part in the murders and absolved the other seven of involvement. He has even named another man as an accomplice in the killings.
Prison, according to Patrick, has been "miserable." He missed his two young children growing up and has had few visits from his family or friends. His hopes were raised when a 2001 Tribune investigation, while focusing largely on Taylor and uncovering additional evidence of his innocence, suggested that the entire case was flawed. But prosecutors continued to fight.
Patrick's hopes were raised again when Alvarez's predecessor, Dick Devine, launched an investigation into the prosecution in response to stories in the Tribune. But Patrick said officials from the office tried to get him to implicate another man in the murders and showed no interest in his claim of innocence. Documents that were later turned over to Taylor's attorneys suggested Devine's inquiry was focused on preserving the convictions.
"It was almost like we were back at the police station," Patrick said of the officials who talked with him at the time. "They were yelling."
Now, Patrick has a newfound hope. After Taylor's goodbye, he said he turned off his TV and began studying his case again. By chance, that same day he received in the mail a copy of a new appeal that his lawyers were filing. What's more, he learned that Alvarez's conviction integrity unit would review his case after throwing out Taylor's conviction. He was reluctant to be optimistic, he said, but hope crept in anyway.
He has begun to let himself daydream about seeing his children — now adults — in the outside world. He has also let himself think of seeing Taylor again.
"I know that one day I'll be able to be out there with him," Patrick said.
smmills@tribune.com
I suspect that if a civilian had accidentally ran over and killed Ye Mengyuan, they would have been charged with some form of negligent homicide or manslaughter.
Of course I doubt San Francicso fire-woman Elyse Duckett will be charged with a crime. As usual when our government masters screw things up, it's the old "Do as I say, not as I do" line.
Even though the accident was tragic and preventable I don't think the government should charge people with crimes which are accidents and when there is no criminal intent.
At most Elyse Duckett should be liable for any damages she cause by accidentally killing Ye Mengyuan.
Attorney: 'Multiple' firefighters knew Asiana Flight 214 passenger was in a position of danger before fire truck killed her
By Dan Nakaso and Mark Emmons
Staff writers
Posted: 07/26/2013 05:39:35 PM PDT
SAN FRANCISCO -- "Multiple" San Francisco firefighters knew that a 16-year-old passenger from Asiana Flight 214 had been taken from the crashed plane's wreckage and placed in harm's way on the tarmac, where she was run over and killed by a fellow firefighter, the lawyer for the family of the dead girl said Friday.
Ye Mengyuan was "left unattended and not properly protected, tended to or properly cared for. She did not have fatal injuries or injuries that would have resulted in death before she was run over by that truck," said attorney Anthony Tarricone, a partner with the New York-based law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler.
The firm represents the families of all three Chinese teenage girls who died and a dozen other injured passengers from the Boeing 777. The firm, which has a team of lawyers in town conducting its own investigation of the July 6 crash, has handled cases involving some of the world's biggest aviation disasters, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all 259 on board along with 11 people on the ground.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators said Asiana Flight 214 came in too low and too slow before it slammed into the seawall that abuts San Francisco International Airport's Runway 28 Left. Mengyuan, 16, was alive and covered in firefighting foam when she was run over by a San Francisco fire truck responding to the burning plane, according to San Francisco police, who continue to investigate her death.
Although Ye had been seated in the back of the Boeing 777 when it crashed, her body was discovered in front of the left wing of the plane after she had been run over. Investigators have not explained how she ended up near the front of the plane.
"We know that multiple firefighters knew she was there, and she was left there to fend for herself before the foam was put down," Tarricone told this newspaper.
ABC7, citing unnamed sources, first reported Thursday that a firefighter pulled Ye from the plane and put her on the ground near the wing. The station said that another firefighter, Elyse Duckett, 49, was out getting food for the SFO fire station when Asiana Flight 214 crashed. When Duckett returned to the station, she found everyone had gone to the crash scene, so she got into a reserve truck, Mobile 37, and drove alone, without a spotter or rider to help navigate, according to ABC7.
The station reported that it was Duckett's truck that ran over the girl.
According to an earlier report by the San Francisco Chronicle, the truck was not equipped with Forward Looking Infrared, which uses heat-sensing technology to detect body temperatures.
While not disputing the details in the ABC7 report, the San Francisco Fire Department blasted the story in a statement Friday.
"This news outlet distastefully disclosed personnel information, as well as released incomplete information," the statement said. "Out of respect for the family of Ye Mengyuan and the investigative processes, the department will await the outcome of the investigations prior to commenting any further about the accident."
Ye's family is "heart-broken and devastated," Tarricone said. "It appears that the truth is starting to come out. But I don't believe it's all been told at this time. The bottom line is that there are many unanswered questions about what happened and many unanswered questions about the versions that have been told by various officials at various times."
San Francisco police officials said on Friday they will not comment while their investigation is underway.
Ken Willette, division manager of the Public Fire Protection Division of the National Fire Protection Association, had never heard of a similar firefighting tragedy "in 35 years of fire service."
Willette called Ye's death a "tragic accident during an amazing response to a disaster where lives were saved."
"Imagine responding to an incident, and you see a plane burning," Willette told this newspaper. "You're driving an apparatus to get there and put out the fire. And you see people coming toward you to escape the crash. Your goal is to get as close as possible to lay down a blanket of foam so people escaping are protected from the fire. So you have to focus on the fire and avoid the crowd. It's usually mass chaos in situations like this."
Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/dannakaso.
Sounds like it.
If a civilian threatened to burn down the Glendale City hall and kill the mayor of Glendale for giving the Coyotes millions of our tax dollars that civilian would be in prison right now. But when the Glendale police chief does the same thing it's no big deal.
Board: Glendale's former assistant police chief should be reinstated
By Miguel Otarola The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Jul 25, 2013 5:32 PM
Glendale’s former assistant police chief should get his job back, so said a personnel oversight board Wednesday after reviewing his demotion.
Dominguez was bumped down to commander in April following accusations that he threatened to burn down Spanky’s Smoke Shop in Peoria for selling “stuff” to his son. That stuff, Dominguez later said, was the synthetic drug known as “spice.”
The police report said Dominguez returned to the store and threatened to kill an employee if the store kept selling to his son. Dominguez was off-duty during the incidents and did not announce he was an officer, said David Leibowitz, spokesman for the Glendale chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. Leibowitz added Dominguez was not wearing his police uniform or driving a patrol car.
[So since he didn't commit the crimes while he was wearing the Glendale Police Chief's uniform that means everything is OK????]
In addition to his demotion, Dominguez was suspended for five days without pay by Chief Deborah Black in April following a internal affairs investigation.
The board listened to arguments from the city attorney and Dominguez’s lawyer, Neil Landeen, as well as testimony from Black Wednesday night. In the end, those voting in favor of Dominguez said the punishment was too harsh.
[What rubbish!!! Since when is firing a crooked cop for threatening arson and murder too harsh of a punishment. If he was a civilian he would be sitting in jail waiting to go to trial for threatening arson and murder]
The personnel board hears appeals regarding disciplines, according to the Glendale city website. It is made up of five residents appointed by Glendale City Council.
[Yea, and they are probably all cops or ex-cops?]
The board’s recommendation will go to City Manager Brenda Fischer, who began her position earlier this week. Fischer has the choice of upholding Black’s demotion or reinstating Dominguez as assistant police chief.
“I’m sure she will want to go forward ... and make a decision sooner rather than later,” said Julie Pendergast, president of the Glendale Chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.
The police department has two assistant police chief positions. Currently Rick St. John is the only sitting assistant chief and the other position is unfilled. Commander Matthew Lively is serving in the interim.
Dominguez has served with the Glendale Police Department for 28 years, according to the department’s website.
Leibowitz said Wednesday’s recommendation was still not a reason for Dominguez to celebrate.
“This is not time for a victory lap. This is an intermediate step,” he said. “(Greg) is obviously very grateful to have the opportunity to have the city manager decide this case.”
Justin Harris, president of the Glendale Law Enforcement Association, called the personnel board’s decision, “the right call.”
[Yea, let one crooked cops be fired, and next thing you know other crooked cops will be fired. Can let that happen. Any member of the police union will tell you it's wrong to fire crooked cops.]
Department officials did not return several calls requesting interviews.
“He is not looking to avoid responsibility of what happened,” Leibowitz said. “He just loves his job.”
[What rubbish!!! He is a criminal who should have been fired from his job]
Patterson: SSDI is nothing but government social welfare
Posted: Monday, July 29, 2013 7:49 am
Commentary by Tom Patterson
Social Security Disability Insurance is turning into a monster. It has experienced exponential growth, much like other big government entitlement programs. As a consequence, it threatens to run out of money by 2016. Worse, it weakens our economy and has become yet another dark cloud over our financial future.
Eleven-million Americans receive SSDI today, compared to 2.7 million in 1970.
[That is 3.5 percent of the total US population, or about 7 percent of the adult US population] During that time, we seen an 800 percent increase, inflation-adjusted, in SSDI spending.
How could that be? The number of workers in physically demanding jobs like mining, manufacturing and agriculture has declined, while employment has surged in fields like health, education and finance.
Some of the growth can be explained by the aging of the working population and an increase in women with sufficient work history to become eligible. But the real culprit is the design of the program itself.
In 1984, Congress significantly broadened eligibility and included coverage for more subjective problems like back pain and mood disorders. The rolls begin to fill with sufferers from these hard-to-disprove maladies which now draw more payments than diseases like cancer, heart disease and provable musculoskeletal disorders.
SSDI payments, based on a workers wage history, average just $1,130 monthly for the predominately low-wage, unskilled workers who draw SSDI. That may not seem like much — just $2,000 annually over the federal poverty level for a single person — but Medicare eligibility is also included. For whatever reasons, it’s catnip for those in the program. In 2011, only 0.5 percent of people receiving disability payments returned to work. The vast majority simply “graduate” to the Social Security retirement program.
Tellingly, disability applications rise during economic recessions. Disability insurance can become more of a strategy for supplemental income and early retirement then a safety net. Many states actively try to herd beneficiaries who are in state programs into SSDI where federal cash and Medicare relieve the state of its obligations. Unions often help workers to achieve SSDI eligibility when they suffer job losses.
Multiple studies have demonstrated the obvious: SSDI functions as a powerful disincentive to return to employment. Workers are “pretty unlikely to want to forfeit economic security for a precarious job market,” notes Prof. David Autor of MIT. Workers also find that idleness makes them less employable.
But all these reasons to get on and stay on SSDI not only cost taxpayers a bundle, they’re a serious threat to our economy, which is suffering from a shrinking workforce. More than 66 percent of Americans age 16 and older were working or looking for work in 2009, at the start of the current recovery. The participation rate is currently down to 63.3%. The unemployment numbers don’t look so bad but we have fewer workers pulling the wagon and contributing to the wealth of the nation. SSDI recipients, whether warranted or not, are people in their working years who are taking from rather than contributing to the social programs they will expect when they are seniors.
SSDI is yet one more iteration of the same old story — a government social welfare program, founded on the best intentions, that in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats morphs into a wasteful blob. The administration of SSDI over the years has worked harder at getting workers into the program in than in getting them back to work.
They (we) actually paid $1.4 billion to “disability advocates”, who help workers attain eligibility. Yet administrators have enrolled only 3 percent of those eligible in the Ticket to Work program which offers vocational rehabilitation and job placement.
As Ronald Reagan would say, there is a solution that is simple, but not easy. If we privatized SSDI, we could reduce costs sharply.
