Feds oppose public reporting of hospital infections
da faaaaaack? oi!
Category: Domestic Affairs,
FDA Approves Marijuana-Based Pharmaceutical Drug : Shots – Health News
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a marijuana-derived drug for the treatment of two rare and serious forms of epilepsy, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome, that begin in childhood but can persist in adulthood.
The drug is made from purified cannabidiol, or CBD, a compound found in the cannabis plant. The drug will be marketed under the brand name Epidiolex.
CBD has medicinal effects, but it does not cause the mind-altering high that comes from THC, the primary psychoactive component of marijuana.
The FDA says this is the first drug approved in the U.S. that contains a purified substance derived from marijuana. The agency has previously approved drugs made from synthetic versions of THC and other marijuana constituents.
…Several researchers are studying the potential of CBD to treat psychiatric conditions. For instance, a clinical trial is underway to test whether CBD can be an effective treatment for people with post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder. Another clinical trial will determine whether CBD could help prevent relapse in opioid abusers.
The approval of Epidiolex may help open the door to more CBD research, as it helps to lift one regulatory hurdle. Until now, the Drug Enforcement Administration has classified CBD as a Schedule 1 substance. Like other drugs in this category, which include heroin and LSD, these drugs are considered to have no medical use and a high potential for abuse.
But now, with the approval of a CBD drug, the DEA will change this, according to Dr. Douglas Throckmorton, deputy director of regulatory programs at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research,
“The DEA will need to make a different scheduling decision for CBD…because it now has an accepted medical use,” he said during a conference call with reporters.
He said the reclassification is underway now.
FDA Approves Marijuana-Based Pharmaceutical Drug : Shots – Health News : NPR
hmmm
Reason’s Jared Kushner’s Middle East Peace Plan Will Probably Backfire
The assumptions on which he appears to be basing his plan—whatever its precise contents turn out to be—are so flawed that it is fair to wonder if his aim is really to start serious negotiations, or simply to please …Trump’s base by gearing up to blame the Palestinian side for the failure to come.
…More Palestinians now oppose a two-state solution than support one, and a majority—57 percent—say that such a solution is no longer practical because of Israeli settlement expansion, which now extends deep into the West Bank. Over 35 percent of Palestinians now support a one-state solution—in other words, a single country with an Arab majority and equal rights for all—a solution increasingly appealing to Palestinians under the age of 30.
…But while it is already clear that Trump is a terrible dealmaker who has yet to conclude any significant international agreement (the unilateral concessions to North Korea in exchange for a vague pledge to “work towards” denuclearization do not qualify), Middle East peace may be the issue on which he is least well-placed to succeed. While all U.S. administrations have always been closer to Israel than to the Palestinians, they all at least tried to play the role of honest broker in the name of finding some workable compromise, and were seen as necessary partners in the eyes of Palestinians.
But Trump has abandoned even the veneer of objectivity. Just last month, he unilaterally gave Israel one of its most coveted prizes in negotiations, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, without getting anything in return. To make it worse, he then celebrated the unilateral move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem—a move opposed by 128 countries at the United Nations—with a big ceremony organized just one day before Palestinians observe the nakba, the catastrophe of their expulsion in 1948. The embassy ceremony was attended by dozens of Republican-only members of Congress and included speeches by evangelical pastors known primarily for bigoted remarks against Mormons, Jews, and Muslims, suggesting the whole thing was more about domestic politics than Middle East peace.
While dozens of Palestinians in Gaza were killed in clashes with the Israeli Defense Forces, the Trump administration chose neither to express sympathy for the Palestinians killed nor to join international calls for Israeli restraint. Trump has, on the other hand, cut financial assistance for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) out of pique that the Palestinians have not given him the requisite “appreciation or respect,” as if humanitarian aid, even when it serves U.S. national interests, should be awarded in return for flattery. His administration has offered unconstrained support for settlements, with an ambassador who has fought against use of the word “occupation” and refers to “Judea and Samaria,” as favored by Israeli settlers, instead of traditional U.S. references to the West Bank.
