Who knew that the first thing you would hear after being hired to dance for Britney Spears would be, “Fill this, please.”
A source tells E! News that, in an effort to keep the on-track pop star free from negative influences, her camp is requiring that all of her backup dancers submit to drug tests.
“They all had to be drug tested and, if they didn’t pass, they were fired,” the insider says.
“I think they only do it for her because she is under strict watch. I think they just want good influences around her,” the source adds, noting that drug testing is not common practice.
Considering Britney spends a hefty chunk of time with her fellow performers—and is going to be heading out on tour next year with a number of them—it’s understandable that those who look after the Circus star want to screen her stagemates ahead of time.
“It’s going to be a pretty big tour,” says Robert Baker, the studio director at Millennium Dance Complex in North Hollywood, where Spears frequently rehearses. “They’re going to have a three-ring circus with live animals, so it’s probably stricter liability.”
“I don’t think it’s a common practice, but each artist is different,” Baker tells E! News, referring to the drug-testing issue. “Everyone is just trying to safeguard against any foreseeable problems.”
A rep for Spears didn’t respond
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Maine Women Lead Politics
Maine women to lead Legislature
Pingree elected House speaker, Mitchell Senate president
AP PHOTO BY PAT WELLENBACH
Hannah Pingree (left) is escorted into the House of Representatives at the State House in Augusta on Wednesday. Pingree was later elected to be Maine’s Speaker of the House.
By The Associated Press
By Glenn Adams
AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s glass ceiling developed a few more cracks Wednesday as women were sworn in as Senate president and House speaker. And in one of its first acts, the newly seated Legislature elected Maine’s first female attorney general.
“It’s so good to see things moving ahead,” said Janet Mills, a Democrat who won bipartisan support to become the state’s 55th attorney general. “Just because there are a lot of firsts doesn’t mean there can’t be a lot of seconds, thirds and fourths along the way. Maine men and women are sharing responsibilities more than in many other states, most other states.”
Also Wednesday after the formal swearing-in of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Sen. Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell of Vassalboro was elected the chamber’s president and Rep. Hannah Pingree of North Haven was elected House speaker.
Both were elected unanimously after minority Republicans, in a gesture of bipartisanship at the start of what’s expected to be a difficult session, threw their support behind the two Democrats. It’s the first time both of Maine’s legislative chambers are being headed by women at the same time.
And Mitchell is the first woman to have served as presiding officer in both the Maine House and Senate.
Maine has a history of electing and appointing women to lofty positions, although never a governor. The chief justice of the state supreme court, Leigh Ingalls Saufley, is a woman. Maine’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, soon will be joined in Washington by Democratic Rep.-elect Chellie Pingree, who was in Augusta Wednesday to see her daughter ascend to the House rostrum.
The 32-year-old Hannah Pingree noted that while she’s the second woman to serve as speaker, she’s not the youngest person to hold the title. In her acceptance speech, Pingree pointed to Hannibal Hamlin, who at age 27 wielded the Maine House gavel. Hamlin went on to serve as governor and in the U.S. House and Senate be-fore serving as Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president.
In her address to the Senate, Mitchell made reference to Maine’s record electing women.
“I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to reflect on how unremarkable an accomplishment it is to elect a woman president of the Senate,” Mitchell said. “I am proud that in Maine, this is not a big news story. In Maine a young woman can not only dream of becoming anything she wants to be, but she can actually achieve it.”
Mills, of Farmington, who was a western Maine district attorney for 15 years, must give up her House seat to which she was just re-elected in order to serve as attorney general. The mother of five stepdaughters, Mills is a former assistant attorney general who has practiced law for three decades.
She comes from a family with a history of political activism, including a brother, Peter Mills, serving as a Republican senator from Cornville and a sister, Dr. Dora Anne Mills, who is director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Three other prominent state offices also were filled Wednesday as Democrats were joined by Republicans in re-electing Matthew Dunlap as secretary of state, David Lemoine as treasurer and Neria Douglass as auditor. The secretary and treasurer serve two-year terms, and the auditor serves a four-year term.
Republican Rep. Kenneth Fletcher of Winslow said his party considers each of the Democratic candidates qualified and saw no gain in placing token candidates’ names in nomination.
“Don’t pick a fight that serves no purpose,” said Fletcher. “Why be contrary just to be contrary?”
Lawmakers were sworn in by Gov. John Baldacci, who had a sobering but optimistic message a day after he and the nation’s other governors met with President-elect Barack Obama in Philadelphia. In the State House, Baldacci reiterated Obama’s message that government must adopt the best ideas regardless of which side of the political aisle they come from.
“These are very difficult times facing our state and the nation,” said Baldacci. “In Maine, we put people above politics. We will need all our talents combined to ensure that Maine successfully weathers this economic storm and comes out stronger.”
Pingree elected House speaker, Mitchell Senate president
AP PHOTO BY PAT WELLENBACH
Hannah Pingree (left) is escorted into the House of Representatives at the State House in Augusta on Wednesday. Pingree was later elected to be Maine’s Speaker of the House.
By The Associated Press
By Glenn Adams
AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s glass ceiling developed a few more cracks Wednesday as women were sworn in as Senate president and House speaker. And in one of its first acts, the newly seated Legislature elected Maine’s first female attorney general.
“It’s so good to see things moving ahead,” said Janet Mills, a Democrat who won bipartisan support to become the state’s 55th attorney general. “Just because there are a lot of firsts doesn’t mean there can’t be a lot of seconds, thirds and fourths along the way. Maine men and women are sharing responsibilities more than in many other states, most other states.”
Also Wednesday after the formal swearing-in of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Sen. Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell of Vassalboro was elected the chamber’s president and Rep. Hannah Pingree of North Haven was elected House speaker.
Both were elected unanimously after minority Republicans, in a gesture of bipartisanship at the start of what’s expected to be a difficult session, threw their support behind the two Democrats. It’s the first time both of Maine’s legislative chambers are being headed by women at the same time.
And Mitchell is the first woman to have served as presiding officer in both the Maine House and Senate.
Maine has a history of electing and appointing women to lofty positions, although never a governor. The chief justice of the state supreme court, Leigh Ingalls Saufley, is a woman. Maine’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, soon will be joined in Washington by Democratic Rep.-elect Chellie Pingree, who was in Augusta Wednesday to see her daughter ascend to the House rostrum.
The 32-year-old Hannah Pingree noted that while she’s the second woman to serve as speaker, she’s not the youngest person to hold the title. In her acceptance speech, Pingree pointed to Hannibal Hamlin, who at age 27 wielded the Maine House gavel. Hamlin went on to serve as governor and in the U.S. House and Senate be-fore serving as Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president.
In her address to the Senate, Mitchell made reference to Maine’s record electing women.
“I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to reflect on how unremarkable an accomplishment it is to elect a woman president of the Senate,” Mitchell said. “I am proud that in Maine, this is not a big news story. In Maine a young woman can not only dream of becoming anything she wants to be, but she can actually achieve it.”
Mills, of Farmington, who was a western Maine district attorney for 15 years, must give up her House seat to which she was just re-elected in order to serve as attorney general. The mother of five stepdaughters, Mills is a former assistant attorney general who has practiced law for three decades.
She comes from a family with a history of political activism, including a brother, Peter Mills, serving as a Republican senator from Cornville and a sister, Dr. Dora Anne Mills, who is director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Three other prominent state offices also were filled Wednesday as Democrats were joined by Republicans in re-electing Matthew Dunlap as secretary of state, David Lemoine as treasurer and Neria Douglass as auditor. The secretary and treasurer serve two-year terms, and the auditor serves a four-year term.
Republican Rep. Kenneth Fletcher of Winslow said his party considers each of the Democratic candidates qualified and saw no gain in placing token candidates’ names in nomination.
“Don’t pick a fight that serves no purpose,” said Fletcher. “Why be contrary just to be contrary?”
Lawmakers were sworn in by Gov. John Baldacci, who had a sobering but optimistic message a day after he and the nation’s other governors met with President-elect Barack Obama in Philadelphia. In the State House, Baldacci reiterated Obama’s message that government must adopt the best ideas regardless of which side of the political aisle they come from.
“These are very difficult times facing our state and the nation,” said Baldacci. “In Maine, we put people above politics. We will need all our talents combined to ensure that Maine successfully weathers this economic storm and comes out stronger.”
Vatican Thinks LGBTQ Are Criminals
Vatican criticized for opposing UN decriminaliztion of homosexuality.»
The Vatican is drawing criticism from gay rights groups and newspapers editorials after Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, told a French Catholic news service that the Vatican opposes “a proposed U.N. resolution calling on governments worldwide to de-criminalise homosexuality.” Migliore claimed that the resolution “would create new and implacable discriminations” against opponents of same-sex marriage. Critics call that position “grotesque“:
A strongly worded editorial in Italy’s mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican’s reasoning was “grotesque”.
Pointing out that homosexuality was still punishable by death in some Islamic countries, the editorial said what the Vatican really feared was a “chain reaction in favour of legally recognised homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation”.
Franco Grillini, founder and honorary president of Arcigay, Italy’s leading gay rights group, said the Vatican’s reasoning smacked of “total idiocy and madness”.
Every single country in the European Union has signed the resolution, which was written by France. France is due to submit the draft declaration at the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, the sixtieth anniver
The Vatican is drawing criticism from gay rights groups and newspapers editorials after Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, told a French Catholic news service that the Vatican opposes “a proposed U.N. resolution calling on governments worldwide to de-criminalise homosexuality.” Migliore claimed that the resolution “would create new and implacable discriminations” against opponents of same-sex marriage. Critics call that position “grotesque“:
A strongly worded editorial in Italy’s mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican’s reasoning was “grotesque”.
Pointing out that homosexuality was still punishable by death in some Islamic countries, the editorial said what the Vatican really feared was a “chain reaction in favour of legally recognised homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation”.
Franco Grillini, founder and honorary president of Arcigay, Italy’s leading gay rights group, said the Vatican’s reasoning smacked of “total idiocy and madness”.
Every single country in the European Union has signed the resolution, which was written by France. France is due to submit the draft declaration at the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, the sixtieth anniver
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Blast From The Past: Aaliyah featuring Timbaland - "We Need A Resolution"
This was my favorite song seven years ago...
http://www.aaliyah.com/aaliyah/fund.html
http://www.aaliyah.com/aaliyah/fund.html
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Obama Publishes Plans for GLBTQ Individuals on Change.Gov
President-Elect Barack Obama has posted his plan for LGBT Rights on the Change.gov website and it's pretty comprehensive. It is by far, the most far-ranging civil rights agenda for the gay community ever offered by a President. Because the page is swathed in a combination of hopey vagueness and legislation you may have never heard of, here's a translation of the plan from Obamican to English:
Expand Hate Crimes Legislation
Obama supports the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act
In a separate section of the site, Obama offers support for the Matthew Shepard Act, which would significantly expand the 1969 Hate Crime law, give $10 million to law enforcement to investigate hate crimes and direct the FBI to track crimes made against LGBT people. The bill passed the House and the Senate in 2007 and was attatched to a defense spending bill as an ammendment. When Bush threatened a veto, the bill was dropped. The bill has widespread support in Congress and at the state-level, so with Obama's support, this bill will most likely pass.
Fight Workplace Discrimination
Obama wants to sign The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) comes in two flavors: Transgender and Transgender-Free. After watching ENDA fail, Congressman Barney Frank introduced a version of the bill into the House that did not provide protect against discrimination based on gender identity. It passed 235-184 and set off a small war within the gay community. Obama says he supports the version of ENDA that includes gender identity. With the new composition of the House, Frank would be inviting a firestorm if he chooses to introduce a version of the law that doesn't include transgender protection.
Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples
Obama wants to repeal DOMA and create federal recognition for civil unions.
In the wake of Prop. 8, Obama's position will please some in the gay community and anger others. Anyone who supports marriage equality will want to see the Defense of Marriage Act repealed. Not only does it prevent states from recognizing same-sex marriages in other states, it prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages anywhere. It set off a wave of mini-DOMA's which were enacted in states across the country. It may not be Constitutional. It's really bad, see?
The question of civil unions is a thorny one. Many (including Queerty) feel that creating a special class that confers the same rights as another institution for the sole purpose of excluding a group of people is both unconstitutional and immoral. That is, some of us will only accept equal rights under marriage.
Anti-marriage-equality advocates are also aware of this and with the Supreme Court composition likely to drift back to the center over the next several years, the fear is that civil unions are just a step on the way to legally recognizing gay marriages. With both the gay community split on the issue and conservatives looking to kill anything which would confer rights to gay Americans, the battle for federally recognized civil unions would be an uphill one.
Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
Obama won't support the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Politically, this position is only slightly harder than kissing a baby and offering "change". The Federal Marriage Amendment exists for one reason only– to help conservative Republicans get elected. The measure has limited support, would never pass Congress and would never get the votes from U.S. state legislatures needed to enact it.
Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell
Obama might appeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell if military commanders okay it.
The key phrase here is that Obama "will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy." Obama is unlikely to make a decision without support from the Pentagon, which is not keen on the idea of repealing Don't Ask-Don't Tell. This is smart. Bill Clinton tried to get gays in the military without getting military support and Don't Ask-Don't Tell was the compromise that resulted after commanders accused Clinton of putting the troops in danger.
The policy has been a disaster: Over 11,000 soldiers have been discharged from the military for disclosing their sexuality, with 'disclosure' being a term that includes things like writing a letter to your partner. Whether or not Obama moves quickly on the issue, he is promising to change the policy, which counts for something. If 2012 rolls around and it's still in place, the gay community should hold him accountable.
Expand Adoption Rights
Obama offers no promises.
Obama's position is that gay parents deserve the same rights as straight parents, but offers up no new ideas or support for existing legislation.
Promote AIDS Prevention
Obama will direct his administration to develop a comprehensive national strategy to deal with HIV/AIDS. He supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange programs and intends to speak publicly about HIV/AIDS related issues.
The only real meat to this position is Obama's support in lifting the ban on needle exchanges. That said, the vague "national AIDS strategy" could be something really large and extensive, or it could be three cubicles on Constitution Ave. He offers a laundry-list of things he seeks to promote: better safe sex education, education and contraception availability and there's no reason for him to lie. George Bush spent over $48 billion to combat AIDS in Africa and only a stupid politician would stand in the way of HIV/AIDS-related policies.
Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS
Obama supports the Microbicide Development Act
This is a pet project of Senate Democratic leaders like Obama, Clinton, and Dodd. The number of women who are infected with HIV has quadrupled in the last decade. The bill mentions that "In Sub-Saharan Africa, 76 percent of the young people (between ages 15 and 24) with HIV are girls under 20."
The bill would directed the National Institute of Health to set up a research arm focused on microbiocides, which could be administered as a cream, vaginal ring or other easy-to-apply method and prevent the spread of HIV among women, who are often at risk from infection by their own husbands. This bill would benefit women in the U.S. as well, but it is focused specifically as a way to address AIDS in Africa– a reminder that AIDS is not a gay issue, but a human issue.
Expand Hate Crimes Legislation
Obama supports the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act
In a separate section of the site, Obama offers support for the Matthew Shepard Act, which would significantly expand the 1969 Hate Crime law, give $10 million to law enforcement to investigate hate crimes and direct the FBI to track crimes made against LGBT people. The bill passed the House and the Senate in 2007 and was attatched to a defense spending bill as an ammendment. When Bush threatened a veto, the bill was dropped. The bill has widespread support in Congress and at the state-level, so with Obama's support, this bill will most likely pass.
Fight Workplace Discrimination
Obama wants to sign The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) comes in two flavors: Transgender and Transgender-Free. After watching ENDA fail, Congressman Barney Frank introduced a version of the bill into the House that did not provide protect against discrimination based on gender identity. It passed 235-184 and set off a small war within the gay community. Obama says he supports the version of ENDA that includes gender identity. With the new composition of the House, Frank would be inviting a firestorm if he chooses to introduce a version of the law that doesn't include transgender protection.
Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples
Obama wants to repeal DOMA and create federal recognition for civil unions.
