Homeless in Arizona

Struggling Caribbean Islands Selling Citizenship

You can buy a legal passport from a Caribbean nation for $100K??

Struggling Caribbean Islands Selling Citizenship

By DAVID McFADDEN Associated Press

KINGSTON, Jamaica February 12, 2013 (AP)

Hadi Mezawi has never set foot on the Caribbean island of Dominica, has never seen its rainforests or black-sand beaches. But he's one of its newest citizens.

Without leaving his home in the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian man recently received a brand new Dominican passport after sending a roughly $100,000 contribution to the tropical nation half a world away.

"At the start I was a little worried that it might be a fraud, but the process turned out to be quite smooth and simple. Now, I am a Dominican," said Mezawi, who like many Palestinians had not been recognized as a citizen of any country. That passport will help with travel for his job with a Brazilian food processing company, he said by telephone from Dubai.

Turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has led to a surge of interest in programs that let investors buy citizenship or residence in countries around the world in return for a healthy contribution or investment. Most are seeking a second passport for hassle-free travel or a ready escape hatch in case things get worse at home.

Nowhere is it easier or faster than in the minuscule Eastern Caribbean nations of Dominica and St. Kitts & Nevis.

It's such a booming business that a Dubai-based company is building a 4-square-mile (10-square-kilometer) community in St. Kitts where investors can buy property and citizenship at the same time. In its first phase, some 375 shareholders will get citizenship by investing $400,000 each in the project, which is expected to include a 200-room hotel and a mega-yacht marina. Others will get passports for buying one of 50 condominium units.

"The more they fight over there, the more political problems there are, the more applications we get here," said Victor Doche, managing director of another company that offers four condominium projects where approved buyers are granted citizenship in St. Kitts, which is less than twice the size of Washington D.C.

It's impossible to say how many people have used the cash for citizenship programs. Officials in both countries declined to respond when asked by The Associated Press.

"Why do I have to speak on that?" said Levi Peter, Dominica's attorney general. "I have no explanation to give to AP."

But Bernard Wiltshire, a former Dominica attorney general, said there were already around 3,000 economic citizens when he left government about a decade ago. The country now has roughly 73,000 inhabitants in all.

"Investor visa" or citizenship programs are offered by many nations, including the United States, Canada, Britain and Austria. But the Caribbean countries offer a fast path to citizenship at a very low cost. The whole process, including background checks, can take as little as 90 days in St. Kitts. And there's no need to ever live on the islands, or even visit.

A foreigner can qualify for citizenship in St. Kitts with a $250,000 donation to a fund for retired sugar workers or with a minimum real estate investment of $400,000. The minimum contribution in Dominica is $100,000.

By contrast, a U.S. program allows visas for a $1 million investment in a U.S. business employing at least 10 people or $500,000 in designated economically depressed areas. The investor can apply for permanent residence in two years, and seek citizenship after five more. Demand in Canada is so great that the country stopped accepting new applications in July.

A Dominica passport holder can travel without a visa to more than 50 countries, while a St. Kitts passport provides visa-free travel to 139 countries, including all of the European Union. That's a big deal to people in countries from which travel is restricted or whose passports are treated with suspicion.

Critics say the programs undermine the integrity of national passports and have security risks. While there are no known cases of terrorists using the programs, experts say that's a possibility with many visa arrangements anywhere.

"No level of scrutiny can completely guarantee that terrorists will not make use of these programs, just as background checks cannot eliminate the risk that dangerous individuals will not enter the country (the U.S.) on tourist visas, as students or as refugees," said Madeleine Sumption, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

Canada imposed visa requirements on Dominica citizens a decade ago after complaining that suspected criminals had used island passports. And in 2010, Britain said it was considering visa requirements for Dominicans, prompting the island to review its 20-year-old economic citizenship program. Dominica never publicly released the results of its review and Britain took no action.

St. Kitts closed its program to Iranians in December 2011, shortly after Iranian students stormed the British Embassy in Tehran. Iranians had earlier been a major source of applicants, according to Doche.

Some locals worry the programs could get out of hand if conditions worsen abroad.

"There could be a flood of people with our passports relocating here," said Dominica's Wiltshire. "What are we going to do then? Really, this program must be halted. It's dangerous to us and dangerous for our neighbors."

St. Kitts opposition leader Mark Brantley said the citizenship program was bringing much needed revenue to the debt-swamped islands, but he said there should be better oversight and public accounting. "We do not see that sufficient controls are currently in place to ensure that bad people, for want of better language, do not get access to our citizenship," he said.

It's not just economic refugees who are interested in the programs.

American Neil Strauss wrote of securing citizenship in St. Kitts in his 2009 book on survivalist preparedness, "Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life."

"The same way we have a backup drive for our computer in case the hard drive explodes, I just felt like I wanted a backup citizenship in case the same thing happened to my country," Strauss said during a phone call from his home in Los Angeles. Like most economic citizens of St. Kitts, he rents out his island property.

Some other struggling Eastern Caribbean islands are looking at adopting the St. Kitts model.

Antigua & Barbuda is launching its own citizenship program to drum up money. And leaders of both main parties on the poor island of Grenada have hinted they may revive a program that was suspended after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, due to fears that local passports could be mistakenly sold to terrorists,

In Dubai, Mezawi said he keeps meeting fellow Dominica passport holders, mostly people of Iranian and Palestinian background.

"After the Arab Spring, it's become more difficult for us to really travel around the world, even in the Arab region," he said. "But being a citizen of Dominica, it is much, much better for us."

———

David McFadden on Twitter: http://twitter/com/dmcfadd

Arizona lawmakers target synthetic marijuana drugs

Arizona lawmakers target synthetic marijuana drugs

Associated Press Mon Feb 18, 2013 4:57 PM

PHOENIX — It’s an illegal marijuana knockoff that can result in seizures, psychotic episodes and other dangerous side effects, but some teenagers can’t get enough of it.

Despite a statewide and federal ban on synthetic marijuana, some Arizona lawmakers say the state must do more to crack down on the drug commonly known as spice. A Senate committee advanced two bills Monday that would make it harder to use or buy the synthetic compound that activates some of the same receptors in the body stimulated by cannabis.

One bill would prohibit businesses with liquor licenses from selling spice. Another bill would expand the state’s definition of dangerous drugs and increase the minimum fine for selling or manufacturing those drugs from $1,000 to $25,000.

“Kids’ lives are being ruined, and I am going to do what I can to stop it,” said Republican Sen. Don Shooter, of Phoenix, the bills’ sponsor.

Under the proposed changes, the state could revoke the liquor license of any business found distributing spice.

Roughly 41 states have banned spice, including Arizona.

Law enforcement officials have said the state ban has had little impact because distributors of synthetic drugs can make minor chemical changes to try to stay ahead of the law.

Expanding the state’s definition of dangerous drugs should close that loophole, Shooter said. The proposed definition would state that “a dangerous drug is any material, compound, mixture, preparation or substance that contains any quantity of certain listed substances, including their salts, isomers, and salts of isomers.” It also expands the definition to include an analog that “has a substantially similar chemical structure” as a dangerous drug.

Last year, President Barack Obama signed a federal law banning synthetic marijuana and other such drugs. The ban placed 26 substances in the federal list of Schedule 1 controlled dangerous substances.

———

Cristina Silva can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/cristymsilva.

Gilbert firm, makers of ‘SweetLeaf’ sugar substitute, an industry pioneer

Using government to drive your competitors out of business??

In this article the special interest groups that make aspartame tried to get the FDA to drive this maker of Stevia out of business.

As May puts it, companies that supported aspartame — a popular artifical sweetener — took notice of the article and used it to try to get him to stop selling Stevia as an alternative sweetener on its own.

Ultimately, May said the Food and Drug Administration told him he couldn’t bring Stevia to the U.S. as a separate sweetener — only if it was part of his herbal teas.

Gilbert firm, makers of ‘SweetLeaf’ sugar substitute, an industry pioneer

Posted: Monday, February 18, 2013 7:59 am

By Abel Muñiz Jr., Special to Tribune

Five-hundred years ago, the Guarani Indians of Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia started using the plant Ka’a He’ê — translated to English as “sweet herb” — for consumption and medical treatments.