…There is no doubt Kushner heard positive words from Arab friends in private meetings on his just-finished four-day trip to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar, before going to Israel. But he should not hold his breath waiting for those leaders to publicly embrace positions on peace that the Palestinians—and the vast majority of their populations—reject.
…Putting aside that the Trump administration has not even made or been able to attract major investments in U.S. infrastructure, which makes one wonder about the West Bank and Gaza, this emphasis on economic issues has been tried unsuccessfully many times before. …The key issues remain borders and sovereignty; security; settlements and occupation; refugees; and Jerusalem.
…With Netanyahu and his wife the subject of several serious corruption inquiries, the prime minister likely sees his only hope as to keeping that hardline cabinet together to stave off or delay potential indictments. It is far from clear that the Israeli people themselves are prepared to make the major compromises required for peace, including the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of settlers from the West Bank. But it is quite clear that the current Israeli government is not ready to do so.
…Another reason to proceed would be to blame the Palestinians, rather than the difficult context and Trump’s mistakes, for failure to make “the ultimate deal.” If past is prologue, we can expect the Israeli side to say “yes, but” (while meaning “no way”) and that the Palestinians will fall into the trap of rejecting a U.S. plan or not engaging at all. This would please parts of Trump’s base and may get the administration off the hook for trying, but it would only further divide the Israelis and Palestinians, while exacerbating partisan divides on Israel in the United States as well.
…The lopsided UN vote against Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem shows that it is the United States, and not the Palestinians, who are isolated. In fact, the cancellation of a recent soccer match between Israel and Argentina in part because Netanyahu’s government insisted on the political symbolism of holding it in Jerusalem may signal an acceleration in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Jared Kushner’s Middle East Peace Plan Could Backfire – The Atlantic
hmmm
De Blasio: Feds have ‘no game plan’ for reuniting 300 immigrant kids in NYC with parents
Because the federal department of Health and Human Services has refused to provide information about how many children have been brought to New York, the city has resorted to reaching out to each provider with a contract with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. In the city, that’s Cayuga Centers, Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Guardian Services. Across the three, there are about 300 children here as a result of the policy, de Blasio said.
Most are at Cayuga — where a worker laid out the challenges involved with reaching their parents last week.
“She said some kids are old enough that they know the names of their relatives and they know the phone numbers. She said some kids have a scrap of paper in their pocket with a phone number for their mother or their grandmother, where they can reach them. She said younger kids a lot of time don’t have that, or they had the scrap of paper and they lost it,” de Blasio said.
…That the federal government has refused to provide information about the children to the city and the state is unprecedented, de Blasio said.
“People should see this as a very dangerous precedent where even senators and congress members can’t go into the centers in Texas and the federal government is refusing to give us a straight answer about how many kids are involved,” de Blasio said.
Aghhhhhhhhhhhh
Jared Kushner’s immigrant grandmother complained of America’s ‘closed doors’
Jared Kushner’s paternal grandparents, Holocaust survivors Joseph and Rae Kushner, came to the United States in 1949 as impoverished Eastern European refugees.
…In a 1982 interview given to a Holocaust research center, Jared’s grandmother talks about how wrong she felt it was for the United States to let people like her and her husband languish in those camps for years awaiting permission to enter the country.
…”This was our honeymoon. In Italy, we sat in a displaced persons camp. It was like being in the ghetto again. . . . Nobody wanted to take us in. So for three and a half years, we waited until we finally got a visa to come to the United States.”
Later on, she says: “For the Jews, the doors were closed. We never understood that. Even President [Franklin] Roosevelt kept the doors closed. Why?”
The answer, of course, can be found by looking at some less-than-inspiring U.S. history. The Immigration Act of 1924 set stringent limits on the number of people the country would admit from Poland (where Joseph and Rae Kushner were from) and other Eastern European countries.
Roosevelt didn’t seek to make exceptions to those rules — perhaps because, in addition to the immigration quotas, there was a nasty outfit called the America First Committee. Its prominent members included the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and its supporters included Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semite who gained huge popularity as “the Radio Priest from Royal Oak, Michigan.”
