Wednesday, April 29, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nigeria-rescues-nearly-300-from-boko-haram-hideout/

Nigerian army says it has rescued nearly 300 from Boko Haram hideout
AP April 28, 2015

LAGOS, Nigeria -- The Nigerian army says that it has rescued 200 girls and 93 women in the Sambisa Forest, but officials say they are not the schoolgirls kidnapped a year ago by Boko Haram extremists from Chibok.

The army announced the rescue on Twitter Tuesday and said it is now screening and profiling the girls and women.

Troops also captured and destroyed three terrorist camps in the forest, known as an operating area for the Boko Haram.

FLASH: Troops this afternoon rescued 200 girls & 93 women from#Sambisa Forest. We cannot confirm if the #ChibokGirls are in this group /1
— DEFENCE HQ NIGERIA (@DefenceInfoNG) April 28, 2015

More than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped from Chibok in northeastern Nigeria by the Islamic extremist group in April 2014. The militants took the schoolgirls in trucks into the Sambisa Forest and the girls have been missing since. The plight of the schoolgirls has garnered international attention and the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.

The Nigerian army announced two weeks ago that it is going into Sambisa Forest, which is a center for the Boko Haram fighters.

Meanwhile, hundreds of skeletons of children, women and men believed killed by Boko Haram have been found in the recaptured Nigerian border town of Damasak, indicating another atrocity by the Islamic extremists, witnesses say.




This is a victory for the Nigerian troops, but the women and girls freed are not the 200 from April last year. Boko Haram has been busy collecting hostages. If only their leadership could be captured and killed. The skeletons of hundreds more of both sexes and all ages has been found in one of the towns the army took. There must be no safe place to live there. Like ISIS, they consider themselves to be living according to their religion. There have been other bloodthirsty groups before, of course, even down into prehistory. Mass graves have been found a number of times. I just wish they wouldn't credit their religion with this carnage.





BALTIMORE ISSUES TODAY


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/28/402836834/criminals-taking-advantage-of-situation-in-baltimore-obama-says

'Criminals' Taking Advantage Of Situation In Baltimore, Obama Says
Krishnadev Calamur
APRIL 28, 2015

Photograph – President Obama is condemning the unrest in Baltimore, saying a handful of "criminals" are taking advantage of the situation following the April 19 death of Freddie Gray.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

President Obama is condemning the unrest in Baltimore, saying that a handful of "criminals" are taking advantage of the situation following the April 19 death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who suffered a serious spine injury while in police custody.

As we have been reporting, hundreds of National Guard troops have been positioned across parts of the city a day after riots left at least 15 police officers wounded and more than a dozen buildings destroyed, damaged or looted. The violence, as NPR's Jackie Northam noted, began after Gray's funeral. His death on April 19 at a hospital led to several days of mostly peaceful protests.

Speaking Tuesday alongside visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama said, "There's no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday."

"When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they're not protesting, they're not making a statement, they're stealing," he said. "When they burn down a building, they're committing arson. And they're destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area."

Obama said he'd spoken to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Monday about the steps they have taken to try to stop what the president called "senseless violence and destruction."

"That is not a protest, that is not a statement, it's people — a handful of people taking advantage of the situation for their own purposes, and they need to be treated as criminals," he said.

He said the violence distracted from the peaceful protests that followed Gray's death, and he noted that the often-violent interactions between police and African-Americans and the poor were part of a "slow-rolling crisis."

"This has been going on for a long time," he said. "This is not new. And we shouldn't pretend that it's new. The good news is that perhaps there's some newfound awareness because of social media and video cameras and so forth that there are ... problems and challenges when it comes to how policing and our laws are applied in certain communities, and we have to pay attention to it and respond."

He said a White House task force comprising law enforcement and community activists, created in the wake of the protests in Ferguson, Mo., "wouldn't solve every problem, but would make a concrete difference in rebuilding trust and making sure that the overwhelming majority of effective, honest and fair law enforcement officers ... [are] able to do their job better because it will weed out or retrain or put a stop to those handful who may be not doing what they're supposed to be doing."

Obama said that police departments across the country need to acknowledge that just as there are some corrupt politicians and wrongdoers on Wall Street, "there are some police who aren't doing the right thing." The president added that some communities, police departments and the entire country "have to do some soul searching."

"[I]f we really want to solve the problem, if our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could. It's just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant, and that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped," he said. "We're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids and we think they're important and they shouldn't be living in poverty and violence."




"When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they're not protesting, they're not making a statement, they're stealing," he said. "When they burn down a building, they're committing arson. And they're destroying and undermining businesses and opportunities in their own communities that rob jobs and opportunity from people in that area." …. He said the violence distracted from the peaceful protests that followed Gray's death, and he noted that the often-violent interactions between police and African-Americans and the poor were part of a "slow-rolling crisis." …. "This has been going on for a long time," he said. "This is not new. And we shouldn't pretend that it's new. The good news is that perhaps there's some newfound awareness because of social media and video cameras and so forth that there are ... problems and challenges when it comes to how policing and our laws are applied in certain communities, and we have to pay attention to it and respond." …. rebuilding trust and making sure that the overwhelming majority of effective, honest and fair law enforcement officers ... [are] able to do their job better because it will weed out or retrain or put a stop to those handful who may be not doing what they're supposed to be doing." …. It's just it would require everybody saying this is important, this is significant, and that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped," he said. "We're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids and we think they're important and they shouldn't be living in poverty and violence."

Wise words, which unfortunately were spoken couched in the phrase “if we really wanted to solve this problem.” Unfortunately, those who are well-to-do and especially if they are white, mainly want to buy a big boat, drink champagne and go to their country clubs and golf courses undisturbed. Some of them hope that the “black problem” will just go away. Well, it's not going to. Governments from federal to state to local need to turn their eyes to the everyday life of the jobless and the working poor. Those people are desperate or at the very least deprived, and partly in response to that they are fuming with rage. The too often violent police officers are hated and the result is this rioting. I certainly don't want to see race-based fighting on our city streets, but unfortunately it is a possibility. Obama is right, of course, that theft is theft and murder is murder and they must be punished. It should be in the courts, however, not at the hands of police officers. And as long as police departments fail to see the need to build bridges with the communities they serve this will continue to go on.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/rift-between-police-and-community-underlies-baltimore-unrest/

Rift between police and community underlies Baltimore unrest
By JEFF PEGUES CBS NEWS
April 28, 2015

74 Photographs – Baltimore under siege

BALTIMORE -- The violence started yesterday after the funeral for Freddie Gray, who died last week of injuries he suffered while in police custody.

Six officers have been suspended. Results of a police department investigation are due to be turned over to prosecutors by Friday.