Private disability insurers, needless to say, don’t just shovel money out the door. They’re highly motivated first to determine if claimants are truly injured or just wish they were. They also put great emphasis on programs helping people return to work. As a result, they typically return about 20 percent of claimants to work each year, a rate 40 times that achieved by government.
Helping people who need it is a long American tradition. However, that doesn’t mean we can afford to be stupid about our burgeoning social programs.
East Valley resident Tom Patterson (pattersontomc@cox.net) is a retired physician and former state senator.
BART workers' paychecks already outpace their peers'
By Mike Rosenberg and Daniel J. Willis
Mercury News
Posted: 07/27/2013 04:00:00 PM PDT
While BART and its unions fight over employee pay raises with another strike looming in a week, a new analysis by this newspaper reveals the rail line's workers already have bigger paychecks than any of their peers.
BART workers easily earned the most money on average last year among the 25 largest government agencies in the Bay Area, the newspaper's review of public employee payroll data shows. What's more, BART employees also topped the list of the highest-paid transit operators in California.
And the results are not close. Even when eliminating high-paid police officers and executives, the average gross pay for the blue-collar BART union workers who are threatening another shutdown was $76,551 last year -- more than the average employee made at any large school district from San Jose to Walnut Creek, any county from Santa Cruz to Contra Costa or any transit line from San Diego to Sacramento.
BART's top-paid train operator grossed $155,308, compared with the $109,450 that the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority paid its top light-rail driver. BART's best-paid janitor made $82,752 while the upscale Hillsborough City School District paid its top custodian $59,360. And BART's electrician with the highest paycheck made $149,957 -- nearly twice the $79,878 that AC Transit's best-paid electrician made.
The wages are under heightened scrutiny as BART and its labor unions on Tuesday enter their final week of negotiations, hoping to avert a second shutdown, Aug. 5, after a cooling-off period halted a 4½-day strike earlier this month. Both sides remain far apart on the key issues of worker pay and contributions to pensions and health care.
Overall, BART's average employee -- executives included -- made nearly $30,000 more than employees at Los Angeles' transit line, and nearly $10,000 more than those at San Francisco Muni, the state's second-highest paid transit workers.
BART workers argue their wages have remained flat for four years. They say they are worthy of their salaries, pointing to the agency's strong on-time performance, high rider satisfaction and their work maintaining one of the nation's most antiquated rail lines.
"You buy a Mercedes, you get quality. You almost get what you pay for," said Dennis Acma, 47, of Dublin, a power support controller at BART for the past seven years. "They're paying for that expertise. You got people who are dedicated that work here."
Despite the lack of recent wage increases, BART has not had trouble attracting -- or retaining -- people to fill their union jobs, such as station agent, train operator and maintenance worker, that typically require a high school diploma and a few years of general work experience.
Since 2007, BART has received nearly 65,000 job applications for about 1,800 line-level union openings. Only 6.8 percent of BART's blue-collar workforce left the job in the past year -- half the average national turnover rate for public and private employers -- and the typical union employee stays with BART for 13 years.
The data show BART pay is above average partly because of favorable rules that allow workers to pile up lots of overtime and cash out unused sick and vacation time, which has helped some employees double their base salary. But BART and experts say it's also the result of previous managers caving to the public demand to avoid strikes by including regular pay bumps for decades, until
BART union members picket outside Caltrans building on their third day of strike in Oakland, Calif., July 3, 2013. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
2009.
"(BART unions) have a degree of leverage from a strike perspective that many other industries don't, and this is a classic example of them capitalizing on it," said Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles-based economics consulting firm. "If you ask me, it's a tiny bit short of blackmail: 'Give me the money or the commute's going to get it.' "
Union employees say the cost of living in the Bay Area has soared and BART's revenue has surged to record levels. Plus, because of management's push to increase health care and pension premiums, employees stand to see their take-home pay go down without raises.
And not all workers are highly paid. Last year, 830 part-time and full-time BART workers -- or nearly one-quarter of the rail line's workforce -- made less than the $62,680 median income in the San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont metropolitan area.
Acma, the BART worker, said he's tired of people thinking they are drones who only push buttons and said the employees work hard, often on off-hours, holidays and weekends, for their money.
"It's unfortunate that our jobs do hold the Bay Area hostage," he said. "We're scrimping by, and sometimes the public treats us like we're above everybody else. We're not the 1-percenters."
But BART says it needs to limit worker costs, which, as in most transit agencies, are the biggest expense in its budget. If overall compensation goes up, BART officials say, they will have to delay payments toward new rail cars and other equipment needed to increase service.
Before state mediators earlier this month ordered both sides to keep their latest proposals secret, BART had offered a wage increase of 5 to 8 percent, depending on whether certain economic measures were met, over four years. That would push the average union gross pay to as much as $82,861 by 2017.
Unions had countered with a pay increase of 20.1 percent over three years, which would increase their average total pay to $92,991 by 2016.
The pay comes on top of the benefits BART workers earn, which are among the best in the Bay Area and have eaten up half the extra revenue the agency has collected in the past few years. Employees contribute nothing toward their pension and $92 a month toward health care.
"I don't know if it's an urban myth or just a saying, that the BART contract is held up in union halls around the county as the gold standard," BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said. "We have to bring our compensation packages more in line with what others have. Years of protecting the employees have caught up with us."
Contact Mike Rosenberg at mrosenberg@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5705. Follow him at Twitter.com/RosenbergMerc.
$250,000 for moving your bogus business to Arizona???
Wow! This guy told Jan Brewer that he was moving his bogus business from California to Arizona and got $250,000 in corporate welfare from the state of Arizona.
Light-rail train strikes, kills pedestrian in Tempe
Source
Puritans on San Jose city council don't like 'Bikini bar'
If you ask me it sounds like mixing government and religion in San Jose.
Pedestrian killed in incident with light-rail train in East Valley
Body parts spread over 2 1/2 miles of light rail track???
Va. first lady McDonnell spent thousands from husband’s PAC on clothes
They are not bribes, they are campaign contributions - honest!!!!
Border statistics demanded by Arizona's congressional delegation
I guess the goons in the BP are only going to tell us the statistics that makes them look like heroes!!!!
Glendale denies unlawful ‘meetings’
I guess it's how you define the meaning of a word.
"It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is."
I guess Glendale City Attorney Nick DiPiazza has the same problem with the definition of "public meetings"
Judge to decide if Phoenix Police have to obey the law
For some odd reason the Phoenix Police think they are above the law and don't have to obey it.
A good alibi won't keep you out of prison???
State inmate Deon Patrick hopes for freedom as co-defendant exonerated
Air tight alibi??? Don't make me laugh. You were at work when the murder occurred, have time cards to prove it along with 6 witnesses, and a video tape.
Firetruck kills passenger in Asiana Flight 214 plane crash
Firetruck kills passenger in Asiana Flight 214 plane crash
It's impossible to fire a crooked police chief????
Glendale Police Chief Greg Dominguez threatens to burn down store and kill employees
It's impossible to fire a crooked police chief????
Glendale’s assistant police chief Greg Dominguez threatened to burn down Spanky’s Smoke Shop in Peoria for selling “stuff” to his son. Assistant police chief Greg Dominguez also threatened to kill a store employee.
The city’s Personnel Board voted 3-1 to recommend Greg Dominguez’s reinstatement after a four-and-a-half hour appeal hearing that ended at 10:45 p.m.
Patterson: SSDI is nothing but government social welfare
Source
BART workers' paychecks already outpace their peers'
Source
Mexicans outraged by humiliation of Indian boy
Mexicans outraged by humiliation of Indian boy
Mexico outraged by official's humiliation of Indian boy - Whatsupic
MEXICO CITY — A 10-year-old Indian street vendor whose humiliation by a city inspector tugged on the heart strings of Mexicans after a video of it appeared on social media was showered Friday with attention and the offer of a scholarship.
The video shows the poor, sandal-clad Tzotzil boy selling candy, cough drops and apparently cigarettes out of a wicker basket in Villahermosa, the capital of the Gulf coast state of Tabasco. State officials say the boy, Manuel Diaz Hernandez, was trying to earn money to buy his own school supplies.
A city inspector, identified as Juan Diego Lopez, spots the boy, confronts him and takes several packs of cigarettes from his basket. It is prohibited in Mexico for minors to buy or sell cigarettes.
In the video, Manuel can be seen weeping inconsolably as the inspector forces him to take all the candy in his basket, handful by handful, and toss it on the pavement. The cost of the candy and cigarettes could well be more than the boy would earn with a week’s work.
As the inspector walks off with the boy’s cigarettes, another man steps forward to help him try to pick up the sweets, and Manuel collapses into a squatting position, covering his face with his arms, rocking back and forth and sobbing loudly. The encounter took place on Monday.
The video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the last few days, and on Friday the governmental National Human Rights Commission announced it would investigate the case. The city announced on Wednesday that it has fired the inspector.
It was the latest victory for social media in winning some measure of justice in Mexico. In recent years, social media have exposed a number of scandals and instances of mistreatment that often would have gone overlooked in the past.
“Any form of violence against children is totally unacceptable, especially when directed against Indians, who are one of the most vulnerable groups in the country,” the rights commission said in a statement.
Street vendors in Mexico frequently sell single cigarettes to passers-by at twice their original price, for people who don’t have the time or money to buy a full pack. Officials agreed that the punishment meted out to the boy for selling cigarettes was out of line, especially in the southeast, a part of the country where Indians were routinely enslaved a century ago.
The Tabasco state prosecutors’ office said the boy’s aunt, Maria Diaz Diaz, said she had brought Manuel to Villahermosa about 10 days earlier. She said the boy lives with his grandparents in the Tzotzil Indian village of San Juan Chamula, in neighboring Chiapas state, and wanted to work during his summer vacation to raise money for school supplies in the fall. Mexican children get free textbooks, but often have to buy their own pencils, paper and uniforms.
Tabasco state Gov. Arturo Nunez announced Thursday his administration would give Manuel and his family “a scholarship, as well as all medical and psychological help for the boy.”
Lupita Santiago, a spokeswoman for the Chiapas state child welfare agency, said Manuel speaks only limited Spanish. His age is listed as 10, but in rural communities like his hometown births are often not registered until much later.
They boy, who appears short for his age, had returned to his village following the incident, apparently fearing retaliation by Villahermosa officials.
“The boy is doing well,” Santiago noted. He didn’t suffer physical harassment, but it was harassment.”
The child welfare agency is also providing the boy “all necessary help,” she said.
The Tabasco state prosecutors’ office said Friday it had detained another municipal employee who participated in the incident and is investigating both workers on suspicion of abuse of authority and theft.
John McCain is against the "military police state"???
Kyrsten Sinema votes to support the military police state???
John McCain is against the "military police state"???That's probably as accurate as Hitler saying he loves Jews.
And allegedly anti-war, anti-police state Kyrsten Sinema seems to have turned into a supporter of the military industrial complex and the police state.
Kyrsten Sinema voted against the bill which would have curbed the NSA surveillance operations.
Kyrsten Sinema when she was an Arizona elected official tried to flush Arizona's medical marijuana program (Prop 203) down the toilet introducing a bill that would have slapped a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.
McCain: More transparency on NSA
By Dan Nowicki The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Jul 27, 2013 7:51 PM
U.S. Sen. John McCain says last week’s narrow U.S. House vote on the National Security Agency’s phone-record collecting demonstrates the need for President Barack Obama’s administration to better explain the controversial anti-terror program to an anxious public.
The Republican-controlled House voted 217-205 Wednesday to defeat an amendment that would have drastically curtailed the NSA’s snooping practice, which has rattled privacy advocates and civil libertarians across the political spectrum since it was disclosed in early June.