The committee tried to keep the United States out of World War II and blamed American Jews for supposedly pushing Roosevelt to have our country enter the hostilities.
Jared Kushner’s immigrant grandmother complained of America’s ‘closed doors’ | NJ.com
hmmmm
Migrants reportedly told they could reunite with children if they agree to deportation.
Detained migrants who have been split up from their children are reportedly being told they will be able to get their kids back if they agree to be deported. The Texas Tribune cites a 24-year-old Honduran man who is being detained in Texas and claims to have abandoned his asylum case out of “desperation” to see his six-year-old daughter. Two immigration attorneys also confirmed that they had heard about similar offers to other detained migrants.
…. In a fact sheet released Saturday night, the Department of Homeland Security says parents can request whether they want their children to be deported with them. In the past many have chosen to be deported without their children.
Even with a process supposedly in place, the Department of Homeland Security statement doesn’t detail how long it will take to reunite the 2,053 children currently in the government’s custody with their families.
…For now, the Port Isabel detention center in Texas has been set up as “the primary family reunification and removal center,” the statement said. For many, reunification likely won’t be simple to coordinate considering dozens were “being funneled from Texas shelters to foster homes across the country, including in South Carolina and Michigan,” according to the Houston Chronicle. It is also unclear how reunification would happen for migrants claiming asylum protections.
Migrants reportedly told they could reunite with children if they agree to deportation.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Black Firefighter Questioned, Videotaped and Reported to Police While Conducting Official Inspections
What the hell is up with all the Bay Area Beckys calling the cops on people for existing while black???!
NOAA’s Research Just Shifted from Climate Change to “Empowering the Economy” and “National Security” –
One of the country’s major federal science agencies seems to have been forced to abandon climate change research as a key organizational focus, the New York Times revealed this week. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization is responsible for managing the National Weather Service and using its network of satellites to forecast the effects of climate change. Rather than concentrate on resiliency efforts, NOAA is now charged with prioritizing “a safe, secure and growing economy.”
…The presentation also included a new emphasis: “To protect lives and property, empower the economy, and support homeland and national security.”
NOAA, whose mandate includes forecasting for hurricanes and cyclical storms like El Niño, had remained relatively immune so far from the influence of climate change skeptics within the Trump administration. Just last month, NOAA researchers recorded the highest-ever levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a historic result that an agency scientist called “a whole lot of bad news.”
….Previous government interventions into NOAA affairs suggest the White House would be unlikely not to intervene with an agency under its watch that continues to publicly discuss the potentially devastating effects of climate change.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Here’s how hard it is to trace a migrant kid who has been separated from his mom
An unknown number of parents have already been deported without their children. Wherever they are living or being held, it can be difficult for parents and families to connect with a caseworker on the federal hotline set up to reunify families. Parents will have to work with consulates and family members back home to produce identification documents that can prove they are the parents of a child.
…El Paso County Commissioner Vince Perez, whose precinct includes Tornillo, the so-called tent city where more than 300 children are being held, has been sharply critical of the use of the jail to hold immigrant detainees. “Depriving refugees of their children as a matter of policy is vile and we should not condone or facilitate this practice,” Perez said.
Taylor Levy, legal coordinator for Annunciation House, said staff would try as hard as they could to help the parents find their children.
“We know that’s going to be the first question that all these parents are going to have,” Levy said. “They’re all really worried about their children.”
Here’s how hard it is to trace a migrant kid who has been separated from his mom
sigh…
How Comey intervened to kill WikiLeaks’ immunity deal
“Subject to adequate and binding protections, including but not limited to an acceptable immunity and safe passage agreement, Mr. Assange welcomes the opportunity to discuss with the U.S. government risk mitigation approaches relating to CIA documents in WikiLeaks’ possession or control, such as the redaction of agency personnel in hostile jurisdictions and foreign espionage risks to WikiLeaks staff,” Waldman wrote Laufman on March 28, 2017.
Not included in the written proffer was an additional offer from Assange: He was willing to discuss technical evidence ruling out certain parties in the controversial leak of Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. The U.S. government believes those emails were hacked by Russia; Assange insists they did not come from Moscow.
