Monday, July 6, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/07/06/420289254/liberal-minority-won-over-conservatives-in-historic-supreme-court-term

Liberal Minority Won Over Conservatives In Historic Supreme Court Term
Nina Totenberg
July 6, 2015

Photograph -- An American flag flies over the U.S. Supreme Court June 29, 2015 in Washington, D.C. This past term, the liberal position won in 19 of the 26 closely-divided ideological cases and eight out of 10 of the most important ones.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

It was a historic term, a surprisingly liberal term — and a nasty term.

That's the essence of the tea-leaf reading about the U.S. Supreme Court term that just concluded. Astonishingly — though the court is dominated by conservative justices — the liberal minority, disciplined and united, drove the direction in a startling number of cases, while the conservatives splintered into multiple factions.

The numbers tell the story. The liberals won in 19 of the 26 closely-divided ideological cases and eight out of 10 of the most important ones. Those numbers were compiled by SCOTUSblog, the go-to Supreme Court online journal.

"This is, by the numbers, the best term for the left in at least a quarter century," observes publisher Tom Goldstein.

People gather at a church in Gilbert, Ariz., for an Easter sunrise service in 2010. The town passed a law to regulate signs a church in town was temporarily posting to provide event directions, but the Supreme Court on Thursday declared those rules unconstitutional.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that under the majority's reasoning it would not matter if the prisoner was being "drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake," as long as there was no more humane method of execution available. Justice Antonin Scalia orally rebutted Justice Stephen Breyer's dissent, calling it "gobbledygook."

IT'S ALL POLITICS
Lethal Injection Ruling Draws Out Justices' Passionate Opinions
Time after time, the liberals stuck together and managed to win over one or more conservatives — as they did in the case holding that states may refuse to issue Confederate flag specialty license plates. In that case, the court's most conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, joined the liberal four, providing the fifth and decisive vote.

Goldstein says that even taking the most centrist of the conservatives, Justice Anthony Kennedy, out of the equation, one or more members of the conservative bloc crossed over to join the liberals in 14 of the most ideological cases, while the reverse was true for the liberals only three times.

But as Goldstein observes, the liberals are, for the most part, just trying to preserve the status quo.

"A lot of what's going on with the left is that it's much easier to stick together on defense, when you're not calling plays and going for bombs and slants and trying to make a big difference and change the law," he says.

Court watchers cite other reasons for the liberal success this year — among them, that conservative activists just pushed their agenda too far.

"Several of the most important [liberal] victories that you see, are simply the court blinking at the extremism of certain [conservative] claims that were being put before it," says Yale Law School's Akhil Amar.

Another explanation is that the five conservative justices on the court have very different legal philosophies, and the cases this term showed those splits in vivid color. In all, the court's four most conservative justices wrote 78 dissents and concurrences, versus only 27 for the liberals.

Supreme Court advocate Walter Dellinger says the split among the conservatives is between "ideological, professorial conservatives" — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia — and John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy, "who are more economic conservatives, which makes them more pragmatic and more realistic about what works."

Dellinger adds that 3-2 split "in some ways reflects the split within the larger Republican Party politically."

The Reagan coalition is beginning to fray as the world turns, time passes, new issues arise.

The outcomes this term were so much of a turnaround that the liberal justices looked positively serene, even perky, in June, while the tone of the conservative dissents was unusually harsh.

"The bombastic tone of the dissents this term was over the top, even for Justice Scalia, who has a blood-soaked pen at his desk," Goldstein says.

"He wrote the nastiest thing I have read in any Supreme Court opinion," says Charles Fried, who served as the government's chief advocate in the Supreme Court during the Reagan administration.

Dellinger, who had the same job in the Clinton Administration, agrees.

"I've never seen that kind of really, deeply personal attack that basically says 'The author of the opinion is not just wrong as a matter of law, he's a jerk,' " says Dellinger.

That's pretty much what Justice Scalia wrote about Justice Kennedy's soaring rhetoric in the same-sex marriage case, calling it "pretentious," and "egotistic," and comparing it to "the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie." If I had ever joined such a vague opinion, said Scalia, "even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, .... I would hide my head in a bag."

Fried, now a professor at Harvard Law School, says that in some ways, Kennedy's opinion provoked that reaction. He says that Kennedy should have focused on legal precedents instead of poetic passages. In particular, the court's 1967 decision striking down state bans on interracial marriage, and two more recent decisions dealing with same-sex relations and marriage.