“I think it’s a combination of right and left, but I think it’s a little more than that. And that is, there’s suspicion out there,” McCain, R-Ariz., told The Arizona Republic. “Because I don’t think there has been enough communication with the American people as to exactly what they’re doing and what they’re not doing. In other words, it concerns all of us that the government might be invading our privacy. So there’s going to have to be legislation that calls for greater transparency and sharing of methodology without compromising our ability to defend this country.”
The split in Arizona’s House delegation illustrates how the NSA issue has blurred traditional partisan and ideological lines. Republican U.S. Reps. Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon and David Schweikert joined Democratic U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Ed Pastor in voting to curb the NSA surveillance operation. Democratic U.S. Reps. Ron Barber, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema [looks like the allegedly anti-war peacenik Kyrsten Sinema now supports the police state and military industrial complex] and Republican U.S. Rep. Trent Franks opposed the amendment to essentially kill the program, which was developed as part of the war against terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“I doubt if there would have been that vote on Sept. 12, 2001,” McCain said.
In other developments:
McCain is continuing to push bipartisan legislation that over four years would phase out the $1 bill and replace it with a $1 coin. He argues the transition would modernize U.S. currency while saving taxpayers billions of dollars and reducing the deficit.
But a gossip columnist for the Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, last week asked him about one constituency that has been cool to the coin idea: strippers and exotic dancers who collect dollar bills as tips during their stage performances.
“Then I hope that they could obtain larger denominations,” McCain told The Hill, eventually adding, “Fives, tens, one hundreds!”
On Friday, McCain clarified to The Republic that he weighed in only when “pressed about the predicament” by the media.
“I was asked about it. ... I don’t frequent those establishments,” McCain said. “I don’t presume to know what’s best. I think I’m an expert on a lot of national-security issues, but that’s one that I’m not really well-versed in.”
McCain’s “a la carte” cable television bill got a boost last week when U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut announced that he would sign on as its lead Democratic co-sponsor.
McCain this year revived legislation that would encourage cable and satellite TV providers to offer customers the ability to purchase only the channels they want to watch instead of having to buy an expensive bundle. The bill, which faces stiff resistance from the influential telecommunications industry, remains a longshot to become law, but Blumenthal’s participation could help its chances in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
“We’re having a lot of fun with it,” McCain said. “We’re making those lobbyists earn their salaries.”
Nowicki is The Republic’s national political reporter.
John McCain and Barack Obama working together???
And it ain't about good government. It's kind of like the typical "I will vote for your pork if you vote for my pork" line.Or you could think of it like the Crips and the Bloods working together corner the heroin market in South Central Los Angeles. [Not that I have anything against heroin, I think it should be legalized]
Sadly ever since Barack Obama got elected he pretty much has been a clone of both George W. Bush and John McCain.
Barack Obama and John McCain: Washington's newest odd couple
Posted: Sunday, July 28, 2013 1:14 pm
Associated Press
There was no conciliatory phone call, no heart-to-heart talk to soothe the tensions. No one knows exactly when President Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain went from bitter rivals in the 2008 presidential campaign and foes over health care and national security to bipartisan partners.
Yet in recent months, an alignment on high-profile domestic issues — not to mention an eye on their respective legacies — has transformed Obama and McCain into Washington's most unexpected odd couple. The Arizona senator is a regular visitor to the West Wing and in near-daily contact with senior White House officials.
McCain, in an Associated Press interview, said that he and Obama "trust each other." White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, among the Obama advisers who speak regularly with McCain, praised the lawmaker as a "refreshing" partner who "welcomes a debate and welcomes action."
Like any good business arrangement in the nation's capital, the secret to the new Obama-McCain alliance ultimately comes down to this: Both sides believe that working together is mutually beneficial and carries little political risk.
For Obama, the senator has become a rare Republican backer of important elements on the president's second term agenda, including immigration overhaul, stricter background checks for gun buyers, and perhaps a fall budget deal.
In return, McCain has secured increased access to the White House and an opportunity to redeem his reputation as a Capitol Hill "maverick." That image was tainted when McCain tacked to the right during his failed 2008 presidential run against Obama.
"I've told the people of Arizona, I will work with any president if there are ways I can better serve Arizona and the country," McCain said. "That seems to be an old-fashioned notion but it's the case."
Indeed, the level of attention lavished on a functional working relationship between the Democratic president and the Republican senator underscores how rare such partnerships have been during Obama's tenure.
Lawmakers, including some Democrats, long have chafed at Obama's distant dealings with Capitol Hill and his supposed lack of understanding about how Congress operates.
It's unlikely that Obama and McCain's partnership will lead to a larger detente between the White House and congressional Republicans. While McCain may have sway over some like-minded members of the Senate Republican caucus, he has considerably less influence with his party's more conservative wing, particularly in the GOP-controlled House.
Still, the White House is hopeful that forging policy breakthroughs with McCain and other Senate Republicans will isolate the House GOP and perhaps persuade them to act.
The first test of that strategy probably will be the White House-backed immigration overhaul. McCain helped write and shepherd the bill through the Senate last month. Its future in the House is deeply uncertain.
The administration also will try to work with McCain ahead of impending budget battles, McDonough said, given that the senator and the White House agree there is a negative impact from across-the-board federal budget cuts, particularly on the military and defense industry.
McDonough said it's not just a shared view on policy that has made McCain an attractive partner to Obama on these and other issues. It's their mutual disdain for Washington meetings that never move beyond the standard talking points.
"Part of what's great to work with him is his impatience with that," McDonough said. "You can kind of get into the meat of the matter very quickly"
Obama and McCain were never close during the president's brief tenure in the Senate. While McCain is a creature of Capitol Hill, Obama largely saw Congress as a stepping stone to bigger things. The relationship deteriorated during frequent clashes in the 2008 presidential campaign, and it often appeared during Obama's first term like it would never recover.
In 2010, the two sparred during a televised negotiating session on health care. McCain chastised Obama for brokering deals behind closed doors, to which the president snapped, "We're not campaigning anymore. The election is over."
McCain replied: "I'm reminded of that every day."
White House advisers still bristle over McCain's accusations that the administration covered up details of last year's deadly attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya, as well as his relentless criticism of former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's role in that alleged effort.
McCain's criticism contributed to Rice's decision to withdraw from consideration as Obama's secretary of state. She now serves as White House national security adviser, a post that does not require Senate confirmation.
McDonough acknowledged that McCain's role in keeping the Benghazi controversy alive has been a source of frustration. But he credited the senator with largely shelving his criticism of Rice once she joined the White House staff.
"The way he's worked with her since she became national security adviser speaks to his interest in making sure that even where we disagree, we're finding a way to work together when we can," McDonough said. "I know the president has appreciated that."
McCain said his stronger ties with the president on domestic issues won't keep him from challenging the president on national security issues, including Syria, where McCain backs a more aggressive U.S. response than does the administration. But he said there's a way to strike an appropriate balance.
"He is the president of the United States," McCain said. "You can strongly disagree and still be respectful."
Low-level staff have access to ‘invasive’ surveillance
Greenwald: Low-level staff have access to ‘invasive’ surveillanceYea, sure - You have nothing to worry about unless you are a criminal. Your emails and phone calls are safe from the prying eyes of government bureaucrats - honest!!!!
Greenwald: Low-level staff have access to ‘invasive’ surveillance
By Aaron Blake, Published: July 28 at 10:57
Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who has worked with Edward Snowden to reveal sensitive national security information, said Sunday that low-level National Security Agency staff and contractors have access to a powerful and invasive tool that can provide them the e-mails and phone calls of basically anybody — up to and including the president.
“The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and e-mails in their databases that they’ve collected over the last several years,” Greenwald said on ABC’s “This Week.”
He then detailed the program, which he said only require an e-mail or an IP address to return data on Americans.“It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the e-mails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that e-mail address or that IP address do in the future,” Greenwald said.
Greenwald, who is set to testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, suggested intelligence officials are lying when they say low-level staff have no such access to that information. He said he “defies” intelligence officials to deny the program’s existence.
“It’s an incredibly powerful and invasive tool — exactly of the type that Mr. Snowden described,” Greenwald said.
Appearing on the same show, Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) cast doubt on Greenwald’s reporting.
“I was back out at NSA just last week, spent a couple hours out there with high-level and low-level NSA officials, and what I have been assured of is there is no capability … at NSA, for anyone without a court order to listen to any telephone conversation or to monitor any e-mail,” Chambliss said.
Chambliss also said any access that low-level staff had to such personal information would be accidental.
“In fact, we don’t monitor e-mails. That’s what kind of assures me is that the reporting is not correct. Because no emails are monitored now,” Chambliss said. “They used to be, but that stopped two or three years ago. So I feel confident that there may have been some abuse, but if it was it was purely accidental.”
NYC Mayor candidate likens "stop and frisk" to suspicions that killed Trayvon Martin
NYC Mayor candidate likens "stop and frisk" to suspicions that killed Trayvon MartinThompson Likens Police Stops to Suspicions That Killed Trayvon Martin
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: July 28, 2013
William C. Thompson Jr., a Democratic candidate for mayor, likened the policies of the New York City Police Department to the suspicions of George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, in an unusually personal and provocative speech on Sunday, saying that both had led to injustice for young black and Latino men.
“Here in New York City, we have institutionalized Mr. Zimmerman’s suspicion with a policy that all but requires our police officers to treat young black and Latino men with suspicion, to stop them and frisk them because of the color of their skin,” Mr. Thompson said at the AbundantLife Church in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
The remarks were by far his most forceful of the campaign on the contentious issue of stop-and-frisk policing, a widely used tactic that the city’s police force has credited with reducing gun violence, even as a growing number of elected officials have criticized it as overused and abusive.
Of what Mr. Thompson said were the 600,000 blacks and Latinos stopped by the New York police in 2011, he said a vast majority were innocent — “profiled as Trayvon was profiled.”
“If our government profiles people because of skin color and treats them as potential criminals, how can we expect citizens to do any less?” Mr. Thompson asked, as members of the small storefront church loudly applauded him and occasionally interrupted with cries of “amen.”
Mr. Thompson said he had endured criticism for declaring, after Mr. Zimmerman’s acquittal on July 13, that Mr. Martin, an unarmed teenager, was killed because of his skin color. But he reiterated that belief again on Sunday.
“Trayvon Martin did die because he was black,” Mr. Thompson said. Of that, there is no doubt.”
But he added, “the verdict in Florida was a verdict — but it was not the verdict.” He called on New Yorkers of all races to engage in a spirited and thoughtful discussion about the shooting and its meaning.
“Let the verdict of these days instead be this: that in protest on our streets, in quiet conversation with our families, or in the halls and chambers of our government, we will ask the hard questions, face the hard truths and honor our fathers’ and mothers’ dreams.”
Paradise Valley high-school students will be required to wear ID badges
What's next? Will the Jewish students be required to wear a badge with a yellow star on it???
If you ask me I would say it is a violation of the 5th Amendments, forcing kids to wear badges that have their photos and names on them.
Well yea, in addition to a violation of the 13th Amendment, because basically the state of Arizona is forcing the kids into slavery by requiring them to go to high school until they are 16, which is a violation of the 13th Amendment.
Per the 13th Amendment you can only force people into slavery when they have been convicted of a crime, allowing the government to sent them to prison as a slave for punishment of the crime they were convicted of.
Paradise Valley high-school students will be required to wear ID badges
By Amy B Wang The Republic | azcentral.com Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:20 PM
Starting this school year, all high-school students in the Paradise Valley Unified School District must wear identification badges at all times while on campus.