For West Baltimore residents like Melvin Towns, 16, the frustration wasn't just written on his protest sign. He says the death of Freddie Gray represents the larger problem between the police and the community.

He was asked how he feels about the police.

"I mean personally, I ain't going to lie to you, I don't like the police, just because of what they keep doing to my people -- my people. My black people," he said, explaining that people are furious. "It's beginning to become a routine with us. With the police."

Mike Ware, 34, says on the street, the routine of rounding up and arresting people is called a walkthrough. What does that mean? "The police don't want us right here on the corner, we're going to jail, we'll be home tomorrow morning," he said.

The divisions are not just along racial lines, they are economic too. In Baltimore there are about 16,000 abandoned buildings, mostly in predominantly black neighborhoods. In Sandtown, Freddie Gray's neighborhood, as of 2011 one of five adults was unemployed. And half the households made under $25,000 a year.

According to a Baltimore Sun investigation, the city has paid about 100 people more than $5 million to settle police brutality cases.

Ware called relations between the police and the community "as bad as good and evil." To him that means "as bad as black and white," he said. "It's total opposites. They don't care about us, I know about people will get their houses broken into and willnot call the police."

Valerie Pool prays the distrust and resentment doesn't destroy the city. Asked what's next for Baltimore, she answers: "You know what sir, I have no idea."

Baltimore City Police tactics have led to a consistent drop in murders, so far this year just 68. In the 90s, that was a number that routinely topped 300.




“Mike Ware, 34, says on the street, the routine of rounding up and arresting people is called a walkthrough. what does that mean? "The police don't want us right here on the corner, we're going to jail, we'll be home tomorrow morning," he said. …. “According to a Baltimore Sun investigation, the city has paid about 100 people more than $5 million to settle police brutality cases. Ware called relations between the police and the community "as bad as good and evil." To him that means "as bad as black and white," he said. "It's total opposites. They don't care about us, I know about people will get their houses broken into and will not call the police." …. Baltimore City Police tactics have led to a consistent drop in murders, so far this year just 68. In the 90s, that was a number that routinely topped 300.”


“According to a Baltimore Sun investigation, the city has paid about 100 people more than $5 million to settle police brutality cases.” You'd think that after this piece of information gets around, the city will get serious about mending the problems – poor training, selection and management of police officers – and ignorant human interactions between them and the citizens. $500,000,000 is a lot of money to spend without even looking toward solving the problems at their core. The statement that it is “the police tactics” that have led to a drop in the murder rate, I think is probably not true. I think when a positive change occurs it is more likely due to some constructive work by social service groups and the city government that has helped. Beside the “enforcement” of law stands its partner. the respect for law. That is an inner attitude that comes from faith in the system, and some black citizens did stand together calling for peace in the streets when these riots first began. Unfortunately this faith does not come from a lifetime full of negative experiences, which has too often been the prevailing reality. Two earlier news reports stated that most of the rioting individuals are young people and many are from out of town. I think improvement in the murder rate of Baltimore more likely than not has come about through those responsible citizens down through the years rather than the repressive actions of a militarized police force, as I noted below in the ACLU report. If the police have joined in community service tasks along with the other citizens, then that has undoubtedly helped. That's what they need to do to win the trust of the citizens. On the Internet I could find no glowing reports of improving police interactions with the poor communities, however. See the following from the ACLU.

https://www.aclu.org/news/statement-freddie-gray-and-policecommunity-conflict-baltimore

STATEMENT ON FREDDIE GRAY AND POLICE/COMMUNITY CONFLICT IN BALTIMORE

“The following can be attributed to Susan Goering, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland:

As every wisdom tradition recognizes, violence begets more violence. We as an organization stand for interrupting that cycle of violence. The tragic destruction and violence that Baltimore suffered yesterday is of a piece with the violence that people in Black communities in Baltimore have experienced daily in their interactions with police. We also know that other systemic forms of violence - in the form of discriminatory housing and education policies - have been perpetrated against the same communities in Baltimore for decades.

The first step in interrupting this cycle must be urgent reforms in how police and communities interact. We must acknowledge that the tragedy of Freddie Gray's death, and the death of others, flows from the militarization of the Baltimore Police Department, and police departments across the country. Over time, the daily injustices, the repeated instances of police brutality, the unconstitutional treatment of poor and minority people - these patterns crush people's souls.

The basis for creating a relationship of mutual respect between police and communities was evident in the thousands of people who peacefully exercised their First Amendment rights in protesting the death of Freddie Gray. It was also evident in the thousands of people who stood for calm and urged peace in the tension of the day. We know that the path to peace goes through justice. We must move forward on that path with urgency and determination.”




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-governor-calls-for-water-restrictions/

California governor calls for water restrictions
AP April 28, 2015

Houseboats float in the drought-lowered waters of Oroville Lake near Oroville, Calif.  AP / RICH PEDRONCELLI, FILE

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday called for $10,000 fines for residents and businesses that waste the most water as California cities try to meet mandatory conservation targets during the drought.

The recommendation was part of a legislative proposal Brown said he would make to expand enforcement of water restrictions.

His announcement came as his administration faces skepticism about his sweeping plan to save water and just hours before regulators were scheduled to release an updated plan assigning each community a water use reduction target.

"We've done a lot. We have a long way to go," Brown said after meeting with the mayors of 14 cities, including San Diego and Oakland. "So maybe you want to think of this as just another installment on a long enterprise to live with a changing climate and with a drought of uncertain duration."

The governor also said he is directing state agencies to speed environmental review of projects that increase local water supplies. Mayors have complained that such projects have been delayed by red tape.

Brown's action will not extend to the construction of dams and reservoirs. A legislative panel on Monday rejected a bill supported by Republicans to expedite construction of water storage projects near Fresno and north of Sacramento.

Last summer, state regulators authorized $500 fines for outdoor water waste, but few cities have levied such high amounts. Many agencies have said they would rather educate customers than penalize them.

The mayors who gathered Tuesday with Brown did not indicate they were seeking higher fines.

Brown said steep fines should still be a last resort and "only the worst offenders" that continually violated water rules would be subject to $10,000 penalties. It was unclear what kind of violations those would be.

His proposal would also provide enforcement power to water departments that currently can't fine customers.

California is in its fourth year of drought, and state officials fear it may last as long as a decade. State water officials on Tuesday toured the High Sierra by helicopter, finding snow at only one of four sites that normally would be covered, said Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources.

"We'd be flying along at 10,000 feet, where there should be an abundant snowpack this time of year, and it's dry, dusty ground," he said by telephone.

Brown previously ordered a mandatory 25 percent reduction in statewide water use in cities and towns after voluntary conservation wasn't enough to meet his goals.