“Mr. Assange offered to provide technical evidence and discussion regarding who did not engage in the DNC releases,” Waldman told me. “Finally, he offered his technical expertise to the U.S. government to help address what he perceived as clear flaws in security systems that led to the loss of the U.S. cyber weapons program.”
…Waldman couldn’t believe a U.S. senator and the FBI chief were sending a different signal, so he went back to Laufman, who assured him the negotiations were still on. “What Laufman said to me after he heard I was told to ‘stand down’ by Warner and Comey was, ‘That’s bullshit. You are not standing down and neither am I,’” Waldman recalled.
…Multiple sources tell me the FBI’s counterintelligence team was aware and engaged in the Justice Department’s strategy but could not explain what motivated Comey to send a different message around the negotiations through Warner. A lawyer for Comey did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
…Soon, the rare opportunity to engage Assange in a dialogue over redactions, a more responsible way to release information, and how the infamous DNC hacks occurred was lost — likely forever.
How Comey intervened to kill WikiLeaks’ immunity deal | TheHill
More Comey interference in things related to the outcome of the 2016 election. Huh.
White House reasserts zero tolerance policy as Border Patrol suspends it
“We’re not prosecuting those parents,” McAleenan said. He cited as the reason President Donald Trump’s executive order last week requiring parents to be detained with their children, after an earlier policy of separating parents and children prompted a national uproar.
McAleenan said the suspension was temporary, but he didn’t say when prosecutions would resume.
Several DHS officials have said privately that the president’s order made it impossible to continue zero tolerance, but McAleenan was the first to say so publicly.
…But the Justice Department can’t prosecute parents who cross the southern border with children if Border Patrol doesn’t refer them for prosecution.
Border Patrol’s suspension of those referrals reinstates what Trump has publicly criticized as a “catch and release“ policy for migrant families.
Trump’s executive order barring the separation of parents and children rendered the zero-tolerance policy unenforceable almost immediately because there wasn’t sufficient detention space to house the thousands of family members who arrive at the border each month.
…The decision to suspend zero tolerance may ease a growing housing crunch for unaccompanied minors.
Under the policy, adults were referred for federal prosecution under illegal entry and re-entry statutes. Children traveling with them were then placed in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The separated children flooded the shelter system, which held nearly 12,000 children last week.
To create additional shelter capacity, the administration opened a “tent city” earlier this month near a port of entry in Tornillo, Texas.
But the contract for that facility will end July 13, an HHS spokesperson told a local ABC affiliate. The federal government has not made a decision on whether to extend the contract, according to an ACF spokesman.
White House reasserts zero tolerance policy as Border Patrol suspends it – POLITICO
hmmm
Donald Trump Calls for Deporting Immigrants Without Judges | Time
The Supreme Court has long held that even non-citizens have the right to due process, the constitutional rule that every person should get a fair hearing in court before facing any punishment.
…In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled on the very issue Trump was describing. In a 1953 case, Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, the Supreme Court found in an 8-1 decision that a permanent resident of the United States could not be deported without a hearing under the constitutional right to due process.
“Although Congress may prescribe conditions for his expulsion and deportation, not even Congress may expel him without allowing him a fair opportunity to be heard,” the court wrote.
…Trump has also complained about proposals to add more federal immigration judges. A bill from a group of Senate Republicans including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would add another 225, while a proposal from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz would add 375, but in both cases the total number of judges would still be in the hundreds, not, as Trump has said, in the thousands.
Donald Trump Calls for Deporting Immigrants Without Judges | Time
hmmm
Illegal Immigrant Families: Prosecution Suspended at Border
U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan has temporarily stopped referring for prosecution adults who attempt to cross the border illegally with children, he told reporters Monday.
…McAleenan’s admission comes as Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in Reno, Nev. that federal prosecution of adults who cross the border illegally would continue despite Trump’s executive order. Those prosecutions cannot occur without referrals from CBP agents.