The new policy is part of an increased “sight security” effort, said PVUSD student services Director Jim Lee. The district’s five high schools and one alternative school will require wearing the badges — affecting about 11,000 students total.
“It’s kind of a safety and accountability measure of who should be on campus,” Lee said. “If a staff member is having an interaction with a student on campus, they can verify who they’re talking to.”
The district already issues photo-identification cards to all of its high-school students at the beginning of each school year. This year will be no different, except the photography companies taking student photos will provide lanyards free of charge, Lee said.
In the past, school officials required students to carry these identification cards with them at all times and students had to produce them if asked. Now, if they don’t wear the badges, they will face a series of warnings that differ at each high school.
Students had mixed reactions to the new policy.
Wyatt Wagner, an incoming junior at Shadow Mountain High School, said he has heard of people posing as different students on campus.
But even though he can see why the district would want to require badges, Wagner thinks it will be too much for schools to enforce the rule.
“I heard about it a couple months before school ended,” Wagner said. “Nobody’s going to actually follow through with it. There’s going to be too much trouble going on.”
“I don’t think it’s really that much of a big deal to have it on you,” said Nick Anderson, a senior at Shadow Mountain High School. “But also, 16- to 18-year-olds should be able to be trusted to be at your own school at your own time.”
Paradise Valley’s new policy is similar to one the Scottsdale Unified School District adopted last year, with mixed success. Not wearing badges in Scottsdale meant a dress-code violation for students, and the district reported that dress-code violations were up 900 percent this year.
Republic reporter Mary Beth Faller contributed to this article.
Mayor 'Headlock' Filner won't spell out his misconduct, so we will
By Robin Abcarian
July 29, 2013, 9:18 a.m.
Wow, what a relief.
I’m sure the women of San Diego are breathing easy now that Mayor Headlock is taking himself off to “behavior rehabilitation.”
For at least two weeks starting Aug. 5, the mayor will be off the streets, unable to inflict his trademark “half Filner” and “full Filner” wrestling moves on the female population. (Until then, ladies, steer clear of City Hall!)
For those who missed it, at a noon news conference on Friday, San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, a 70-year-old Democrat, apologized for his “conduct.” He ignored the growing chorus of calls for his resignation, opting instead to apologize for unspecified behavior and announce he’d be going away for a little while.
“I am responsible for my conduct,” he said. “And I must take responsibility for my conduct by taking action so that such conduct does not ever happen again.”
Using “conduct” as a euphemism is not really good enough, Mayor Feelin-her. Why don’t you spell out for us what you did wrong, exactly, so we can be assured that we’re all on the same page about your misdeeds?
Isn’t the first step in rehabilitation admitting what you've done?
Maybe I can help. Here is a list, compiled from what the public statements of your alleged victims. Feel free to refer to it in your first group therapy session:
- Irene McCormack Jackson, your former communications director, said you regularly inflicted the Full Filner on her, tried to kiss her and told her she’d do a better job without her panties. She’s suing you.
- Laura Fink said you patted her buttocks in 2005 when she was your deputy campaign manager.
- San Diego Union School District psychologist Morgan Rose said you tried to kiss her four times in 2009 when she was trying to discuss America’s Angel Campaign, a child welfare project with you. She contacted the San Diego County Sheriff’s dedicated Filner Sex Follies hotline.
- Retired Navy Rear Adm. Veronica Froman says at the end of a business meeting in your congressional office, you ran your finger up her cheek and asked her if she was involved with anyone. She asked her assistants to never leave her alone with him again.
- Sharon Bernie-Cloward, president of the San Diego Port Tenants Assn., said that last year Filner approached her after an event, hugged her and then groped her “backside” leaving her “startled and fearful.”
- Joyce Gattas, a dean at San Diego State University said that at various times, you held her too tight, touched her knee and kissed her.
- San Diego businesswoman Patti Roscoe said you put her in the headlock more than once in order to try to kiss her. A few months ago, it happened again, she told San Diego’s KPBS. “I turned and he just slobbered down my chin. And I was so violated and so offended.”
I think it’s important to note -- for the mayor, who seems confused on this point -- that going to rehab is not the same as “taking responsibility” for his, ah, conduct.
Rehabilitation is a distinctly different stage on the road to recovery.
Behavioral rehab is not the penalty for unwanted sexual touching. It is the treatment for unwanted sexual touching.
The penalty is something else entirely. It might be a forced resignation, or a recall election. It could be civil litigation by alleged victims. It could even be criminal assault charges.
I'm happy that Filner has vowed to use his time in rehab to become “the best person I must be.”
Mayor Headlock, however, needs to be held accountable for what he has already done
1) A large part of the time the park is not open to the public, but used for events to raise money for the royal rulers of Tempe. And these events are expensive to attend and most of the working class people
that live in Tempe can't afford to attend the events, despite the fact that these people
were forced to pay for
Tempe Town Toilet
with their hard earned tax dollars.
2) These events cause huge traffic jams and parking problems in the downtown Tempe area
3) When these events are concerts they routinely keep people awake late at night in the entire downtown area, and as far north as Roosevelt Road in Scottsdale which is also Continental Drive in Tempe. I am not sure how far south the concerts can be heard.
Also check out:
Tempe to weigh revising Town Lake plan
By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com
Tue Jul 30, 2013 12:10 AM
The Tempe City Council took a leap of faith more than a decade ago when it sank $44.8 million into building a 2 1/2-mile-long lake in the desert.
The council hoped that risking the debt to create high-profile waterfront property would pay off in the long run for Tempe, then a landlocked city desperate for new development.
But 14 years after the lake opened in 1999, city finance officials say Tempe is faced with a reality check that Town Lake is far from reaching the city’s development goals.
Tonight, the council is expected to consider revising a financing plan for Town Lake.
City finance officials have said the revised plan would give developers a financial break on their share of costs tied to the man-made lake
[i.e. - stiff us taxpayers with the cost], make private development more affordable
[i.e. stiff us taxpayers with the cost] and, ultimately, advance Tempe’s plans to secure sufficient lakeshore private development to ease the hefty public costs of maintaining Town Lake.
[now the last phrase certainly is an oxymoron - give tax dollars private developers to lower the cost to taxpayers - now that's an impossibility - the more we give them the more it costs us]
But critics argue that taxpayers have long carried the financial burden for private lake development.
The new plan offers no guarantee that economic breaks for developers will actually spur construction, argue Joe Pospicil and Art Jacobs, two longtime Tempe residents who regularly question city finances and criticize lake expenses.
If approved, the revised plan also would shift the burden of paying for a new west-end lake dam, which the city has estimated will cost at least $37.4 million, to Tempe taxpayers, freeing developers from sharing the expense to replace the dam.
[That a fancy way of saying give boatloads of our hard earned tax dollars out in corporate welfare rich corporations - the rich corporations that give bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions to the members of the Tempe City Council]
Approval of the city proposal would mark the second time a Tempe City Council, aiming to drive development, has tweaked the original 1995 lake-financing plan in favor of developers. The first was in 1997.
Mayor Mark Mitchell said he believes the proposal merits more time in the public realm so that council members may gain sufficient community feedback.
[Translation - he wants to make it look like the taxpayers approve of the members of the Tempe City Council giving boatloads of our cash to the rich corporations that gave the members of the Tempe City Council bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]
But it remains to be seen whether Mitchell’s colleagues agree that the council has a responsibility to arrange future forums for the public to question and comment on the proposal.
As of Monday, the proposed changes were included on the agenda for today’s council meeting.
The finance proposal is not set for a two-hearing process, which would have allowed for public comment at the first hearing and then required a vote and a second opportunity for public comment at a future council meeting.
That means the council could choose to approve the revised Town Lake financing plan with little opportunity for public input.
But before the council agenda was posted on the city’s website Friday, Mitchell said he still had questions about the financing plan.
“When we initially developed the lake, we had a plan, but it’s a working document,” he said. “We might change it, we might not. (But) we’ll have enough time to thoroughly review (any formal changes).”
[translation - we know how to run your life better then you do, but if we screw it up don't blame us]
Mitchell said he expects staff today to merely explain the long-term impact of the proposed changes.
[That pretty simple Mayor Mitchell, you and the other royal members of the Tempe City Council will be giving our hard earned tax dollars out as corporate welfare for years to come to corporations that give you bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions]
The proposed finance changes were triggered by an economic reality check, Roger Hallsted, the city finance analyst for the Rio Salado Community Facilities District, told The Arizona Republic.
“From all of our original projections, (we were) thinking really by about this time ... the lake would be built out,” Hallsted said.
Tempe’s goal is for private development on 120 acres to generate assessment fees covering 60 percent of annual operations costs.
[So us taxpayers will be forced to pay for 40 percent of the developers costs]
But a Republic analysis last year revealed that in the 13 years since the lake was filled, private development still only covered about 20 percent of operation and maintenance costs, well below the 60 percent envisioned in the original city plan.
[So in stead of us taxpayers being stuck with paying 40 percent of the developers costs, we are stuck with paying 80 percent of the developers costs - if you ask me us taxpayers are getting screwed on this deal]
Tempe taxpayers have and continue to pay the majority of the $2 million to $3 million in annual costs for operations and maintenance as well as most of the bill for the $44.8 million in original construction costs.
[translation - us taxpayers are getting screwed - also did you know that the city of Tempe spends more on Tempe Town Toilet, aka Tempe Town Lake then on all the other parks in Tempe combined???]
Private investment has spurred construction of about 24 acres of condos, high-rise office and commercial space around the lake. Town Lake supporters blame the recession for slower-than-expected development.
[Well why didn't the freaking geniuses on the Tempe City Council figure out this??? I guess they were too busy taking bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions from the rich developers]
The proposed changes to the financing plan are aimed at making land surrounding Town Lake more attractive to private development, Hallsted said.
[yea, like giving then 10 times as much corporate welfare as originally planned]
If the council approves the changes, Town Lake developers would pay less toward their share of payments for the original construction costs.
[And us taxpayers get screwed again and will have to make up the difference]
The proposal emanated from Tempe’s Enhanced Services Commission, Tempe Finance Manager Ken Jones said.
[It sounds more like it came from the developers who will be getting the corporate welfare if you ask me!!!!]
The commission includes representation from Jones; Town Lake developers; Nancy Hormann, the president of the group that manages the downtown Tempe district; and Arizona State University, which owns and is attempting to develop acres of lakeshore property.
[yes I was right, it did come from the developers who will are getting the corporate welfare!!!!]
A Republic review of public records from the commission meetings shows that commission members have spent the past year discussing development and maintenance plans for the lake.
At a January meeting, Jones asked for “the logic behind asking the council to cover the cost of replacing the dams,” according to public records of the meeting.
[If you remember it was the idiots on the Tempe City Council who get screwed on the damn. The accepted a worthless ORAL 30 year guarantee on the damn, which failed after 10 years causing us taxpayers to get stuck with the replacement costs]
Hallsted said shifting the cost of the dams from being a shared debt with private developers to a taxpayer-only-funded cost is the result of the original rubber dam deteriorating years earlier than expected.
[yea, like I just said]
“These new dams, at $38 million to $50 million, if we were to put that in at the true cost, just the (Town Lake) infrastructure replacement budget would have gone from $531,000 (annually) to $2 million,” he said.
The city had to face facts, he said, that it would have to shoulder the dam’s cost rather than “bankrupting every single (lake) property owner,” Hallsted said.
[f*ck you!!!! bankrupt the developers for making dumb decisions, not the taxpayers. Or let the members of the Tempe City Council pay for the whole thing.]