The state's most recent proposal, released last week, calls for water use to plummet by as much as 36 percent in some communities. Some cities say the targets are unrealistic and possibly illegal. And some Northern California communities say their longstanding legal rights to water protect them from having to make cuts to help other parched towns.

The current conservation plan is based on per-capita residential water use last summer. Some agencies have offered alternatives that reflect greater demand for water in more arid parts of the state and give credit for conservation efforts before the drought began.

"There are entities like San Diego that are doing a remarkable job on conservation," city Mayor Kevin Faulconer said in an interview after the meeting with Brown. "We're investing significant dollars in desalination and wanting to invest significant dollars into water recycling."

Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin said she was pleased that the governor intended to streamline regulations for such things as her city's planned surface water treatment plant and a water recycling facility.

Earlier this month, an appeals court struck down tiered water rates designed to encourage conservation in the Orange County city of San Juan Capistrano, saying rates must be linked to the cost of service.

Brown, however, said the ruling does not eliminate using tiered water rates but added "it's not as easy as it was before the decision."

Brown did not release any specific language related to his proposed legislation, and it was unclear whether the Democratic governor had asked any lawmakers to carry it.

In a prepared statement, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said she was reviewing the proposal but "it's clear that local governments need additional enforcement tools to help them to further increase conservation."

Claire Conlon, a spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, declined comment.




"We've done a lot. We have a long way to go," Brown said after meeting with the mayors of 14 cities, including San Diego and Oakland. "So maybe you want to think of this as just another installment on a long enterprise to live with a changing climate and with a drought of uncertain duration." The governor also said he is directing state agencies to speed environmental review of projects that increase local water supplies. Mayors have complained that such projects have been delayed by red tape. …. Brown said steep fines should still be a last resort and "only the worst offenders" that continually violated water rules would be subject to $10,000 penalties. It was unclear what kind of violations those would be. His proposal would also provide enforcement power to water departments that currently can't fine customers. …. "We'd be flying along at 10,000 feet, where there should be an abundant snowpack this time of year, and it's dry, dusty ground," he said by telephone. Brown previously ordered a mandatory 25 percent reduction in statewide water use in cities and towns after voluntary conservation wasn't enough to meet his goals. The state's most recent proposal, released last week, calls for water use to plummet by as much as 36 percent in some communities. Some cities say the targets are unrealistic and possibly illegal. And some Northern California communities say their longstanding legal rights to water protect them from having to make cuts to help other parched towns. …. In a prepared statement, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, said she was reviewing the proposal but "it's clear that local governments need additional enforcement tools to help them to further increase conservation."

"There are entities like San Diego that are doing a remarkable job on conservation," city Mayor Kevin Faulconer said in an interview after the meeting with Brown. "We're investing significant dollars in desalination and wanting to invest significant dollars into water recycling." Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin said she was pleased that the governor intended to streamline regulations for such things as her city's planned surface water treatment plant and a water recycling facility.” Recycling and desalination will hopefully be the trend of the future, because droughts like this are not temporary, I don't believe. I know California has always been dry, but not this dry. It's becoming a desert. Goodbye to farms and orchards. We may have to buy our fruit and vegetables from some other source in the future, and people will have to be restrictive even in their home use of water. I am waiting for desalination plants to spring up all over both coasts in the years to come, and purifying our used waste water will probably become standard. Do any of you remember that scene in the movie Waterworld in which Kevin Costner recycles his water? Well, disgusting as that was, it is being done right now on the International Space Station by long term astronauts.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-the-supreme-court-restrict-the-use-of-lethal-injection/

Could the Supreme Court restrict the use of lethal injection?
By JAKE MILLER CBS NEWS
April 29, 2015

Photograph – The death chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, seen in a November 2005 file photo.  AP PHOTO/KIICHIRO SATO

The execution of Oklahoma death row inmate Clayton Lockett in April 2014 was, by all accounts, thoroughly botched. The memories of those who witnessed the lethal injection have a decidedly gruesome quality to them. One likened the scene to something you'd see in a "horror movie."

"He was conscious and blinking, licking his lips even after the process began. He then began to seize," Associated Press reporter Bailey Elise McBride tweeted shortly after the execution.

"He kicks his right leg and his head rolls to the side. He mumbles something we can't understand," reported Tulsa World reporter Ziva Branstetter. "He begins rolling his head from side to side. He again mumbles something we can't understand, except for the word 'man.' He lifts his head and shoulders off the gurney several times, as if he's trying to sit up. He appears to be in pain."

One attorney present "began crying as Clayton began to have this violent reaction," Branstetter later told NPR."This is my fourth execution to witness, but I've never seen anything like this during an execution."

Lockett, who was sentenced to death for killing a 19-year-old girl in 1999, was injected with a drug cocktail that included a sedative known as midazolam. It was 43 minutes before he ultimately passed away.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could determine whether the use of midazolam in lethal injections violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. If the court prohibits the use of the compound, it will mark the first time the justices have ruled a particular method of capital punishment unconstitutional in U.S. History.

The case was brought by a group of Oklahoma death row inmates. The plaintiff, Richard Glossip, is the next inmate scheduled to be executed in the state. The Supreme Court granted a stay of Glossip's execution on January 28, just one day before he was scheduled to be put to death. Another of the state's death row inmates, Charles Warner, was executed just two weeks before that.

Lethal injections in Oklahoma are administered under a protocol that requires the use of a three-drug cocktail. An anesthetic is injected first, ostensibly to dull pain, then a paralytic agent, to prevent movement, and finally the drug that stops the heart. The last time the justices considered capital punishment, in a 2008 case called Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's method of execution, a three-drug lethal injection which involved a sedative called sodium thiopental. For a number of reasons, though, that drug and another barbiturate used in lethal injections, pentobarbital, have become prohibitively difficult to obtain.

The drug manufacturers "have said that they don't want their life-sustaining medicines to be used in life-taking enterprises like executions. As a result, the companies have discontinued producing the medicine altogether," explained Robert Dunham, an attorney and the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-partisan group that compiles information about capital punishment in the United States.

Some states turned to European pharmaceutical companies, but the European Union considers capital punishment a violation of international human rights law, and export protocols have prevented E.U. manufacturers from selling the drug to buyers who might use it for executions. Even compounding pharmacies in the U.S., a relatively loosely regulated industry, have been restricted by the American Pharmacists Association, which moved last year to discourage its members from selling drugs that would be used in executions.

"The drug protocol the court validated in 2008 was no longer available," explained Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University who specializes in capital punishment. As a result, "there's been an explosion of different kinds of protocols that aren't similar to what the court upheld in 2008."