In the wake of Prop. 8, Obama's position will please some in the gay community and anger others. Anyone who supports marriage equality will want to see the Defense of Marriage Act repealed. Not only does it prevent states from recognizing same-sex marriages in other states, it prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages anywhere. It set off a wave of mini-DOMA's which were enacted in states across the country. It may not be Constitutional. It's really bad, see?
The question of civil unions is a thorny one. Many (including Queerty) feel that creating a special class that confers the same rights as another institution for the sole purpose of excluding a group of people is both unconstitutional and immoral. That is, some of us will only accept equal rights under marriage.
Anti-marriage-equality advocates are also aware of this and with the Supreme Court composition likely to drift back to the center over the next several years, the fear is that civil unions are just a step on the way to legally recognizing gay marriages. With both the gay community split on the issue and conservatives looking to kill anything which would confer rights to gay Americans, the battle for federally recognized civil unions would be an uphill one.
Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
Obama won't support the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Politically, this position is only slightly harder than kissing a baby and offering "change". The Federal Marriage Amendment exists for one reason only– to help conservative Republicans get elected. The measure has limited support, would never pass Congress and would never get the votes from U.S. state legislatures needed to enact it.
Repeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell
Obama might appeal Don't Ask-Don't Tell if military commanders okay it.
The key phrase here is that Obama "will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy." Obama is unlikely to make a decision without support from the Pentagon, which is not keen on the idea of repealing Don't Ask-Don't Tell. This is smart. Bill Clinton tried to get gays in the military without getting military support and Don't Ask-Don't Tell was the compromise that resulted after commanders accused Clinton of putting the troops in danger.
The policy has been a disaster: Over 11,000 soldiers have been discharged from the military for disclosing their sexuality, with 'disclosure' being a term that includes things like writing a letter to your partner. Whether or not Obama moves quickly on the issue, he is promising to change the policy, which counts for something. If 2012 rolls around and it's still in place, the gay community should hold him accountable.
Expand Adoption Rights
Obama offers no promises.
Obama's position is that gay parents deserve the same rights as straight parents, but offers up no new ideas or support for existing legislation.
Promote AIDS Prevention
Obama will direct his administration to develop a comprehensive national strategy to deal with HIV/AIDS. He supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange programs and intends to speak publicly about HIV/AIDS related issues.
The only real meat to this position is Obama's support in lifting the ban on needle exchanges. That said, the vague "national AIDS strategy" could be something really large and extensive, or it could be three cubicles on Constitution Ave. He offers a laundry-list of things he seeks to promote: better safe sex education, education and contraception availability and there's no reason for him to lie. George Bush spent over $48 billion to combat AIDS in Africa and only a stupid politician would stand in the way of HIV/AIDS-related policies.
Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS
Obama supports the Microbicide Development Act
This is a pet project of Senate Democratic leaders like Obama, Clinton, and Dodd. The number of women who are infected with HIV has quadrupled in the last decade. The bill mentions that "In Sub-Saharan Africa, 76 percent of the young people (between ages 15 and 24) with HIV are girls under 20."
The bill would directed the National Institute of Health to set up a research arm focused on microbiocides, which could be administered as a cream, vaginal ring or other easy-to-apply method and prevent the spread of HIV among women, who are often at risk from infection by their own husbands. This bill would benefit women in the U.S. as well, but it is focused specifically as a way to address AIDS in Africa– a reminder that AIDS is not a gay issue, but a human issue.
Military Leaders Call For Repeal Of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
100+ Military Leaders Call for Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'
104 of the U.S. military's retired generals and admirals have called for repeal of the nation's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a document released Monday.
DadtSays the document: "We – the undersigned -- respectfully call for the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Those of us endorsing this letter have dedicated our lives to defending the rights of our citizens to believe whatever they wish. Scholarly data shows there are approximately one million gay and lesbian veterans in the United States today as well as 65,000 gays and lesbians currently serving in our armed forces. They have served our nation honorably. We support the recent comments of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General John Shalikashvili, who has concluded that repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would not harm and would indeed help our armed forces. As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Such collaboration reflects the strength and the best traditions of our democracy."
The AP reports: "While Obama has expressed support for repeal, he said during the presidential campaign that he would not do so on his own — an indication that he would tread carefully to prevent the issue from becoming a drag on his agenda. Obama said he would instead work with military leaders to build consensus on removing the ban on openly gay service members. 'Although I have consistently said I would repeal 'don't ask, don't tell,' I believe that the way to do it is make sure that we are working through a process, getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff clear in terms of what our priorities are going to be,' Obama said in a September interview with the Philadelphia Gay News."
See the list of military leaders who signed the document, AFTER THE JUMP...
Former Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander
Admiral Charles Larson, USN (ret.)
Lieutenant General Quinn Becker, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Henry Emerson, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Jerry Hilmes, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald Kerrick, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Ira Owens, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Thomas Rienzi, USA (ret.)
Vice Admiral Harold Koenig, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral James Zimble, USN (ret.)
Major General Anders Aadland, USA (ret.)
Major General Floyd Baker, USA (ret.)
Major General Harry Brooks Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Leslie Burger, USA (ret.)
Major General Alexander Burgin, USANG (ret.)
Major General Rosetta Burke, AUS (ret.)*
Major General William Burke, USA (ret.)
Major General Michael Conrad, USA (ret.)
Major General Eugene Cromartie, USA (ret.)
Major General James Delk, AUS (ret.)
Major General Oliver Dillard, USA (ret.)
Major General John Faith, USA (ret.)
Major General Jack Farris, USAF (ret.)
Major General Fred Forster, USANG (ret.)
Major General Robert Gamrath, AUS (ret.)
Major General Albert Genetti Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Luis Gonzales-Vales, AUS (ret.)
Major General David Hale, USA (ret.)
Major General Randy Jayne, USANG (ret.)
Major General Lawrence Johnson, AUS (ret.)
Major General Dennis Laich, USA (ret.)
Major General Frederick Lawson, AUS (ret.)
Major General Thomas Lynch, USA (ret.)
Major General Dennis Malcor, USA (ret.)
Major General John Roth, AUS (ret.)
Major General Henry Rasmussen, USA (ret.)
Major General Alan Salisbury, USA (ret.)
Major General Michael Scotti Jr., USA (ret.)**
Major General Harry Sieben, USANG (ret.)
Major General Paul Smith, USA (ret.)
Major General Robert B. Smith, USA (ret.)
Major General Charles Starr Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Story Stevens, USA (ret.)
Major General Joseph E. Turner, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General John C. Adams, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Clara Adams-Ender, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Hugh Aitken, USMC (ret.)
Brigadier General John "Joe" Allen, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Patricia Anderson, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Dale Barber, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General George Baxter, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Baxter, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General George Blysak, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Harold Bowman, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Douglas Bradley, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Jack Capps, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Richard Carter, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Steve Chapplis, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General BG David Cole, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General William Colvin, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Joseph Cutrona, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Tom Daniels, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Von DeLoatch, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Dilworth, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General George Eggers Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn Foote, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Giffen, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Hardy Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Carlos Hayden, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Edwin Heffelfinger, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General James Hunt, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General J.D Johnson, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Keith H. Kerr, CSMR (ret.)
Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Dean Mann, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General James Martin, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General William Meehan II, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Harold Miller, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Kenneth Newbold, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General I.R. Obenchain Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Phil Peay, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Dorothy Pocklington, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Poirot, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Philip Pushkin, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Virgil Richard, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General William Richter, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Kenneth Rieth, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Ernst Roberts, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Murray Sagsveen, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Norman Salisbury, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Donald Schenk, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Bettye Simmons, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Theodore Vander Els, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Daniel Wardrop, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Watling, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General John Weinzettle, USA (ret.)
Rear Admiral James Barnett, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Robert Krasner, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Charles Rauch, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Alan Steinman, USPHS (ret.)
* AUS is the Army of the United States.
**General Scotti passed away in September, 2007. His widow asked that his name remain on this statement.
104 of the U.S. military's retired generals and admirals have called for repeal of the nation's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a document released Monday.
DadtSays the document: "We – the undersigned -- respectfully call for the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Those of us endorsing this letter have dedicated our lives to defending the rights of our citizens to believe whatever they wish. Scholarly data shows there are approximately one million gay and lesbian veterans in the United States today as well as 65,000 gays and lesbians currently serving in our armed forces. They have served our nation honorably. We support the recent comments of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General John Shalikashvili, who has concluded that repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy would not harm and would indeed help our armed forces. As is the case with Great Britain, Israel, and other nations that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, our service members are professionals who are able to work together effectively despite differences in race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Such collaboration reflects the strength and the best traditions of our democracy."
The AP reports: "While Obama has expressed support for repeal, he said during the presidential campaign that he would not do so on his own — an indication that he would tread carefully to prevent the issue from becoming a drag on his agenda. Obama said he would instead work with military leaders to build consensus on removing the ban on openly gay service members. 'Although I have consistently said I would repeal 'don't ask, don't tell,' I believe that the way to do it is make sure that we are working through a process, getting the Joint Chiefs of Staff clear in terms of what our priorities are going to be,' Obama said in a September interview with the Philadelphia Gay News."
See the list of military leaders who signed the document, AFTER THE JUMP...
Former Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander
Admiral Charles Larson, USN (ret.)
Lieutenant General Quinn Becker, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Henry Emerson, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Flowers, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Robert Gard, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Jerry Hilmes, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Claudia Kennedy, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Donald Kerrick, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Ira Owens, USA (ret.)
Lieutenant General Thomas Rienzi, USA (ret.)
Vice Admiral Harold Koenig, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, USN (ret.)
Vice Admiral James Zimble, USN (ret.)
Major General Anders Aadland, USA (ret.)
Major General Floyd Baker, USA (ret.)
Major General Harry Brooks Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Leslie Burger, USA (ret.)
Major General Alexander Burgin, USANG (ret.)
Major General Rosetta Burke, AUS (ret.)*
Major General William Burke, USA (ret.)
Major General Michael Conrad, USA (ret.)
Major General Eugene Cromartie, USA (ret.)
Major General James Delk, AUS (ret.)
Major General Oliver Dillard, USA (ret.)
Major General John Faith, USA (ret.)
Major General Jack Farris, USAF (ret.)
Major General Fred Forster, USANG (ret.)
Major General Robert Gamrath, AUS (ret.)
Major General Albert Genetti Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Luis Gonzales-Vales, AUS (ret.)
Major General David Hale, USA (ret.)
Major General Randy Jayne, USANG (ret.)
Major General Lawrence Johnson, AUS (ret.)
Major General Dennis Laich, USA (ret.)
Major General Frederick Lawson, AUS (ret.)
Major General Thomas Lynch, USA (ret.)
Major General Dennis Malcor, USA (ret.)
Major General John Roth, AUS (ret.)
Major General Henry Rasmussen, USA (ret.)
Major General Alan Salisbury, USA (ret.)
Major General Michael Scotti Jr., USA (ret.)**
Major General Harry Sieben, USANG (ret.)
Major General Paul Smith, USA (ret.)
Major General Robert B. Smith, USA (ret.)
Major General Charles Starr Jr., USA (ret.)
Major General Story Stevens, USA (ret.)
Major General Joseph E. Turner, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General John C. Adams, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Clara Adams-Ender, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Hugh Aitken, USMC (ret.)
Brigadier General John "Joe" Allen, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Patricia Anderson, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Dale Barber, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General George Baxter, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Baxter, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General George Blysak, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Harold Bowman, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Douglas Bradley, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Jack Capps, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Richard Carter, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Steve Chapplis, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General BG David Cole, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General William Colvin, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Joseph Cutrona, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Tom Daniels, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Von DeLoatch, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Dilworth, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General George Eggers Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Evelyn Foote, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Giffen, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Hardy Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Carlos Hayden, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Edwin Heffelfinger, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General James Hunt, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General John H. Johns, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General J.D Johnson, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Keith H. Kerr, CSMR (ret.)
Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Dean Mann, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General James Martin, USAF (ret.)
Brigadier General William Meehan II, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Harold Miller, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Kenneth Newbold, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General I.R. Obenchain Jr., USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Phil Peay, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Dorothy Pocklington, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Poirot, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Philip Pushkin, USANG (ret.)
Brigadier General Virgil Richard, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General William Richter, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Kenneth Rieth, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Ernst Roberts, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Murray Sagsveen, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General Norman Salisbury, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Donald Schenk, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Bettye Simmons, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Theodore Vander Els, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Daniel Wardrop, USA (ret.)
Brigadier General Robert Watling, AUS (ret.)
Brigadier General John Weinzettle, USA (ret.)
Rear Admiral James Barnett, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Robert Krasner, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Charles Rauch, USN (ret.)
Rear Admiral Alan Steinman, USPHS (ret.)
* AUS is the Army of the United States.
**General Scotti passed away in September, 2007. His widow asked that his name remain on this statement.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Anti Immigrant Doctor Costs Inmate Her Baby
Arpaio’s Jail Staff Cost Ambrett Spencer Her Baby, and She’s Not the Only One
By John Dickerson
published: October 30, 2008
Ambrett Spencer sat up in bed. It was 2:40 a.m., and the pain in her stomach was not right. She was nine months pregnant, but this didn't feel like labor pains. She'd been pregnant before, and given birth to a healthy boy. This was different.
*
Ambrett Spencer with her baby, Ambria
Ambrett Spencer with her baby, Ambria
Subject(s):
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County jail conditions, Correctional Health Services, pregnant inmates
So Spencer climbed out of her bed and called for medical help.
But she wasn't at home.
Spencer was sleeping in Bunk 69 at Maricopa County's Estrella Jail in west Phoenix. Months before she got pregnant, Spencer, 30, had been arrested for drunk driving and pleaded guilty. She was now serving her sentence. (When she became pregnant, she was in treatment and not drinking, she says.) Doctor visits had confirmed that she was pregnant with a healthy baby girl.
Spencer and her attorney declined interview requests, but the records in an ongoing lawsuit she's filed against Sheriff Joe Arpaio tell the story.
As one of Arpaio's inmates, Spencer had no way of calling a doctor that night, April 21, 2006. The best she could do was call for the detention officer working the graveyard shift.
In the month she'd been in the jail, Spencer had seen plenty of inmates turned away when requesting medical attention, so she was relieved when the guard called the infirmary at a little after 3 a.m. The infirmary nurse asked how bad the pain was.
On a scale of one to 10, Spencer said it was a 10.
The nurse told her to go immediately to the infirmary. So Spencer got ready for a trip to medical.
Then she waited. The sergeant on duty decided that Spencer was not top priority, he said later in a sheriff's report about the incident.
About an hour after she requested help, Spencer was escorted to the infirmary. The one healthcare professional on the premises, a nurse, took Spencer's blood pressure. She also detected the baby's heartbeat, around 4 a.m.
The nurse — who later admitted she had no prenatal training — told Spencer that she'd be going to the hospital, but she also decided that Spencer's pain was not an emergency.
Another hour later, Spencer passed out. The nurse took her blood pressure again; it was fatally low. The nurse called an ambulance and tried to get an IV into Spencer's arm. She couldn't.
When EMT Jarrid Ortiz arrived, Spencer, who is African-American, had lost so much color it was clear to him that it was an emergency. "If you are turning that color, you're not getting enough blood to your organs and skin," Ortiz later told a sheriff's detective.
By the time the ambulance arrived at the Maricopa County Hospital, Spencer had been in severe pain and without a doctor for almost four hours. Doctors delivered Ambria Renee Spencer, a 9-pound baby girl with a quarter-inch of thick hair on her head.
Ambria was dead. Spencer's pain had been caused by internal bleeding — a malady known as placental abruption. Babies often survive the condition, if their mothers go immediately to a hospital. The treatment is simple: immediate delivery. Otherwise, the baby dies from blood loss.
Inmates in Arpaio's jails aren't usually allowed to see their babies after birth. Despite protests from the jail guard, hospital employees brought baby Ambria to Spencer, so she could see her daughter before the funeral.
Spencer described the moment for attorneys in her deposition.
"I kept praying that she would just open her eyes because she looked like she was alive."