The commission questioned whether it’s “more expensive to build at the lake than anywhere else in the Valley” and whether the city was “willing to offer an incentive to level the playing field,” according to public meeting records.
[Well maybe the idiots on the Tempe City Council should not have build the lake, since it is a money losing experience]
The commission recommended a plan that would lower an annual “holding fee” of sorts that developers pay until they build on their lake property.
[translation - make the taxpayers pay more of the developers expenses - i.e. more corporate welfare for the rich corporations building stuff on Tempe Town Toilet]
If the revised plan is approved, that fee would be reduced from the current 5 percent to the rate of inflation, which is currently 2.2 percent, Hallsted said.
[which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]
The financing proposal also includes lowering the annual interest rate developers pay over the 25 years they are allowed to pay back their share of lake construction.
[again, which the Tempe taxpayers will pay]
The current interest rate is 5 percent, and the proposal would lower it to 3.64 percent, Hallsted said. He added that the proposal calls for the council to make the rate reduction retroactive to July 1, 2009.
If the council approves rolling back the fee, developers that have built existing commercial and residential development at the lake would receive credits on biannual debt payments they are currently making.
[and us taxpayers will be stuck with even bigger bills. Of course the members of the Tempe City Council will get to keep the bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions they accepted from the developers of property at Tempe Town Toilet]
While critics worry that taxpayers are funding too much of the cost for Town Lake, Hallsted reasons that the revised plan will establish a realistic financing plan for the lake and encourage development that will help pay a greater share of the lake’s annual operations and maintenance costs.
[why expect the developers to pay for their costs, when they can give small bribes, oops, I mean small campaign contributions to the Tempe City Council members who will stiff the taxpayers with the bill]
“The key thing,” he said, “is being fair to the citizens, but try to make it more enticing for developers to come in.” [translation - the key to this is SCREWING the taxpayers and forcing them to pay the developers bills]
Mayor 'Headlock' Filner won't spell out his misconduct, so we will
Remember out government masters usually think they know how to run our lives better then we do. Well despite the fact that they claim to by "public servants", not our "royal masters"
Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Lake!!!!
Corporate welfare at Tempe Town Toilet!!!!
I have these problems with
Tempe Town Toilet
or
Tempe Town Lake
as the royal members of the Tempe City Council call it.
The NSA hears and sees everything you do!!!!!
Metra boss got village pay despite ban
By David Heinzmann and Stacy St. Clair, Chicago Tribune reporters
7:19 a.m. CDT, July 30, 2013
Metra Chairman Brad O'Halloran received nearly $22,000 for his service as an elected trustee in Orland Park despite a state law banning Metra board members from receiving a paycheck from any other government post, according to records from the southwest suburb.
O'Halloran — under fire for his role in a large severance package to ousted Metra CEO Alex Clifford — attempted to return the money this month, according to public records obtained Monday by the Tribune.
He received pay from both government bodies for 16 months until notifying Orland Park in December to stop paying him his village salary, according to the records and a village spokesman.
But O'Halloran did not move to repay the money he had already received until July 12, after the $718,000 Clifford severance deal had unfolded into a political spectacle involving allegations of patronage and back-scratching that have entangled powerbrokers including Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
In a letter dated one day after he endured several hours of withering questioning by state lawmakers about the Clifford situation, O'Halloran told the Orland Park village manager "it was my intent that all compensation to me from Orland Park cease effective July 2011."
But, he said, "it has come to my attention" that he was still receiving his trustee pay into a deferred compensation plan. He enclosed a check for $22,167.36, the amount he believed he had been paid.
In his formal request to stop his pay in December 2012, O'Halloran made no mention of the 16 months of salary and benefits he had already collected, according to a copy of his letter obtained in response to the newspaper's Freedom of Information Act request.
Village spokesman Joseph La Margo confirmed that trustees receive monthly pay statements, even if their pay is going to deferred compensation accounts, as was the case with O'Halloran. La Margo said O'Halloran had a conversation with village staff on or about Dec. 3 to stop his pay, and followed up with an undated letter formalizing the request "sometime around the holidays." The early December conversation was the first notice from O'Halloran about stopping his pay, La Margo said.
The Regional Transportation Authority act, which governs mass transit agencies in the region, prohibits Metra board members from receiving a paycheck for any other elected or appointed government post.
"No director, while serving as such, shall be an officer, a member of the board of directors or trustee ... of any unit of local government or receive any compensation from any elected or appointed office under the Constitution and laws of Illinois," the law states.
O'Halloran declined to answer questions about the timing of his request to stop receiving payment and instead released a statement saying, "I recently was told that the village of Orland Park" paid into his retirement, life insurance and other benefit accounts while he was serving on both government bodies.
"I had no intention to be compensated while I serve on the Metra board," the statement read. "When I was told about these contributions, I asked for an accounting of the amounts involved and immediately wrote a check to the village for the entire amount."
The village has not cashed the check, according to a July 16 letter Village Manager Paul Grimes sent to O'Halloran. In his letter, Grimes explained the check was for the wrong amount because O'Halloran wrote it before village staff could correctly tally up exactly what he had been paid — $21,967.10 — as well as tax implications from the payments. Also, village officials believed it would be more appropriate to get refunds directly from the deferred income funds where they send the money, as well as the Social Security Administration.
Metra spokesman Michael Gillis said O'Halloran notified the agency's ethics officer about the pay issue July 18 and it was forwarded to the state executive inspector general, which is investigating Clifford's allegations. O'Halloran, who became Metra chairman last fall, makes $25,000 a year for the part-time position.
Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, has called on the entire board — including O'Halloran — to resign and criticized the RTA's oversight abilities. On Monday he questioned why neither Metra nor the RTA made sure O'Halloran was following the law.
"The RTA is supposed to be Metra's watchdog," Franks said. "It just shows that there is complete disorganization and incompetence at all levels of our mass transit system."
dheinzmann@tribune.com
sstclair@tribune.com
Millions in U.S. Subsidies Go to Dead Farmers
By RON NIXON
Published: July 30, 2013
WASHINGTON — The federal government pays millions of dollars in farm subsidies each year to farmers who have died, because the Agriculture Department lacks the proper controls to make sure the money it sends is going to the right people, a government audit has found.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service, which oversees the Agriculture Department’s conservation programs, sent out $10.6 million in payments between 2008 and 2012 to more than 1,000 people who had been dead for more than a year, according to the report. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said the problem involved several agencies within the department.
The Risk Management Agency, which administers the crop insurance program, paid $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who had been dead for at least two years. The G.A.O. said that some of those payments might have been made while the farmer was still alive, but that there was no way to know for sure.
The findings were released as the House and the Senate prepared to meet to work out their differences on a farm bill that would greatly expand some subsidies, like crop insurance. The report raises questions about the ability of the Agriculture Department to monitor the programs for waste, fraud and abuse.
The Agriculture Department generally agreed with the findings in the report, but said it disagreed with the characterization that it did not have sufficient controls in place to detect improper payments.
Still, the department acknowledged that its controls to identify deceased individuals could be applied more effectively.
Controls over crop insurance, in particular, have been questioned after government investigators found a huge fraud ring last year in North Carolina that for decades siphoned over $100 million from the program. The fraud ring involved insurance agents, adjusters, farmers and dozens of others.
Environmental activists said the report pointed to the need for changes in agriculture subsidy programs.
“Not only are unlimited crop insurance subsidies flowing to the largest and most successful farm businesses, they are now going to deceased policyholders,” said Scott Faber, vice president of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research organization, which has been critical of farm subsidies. “This irresponsible use of scarce taxpayer dollars reinforces just how broken the system is.”
The G.A.O. said the Agriculture Department had had some success in finding improper payments. The department identified payments to nearly 173,000 deceased individuals from 1999 to 2005, the report said. The Agriculture Department recovered about $1 billion in improper payments.
Still, the G.A.O. said more could be done. The auditors suggested that the Agriculture Department use the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File to identify payments made to dead individuals. The G.A.O. said the agencies used an incomplete version of the data that did not include all deaths.
Unless the agencies begin using the full Death Master File, they “cannot know if they are providing payments to, or subsidies on behalf of, deceased individuals; how often they are providing such payments or subsidies; or in what amounts,” the report said.
The Agriculture Department said in May that the Risk Management Agency had begun using a new computer program that compared the full Social Security death data against crop insurance payments.
Krauthammer: Detroit succumbs to Stein’s Law
Posted: Sunday, July 28, 2013 12:00 am
WASHINGTON If there’s an iron rule in economics, it is Stein’s Law (named after Herb, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Detroit, for example, can no longer go on borrowing, spending, raising taxes and dangerously cutting such essential services as street lighting and police protection. So it stops. It goes bust.
Cause of death? Corruption, both legal and illegal, plus a classic case of reactionary liberalism in which the governing Democrats — there’s been no Republican mayor in half a century — simply refused to adapt to the straitened economic circumstances that followed the post-World War II auto boom.
Corruption of the criminal sort was legendary. The former mayor currently serving time engaged in a breathtaking range of fraud, extortion and racketeering. And he didn’t act alone. The legal corruption was the cozy symbiosis of Democratic politicians and powerful unions, especially the public-sector unions that gave money to elect the politicians who negotiated their contracts — with wildly unsustainable health and pension benefits.
When our great industrial competitors were digging out from the rubble of World War II, Detroit’s automakers ruled the world. Their imagined sense of inherent superiority bred complacency. Management grew increasingly bureaucratic and inflexible. Unions felt entitled to the extraordinary wages, benefits and work rules they’d bargained for in the fat years. In time, they all found themselves being overtaken by more efficient, more adaptable, more hungry foreign producers.
The market ultimately forced the car companies into reform, restructuring, the occasional bankruptcy and eventual recovery. The city of Detroit, however, lacking market constraints, just kept overspending — $100 million annually since 2008. The city now has about $19 billion in obligations it has no chance of meeting. So much city revenue had to be diverted to creditors and pensioners that there was practically nothing left to run the city. Forty percent of the streetlights don’t work, two-thirds of the parks are closed and emergency police response time averages nearly an hour — if it ever comes at all.
Bankruptcy, which will radically cut payments to bondholders and retirees, is the only chance to start over. Yet, if a Detroit bankruptcy succeeds, other cities will be tempted to follow suit. Dozens of other large urban areas have similarly massive pension and debt obligations, with commensurately denuded services and exorbitant taxes — leading to a vicious cycle of depopulation that makes everything worse. Detroit has lost more than 60 percent of its population since 1950.
The moral hazard increases if the federal government steps in to help. The Obama administration is therefore firmly opposed to any “bailout,” recognizing both the political toxicity of the word and the fiscal consequences of a Detroit precedent that invites other cities to line up with a tin cup. Washington cannot afford a nationwide federal bailout of insolvent cities. [This is typical of elected officials who want it both ways. First Obama refuses to give any aid to get the votes of the conservatives. Next Obama will cave in and dole out the aid to get the votes of the liberals, hoping that the conservatives don't hear about it.]
However, under pressure of the public-sector unions, whose retirees will necessarily be victimized, the administration will likely offer “assistance” — which implies whatever kind of non-cash payments, indirect funds from other ongoing federal programs and enterprise-zone tax subsidies it can get away with.
But Detroit is an object lesson not just for other cities. Not even the almighty federal government is immune to Stein’s Law. Reactionary liberalism simply cannot countenance serious reform of the iconic social welfare programs of the 20th century. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are pledged to their inviolability. President Barack Obama will occasionally admit that, for example, Medicare cannot go on as is, but then reverts to crude demagoguery when Republicans propose a structural reform, such as premium support for Medicare or something as obvious as raising the retirement age to match increasing longevity.