The Glossip case is so pressing, Denno argued, because the court's decision in Baze v. Rees was "ineffective" and states are now "experimenting" with capital punishment. "I don't see how you can characterize it any other way. They're using so many drugs in the execution process that have never been used on a human being before to kill somebody," she explained. "Oklahoma was desperate to find a drug that they could use, and they took one that was not high up on the food chain of choices here."

Midazolam, unlike other sedatives used in capital punishment, is widely available -- it's manufactured by a number of different companies in a number of different countries. But it's not clear the drug possesses the same pain-numbing effects of the hard-to-obtain barbiturates.

"It's an anti-anxiety drug, so it's not used in medical procedures that could be painful or require the patient to be in a coma-like state," Dunham said. "As a result, people who have been given midazolam have regained consciousness or not lost it prior to the execution. They have experienced, in several botched executions, prolonged deaths that appeared to be very painful."

A state review of Lockett's botched execution found that an intravenous needle was improperly inserted, causing a vein to rupture before the cocktail could be fully injected. "It's hard to know how much [midazolam] he got, and how much that contributed" to the horrific results, Denno said. "Nonetheless, there have been other executions where midazolam has been a problem."

Indeed, Lockett's was one of three botched executions involving midazolam that made headlines in recent years. Arizona inmate Joseph Wood was injected with the drug in July 2014, and two hours elapsed before he died. Another death row inmate in Ohio lived for 25 minutes after the injection. In addition to Ohio, Arizona, and Oklahoma, at least five other states - Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Virginia and Missouri - have either used or proposed using midazolam as part of their protocol.

The case before the court on Wednesday could effectively halt all of that. The justices "could say that midazolam, as used in Oklahoma or in an Oklahoma-type protocol, is unconstitutional," Dunham said. "They could say midazolam is not necessarily unconstitutional, but here are the circumstances in which it can be used. They could also say for procedural reasons, we're not going to hear this issue. We granted review, but we shouldn't have."

That last potential outcome, he added, is "highly unlikely," given the attention surrounding the three botched executions, and given the fact that a number of justices have already shown their interest in the case. Dunham pointed out that at least four justices must agree to hear a case before it reaches the Supreme Court, and at least five justices are needed to stay an execution, as they did in Oklahoma.

The case comes at a particularly dynamic moment in the politics of capital punishment in the U.S. The drug shortages explained earlier have forced some states to retool their own policies on executions. Utah's governor signed a bill in March permitting the use of firing squads if lethal injection drugs cannot be readily obtained. A similar bill in Tennessee greenlighted the use of the electric chair in the event of a drug shortage. Other states have halted executions while authorities seek a steadier supply of lethal injection drugs or a better understanding of the drugs' effects. In 2013, Maryland became the 18th state to outlaw capital punishment.

Public support for capital punishment, while still fairly robust, is also at a low point - 56 percent of respondents in a CBS News poll earlier this month said they support capital punishment, the lowest number ever recorded in a CBS poll.

Dunham said it's unlikely the court will use the Glossip case as an opportunity to render a more far-reaching verdict on capital punishment. "There is a broad social issue that relates to lethal injection and death penalty policies," he explained. "But the issue in front of the court is a much more narrow one."

But the justices, he added, don't make decisions in a vacuum. "Judges are human beings, and they understand issues both in the context of the case and the context of modern society. I think the court is aware that support for the death penalty is at an historic low and concern about the death penalty is rising."

"I think that would be surprising, that the court would sweep wider than it has to. That doesn't mean it won't happen," said Denno. "Irrespective of what happens tomorrow, as a factual issue, the poll numbers are dropping...an increasing number of states have found the death penalty unconstitutional. These are just facts...Since 1999 we've seen a precipitous decline in the number of people we've been executing, and the public is so much more aware of these issues."

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, concurring with the majority ruling in the 2008 Baze case, seemed to nod at the likelihood of greater judicial engagement with capital punishment in the future.

"I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol," he wrote, "but also about the justification for the death penalty itself."




“One attorney present "began crying as Clayton began to have this violent reaction," Branstetter later told NPR."This is my fourth execution to witness, but I've never seen anything like this during an execution." …. Lethal injections in Oklahoma are administered under a protocol that requires the use of a three-drug cocktail. An anesthetic is injected first, ostensibly to dull pain, then a paralytic agent, to prevent movement, and finally the drug that stops the heart. The last time the justices considered capital punishment, in a 2008 case called Baze v. Rees, the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's method of execution, a three-drug lethal injection which involved a sedative called sodium thiopental. For a number of reasons, though, that drug and another barbiturate used in lethal injections, pentobarbital, have become prohibitively difficult to obtain. …. "It's an anti-anxiety drug, so it's not used in medical procedures that could be painful or require the patient to be in a coma-like state," Dunham said. "As a result, people who have been given midazolam have regained consciousness or not lost it prior to the execution. They have experienced, in several botched executions, prolonged deaths that appeared to be very painful." …. "I think that would be surprising, that the court would sweep wider than it has to. That doesn't mean it won't happen," said Denno. "Irrespective of what happens tomorrow, as a factual issue, the poll numbers are dropping...an increasing number of states have found the death penalty unconstitutional. These are just facts...Since 1999 we've seen a precipitous decline in the number of people we've been executing, and the public is so much more aware of these issues."

To me, for the state to use a drug which tranquilizes and paralyzes but which doesn't kill pain is unconscionable. In the one case that took 43 minutes for death to ensue, it really was cruel. In addition to that, an alarming number of people on death row have been found to be innocent by groups such as the Innocence Project doing DNA testing. I would like to see every prisoner on death row be DNA tested on a mandatory basis, to see whether there is a match to the blood or semen or whatever is the evidence at hand – no DNA match, no death penalty! Also, it would be helpful if court cases that do not have any available DNA evidence at all from the crime scene or rape victim were to be limited to sentences of life in prison without parole rather than death. In other words, highly restrict the application of the death penalty. Better still, just outlaw the death penalty entirely, as so many other civilized countries around the world have done. With all those private prisons that were mentioned in yesterday's blog we should have enough space to house life term prisoners, after all.





http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/04/29/402875028/floridas-legislature-quits-early-at-impasse-over-medicaid-expansion

Florida's Legislature Quits Early, At Impasse Over Medicaid Expansion
DIANE WEBBER, KAISER HEALTH NEWS
LYNN HATTER, WFSU
APRIL 29, 2015

Photograph – Once a proponent of Medicaid's expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Florida Gov. Rick Scott is now trying to pressure Florida's Senate to abandon its support of expansion.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The Republican-controlled Florida legislature — at odds over the question of whether to expand Medicaid — abruptly ended its session three days early on Tuesday, leaving hundreds of bills that are unrelated to health care unfinished.