Ambrett Spencer was one of 1,578 pregnant women who passed through Arpaio's jails in 2006, county records show. Only 42 of those women gave birth while in custody.
Spencer pleaded guilty to two DUIs and served her time. Now she's out, and she's suing Joe Arpaio and the county's Correctional Health Services department. Spencer believes delayed medical care caused her baby's death.
She's not the only inmate to say so. Four other inmates or their family members have contacted New Times this year, describing miscarriages, stillbirths, or harsh conditions for pregnant women in Arpaio's jails.
They blame poor medical care or, at times, no medical care. They also say that rotten food, potentially contaminated water, a lack of prenatal vitamins, and careless detention officers contribute to the problems.
Records show the claims may not be groundless. For example, the water well in the facility where pregnant women are jailed has been infested with mice and mice feces since 2005, Maricopa County Environmental Health Services Records show.
Mice carry a parasite — toxoplasma — that can infect water and cause birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It's so dangerous that the CDC says pregnant women shouldn't even touch litter boxes — because cats eat mice and their feces can contain the parasite.
"Most infected infants do not have symptoms at birth but can develop serious symptoms later in life, such as blindness or mental disability," the CDC writes in its description. "Occasionally infected newborns have serious eye or brain damage at birth."
In addition to that parasite, Dr. Leslie Barton, a pediatrics professor at the University of Arizona School of Medicine, has found that mice feces and urine also carry a virus that can cause birth defects, including chromosomal defects.
It's not just the water. Last week a federal judge ruled that Arpaio's current jail conditions violate the U.S. Constitution, specifically when it comes to healthcare, overcrowding, and access to medication. U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake issued a list of 15 changes — including diet, medical care, and medication — that Arpaio must make by December.
A month before that ruling, the jails also lost their national health accreditation, which is required by state law.
Arpaio does not deny that his jails are tough. He's actually built his career on claims that he doesn't coddle criminals.
Into the fray of Arpaio's "tough" jails come about 1,500 pregnant inmates each year. Some of them say their care hardly differs from what's given the other inmates. That is ironic, since Joe Arpaio claims to care about the unborn in his jails. In 2005, he refused to allow inmate abortions. Arpaio fought that battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost.
A person like Ambrett Spencer — who admits she drove drunk more than once — deserves to be punished. But jail does not have to be a potentially unsafe place for an unborn child. Unlike Maricopa County, many other correctional facilities in the U.S. offer programs to care for pregnant women.
Dr. Mary Byrne, professor of clinical healthcare for the underserved at Columbia University, has studied prenatal care in jails and prisons for years. She points to the state of New York as a model. There, all pregnant inmates are sent to a maximum-security prison where they take birthing and parenting classes. It's worked so well that six other states have adopted similar programs.
In 2005, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in California started its own program — after jail nurses and doctors realized that many pregnant inmates were getting depressed.
"Nurses and social workers at the jail and at the hospital noticed that inmates giving birth were usually scared, alone, unsure of their baby's fate and often ill-equipped to deal with the situations and decisions confronting them after giving birth," nursing director Debby Lucas wrote in a review of the program.
As a result, the San Bernardino jail started Lamaze childbirth classes, as well as parenting classes for pregnant inmates.
The Monroe County Jail in New York offers prenatal care as part of its rehabilitation for pregnant inmates. Mothers-to-be can also get tutoring about rape crisis, family planning, smoking cessation, and community resources.
In Seattle, the King County Jail brings in social workers and nurses every Wednesday to train pregnant inmates in prenatal care, examine their health, and answer questions. Some social workers even keep in touch with pregnant inmates after their release.
In Arpaio's jail, pregnant inmates say the only prenatal care they get is a bottom bunk, an extra blanket, a "snack" (which is sometimes inedible, they say), and prenatal vitamins — if the vitamins come that day.
In September, New Times asked to talk to the jail's healthcare director about prenatal care. Correctional Health Services has not yet scheduled an interview with its director, Betty Adams.
Former inmates have been far more willing to speak.
Michelle McCollum was in the first trimester of her pregnancy when she awaited trial in 2005 for possession of marijuana. She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
McCollum blames unchecked violence and delayed medical care for the loss of her pregnancy. On August 21, 2005, she was attacked by two other inmates, she says in an affidavit filed in the lawsuit that recently found jail conditions unconstitutional.
Two inmates punched McCollum in the stomach repeatedly. After the attack, she and another inmate cried to guards for help. But McCollum writes that detention officers refused to bring her to the infirmary — even after she told them she was pregnant and injured.
Three days after the attack, McCollum's bleeding wouldn't stop. She was finally taken to the Maricopa County Hospital. There, doctors said she had miscarried and ordered that she return to the hospital for a checkup.
Despite her reminders, jail personnel did not take McCollum back to the hospital. On September 17, she began bleeding again. The bleeding wouldn't stop.
An ambulance finally rushed McCollum back to the hospital — where doctors gave her a blood transfusion because she had lost so much blood. Then they performed a procedure called a D&C, which removed the remains of the pregnancy.
Lilly Lee recently got out of the Estrella Jail. Upon her release, she called New Times to spread the word about pregnant inmates.
"The detention officers knew these women were undergoing miscarriages, and we were telling them," she says. "They just wouldn't do anything. There were a lot of things going on in there that I don't think a lot of people know."
Michael Bergman, an executive chef, agrees. His fiancée, Reyna Dziovecki, was in the jail for only two days, but it was enough to make him fear for the life of their baby. The charges against Dziovecki have since been dropped.
"She was eight months pregnant. She literally didn't eat anything from 5 p.m. one night to 6:45 a.m. two days later," he says. Bergman says he spent that time running from one downtown building to another, trying to bond his fiancée out. He finally did.
"You never really pay attention to this stuff until it happens to you. Then it does, and it's just scary how they treat people," he says.
Ambrett Spencer acknowledged in court that she deserved jail time for her actions. On May 21, 2005, she made a potentially deadly choice by driving drunk.
Instead of killing anyone, though, Spencer caused a minor fender-bender when she bumped into another car while stopping at an intersection. The other driver was not injured. When the cops arrived, Spencer confessed to driving under the influence. Not that she needed to. She blew a .204 B.A.C.
Spencer started alcohol treatment at Terros Rehab in west Phoenix. Months later, she got pregnant. Spencer was 30 and excited to have a second child. She hoped to marry her fiancé, Kenny, the baby's father.
In March 2006, Spencer pleaded guilty to two DUIs and received a 2 1/2-year sentence.
Spencer had been in the jail for about a month when the baby was born.
Spencer worked at hospitals for six years, registering pregnant mothers when they came in to give birth. Based on that experience, she says, she would have headed straight for a hospital had she not been in the jail that night.
Drug use plays a factor in many jail pregnancies, but Spencer's baby had no drugs in her system, nor did she show any symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, a county autopsy reveals.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner concluded that Spencer's baby died from placental abruption — a malady that occurs naturally in about one in 100 near-term pregnancies.
Dr. Michael Foley, an OB/GYN at Scottsdale Healthcare, explains abruption as the separation of the placenta from the wall of the womb. That separation results in bleeding and a loss of blood to the baby.
The condition is not usually fatal, if the mother gets to a hospital, says Dr. Ingrid Haas, another OB/GYN. The treatment for abruption is simple, both doctors agreed: immediate delivery. The longer the delay, the less likely that the baby will survive. (Both doctors declined to speak about Spencer specifically, but spoke about abruption in general terms.)
Haas has never seen a placental abruption end in death — that is, when the mother went straight to the hospital. "Likelihood of survival is very good if the woman is full-term and goes straight to the hospital," she said.
She added that the fastest abruption she's ever seen wasn't complete until one hour after the severe pain started. That would explain why Spencer's baby still had a heartbeat around 4 a.m. — more than an hour after the pain began.
When Spencer's lawsuit goes to trial, possibly next year, medical experts will likely say that her baby would have survived — if Spencer had been taken straight to the hospital.
Ultimately, a judge or jury will decide whether Arpaio's guards and health staff were at fault. In the county's favor is the fact that placental abruption can be difficult to diagnose.
But Spencer's attorney, Joel Robbins, writes that the abruption would have been diagnosed — if Spencer had seen an actual doctor. "Despite Ambrett's obvious pain and distress, Defendants waited hours to obtain emergency treatment for Ambrett," he writes.
Arpaio and the county deny any wrongdoing, though they do acknowledge that Spencer complained of pain. Dennis Wilenchik, the county's contract attorney, wrote in a court brief that staff took Spencer's vitals, documented the fetal heart rate, and then called for an ambulance at 4:44 a.m.
The county blames Southwest Ambulance — for not transporting Spencer to the hospital quickly enough. Wilenchik writes that Southwest took nearly an hour to get Spencer to the hospital. By the county's own records, however, Southwest Ambulance was not called until almost two hours after jail staff knew about Spencer's pain.
Spencer blames the jail for keeping her from a hospital.
"I'm not blaming anyone for the placental abruption," she says in her deposition, but "they could have gotten me to the hospital sooner. They could have gotten me up to medical sooner . . . Why didn't I see the doctor? That's a question that I've gone over in my head a billion times. A doctor never came in there to see me."
If her baby had survived, today Ambria Spencer would be 2 years old.
By John Dickerson
published: October 30, 2008
Ambrett Spencer sat up in bed. It was 2:40 a.m., and the pain in her stomach was not right. She was nine months pregnant, but this didn't feel like labor pains. She'd been pregnant before, and given birth to a healthy boy. This was different.
*
Ambrett Spencer with her baby, Ambria
Ambrett Spencer with her baby, Ambria
Subject(s):
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County jail conditions, Correctional Health Services, pregnant inmates
So Spencer climbed out of her bed and called for medical help.
But she wasn't at home.
Spencer was sleeping in Bunk 69 at Maricopa County's Estrella Jail in west Phoenix. Months before she got pregnant, Spencer, 30, had been arrested for drunk driving and pleaded guilty. She was now serving her sentence. (When she became pregnant, she was in treatment and not drinking, she says.) Doctor visits had confirmed that she was pregnant with a healthy baby girl.
Spencer and her attorney declined interview requests, but the records in an ongoing lawsuit she's filed against Sheriff Joe Arpaio tell the story.
As one of Arpaio's inmates, Spencer had no way of calling a doctor that night, April 21, 2006. The best she could do was call for the detention officer working the graveyard shift.
In the month she'd been in the jail, Spencer had seen plenty of inmates turned away when requesting medical attention, so she was relieved when the guard called the infirmary at a little after 3 a.m. The infirmary nurse asked how bad the pain was.
On a scale of one to 10, Spencer said it was a 10.
The nurse told her to go immediately to the infirmary. So Spencer got ready for a trip to medical.
Then she waited. The sergeant on duty decided that Spencer was not top priority, he said later in a sheriff's report about the incident.
About an hour after she requested help, Spencer was escorted to the infirmary. The one healthcare professional on the premises, a nurse, took Spencer's blood pressure. She also detected the baby's heartbeat, around 4 a.m.
The nurse — who later admitted she had no prenatal training — told Spencer that she'd be going to the hospital, but she also decided that Spencer's pain was not an emergency.
Another hour later, Spencer passed out. The nurse took her blood pressure again; it was fatally low. The nurse called an ambulance and tried to get an IV into Spencer's arm. She couldn't.
When EMT Jarrid Ortiz arrived, Spencer, who is African-American, had lost so much color it was clear to him that it was an emergency. "If you are turning that color, you're not getting enough blood to your organs and skin," Ortiz later told a sheriff's detective.
By the time the ambulance arrived at the Maricopa County Hospital, Spencer had been in severe pain and without a doctor for almost four hours. Doctors delivered Ambria Renee Spencer, a 9-pound baby girl with a quarter-inch of thick hair on her head.
Ambria was dead. Spencer's pain had been caused by internal bleeding — a malady known as placental abruption. Babies often survive the condition, if their mothers go immediately to a hospital. The treatment is simple: immediate delivery. Otherwise, the baby dies from blood loss.
Inmates in Arpaio's jails aren't usually allowed to see their babies after birth. Despite protests from the jail guard, hospital employees brought baby Ambria to Spencer, so she could see her daughter before the funeral.
Spencer described the moment for attorneys in her deposition.
"I kept praying that she would just open her eyes because she looked like she was alive."
Ambrett Spencer was one of 1,578 pregnant women who passed through Arpaio's jails in 2006, county records show. Only 42 of those women gave birth while in custody.
Spencer pleaded guilty to two DUIs and served her time. Now she's out, and she's suing Joe Arpaio and the county's Correctional Health Services department. Spencer believes delayed medical care caused her baby's death.
She's not the only inmate to say so. Four other inmates or their family members have contacted New Times this year, describing miscarriages, stillbirths, or harsh conditions for pregnant women in Arpaio's jails.
They blame poor medical care or, at times, no medical care. They also say that rotten food, potentially contaminated water, a lack of prenatal vitamins, and careless detention officers contribute to the problems.
Records show the claims may not be groundless. For example, the water well in the facility where pregnant women are jailed has been infested with mice and mice feces since 2005, Maricopa County Environmental Health Services Records show.
Mice carry a parasite — toxoplasma — that can infect water and cause birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It's so dangerous that the CDC says pregnant women shouldn't even touch litter boxes — because cats eat mice and their feces can contain the parasite.
"Most infected infants do not have symptoms at birth but can develop serious symptoms later in life, such as blindness or mental disability," the CDC writes in its description. "Occasionally infected newborns have serious eye or brain damage at birth."
In addition to that parasite, Dr. Leslie Barton, a pediatrics professor at the University of Arizona School of Medicine, has found that mice feces and urine also carry a virus that can cause birth defects, including chromosomal defects.
It's not just the water. Last week a federal judge ruled that Arpaio's current jail conditions violate the U.S. Constitution, specifically when it comes to healthcare, overcrowding, and access to medication. U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake issued a list of 15 changes — including diet, medical care, and medication — that Arpaio must make by December.
A month before that ruling, the jails also lost their national health accreditation, which is required by state law.
Arpaio does not deny that his jails are tough. He's actually built his career on claims that he doesn't coddle criminals.
Into the fray of Arpaio's "tough" jails come about 1,500 pregnant inmates each year. Some of them say their care hardly differs from what's given the other inmates. That is ironic, since Joe Arpaio claims to care about the unborn in his jails. In 2005, he refused to allow inmate abortions. Arpaio fought that battle all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he lost.
A person like Ambrett Spencer — who admits she drove drunk more than once — deserves to be punished. But jail does not have to be a potentially unsafe place for an unborn child. Unlike Maricopa County, many other correctional facilities in the U.S. offer programs to care for pregnant women.
Dr. Mary Byrne, professor of clinical healthcare for the underserved at Columbia University, has studied prenatal care in jails and prisons for years. She points to the state of New York as a model. There, all pregnant inmates are sent to a maximum-security prison where they take birthing and parenting classes. It's worked so well that six other states have adopted similar programs.
In 2005, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department in California started its own program — after jail nurses and doctors realized that many pregnant inmates were getting depressed.
"Nurses and social workers at the jail and at the hospital noticed that inmates giving birth were usually scared, alone, unsure of their baby's fate and often ill-equipped to deal with the situations and decisions confronting them after giving birth," nursing director Debby Lucas wrote in a review of the program.
As a result, the San Bernardino jail started Lamaze childbirth classes, as well as parenting classes for pregnant inmates.
The Monroe County Jail in New York offers prenatal care as part of its rehabilitation for pregnant inmates. Mothers-to-be can also get tutoring about rape crisis, family planning, smoking cessation, and community resources.
In Seattle, the King County Jail brings in social workers and nurses every Wednesday to train pregnant inmates in prenatal care, examine their health, and answer questions. Some social workers even keep in touch with pregnant inmates after their release.
In Arpaio's jail, pregnant inmates say the only prenatal care they get is a bottom bunk, an extra blanket, a "snack" (which is sometimes inedible, they say), and prenatal vitamins — if the vitamins come that day.
In September, New Times asked to talk to the jail's healthcare director about prenatal care. Correctional Health Services has not yet scheduled an interview with its director, Betty Adams.