Those three court precedents dictated the result, Fried maintains, adding, "That is the law. Suck it up!"

Even those who don't like the way the decision was written, however, see it as historic. The kind of decision that comes along only once in a half century.

Amar likens it to Brown v. Board of Education barring segregated public schools, though he points to critical differences. This time, he says the court was not leading the charge.

"It was just riding the wave, keeping up with the tide," he says.

In contrast he says the court in Brown was actually ahead of its time.

At the heart of the case ruled on by the Supreme Court Thursday are the exchanges where people go online to shop for individual insurance.

IT'S ALL POLITICS

Gay rights advocates John Lewis (left), and his spouse Stuart Gaffney kiss across the street from City Hall in San Francisco, on Friday following a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that same-sex couples have the right to marry nationwide.

"Brown in 1954 comes along, before Martin [Luther] King [Jr.] appears on the scene, before a massive civil rights movement. So Brown actually starts the political avalanche," whereas "this time the court is actually following the lead of activists" and rapidly changing public opinion.

The court's other major decision at the end of the term upheld nationwide subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. And as Dellinger observes, Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion for a 6 to 3 majority was "surprisingly favorable" to the law.

"The first five pages of the chief justice's opinion ... is the best articulation of the case for the Affordable Care Act anybody has written," Dellinger says.

The decision did something else important. It sided with the liberal view that legislation should be interpreted in terms of its overall purpose and not by flyspecking a phrase here and there. And it said that the judiciary, not executive agencies, has the last word on such interpretations.

This was Roberts' 10th year as chief justice, and this term he proved to be something of the justice he said he would be at his confirmation hearings: restrained and deferential to legislative bodies where possible.

"In both the Affordable Care Act case and the same-sex marriage case, John Roberts was the only justice who took the minimalist position," says Supreme Court advocate Dellinger, now professor emeritus at Duke Law School. "He neither inserted himself in the Affordable Care Act process by derailing it, as his conservative colleagues would have done, and he didn't take the judicially ambitious stance, correct in my view, of invalidating the same-sex marriage position of all the states."

Indeed, observes Dellinger, Roberts was the only justice of the nine who took that minimalist position in both of these cases.

Roberts has not always demonstrated such a hands-off or deferential approach. He wrote the 2013 decision striking down the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, a law Congress had enacted and re-enacted by overwhelming votes. And he has repeatedly joined and written decisions striking down most of the laws that regulate money in election campaigns.

There are liberal terms, there are conservative terms, and it largely depends upon what the case mix is.
Stanford Law professor Michael McConnell
In short, just because the liberals happened to win a lot this year, doesn't mean they will in the future.

"There are liberal terms, there are conservative terms, and it largely depends upon what the case mix is," observes Stanford Law professor Michael McConnell.

Indeed, next term the court has accepted a mix in the heartland of a conservative legal agenda — cases that seek to overturn or cut back past Supreme Court rulings on abortion, affirmative action and labor union rights.




“That's the essence of the tea-leaf reading about the U.S. Supreme Court term that just concluded. Astonishingly — though the court is dominated by conservative justices — the liberal minority, disciplined and united, drove the direction in a startling number of cases, while the conservatives splintered into multiple factions. …. SCOTUSblog, the go-to Supreme Court online journal. "This is, by the numbers, the best term for the left in at least a quarter century," observes publisher Tom Goldstein. …. Goldstein says that even taking the most centrist of the conservatives, Justice Anthony Kennedy, out of the equation, one or more members of the conservative bloc crossed over to join the liberals in 14 of the most ideological cases, while the reverse was true for the liberals only three times. …. Court watchers cite other reasons for the liberal success this year — among them, that conservative activists just pushed their agenda too far. "Several of the most important [liberal] victories that you see, are simply the court blinking at the extremism of certain [conservative] claims that were being put before it," says Yale Law School's Akhil Amar. Another explanation is that the five conservative justices on the court have very different legal philosophies, and the cases this term showed those splits in vivid color. …. Dellinger adds that 3-2 split "in some ways reflects the split within the larger Republican Party politically." The Reagan coalition is beginning to fray as the world turns, time passes, new issues arise. …. "He wrote the nastiest thing I have read in any Supreme Court opinion," says Charles Fried, who served as the government's chief advocate in the Supreme Court during the Reagan administration. Dellinger, who had the same job in the Clinton Administration, agrees. "I've never seen that kind of really, deeply personal attack that basically says 'The author of the opinion is not just wrong as a matter of law, he's a jerk,' " says Dellinger.… He says that Kennedy should have focused on legal precedents instead of poetic passages. In particular, the court's 1967 decision striking down state bans on interracial marriage, and two more recent decisions dealing with same-sex relations and marriage. Those three court precedents dictated the result, Fried maintains, adding, "That is the law. Suck it up!"