Andy Gardiner, president of Florida's state Senate, says he's disappointed with the House's decision to stop negotiating and leave town.

"The House didn't win, the Senate didn't win and the taxpayers lost," Gardiner says. "There are a lot of issues that aren't going to make it, and it's unfortunate."

But Steve Crisafulli, speaker of the Florida House, says it was the right thing to do.

"We've made every effort we can to negotiate with the Senate on a budget," he says, "and at this time they're standing strong on Medicaid expansion."

Shortly after the adjournment, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over health care funding — a move that was promptly derided by the leadership of the state Senate.

"I don't think it changes anything," says the chairman of Florida's Senate appropriations committee, Tom Lee. "Once he announced he was going to file a lawsuit against the federal government, I think everyone sort of shut down and lawyered up, and all that sort of thing."

Here's a brief overview of the fight: The Republican-led state House is firmly against Medicaid expansion, while the Republican-led state Senate supports it. Scott once supported expansion but is now against it. And the federal government raised the stakes of the battle by refusing to negotiate on the renewal of a $2 billion fund called the Low Income Pool, which reimburses hospitals for unpaid bills.

"The pool money was about helping low-income people have access [to health care]," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told northern Florida's WFSU in January. "I think we believe an important way to extend that coverage to low-income individuals is what passed in the Affordable Care Act ... this issue of Medicaid expansion."

The governor's lawsuit over the low income pool accuses the federal government of trying to coerce the state — requiring Florida to expand Medicaid or lose $2 billion. That sort of pressure was expressly forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court, Scott says, when it upheld the federal health law in 2012.

House appropriations chief Richard Corcoran recently delivered a 20-minute anti-Medicaid speech to fellow lawmakers that underscored his side's determination to block the expansion. "Here's my message to the Senate," he said. "They want us to come to the dance? We're not dancing. We're not dancing this session. We're not dancing next session. We're not dancing next summer — we're not dancing. And if you want to blow up the process because you think you have some right that doesn't exist? Have at it."

Now, the central task that state law requires of the legislature — to pass a budget— remains incomplete. Scott tried this week to pressure the legislature to the bargaining table to craft a budget. He threatened to veto Senate priorities, but the Senate remained unmoved.

Scott has said he will call the legislature back for a special session to complete the budget.

This story is part of NPR's partnership with WFSU andKaiser Health News.




"Andy Gardiner, president of Florida's state Senate, says he's disappointed with the House's decision to stop negotiating and leave town. "The House didn't win, the Senate didn't win and the taxpayers lost," Gardiner says. "There are a lot of issues that aren't going to make it, and it's unfortunate." …. Shortly after the adjournment, Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the federal government over health care funding — a move that was promptly derided by the leadership of the state Senate. "I don't think it changes anything," says the chairman of Florida's Senate appropriations committee, Tom Lee. "Once he announced he was going to file a lawsuit against the federal government, I think everyone sort of shut down and lawyered up, and all that sort of thing." …. And the federal government raised the stakes of the battle by refusing to negotiate on the renewal of a $2 billion fund called the Low Income Pool, which reimburses hospitals for unpaid bills. "The pool money was about helping low-income people have access [to health care]," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told northern Florida's WFSU in January. "I think we believe an important way to extend that coverage to low-income individuals is what passed in the Affordable Care Act ... this issue of Medicaid expansion."

“House appropriations chief Richard Corcoran recently delivered a 20-minute anti-Medicaid speech to fellow lawmakers that underscored his side's determination to block the expansion. "Here's my message to the Senate," he said. "They want us to come to the dance? We're not dancing. We're not dancing this session. We're not dancing next session. We're not dancing next summer — we're not dancing.” This statement is highly reminiscent of the great work of literature “Green Eggs And Ham,” by Dr. Seuss. It shows the light-hearted, or should I say, irresponsible view on the subject of expanding medicaid which exists in the Florida Congress. Who cares if poor people get medical care? Not the Republicans.






http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2015/04/28/402856039/union-head-presses-candidates-clinton-on-trade

Union Head Presses Candidates, Clinton, On Trade
Don Gonyea
April 28, 2015

Photograph – AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka: "Candidates can't hedge their bets any longer, and expect workers to rush to the polls in excitement."
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Don't expect labor support to get fired up for a candidate who hedges their bets. That was the message from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka for 2016 presidential candidates. Translation: Hillary Clinton.

"Candidates can't hedge their bets any longer and expect workers to rush to the polls in excitement, to run out and door knock and phone bank and leaflet only to have their candidate of choice turn a back towards the policies," Trumka said in a speech at the labor federation's headquarters in Washington.

Trumka never named Clinton, but the Democratic frontrunner has done exactly what Trumka is warning against on trade — hedge.

As secretary of state, Clinton called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is being hotly debated now in Congress, the "gold standard" of trade agreements. But, now that she's running for president, she has backed away from that.

"Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security," Clinton said in Concord, N.H., last week while touring a community college that focuses on technical skills. "We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the skills to be competitive."

Clinton is the only announced Democratic presidential candidate to this point, and she is far ahead in the polls. Independent Bernie Sanders, a self-declared socialist is set to announce his candidacy Thursday, Vermont Public Radio reports. Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, has indicated he is also likely to run and will announce his decision by the end of May.

O'Malley, who is trying to position himself to Clinton's left, didn't mince words during an event at Harvard earlier this month. He cut a web video off of what he said on trade.

"I'm for trade," he said. "And I'm for good trade deals, but I'm against bad trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

Trumka talked of the income inequality and noted that CEO pay has skyrocketed over the last four decades while the wages of average Americans have gone the other way.

"We want action," Trumka said. "We want big ideas, and we want structural change. We want 'Raising Wages.'"

And he said labor won't accept "half measures."

"Workers have swallowed the politics of hedged bets for almost two generations," said Trumka, who has seen labor membership decline in the past generation. "We've waited for the scraps that remain after the pollsters shape the politics. Those days are over. America doesn't need relentlessly cautious half-measures."





"Candidates can't hedge their bets any longer and expect workers to rush to the polls in excitement, to run out and door knock and phone bank and leaflet only to have their candidate of choice turn a back towards the policies," Trumka said in a speech at the labor federation's headquarters in Washington.” I, for one, am very unhappy with some Democrats these days who either take up Republican causes or just don't participate when liberal issues are up for grabs. Especially in this time of very aggressive right wing maneuvers in both Washington and the state capitals, we need for our clear-sighted and intelligent liberals to be made of greater courage than they so often show. If they come from a red state they probably fear that they will not be reelected when they vote on human issues such poverty, the environment and civil rights rather than on patriotism, religion and business related views.