Former inmates have been far more willing to speak.
Michelle McCollum was in the first trimester of her pregnancy when she awaited trial in 2005 for possession of marijuana. She later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation.
McCollum blames unchecked violence and delayed medical care for the loss of her pregnancy. On August 21, 2005, she was attacked by two other inmates, she says in an affidavit filed in the lawsuit that recently found jail conditions unconstitutional.
Two inmates punched McCollum in the stomach repeatedly. After the attack, she and another inmate cried to guards for help. But McCollum writes that detention officers refused to bring her to the infirmary — even after she told them she was pregnant and injured.
Three days after the attack, McCollum's bleeding wouldn't stop. She was finally taken to the Maricopa County Hospital. There, doctors said she had miscarried and ordered that she return to the hospital for a checkup.
Despite her reminders, jail personnel did not take McCollum back to the hospital. On September 17, she began bleeding again. The bleeding wouldn't stop.
An ambulance finally rushed McCollum back to the hospital — where doctors gave her a blood transfusion because she had lost so much blood. Then they performed a procedure called a D&C, which removed the remains of the pregnancy.
Lilly Lee recently got out of the Estrella Jail. Upon her release, she called New Times to spread the word about pregnant inmates.
"The detention officers knew these women were undergoing miscarriages, and we were telling them," she says. "They just wouldn't do anything. There were a lot of things going on in there that I don't think a lot of people know."
Michael Bergman, an executive chef, agrees. His fiancée, Reyna Dziovecki, was in the jail for only two days, but it was enough to make him fear for the life of their baby. The charges against Dziovecki have since been dropped.
"She was eight months pregnant. She literally didn't eat anything from 5 p.m. one night to 6:45 a.m. two days later," he says. Bergman says he spent that time running from one downtown building to another, trying to bond his fiancée out. He finally did.
"You never really pay attention to this stuff until it happens to you. Then it does, and it's just scary how they treat people," he says.
Ambrett Spencer acknowledged in court that she deserved jail time for her actions. On May 21, 2005, she made a potentially deadly choice by driving drunk.
Instead of killing anyone, though, Spencer caused a minor fender-bender when she bumped into another car while stopping at an intersection. The other driver was not injured. When the cops arrived, Spencer confessed to driving under the influence. Not that she needed to. She blew a .204 B.A.C.
Spencer started alcohol treatment at Terros Rehab in west Phoenix. Months later, she got pregnant. Spencer was 30 and excited to have a second child. She hoped to marry her fiancé, Kenny, the baby's father.
In March 2006, Spencer pleaded guilty to two DUIs and received a 2 1/2-year sentence.
Spencer had been in the jail for about a month when the baby was born.
Spencer worked at hospitals for six years, registering pregnant mothers when they came in to give birth. Based on that experience, she says, she would have headed straight for a hospital had she not been in the jail that night.
Drug use plays a factor in many jail pregnancies, but Spencer's baby had no drugs in her system, nor did she show any symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, a county autopsy reveals.
The Maricopa County Medical Examiner concluded that Spencer's baby died from placental abruption — a malady that occurs naturally in about one in 100 near-term pregnancies.
Dr. Michael Foley, an OB/GYN at Scottsdale Healthcare, explains abruption as the separation of the placenta from the wall of the womb. That separation results in bleeding and a loss of blood to the baby.
The condition is not usually fatal, if the mother gets to a hospital, says Dr. Ingrid Haas, another OB/GYN. The treatment for abruption is simple, both doctors agreed: immediate delivery. The longer the delay, the less likely that the baby will survive. (Both doctors declined to speak about Spencer specifically, but spoke about abruption in general terms.)
Haas has never seen a placental abruption end in death — that is, when the mother went straight to the hospital. "Likelihood of survival is very good if the woman is full-term and goes straight to the hospital," she said.
She added that the fastest abruption she's ever seen wasn't complete until one hour after the severe pain started. That would explain why Spencer's baby still had a heartbeat around 4 a.m. — more than an hour after the pain began.
When Spencer's lawsuit goes to trial, possibly next year, medical experts will likely say that her baby would have survived — if Spencer had been taken straight to the hospital.
Ultimately, a judge or jury will decide whether Arpaio's guards and health staff were at fault. In the county's favor is the fact that placental abruption can be difficult to diagnose.
But Spencer's attorney, Joel Robbins, writes that the abruption would have been diagnosed — if Spencer had seen an actual doctor. "Despite Ambrett's obvious pain and distress, Defendants waited hours to obtain emergency treatment for Ambrett," he writes.
Arpaio and the county deny any wrongdoing, though they do acknowledge that Spencer complained of pain. Dennis Wilenchik, the county's contract attorney, wrote in a court brief that staff took Spencer's vitals, documented the fetal heart rate, and then called for an ambulance at 4:44 a.m.
The county blames Southwest Ambulance — for not transporting Spencer to the hospital quickly enough. Wilenchik writes that Southwest took nearly an hour to get Spencer to the hospital. By the county's own records, however, Southwest Ambulance was not called until almost two hours after jail staff knew about Spencer's pain.
Spencer blames the jail for keeping her from a hospital.
"I'm not blaming anyone for the placental abruption," she says in her deposition, but "they could have gotten me to the hospital sooner. They could have gotten me up to medical sooner . . . Why didn't I see the doctor? That's a question that I've gone over in my head a billion times. A doctor never came in there to see me."
If her baby had survived, today Ambria Spencer would be 2 years old.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Sarah Palin Thinks Africa Is A Continent
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/palin-didnt-know-africa-i_n_141653.html
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Best Internship Quote Ever:
Supervisor: Hi(insert new client's name here), this is Eric. He is an intern from Columbia.
Client: Intern? That's impressive. Like Monica Lewinsky?
Client: Intern? That's impressive. Like Monica Lewinsky?
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Good Vs. Bad
Things that I don't like about my life:
1) My crackberry I purchased off ebay, the brand new one...yeah apparently already registered to someone. The seller keeps swearing they already deactivated it. I keep begging them to call verizon.
2) My classes...pretty awful. I have never been so bored in my life. No electives leaves me with classes including evaluation, Advanced Generalist Practice and Programming and Health/Mental Health Policy.
3) Considering that my credit is awful (stepfather had a credit card in my name upon his death), I probably won't get a Gradplus loan next semester which means that I am dependent upon a Columbia loan....again. They jerked me around for a long time in the fall, what if I can't stay next semester?
4) I don't know what I am doing for Christmas.
5) My love life is nonexistant. Haven't had a date since the summer. Wah Wah.
Things I enjoy about my life:
1) Outside of school fees, I am fairly financially secure. I can go out for drinks and never worry that I can't afford it.
2) I got to see my loves this weekend. Socially, I am doing better and people now want to play with me sometimes.
3) Although my classes bite the big one, I am doing very well in them. Got an A on a paper and presentation that I spent an hour total on.
4) My fieldwork is incredible. I get to create programs from scratch and pretty much have full control over everything I do. They have hinted a few times that a job might be in line for me after graduation, and I have access to organic lunches which cost me, on average, a dollar.
5) I rarely get lost in the city anymore and feel less and less like an outsider every day.
1) My crackberry I purchased off ebay, the brand new one...yeah apparently already registered to someone. The seller keeps swearing they already deactivated it. I keep begging them to call verizon.
2) My classes...pretty awful. I have never been so bored in my life. No electives leaves me with classes including evaluation, Advanced Generalist Practice and Programming and Health/Mental Health Policy.
3) Considering that my credit is awful (stepfather had a credit card in my name upon his death), I probably won't get a Gradplus loan next semester which means that I am dependent upon a Columbia loan....again. They jerked me around for a long time in the fall, what if I can't stay next semester?
4) I don't know what I am doing for Christmas.
5) My love life is nonexistant. Haven't had a date since the summer. Wah Wah.
Things I enjoy about my life:
1) Outside of school fees, I am fairly financially secure. I can go out for drinks and never worry that I can't afford it.
2) I got to see my loves this weekend. Socially, I am doing better and people now want to play with me sometimes.
3) Although my classes bite the big one, I am doing very well in them. Got an A on a paper and presentation that I spent an hour total on.
4) My fieldwork is incredible. I get to create programs from scratch and pretty much have full control over everything I do. They have hinted a few times that a job might be in line for me after graduation, and I have access to organic lunches which cost me, on average, a dollar.
5) I rarely get lost in the city anymore and feel less and less like an outsider every day.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Disturbing...
Va. pharmacy follows faith, no birth control sales
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer Matthew Barakat, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 22, 12:28 am ET
CHANTILLY, Va. – A new drug store at a Virginia strip mall is putting its faith in an unconventional business plan: No candy. No sodas. And no birth control. Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy is among at least seven pharmacies across the nation that are refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription.
States across the country have been wrestling with the issue of pharmacists who refuse on religious grounds to dispense birth control or morning-after pills, and some have enacted laws requiring drug stores to fill the prescriptions.
In Virginia, though, pharmacists can turn away any prescription for any reason.
"I am grateful to be able to practice," pharmacy manager Robert Semler said, "where my conscience will never be violated and my faith does not have to be checked at the door each morning."
Semler ran a similar pharmacy before opening the new store, which is not far from Dulles International Airport. The store only sells items that are health-related, including vitamins, skin care products and over-the-counter medications.
On Tuesday, the pharmacy celebrated a blessing from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. While Divine Mercy Care is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, it is guided by church teachings on sexuality, which forbid any form of artificial contraception, including morning-after pills, condoms and birth control pills, a common prescription used by millions of women in the U.S.
"This pharmacy is a vibrant example of our Holy Father's charge to all of us to wear our faith in the public square," said Loverde, who sprinkled holy water on the shelves stocked with painkillers and acne treatments. "It will allow families to shop in an environment where their faith is not compromised."
The drug store is the seventh in the country to be certified as not prescribing birth control by Pharmacists for Life International. The anti-abortion group estimates that perhaps hundreds of other pharmacies have similar policies, though they have not been certified.
Earlier this year in Wisconsin, a state appeals court upheld sanctions against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere. Elsewhere, at least seven states require pharmacies or pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions, according to the National Women's Law Center. Four states explicitly give pharmacists the right to turn away any prescriptions, the group said.
The Virginia store's policy has drawn scorn from some abortion rights groups, who have already called for a boycott and collected more than 1,000 signatures protesting the pharmacy.
"If this emboldens other pharmacies in other parts of the state, it could really affect low-income and rural women in terms of access," said Tarina Keene, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Robert Laird, executive director of Divine Mercy Care, believes many of the estimated 50,000 Catholics within a few miles of the store will support its mission and make up for the roughly 10 percent of business that contraceptives represent in a typical pharmacy.
Whether Catholics will be drawn to the pharmacy is uncertain. According to a Gallup poll published last year for an extensive study of U.S. Catholicism called American Catholics Today, 75 percent of U.S. Catholics said you can still be a good Catholic even if you don't obey church teachings on birth control.
Catherine Muskett said she plans to shop at the drug store even though she lives more than 20 miles away.
"Obviously it's good to support pro-life causes. Every little bit counts," said Muskett, one of about 75 people who crowded into the tiny shop for Tuesday's ceremony.
___
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer Matthew Barakat, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 22, 12:28 am ET
CHANTILLY, Va. – A new drug store at a Virginia strip mall is putting its faith in an unconventional business plan: No candy. No sodas. And no birth control. Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy is among at least seven pharmacies across the nation that are refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription.
States across the country have been wrestling with the issue of pharmacists who refuse on religious grounds to dispense birth control or morning-after pills, and some have enacted laws requiring drug stores to fill the prescriptions.
In Virginia, though, pharmacists can turn away any prescription for any reason.
"I am grateful to be able to practice," pharmacy manager Robert Semler said, "where my conscience will never be violated and my faith does not have to be checked at the door each morning."
Semler ran a similar pharmacy before opening the new store, which is not far from Dulles International Airport. The store only sells items that are health-related, including vitamins, skin care products and over-the-counter medications.
On Tuesday, the pharmacy celebrated a blessing from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. While Divine Mercy Care is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, it is guided by church teachings on sexuality, which forbid any form of artificial contraception, including morning-after pills, condoms and birth control pills, a common prescription used by millions of women in the U.S.
"This pharmacy is a vibrant example of our Holy Father's charge to all of us to wear our faith in the public square," said Loverde, who sprinkled holy water on the shelves stocked with painkillers and acne treatments. "It will allow families to shop in an environment where their faith is not compromised."
The drug store is the seventh in the country to be certified as not prescribing birth control by Pharmacists for Life International. The anti-abortion group estimates that perhaps hundreds of other pharmacies have similar policies, though they have not been certified.
Earlier this year in Wisconsin, a state appeals court upheld sanctions against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere. Elsewhere, at least seven states require pharmacies or pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions, according to the National Women's Law Center. Four states explicitly give pharmacists the right to turn away any prescriptions, the group said.
The Virginia store's policy has drawn scorn from some abortion rights groups, who have already called for a boycott and collected more than 1,000 signatures protesting the pharmacy.
"If this emboldens other pharmacies in other parts of the state, it could really affect low-income and rural women in terms of access," said Tarina Keene, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Robert Laird, executive director of Divine Mercy Care, believes many of the estimated 50,000 Catholics within a few miles of the store will support its mission and make up for the roughly 10 percent of business that contraceptives represent in a typical pharmacy.
Whether Catholics will be drawn to the pharmacy is uncertain. According to a Gallup poll published last year for an extensive study of U.S. Catholicism called American Catholics Today, 75 percent of U.S. Catholics said you can still be a good Catholic even if you don't obey church teachings on birth control.
Catherine Muskett said she plans to shop at the drug store even though she lives more than 20 miles away.
"Obviously it's good to support pro-life causes. Every little bit counts," said Muskett, one of about 75 people who crowded into the tiny shop for Tuesday's ceremony.
___
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Umm...
A man on the train kept winking at me...while masturbating. full hand down the sweats masturbating.
As my friend Maddie would say...not so tender.
As my friend Maddie would say...not so tender.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Laramie Project -10th Anniversary
Has Anything Changed?
The creators of 'The Laramie Project', a play about Matthew Shepard, returned to Wyoming on the 10-year anniversary of his death.
Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Stephen Belber and Andy Paris
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 9, 2008 | Updated: 9:03 a.m. ET Oct 9, 2008
One month after the brutal murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, 10 members of the Tectonic Theater Project , led by playwright and director Moisés Kaufman, went to Laramie, Wyo., to interview residents about the killing. Those interviews served as the basis for "The Laramie Project," a play that chronicles how the community grappled with the slaying. On the 10th anniversary of Shepard's death, which has become a rallying cry for gay rights and hate-crime laws, the theater company returned to Laramie. These are their observations:
In returning to Laramie, Wyo., 10 years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, the pressing question for all of us was: how has the town changed since 1998? But soon a different question arose: how do we measure that change?
On the state level no hate crime legislation has passed; the fence where Matthew Shepard was murdered has been dismantled; the Fireside Bar where Matthew met his killers has been renamed; and the University of Wyoming still has yet to grant domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian faculty and staff. And when you ask of the people of Laramie how has the town has changed, many say, "We've moved on."
"Moved on to what?" asks Reggie Fluty, the policewoman who was the first to arrive at the fence where Matthew was tied. "If you don't want to look back, fine. But what are we moving towards?"
Certainly the university has taken several concrete actions to promote inclusiveness: they've added gay and lesbian study classes to the curriculum, created a resource center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and permanently renamed the Social Justice Symposium after Matthew Shepard. They've also recently joined Matthew's mom, Judy Shepard, in memorializing Matthew on campus. (Judy is the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation.)
As for the rest of the town, Shepard's former academic adviser Jon Peacock says, "I think when you're so close to an event like this you become more sensitized. You start to pay more attention to those issues." Detective Sergeant Rob Debree, the lead investigator in Shepard's murder, adds, "I think overall, there's just more acceptance." Debree became a forceful national advocate for Federal Hate Crime legislation alongside Officer Dave O'Malley as a result of this murder.