Today, under the modern name “Stevia,” and thanks in no small part to the efforts of James May and his Gilbert-based company, Wisdom Natural Brands, it is consumption, as a zero-calorie sweetener in particular, that’s currently helping the product see significant worldwide growth.

May first came in contact with Stevia in the early 1980s. He saw the potential of both creating a business and promoting the consumer benefits of the product — used today as a natural alternative to sugar and other sweeteners. He traveled to Paraguay, home to an abundance of the “sweet herb” plants, to pursue his goal.

Thirty-one years later, after many successes — and certinaly a few setbacks, too — May, labeled by some as the “Father of Stevia,” is credited by industry leaders with helping stevia cultivation and distribution become a near $1 billion global industry.

Sweet beginnings

The story of May’s Gilbert-based company, Wisdom Natural Brands, and its connection to Stevia begins long before he was introduced to the plant in 1982.

The Guarani Indians of South America had presented the plant to the conquistadors when who came to their area in the 1500s. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, scientists began studying and determining ways to use the sweet qualities of Stevia as a possible sugar substitute, and by the time World War II ended, many countries — including the United States and United Kingdom were researching stevia as a possible substitute sweetener.

Japan was also researching the plant, seeing the potential of starting a Stevia industry of its own; by the time May had found out about the plant in 1982, it’s reported that a significant number of products in Japan already had Stevia in them.

Before Stevia entered May’s life he was involved in the field of renal disease, or kidney failure. Long a healthcare executive, May said he’s worked with both the artificial and transplant organ programs at Phoenix’s Good Samaritan Hospital, and has been on the board of directors of the Arizona Kidney Foundation and End Stage Renal Disease as well.

May’s Stevia experience began when, while at a get-together with friends, he met a Peace Corps volunteer who started telling him about the health benefits of Stevia. At first May didn’t believe the story, but the volunteer took out a sample of the plant and gave it to May to taste it. May was surprised at its sweet taste. The volunteer proceeded to tell him about the history and science of Stevia and May became immediately intrigued by it.

May said he saw so much potential in the plant that he decided to use his life savings to travel to Paraguay and start a business.

At the beginning of his new career, May already had a wife and five children; his wife, Carol, remembers the family had to sell almost everything they had during the first years.

“We started selling from our garage and the children even helped by putting labels on the boxes,” said Carol May, a former marriage and family therapist, and now the president of SweetLeaf working alongside her husband.

Bringing back a business

Upon May’s first trek to Paraguay, the issues with turning the sweet herb plant into what is now known as Stevia soon became apparent.

He said he met the ministers of commerce and agriculture before being introduced local farmers and businesses. Unfortunately because there was not much interest in Stevia, many of the farmers had stopped growing the plant and it took much convincing to get them to start cultivating it again.

May said some had even started growing other plants — in some cases marijuana and coca for the drug trade. But by offering them a steady, honest way to continue working, it didn’t take long for many of the farmers to join May’s business venture, he said.

As May worked to get the business off the ground the first few years — he first started selling Yerba Mate Tea with Stevia — he ran into trouble in 1985, he said, when a publication wrote a short story about his business. As May puts it, companies that supported aspartame — a popular artifical sweetener — took notice of the article and used it to try to get him to stop selling Stevia as an alternative sweetener on its own.

Ultimately, May said the Food and Drug Administration told him he couldn’t bring Stevia to the U.S. as a separate sweetener — only if it was part of his herbal teas.

May continued to fight the ruling, eventually tapping U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl for help in 1993. He argued his business was the victim of restrictive trade. According to May, the senators got letters back from the FDA telling them, in essence, that Congress had no business in FDA decisions.

Even still, whether it had any influence or not, it wasn’t long before congress passed the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education act; the act allows dietary products and their ingredients to be put under different sets of rules than those of “regular” food and pharmaceutical drugs, and in May’s case allowed for Stevia to be used as a dietary supplement, though still not a sweetener.

May said he had to get creative and figure out a way to get people to see that the product was sweet, without explicitely saying it to them. That, he says, is how the name SweetLeaf was created, with the brand serving as the ultimate descriptor.

A sweet commodity

In 2007, May focused his efforts on continuing to get ahead of the bigger companies which were trying to get into the Stevia business, May said he hired two organizations — GRAS Associates and the Life Sciences Research Office — to conduct studies to see if his product was safe enough to be marketed as a sweetner. GRAS Associates is a organization that helps companies meet, or prove that it meets, the “Generally Recognized as Safe” standard — hence the company’s name — as set by the FDA. The Life Sciences Research Office, May explained, is a non-profit organization that brings together groups of scientists to evaluate scientific data.

The studies were finished a year later, and May said SweetLeaf was granted GRAS certification, allowing it to be sold as a sweetner. Life Sciences also found that the product was safe and agreed with GRAS’ findings, leading to the FDA sending May a “no questions” letter; the letter isn’t a complete FDA affirmation of SweetLeaf, but it still allows May’s company to continue selling the product.

‘Father of Stevia’

May stands by his SweetLeaf product — and the ability of his business to be one of the pioneers of the trade.

“When he started, you could see he had a passion and vision for Stevia. I am very proud of him of his work and how he has been helpful for people’s health and farmers,” Carol said.

Throughout the years, May has been honored internationally with numerous awards for his work with Stevia. In addition to being presented the Lifetime Achievement Award by Stevia World International and the Visionary Award by the American Herbal Products Association, May has been honored by the President of Paraguay for his contributions to the country.

May himself is proud that the company was able to bring more awareness to the Stevia product.

“I am honored to been known as the father of Stevia,” May said.

Will Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. get a slap on the wrist???

Source

Ex-congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. may lose federal pension

By Katherine Skiba, Chicago Tribune reporter

7:09 a.m. CST, February 19, 2013 WASHINGTON—

Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who plans to plead guilty to using campaign dollars to buy more than $750,000 worth of luxury items, memorabilia and other goods, is at risk of losing his freedom and a federal pension estimated at $45,000, observers said.

Jackson, 47, who could be in court as early as this week, faces up to five years in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

His wife, Sandi, a former Chicago alderman facing a separate felony charge of filing false tax returns for six years, faces up to three years in prison, they said. Like her husband, she has agreed to plead guilty, according to announcements by their separate legal teams Friday.

Jackson Jr. has been ordered to pay a judgment of $750,000 and surrender some of the goods he bought. He and his wife each could be fined up to $250,000 as well. Sentencing is likely weeks away.

Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman, an expert on federal sentencing, said Jackson Jr.'s high-dollar crimes, mental condition and duties as a public servant will be considered at sentencing.

"His exposure — the most he could properly get if the judge decides to throw the book at him — clearly is at least five years," Berman said, "and it may be significantly more."

He said some factors help the Jacksons, including their stated remorse, their lack of criminal records and their willingness to plead guilty, saving the government from the burden and costs of a trial.

What hurts Jackson Jr. is the duration of the offenses set out in the federal charges, Berman said. And he noted that it's unclear whether prosecutors will bring up Jackson's dealings with now-imprisoned Gov. Rod Blagojevich or the ex-congressman's former relationship with a woman whose plane fare to Chicago was picked up by a Jackson friend.

Berman said his best early guess was that Jackson Jr. would be sentenced to "a year and a little bit more," and added: "But how hard the prosecutor pushes and what additional, aggravating information they put forward is definitely going to shape the sentencing outcome considerably."

Sandi Jackson's punishment is likely to be less harsh, he said, explaining that because of the couple's two young children, she might be given probation.

Since the two are unique defendants who held public office, the court of public opinion will sway what prosecutors and judges do, he said. Berman cited the public corruption nature of the charges against Jackson Jr., predicting that the government will want to make an example of him "so no one is fooled into believing that once you're a prominent politician, you can cut corners and get away with this."

Jackson Jr. suffers from bipolar disorder, but even if prosecutors are sympathetic to his illness, they will want to make clear that having mental problems does not mean you can commit crimes with impunity, Berman said.

The job of defense lawyers is to minimize their clients' exposure to prison, which may have been done in negotiations over the criminal counts, and "to tell a story as sympathetic as possible," Berman said.

Jackson Jr., 47, resigned Nov. 21 from the seat he had held in Congress for almost 17 years. Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, calculated then that Jackson Jr. — who was under investigation — might be eligible to collect a pension of $45,000 a year when he reached 62.