Rarely have I seen such lively and passionate discussion by judges, nor reporting by this writer. The thing I saw in this report is that the Tea Party and the Dominionists and that whole FOX News Crew have gone so far out on a limb that their prior suitors aren’t able to back them up now. The article also said, “The decision did something else important. It sided with the liberal view that legislation should be interpreted in terms of its overall purpose and not by flyspecking a phrase here and there. And it said that the judiciary, not executive agencies, has the last word on such interpretations.” In other words nit picking and convoluted analysis did not win the day. “Legislation should be interpreted in terms of its overall purpose” – in other words with honest attempts to do what is right. Rather than being a war, it’s a Judgment with the Lady Justice being open to the most fair viewpoint. “Roberts has not always demonstrated such a hands-off or deferential approach. He wrote the 2013 decision striking down the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, a law Congress had enacted and re-enacted by overwhelming votes. And he has repeatedly joined and written decisions striking down most of the laws that regulate money in election campaigns.”

"There are liberal terms, there are conservative terms, and it largely depends upon what the case mix is," observes Stanford Law professor Michael McConnell. Indeed, next term the court has accepted a mix in the heartland of a conservative legal agenda — cases that seek to overturn or cut back past Supreme Court rulings on abortion, affirmative action and labor union rights.” So we liberals had better not crow too loudly, because the level of inevitable conflict between the sides will ensure that future years will not all work out so well. Personally, I would like to see Obama get at least one more chance to make a Supreme Court nomination before he goes out of office. The good news to me is that the liberals who are on the court are willing to fight for equitable justice, for instance I want to see the labor laws liberalized to the point that workers can freely set up unions in their company without being fired and unions will not be limited to a company specific approach. The fast food workers who have joined unions over the last couple of years didn’t have a company base, but an occupational base, and those strikers were not just limited to McDonald’s, but to a number of the fast food chains. We need to get back to the much more powerful unions of the early part of the 1900s. A union was able to close a business down in a number of cases then.





http://www.theskytimes.com/2015/07/neo-nazis-try-to-hold-rally-in-london.html

Neo-Nazis try to hold rally in London, about five people turn up
NEWS
July 5, 2015

A group of Neo-Nazis were demoralized after a few people turn up for their rally in UK's capital.

About a handful of people turned up were utterly drowned out by a counter-demonstration of anti-racists.

A bitter row broke out at the rally Friday in Golders Green, north London. Under the slogan “Golders Green Together,” the rally was called to demonstrate opposition to a proposed neo-Nazi gathering that had been planned for the neighborhood, which is nicknamed London’s “Jewish heart.” But the display of Israeli flags at the largely good-natured event proved divisive.

Earlier this week, London’s Metropolitan Police announced that it had relocated the neo-Nazi rally to a secure area in Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, where the demonstrators will be confined to a one-hour slot on Saturday before being made to disperse.

In preparation for the anticipated neo-Nazi invasion, however, mainstream Jewish opponents, including the umbrella organization the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the London Jewish Forum, and the pluralistic anti-fascist group HOPE Not Hate, had banded together in Golders Green to declare a “Day of Action” on Friday.

A variety of faith communities in the area had lent their support to the Day of Action, and organizers decided it would go ahead despite the relocation of the far-right action.

On Friday morning two women appeared at the event carrying a huge Israeli flag and proceeded to decorate parts of the Golders Green war memorial, where the rally was being held, in Israeli bunting and pennants.

The women, Sharon Klaff and Amber Shetreet, claimed to represent five grassroots organizations which monitor anti-Semitism. They denounced the Board of Deputies for what they called its “kumbaya” cooperation with HOPE Not Hate, which they insisted is virulently anti-Israel. (Gemma Levine, HOPE Not Hate’s deputy director, emphatically denied this claim.)

Although the women attempted to broadcast their ideas through a megaphone during the morning’s event, for the most part the other participants, busy draping lamp posts and flower troughs in the Golders Green campaign colors of gold and green, did not interact with them.