On the contrary. Obama added one enormous new entitlement (Obamacare) and, in his last State of the Union address, proposed yet another (universal preschool).
None of this is inevitable. In Wisconsin, Republicans showed that they recognize the perils of unconstrained government growth and will take on the unchecked power of government unions. Democratic Detroit, on the other hand, has for 50 years conducted a contrary experiment in myopia and the most imprudent passivity.
It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein’s Law and yell “Stop.” You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff.
Contact Charles Krauthammer at
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Of course I disagree with Robert Glass that the Post Office can be saved. It should be eliminated and the private sector should be allowed to deliver the mail.
Let’s save Postal Service
Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:26 PM
Unfortunately, what came out of Washington last week is not a common-sense solution to what ails the U.S. Postal Service. Eliminating door-to-door mail delivery is not the answer.
Nearly 80 percent of the losses the Postal Service has experienced comes from a 2006 law that mandates it to pay 75 years worth of retirement benefits within a span of 10 years. No other organization, public or private, has ever been forced by law to pay such an onerous sum. [From what I have heard it's a slush fund that Congress will use for things other the post office retirement. Kind of like the Social Security slush fund which is used for everything but Social Security retirement]
This pre-funding mandate is the root of the problem that needs to be corrected by Washington.
House Resolution 630 and Senate Bill 316 are common-sense pieces of legislation that do solve the problems the Postal Service faces. These bills eliminate the pre-funding mandate, allow the creation of new streams of revenue and keep the delivery of door-to-door mail six days a week at absolutely zero cost to the American taxpayer.
Call your congressional representative and your senators to co-sponsor these two bills and help save the Postal Service.
— Robert Glass, Phoenix
The writer is vice president of the Arizona branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers.
Eugene Robinson: Snowden deserves our thanks, not our derision
Updated: 29 July 2013 11:44 PM
Edward Snowden’s renegade decision to reveal the jaw-dropping scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance is being vindicated, even as Snowden himself is being vilified.
Intelligence officials in the Obama administration and their allies on Capitol Hill paint the fugitive analyst as nothing but a traitor who wants to harm the United States. Many of those same officials grudgingly acknowledge, however, that public debate about the NSA’s domestic snooping is now unavoidable.
This would be impossible if Snowden, or someone like him, hadn’t spilled the beans. We wouldn’t know that the NSA is keeping a database of all our phone calls. We wouldn’t know that the government gets the authority to keep track of our private communications — even if we are not suspected of terrorist activity or associations — from secret judicial orders issued by a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law.
Snowden, of course, is hardly receiving the thanks of a grateful nation. He has spent the last five weeks trapped in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow. Russian officials, who won’t send him home for prosecution, wish he would move along. But he fears that if he takes off for one of the South American countries that have offered asylum, he would risk being intercepted en route and extradited. It’s a tough situation, and time is not on his side.
You can cheer Snowden’s predicament or you can bemoan it. But even some of the NSA’s fiercest defenders have admitted, if not in so many words, that Snowden performed a valuable public service.
Less than two weeks ago, the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a public statement to announce that the secret Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed the government’s authority to collect metadata about our phone calls. This was being disclosed “in light of the significant and continuing public interest in the … collection program.”
Isn’t that rich? If the spooks had their way, there would be no “continuing public interest” in the program. We wouldn’t know it exists.
The new position espoused by President Barack Obama and those who kept the NSA’s domestic surveillance a deep, dark secret is that of course we should have a wide-ranging national debate about balancing the imperatives of privacy and security. But they don’t mean it.
I know this because when an actual debate erupted in Congress last week, the intelligence cognoscenti freaked out.
An attempt to cut off funding for the NSA’s collection of phone data, sponsored by an unlikely pair of allies in the House — Justin Amash, a conservative Republican, and John Conyers, a liberal Democrat, both from Michigan — suffered a surprisingly narrow defeat, 217-205.
The Amash-Conyers amendment was in no danger of becoming law — the Senate would have killed it, and if all else failed, Obama would have vetoed it. But it put the intelligence establishment on notice: The spooks don’t decide how far is too far. We do.
At the heart of the Fourth Amendment is the concept that a search must be justified by suspicion. Yet how many of those whose phone call information is being logged are suspected of being terrorists? One in a million?
Equally antithetical to the idea of a free society, in my view, is the government’s position that we are not even permitted to know how the secret intelligence court interprets our laws and the Constitution. The order that Snowden leaked — compelling a Verizon unit to cough up data on the phone calls it handled — was one of only a few to come to light in the court’s three decades of existence. Now there are voices calling for all the court’s rulings to be released.
We’re talking about these issues. You can wish Edward Snowden well or wish him a lifetime in prison. Either way, you should thank him.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson may be contacted at eugenerobinson@washpost.com.
Don't expect our government masters to obey their own laws!!!!
Of course if YOU get caught breaking the law like Metra Chairman Brad O'Halloran don't expect to get off with a slap on the wrist like he did.
Millions in U.S. Subsidies Go to Dead Farmers
Source
Krauthammer: Detroit succumbs to Stein’s Law
Source
US Post Office Slush Fund????
Robert Glass is correct about this "slush fund" that the US Congress has ordered the US Post Office to create. Although, like Social Security taxes, I suspect it will not be spent on it's intended uses and instead be doled out as pork by Congress.
Eugene Robinson: Snowden deserves our thanks, not our derision
Source
Enjoying that wonderful feeling of security in America
Government Tyrants 1 - Freedom Fighters 0
Bradley Manning convicted of some charges
SourceBradley Manning acquitted of most serious charge, convicted of others
By Richard A. Serrano
July 30, 2013, 8:51 p.m.
FT. MEADE, Md. — Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was convicted Tuesday of violating the Espionage Act and faces up to 136 years in prison, but his acquittal on the even more serious charge of aiding the enemy was hailed as a victory for the press and the Internet against the government's crackdown on leaks of classified information.
Manning's leak of more than 700,000 State Department cables, terrorism detainee assessments, combat logs and videos was the largest breach of classified secrets in U.S. history. Among the information was a now-infamous 2007 video of an Apache combat helicopter attack in Iraq in which U.S. soldiers fired on civilians and killed 12, including two Reuters journalists.
Manning becomes one of only two people ever convicted under the Espionage Act for making classified data available to the public; the other, Samuel L. Morison, a government security analyst convicted in 1985, was pardoned by President Clinton on his final day in office.
"We won the battle, now we need to go win the war," said chief defense lawyer David Coombs, who was greeted by applause and thanks from Manning supporters when he left the courtroom. "Today is a good day, but Bradley is by no means out of the fire."
Under the aiding the enemy charge, Manning, 25, could have been sent to prison for life with no parole. The military judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, heard the case without a jury and did not explain her verdicts. She appeared to have accepted defense arguments that Manning did not understand that releasing the material could allow Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations to use the information to harm the United States.
The government's theory — that even if Manning did not directly convey information to an enemy, he could be charged with that crime because information released to the public could be obtained by U.S. adversaries — had serious implications for whistle-blowers and those who provide information about classified programs to journalists.
Prosecutors "pushed a theory that making information available on the Internet — whether through WikiLeaks, in a personal blog posting, or on the website of the New York Times — can amount to 'aiding the enemy,'" said Widney Brown, senior director for international law and policy at Amnesty International. That, Brown said, "is ludicrous."
A conviction for aiding the enemy would have "severely crippled the operation of a free press," said Thomas Fiedler, dean of the College of Communication at Boston University.
At Tuesday's hearing, Manning wore a blue dress uniform, wire rim glasses and a prison pallor after three years in pretrial confinement. He stood at ramrod attention and listened without emotion as the judge read the guilty and not-guilty verdicts on about two dozen charges.
A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin Wednesday, with each side expected to present about 10 witnesses. Manning's lawyers may put him on the stand.
If so, it would be the second time he has addressed the court. In February, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 lesser charges of mishandling classified data. He said then that after collecting intelligence on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "I began to become depressed with the situation we had become mired in year after year."
After the sentencing, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, commander of joint forces in the capital region, has the authority to toss out some or all of the guilty verdicts and, theoretically, release Manning. On Friday, Manning supporters rallied outside the gate of Ft. McNair in Washington, where Buchanan is stationed. They carried balloons and a 20-foot banner that read, "Maj. Gen. Buchanan, Do the Right Thing. Free Bradley Manning."
Manning was arrested in spring 2010 after the documents he took from government computer databases began appearing in sensational posts on the WikiLeaks website. For months he was held incommunicado, and his lawyers complained he was kept naked and tortured emotionally before his trial began in June.
Manning elected to allow Judge Lind to hear the case without a jury, probably worried that a panel of fellow soldiers weighing his fate would not be pleased that some of the material he gave to WikiLeaks was found in Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan after the Al Qaeda leader was killed by Navy SEALs in May 2011.
Military prosecutors presented evidence that Manning underwent extensive training about safeguarding classified data before becoming an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq, and that he instructed other soldiers in security procedures.
"He was a traitor, a traitor who understood the value of compromised information in the hands of the enemy and took deliberate steps to ensure that they, along with the world, received it," Maj. Ashden Fein, the chief prosecutor, told the judge.
The defense, however, portrayed Manning as a small-town youth from Oklahoma who joined the Army with good intentions, only to become deeply bothered when he discovered what he believed to be government misconduct. Coombs said Manning was a whistle-blower, a "young, naive, good-intentioned soldier."
The soldier has spawned a worldwide group of sympathizers who have rallied in his defense, urged his release and floated his name for the Nobel Peace Prize.
On Tuesday morning, hours before Manning learned his fate, two dozen supporters, many wearing black "TRUTH" T-shirts, hoisted signs and waved at workers arriving at Ft. Meade, where the court-martial has been held, and which also houses the highly secretive National Security Agency and the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was asked before the verdicts whether a long prison sentence would be worth it to Manning.
"That's something Bradley Manning has to weigh up," Assange told CNN. "He was willing to take that risk because he believes apparently that the result is so important."
richard.serrano@latimes.com
Egyptian military plays Uncle Sam as Uncle Sap
SourcePosted on July 30, 2013 5:20 pm by Robert Robb
Egyptian military plays Uncle Sam as Uncle Sap
Egyptian General Sisi is sure making it hard for his U.S. apologists.
According to the apologists, the military was simply channeling the Rousseauian General Will of the Egyptian people. They were tired of being governed by President Mohamad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, so the military ousted him.
The fact that Morsi had been elected to the position was a triviality. The military would turn civilian power over to a technocratic government, new elections would be held shortly. Nothing to see here. Keep the $1.3 billion in military aid flowing.
Then last week, Sisi gave a public speech exhorting the Egyptian people to flood the streets to give the military a mandate to crush the Brotherhood. So much for the façade of a technocratic civilian government.
Egypt is now run by a military junta. In reality, it has been since a coup by another general, Gamel Nasser, in 1952.
The Egyptian military is grossly oversized. There is no external threat to Egypt’s territorial sovereignty that requires a military of its size and lethality. Its primary mission is clearly internal control.
Nor is the military a neutral force. It controls a huge swath of Egypt’s private sector economy. It has a privileged position it will act to protect.
The United States has heavily subsidized Egypt’s oversized military. According to U.S. law, the aid should be cut off if the military has conducted a coup against a democratically-elected government.
Morsi was elected. The military ousted him, and still holds him hostage. It was a coup.
Moreover, the repression in Egypt mounts. Trumped up charges are being leveled against Morsi. The military has reasserted the Mubarak-era power to arrest civilians. Mubarak’s secret police are being unleashed against internal dissent, principally the Brotherhood.