Trump’s executive order, which prohibits the separation of children from parents awaiting prosecution for crossing the border illegally, reportedly sparked widespread confusion among Department of Homeland Security officials about how exactly to enforce it. The officials were not told about the order in advance and were unsure how to proceed with criminal prosecutions without separating families because of a 1997 consent decree which established that minors cannot be held in federal custody for longer than 20 days. In addition to the legal obstacle preventing prolonged detention of children, there are not enough shelters equipped to house families, exacerbating confusion about how exactly to comply with the order.
Illegal Immigrant Families: Prosecution Suspended at Border | National Review
hmmmm
Commander of Texas tent city blasts “dumb, stupid” zero tolerance immigration policy
The commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Monday the agency has stopped referring immigrant parents for criminal prosecution until federal agencies can agree on a plan to keep parents and children together. More than 500 children have been reunited with their families since the president ordered agencies to stop separating them, but more than 2,300 remain separated.
CBS News met five migrant parents. …The group was released from detention on Sunday after criminal charges were dismissed — the most recent evidence of the U.S. CBP’s policy not to turn over people who cross illegally for prosecution.
…During the tour, the commander in charge said the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy was “a dumb, stupid decision” and one that “should never have happened.”
“We are working as fast as we possibly can to reunify children with sponsors here in the U.S.,” said Mark Weber, with the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the facility.
Commander of Texas tent city blasts “dumb, stupid” zero tolerance immigration policy – CBS News
hmmmm
How The Loss Of U.S. Psychiatric Hospitals Contributes To A Mental Health Crisis
A severe shortage of inpatient care for people with mental illness is amounting to a public health crisis, as the number of individuals struggling with a range of psychiatric problems continues to rise.
…A study published in the journal Psychiatric Services estimates 3.4 percent of Americans — more than 8 million people — suffer from serious psychological problems.
The disappearance of long-term-care facilities and psychiatric beds has escalated over the past decade.
…A 2012 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit organization that works to remove treatment barriers for people with mental illness, found the number of psychiatric beds decreased by 14 percent from 2005 to 2010. That year, there were 50,509 state psychiatric beds, meaning there were only 14 beds available per 100,000 people.
…”Many times individuals who really do require intensive psychiatric care find themselves homeless or more and more in prison,” Sisti says. “Much of our mental health care now for individuals with serious mental illness has been shifted to correctional facilities.”
…Many of the private mental health hospitals still in operation do not accept insurance and can cost upwards of $30,000 per month, Sisti says. For many low-income patients, Medicaid is the only path to mental health care, but a provision in the law prevents the federal government from paying for long-term care in an institution.
As a result, many people who experience a serious mental health crisis end up in the emergency room. According to data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, between 2001 and 2011, 6 percent of all emergency department patients had a psychiatric condition. Nearly 11 percent of those patients require transfer to another facility, but there are often no beds available.
…Most hospitals are unable to take care of people for more than 72 hours, Sisti explains, so patients are sent back out into the world without adequate access to treatment.
How The Loss Of U.S. Psychiatric Hospitals Led To A Mental Health Crisis : NPR
hmmmm
Philly’s new top prosecutor is rolling out wild, unprecedented criminal justice reforms.
In the church, queries and complaints from constituents that might have made his predecessors cringe were softballs for Krasner: a loved one has been wrongfully incarcerated? Send the case to the revamped Conviction Review Unit, a sort of in-house innocence project. How can lying officers be kept off the stand? He has staff working to verify and expand a formerly secret “do not call” list of 29 suspect officers. Late in the meeting, one elderly woman asked a question that cuts to the core of concerns for those who doubt Krasner’s reforms: What would he do about the drug dealers and users on her street that make her feel unsafe? He didn’t miss a beat: “The past solution was to lock [corner drug dealers] all up and that didn’t work. We have to go after root cause,” he says. This came after an extended riff promising “to go after doctors, and pharmaceutical corporations” for their role in the nation’s opioid crisis. Notably, his office had already initiated legal proceedings against some of those pharmaceutical companies.
…Krasner issued a memo to his staff making official a wave of new policies he had announced his attorneys last month. The memo starts: “These policies are an effort to end mass incarceration and bring balance back to sentencing.”