But a furious Israeli businessman, Eyal Landau, was not ready to ignore them. Despite angry protests from Klaff and Shetreet, Landau accused them of “disrespecting” the Israeli flag.

“People died for that flag,” he proclaimed, as he went around the war memorial taking down the women’s flags. “You have no right to use this flag here,” Landau told the women. “You are doing great damage. This event is not about Israel, it is about anti-Semitism. Enough is enough.”

As Landau told the women he was reporting them to the Israeli embassy for misusing the flag, the women, in their turn, said he had no right to lay hands on their property.




“In preparation for the anticipated neo-Nazi invasion, however, mainstream Jewish opponents, including the umbrella organization the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the London Jewish Forum, and the pluralistic anti-fascist group HOPE Not Hate, had banded together in Golders Green to declare a “Day of Action” on Friday. A variety of faith communities in the area had lent their support to the Day of Action, and organizers decided it would go ahead despite the relocation of the far-right action. …. The women, Sharon Klaff and Amber Shetreet, claimed to represent five grassroots organizations which monitor anti-Semitism. They denounced the Board of Deputies for what they called its “kumbaya” cooperation with HOPE Not Hate, which they insisted is virulently anti-Israel. (Gemma Levine, HOPE Not Hate’s deputy director, emphatically denied this claim.) …. But a furious Israeli businessman, Eyal Landau, was not ready to ignore them. Despite angry protests from Klaff and Shetreet, Landau accused them of “disrespecting” the Israeli flag. “People died for that flag,” he proclaimed, as he went around the war memorial taking down the women’s flags. “You have no right to use this flag here,” Landau told the women. “You are doing great damage. This event is not about Israel, it is about anti-Semitism. Enough is enough.”

“A group of Neo-Nazis were demoralized after a few people turn up for their rally in UK's capital. About a handful of people turned up were utterly drowned out by a counter-demonstration of anti-racists.” The lack of Neo-Nazis at the rally may have been partly because the police moved it from its original location, and some perhaps didn’t know where to go. The best view of the situation, however, would be that there are only a few people of that persuasion in London. I think in some of the more rural or blue collar areas there are some, though, according to a couple of articles several months ago along with the generally conservative trend of the times. The rise of rightwing feeling in Europe as a whole, including the UK, has been in the news for quite a while now.

No matter why so few Nazi sympathizers showed up, what is most encouraging is the sturdy and staunch backing of ethnic and religious inclusiveness at this rally. It’s interesting that the Israeli flag caused consternation, though an article on the rising conflict four or five months ago did state that dissatisfaction with the political actions of Israel against the Palestinians is resented by many in Europe. That makes sense to me, because I too have been angry at the purposeful colonization of Palestinian territory at the hands of Israel, with the goal of establishing a physical foothold there and preventing a real peace plan from being acceptable to both sides. The Palestinians haven’t been so virtuous, either, of course. It’s a good thing that there were apparently no Palestinian or other Islamic demonstrators there.






http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-using-facial-recognition-privacy-concerns/

FBI using facial recognition despite privacy concerns
By MICHAEL CASEY CBS NEWS
July 6, 2015

Photograph -- The FBI is hoping that a new program that includes facial recognition software could make it easier to catch criminals, such as the 10 most-wanted fugitives (shown above), by matching their mug shots with photos submitted by police departments. FBI

For 19 years, Lynn Cozart eluded authorities after being convicted of sexually assaulting his three children.

He failed to show up for his sentencing hearing and seemed to drop off the map. So in a desperate bid to track down the Pennsylvania native, an FBI agent submitted Cozart's mug shot to the agency's newly created Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which among other things uses facial recognition software to identify suspects.

Facial recognition software captures an image of an individual's face from a photo or video and identifies him or her by matching the picture with one on a database of faces.

After Cozart's arrest photo was sent out to several state agencies, Arkansas' motor vehicle department came back last month with a match from their collection of driver's license photos. The convicted child molester was then tracked down to Oklahoma, where he was found working at a Walmart under an assumed named and subsequently arrested.

"You take a case that had a 19 year gap, or the guy was on the run for 19 years," said Stephen L. Morris, the assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, which includes NGI.

"Technology did result in the identification of that guy because it happened to provide them a lead they were able to run down in Oklahoma," he told CBS News. "When the task force in Oklahoma started running it down, they were able to verify the individual under a different name was one in the same as the individual working in Walmart."

The NGI system is the FBI's ambitious effort to bring its databases of tens of million mug shots, fingerprints and other data on criminals into the 21st century.