Clinton has done some of that hedging, and as a result I don't care for her as I did in the 1990's. I haven't forgiven her for voting to go into Iraq because of the mythical WMDs. Interestingly Obama did vote against that, though while in his present office he is right now pushing another world trade agreement that may cause businesses to offshore their jobs as the have under NAFTA, and that is unforgivable. The bulk of the Middle Class are actually working class , blue collar people. They aren't doctors and lawyers or even candle stick makers. Not only can they not send their kids, especially if they have a house full of them, to college, but they may not be able to pay the mortgage on their house. We Dems need to THINK DEM AND STICK TOGETHER. That's what the Republicans do all the time, and unfortunately it's gaining ground for them on some issues that really scare me, such as establishing Christianity as the national religion, something which we traditionally believe is unconstitutional. Some right wing jerks are trying to argue with the wording of the Constitution and bring it into law.





http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/04/28/402679062/nazi-summer-camps-in-1930s-america

Nazi Summer Camps In 1930s America?
Linton Weeks
April 28, 2015

Photograph – Riflery practice at a New York Nazi summer camp in the 1930s. From the National Archives video Volks-Deutsche/Jungen in USA.
National Archives

To the unsuspecting observer, the 25-minute silent, grainy black and white video from the vaults of the U.S. National Archives seems to showcase a quaint, carefree summer camp for boys in 1937.

Healthy, happy, high-energy guys — against the bucolic backdrop of the Catskill Mountains in eastern New York — pitch tents, get muddy, play checkers, shoot rifles, box and wrestle one another, raise a Nazi swastika flag …

Wait, what?

The Bund

In the 1930s, while Adolf Hitler was inciting the German people toward bellicosity and Nazis were establishing horrific concentration camps around Germany, Nazi summer camps for youngsters — like the one near Windham, N.Y., featured in the clip — popped up around this country. The pro-Hitler retreats were sponsored by German loyalists, such as the German-American Bund led by Fritz Kuhn.

The Bund, "which came to include more than 70 local chapters," according to a 2014 National Archives blog post, "was founded in 1936 to promote Germany and the Nazi party in America. The most well-known of the organization's activities was the 1939 pro-Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden that drew a reported 20,000 attendees."

This was the same year that Hitler staged military strategy sessions with top Nazi leaders. And declared war on Poland — and decided to battle Britain and France, if necessary.

Documentary film of the Nazi summer camps in America, the Archives post continues, "complete with the official uniforms and banners of the Hitler Youth, might be the most visual and chilling example of the [Bund's] attempts to instill Nazi sympathies in German-American children."

A handful of summertime sanctuaries — for boys and girls — received campers. Camp Will And Might in Griggstown, N.J., for instance, hosted 200 German-American boys between the ages of 8 and 18 — and hoisted the Nazi flag — in the summer of 1934, the Altoona, Pa., Tribune reported on Aug. 13.

And Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wis. — near Milwaukee — was another site of Nazi youth and family camps. "Children dressed in Nazi uniforms and drilled military-style, with marching, inspections, and flag-raising ceremonies," Mark D. Van Ells of City University of New York posted on America in WWII. "Although the Bund denied it, children were taught Nazi ideology."

Swastika Nation

Arnie Bernstein, author of the 2014 book Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German American Bund, estimates the Bund membership at its zenith ranged between 5,000 and 25,000 — though the Bund claimed a much larger enrollment. "The majority of the campers were children or grandchildren of German immigrants and naturalized American citizens who were part of the Bund," Bernstein says.

On the surface, these enterprises offered standard summer-camp fare. "But their real purpose," Bernstein says, "was to indoctrinate and raise children to be good Aryans loyal to the Bund, its leader Kuhn, and of course Hitler. They would march about in their uniforms carrying American and Bund flags, singing German songs. Uniforms were modeled on Hitler Youth uniforms."

Bernstein says, "There were forced marches in the middle of the night to bonfires where the kids would sing the Nazi national anthem and shout 'Sieg Heil.' Nazi propaganda was plentiful at these camps as well."

Superficially sunny, the camps presented situations for dark behavior, Bernstein says. The attendees were exploited by the Bund, both for physical labor and for physical abuse. He says, "This all came out in congressional hearings."

Citizen Unrest

As Germany's military might increased overseas, Americans became more uncomfortable with Nazism and its expression on U.S. soil. Writing in the Los Angeles Times last year, Michael Hiltzik explains how Americans' concern for the Nazi summer camp programs helped usher in the House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthyism.

The camps "more or less died out as the Bund came to its wheezing end with Fritz Kuhn's imprisonment in 1939," Bernstein explains. "With the strong central leader in prison for forgery and embezzlement, members started leaving the Bund and taking their kids with them."

By 1940, he adds, the Bund was moribund "and with that, the camps suffered significant drops in attendance and activities." Plus, the programs came under intense government scrutiny and were raided.

"So realistically, they ended in 1940," Bernstein adds. "The Bund sputtered along into 1941, but by then was whittled down to only hard-core loyalists. The Bund itself was officially disbanded days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war against the United States."

Some of the camps were converted to different uses; others fell into ruins. Bill Maloney, who lives in Wayne, N.J., has visited — and taken photos that are posted on his website — of nearby Camp Bergwald. Asked how he felt when he saw the overgrown site, he says, "Puzzlement and discomfort that a Hitler Youth camp could be in any way acceptable in the U.S., even before the war. It is especially disturbing that it is so close to home and that the people involved would have been our neighbors. Maybe some still are. The site is only 3 miles from where I live."

As for what happened to the campers, who knows? One of the adult leaders at a New York camp, Gustav Wilhelm Kaercher, worked as a power-plant designer for a utility company in New York City. He was arrested by the FBI in 1942 — for being a German spy.

(This post has been updated.)



German American Bund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The German American Bund, or German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund; Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), was an American Nazi organization established in 1936 to succeed Friends of New Germany (FONG), the new name being chosen to emphasise the group's American credentials after press criticism that the organisation was unpatriotic.[1] The Bund was to consist only of American citizens of German descent.[2] Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.

Friends of New Germany[edit]

In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave German immigrant and German Nazi Party member Heinz Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.[3] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany[3] by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA and the Free Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The FONG was based in New York but had a strong presence in Chicago.[3] Members wore a uniform, a white shirt and black trousers for men with a black hat festooned with a red symbol. Women members wore a white blouse and a black skirt.[4]

The organization led by Spanknöbel was openly pro-Nazi, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published, and the infiltration of other non-political German-American organizations. One of the Friends early initiatives was to counter, with propaganda, the Jewish boycott of German goods which started in March 1933.