Washington attorney Ken Gross said Monday that if Jackson Jr. pleads guilty, that pension is in jeopardy because of a law that strips pensions from lawmakers convicted of an array of public corruption crimes.

Jackson is the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who issued a statement Monday asking for prayers for his son, his daughter-in-law and their children. In the statement, he said his son is "struggling with the highs and lows of his bipolar disorder" and under "tight medical supervision."

The father, speaking in an interview, said his son was in Washington — but not in a medical facility — and was seeing doctors and taking medicine. He said his son faced medical and legal challenges and "the additional pressure of press knocking at his door."

Tribune reporter Kim Geiger in Chicago contributed.

kskiba@tribune.com

Bills target public-sector [police] unions

Source

Bills target public-sector unions

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com

Tue Feb 19, 2013 12:14 AM

Republicans at the Arizona Legislature are continuing efforts to restrict public-employee unions.

Three bills to restrict unions passed a Senate committee on Monday. Another is scheduled for a House committee vote today. Several other bills are at various stages in the legislative process.

On Presidents Day, when most public employees had the day off, the Senate Government and Environment Committee held public hearings on three union-related bills. Sen. Rick Murphy, R-Peoria, sponsored all three bills. The committee passed:

Senate Bill 1348, which would prohibit a public employee from doing union activities during paid work time.

SB 1349, which would prohibit outside groups, such as unions, from deducting money from public-employee paychecks unless the employee provides written or electronic permission annually.

SB 1350, which would prohibit any individual who contracts with the state, counties or local governments from being able to strike.

The votes were all along party lines, with Republicans supporting them and Democrats opposing them.

“I am so profoundly sick and tired of the attacks by this body on public employees in all of their forms, especially the first responders putting their lives on the line every single day,” said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson. “It is time to support those who support us.”

Sen. Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City, defended the bills. “I don’t think there is an attack on public-sector unions,” she said. “When dealing with our money and taxpayer money, that’s when we need to put some brakes on.”

A.J. LaFaro, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, spoke in support of the bills. He said he was testifying as a Tempe resident and not in his official capacity.

“Unions use release-time hours to affect the outcome of elections in our city elections by having firefighters ... put campaign signs up and campaign for candidates,” LaFaro said. “It is unfair to us as citizens to pay tax dollars for these people to go out there and use these hours against us.”

David Mendoza, a lobbyist with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, opposed all three bills.

“The system of negotiations and union release time has been in place for decades in the state of Arizona,” he said. “It has not needed the state Legislature to intervene. It is an issue of local control, and it has worked well.”

The bills next need a vote of the full Senate before moving on to the House.

Today, the House Government Committee will hear House Bill 2343, which, similarly to SB 1348, would prohibit a public employer from paying an employee for union activities.

Rep. Warren Petersen, R-Gilbert, is the sponsor.

Three other bills have already passed committee and are awaiting a vote of their full chamber:

SB 1182, sponsored by Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, is similar to SB 1349 in that it prohibits outside groups from deducting money from public-employee paychecks without annual authorization.

HB 2026, sponsored by Rep. Michelle Ugenti, R-Scottsdale, would require local governments to vote by the end of the year on whether to deduct union dues from employee paychecks.

HB 2330, sponsored by Rep. Steve Montenegro, R-Avondale, requires meetings between unions and a public body to follow the Open Meeting Law unless they are about employment-related matters.

Bills to forbid employees from doing union business on work time and to restrict unions from deducting dues from members’ paychecks failed to pass the Legislature last year.

750,000 Marijuana Arrests in 2011

1,500,000 Drug War Arrests in 2011

"Turning the tide on Drug reform"

The article said that was about one half of all the drug war arrests in 2011, which was a total of 1.5 million.

I checked out an FBI web page titled:

Crime in the United States 2011

That means arrests for victimless drug war crimes accounted for about 12 percent of all the arrests in the United Stated in 2011. And that arrests for victimless marijuana crimes accounted for about 6 percent of all the arrests in 2011.

I suspect these numbers are misleading because the FBI considers each charge a person was arrested for as a separate arrest.

So if a person was arrested and charged with 3 crimes that would account for 3 separate arrests, not one.

I frequently say that two thirds of the people in Federal prisons are there for victimless drug war crimes, so the 12 percent number here is about one sixth of the figure I usually give.

I don't know why the numbers are different.

Perhaps because the 12 percent number is number of arrests. While the two thirds number or 66 percent is the number of people in prisons, and each person arrested is not sent to prison.

China to use drones to murder suspected drug war criminals????

Source

Chinese Plan to Kill Drug Dealer With Drone Highlights Military Advances

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: February 20, 2013

BEIJING — China considered using a drone strike in a mountainous region of Southeast Asia to kill a Myanmar drug lord wanted in the killings of 13 Chinese sailors, but decided instead to capture him alive, according to an influential state-run newspaper.

The plan to use a drone, described to the Global Times newspaper by a senior public security official, highlights China’s increasing capacity in unmanned aerial warfare, a technology dominated by the United States and used widely by the Obama administration for the targeted killing of terrorists.

Liu Yuejin, the director of the public security ministry’s antidrug bureau, told the newspaper that the plan called for using a drone carrying explosives to bomb the outlaw’s hide-out in the opium-growing area of Myanmar in the Golden Triangle at the intersection of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

China’s law enforcement officials were under pressure from an outraged public to take action after 13 Chinese sailors on two cargo ships laden with narcotics were killed in October 2011 on the Mekong River. Photos of the dead sailors, their bodies gagged and blindfolded and some with head wounds suggesting execution-style killings, circulated on China’s Internet.

It was one of the most brutal assaults on Chinese citizens abroad in recent years. Naw Kham, a member of Myanmar’s ethnic Shan minority and a major drug trafficker, was suspected in the killings.

A manhunt by the Chinese police in the jungles of the Golden Triangle produced no results, and security officials turned to a drone strike as a possible solution.

China’s global navigation system, Beidou, would have been used to guide the drones to the target, Mr. Liu said. China’s goal is for the Beidou system to compete with the United States’ Global Positioning System, Russia’s Glonass and the European Union’s Galileo, Chinese experts say.

Mr. Liu’s comments on the use of the Beidou system with the drones reflects the rapid advancement in that navigation system from its humble beginnings more than a decade ago.

The experimental navigation system was started in 2000 and has since expanded to 16 navigation satellites over Asia and the Pacific Ocean, according to an article in Wednesday’s China Daily, an English-language state-run newspaper. The Chinese military, particularly the navy, is now conducting patrols and training exercises using Beidou, the newspaper said.

As an example, China Daily quoted the information chief at the headquarters of the North Sea Fleet, Lei Xiwei, saying a fleet with the missile destroyer Qingdao, along with the missile frigates Yantai and Yancheng, entered the South China Sea on Feb. 1 using the Beidou navigation system to provide positioning, security and protection for the fleet.

As China has been vastly improving its navigation system, it is also making fast progress with drones, and many manufacturers for the Chinese military have research centers devoted to unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a report last year by the Defense Science Board of the Pentagon.

Two Chinese drones, apparently modeled on the American Reaper and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, were unveiled at the Zhuhai air show in November. A larger drone that Western experts say is akin to the American RQ-4 Global Hawk is also known to be in the Chinese arsenal.

One of the Chinese drones, the CH-4, had a range of about 2,200 miles and was ideal for surveillance missions over islands in the East China Sea that are the subject of a dispute between China and Japan, an official with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said at the Zhuhai air show.

China has acknowledged a pilot program that uses drones as part of its stepped-up surveillance of its coastal areas, as well as in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

By 2015, the State Oceanic Administration has said it plans to use drones along China’s coastline on a permanent basis and would establish monitoring bases in provinces along the coastline for drones.

As for Naw Kham, the fugitive, he was captured by Lao authorities at the Mekong River port of Mong Mo after a six-month hunt in the jungles of the Golden Triangle by the combined police forces of China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. After his extradition to China, Naw Kham received a death sentence from a Chinese court in Yunnan Province and awaits execution, according to Chinese press reports.

“We didn’t use China’s military, and we didn’t harm a single foreign citizen,” Mr. Liu bragged after the arrest in April 2012.