"The fact that cops like DeBree and O'Malley, law officers in positions of real power, are committed to gay and lesbian people and their protection, that should be construed as concrete change," says Beth Loffreda, author of the book, "Losing Matthew Shepard." "You won't find that in a statute or in a public monument to Matt, but that's real and meaningful change."
A real cause for concern, however, is the emergence in Laramie of a narrative that has gained many proponents in recent years: one that states that Shepard's murder by two local residents, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, was only "a robbery gone bad" or "a drug-fueled murder" and not a hate crime. "That's nonsense," says Fluty. "All you have to do is look at the evidence." O'Malley, lead investigator of the Laramie Police Department agrees, "I'm convinced that these guys killed Matt because he was gay."
Debree of the Sheriff's department adds: "We went in depth reviewing [the murderers'] blood for any kind of drugs or anything to that effect. There was nothing." The fact that this was a hate crime was decisively proved at the trial when in excerpts of McKinney's confession, the jury heard him tell DeBree: "[Shepard] put his hand on my leg. ... I told him I'm not a f---ing faggot" before beginning to brutally beat Matthew Shepard.
Catherine Connolly, the first openly gay professor at the university, also takes issue with this willful ignoring of the facts: "This distortion of history, this is what kids 18, 19 years old think now. It's devastating to us. This is our history."
So why has this distortion of the truth become so prevalent? One hypothesis is that because Laramie was portrayed in the media as a backward town where hatred and bigotry were rampant, forcing the citizens to question their identity as an idyllic community, a "good place to raise your children." "And when we have a theory about who we are," says Laramie resident Jeffrey Lockwood, "and the data goes against that theory, we throw out the data rather than adjust the theory. We are hardwired as human beings not to contemplate our own complicity in things."
Yet there are many people who found in this murder an opportunity to reflect deeply about the role that the culture and values of Laramie played in the crime. "This whole thing forced us to look at our warts," says Dr. Don Cantway, the physician who treated Matthew's injuries. "To look at our bigotry, the hatreds, the intolerance that exist here."
These two stances, denial and self-reflection, have divided the town. "This is where I choose to live," insists Jonas Slonaker, a gay man who chose to come out after Shepard's murder, "and this is a state that always votes Republican and is pretty conservative. So there'll be a lot of resistance [to change]. It might be a situation where those rights will come from a federal level down before it comes to the state level."
But nationally, the situation regarding gay rights legislation mirrors Wyoming's. In 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act passed in both the House and the Senate but the legislation never made it out of Congress—because of a Bush veto threat and the bill's attachment to a defense authorization measure.
Still, shifts are occurring: Wyoming's Governor Dave Freudenthal, says, "If you really believe in that Western 'live and let live' [philosophy] then you wouldn't have homophobic violence. So there's a contradiction. We tolerate an awful lot of violence in this state and we have to look at that." In 2005, the neighboring town of Casper elected a gay man as mayor and professor Connolly is running for a State House seat in the coming election. In addition, the faculty at the university continues to fight for same-sex partner benefits.
Measuring change is not an exact science: the markers can be elusive or blurry, yet no less meaningful. Peacock says, "I think it does a great disservice to the power of the story around Matthew's death to measure it by whether there's been definitive or quantifiable change like a law passed. We know that there has been so much qualitative and transformational change. So I think it does a real disservice to the story to measure it that way. I just think that's too thin of a measure."
The creators of 'The Laramie Project', a play about Matthew Shepard, returned to Wyoming on the 10-year anniversary of his death.
Moisés Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Stephen Belber and Andy Paris
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 9, 2008 | Updated: 9:03 a.m. ET Oct 9, 2008
One month after the brutal murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, 10 members of the Tectonic Theater Project , led by playwright and director Moisés Kaufman, went to Laramie, Wyo., to interview residents about the killing. Those interviews served as the basis for "The Laramie Project," a play that chronicles how the community grappled with the slaying. On the 10th anniversary of Shepard's death, which has become a rallying cry for gay rights and hate-crime laws, the theater company returned to Laramie. These are their observations:
In returning to Laramie, Wyo., 10 years after the murder of Matthew Shepard, the pressing question for all of us was: how has the town changed since 1998? But soon a different question arose: how do we measure that change?
On the state level no hate crime legislation has passed; the fence where Matthew Shepard was murdered has been dismantled; the Fireside Bar where Matthew met his killers has been renamed; and the University of Wyoming still has yet to grant domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian faculty and staff. And when you ask of the people of Laramie how has the town has changed, many say, "We've moved on."
"Moved on to what?" asks Reggie Fluty, the policewoman who was the first to arrive at the fence where Matthew was tied. "If you don't want to look back, fine. But what are we moving towards?"
Certainly the university has taken several concrete actions to promote inclusiveness: they've added gay and lesbian study classes to the curriculum, created a resource center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and permanently renamed the Social Justice Symposium after Matthew Shepard. They've also recently joined Matthew's mom, Judy Shepard, in memorializing Matthew on campus. (Judy is the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation.)
As for the rest of the town, Shepard's former academic adviser Jon Peacock says, "I think when you're so close to an event like this you become more sensitized. You start to pay more attention to those issues." Detective Sergeant Rob Debree, the lead investigator in Shepard's murder, adds, "I think overall, there's just more acceptance." Debree became a forceful national advocate for Federal Hate Crime legislation alongside Officer Dave O'Malley as a result of this murder.
"The fact that cops like DeBree and O'Malley, law officers in positions of real power, are committed to gay and lesbian people and their protection, that should be construed as concrete change," says Beth Loffreda, author of the book, "Losing Matthew Shepard." "You won't find that in a statute or in a public monument to Matt, but that's real and meaningful change."
A real cause for concern, however, is the emergence in Laramie of a narrative that has gained many proponents in recent years: one that states that Shepard's murder by two local residents, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, was only "a robbery gone bad" or "a drug-fueled murder" and not a hate crime. "That's nonsense," says Fluty. "All you have to do is look at the evidence." O'Malley, lead investigator of the Laramie Police Department agrees, "I'm convinced that these guys killed Matt because he was gay."
Debree of the Sheriff's department adds: "We went in depth reviewing [the murderers'] blood for any kind of drugs or anything to that effect. There was nothing." The fact that this was a hate crime was decisively proved at the trial when in excerpts of McKinney's confession, the jury heard him tell DeBree: "[Shepard] put his hand on my leg. ... I told him I'm not a f---ing faggot" before beginning to brutally beat Matthew Shepard.
Catherine Connolly, the first openly gay professor at the university, also takes issue with this willful ignoring of the facts: "This distortion of history, this is what kids 18, 19 years old think now. It's devastating to us. This is our history."
So why has this distortion of the truth become so prevalent? One hypothesis is that because Laramie was portrayed in the media as a backward town where hatred and bigotry were rampant, forcing the citizens to question their identity as an idyllic community, a "good place to raise your children." "And when we have a theory about who we are," says Laramie resident Jeffrey Lockwood, "and the data goes against that theory, we throw out the data rather than adjust the theory. We are hardwired as human beings not to contemplate our own complicity in things."
Yet there are many people who found in this murder an opportunity to reflect deeply about the role that the culture and values of Laramie played in the crime. "This whole thing forced us to look at our warts," says Dr. Don Cantway, the physician who treated Matthew's injuries. "To look at our bigotry, the hatreds, the intolerance that exist here."
These two stances, denial and self-reflection, have divided the town. "This is where I choose to live," insists Jonas Slonaker, a gay man who chose to come out after Shepard's murder, "and this is a state that always votes Republican and is pretty conservative. So there'll be a lot of resistance [to change]. It might be a situation where those rights will come from a federal level down before it comes to the state level."
But nationally, the situation regarding gay rights legislation mirrors Wyoming's. In 2007, the Matthew Shepard Act passed in both the House and the Senate but the legislation never made it out of Congress—because of a Bush veto threat and the bill's attachment to a defense authorization measure.
Still, shifts are occurring: Wyoming's Governor Dave Freudenthal, says, "If you really believe in that Western 'live and let live' [philosophy] then you wouldn't have homophobic violence. So there's a contradiction. We tolerate an awful lot of violence in this state and we have to look at that." In 2005, the neighboring town of Casper elected a gay man as mayor and professor Connolly is running for a State House seat in the coming election. In addition, the faculty at the university continues to fight for same-sex partner benefits.
Measuring change is not an exact science: the markers can be elusive or blurry, yet no less meaningful. Peacock says, "I think it does a great disservice to the power of the story around Matthew's death to measure it by whether there's been definitive or quantifiable change like a law passed. We know that there has been so much qualitative and transformational change. So I think it does a real disservice to the story to measure it that way. I just think that's too thin of a measure."
Monday, October 13, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
McCain Gets Criticized For Racist Rallies
McCain calls comments by Georgia Democrat 'shocking'
* Story Highlights
* Rep. John Lewis compares recent McCain rallies to segregationist ex-governor
* Lewis: George Wallace "created the climate ... that encouraged vicious attacks"
* McCain: Rep. Lewis' comments are "shocking and beyond the pale"
* McCain now calls on the Obama campaign to repudiate the remarks
From Rebecca Sinderbrand
CNN Associate Political Editor
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain called a statement by a Georgia congressman Saturday, which compared the feeling at recent Republican rallies to those of segregationist George Wallace, "a brazen and baseless attack."
Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, who has been praised by McCain in the past, issued his statement after several days of headline-grabbing anger aimed at Democratic nominee Barack Obama from some attendees at campaign rallies of McCain and running mate Gov. Sarah Palin.
"What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse," Lewis said in a statement.
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama," wrote the Democrat. VideoWatch more on the rising rage at McCain-Palin rallies »
McCain has written about Lewis, praising his actions in Selma, Alabama, during the civil rights movement. The Republican nominee even said during a summer faith forum that Lewis was one of three men he would turn to for counsel as president.
But the Arizona senator blasted Lewis' remarks, and called on Obama to repudiate them.
"Congressman John Lewis' comments represent a character attack against Gov. Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale," he said in a Saturday afternoon statement released by his campaign.
"The notion that legitimate criticism of Sen. Obama's record and positions could be compared to Gov. George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track. VideoWatch more on the rising rage at McCain-Palin rallies »
"I call on Sen. Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America."
Also Saturday, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton released a statement on the Lewis comments.
"Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies," Burton said. "But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.' "
Later Saturday, Lewis issued a statement saying a careful review of his remarks "would reveal that I did not compare Sen. John McCain or Gov. Sarah Palin to George Wallace."
"My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior," Lewis said. "I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation."
* Story Highlights
* Rep. John Lewis compares recent McCain rallies to segregationist ex-governor
* Lewis: George Wallace "created the climate ... that encouraged vicious attacks"
* McCain: Rep. Lewis' comments are "shocking and beyond the pale"
* McCain now calls on the Obama campaign to repudiate the remarks
From Rebecca Sinderbrand
CNN Associate Political Editor
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain called a statement by a Georgia congressman Saturday, which compared the feeling at recent Republican rallies to those of segregationist George Wallace, "a brazen and baseless attack."
Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, who has been praised by McCain in the past, issued his statement after several days of headline-grabbing anger aimed at Democratic nominee Barack Obama from some attendees at campaign rallies of McCain and running mate Gov. Sarah Palin.
"What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse," Lewis said in a statement.
"George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama," wrote the Democrat. VideoWatch more on the rising rage at McCain-Palin rallies »
McCain has written about Lewis, praising his actions in Selma, Alabama, during the civil rights movement. The Republican nominee even said during a summer faith forum that Lewis was one of three men he would turn to for counsel as president.
But the Arizona senator blasted Lewis' remarks, and called on Obama to repudiate them.
"Congressman John Lewis' comments represent a character attack against Gov. Sarah Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale," he said in a Saturday afternoon statement released by his campaign.
"The notion that legitimate criticism of Sen. Obama's record and positions could be compared to Gov. George Wallace, his segregationist policies and the violence he provoked is unacceptable and has no place in this campaign. I am saddened that John Lewis, a man I've always admired, would make such a brazen and baseless attack on my character and the character of the thousands of hardworking Americans who come to our events to cheer for the kind of reform that will put America on the right track. VideoWatch more on the rising rage at McCain-Palin rallies »
"I call on Sen. Obama to immediately and personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments that are so clearly designed to shut down debate 24 days before the election. Our country must return to the important debate about the path forward for America."
Also Saturday, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton released a statement on the Lewis comments.
"Sen. Obama does not believe that John McCain or his policy criticism is in any way comparable to George Wallace or his segregationist policies," Burton said. "But John Lewis was right to condemn some of the hateful rhetoric that John McCain himself personally rebuked just last night, as well as the baseless and profoundly irresponsible charges from his own running mate that the Democratic nominee for president of the United States 'pals around with terrorists.' "
Later Saturday, Lewis issued a statement saying a careful review of his remarks "would reveal that I did not compare Sen. John McCain or Gov. Sarah Palin to George Wallace."
"My statement was a reminder to all Americans that toxic language can lead to destructive behavior," Lewis said. "I am glad that Sen. McCain has taken some steps to correct divisive speech at his rallies. I believe we need to return to civil discourse in this election about the pressing economic issues that are affecting our nation."
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Obama Referred To As "N" Word By Teacher
7th-Grade Teacher to Students: Obama is a 'N'-Word
October 8th, 2008
Greg Howard
7th-Grade teacher to students: Obama is a 'N'-word. Angry parents in the northwest Florida community of Marianna want a middle school teacher fired after he put the "N"-word on the board to describe Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. The Marianna Middle School teacher, Greg Howard, is now serving a 10-day suspension after writing an acronym on the dry-erase board on Sept. 26: "C.H.A.N.G.E. - Come Help A N*gg*r Get Elected." But many parents want the 17-year teacher fired. The seventh-grade social studies teacher's class has 17 White students, six Black students and one Asian student. Initially he was suspended for the day without pay, but that was elevated to the 10-day punishment. He must also write a letter of apology to students. "We feel like the punishment is sufficient," Larry Moore, superintendent of the Jackson County School District, told The Detroit Free Press. "We did not feel he had to be fired." NAACP officials say they will reserve their actions in the case until their investigation is complete. Audrey Wad, who has nieces and nephews at the school, didn't need any more information before expressing her outrage. "To me, it's hurtful," she told the Free Press. "The idea that he would impose his political opinion on the children is wrong to me. That's where he crossed the line."
October 8th, 2008
Greg Howard
7th-Grade teacher to students: Obama is a 'N'-word. Angry parents in the northwest Florida community of Marianna want a middle school teacher fired after he put the "N"-word on the board to describe Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. The Marianna Middle School teacher, Greg Howard, is now serving a 10-day suspension after writing an acronym on the dry-erase board on Sept. 26: "C.H.A.N.G.E. - Come Help A N*gg*r Get Elected." But many parents want the 17-year teacher fired. The seventh-grade social studies teacher's class has 17 White students, six Black students and one Asian student. Initially he was suspended for the day without pay, but that was elevated to the 10-day punishment. He must also write a letter of apology to students. "We feel like the punishment is sufficient," Larry Moore, superintendent of the Jackson County School District, told The Detroit Free Press. "We did not feel he had to be fired." NAACP officials say they will reserve their actions in the case until their investigation is complete. Audrey Wad, who has nieces and nephews at the school, didn't need any more information before expressing her outrage. "To me, it's hurtful," she told the Free Press. "The idea that he would impose his political opinion on the children is wrong to me. That's where he crossed the line."
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
New York Times: McCain/Palin Ticket Should Be Ashamed
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October 8, 2008
Editorial
Politics of Attack
It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.
They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.
Despite the occasional slip (referring to Mr. Obama’s “cronies” and calling him “that one”), Mr. McCain tried to take a higher road in Tuesday night’s presidential debate. It was hard to keep track of the number of times he referred to his audience as “my friends.” But apart from promising to buy up troubled mortgages as president, he offered no real answers for how he plans to solve the country’s deep economic crisis. He is unable or unwilling to admit that the Republican assault on regulation was to blame.