Yet, the Obama administration says that nothing in the law requires it to decide whether what has happened in Egypt amounts to a coup, so it isn’t going to. Which means that the U.S. military aid will continue to flow to a repressive military junta.
According to the foreign policy “realists” in both political parties, the aid needs to continue so that the United States can retain “leverage” on the junta. Not sure how much leverage we’re buying, but to the extent we are, to what end?
The aid originated in the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. Supposedly, it is necessary to keep Egypt honoring the agreement. But Egypt doesn’t pose a threat to Israel. The last thing the Egyptian military wants to do is fight someone with the capability of actually fighting back. Nor does it have an incentive to aid Hamas’ or Hezbollah’s efforts against Israel. They are on the other side of the Arab divide.
So, what might we want to achieve with our leverage in terms of Egyptian domestic affairs?
The Obama administration wants the Muslim Brotherhood to be part of the new political process. But the Brotherhood has already won three national elections. Why should it play a game the military has made clear they will not be permitted to win? And the military is obviously committed to suppressing and enfeebling the Brotherhood, not giving it a role in the country’s future.
U.S. foreign policy should advance our interests, not necessarily our ideals. But there should be clear interests at stake when we trash our ideals.
The coup was supposedly in our national interest because the Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t really interested in democratic governance, but in imposing some sort of Islamist state. But in the worst nightmare of the realists, the Brotherhood wouldn’t impose as repressive a theocratic regime as exists in Saudi Arabia, which the realists regard as an ally.
The geopolitical crosscurrents in the Middle East are powerful, dangerous and blindingly complex and intricate. There is the Sunni-Shia conflict. There is the conflict between the royalists and those, such as the Brotherhood, whose governing philosophy is murky but doesn’t include hereditary succession. Where U.S. interests lie in this maelstrom is far from clear.
What is clear is that no important national interest is being served by continuing to give a repressive military junta $1.3 billion a year. The Egyptian military is playing Uncle Sam for Uncle Sap.
Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld
RIP - Fourth Amendment - Warrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld
SourceWarrantless Cellphone Tracking Is Upheld
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: July 30, 2013 88 Comments
The ruling is the first that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of the historical location data stored by cellphone service providers.
The closely watched case, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is the first ruling that squarely addresses the constitutionality of warrantless searches of historical location data stored by cellphone service providers. Ruling 2 to 1, the court said a warrantless search was “not per se unconstitutional” because location data was “clearly a business record” and therefore not protected by the Fourth Amendment.
The ruling is likely to intensify legislative efforts, already bubbling in Congress and in the states, to consider measures to require warrants based on probable cause to obtain cellphone location data.
The appeals court ruling sharply contrasts with a New Jersey State Supreme Court opinion in mid-July that said the police required a warrant to track a suspect’s whereabouts in real time. That decision relied on the New Jersey Constitution, whereas the ruling Tuesday in the Fifth Circuit was made on the basis of the federal Constitution.
The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on whether cellphone location data is protected by the Constitution. The case, which was initially brought in Texas, is not expected to go to the Supreme Court because it is “ex parte,” or filed by only one party — in this case, the government.
But the case could renew calls for the highest court to look at the issue, if another federal court rules differently on the same question. And two other federal cases involving this issue are pending.
“The opinion is clear that the government can access cell site records without Fourth Amendment oversight,” said Orin Kerr, a constitutional law scholar at George Washington University Law School who filed an amicus brief in the case.
For now, the ruling sets an important precedent: It allows law enforcement officials in the Fifth Circuit to chronicle the whereabouts of an American with a court order that falls short of a search warrant based on probable cause.
“This decision is a big deal,” said Catherine Crump, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s a big deal and a big blow to Americans’ privacy rights.”
The group reviewed records from more than 200 local police departments last year, concluding that the demand for cellphone location data had led some cellphone companies to develop “surveillance fees” to enable police to track suspects. [so the police are getting private businesses to monitor us to the 4th Amendment which forbids police spying without a warrant]
In reaching its decision on Tuesday, the federal appeals court went on to agree with the government’s contention that consumers knowingly give up their location information to the telecommunications carrier every time they make a call or send a text message on their cellphones.
“That means it is not protected by Fourth Amendment when the government goes to a third-party service provider and issues something that is not a warrant to demand production of those records,” said Mark Eckenwiler, a former Justice Department lawyer who worked on the case and is now with the Washington law firm Perkins Coie. “On this kind of historical cell site information, this is the first one to address the core constitutional question.”
Historical location data is crucial to law enforcement officials. Mr. Eckenwiler offered the example of drug investigations: A cellphone carrier can establish where a suspect met his supplier and how often he returned to a particular location. Likewise, location data can be vital in establishing people’s habits and preferences, including whether they worship at a church or mosque or whether they are present at a political protest, which is why, civil liberties advocates say, it should be accorded the highest privileges of privacy protection.
The decision could also bear implications for other government efforts to collect vast amounts of so-called metadata, under the argument that it constitutes “business records,” as in the National Security Agency’s collection of Verizon phone records for millions of Americans.
“It provides support for the government’s view that that procedure is constitutional, obtaining Verizon call records, because it holds that records are business records,” said Mr. Kerr, of George Washington University. “It doesn’t make it a slam dunk but it makes a good case for the government to argue that position.”
An important element in Tuesday’s ruling is the court’s presumption of what consumers should know about the way cellphone technology works. “A cell service subscriber, like a telephone user, understands that his cellphone must send a signal to a nearby cell tower in order to wirelessly connect his call,” the court ruled, going on to note that “contractual terms of service and providers’ privacy policies expressly state that a provider uses a subscriber’s location information to route his cellphone calls.”
In any event, the court added, the use of cellphones “is entirely voluntary.” [Yea, and so is going to the bathroom. But that doesn't mean the government has a God given right to listen to your cell phone call or watch you go to the bathroom]
The ruling also gave a nod to the way in which fast-moving technological advances have challenged age-old laws on privacy. Consumers today may want privacy over location records, the court acknowledged: “But the recourse for these desires is in the market or the political process: in demanding that service providers do away with such records (or anonymize them) or in lobbying elected representatives to enact statutory protections.” [I think what is happening here is the government is requiring private businesses to spy on us, and then saying it isn't a violation of the 4th Amendment because a private business is doing the spying, not the government.]
Cellphone privacy measures have been proposed in the Senate and House that would require law enforcement agents to obtain search warrants before prying open location records. Montana recently became the first state to require a warrant for location data. Maine soon followed. California passed a similar measure last year but Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, vetoed it, saying it did not strike what he called the right balance between the demands of civil libertarians and the police.
Also see:
Joanna Allhands thinks Tempe Town Toilet will be a disaster
Joanna Allhands thinks Tempe Town Toilet will continue to be a disaster for the taxpayers of Tempe????
Tempe Town Toilet
Source
and
Tempe Cesspool for the Arts
Joanna Allhands | azcentral opinions
Posted on July 30, 2013 3:12 pm by Joanna Allhands
Incentives for Tempe Town Lake? Yeah, because that worked so well before
Truth: Tempe Town Lake development has never met its financial expectations. It doesn’t generate anywhere near the revenue necessary to cover the lake’s significant operational costs.
Truth: Over time, it’s smart to re-evaluate the city’s approach to speed lakeside development — even more so after a prolonged economic downturn. We must ensure that deals are fair to residents and enticing for businesses.
But is offering incentives the best way to do that? I’m skeptical, and Tempe residents should be, too. Let’s not forget:
– The previous City Council set a policy not to offer incentives unless they were for specific uses, such as historical preservation and environmental cleanup. That was under former Mayor Hugh Hallman, and I get that things are different now. But so different as to abandon that policy? I need convincing.
– Tempe has a poor track record of incentives and development deals, particularly when it comes to the lake. The city was embroiled in lawsuits and failed deals in the lake’s early days, which took years and cost millions of dollars to resolve. Do we really want to go down that road again, especially without specific performance expectations from businesses that receive the incentives?
Let me be clear: I was skeptical of plans city leaders floated to fund replacement Town Lake dams solely with land sales and private development. There just isn’t that much land left to produce the kind of cash we’re talking about.
But I’m equally skeptical of plans to have businesses pay less, if anything at all. Not so long ago, lakeside land at Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway was named the Valley’s most desirable.
Has the market really changed so much that that’s no longer the case without giving businesses a financial break? Maybe. But I’d like proof.
Well it's a little bit more complex then that. A $1,000 bribe, oops, I mean $1,000 campaign contribution to a Tempe City Councilman will get you $1 million in corporate welfare if you want to build something on the
Tempe Town Toilet,
which they call
Tempe Town Lake.
No I didn't document that, that's just my estimate of how corrupt the Tempe city government is.
The members of the Tempe City Council that sold us out to the developers are:
Mark Mitchell
[His daddy is former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell and Congressman Harry Mitchell,
I think his brother is Robert Mitchell, a Tempe cop I sued in Federal court for false arrest and civil rights violations],
Onnie Shekerjian,
Robin Arredondo-Savage
[yes I think she is related to convicted crooked Tempe City Councilman Ben Arredondo],
Shana Ellis,
Kolby Granville
[he seems think he is the nut job neat freak Felix Unger of the Odd Couple
and seems to be on a crusade to rid Tempe of messy yard criminals],
Joel Navarro and Corey Woods
Tempe OKs controversial lake plan
Tempe City Council sells out to special interest groups
All it takes is a few well placed bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions and you can own you own Tempe City councilman or councilwoman.
Tempe City Council sells out to rich developers of Tempe Town Toilet
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Mayor Mark Mitchell
Son of former Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell Brother of Tempe cop Robert Mitchell |
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Onnie Shekerjian |
Shana Ellis |
Robin Arredondo Savage |
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Kolby Granville |
Joel Navarro |
Corey Woods |
Tempe OKs controversial lake plan
By Dianna M. Náñez The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Jul 31, 2013 12:56 AM
The Tempe City Council voted Tuesday to revise the city’s Town Lake financing plan to offer greater incentives for developers. [translation bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions in exchange for millions of dollars in corporate welfare]
The plan was unanimously approved despite a small window for public review and little opportunity for public comment on changes that would shift millions of dollars in lake costs to taxpayers. [That because the crooks on the Tempe City Council want as little media coverage of this theft as possible]
Early Tuesday, Tempe resident Ron Tapscott, a member of a city neighborhood association, sent Mayor Mark Mitchell and the council an e-mail pleading on behalf of taxpayers for a delay on the vote.
“I strongly encourage you to postpone a decision on this matter until it has been discussed and considered with community input,” Tapscott said.
Mitchell had earlier pushed to postpone a vote and allow input from taxpayers and businesses.
“This is something that’s important,” he said. “We’re going to have plenty of opportunity for (public) engagement.”
But Tuesday, Mitchell shifted his position and voted with the rest of the council to approve the changes.
The mayor asked Tempe Finance Manager Ken Jones to clarify the plan and note that it would not directly increase residents’ taxes nor delay improvements to community parks. [Those numbers are usually done using "politician math" which any 5th grader will tell you isn't the same math the rest of us use. "Politician math" can be call math that uses smoke, mirrors and lies to justify the users points]
Jones contended the developer incentives were “clarifications” to the lake finance plan. ["clarifications" my *ss, they are just more corporate welfare]
City finance officials have said the revised plan would give developers a financial break on their share of costs tied to the man-made lake and make private development more affordable. [That's government double talk that says the revised plan will make the TAXPAYERS pay the developers BILLS] The goal is to advance Tempe’s plans to secure sufficient lakeshore private development to ease the hefty public costs of maintaining Town Lake, finance officials said. [That's an oxymoron. Stealing money from the taxpayers and giving it to the developers isn't going to reduce the taxpayers costs. In fact it's going to increase the taxpayers costs. It's just smoke, mirrors and lies from the city of Tempe to cover up this outrageous corporate welfare]
While the plan was pushed as a solution to spur development that slowed as a result of the the Great Recession, the incentives for developers would come as the Tempe and national economy are improving.