Bree Feng contributed reporting.

San Francisco government rulers pay themselves very well!!!!

25% of San Francisco city workers make over $100,000

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr made $321,522.

San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White came in second, at $314,759

The were followed by a slew of police and fire deputy chiefs.

Source

572 city workers paid more than governor

Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross

Updated 3:05 am, Wednesday, February 20, 2013

No fewer than 572 San Francisco city workers and executives made more than Gov. Jerry Brown last year.

More than 1,500 city workers made more than state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

And that's without overtime.

"That's pretty staggering," said Tom Dalzell, head of the California Citizens Compensation Commission, which sets pay for state lawmakers.

With a salary of $173,987, Brown makes about as much as a senior police sergeant in San Francisco, once premium pay for the cop's years of service, special training and the like are included.

At $151,127 a year, Harris is making less than many of the lawyers she used to oversee when she was San Francisco district attorney.

"I think you will find that in just about every major city or county in the state," Dalzell said.

That may be the case, but San Francisco is a true municipal gold mine when it comes to pay. The days when the headline-grabbing "$100,000 club" was made up of a handful of top managers and overtime earners are long gone.

Last year, city controller's records show, roughly a quarter of the city's 36,000 full- and part-time workers made more than $100,000 - without overtime.

And 195 workers and execs made more than $200,000.

The highest-paid was Police Chief Greg Suhr, who made $321,522. Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White came in second, at $314,759, followed by a slew of police and fire deputy chiefs.

Mayor Ed Lee checked in at No. 27, with $260,547.

This year's cash-out prize went to outgoing police Capt. John Goldberg, who got $245,999 for his unused sick and vacation time, bringing his yearly pay to $350,403.

Lee's reaction to the numbers?

"Whenever the city opens a contract, we look at comparable rates around the region," said spokeswoman Christine Falvey. "We're constantly looking (at) how much we are paying employees and finding good people, and balancing that with protecting the city's fiscal health."

SNIP

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com

Arizona Senate panel to ban medical marijuana candy???

Arizona Senate panel OKs plan to clarify medical-pot law

By Lindsey Collom The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 20, 2013 9:46 PM

A bill that would pave the way for medical-marijuana research at Arizona’s universities, particularly to help veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, is advancing through the Legislature.

The Senate Health and Human Services committee approved a bill Wednesday that changes the state’s medical-marijuana law, which currently bans medical pot on public university and college campuses. It also passed another bill that strictly prohibits marijuana dispensaries from packaging medical drugs as confectionery or candy, or labeling it in a way that might make it attractive to kids. [I guarantee you if the kiddies want candy they will buy the stuff that costs $10 a pound, not the $200 and ounce medical marijuana candy. Well except the ones that want to get high.]

Senate Bill 1443 clarifies a measure the governor signed into law last year. The proposal qualifies that, although the pot-on-campus ban is in place, the statute doesn’t prohibit public universities and other postsecondary schools from conducting medical-marijuana research on school grounds.

Sara Presler, CEO and executive director of the Maricopa County Medical Society, a professional group that represents more than 2,600 physicians, said the bill would allow medical researchers to study the real effects of cannabis.

“One of the most important things we can do is have real data to make public-policy decisions,” Presler said. “We don’t have the data. We don’t have the information we need to make good policy decisions.”

A colleague of Dr. Sue Sisley, an assistant professor of psychiatry and internal research at the University of Arizona, told committee members that the current statute has impeded Sisley’s attempts to research the use of medical marijuana by veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder. Sisley had been expected to speak in favor of the bill, but the committee didn’t hear the issue until after 8:30 p.m.

Senate Bill 1440 would require the Department of Health, which administers the state’s medial-marijuana program, to revoke the license of a dispensary that uses ambiguous packaging or advertising for its products. [The tyrants in the Legislator continue to flush Prop 203 down the toilet]

“We have an issue here in Arizona where there are products being made, such as brownies, cookies, lollipops that are packaged in a way that appeal to our youngest consumer,” said Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, the bill’s primary sponsor. “The dangerous part of this is these products contain marijuana.”

Dispensaries would have to label packaging to make it clear the edible drug is only for medicinal purposes. Packaging could look similar to the U.S. surgeon general’s warning labels on cigarettes.

Labeling currently is required to identify the amount of marijuana in the product.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the language of the bill is too broad but does not take issue with its underlying aim of preventing kids from accidentally eating the drug.

Republic reporter Yvonne Wingett Sanchez contributed to this article.

Mexico disappearances constitute ‘crisis,’ report says

Remember Felipe Calderon "War on Drugs" has been financed by the American government.

And of course Enrique Pena Nieto has chosen to continue this "War on Drugs" for the money it brings Mexico from America.

Source

Mexico disappearances constitute ‘crisis,’ report says

Associated Press Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:26 PM

MEXICO CITY — A Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday calls Mexico’s anti-drug offensive “disastrous” and cites 249 cases of disappearances, most of which show evidence of having been carried out by the military or law enforcement.

The report says the enforced disappearances follow a pattern in which security forces detain people without warrants at checkpoints, homes or workplaces, or in public. When victims’ families ask about their relatives, security forces deny the detentions or instruct them to look for their loved ones at police stations or army bases.

Human Rights Watch criticizes former President Felipe Calderon for ignoring the problem, calling it “the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades.”

While the report acknowledges that current President Enrique Pena Nieto inherited the problem, it says he should act urgently “in cases where people have been taken against their will and their fate is still unknown.”

Mexico’s Interior Department, which oversees domestic security, declined to make an immediate comment about the report.

Among the examples cited by Human Rights Watch is evidence suggesting that marines detained about 20 people in three northern border states in June and July of 2011. Though it denied abducting the victims, the Navy later acknowledged it had contact with some before they disappeared.

The report also says security personnel sometimes work with criminals, detaining victims and handing them over to the gangs. The report cites incidents in which investigators used information collected in a case to pose as kidnappers and demand ransom payments from the victims’ families.

Authorities frequently fail to take even the most basic investigative steps, such as tracing victims’ cellular phone or bank records, and often rely on investigations carried out by the victims’ relatives, the report adds.

Human Rights Watch recommends include that the Mexican government take concrete steps to change security procedures, including issuing new rules that require that detainees be taken immediately to prosecutors’ offices, and not be held at military bases or police stations.

California program to seize illegal guns gaining notice

California has the nation's only program to confiscate guns from people who bought them legally but later became disqualified.

The job requires a mixture of force and finesse. The agents show up in heavily armed teams, wearing black jumpsuits bulked up by bulletproof vests. But they don't have warrants and, unless their subject is on probation, they need permission to enter homes to search for guns.

Source

California program to seize illegal guns gaining notice

California has the nation's only program to confiscate firearms from people who bought them legally but are now barred from having them.

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

February 18, 2013, 6:56 p.m.

By law, Alexander Hernandez should have surrendered his gun to the state of California three years ago after a judge issued a restraining order against him for alleged domestic violence.

He didn't.

So one night recently , when the 26-year-old was at home in Whittier with his toddler, eight armed agents from the California Department of Justice banged on his door and took it from him.

Agents found the loaded .45-caliber handgun in a safe by his bed. Hernandez, who told the agents he had forgotten that he was supposed to turn in the weapon, was arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing a handgun, records show.

After assuring that the child had a baby-sitter, the agents drove off into the night in search of more illegal guns. Their quest took them across the San Gabriel Valley, from a retirement home to a gated community to a small house with rosebushes in front. In the living room of that house, a mother wept as agents arrested her son. A conviction for misdemeanor battery made it illegal for him to continue possessing his four guns.

California has the nation's only program to confiscate guns from people who bought them legally but later became disqualified. During twice-weekly sweeps over the last five years, agents have collected more than 10,000 guns.

But there are still more than 19,700 people on the state's Armed Prohibited Persons database. Collectively, they own about 39,000 guns. About 3,000 people are added to the list each year.

Clearing the backlog would cost $40 million to $50 million, according to Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. She estimated that once the backlog is cleared, fielding teams large enough to keep up with people added to the list would cost about $14 million a year.

"This is about prevention," Harris said. "This is about taking guns out of the hands of people who are prohibited from owning them, and are known to be potentially some of the most dangerous people walking around.... It's just common sense."