Ninety minutes of forced cordiality did not erase the dismal ugliness of his campaign in recent weeks, nor did it leave us with much hope that he would not just return to the same dismal ugliness on Wednesday.
Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying.
That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she’s done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers — and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, “sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.
Mr. McCain’s aides haven’t even tried to hide their cynical tactics, saying they were “going negative” in hopes of shifting attention away from the financial crisis — and by implication Mr. McCain’s stumbling response.
We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics. He was driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear, orchestrated by some of the same people who are now running his campaign.
And the tactic of guilt by association is perplexing, since Mr. McCain has his own list of political associates he would rather forget. We were disappointed to see the Obama campaign air an ad (held for just this occasion) reminding voters of Mr. McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five savings-and-loan debacle, for which he was reprimanded by the Senate. That episode at least bears on Mr. McCain’s claims to be the morally pure candidate and his argument that he alone is capable of doing away with greed, fraud and abuse.
In a way, we should not be surprised that Mr. McCain has stooped so low, since the debate showed once again that he has little else to talk about. He long ago abandoned his signature issues of immigration reform and global warming; his talk of “victory” in Iraq has little to offer a war-weary nation; and his Reagan-inspired ideology of starving government and shredding regulation lies in tatters on Wall Street.
But surely, Mr. McCain and his team can come up with a better answer to that problem than inciting more division, anger and hatred.
October 8, 2008
Editorial
Politics of Attack
It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember.
They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.
Despite the occasional slip (referring to Mr. Obama’s “cronies” and calling him “that one”), Mr. McCain tried to take a higher road in Tuesday night’s presidential debate. It was hard to keep track of the number of times he referred to his audience as “my friends.” But apart from promising to buy up troubled mortgages as president, he offered no real answers for how he plans to solve the country’s deep economic crisis. He is unable or unwilling to admit that the Republican assault on regulation was to blame.
Ninety minutes of forced cordiality did not erase the dismal ugliness of his campaign in recent weeks, nor did it leave us with much hope that he would not just return to the same dismal ugliness on Wednesday.
Ms. Palin, in particular, revels in the attack. Her campaign rallies have become spectacles of anger and insult. “This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,” Ms. Palin has taken to saying.
That line follows passages in Ms. Palin’s new stump speech in which she twists Mr. Obama’s ill-advised but fleeting and long-past association with William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground and confessed bomber. By the time she’s done, she implies that Mr. Obama is right now a close friend of Mr. Ayers — and sympathetic to the violent overthrow of the government. The Democrat, she says, “sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.”
Her demagoguery has elicited some frightening, intolerable responses. A recent Washington Post report said at a rally in Florida this week a man yelled “kill him!” as Ms. Palin delivered that line and others shouted epithets at an African-American member of a TV crew.
Mr. McCain’s aides haven’t even tried to hide their cynical tactics, saying they were “going negative” in hopes of shifting attention away from the financial crisis — and by implication Mr. McCain’s stumbling response.
We certainly expected better from Mr. McCain, who once showed withering contempt for win-at-any-cost politics. He was driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear, orchestrated by some of the same people who are now running his campaign.
And the tactic of guilt by association is perplexing, since Mr. McCain has his own list of political associates he would rather forget. We were disappointed to see the Obama campaign air an ad (held for just this occasion) reminding voters of Mr. McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five savings-and-loan debacle, for which he was reprimanded by the Senate. That episode at least bears on Mr. McCain’s claims to be the morally pure candidate and his argument that he alone is capable of doing away with greed, fraud and abuse.
In a way, we should not be surprised that Mr. McCain has stooped so low, since the debate showed once again that he has little else to talk about. He long ago abandoned his signature issues of immigration reform and global warming; his talk of “victory” in Iraq has little to offer a war-weary nation; and his Reagan-inspired ideology of starving government and shredding regulation lies in tatters on Wall Street.
But surely, Mr. McCain and his team can come up with a better answer to that problem than inciting more division, anger and hatred.
Paris Hilton Running For President...Gets Campaign Advice
See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die
Sarah Palin Hates GLBTQ - No Duh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfL2l1dk8nA&eurl=http://feministing.com/
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
McCain/Palin Health Care Disaster
The New York Times
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October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.
Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.
So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.
Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.
This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.
So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.
Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.
Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.
As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.
So what would happen?
The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.
But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).
Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.
And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
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October 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Health Care Destruction
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Sarah Palin ended her debate performance last Thursday with a slightly garbled quote from Ronald Reagan about how, if we aren’t vigilant, we’ll end up “telling our children and our children’s children” about the days when America was free. It was a revealing choice.
You see, when Reagan said this he wasn’t warning about Soviet aggression. He was warning against legislation that would guarantee health care for older Americans — the program now known as Medicare.
Conservative Republicans still hate Medicare, and would kill it if they could — in fact, they tried to gut it during the Clinton years (that’s what the 1995 shutdown of the government was all about). But so far they haven’t been able to pull that off.
So John McCain wants to destroy the health insurance of nonelderly Americans instead.
Most Americans under 65 currently get health insurance through their employers. That’s largely because the tax code favors such insurance: your employer’s contribution to insurance premiums isn’t considered taxable income, as long as the employer’s health plan follows certain rules. In particular, the same plan has to be available to all employees, regardless of the size of their paycheck or the state of their health.
This system does a fairly effective job of protecting those it reaches, but it leaves many Americans out in the cold. Workers whose employers don’t offer coverage are forced to seek individual health insurance, often in vain. For one thing, insurance companies offering “nongroup” coverage generally refuse to cover anyone with a pre-existing medical condition. And individual insurance is very expensive, because insurers spend large sums weeding out “high-risk” applicants — that is, anyone who seems likely to actually need the insurance.
So what should be done? Barack Obama offers incremental reform: regulation of insurers to prevent discrimination against the less healthy, subsidies to help lower-income families buy insurance, and public insurance plans that compete with the private sector. His plan falls short of universal coverage, but it would sharply reduce the number of uninsured.
Mr. McCain, on the other hand, wants to blow up the current system, by eliminating the tax break for employer-provided insurance. And he doesn’t offer a workable alternative.
Without the tax break, many employers would drop their current health plans. Several recent nonpartisan studies estimate that under the McCain plan around 20 million Americans currently covered by their employers would lose their health insurance.
As compensation, the McCain plan would give people a tax credit — $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family — that could be used to buy health insurance in the individual market. At the same time, Mr. McCain would deregulate insurance, leaving insurance companies free to deny coverage to those with health problems — and his proposal for a “high-risk pool” for hard cases would provide little help.
So what would happen?
The good news, such as it is, is that more people would buy individual insurance. Indeed, the total number of uninsured Americans might decline marginally under the McCain plan — although many more Americans would be without insurance than under the Obama plan.
But the people gaining insurance would be those who need it least: relatively healthy Americans with high incomes. Why? Because insurance companies want to cover only healthy people, and even among the healthy only those able to pay a lot in addition to their tax credit would be able to afford coverage (remember, it’s a $5,000 credit, but the average family policy actually costs more than $12,000).
Meanwhile, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most: lower-income workers who wouldn’t be able to afford individual insurance even with the tax credit, and Americans with health problems whom insurance companies won’t cover.
And in the process of comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted, the McCain plan would also lead to a huge, expensive increase in bureaucracy: insurers selling individual health plans spend 29 percent of the premiums they receive on administration, largely because they employ so many people to screen applicants. This compares with costs of 12 percent for group plans and just 3 percent for Medicare.
In short, the McCain plan makes no sense at all, unless you have faith that the magic of the marketplace can solve all problems. And Mr. McCain does: a much-quoted article published under his name declares that “Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”
I agree: the McCain plan would do for health care what deregulation has done for banking. And I’m terrified.
Drug Companies Lie: Pfizer Manipulated Studies.
The New York Times
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October 8, 2008
Experts Conclude Pfizer Manipulated Studies
By STEPHANIE SAUL
The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company.
Pfizer’s tactics included delaying the publication of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for some other disorders, “spinning” negative data to place it in a more positive light, and bundling negative findings with positive studies to neutralize the results, according to written reports by the experts, who analyzed the documents at the request of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
One of the experts who reviewed the documents, Dr. Kay Dickersin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, concluded that the Pfizer documents spell out “a publication strategy meant to convince physicians of Neurontin’s effectiveness and misrepresent or suppress negative findings.”
Pfizer issued a statement Tuesday denying that it had manipulated Neurontin data, saying “study results are reported by Pfizer in an objective, accurate, balanced and complete manner, with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of the study, and are reported regardless of the outcome of the study or the country in which the study was conducted.”
The expert reports, unsealed Monday in a federal court in Boston, add to accusations that the pharmaceutical industry has controlled the flow of clinical research data, blurring the lines between science and marketing.
In April, for example, a group of academic doctors questioned the validity of drug industry research after finding that Merck had hired ghostwriters to produce scientific articles about Vioxx, then recruited prestigious doctors to serve as their official authors. Vioxx, a painkiller, was withdrawn from the market in 2004 after research indicated it could cause strokes and heart attacks.
Last winter, Merck and Schering-Plough were criticized for delaying the release of a study on their best-selling cholesterol medication Vytorin that showed the drug did not slow the growth of plaque in arteries. In the case of Pfizer’s Neurontin, the negative studies would have increased doubts about the drug’s value for several unapproved uses — treating bipolar disorder, controlling certain types of pain and preventing migraine headaches, according to the expert opinions.
So-called off-label use of Neurontin for those conditions helped propel its sales to nearly $3 billion a year before it lost patent protection in 2004.
In one example, the experts concluded that Pfizer had deliberately delayed release of a study that showed the drug had little effect against pain that is a complication of long-term diabetes, even as the outside researcher who was a lead investigator for the study, Dr. John Reckless of Bath, England, pushed to publish the unflattering findings on his own. Dr. Reckless’s office said Tuesday that he could not be reached for comment.
According to one September 2000 e-mail message by a Neurontin team leader at Pfizer, “The main investigator in the U.K. (Dr. Reckless) is keen to publish but this will have several ramifications.” The team leader later wrote, “I think we can limit the potential downside of the 224 study by delaying publication for as long as possible.”
Pfizer said Tuesday that it had submitted the Reckless study to two journals which declined to publish it. The results were not published until 2003 and, according to plaintiffs’ experts, when they did appear they were combined with two other studies and together the findings concluded Neurontin was effective for treating neuropathic pain.
Another series of e-mail messages had the subject line “Spinning Serpell,” a reference to an investigator on the study, Dr. Michael Serpell of Glasgow, Scotland. In the e-mail exchange a senior marketing manager for Pfizer and a professional medical writer discussed how to cast the results in a more favorable light for a poster presentation at a medical conference, the experts concluded.
“If Pfizer wants to use, present and publish this comparative data analysis in which two of the five studies compared make the overall picture look bad, how do we make it sound better than it looks on the graphs?” the medical writer asked.
Pfizer discontinued its marketing program for Neurontin in 2004 after the drug became available as a generic. That same year, the company paid $430 million to settle federal criminal and civil claims that Warner-Lambert, which Pfizer acquired in 2000, promoted Neurontin for unapproved uses during the 1990s.
At the time, Pfizer said the illegal marketing had occurred before Pfizer acquired the company or drug. On Tuesday, Pfizer repeated that it had instituted procedures when it acquired Warner-Lambert to make sure there was no off-label promotion of Neurontin.
Despite that settlement, separate legal action involving the drug is still pending in Boston, where consumers and third-party payers including insurance companies and trade unions want Pfizer to repay them billions of dollars for Neurontin prescriptions. The plaintiffs accuse Pfizer of fraudulently misrepresenting the drug’s benefits.
Thomas Greene, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the documents in the case revealed that even after the Neurontin settlement.
“Pfizer continued with the medical marketing firms and planted marketing messages in journal articles that Neurontin was effective while they knew that their own clinical trials had failed to demonstrate it was effective,” Mr. Greene said.
Dr. Dickersin, the Johns Hopkins expert, said that of 21 studies she reviewed, five were positive and 16 negative, meaning they did not prove the drug was effective. Of the five positive studies, four were published in full journal articles, yet only six of the negative studies were published and, of those, two were published in abbreviated form.
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October 8, 2008
Experts Conclude Pfizer Manipulated Studies
By STEPHANIE SAUL
The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company.
Pfizer’s tactics included delaying the publication of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for some other disorders, “spinning” negative data to place it in a more positive light, and bundling negative findings with positive studies to neutralize the results, according to written reports by the experts, who analyzed the documents at the request of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
One of the experts who reviewed the documents, Dr. Kay Dickersin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, concluded that the Pfizer documents spell out “a publication strategy meant to convince physicians of Neurontin’s effectiveness and misrepresent or suppress negative findings.”
Pfizer issued a statement Tuesday denying that it had manipulated Neurontin data, saying “study results are reported by Pfizer in an objective, accurate, balanced and complete manner, with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of the study, and are reported regardless of the outcome of the study or the country in which the study was conducted.”
The expert reports, unsealed Monday in a federal court in Boston, add to accusations that the pharmaceutical industry has controlled the flow of clinical research data, blurring the lines between science and marketing.
In April, for example, a group of academic doctors questioned the validity of drug industry research after finding that Merck had hired ghostwriters to produce scientific articles about Vioxx, then recruited prestigious doctors to serve as their official authors. Vioxx, a painkiller, was withdrawn from the market in 2004 after research indicated it could cause strokes and heart attacks.
Last winter, Merck and Schering-Plough were criticized for delaying the release of a study on their best-selling cholesterol medication Vytorin that showed the drug did not slow the growth of plaque in arteries. In the case of Pfizer’s Neurontin, the negative studies would have increased doubts about the drug’s value for several unapproved uses — treating bipolar disorder, controlling certain types of pain and preventing migraine headaches, according to the expert opinions.
So-called off-label use of Neurontin for those conditions helped propel its sales to nearly $3 billion a year before it lost patent protection in 2004.
In one example, the experts concluded that Pfizer had deliberately delayed release of a study that showed the drug had little effect against pain that is a complication of long-term diabetes, even as the outside researcher who was a lead investigator for the study, Dr. John Reckless of Bath, England, pushed to publish the unflattering findings on his own. Dr. Reckless’s office said Tuesday that he could not be reached for comment.
According to one September 2000 e-mail message by a Neurontin team leader at Pfizer, “The main investigator in the U.K. (Dr. Reckless) is keen to publish but this will have several ramifications.” The team leader later wrote, “I think we can limit the potential downside of the 224 study by delaying publication for as long as possible.”
Pfizer said Tuesday that it had submitted the Reckless study to two journals which declined to publish it. The results were not published until 2003 and, according to plaintiffs’ experts, when they did appear they were combined with two other studies and together the findings concluded Neurontin was effective for treating neuropathic pain.
Another series of e-mail messages had the subject line “Spinning Serpell,” a reference to an investigator on the study, Dr. Michael Serpell of Glasgow, Scotland. In the e-mail exchange a senior marketing manager for Pfizer and a professional medical writer discussed how to cast the results in a more favorable light for a poster presentation at a medical conference, the experts concluded.
“If Pfizer wants to use, present and publish this comparative data analysis in which two of the five studies compared make the overall picture look bad, how do we make it sound better than it looks on the graphs?” the medical writer asked.
Pfizer discontinued its marketing program for Neurontin in 2004 after the drug became available as a generic. That same year, the company paid $430 million to settle federal criminal and civil claims that Warner-Lambert, which Pfizer acquired in 2000, promoted Neurontin for unapproved uses during the 1990s.
At the time, Pfizer said the illegal marketing had occurred before Pfizer acquired the company or drug. On Tuesday, Pfizer repeated that it had instituted procedures when it acquired Warner-Lambert to make sure there was no off-label promotion of Neurontin.
Despite that settlement, separate legal action involving the drug is still pending in Boston, where consumers and third-party payers including insurance companies and trade unions want Pfizer to repay them billions of dollars for Neurontin prescriptions. The plaintiffs accuse Pfizer of fraudulently misrepresenting the drug’s benefits.
Thomas Greene, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the documents in the case revealed that even after the Neurontin settlement.