Over 90 percent of criminal cases nationwide are decided in plea bargains. …In an about-face from how these transactions typically work, Krasner’s 300 lawyers are to start many plea offers at the low end of sentencing guidelines. For most nonviolent and nonsexual crimes, or economic crimes below a $50,000 threshold, Krasner’s lawyers are now to offer defendants sentences below the bottom end of the state’s guidelines. So, for example, if a person with no prior convictions is accused of breaking into a store at night and emptying the cash register, he would normally face up to 14 months in jail. Under Krasner’s paradigm, he’ll be offered probation. If prosecutors want to use their discretion to deviate from these guidelines, say if a person has a particularly troubling rap sheet, Krasner must personally sign off.
…Krasner’s lawyers are also now to decline charges for marijuana possession, no matter the weight, effectively decriminalizing possession of the drug in the city for all nonfederal cases. Sex workers will not be charged with prostitution unless they have more than two priors, in which case they’ll be diverted to a specialized court. Retail theft under $500 is no longer a misdemeanor in the eyes of Philly prosecutors, but a summary offense—the lowest possible criminal charge.
…When a person does break the rules of probation, minor infractions such as missing a PO meeting are not to be punished with jail time or probation revocation, and more serious infractions are to be disciplined with no more than two years in jail.
In a move that may have less impact on the lives of defendants, but is very on-brand for Kranser, prosecutors must now calculate the amount of money a sentence would cost before recommending it to a judge, and argue why the cost is justified. He estimates that it costs $115 a day, or $42,000 a year, to incarcerate one person. So, if a prosecutor seeks a three-year sentence, she must state, on the record, that it would cost taxpayers $126,000 and explain why she thinks this cost is justified. Krasner reminds his attorneys that the cost of one year of unnecessary incarceration “is in the range of the cost of one year’s salary for a beginning teacher, police officer, fire fighter, social worker, Assistant District Attorney, or addiction counselor.”
…Krasner’s election was consistent with Philadelphia’s recent mood around criminal justice. Two years ago, the city elected Mayor Jim Kenney, who Philadelphia Magazine labeled “Mr. Criminal Justice Reform.” Under his leadership and with the help of a multimillion-dollar grant from the MacArthur Foundation, the city has brought the jail population down by 26 percent since July 2015.
Philly’s new top prosecutor is rolling out wild, unprecedented criminal justice reforms.
Wild.
Theories on why American passenger trains are so bad
The way Amtrak is currently set up, there’s no real incentive to undertake incremental improvements. The Northeast Corridor already generates an operating profit, which simply defrays losses elsewhere in the system. Making it run better doesn’t generate any wins for the people who would have to do the work, and would plausibly just lead Congress to reduce subsidies.
…America’s railroads ship a dramatically larger share of total goods than their European peers. And this is no coincidence. Outside of the Northeast Corridor, the railroad infrastructure is generally owned by freight companies — Amtrak is just piggybacking on the spare capacity.
That means the technology isn’t optimized for passenger rail needs. But it also means passenger train scheduling needs to take a back seat to freight priorities.
The real reason American passenger trains are so bad – Vox
hmmm
Patient Demands Treatment And Release From NH Prison Since He Didn’t Commit Crime
Patient Andrew Butler, 21, who was a well-known athlete as a Hollis Brookline High School student, argued through his attorney that he is locked up in a maximum-security prison because of mental illness even though he hasn’t committed a crime.
…“He is held as a mental health patient without being in an accredited hospital, denied contact visits with his father, denied contact visits with his attorney, forced to wear prison clothing,” wrote his attorney Sandra Bloomenthal. “He is locked down 23 hours a day. He has been tasered. The treatment he has received is cruel and unusual punishment without having been convicted of a crime and with no pending criminal process.”
…[Butler’s father] believes his son may have reacted badly to illegal drug experimentation on a trip to Vermont in late August of last year.
…The problem, he believes, was compounded by the psychotropic drugs Andrew was prescribed.
…[Andrew Butler] was civilly committed to the New Hampshire Hospital, the state’s psychiatric hospital, in the fall of 2017, then involuntarily transferred to the Secure Psychiatric Unit at the men’s prison, according to his father, Douglas Butler.