As gun control has moved to the forefront of national debate, California's program is being studied as a potential model.

The list of prohibited owners is compiled by analysts who track gun sales back to 1996 and match them against databases listing criminal convictions, restraining orders and mental health detentions.

Sometimes the guns are used in killings before the state can retrieve them, according to state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who last month introduced legislation that would provide funding for more agents to conduct sweeps.

For example, Roy Perez had been on the list for three years before he shot and killed his mother, his neighbor and his neighbor's 4-year-old in Baldwin Park in 2008, officials said.

Until recently, the gun apprehension teams had received little attention in the five years they have been sweeping through neighborhoods. But they suddenly have become a topic of intense interest — so much so that when agents rolled through Southern California earlier this month , their big, unmarked trucks were joined by two agents in a rented minivan large enough to carry journalists and camera crews.

The job requires a mixture of force and finesse. The agents show up in heavily armed teams, wearing black jumpsuits bulked up by bulletproof vests. But they don't have warrants and, unless their subject is on probation, they need permission to enter homes to search for guns. Obtaining a search warrant typically requires a reasonable suspicion that the gun would be on the premises, a difficult standard to meet based solely on information from a database, officials said.

Instead, they must talk their way in and coax gun owners into turning over their weapons.

Often, they come away empty-handed.

As the sun was setting, they arrived at the home of a man who had a domestic violence restraining order and was living in a Whittier neighborhood of small ranch homes and backyard stables. As agents walked to the door, neighbors came by on horseback, staring.

The man told the agents he didn't have the gun anymore; it was at his brother's house.

The agents went on their way — in the absence of the gun, they had no proof of a crime, and thus no cause for arrest.

"They'll keep going until they find that gun," Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh said. "You exhaust every lead."

On one occasion, he said, the team tracked a gun owned by mentally ill person to a remote cabin in the mountains in Northern California, where it had been sealed into a wall.

Sometimes the addresses they have are wrong, as was the case that same night when armed teams strode into a retirement community in Whittier, startling residents.

Other times, they don't find the gun they are seeking, but come across others that are possessed illegally. In Oakland last fall, Marsh said, his team entered a house and found a stash of assault weapons with the serial numbers ground off.

Marsh said he once felt a little twinge when taking a gun. The man had been disqualified from ownership because of mental illness. Agents found him living in compound without electricity in a rural area near Crescent City. He was using his guns to shoot game to feed himself.

A more common scenario played out at the Whittier home of Gerardo Naranjo, the young man who had been convicted of misdemeanor battery.

As Naranjo's mother wept, agents recovered the two guns they knew about and two more, including a semiautomatic rifle.

"I know I've saved lives," Marsh said as he cracked open an energy drink and drove the minivan to the next location. "We're taking guns from people that shouldn't have guns."

jessica.garrison@latimes.com

Third Schaumburg ex-cop accused of running drug ring out on bond

Source

Third Schaumburg ex-cop accused of running drug ring out on bond

By Clifford Ward Special to the Tribune

1:47 p.m. CST, February 20, 2013

A former Schaumburg police officer accused of running a drug ring was freed from jail Wednesday after a DuPage County judge rejected a bid to increase his bail.

Terrance O’Brien and two other ex-officers were arrested in mid January on charges that they were buying and selling illegal drugs and were using their police powers to facilitate their operation. O’Brien was the last of the trio to bond out of jail.

Judge Blanche Hill Fawell stuck with the order she made in late January, requiring O’Brien to post $30,000 to gain his release. Following his arrest, his bail initially was set at $750,000 full cash.

O’Brien’s attorney, Robert Irsuto, had previously told the judge that O’Brien had the support of his wife and could expect to live at home. But prosecutors learned that his wife had filed for divorce shortly after O’Brien’s arrest, prompting their request that the bail be reset at $750,000.

But Irsuto said the ex-cop could live with his mother in Hoffman Estates. She was one of about a dozen friends and family members in attendance at the hearing.

His brother, Patrick, testified that he would be willing to post the necessary money for bond.

During previous hearings, it was disclosed that O’Brien is the father of a teenage girl with his longtime mistress, who is also charged in connection with the alleged drug ring.

Irsuto called the situation between O’Brien and his wife something that would have to be worked through.

“If she doesn’t want him to return home, that’s something he respects,” Irsuto said following the hearing.

Fawell told O’Brien that he would be required to wear a GPS unit and would be barred from leaving the state. He was also barred from contacting John Cichy and Matthew Hudak, the two other officers charged in the case.

The Village of Schaumburg announced this week that it had contracted with an outside agency to review its police department in the wake of the scandal. The three cops resigned from the department following their arrests.

triblocaltips@tribune.com

When solitude is torture

When solitude is torture

By George F. Will, Published: February 20

“Zero Dark Thirty,” a nominee for Sunday’s Oscar for Best Picture, reignited debate about whether the waterboarding of terrorism suspects was torture. This practice, which ended in 2003, was used on only three suspects. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of American prison inmates are kept in protracted solitary confinement that arguably constitutes torture and probably violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.”

Noting that half of all prison suicides are committed by prisoners held in isolation, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) has prompted an independent assessment of solitary confinement in federal prisons. State prisons are equally vulnerable to Eighth Amendment challenges concerning whether inmates are subjected to “substantial risk of serious harm.”

America, with 5 percent of the world’s population, has 25 percent of its prisoners. Mass incarceration, which means a perpetual crisis of prisoners re-entering society, has generated understanding of solitary confinement’s consequences when used as a long-term condition for an estimated 25,000 inmates in federal and state “supermax” prisons — and perhaps 80,000 others in isolation sections within regular prisons. Clearly, solitary confinement involves much more than the isolation of incorrigibly violent individuals for the protection of other inmates or prison personnel.

Federal law on torture prohibits conduct “specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” And “severe” physical pain is not limited to “excruciating or agonizing” pain, or pain “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death.” The severe mental suffering from prolonged solitary confinement puts the confined at risk of brain impairment.

Supermax prisons isolate inmates from social contact. Often prisoners are in their cells, sometimes smaller than 8 by 12 feet, 23 hours a day, released only for a shower or exercise in a small fenced-in outdoor space. Isolation changes the way the brain works, often making individuals more impulsive, less able to control themselves. The mental pain of solitary confinement is crippling: Brain studies reveal durable impairments and abnormalities in individuals denied social interaction. Plainly put, prisoners often lose their minds.

The first supermax began functioning in Marion, Ill., in 1983. By the beginning of this century there were more than 60 around the nation, and solitary-confinement facilities were in most maximum-security prisons. In an article (“Hellhole”) in the March 30, 2009, issue of the New Yorker, Atul Gawande, a surgeon who writes on public health issues, noted, “One of the paradoxes of solitary confinement is that, as starved as people become for companionship, the experience typically leaves them unfit for social interaction.” And those who are most incapacitated by solitary confinement are forced to remain in it because they have been rendered unfit for “the highly social world of mainline prison or free society.” Last year, the New York Times reported that of the prisoners sent to solitary confinement in California’s Pelican Bay prison because of gang affiliation, “248 have been there for 5 to 10 years; 218 for 10 to 20 years; and 90 for 20 years or more.”

Two centuries ago, solitary confinement was considered a humane reform, promoting reflection, repentance — penitence; hence penitentiaries — and rehabilitation. Quakerism influenced the design of Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, which opened in 1829 with a regime of strict solitude. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited it:

“I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.”

In 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court said of solitary confinement essentially what Dickens had said: “A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide.” Americans should be roused against this by decency — and prudence.

Mass incarceration is expensive (California spends almost twice as much on prisons as on universities) and solitary confinement costs, on average, three times as much per inmate as in normal prisons. And remember: Most persons now in solitary confinement will someday be back on America’s streets, some of them rendered psychotic by what are called correctional institutions.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive.

Mesa expands DUI "war on drugs" to raise revenue???

If the cops force everybody they see to take a blood test there are bound to be a few more people with microscopic traces of illegal drugs in their bodies, which will make them automatically guilty of DUI and more important Mesa can shake them down with a $2,000 DUI fine.

Under Arizona law even if you are NOT intoxicated but have any measurable trace of illegal drugs in your body you are assumed to be guilty of DUI.