Today, Tempe and state leaders were scheduled to attend a celebration in Tempe to mark the beginning of construction on Marina Heights, a $600 million project touted as the state’s largest office development.
Developers unveiled renderings of the 2 million-square-foot project that city leaders have boasted would drive Town Lake commercial and residential development.
Town Lake critics say that taxpayers have long carried the financial burden for private lake development, and the new plan offers no guarantee that economic breaks for developers would actually spur construction.
The revised plan would shift the burden of paying for a new west-end lake dam, which the city has estimated will cost at least $37.4 million, to Tempe taxpayers, freeing developers from sharing the expense of replacing the dam. [Again, when the damn was built the royal rulers of Tempe got screwed with a ORAL 30 year guarantee on the damn. When the damn failed 10 years after being built the guarantee was worth as much as the hot air that it was created with.]
Developers would pay a lower annual “holding fee,” which they typically begin paying when they build on their lake property.
The financing proposal also includes lowering the annual interest rate that developers must pay over the 25 years that they are allowed to pay back their share of lake construction.
Tapscott counted himself among the many Tempe residents who have endured community-service cuts. Under the revised lake-financing plan “substantial costs will be shifted to Tempe residents,” he wrote to council members.
Some Tempe residents have criticized the city for shifting millions of dollars to the Town Lake dam costs from spending that was approved by voters in a past bond election for community parks.
“The Alta Mira (Goodwin Park) neighborhood has diligently worked to improve our park, acknowledging the effects of a restricted city budget,” Tapscott wrote. “We sacrificed hours of master planning and hopeful expectation to accommodate the loss of city revenues from the economic recession.”
3 hops - A lame excuse to nullify the 4th Amendment
SourceWith 3 ‘hops,’ NSA gets millions of phone records
Associated Press Wed Jul 31, 2013 2:26 PM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s national security team acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that, when investigating one suspected terrorist, it can read and store the phone records of millions of Americans.
Since it was revealed recently that the National Security Agency puts the phone records of every American into a database, the Obama administration has assured the nation that such records are rarely searched and, when they are, officials target only suspected international terrorists. [Yea, sure!!!!]
But testimony before Congress on Wednesday showed how easy it is for Americans with no connection to terrorism to unwittingly have their calling patterns analyzed by the government.
It hinges on what’s known as “hop” or “chain” analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people.
If the average person called 40 unique people, three-hop analysis would allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist. [Give me a break. It would be IMPOSSIBLE for a small team of FBI cop to investigate 2.5 million Americans for every person they suspect is a terrorist. This 3 hop double talk is just a lame excuse to justify spying on millions of Americans]
The NSA has said it conducted 300 searches of its telephone database last year. Left unsaid until Wednesday was that three-hop analysis off those searches could mean scrutinizing the phone records of tens or even hundreds of millions of people.
“So what has been described as a discrete program, to go after people who would cause us harm, when you look at the reach of this program, it envelopes a substantial number of Americans,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.
John Inglis, the NSA’s deputy director, conceded the point but said NSA officials “try to be judicious” about conducting hop analysis.
“And so while, theoretically, 40 times 40 times 40 gets you to a large number, that’s not typically what takes place,” he said. “We have to compare the theory to the practice.” [So in reality the FBI doesn't investigate 2.5 million Americans for every suspected terrorists. But the FBI does want to use that lame 3 hop theory to give it an excuse to wire tape the phones of the 300+ millions Americans]
Such reassurances have done little to quell the sharp criticism from both parties over the once-secret program. Last week saw a close vote in the House on a measure that aimed to kill the phone surveillance program. [Yea, and they DIDN'T kill the program!!!]
On Wednesday, the administration acknowledged some limitations to its sweeping surveillance powers are inevitable.
“We are open to re-evaluating this program in ways that can perhaps provide greater confidence and public trust that this is in fact a program that achieves both privacy protections and national security,” Robert Litt, counsel to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told skeptical members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This newest privacy-vs.-security debate was touched off when former government contract systems analyst Edward Snowden leaked classified documents exposing National Security Agency programs that store years of phone records on every American. That revelation prompted the most significant reconsideration yet of the vast surveillance powers Congress granted the president after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The administration intended to keep the telephone program a secret, and for more than a decade few in Congress showed any interest in limiting the surveillance. Snowden’s leaks abruptly changed the calculus on Capitol Hill. [Snowden should be a national hero for exposing our corrupt government masters in the US House and Senate who have flushed the 4th Amendment down the toilet]
“We have a lot of good information out there that helps the American public understand these programs, but it all came out late,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, said in a rebuke of government secrecy. “It all came out in response to a leaker. There was no organized plan for how we rationally declassify this so that the American people can participate in the debate.” [Translation - we got caught flushing the Fourth Amendment down the toilet and I am trying to justify it with this double talk]
The telephone program is authorized under a provision of the USA Patriot Act, which Congress hurriedly passed after the Sept. 11,2001 attacks against the U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration said then what Obama’s administration says now: that in order to connect the dots, it needs to collect lots of dots. [Yea, using the unconstitutional Patriot Act which pretty much flushes the Bill of Rights down the toilet] Sen. Patrick Leahy was skeptical.
“There’s always going to be dots to collect, analyze and try to connect,” he said. “Government is already collecting data on millions of innocent Americans on a daily basis based on a secret legal interpretation of a statute that does not on its face appear to authorize this kind of bulk collection. So what’s going to be next? When is enough enough?” [The Patriot Act was enough. Congress should have repealed it, because it is unconstitutional. The courts should have struck it down because it is unconstitutional. I suspect the only way for it to end is an armed revolt by the people.]
Several Democrats promised bills that would provide tighter controls or more transparency. Proposals include eliminating the FBI’s ability to seize data without a court order, changing the way judges are appointed to the surveillance court and appointing an attorney to argue against the government in secret proceedings before that court. Another measure would force the government to reveal how many Americans have had their information swept up in surveillance. [All which is double talk and BS to justify the unconstitutional Patriot Act. The solution is simple - Repeal the Patriot Act!!!!]
Inglis said the NSA was willing to reconsider whether it needed to keep phone data for five years. And Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department was considering whether and how to allow an outside attorney into the secret court to argue against the government. [Again the solution is simple - Repeal the unconstitutional Patriot Act!!!!]
Leaked docs give new insight into NSA’s searches
SourceLeaked docs give new insight into NSA’s searches
Associated Press Wed Jul 31, 2013 1:35 PM
LONDON — Documents published by the Guardian newspaper are providing new insight into the National Security Agency’s surveillance of world data, giving an over-the-shoulder look at the programs and techniques U.S. intelligence analysts use to exploit the hundreds of billions of records they gather each year.
Dozens of training slides published Wednesday divulge details about XKeyscore, one of a family of NSA programs that leaker Edward Snowden says has given America the ability to spy on “the vast majority of human communications.”
Some of the slides appear to carry screenshots showing what analysts would see as they trawled the intercepted conversations, including sample search queries such as “Show me all encrypted word documents from Iran” or “Show me all the word documents that reference Osama Bin Laden.”
In an indication of the program’s scope, one slide says that XKeyscore has led to the capture of more than 300 terrorists. In a statement, the NSA said that figure only included captures up to the year 2008, and pushed back against any suggestion of illegal or arbitrary collection of data.
“These types of programs allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully — to defend the nation and to protect U.S. and allied troops abroad,” the statement said.
How and from where the program draws its data isn’t completely clear, but one slide said XKeyscore was supported by 700 servers and 150 sites across the globe. Another slide seemed to show the program drawing data from a body codenamed SSO — an apparent reference to the NSA’s Special Source Operations, which previous Guardian articles have described as capturing large numbers of communications between the United States and other countries.
The volume of data available to analysts through XKeyscore appears to be vast. The Guardian quoted one slide as saying that nearly 42 billion records had been captured by the system during a one-month period in 2012 — a rate of half a trillion records every year. So much content was being collected, the newspaper said, that it could only be stored for short periods of time — generally just a few days.
“At some sites, the amount of data we receive per day (20+ terabytes) can only be stored for as little as 24 hours,” the Guardian quoted one document as saying.
In a message forwarded to The Associated Press by Guardian spokesman Gennady Kolker, journalist Glenn Greenwald said the article about XKeyscore drew on half a dozen documents supplied to him by Snowden in Hong Kong. One of them — a 32-page overview of the program — was published in its entirety, albeit with several pages redacted.
The documents are the first to have been published in the Guardian since Snowden, who remains stuck at a Moscow airport, applied for temporary asylum in Russia on July 16.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’d be inclined to accept on condition that Snowden agreed not to hurt U.S. interests — implying that the American would have to stop leaking secrets. But Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said Wednesday that the material for the article was provided long before Snowden promised to stop leaking.
“He warned me that he had already sent to the press an array of revealing information and secret documents and, unfortunately, could not stop its publication,” Kucherena was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Give Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible
SourceGive Snowden his due: He made a surveillance debate possible
By Michael McGough
July 31, 2013, 12:42 p.m.
They call it the “Snowden effect.” Whatever you think of fugitive former National Security Agency consultant Edward J. Snowden -- hero, traitor, something in between -- his revelations about electronic surveillance programs have inspired a debate about broad questions of policy that was impossible because of the secrecy that enshrouded the programs themselves and their legal rationale. And that debate in turn has prompted defenders of the program to acknowledge that it can be reformed.
In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee and a dogged defender of the NSA programs, says that she intends “to work with members of the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees to consider changes to the NSA call-records program in an effort to increase transparency and improve privacy protections.” That is the program under which the government collects so-called metadata -- information about the source, destination and duration of telephone calls.
Among other changes, Feinstein would have the government make public on an annual basis the number of Americans’ phone numbers “submitted as queries of the NSA database,” as well as the number of warrants obtained by the FBI to examine the actual content of phone calls. She also would reduce from five to two or three years the length of time phone records would be retained.
The improvements Feinstein proposes fall short of abolishing the bulk collection of telephone metadata unrelated to a specific terrorism investigation. But would even these refinements be on the table if Snowden hadn’t released information about the metadata program? Would President Obama be inviting congressional critics of the program (along with supporters) to the White House? According to Politico, the president will host a powwow on the surveillance program Thursday.
And without Snowden’s revelations, which continued Wednesday with a report in the Guardian about a versatile search program called XKeyscore, would the Senate Judiciary Committee be discussing changes in the way the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates and in how its judges are selected? Would the administration have released key documents about the metadata program, as it did Wednesday?
As they say in England, not bloody likely.
Even Obama, in the aftermath of the first Snowden leaks, said that he welcomed a debate over surveillance policy and whether it infringed on civil liberties. Without Snowden, that debate wouldn’t exist.
For that reason, some of Snowden’s supporters argue that he should be spared prosecution or even be given a presidential pardon. (Talk about “not bloody likely.”)
That doesn’t necessarily follow, for several reasons. Even if you don’t accept the notion that those who engage in civil disobedience should be willing to accept punishment, there is the question of whether some of Snowden’s leaks went beyond blowing the whistle on surveillance of Americans to compromise purely foreign intelligence.
But the “Snowden effect” is real, and salutary.
More articles on bad government.