…The state labels his son as psychotic and schizophrenic, [Douglas Butler] said, diagnoses that he doesn’t believe and is unable to get a second opinion or consider alternative treatments because he is no longer Andrew’s guardian.
…Andrew Butler is being denied his “right to due process of law by the State holding him indefinitely in a maximum-security prison,” attorney Bloomenthal wrote. “He is not being treated by an accredited hospital for his mental illness and in fact his treatment is harmful and cruel and violates the Americans with Disability Act.”
Patient Demands Treatment And Release From NH Prison Since He Didn’t Commit Crime | InDepthNH.org
hmmmm
Trump administration’s ‘secret shutdown’ of immigration program discriminated against Latinos: Lawsuit – ABC News
In 2014, more than 50,000 minors reached the southern U.S. border seeking asylum from the violence wracking three Central American countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The largest wave yet of child migrants, it forced the Obama administration to take a multi-pronged approach: sending millions more in aid to the three countries; detaining families who had crossed the border illegally, until a court ordered them to stop [emphasis: mine] two years later; and creating a path for children to come here legally.
That path became the Central American Minors, or CAM, program, which allowed parents lawfully present in the U.S. to apply for refugee resettlement or a temporary status called parole for their children and other eligible family members — the child’s other parent or caregiver or the child’s own child, the parent’s grandchild.
…Families had to prove their relations through a DNA test, applicants had to be interviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, and applicants had to meet the definition of a refugee — someone outside the U.S. who is fleeing persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
If a CAM applicant did not qualify for refugee resettlement, they were automatically considered for parole status and informed of whether or not they were granted it when they got their refugee decision.
Parole allows non-U.S. citizens to enter the country for a period of time on humanitarian grounds, although it does not automatically provide a path to legal status. Similar programs were created in the past for Vietnamese fleeing in the 1980’s, Filipino World War II veterans, and certain eastern Europeans after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
CAM parole applicants had to prove they were not at risk of harm, had cleared background vetting, and had someone to financially support them. Once they were granted approval, there were a series of final checks to clear: a medical exam and paying the U.S. or its contractor to arrange flights. They’d then be given a travel date and instructions to meet an official at the airport and receive their paperwork and plane ticket.
…The Central American Minors program, which reunited children and other eligible family members with parents legally residing in the U.S., was one of Trump’s early targets as he sought to crack down on legal immigration. Designed during the Obama administration to avoid the scenes at the U.S.-Mexican border that have gripped the nation this week, its termination is now being blamed by some for worsening the migrant crisis and possibly sending more children north.
…They were told by authorities they would be given final documentation and a plane ticket to travel in two weeks time — but months went by, and nothing ever came.
Without notifying them, …Trump’s administration had already frozen the program just days into his term, even as it solicited and collected thousands of dollars from S.A. and others like her who had been granted conditional approval, according to a new lawsuit that argues the administration broke the law and was driven by “racial animus against Latinos.”
…The administration’s “unprecedented, unexplained, and unsupported secret shutdown” of the program is also under fire for how it was carried out, with little to nothing communicated to recipients months after the decision was seemingly made and no real explanation ever given.
Sigh…
In rural America, tightened access to Medicaid means tough choices
Life expectancy in much of Appalachia, where poverty has kept a tight hold for generations, is lower than in Bangladesh or Vietnam, said Carolyn Miles, president and chief executive officer of Save the Children. “That’s a really shocking statistic,” she added.
…In 2016, 14.1 million children grew up in poverty nationwide. But that proportion is higher in rural areas, where 24 percent of kids live in poverty, compared to 19 percent of those in urban areas, according to a new report on rural poverty from Save the Children. That gap widened after the Great Recession, according to Census Bureau data, and remains most persistent for single-parent homes, children with disabilities and African-American children. In the latest report, Tennessee ranks 40th nationwide for states where childhood is most under threat. Nearly 1.5 million Tennessee children were enrolled in Medicaid in 2017. In Perry County, there were 2,078 children enrolled. Britton’s two sons were among them.