Remember if you smoke a marijuana cigarette, you are only "stoned" for around 4 hours, but the marijuana is detectable in your body for several days minimum, and as long as the pot is detectable you are assumed to be guilty of DUI in Arizona.

Source

Grant to help Mesa prosecute more DUI cases

Posted: Thursday, February 21, 2013 7:55 am

By Michelle Reese, Tribune

Use spice and drive, and it may be more likely you’ll pay for the crime in Mesa.

The City of Mesa’s Prosecutor’s Office was recently awarded a grant that will be used to help improve DUI prosecution — specifically those cases that involve synthetic drugs. The grant will allow the city to fund testing of blood samples for synthetic drugs like spice or bath salts when they are suspected. [I suspect the main idea it to give EVERYBODY a blood test, hoping that a few people will have microscopic traces of illegal drugs in their system which will allow Mesa to shake them down for a $2,000 fine even if they are NOT stoned]

Mesa Police Lt. Lt. Tom Intrieri said there has been a rise in the number of drug-related DUI cases overall, specifically with spice — a synthetic drug that mimics marijuana — and bath salts.

“Those two categories have been up a lot more this last year and the year before,” he said.

Mesa prosecutor Jon Eliason said the grant will also allow his office to bring in expert witnesses who can attest to the findings in samples. [If you have to bring in an "expert witness" to get a DUI conviction the person probably arrested was not intoxicated enough to be a danger to other people. So it sounds like it is about money, not safety]

Intrieri said while it’s a little easier to convince a jury in a DUI trial when alcohol is involved, the grant funds could help change that.

Mesa has traffic officers trained to recognize signs of drug use – whether it’s illicit, prescription or synthetic. The grant will provide funds to train more officers, as well as give them more knowledge on what to look for when they pull over an impaired driver, he said. [If only a skilled and highly trained police officer can determine that you are high on drugs, the degree of impairment you have probably isn't enough to make you legally drunk. - i.e. This sounds like it is more about increasing revenue, then getting dangerous drivers off of the road]

“They have to carry that (information) on to the forensics services division so when they analyze the blood, they know what they’re looking for,” Intrieri said.

When a synthetic drug or bath salt is suspected, it will be sent out of state for testing, Eliason said.

Most DUI cases where synthetic drugs or bath salts are suspected involve young people, Intrieri said.

“What we’re seeing through DUI enforcement is from 17, 18, on and up through the college age,” he said.

The nearly $60,000 grant was awarded by the DUI Abatement Council of the Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

Part of the funds will also be used to design a website for officers to track their arrest logs. That information will then be available to attorneys. [This sounds meaningless. Each case should be based only on the person arrested, not on arrests before or after the person arrested]

“The web page is to make us more effective,” Eliason said. “In the end we hope it will help us get cases prosecuted.”

In 2012, there were 3,412 DUI arrests in Mesa, Eliason said. Of those, 41.6 percent — or 1,420 arrests — involved drugs of some type. That’s up slightly from 2011, when 41.2 percent of DUI arrests involved drugs and it’s even higher than 2010, when 37 percent of DUI arrests involved drugs. [3,412 DUI busts boils down to almost $7 million in fines. If they can get a 10 percent increase in drug busts this will result in a $700,000 increase in revenue. F*ck safety, this is all about money]

“They’re increasing. We hear about it on the prescription drug side,” Eliason said. “If you’re abusing it or it’s a powerful prescription, you’re not supposed to drive. You’re not safe.” [Translation - if you take a prescription drug we would love to shake you down for a $2,000 DUI fine. We need the cash to pay the cops!!!]

The passing of Arizona’s medical marijuana law isn’t helping the situation, Eliason said.

“With the passing of Prop. 203, they think it’s OK to smoke marijuana and drive. The scary thing is people think it’s legal, so they think it’s OK.” [You can't convict a medical marijuana patient for DUI simply because they have marijuana in their system. They have to PROVE with other tests the person is intoxicated.]

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com

Drones have murdered 4,700 - U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham

If Obama, the CIA, DEA and Generals in the military don't have any qualms about being the judge, jury and executioner of suspect or accused criminals on foreign soil, I doubt if they won't have any qualms about murdering suspected drug dealers on American soil.

I wonder what the cost of each of these murders was.

The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator program cost $2.38 billion.

Dividing the $2.38 billion by the 4,700 drone murders gives us a cost of $506,382 per drone murder. Of course that doesn't count for the operation costs of the program, such as manpower and fuel.

Source

Drones have killed 4,700, U.S. senator says

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

Just how many people have America’s drones killed? Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has put the death toll at 4,700 — the first time an American official has publicly put a precise figure on the impact of strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles. The South Carolina lawmaker's office said he was citing an estimate already discussed on cable television.

Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, used the figure during a question and answer session on Tuesday with the Rotary Club of Easley in his home state of South Carolina. His remarks were first reported by the Easley Patch.

“We've killed 4,700,” the lawmaker said. “Sometimes you hit innocent people, [like 4,700 innocent people] and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al-Qaida.”

Drone strikes, President Barack Obama’s signature tactic for killing suspected al-Qaida and other extremist fighters, have been “very effective,” said Graham. “It's a weapon that needs to be used.”

Amid a controversy sparked by Obama’s targeted assassination of American citizens overseas suspected of consorting with terrorists, Graham came down sharply against any judicial oversight of the drone war, calling the idea “crazy.” [Hey, I'm a Senator and have a God given right to murder anybody I want to???]

“I can't imagine, in World War [II] for Roosevelt to have gone to a bunch of judges and said, 'I need your permission before we can attack the enemy,'” Graham said.

Drone war expert Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations noted on his blog that Graham’s figure lined up with the high-end estimate by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

“Either Graham is a big fan of TBIJ’s work, or perhaps he inadvertently revealed the U.S. government’s body count for nonbattlefield targeted killings,” Zenko said.

Asked about the disclosure, Graham's office forwarded a clip from MSNBC in which the anchor cites the figure of 4,700 killed. Asked whether the Obama Administration harbored any concerns about Graham's comments, National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor sent along a blog post including the same clip.

Graham's remarks, as reported, did not specify whether he was discussing CIA drone strikes or military drone strikes.

Obama's expanded drone war has broad popular support in the U.S., according to a poll released earlier this month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That survey found 56 percent support such strikes and 26 percent oppose them. At the same time, 53 percent worry about potential civilian casualties. But overseas it faces majority opposition, Pew found last year.

TSA apologizes for screening that upset girl, 3

I'm just joking, but I suspect the TSA thugs are 100 percent serious when it comes to suspecting that all 3 year old children are armed with AK-47s and members of the Taliban. Especially the ones with brown skin.

Source

TSA apologizes for screening that upset girl, 3

Associated Press Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:35 AM

ST. LOUIS — The Transportation Security Administration is apologizing after agents at Lambert Airport in St. Louis sought to screen a 3-year-old girl in a wheelchair.

The mother of the child shot video that caused a stir in social media after it was posted online.

The incident happened Feb. 8. The girl and her family were about to fly to Disney World in Orlando, Fla. A TSA agent asked to pat down the 3-year-old and screen her wheelchair. The agent initially told the girl’s mother, Annie Schulte, it was illegal to tape the activity.

On the video, the little girl, Lucy, who has spina bifida, is seen crying.

Agents eventually decided against a pat-down.

The TSA says it regrets the incident and will address concerns with its workers.

Mandatory Gun Insurance??? A round about way to disarm Americans???

I suspect this so called "mandatory gun insurance" is designed to do the same thing.

Requiring people who own guns to purchase insurance which will be made unaffordable to prevent people from legally buying and owning guns by making the insurance too expensive.

And of course after the government passes a law requiring mandatory gun insurance, the next step would be to pass laws that make it impossible for insurance companies to sell the mandatory gun insurance, effectively making guns illegal.

This isn't a new trick by our government rulers. They did the same thing when they made drugs illegal.

The "1914 Harrison Narcotic Tax Act" and the "1937 Marihuana Tax Act" effectively made drugs illegal by slapping a tax on them, while at the same time the government stopped issuing the tax licenses.

Source

Latest Front in the Gun Debate Is Mandatory Insurance

By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: February 21, 2013 609 Comments

In a nation sharply divided over efforts to curb violence and the right to bear arms, both sides of the gun debate seem to agree on at least one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed society.