“Pfizer continued with the medical marketing firms and planted marketing messages in journal articles that Neurontin was effective while they knew that their own clinical trials had failed to demonstrate it was effective,” Mr. Greene said.
Dr. Dickersin, the Johns Hopkins expert, said that of 21 studies she reviewed, five were positive and 16 negative, meaning they did not prove the drug was effective. Of the five positive studies, four were published in full journal articles, yet only six of the negative studies were published and, of those, two were published in abbreviated form.
Giant Turtles Are Fierce
The New York Times
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October 8, 2008
Future of Giant Turtle Still Uncertain
By JIM YARDLEY
BEIJING — Wait until next year.
Scientists trying to save one of the world’s most endangered species of freshwater turtles say waiting is their only recourse after a complicated attempt to mate two elderly turtles during this year’s breeding season ended without producing any offspring.
The fate of the Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle seems especially uncertain because only one female is known to exist — an 80-year-old turtle with a leathery shell that lived without notice for a half century inside a zoo in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, in southern China. Only when scientists discovered her existence last year did it become clear that a chance remained to save her species.
In May, scientists drove her more than 600 miles to a zoo in the city of Suzhou. There, a male turtle estimated to be 100 years old awaited her. He had been the last known male of the species, though in recent months scientists discovered two more males in Vietnam.
Gerald Kuchling, a prominent herpetologist helping to oversee the mating program, said the male and female turtles were introduced to each other on May 7.
It was a meeting that carried some risk; males can be territorial and have been known to attack other, unfamiliar, turtles. On top of that, neither turtle had seen a member of the opposite sex in decades. But scientists say the pairing was a success.
“It worked very well,” Mr. Kuchling said by telephone.
June seemed to bring good news: The female produced roughly 100 eggs and about half appeared to be fertilized. But scientists now say the embryos apparently died in early development. A recent posting on the Web site of Turtle Survival Alliance, a global network focused on protecting endangered turtles, said “a number of the eggs had very thin or cracked eggshells, suggesting that the diet of the animals prior to breeding was not optimal.”
Mr. Kuchling said the female had been fed raw beef and pork, rather than a more desirable diet of fish and crayfish.
“If the nutrition of the female is not right, then the eggs usually die,” he said.
Males of the species can reach 220 pounds, while females are usually about half that size. The female from the Changsha zoo weighs about 90 pounds, while the male from the Suzhou zoo weighs more than twice as much.
Xie Yan, the China program director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, said she remained hopeful.
She said that the diet for the female had already been changed and that her general health was considered good. The discovery of two more males is also good news, she added. “The male and the female didn’t spend enough time together this year,” she said. “This was the first time they mated. Next time will be better.”
The Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle is one of the largest freshwater species in the world, though its population has been decimated by hunting and pollution. Last year, scientists struggled to persuade either the Suzhou or the Changsha zoo to allow its turtle to be moved.
Scientists had considered artificial insemination but decided the procedure would be too risky. It became unnecessary when the Changsha zoo agreed to move the female to Suzhou.
Now, the two turtles live in adjacent ponds at the Suzhou zoo. The ponds are connected through a small channel, which is blocked by an underwater door. That door will open again next May, during breeding season, and the two old turtles will try once again.
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October 8, 2008
Future of Giant Turtle Still Uncertain
By JIM YARDLEY
BEIJING — Wait until next year.
Scientists trying to save one of the world’s most endangered species of freshwater turtles say waiting is their only recourse after a complicated attempt to mate two elderly turtles during this year’s breeding season ended without producing any offspring.
The fate of the Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle seems especially uncertain because only one female is known to exist — an 80-year-old turtle with a leathery shell that lived without notice for a half century inside a zoo in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province, in southern China. Only when scientists discovered her existence last year did it become clear that a chance remained to save her species.
In May, scientists drove her more than 600 miles to a zoo in the city of Suzhou. There, a male turtle estimated to be 100 years old awaited her. He had been the last known male of the species, though in recent months scientists discovered two more males in Vietnam.
Gerald Kuchling, a prominent herpetologist helping to oversee the mating program, said the male and female turtles were introduced to each other on May 7.
It was a meeting that carried some risk; males can be territorial and have been known to attack other, unfamiliar, turtles. On top of that, neither turtle had seen a member of the opposite sex in decades. But scientists say the pairing was a success.
“It worked very well,” Mr. Kuchling said by telephone.
June seemed to bring good news: The female produced roughly 100 eggs and about half appeared to be fertilized. But scientists now say the embryos apparently died in early development. A recent posting on the Web site of Turtle Survival Alliance, a global network focused on protecting endangered turtles, said “a number of the eggs had very thin or cracked eggshells, suggesting that the diet of the animals prior to breeding was not optimal.”
Mr. Kuchling said the female had been fed raw beef and pork, rather than a more desirable diet of fish and crayfish.
“If the nutrition of the female is not right, then the eggs usually die,” he said.
Males of the species can reach 220 pounds, while females are usually about half that size. The female from the Changsha zoo weighs about 90 pounds, while the male from the Suzhou zoo weighs more than twice as much.
Xie Yan, the China program director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, said she remained hopeful.
She said that the diet for the female had already been changed and that her general health was considered good. The discovery of two more males is also good news, she added. “The male and the female didn’t spend enough time together this year,” she said. “This was the first time they mated. Next time will be better.”
The Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle is one of the largest freshwater species in the world, though its population has been decimated by hunting and pollution. Last year, scientists struggled to persuade either the Suzhou or the Changsha zoo to allow its turtle to be moved.
Scientists had considered artificial insemination but decided the procedure would be too risky. It became unnecessary when the Changsha zoo agreed to move the female to Suzhou.
Now, the two turtles live in adjacent ponds at the Suzhou zoo. The ponds are connected through a small channel, which is blocked by an underwater door. That door will open again next May, during breeding season, and the two old turtles will try once again.
Financial Crisis: The Worst Of The Worst
knbc.com
Police: Porter Ranch Gunman's Letters Cite 'Financial Problems'
'Suicide' Letters Found In Residence
POSTED: 10:57 am PDT October 6, 2008
UPDATED: 9:44 am PDT October 7, 2008
LOS ANGELES --
Crisis counselors were sent Tuesday to the schools attended by three children killed by their father in a murder-suicide that also took the lives of their mother and their maternal grandmother.
The Los Angeles Police Department said the violence occurred sometime between Saturday evening and Monday morning. Officials said 45-year-old Karthik Rajaram killed his 39-year-old wife Subasari, her 69-year-old mother and his three sons -- 19-year-old Krishna, 12-year-old Ganesha and 7-year-old Arjuna.
Rajaram was a one-time millionaire who lost his job and apparently his money, as well, as a result of stock market losses.
Video: Tues. AM Report | Images
Raw Video: News Conference
Rajaram was found dead with a gun in hand by police officers who followed a trail of carnage from bedroom to bedroom through the big, two-story house the family rented in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.
Investigators quickly found two suicide letters and a will, and determined that the man once worked for a major accounting firm and was at least the part-owner of a financial holding company, Deputy Chief Michel Moore said.
"We believe that he has become despondent recently over financial dealings and the financial situation of his household, and that this murder-suicide event is a direct result of that," Moore said.
The man wrote in his suicide letter that he felt he had two options -- to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family -- and decided the second option was more honorable, Moore said.
The bodies were found when officers were sent to make a check on the home Monday morning after the wife failed to show up at a neighbor's home to go to work as a pharmacy bookkeeper, Moore said.
Officers found the mother-in-law, Indra Ramasesham, 69, dead in bed on the first floor. Upstairs, they found a 19-year-old son, Krishna Rajaram, dead in bed in the master bedroom.
The gunman's 39-year-old wife, Subasari, was found in another room, also apparently shot while sleeping, Moore said.
In an adjoining room, a 12-year-old son was dead on the floor, and his 7-year-old brother was dead in bed. Their father's body also was found there with a handgun "in his grasp," Moore said.
"The handgun that was discovered here on scene was recently purchased, only on the 16th of September," by the father, Moore said.
Authorities withheld the names of the wife and two youngest children because their wounds made official identification difficult, said coroner's assistant chief Ed Winter.
"Some received multiple gunshot wounds," he said.
The killings occurred some time between midnight Saturday and early Monday morning, Winter said.
The gated community, called Sorrento Pointe, is among several developments along curving lanes and cul-de-sacs set on the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains in Porter Ranch, about 23 miles northwest of downtown.
"It's very quiet here," said Ryan Ransdell, who lives across the street. "That's what's so shocking about this. ... You'd think someone would have heard it. You can hear a car door shut at night."
Ransdell said the family kept to themselves.
The father had a master's of business administration in finance, formerly worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sony Pictures, but had been unemployed for several months, Moore said. The deputy chief did not identify the financial holding company, though Nevada records show an incorporation there.
Moore did not specify what financial trouble the man had been in. He noted that the family did not own the home.
One of the suicide letters was addressed to police and the other to friends and relatives.
In the suicide letters, "he attests to some financial difficulties, takes responsibility for the taking of the lives of his family members and himself as a result of those financial difficulties," Moore said. "We believe that he has become despondent recently over financial dealings and the financial situation of his household."
The man had no record of mental disabilities or contacts with mental health professionals in Los Angeles County, Moore said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers spokesman Steven Silber said Karthik Rajaram last worked for the company in 1999, but declined to offer any further information about him.
"This is obviously a terrible tragedy, about which we are very saddened. However, Mr. Rajaram has not worked for PWC for nearly a decade, so it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further," Silber said.
Sony Pictures Entertainment spokesman Steve Elzer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Karthik Rajaram is listed as a co-manager of a corporation called SKGL LLC, which is incorporated in Nevada, according to state records. He formed the corporation for his family's assets and used his family members' initials to form the name, said Las Vegas attorney Christopher R. Grobl.
SKGL was incorporated in 1999 and renewed its annual business license in December 2007.
Grobl did not know what sort of business SKGL was or why Rajaram incoporated in Nevada.
Krishna Rajaram was enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a junior majoring in business economics, spokesman Phil Hampton said.
The LAPD was working with the Los Angeles Unified School District to arrange for crisis response teams to be dispatched to the two local schools that the 7- and 12-year-old victims attended, Moore said.
A crisis response team from the mayor's office also responded to assist the family's friends and neighbors.
Superintendent David Brewer issued a statement saying the "entire Los Angeles Unified School District family is saddened to hear" about the deaths and would " provide support and assistance to the school staff and students following this unfortunate tragedy as long as needed."
Police: Porter Ranch Gunman's Letters Cite 'Financial Problems'
'Suicide' Letters Found In Residence
POSTED: 10:57 am PDT October 6, 2008
UPDATED: 9:44 am PDT October 7, 2008
LOS ANGELES --
Crisis counselors were sent Tuesday to the schools attended by three children killed by their father in a murder-suicide that also took the lives of their mother and their maternal grandmother.
The Los Angeles Police Department said the violence occurred sometime between Saturday evening and Monday morning. Officials said 45-year-old Karthik Rajaram killed his 39-year-old wife Subasari, her 69-year-old mother and his three sons -- 19-year-old Krishna, 12-year-old Ganesha and 7-year-old Arjuna.
Rajaram was a one-time millionaire who lost his job and apparently his money, as well, as a result of stock market losses.
Video: Tues. AM Report | Images
Raw Video: News Conference
Rajaram was found dead with a gun in hand by police officers who followed a trail of carnage from bedroom to bedroom through the big, two-story house the family rented in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.
Investigators quickly found two suicide letters and a will, and determined that the man once worked for a major accounting firm and was at least the part-owner of a financial holding company, Deputy Chief Michel Moore said.
"We believe that he has become despondent recently over financial dealings and the financial situation of his household, and that this murder-suicide event is a direct result of that," Moore said.
The man wrote in his suicide letter that he felt he had two options -- to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family -- and decided the second option was more honorable, Moore said.
The bodies were found when officers were sent to make a check on the home Monday morning after the wife failed to show up at a neighbor's home to go to work as a pharmacy bookkeeper, Moore said.
Officers found the mother-in-law, Indra Ramasesham, 69, dead in bed on the first floor. Upstairs, they found a 19-year-old son, Krishna Rajaram, dead in bed in the master bedroom.
The gunman's 39-year-old wife, Subasari, was found in another room, also apparently shot while sleeping, Moore said.
In an adjoining room, a 12-year-old son was dead on the floor, and his 7-year-old brother was dead in bed. Their father's body also was found there with a handgun "in his grasp," Moore said.
"The handgun that was discovered here on scene was recently purchased, only on the 16th of September," by the father, Moore said.
Authorities withheld the names of the wife and two youngest children because their wounds made official identification difficult, said coroner's assistant chief Ed Winter.
"Some received multiple gunshot wounds," he said.
The killings occurred some time between midnight Saturday and early Monday morning, Winter said.
The gated community, called Sorrento Pointe, is among several developments along curving lanes and cul-de-sacs set on the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains in Porter Ranch, about 23 miles northwest of downtown.
"It's very quiet here," said Ryan Ransdell, who lives across the street. "That's what's so shocking about this. ... You'd think someone would have heard it. You can hear a car door shut at night."
Ransdell said the family kept to themselves.
The father had a master's of business administration in finance, formerly worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Sony Pictures, but had been unemployed for several months, Moore said. The deputy chief did not identify the financial holding company, though Nevada records show an incorporation there.
Moore did not specify what financial trouble the man had been in. He noted that the family did not own the home.
One of the suicide letters was addressed to police and the other to friends and relatives.
In the suicide letters, "he attests to some financial difficulties, takes responsibility for the taking of the lives of his family members and himself as a result of those financial difficulties," Moore said. "We believe that he has become despondent recently over financial dealings and the financial situation of his household."
The man had no record of mental disabilities or contacts with mental health professionals in Los Angeles County, Moore said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers spokesman Steven Silber said Karthik Rajaram last worked for the company in 1999, but declined to offer any further information about him.
"This is obviously a terrible tragedy, about which we are very saddened. However, Mr. Rajaram has not worked for PWC for nearly a decade, so it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further," Silber said.
Sony Pictures Entertainment spokesman Steve Elzer did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Karthik Rajaram is listed as a co-manager of a corporation called SKGL LLC, which is incorporated in Nevada, according to state records. He formed the corporation for his family's assets and used his family members' initials to form the name, said Las Vegas attorney Christopher R. Grobl.
SKGL was incorporated in 1999 and renewed its annual business license in December 2007.
Grobl did not know what sort of business SKGL was or why Rajaram incoporated in Nevada.
Krishna Rajaram was enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, as a junior majoring in business economics, spokesman Phil Hampton said.
The LAPD was working with the Los Angeles Unified School District to arrange for crisis response teams to be dispatched to the two local schools that the 7- and 12-year-old victims attended, Moore said.
A crisis response team from the mayor's office also responded to assist the family's friends and neighbors.
Superintendent David Brewer issued a statement saying the "entire Los Angeles Unified School District family is saddened to hear" about the deaths and would " provide support and assistance to the school staff and students following this unfortunate tragedy as long as needed."
MTA = Shady
Trial Looms Over MTA's Negligence in Platform Rape
A lawsuit against the MTA is about to go to trial surrounding the rape of a woman on a G train platform in Queens three years ago. And the victim, now 25, told the Daily News this weekend that she forgives her attacker ("I know he was sick in the head"), but not the token booth clerk at the 21st Street station, "I can't forgive those five seconds when I stared into his eyes, screaming for help, imploring him with my tears and all I got back was a cold stare."
The victim's suit, filed two years ago, claims the MTA is negligent for not properly training its subway workers as well as lacking the proper communication tools between a booth and the platform below. As the woman was being attacked, she says not only did the token booth clerk see her yet stay in his booth, but another conductor whose train entered during the attack saw her being assaulted and allowed his train to leave the station. The only action taken by both the clerk and the conductor respectively was to call into their command center for further help.