…After the Great Recession hit, Perry County, Tennessee, reported an unemployment rate of 29.8 percent, among the nation’s highest. People left if they were able or found jobs in Nashville or as far as Memphis — more than 140 miles away. Today, the jobless rate is much lower, at 4.2 percent, but 22 percent of the county’s nearly 8,000 residents live in poverty, according to the Census. Britton said the community needs more jobs that pay better so families like hers can thrive.
..Having health care coverage is one victory, but actually getting care is another story. The county has no pediatrician, so Britton either takes her sons to a nurse practitioner at a local walk-in clinic or drives 60 miles — twice the distance the federal government defines as reasonable access to care — to see a doctor. She forgoes her own health care “unless I feel like I’m dying.”
Tennessee legislators voted to set up work requirements for Medicaid recipients, joining a number of states, including Kentucky, Indiana and Arkansas, that have passed similar laws in recent months. …It is the latest in a series of moves nationwide to tighten access to Medicaid.
…In January, the Tennessee Justice Center estimated that more than 480,000 Tennesseans could lose Medicaid coverage under the state’s then-proposed work requirement. Bureaucratic red tape — not ineligibility — could pose an obstacle to access. And nationwide, 60 percent of 24.6 million current adult Medicaid recipients work at least part-time, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
…Health care advocates say work requirements will deny health care to people already vulnerable to the slightest shift in their economic equation, meaning they are more likely to neglect chronic conditions, end up in emergency rooms more often and ultimately cost the system more money.
…At his Tuesday ‘campaign’ rally in Nashville, President Donald Trump told the crowd that “wages are going up, and they’re going up fast. The forgotten men and women of our country are no longer forgotten.”
Britton isn’t as optimistic.
In rural America, tightened access to Medicaid means tough choices | PBS NewsHour
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‘He Does Not Understand What the Role of an Ambassador Should Be’
With a tweet (instructing German businesses to “wind down operations immediately” in Iran), an interview (in which he told Breitbart News he hoped to “empower” conservatives across Europe), a meeting (with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen as a breach of protocol for another country’s ambassador to arrange) and an invitation (to host Austria’s young, hard-line anti-immigration chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, whom he referred to as a “rock star,” for lunch), [U.S. Ambassador Richard] Grenell has managed to shock and anger Berlin.
…“None of his predecessors intervened in domestic politics or created controversy in such a way.”
…Martin Schulz, the former chancellor candidate and leader of the center-left Social Democrats, said Grenell sounded more “like a far-right colonial officer” than a diplomat in his Breitbart interview.
…“He does not understand what the role of an ambassador should be,” says Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the center-left Social Democrats in parliament. “An ambassador is a bridge-builder who explains how American politics works, how the American government works, and at the same time explains to America how Germany sees things.” But Grenell, Schmid says, has “defined his role for himself, and it is not the traditional role of an ambassador. … He will work as a propagandist.”
…Still, it’s unclear whether and how this new kind of ambassadorship will continue to clash with German perceptions of the job. “That depends on the future,” says Liebich, the Die Linke MP, asked whether Grenell could reverse the early impression he has made here. “Everyone can make mistakes.” The Foreign Office official put it this way: “He has a great job—if he wants to do it the usual way.”
‘He Does Not Understand What the Role of an Ambassador Should Be’ – POLITICO Magazine
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Flight 3407 families unhappy with Transportation Secretary’s comments
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao discussed a current shortage of pilots, and she feels training requirements are partly to blame.
“There is the 1,500 hour rule, which came about because of a tragic accident in Upstate New York,” Chao said to the moderator, referring to Flight 3407, which crashed in Clarence on Feb. 12, 2009.
…”The 1,500-hour rule has been in place for 30 or 40 years. It’s an FAA rule. We didn’t come up with that number,” Kausner said.
…Kausner and Eckert, along with Rep. Collins say training isn’t to blame for a pilot shortage; Pay and the nature of the job are to blame. Entry level pilots make only about $20,000 a year.
wgrz.com | Flight 3407 families unhappy with Transportation Secretary’s comments
You can trust this administration to do one thing: not get the facts right.
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