David P. Linsky is a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance.

But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will choose to accept it, are very much in dispute.

Lawmakers in at least half a dozen states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, have proposed legislation this year that would require gun owners to buy liability insurance — much as car owners are required to buy auto insurance. Doing so would give a financial incentive for safe behavior, they hope, as people with less dangerous weapons or safety locks could qualify for lower rates.

“I believe that if we get the private sector and insurance companies involved in gun safety, we can help prevent a number of gun tragedies every year,” said David P. Linsky, a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance. He believes it will encourage more responsible behavior and therefore reduce accidental shootings. “Insurance companies are very good at evaluating risk factors and setting their premiums appropriately,” he added.

Groups representing gun owners oppose efforts to make insurance mandatory, arguing that law-abiding people should not be forced to buy insurance to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. But some groups, including the National Rifle Association, endorse voluntary liability policies for their members. And as several states pass laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons and use them for self-defense, some gun groups are now selling policies to cover some of the legal costs stemming from self-defense shootings.

The United States Concealed Carry Association recently began selling what it calls Self-Defense Shield. “If you’re forced to justifiably use your gun in self-defense,” its Web site says, “Self-Defense Shield will help pay for your expert pro-2nd Amendment lawyer by reimbursing your legal-defense expenses following your acquittal — an ingenious system critical to the arsenal of any responsibly armed citizen.”

Premiums for such insurance range from around $200 to $300 per year; in general, the coverage is narrowly written and excludes cases where a gun is used to commit a crime.

Some specialized underwriters are reviewing what their policies cover when it comes to shootings, and weighing whether they should offer new types of coverage for gun owners. And as more states pass laws allowing people to bring guns to public venues — including restaurants, bars, churches and the parking lots of their workplaces — some business groups have expressed concerns that they could be held liable for shootings on their properties, which could drive up their insurance costs.

On Thursday, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut outlined his proposals to reduce gun violence — which included universal background checks, a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines and a stronger assault weapons ban — he called for officials to study “whether owners of firearms should be required to carry additional insurance.”

The insurance industry is wary of some of the proposals to require gun owners to buy liability coverage — and particularly of bills, like one that was filed in New York that would require coverage for damages resulting not only from negligence but also from “willful acts.”

Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute, said that insurance generally covered accidents and unintentional acts — not intentional or illegal ones. “Insurance will cover you if your home burns down in an electrical fire, but it will not cover you if you burn down your own house, and you cannot insure yourself for arson,” he said.

Some claims stemming from shootings have been covered by homeowners’ insurance — even by policies that said they did not cover illegal acts.

The families of the two students responsible for the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado were able to use money from their homeowners’ policies to settle a lawsuit brought by families of most of the victims. In 2001, a California court ordered an insurance company to defend a policyholder whose 16-year-old son shot and killed a friend with a Beretta handgun that he had found in his mother’s coat. But the year before, a North Carolina court ruled that an insurance company did not have to cover the expenses of a policyholder who had shot and wounded a prowler on his property.

Christopher J. Monge, an insurance agent and gun owner in Verona, Wis., recently wrote a book, “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Insurance for Concealed Carry and Self-Defense,” which he sells at gun shows. Mr. Monge said that the problem with most liability insurance is that it promises coverage only in cases of a gun owner’s negligence, or an accidental shooting — and not if the gun owner shoots someone intentionally in self-defense. “A negligent act is covered by your liability policy, but if you intentionally shoot somebody, it could be excluded,” he said.

So as more states pass self-defense laws, Mr. Monge said that he found several insurance companies that would specifically offer liability coverage in cases of self-defense, usually in the form of an “umbrella” policy that added a higher level of coverage than the routine coverage for negligence in a homeowners’ policy. An umbrella policy adds coverage for unusual, but potentially expensive, incidents.

But he opposes proposals to make liability insurance mandatory. “They’re barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of gun owners are going to be safe and not go crazy.”

States have been considering mandatory gun insurance bills for years, but no state has passed one yet, said Jon Griffin, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures. When Illinois considered a bill in 2009, the National Rifle Association wrote that it would “put firearms ownership out of reach for many law-abiding Illinoisans.” The N.R.A. endorses a policy that offers excess liability coverage — “because accidents do happen no matter how careful you are” — and another that offers “self-defense insurance.”

The recent trend of allowing guns in more public places has alarmed some business groups. When Ohio enacted a law allowing guns in bars in 2011, the Ohio Restaurant Association opposed it, writing officials that restaurant owners “expect that this law would be perceived by insurance companies as increasing the risk of injury in establishments that sell alcohol, which of course would result in increased liability insurance costs.” Owners have not reported higher premiums because of the new law, said a spokesman for the association, Jarrod A. Clabaugh, but some worry that a shooting could drive up their insurance costs.

The current debate over mandatory liability laws is being watched with interest by Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law. Professor Lund proposed the idea of mandatory insurance in a 1987 article in the Alabama Law Review, seeing it as a form of gun control that could be consistent with the constitutional right to bear arms. But he said that he had not studied any of the current proposals, and noted that it made a great deal of difference how they are written.

“If this were done, the private insurance market would quickly and efficiently make it prohibitively expensive for people with a record of irresponsible ownership of guns to possess them legally,” he wrote in the 1987 article, “but would not impose unreasonable burdens on those who have the self-discipline to exercise their liberty in a responsible fashion.”

The "Drug War" is a government welfare program for doctors

Source

Funded but not monitored

An Arizona Republic special report examines Arizona's regulation of residential treatment centers for youth.

By Rob O’Dell and Craig Harris The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 22, 2013 1:04 AM

Arizona taxpayers spent $78 million the past three years for troubled children to receive help for addictions and behavioral problems at nine residential centers without measuring the effectiveness of their treatment.

The Arizona Department of Health Services and the state Supreme Court’s Administrative Office of the Courts, the agencies that regulate the facilities, confirmed that the state does not measure whether contractors are performing well or providing the proper services.

“Treatment success is defined by the facility,” said Laura Oxley, an ADHS spokeswoman. “Treatment progress is defined by the program and the therapist.”

The AOC has a system to rate facilities’ treatment success, but the agency initially told The Arizona Republic that it had no evaluation reports. Later, the agency provided evaluations completed in 2008, but the reviews did not measure the quality of treatment and none has been done since.

The state’s residential treatment tab — an average of $26 million a year since 2009 — is only for care at Level 1 juvenile centers, which house Arizona’s most at-risk teens. It does not include the cost for the judicial system to place children in the centers, for the AOC to administer contracts with the homes, or staff costs at ADHS, which licenses the centers.

Nine residential treatment facilities that receive public money together supply 466 beds, meaning the average annual cost per bed to taxpayers is nearly $56,000. Two receive no state funding.

Courts or parents can place children in these centers, which provide in-house counseling, nursing care and an on-site school for children with issues ranging from drug addictions to behavioral and emotional problems.

A Republic investigation of the juvenile residential treatment centers also found allegations of physical mistreatment of teens, adult staff members having sexual contact with clients, excessive runaways, and lax efforts by regulators to carefully analyze or curb the problems being reported.

Oxley said ADHS does not rate treatment at the centers and is prevented from doing so because no state policy mandates it. A non-profit health-care accreditation organization reviews facilities nationally, but none of its full reports is publicly available.

State health services Director Will Humble, who was appointed by Gov. Jan Brewer, said his department is drafting new rules that could address questions arising from The Republic’s investigation of juvenile residential treatment centers.

Oxley said ADHS’ focus in licensing facilities is making sure they document that staff members have the skills and knowledge to be employed there. The Republic could find no record of any Level 1 facility being in danger of or losing its ADHS license.

But AOC officials and former Maricopa County presiding Juvenile Court Judge Eddward Ballinger Jr. told The Republic that they regard ADHS’ licensing as a stamp of approval that the facilities are secure and safe for the patients.

The state Supreme Court’s contracts with treatment centers require the facilities to “participate in program evaluation processes,” which can include program-improvement plans or quality-assurance efforts. The standardized procurement contract indicates the state may also evaluate a facility’s success in achieving its goals and reducing recidivism. There is no requirement for annual reviews, however.