In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was ousted as leader and subsequently deported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as a foreign agent.[3]

At the same time, Congressman Samuel Dickstein, a later Soviet spy was Chairman of the Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, where he became aware of the substantial number of foreigners legally and illegally entering and residing in the country, and the growing anti-Semitism along with vast amounts of anti-Semitic literature being distributed in the country. This led him to investigate independently the activities of Nazi and other fascist groups. This led to the formation of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities. Throughout the rest of 1934, the Committee conducted hearings, bringing before it most of the major figures in the US fascist movement.[5] Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in America.[6][7]

The organization existed into the mid-1930s, although it always remained small, with a membership of between 5,000–10,000, consisting mostly of German citizens living in America and German emigrants who only recently had become citizens.[3] In December 1935, Rudolf Hess ordered all German citizens to leave the FONG and recalled to Germany all its leaders.[3]

In March 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up organization for the Friends of New Germany in Buffalo, New York.[3][8] The Bund elected a German-born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn as its leader (Bundesführer).[9] Kuhn was a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer (old fighter) of the Nazi Party, who in 1934 was granted American citizenship. Kuhn was initially effective as a leader and was able to unite the organization and expand its membership but came to be seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar.[3]

The Bund established a number of training camps, including Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, New York, Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wisconsin, Deutschhorst Country Club in Sellersville, Pennsylvania,[11] Camp Bergwald in Bloomingdale, NJ[3][12][13][14][11] and Camp Highland in New York state. The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute and attacked the administration of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish groups, Communism, "Moscow-directed" trade unions and American boycotts of German goods.[3][15] The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the flag of the United Statesat Bund meetings, and declared that George Washington was "the first Fascist" who did not believe democracy would work.[16]





“Healthy, happy, high-energy guys — against the bucolic backdrop of the Catskill Mountains in eastern New York — pitch tents, get muddy, play checkers, shoot rifles, box and wrestle one another, raise a Nazi swastika flag …. The pro-Hitler retreats were sponsored by German loyalists, such as the German-American Bund led by Fritz Kuhn. The Bund, "which came to include more than 70 local chapters," according to a 2014 National Archives blog post, "was founded in 1936 to promote Germany and the Nazi party in America. The most well-known of the organization's activities was the 1939 pro-Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden that drew a reported 20,000 attendees." …. A handful of summertime sanctuaries — for boys and girls — received campers. Camp Will And Might in Griggstown, N.J., for instance, hosted 200 German-American boys between the ages of 8 and 18 — and hoisted the Nazi flag — in the summer of 1934, the Altoona, Pa., Tribune reported on Aug. 13. And Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wis. — near Milwaukee — was another site of Nazi youth and family camps. "Children dressed in Nazi uniforms and drilled military-style, with marching, inspections, and flag-raising ceremonies," Mark D. Van Ells of City University of New York posted on America in WWII. "Although the Bund denied it, children were taught Nazi ideology." …. Bernstein says, "There were forced marches in the middle of the night to bonfires where the kids would sing the Nazi national anthem and shout 'Sieg Heil.' Nazi propaganda was plentiful at these camps as well." Superficially sunny, the camps presented situations for dark behavior, Bernstein says. The attendees were exploited by the Bund, both for physical labor and for physical abuse. He says, "This all came out in congressional hearings." …. The camps "more or less died out as the Bund came to its wheezing end with Fritz Kuhn's imprisonment in 1939," Bernstein explains. "With the strong central leader in prison for forgery and embezzlement, members started leaving the Bund and taking their kids with them." By 1940, he adds, the Bund was moribund "and with that, the camps suffered significant drops in attendance and activities." Plus, the programs came under intense government scrutiny and were raided. …. As for what happened to the campers, who knows? One of the adult leaders at a New York camp, Gustav Wilhelm Kaercher, worked as a power-plant designer for a utility company in New York City. He was arrested by the FBI in 1942 — for being a German spy.”

Nazi thought patterns were, and unfortunately still are, simply blood chilling. They are primitive. Some people down through time have either never had a conscience, or have given it up as an expensive commodity. After all, a conscience requires courage. When I see the revivals of those viewpoints, both in the US and in Europe today, it makes me certain that I need to be prepared to fight for the country I grew up loving and trusting. Too many things nowadays are whittling away that trust – USA PATRIOT ACT, RICO provisions, NSA spying on our own citizens, and rampant racism against everyone who is not white, Christian and – increasingly – wealthy.




CORINTHIAN COLLEGE – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-corinthian-shutdown-20150427-story.html#page=1

Corinthian closing its last schools; 10,000 California students displaced
By CHRIS KIRKHAM
April 26, 2015

After years of government investigations, Corinthian Colleges Inc. will shut down more than two dozen of its remaining schools, displacing more than 10,000 California students. The move ends the turmoil at what was once one of the nation's largest for-profit college chains but presents fresh challenges to students, who now must seek transfers or federal loan forgiveness.

The loans were both the lifeblood and the downfall of the troubled Orange County company. Easy access to student debt fueled high tuition and big profits — until the federal government cut off the tap last year, as investigators accused Corinthian of falsifying job placement rates.

Many students, attracted by the promise of higher-paying work, now find themselves with heavy debts for degrees of dubious worth. Many others won't graduate at all.

"A lot of us are devastated," said Dylan Low, 22, who was pursuing a criminal justice associate's degree at Everest College-Ontario and had only three more classes to finish before graduation in July.

The closure, announced Sunday, had been expected for months, but Corinthian gave students and employees almost no notice.

For many observers of the for-profit college industry, Corinthian's meteoric rise and fall offers a cautionary tale for other institutions that rely almost entirely on funding from federal student loans and grants.

Like many other large for-profit schools, Corinthian nearly doubled revenue to $1.75 billion from 2007 to 2011, as the Great Recession prompted millions of unemployed workers to seek opportunity in higher education and career training. But the company lacked the cash flow to survive after the U.S. Education Department barred its access to student loans last summer.

"This has really exposed the shortcomings of federal and state oversight, and the accreditation system," said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the Institute for College Access & Success, an Oakland advocacy group that focuses on student debt issues. "The fact that a school could be allowed to get so big and so reliant on taxpayer funding — and to harm so many students without action being taken sooner — really exposes the need to reform the system at all levels."

This month, the Education Department levied a $30-million fine against Corinthian's Heald College system, which operates primarily in California. The agency alleged that the company boosted official placement rates by paying temporary employment agencies to hire students for brief stints after graduation. Corinthian denied the allegations.

The higher placement rates, in addition to drawing new students, helped the college chain appease investors and retain eligibility for federal student aid.