The system, which was designed by Lockheed Martin at a reported cost of $1 billion and went live in September, allows police departments around the country to submit photos of all sorts and videos and get a response back in two hours based on the facial recognition technology. And as the Cozart case shows, the FBI can go well beyond that database to access photos kept with a range of state and federal agencies - including the State Department, which keeps a vast array of passport and visa photos.

The NGI system contains nearly 125 million criminal and civilian fingerprints and 24 million mug shots. As the technology matures, the FBI said it has the capability to analyze everything from a suspect's scars and tattoos to their voices to their eyes - remember the iris scanners in the movie "Minority Report."

The expanded reach of the system has alarmed some privacy advocates, who fear the power of the technology could lead to abuses like mass surveillance or tracking innocent people.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which describes itself as defending your rights in the digital world, sued the FBI in 2013 to "shine light on the program and its face-recognition components."

"NGI will result in a massive expansion of government data collection for both criminal and noncriminal purposes," EFF Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch, who testified before the U.S. Senate on the privacy implications of facial recognition technology in 2012, said in a statement last year. "Biometrics programs present critical threats to civil liberties and privacy. Face-recognition technology is among the most alarming new developments, because Americans cannot easily take precautions against the covert, remote, and mass capture of their images."

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told CBS News he also saw potential risks with the system given the lack of adequate privacy safeguards and growing power of national security agencies since the 9-11 terror attacks.

"Nobody has any objection to the FBI identifying an unknown perpetrator caught on a video and catching that person if they committed a crime," Stanley said.

"But compared to fingerprints, facial recognition as a biometric is very susceptible to abuse because it can be applied to a person without their knowledge, let alone their permission or participation," he said. "There is a lot of potential for facial recognition databases to be applied for mass surveillance, for identifying people in a context where they don't expect or want to be identified."

Morris downplayed those concerns and said the system was simply a faster way of doing what has been done since "law enforcement was a profession" in terms of collecting and storing information.

He also said they were only "leveraging technology" that many people already come in contact with on a daily basis. Facebook and other social networking sites rely on facial recognition technology and it is increasingly being deployed for marketing and security purposes by malls, casinos and even churches.


7 PHOTOS
7 surprising ways facial recognition is used
"Taxpayers and U.S. citizens have an expectation that we will try to leverage modern day technology to make our processes more efficient and that is essentially what we have done," Morris said.

"We are using a technology that is widely available to help us do our job," he continued. "Rather than us looking through 24 million photographs to find our subject, we have automated that process and we are leveraging our technology to help us narrow down those suspects."

Morris insisted the searches were not violating anyone's privacy and that there were several safeguards in place to ensure abuses didn't occur.

Searches return several potential matches - from two to as many as 50 - to eliminate the risk of false positives and any match must be followed up by traditional detective work that rules out certain candidates and finds the right match.

"We don't make positive identification. The technology is just not there yet to say it is reliable to make a positive identification like you would have with fingerprints," he said. "We have to be absolutely certain who we think we have in the photo. It's more than just hunch or more than just a guess. We have to make a calculated guess and that is why these responses go back as candidates."

Morris also said there were also limits on how the system could be used, noting that the request has to be made from somewhere like a police station, since any gallery returned has to be examined by a facial recognition specialist before a match can be confirmed.

"Clearly, that is not going to happen on the side of the street. It's not going to happen in sub-minute time frames," he said. "There is investigative work that has to be done when the agency gets its results back."

Michigan State University's Amil Jain, who specializes in pattern recognition, computer vision and biometric recognition, said the the technology has advanced to the point where the numbers of false negatives and false positives have dropped dramatically.

But he also warned there were still significant limits to the technology - especially when a person's face is covered. Facebook has figured that one out - note their algorithm that can identify a person from the clothes they wear and their hair styles - but it has yet to migrate to law enforcement.


Play VIDEO
Facial recognition a new tool for tightening border security
To demonstrate this, Jain and several colleagues showed that face recognition could have been deployed to identify one of the Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but not his older brother, Tamerlan, because sunglasses shielded his face. In a subsequent study, Jain and his co-authors showed that when a sketch artist drew a composite of the older brother's face based on video frames, researchers were only able to narrow the choices down to the top 100 best-matching images from a database of 1 million.

His message: Don't expect the technology to replace good old fashioned police work anytime soon.