The Republic requested all facility evaluations conducted in the past three years, the time frame examined by The Republic. AOC spokeswoman Jennifer Liewer said that none existed and that the courts had not done evaluations since the five-year contract began in 2009.

The 2008 evaluations — done during the last contract period — measured the duration of client treatment and the risk profile of patients, but they did not score the centers on the quality of care despite having such a category on the assesssment forms. Liewer said the treatment-quality measurement was still being developed in 2008.

The AOC also does not measure recidivism rates by facility, only conducting large-scale measurement of how often youths return to the juvenile-justice system. That evaluation includes all court-involved youths in the state without focusing specifically on individual Level 1 facilities.

Liewer cited a report showing that the entire system’s recidivism rates dropped from 23 percent in 2008 to 20 percent in 2011. She said those numbers “support the argument that Arizona’s system is working” because residential treatment centers “are one component of Arizona’s system of treating juvenile offenders.”

She questioned the effectiveness of setting benchmarks.

“What would the incentive be to take the most severe offenders then, if the facility might have their contract rescinded if the kids recidivate?” Liewer said. “That seems like a pretty unreasonable thing to expect.”

The nine Level 1 facilities that receive state funding and two others that do not point to their accreditation by the Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit organization based in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., as proof that they meet a high standard for care.

The commission accredits about 2,000 behavioral-health-care organizations. The facilities are charged at least $2,890 for an on-site survey and at least $1,820 in annual fees, said Elizabeth Zhani, a commission spokeswoman.

The commission provides limited information on its website about survey results and does not disclose complaints against facilities. The commission will only disclose for a fee the standards it uses to evaluate the facilities.

‘Is this working?’

Judges who place children in these facilities rely on probation officers and lawyers to determine the services they need, said Liewer, and they depend on these same people during periodic hearings to determine if treatment is successful.

Ballinger, who recently left the Juvenile Court to become a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge, defended the current process of evaluating treatment, saying judges measure success on a child-by-child basis as each juvenile comes before the court.

“We have to rely on what is reported back to us in a court hearing,” Ballinger said. “Is this working for this child? If it isn’t, you’ve got to figure out if you can make the change.”

Ballinger said he had “very, very little” contact with the facilities when he presided over Juvenile Courts. He said judges place children only in facilities with AOC contracts, leaving it to ADHS and the AOC to regulate them. He said judges send children only to treatment centers that have contracts with the AOC.

“The way the process is set up is that others are supposed to investigate, vet them and monitor them,” Ballinger said. “And then give us a list of those that are successful and are in compliance.”

Liewer challenged Ballinger’s assessment, contending that courts or probation departments could directly contract with treatment centers if they wanted.

Ballinger sat for an initial interview late last year about residential treatment-center placements, along with Maricopa County Chief Juvenile Probation Officer Eric Meaux. Both declined to give interviews in late January about the findings of The Republic’s investigation.

Funding sources

Public funding for juvenile residential treatment centers during the past three years came primarily from four sources:

$8.8 million from the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which oversees Child Protective Services and provides funding for some children in DES care.

$23.5 million from the Supreme Court’s AOC, which receives a legislative appropriation and approves contracts for services with the treatment centers.

$28.7 million from Regional Behavioral Health Authorities, clearinghouses for public mental-health funding and treatment.

$17 million from Tribal Regional Behavioral Health Authorities, which disperse money and behavioral-health care for Native American tribes.

Money distributed by the regional and tribal health authorities primarily comes from state and federal Medicaid funding administered by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.

The AHCCCS money passes through ADHS, which licenses residential treatment centers and negotiates payment contracts with the health-care authorities for mental-health services.

The Republic identified the various revenue streams through public-records requests and interviews with officials at ADHS, the DES, the courts, Maricopa County Juvenile Probation and regional and tribal health authorities.

Big business

Owning juvenile treatment centers can be big business.

Much of the money that flows into them is paid under state contracts. Only two Level 1 centers in Arizona have not received state funds in the past three years.

Six centers have received a majority of state contract money during those three years:

Youth Development Institute in Phoenix received $25.8million.

Parc Place, with facilities in Chandler and Casa Grande, received $17.8million.

Devereux Foundation in Scottsdale received $13.7million.

Mingus Mountain Estate Residential Center in Prescott Valley received $9.2million.

The New Foundation in Scottsdale received $4.4million.

A New Leaf (Larry Simmons Residence) in Mesa received $4million.

These facilities also may take private, paying clients whose parents or private insurance covers their treatment costs, though they make up a small portion of the clientele in most centers.

They also take out-of-state clients, who in some instances pay more than Arizona residents.

Parc Place in Chandler, for example, receives 78 percent of its money from state- or tribe-funded clients; 16 percent from private paying clients; and about 6 percent from out-of-state agencies, according to data provided by Parc Place management.

Parc Place facilities in Chandler and Casa Grande are part of Acadia Healthcare Co. Inc., a publicly traded business listed on the Nasdaq. Based in Franklin, Tenn., Acadia purchased the Parc Place locations in April 2011.

The company’s business model, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records, is to generate most of its revenue from public programs such as Medicaid, an insurance program for low-income Americans.

Acadia has grown during the past few years and posted a profit of roughly $16million for the first three quarters of 2012 on $293 million in revenue.

Joey Jacobs, Acadia’s chairman and chief executive, received $669,631 in total compensation in 2011, according to company SEC filings.

On Dec. 12, 2012, he sold 266,177 shares worth $5.7 million and retained 1,161,261 shares.

Devereux Arizona in Scottsdale is part of the national Devereux Foundation, which reported 2010-11 revenue of nearly $381.5 million and a gain of $1.8million, according to the non-profit organization’s most recent available tax returns.

The organization paid $621,290 to Robert Kreider, president and chief executive.

The agency that received the most state money, Youth Development Institute, a non-profit organization, took in $12 million in fiscal 2010-11 and spent nearly that much on expenses. The bottom line: a $38,055 gain.

‘Very good investment’

Robert Friedman, a clinical psychologist and academic from Tampa, who specializes in residential treatment centers, said residential treatment centers can turn big revenues.

Friedman, a consultant for the National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health at Georgetown University, said the nearly $300 a day that some Level 1 centers receive from Arizona contracts is at the high end when compared with other states.

Supporters of residential treatment centers say the facilities deal with hard-to-reach children, including many with severe mental disorders who cannot function in traditional homes.

They acknowledge that some problems occur in the care centers but say the facilities provide a haven and counseling services that many children desperately need. And, in some instances, the facilities prevent a child from being sent to a psychiatric hospital.

But critics such as Cynthia Clark Harvey, a coordinator with the Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate Use of Residential Treatment, said there is little evidence treatment centers are successful.

Several states are trying less expensive in-home services that proponents contend provide better outcomes at lower cost.

Harvey said Arizona’s annual expenses are high, and she suggested that some of the companies’ motivation behind running the treatment centers is profit.

“When you talk about this kind of money, there is a motivation to keep those beds full,” Harvey said. “It’s the only way the model works.”

Rick Carter, an attorney for Youth Development Institute, disagreed.

“When you deal with RTCs, you are dealing with extremely troubled youth, sometimes violent youth,” Carter said. “The people who are in this line of work have a reason to be there, and they don’t do it because of the money. No one makes a lot of money doing this. The salaries are suppressed, there are long hours and it’s emotionally difficult.”

But Ira Burnim, legal director for the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law in Washington, D.C., said it does not appear to him that Arizona is carefully watching how tax dollars are spent.

“This costs a lot of money. Taxpayers are paying for it, and the state is supposed to be monitoring it,” Burnim said.

Arizona regulators have not canceled a contract with a Level 1 residential treatment center in recent memory, though the AOC has in the past several years canceled the contracts of several other juvenile mental-health treatment providers.

Humble, the ADHS director, defended the records of the treatment centers and the public money spent on them. He called the centers critical to preventing troubled children from becoming habitual offenders. He said the centers are a “very good investment” with “evidence-based” outcomes.

“The residential system is an absolutely critical component of the behavioral-health system,” Humble said. “Ultimately, you are asking a value question: What are kids worth? I think they’re worth it.”

Reach the reporters at rob.odell@arizonarepublic.com and craig.harris@arizonarepublic.com.

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