For his part, the clerk claims he wasn't supposed to leave his booth, according to MTA rules, saying the victim "is very wrong" to blame him, adding, "She doesn't remember a lot of things." When asked in a pre-trial deposition why he didn't try to at least scare away the attacker by informing him that police were on their way, he said, "I did not even think about it." He says that when the woman was taken out of his view to the platform for the ten minutes that followed, he did "nothing really. I was just waiting for the police."
The only positive update to comes since we first reported the attack back in 2005 is that Right Rides, the volunteer organization that offers women, transpeople and gender queer individuals safe rides home late on Saturday nights now serves 35 neighborhoods in four boroughs (as opposed to a small section of Brooklyn and the LES back then). They are always looking for volunteers and sponsors for the Zipcars they send out.
A lawsuit against the MTA is about to go to trial surrounding the rape of a woman on a G train platform in Queens three years ago. And the victim, now 25, told the Daily News this weekend that she forgives her attacker ("I know he was sick in the head"), but not the token booth clerk at the 21st Street station, "I can't forgive those five seconds when I stared into his eyes, screaming for help, imploring him with my tears and all I got back was a cold stare."
The victim's suit, filed two years ago, claims the MTA is negligent for not properly training its subway workers as well as lacking the proper communication tools between a booth and the platform below. As the woman was being attacked, she says not only did the token booth clerk see her yet stay in his booth, but another conductor whose train entered during the attack saw her being assaulted and allowed his train to leave the station. The only action taken by both the clerk and the conductor respectively was to call into their command center for further help.
For his part, the clerk claims he wasn't supposed to leave his booth, according to MTA rules, saying the victim "is very wrong" to blame him, adding, "She doesn't remember a lot of things." When asked in a pre-trial deposition why he didn't try to at least scare away the attacker by informing him that police were on their way, he said, "I did not even think about it." He says that when the woman was taken out of his view to the platform for the ten minutes that followed, he did "nothing really. I was just waiting for the police."
The only positive update to comes since we first reported the attack back in 2005 is that Right Rides, the volunteer organization that offers women, transpeople and gender queer individuals safe rides home late on Saturday nights now serves 35 neighborhoods in four boroughs (as opposed to a small section of Brooklyn and the LES back then). They are always looking for volunteers and sponsors for the Zipcars they send out.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
American GLBT Are Fortunate
October 6, 2008
Persecuted in Senegal, Finding Refuge in New York
By KIRK SEMPLE and LYDIA POLGREEN
Pape Mbaye gets a lot of attention. Even in jaded New York, people watch the way he walks (his style defines the word sashay) and scrutinize his outfits, which on a recent afternoon featured white, low-slung capris, a black purse, eyeliner and diamond-studded jewelry.
And he likes it.
“I’m fabulous,” he said. “I feel good.”
Mr. Mbaye, 24, is an entertainer from Dakar, Senegal, known there for his dancing, singing and storytelling. But while his flamboyance may be celebrated in New York, he attracted the wrong kind of attention in West Africa this year, nearly costing him his life.
In February, a Senegalese magazine published photographs of what was reported to be an underground gay marriage and said that Mr. Mbaye, who appeared in the photos and is gay himself, had organized the event. In the ensuing six months, Mr. Mbaye said, he was harassed by the police, attacked by armed mobs, driven from his home, maligned in the national media and forced to live on the run across West Africa.
In July, the United States government gave him refugee status, one of the rare instances when such protection has been granted to a foreigner facing persecution based on sexual orientation. A month later, Mr. Mbaye arrived in New York, eventually moving into a small furnished room in the Bronx that rents for $150 per week. It has a bed, air-conditioner, television, cat and pink walls,.
“There’s security, there’s independence, there’s peace,” he said of his new country.
But even as he has begun looking for work, with the help of a few Senegalese immigrants he knows from Dakar, Mr. Mbaye is largely avoiding the mainstream Senegalese community, fearing that the same prejudices that drove him out of Africa may dog him here.
One recent evening, while visiting close family friends from Dakar who live in Harlem, he recalled a shopping trip to 116th Street, where many Senegalese work and live. There, he said, he was harassed by a Senegalese man on the sidewalk who ridiculed Mr. Mbaye’s outfit and threatened him.
“He said, ‘If you were in Senegal, I would kill you,’ ” Mr. Mbaye said, gesturing enthusiastically with his arms, his voice rising. “I have my freedom now, and that man wanted to take it.”
The United States does not track how often it grants refuge to people fleeing anti-gay persecution. But Christopher Nugent, an immigration lawyer with Holland & Knight, a Washington law firm where he is a senior pro bono counsel specializing in refugee and asylum cases, said that in the past decade he has only heard of a handful.
The government also does not track the number of persecuted gay men and lesbians who are granted asylum, but experts in the field say the number is higher than those granted refugee status. (Asylum is granted to people already in the United States, while people outside the country must seek refugee status.)
Mr. Mbaye’s case was exceptional because his fame made his situation particularly perilous, said Mr. Nugent, who represented Mr. Mbaye in his petition. “He was vilified in the Senegalese media as being the face of the sinful homosexual, and he had scars to show,” he said.
For the past few years, anti-gay hysteria has been sweeping across swaths of Africa, fueled by sensationalist media reports of open homosexuality among public figures and sustained by deep and abiding taboos that have made even the most hateful speech about gays not just acceptable but almost required. Gay men and women have recently been arrested in Cameroon, Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana, among other countries.
“In most countries there is poverty and instability, and usually homosexuality is used as a way of shifting the attention from the actual problem to this thing that is not really the problem but can distract the public,” said Joel Nana, who is from Cameroon and who works for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
Pape Mbaye (pronounced POP mm-BYE) had been living the Senegalese version of the high life for some time. He had worked principally as a griot, a singer and storyteller invited to weddings, birthday parties and other events to perform traditional songs, dance and tell stories.
By West African standards, it earned him a good living. He had performed at parties for wealthy and famous Senegalese, had two cars and a driver, an overflowing wardrobe and an apartment in a fashionable neighborhood decked out with rococo gold-leaf-encrusted furniture.
Mr. Mbaye, who said he had known he was gay from a young age, never made much of an effort to hide his sexuality, often wearing makeup and jewelry in public.
Though Senegal passed an anti-sodomy law in 1965 that forbids “an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex,” homosexuality has traditionally been quietly tolerated in Senegal, particularly among the creative class of musicians and artists that is so central to Senegalese culture.
But the publication of the gay wedding photos on Feb. 1 dovetailed with a recent surge in anti-gay sentiment, a trend partly fueled by some conservative Islamic leaders, launching Mr. Mbaye on his harrowing odyssey.
On the morning after the article’s publication, Mr. Mbaye and several gay friends were arrested by the police, who held them for four days. During his detention, Mr. Mbaye said, he was questioned about his participation in the marriage ceremony, which he asserted was a party, not a wedding. Under diplomatic pressure from the Netherlands and Denmark, the Senegalese authorities released Mr. Mbaye and his friends.
The singer said police officials told him and his friends that they should go into hiding. “The police cannot guarantee your security because the entire society will be out to get you,” a police official said, according to testimony that Mr. Mbaye would later give to Human Rights Watch.
While he was in detention, his apartment was looted and anti-gay graffiti was scrawled on the wall of the building, he said. He and several gay friends fled to Ziguinchor in south Senegal, but in mid-February, a mob wielding broken bottles, forks and other weapons stormed the house and beat them, Mr. Mbaye said.
Mr. Mbaye spent the next several weeks moving from one safe house to another before fleeing to Gambia on May 11. Several days later, President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia vowed to behead all homosexuals in his country. Mr. Mbaye immediately returned to Dakar.
But he was discovered and chased by a crowd, as local newspapers and radio stations reported his return. He sought sanctuary at the offices of Raddho, a human rights organization based in Dakar, which put him in the care of Human Rights Watch.
“I am like a hunted animal,” Mr. Mbaye said during an interview while he hid out in a Dakar hotel.
Human Rights Watch helped Mr. Mbaye assemble his refugee application and get to Ghana, where he sought help from the American Embassy in Accra, the country’s capital.
While in Ghana, Mr. Mbaye said, he was attacked again, this time by knife-wielding Senegalese expatriates who had discovered he was there. The assault, which left him with wounds, likely accelerated the review process for his application, Mr. Nugent said. (Confidentiality regulations forbid United States immigration officials from discussing the case.)
Mr. Mbaye received his refugee status on July 31, and he arrived at Kennedy Airport on Aug. 18 carrying several suitcases and a Chanel handbag. A few weeks later, he received his Social Security card and work authorization permit. He hopes to resume his entertainment career, though he acknowledges that until he improves his English, he will have to perform in French and Wolof, an African language. He also dreams of getting a modeling contract.
In the meantime, he said, he will do just about anything.
“I would like a job in a restaurant or a hotel or a club or in perfume or in makeup,” he said. “But no bricklaying.”
Mr. Nugent has been posting notices on Internet mailing lists serving the gay community in search of sponsors to help Mr. Mbaye find work, including in gay nightclubs.
Mr. Mbaye seems undaunted by the challenges facing him. At his friends’ home in Harlem, he celebrated his newfound freedom.
“I want to live with the gays!” he said as his hosts laughed. “Pape Mbaye is American!”
Mr. Semple reported from New York and Ms. Polgreen from Dakar, Senegal.
Persecuted in Senegal, Finding Refuge in New York
By KIRK SEMPLE and LYDIA POLGREEN
Pape Mbaye gets a lot of attention. Even in jaded New York, people watch the way he walks (his style defines the word sashay) and scrutinize his outfits, which on a recent afternoon featured white, low-slung capris, a black purse, eyeliner and diamond-studded jewelry.
And he likes it.
“I’m fabulous,” he said. “I feel good.”
Mr. Mbaye, 24, is an entertainer from Dakar, Senegal, known there for his dancing, singing and storytelling. But while his flamboyance may be celebrated in New York, he attracted the wrong kind of attention in West Africa this year, nearly costing him his life.
In February, a Senegalese magazine published photographs of what was reported to be an underground gay marriage and said that Mr. Mbaye, who appeared in the photos and is gay himself, had organized the event. In the ensuing six months, Mr. Mbaye said, he was harassed by the police, attacked by armed mobs, driven from his home, maligned in the national media and forced to live on the run across West Africa.
In July, the United States government gave him refugee status, one of the rare instances when such protection has been granted to a foreigner facing persecution based on sexual orientation. A month later, Mr. Mbaye arrived in New York, eventually moving into a small furnished room in the Bronx that rents for $150 per week. It has a bed, air-conditioner, television, cat and pink walls,.
“There’s security, there’s independence, there’s peace,” he said of his new country.
But even as he has begun looking for work, with the help of a few Senegalese immigrants he knows from Dakar, Mr. Mbaye is largely avoiding the mainstream Senegalese community, fearing that the same prejudices that drove him out of Africa may dog him here.
One recent evening, while visiting close family friends from Dakar who live in Harlem, he recalled a shopping trip to 116th Street, where many Senegalese work and live. There, he said, he was harassed by a Senegalese man on the sidewalk who ridiculed Mr. Mbaye’s outfit and threatened him.
“He said, ‘If you were in Senegal, I would kill you,’ ” Mr. Mbaye said, gesturing enthusiastically with his arms, his voice rising. “I have my freedom now, and that man wanted to take it.”
The United States does not track how often it grants refuge to people fleeing anti-gay persecution. But Christopher Nugent, an immigration lawyer with Holland & Knight, a Washington law firm where he is a senior pro bono counsel specializing in refugee and asylum cases, said that in the past decade he has only heard of a handful.
The government also does not track the number of persecuted gay men and lesbians who are granted asylum, but experts in the field say the number is higher than those granted refugee status. (Asylum is granted to people already in the United States, while people outside the country must seek refugee status.)
Mr. Mbaye’s case was exceptional because his fame made his situation particularly perilous, said Mr. Nugent, who represented Mr. Mbaye in his petition. “He was vilified in the Senegalese media as being the face of the sinful homosexual, and he had scars to show,” he said.
For the past few years, anti-gay hysteria has been sweeping across swaths of Africa, fueled by sensationalist media reports of open homosexuality among public figures and sustained by deep and abiding taboos that have made even the most hateful speech about gays not just acceptable but almost required. Gay men and women have recently been arrested in Cameroon, Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana, among other countries.
“In most countries there is poverty and instability, and usually homosexuality is used as a way of shifting the attention from the actual problem to this thing that is not really the problem but can distract the public,” said Joel Nana, who is from Cameroon and who works for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
Pape Mbaye (pronounced POP mm-BYE) had been living the Senegalese version of the high life for some time. He had worked principally as a griot, a singer and storyteller invited to weddings, birthday parties and other events to perform traditional songs, dance and tell stories.
By West African standards, it earned him a good living. He had performed at parties for wealthy and famous Senegalese, had two cars and a driver, an overflowing wardrobe and an apartment in a fashionable neighborhood decked out with rococo gold-leaf-encrusted furniture.
Mr. Mbaye, who said he had known he was gay from a young age, never made much of an effort to hide his sexuality, often wearing makeup and jewelry in public.
Though Senegal passed an anti-sodomy law in 1965 that forbids “an improper or unnatural act with a person of the same sex,” homosexuality has traditionally been quietly tolerated in Senegal, particularly among the creative class of musicians and artists that is so central to Senegalese culture.
But the publication of the gay wedding photos on Feb. 1 dovetailed with a recent surge in anti-gay sentiment, a trend partly fueled by some conservative Islamic leaders, launching Mr. Mbaye on his harrowing odyssey.
On the morning after the article’s publication, Mr. Mbaye and several gay friends were arrested by the police, who held them for four days. During his detention, Mr. Mbaye said, he was questioned about his participation in the marriage ceremony, which he asserted was a party, not a wedding. Under diplomatic pressure from the Netherlands and Denmark, the Senegalese authorities released Mr. Mbaye and his friends.
The singer said police officials told him and his friends that they should go into hiding. “The police cannot guarantee your security because the entire society will be out to get you,” a police official said, according to testimony that Mr. Mbaye would later give to Human Rights Watch.
While he was in detention, his apartment was looted and anti-gay graffiti was scrawled on the wall of the building, he said. He and several gay friends fled to Ziguinchor in south Senegal, but in mid-February, a mob wielding broken bottles, forks and other weapons stormed the house and beat them, Mr. Mbaye said.
Mr. Mbaye spent the next several weeks moving from one safe house to another before fleeing to Gambia on May 11. Several days later, President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia vowed to behead all homosexuals in his country. Mr. Mbaye immediately returned to Dakar.
But he was discovered and chased by a crowd, as local newspapers and radio stations reported his return. He sought sanctuary at the offices of Raddho, a human rights organization based in Dakar, which put him in the care of Human Rights Watch.
“I am like a hunted animal,” Mr. Mbaye said during an interview while he hid out in a Dakar hotel.
Human Rights Watch helped Mr. Mbaye assemble his refugee application and get to Ghana, where he sought help from the American Embassy in Accra, the country’s capital.
While in Ghana, Mr. Mbaye said, he was attacked again, this time by knife-wielding Senegalese expatriates who had discovered he was there. The assault, which left him with wounds, likely accelerated the review process for his application, Mr. Nugent said. (Confidentiality regulations forbid United States immigration officials from discussing the case.)
Mr. Mbaye received his refugee status on July 31, and he arrived at Kennedy Airport on Aug. 18 carrying several suitcases and a Chanel handbag. A few weeks later, he received his Social Security card and work authorization permit. He hopes to resume his entertainment career, though he acknowledges that until he improves his English, he will have to perform in French and Wolof, an African language. He also dreams of getting a modeling contract.
In the meantime, he said, he will do just about anything.
“I would like a job in a restaurant or a hotel or a club or in perfume or in makeup,” he said. “But no bricklaying.”
Mr. Nugent has been posting notices on Internet mailing lists serving the gay community in search of sponsors to help Mr. Mbaye find work, including in gay nightclubs.
Mr. Mbaye seems undaunted by the challenges facing him. At his friends’ home in Harlem, he celebrated his newfound freedom.
“I want to live with the gays!” he said as his hosts laughed. “Pape Mbaye is American!”
Mr. Semple reported from New York and Ms. Polgreen from Dakar, Senegal.
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