"Over the last 20 years, facial recognition technology has improved significantly to the point that mug shot photos can be easily matched with other mug shot photos," he said. "But if the amount of the face visible is very small, there is no hope for facial recognition. Then, we have to rely on other information. If there scar on cheek or tattoo on arm or neck those things start playing an important role."




"He failed to show up for his sentencing hearing and seemed to drop off the map. So in a desperate bid to track down the Pennsylvania native, an FBI agent submitted Cozart's mug shot to the agency's newly created Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which among other things uses facial recognition software to identify suspects. Facial recognition software captures an image of an individual's face from a photo or video and identifies him or her by matching the picture with one on a database of faces. After Cozart's arrest photo was sent out to several state agencies, Arkansas' motor vehicle department came back last month with a match from their collection of driver's license photos. The convicted child molester was then tracked down to Oklahoma, where he was found working at a Walmart under an assumed named and subsequently arrested. …. The NGI system is the FBI's ambitious effort to bring its databases of tens of million mug shots, fingerprints and other data on criminals into the 21st century. The system, which was designed by Lockheed Martin at a reported cost of $1 billion and went live in September, allows police departments around the country to submit photos of all sorts and videos and get a response back in two hours based on the facial recognition technology. And as the Cozart case shows, the FBI can go well beyond that database to access photos kept with a range of state and federal agencies - including the State Department, which keeps a vast array of passport and visa photos. …. The expanded reach of the system has alarmed some privacy advocates, who fear the power of the technology could lead to abuses like mass surveillance or tracking innocent people. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which describes itself as defending your rights in the digital world, sued the FBI in 2013 to "shine light on the program and its face-recognition components." …. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told CBS News he also saw potential risks with the system given the lack of adequate privacy safeguards and growing power of national security agencies since the 9-11 terror attacks. "Nobody has any objection to the FBI identifying an unknown perpetrator caught on a video and catching that person if they committed a crime," Stanley said. "But compared to fingerprints, facial recognition as a biometric is very susceptible to abuse because it can be applied to a person without their knowledge, let alone their permission or participation," he said. "There is a lot of potential for facial recognition databases to be applied for mass surveillance, for identifying people in a context where they don't expect or want to be identified."

There is no doubt that this is a superior technology to our crime fighting tools in the past. The thought of all those millions of fingerprints, facial shots, glimpses in a potentially compromising crowd setting, etc. makes me want to go back to my young years when everything was so much quieter and simpler. However, the minute the computer was invented and developed, everything changed in the world. I just hope that we the people here in the USA can keep evil forces from infiltrating our government so that a powerful tool like this one simply will not be used to subjugate good citizens who happen to have a different political or religious viewpoint. I also hope that I can maintain a basic simple faith in myself and others so that I will be serene and hopeful until the day I die. One way to do that is to see that I don’t think too much about the dangers of modern society, and accept the potential for good in the situation. After all, I do want bad people, and there are plenty of them out there, to be constrained from preventing good people from living a prosperous and productive life. I also plan to continue going to my Unitarian Universalist Church where I can always find gentle and almost exclusively liberal people who believe in helping the disadvantaged and simply being hopeful and useful. “Tis a gift to be simple” could become my theme.





GREECE UPDATE – TWO ARTICLES


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-greece-headed-for-eurozone-exit/

Is Greece headed for eurozone exit?
MONEYWATCH
July 6, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Greek voters send shockwaves through Europe with "no" vote

Greeks have had enough.

Battered by more than five years of "austerity" measures that have deepened the country's economic woes, voters in Greece on Sunday forcefully rejected the latest bailout offer from the country's creditors (a bailout that had technically already been withdrawn, it's worth noting).

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who campaigned against the rescue package after his left-wing Syriza party was swept into office in April on a tide of public dissent over the government spending cuts and tax hikes, described the vote as a "victory of democracy."

As Tsipras no doubt understands, though, democracy is messy. While Greek voters resoundingly said "no" to austerity, polls also show overwhelming support for remaining within the eurozone. Those goals may be incompatible, given European leaders' dislike for Tsipras and resistance within the trading bloc to negotiating another bailout.

As a result, Greece is now considerably closer to exiting the eurozone. A "Grexit," as it is called, would make Greece the first state to leave the 19-member currency union since the euro was formally created in 1999. That would cause domestic economic chaos in the short-term and, more worryingly for Europe, raise fundamental questions about the viability of the eurozone.

The immediate question: How will the European Union, which under the stewardship of German Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted on austerity for Greece, respond now?