Higher education experts acknowledged that Corinthian's demise was imminent, but they questioned why federal education officials continued to allow many schools to enroll students until just before the final collapse.

"Once it became clear they had no future, they should have been making efforts to transfer students elsewhere," said Ben Miller, a former policy advisor in the Education Department who is a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Ted Mitchell, the U.S. undersecretary of education, said the department would work with Congress to "improve accountability and transparency in the career college industry."

By last fall, amid federal pressure, Corinthian had sold the majority of its schools to a nonprofit student loan servicer. But ongoing litigation with California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris and an investigation by the Education Department prevented the company from selling more than two dozen campuses in California and other Western states. The schools operated under the brands Everest, WyoTech and Heald.

Corinthian said in a news release Sunday that it failed to sell the remaining campuses because federal and state authorities were "seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions" that would affect potential buyers. California regulators this month also ordered Corinthian to stop enrolling new students because the company couldn't produce required financial documents.

The company said it had "ceased substantially all operations" in the release, but the company has not formally filed for bankruptcy.

The schools will close effective Monday. They include 13 Everest College and WyoTech campuses in California, along with 12 Heald College campuses in California, Hawaii and Oregon. Corinthian will also close Everest colleges in Phoenix and Rochester, N.Y., along with an online division in Tempe, Ariz.

Going forward, students face a choice: Try to transfer credits elsewhere — a difficult process — or get a discharge of federal student loans and start over at a new institution.

When a school shuts down suddenly, students are eligible for a full discharge of federal loan debt. Students at Corinthian schools that were sold last fall, however, do not have the same options, though a group of former Corinthian students and nine state attorneys general are pressuring the Education Department to offer loan forgiveness to all those affected.

For students such as Low, just a few months from graduation, the closure presented a frustrating predicament: Either start over from scratch, or go through the time-consuming process of transferring credits that may never be recognized by other institutions. The disgrace of the Corinthian chain won't help his cause.

One of Low's classmates at Everest College-Ontario, Rena Rivas, 25, is also just a few months away from graduating. She gave birth to a daughter in March and had to stop classes a few months earlier on orders from her doctor. Despite those complications, she said she was firmly committed to finishing her criminal justice degree this year.

Even if she gets her loans forgiven, she said she wouldn't be satisfied.

"The last two and a half years I spent going to that school — the trouble, the time, the money I spent on gas — I feel like it was a waste of time," said Nemer, who lives in Victorville, about 50 miles from the Ontario campus. "I'm pretty much at a complete loss right now. I'm not even sure what the next step is."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, staff from California's Department of Consumer Affairs will be holding sessions at some of the California campuses affected by the closure. Staff will be available at 13 Everest and WyoTech schools across the state, but not at Heald College campuses, which have different accreditation and aren't supervised by the agency.

Russ Heimerich, an agency spokesman, said staff would help students get proper paperwork to apply for loan discharges or to seek transfers.

Everest and WyoTech campuses have a nontraditional accreditation that applies mostly to career colleges, meaning it can be very difficult to transfer credits to community colleges or four-year institutions.

"Transferring credits from one private postsecondary school to another is almost always problematic," Heimerich said, "and it almost always doesn't happen."





http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/cfpb-sues-for-profit-corinthian-colleges-for-predatory-lending-scheme/

CFPB Sues For-Profit Corinthian Colleges for Predatory Lending Scheme
Bureau Seeks More than $500 Million In Relief For Borrowers of Corinthian’s Private Student Loans
SEP 16 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued for-profit college chain Corinthian Colleges, Inc. for its illegal predatory lending scheme. The Bureau alleges that Corinthian lured tens of thousands of students to take out private loans to cover expensive tuition costs by advertising bogus job prospects and career services. Corinthian then used illegal debt collection tactics to strong-arm students into paying back those loans while still in school. To protect current and past students of the Corinthian schools, the Bureau is seeking to halt these practices and is requesting the court to grant relief to the students who collectively have taken out more than $500 million in private student loans.

“For too many students, Corinthian has turned the American dream of higher education into an ongoing nightmare of debt and despair,” said CFPB Director Richard Corday. “We believe Corinthian lured consumers into predatory loans by lying about their future job prospects, and then used illegal debt collection tactics to strong-arm students at school. We want to put an end to these predatory practices and get relief for the students who are bearing the weight of more than half a billion dollars in Corinthian’s private student loans.”

The complaint against Corinthian can be found at: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201409_cfpb_complaint_corinthian.pdf

Corinthian Colleges, Inc. is one of the largest for-profit, post-secondary education companies in the United States. The publicly traded company has more than 100 school campuses across the country. The company operates schools under the names Everest, Heald, and WyoTech. As of last March, the company had approximately 74,000 students.

In June, the U.S. Department of Education delayed Corinthian’s access to federal student aid dollars because of reports of malfeasance. Since then, Corinthian has been scaling down its operations as part of an agreement with the Department of Education. However, Corinthian continues to enroll new students.

Today’s CFPB lawsuit alleges a pervasive culture across the Everest, Heald, and WyoTech schools that allowed employees to routinely deceive and illegally harass private student loan borrowers. Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. Based on its investigation, the CFPB alleges that the schools made deceptive representations about career opportunities that induced prospective students to take out private student loans, and then used illegal tactics to collect on those loans. Today’s lawsuit covers the period from July 21, 2011 to the present.

….


This article is too long for me to include on one day's blog, but it is fascinating, if shocking reading. The complaints against these “colleges” show major areas of fraud. I see Internet mentions of online schools frequently and they are never well-known, mainstream names. I suggest to anybody, no matter how little money they have or how low their high school grades or test results are, to apply only to brick and mortar secular state schools. Paying good money for a degree that's not worth two cents is really a shame. Religious colleges are still privately owned, and tend to be more expensive than state colleges. Even at those colleges they often have an online program that is available if a student just doesn't want to attend regular classes, but tackle one course at a time in the comfort and privacy of their own home. They always have loan and work based tuition programs and students will have access to legitimate professors and textbooks.

In Jacksonville, for students who want to stay at home and study or who can only go part time, we have a good junior college system with numerous city locations. It in the past gave only two-year degrees, but has recently been taken into the Florida state system and offers four year degrees. A two year degree in a subject like medical, computer or legal specialties can be a path to a job. Becoming a Dental Assistant or a paralegal can bring a satisfying and fairly lucrative position, and if a student then wants to go for four years they can do that later. I am glad to see that some local high schools have tech training programs such as computer science that can help also. That is not a college-prep path, of course, but I am not of the opinion that everybody needs a BA or BS degree. State run four year programs, while not as prestigious as Duke University, are usually fully accredited, respected by businesses and don't cost as much as private colleges for in state students.