"Syriza's gamble that a 'no' will force EU leaders to 'respect' Greek democracy is a bold one," said Claus Vistesen chief eurozone economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note. "If the German government considers its mandate to stand firm, a Grexit is the only option we can see with Syriza at the helm in Athens."

If Greeks have had enough of Europe, in short, they are about to learn whether Europe has had enough of them. -- Alain Sherter

Labor force dropouts -- American economic matters only discussed here. See below for more on Greece.




http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/07/06/420482010/latest-on-greek-crisis-finance-minister-resigns-as-eu-leaders-meet
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-greece-headed-for-eurozone-exit/

Latest On Greek Crisis: Finance Minister Resigns, As EU Leaders Meet
Eyder Peralta
July 6, 2015

Photograph -- People read newspaper headlines showing the results of Greece's referendum, in Athens on Monday.
Louisa Gouliamaki /AFP/Getty Images

Greece and its European Union partners are beginning to sort out what's next after the country voted en masse to reject a German-led bailout plan that would have given the country more credit to pay its debt in exchange for tough austerity measures.

As The New York Times reports, now that the vote is in, the hard part begins. Using the vote as leverage, Greece will try to renegotiate more favorable terms for its bailout, but its European partners could insist on tough terms, which could ultimately result in Greece's exit from the European Union.

Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem called the vote "regrettable for the future of Greece," and he called an emergency meeting on Tuesday. CNBC reports that EU leaders expect Greece to put forth a new proposal soon.

Meanwhile, the vote had its first concrete consequence on Monday when Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis resigned.

In a statement, Varoufakis said he expects his resignation will help Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras negotiate better terms for his country.

"Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my... 'absence' from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement," Varoufakis said. "For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today."

Varoufakis went on to call the vote "splendid" and the "historic" moment in which Greece "rose up against debt bondage."

"I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride," he said.

We'll follow the news on Greece throughout the day, and we'll update this post as we hear more.

Update at 9:06 a.m. ET. Vote 'Widens Gap':

During a press conference today, European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said while they respect the "democratic choice of the Greek people," the no vote "widens the gap between Greece and Eurozone countries."

"There is no easy way out of this crisis," Dombrovskis said. "Too much time and too many opportunities have been lost."

Dombrovskis explained that the European Commission cannot negotiate new terms with Greece without a mandate from eurogroup countries. He also said that no matter what happens with Greece, the eurozone is not in danger.

He concluded: "One thing is clear: the place of Greece is, and remains, in Europe. To solve this very difficult situation all sides need to work together responsibly for the sake of Greek people."





CBS NEWS -- “Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who campaigned against the rescue package after his left-wing Syriza party was swept into office in April on a tide of public dissent over the government spending cuts and tax hikes, described the vote as a "victory of democracy." As Tsipras no doubt understands, though, democracy is messy. While Greek voters resoundingly said "no" to austerity, polls also show overwhelming support for remaining within the eurozone. Those goals may be incompatible, given European leaders' dislike for Tsipras and resistance within the trading bloc to negotiating another bailout. …. "Syriza's gamble that a 'no' will force EU leaders to 'respect' Greek democracy is a bold one," said Claus Vistesen chief eurozone economist with Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note. "If the German government considers its mandate to stand firm, a Grexit is the only option we can see with Syriza at the helm in Athens." .…

NPR NEWS -- As The New York Times reports, now that the vote is in, the hard part begins. Using the vote as leverage, Greece will try to renegotiate more favorable terms for its bailout, but its European partners could insist on tough terms, which could ultimately result in Greece's exit from the European Union. Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem called the vote "regrettable for the future of Greece," and he called an emergency meeting on Tuesday. CNBC reports that EU leaders expect Greece to put forth a new proposal soon. …. In a statement, Varoufakis said he expects his resignation will help Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras negotiate better terms for his country. "Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted 'partners', for my... 'absence' from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement," Varoufakis said. "For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today." …. Varoufakis went on to call the vote "splendid" and the "historic" moment in which Greece "rose up against debt bondage." "I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride," he said. We'll follow the news on Greece throughout the day, and we'll update this post as we hear more. …. Dombrovskis explained that the European Commission cannot negotiate new terms with Greece without a mandate from eurogroup countries. He also said that no matter what happens with Greece, the eurozone is not in danger. He concluded: "One thing is clear: the place of Greece is, and remains, in Europe. To solve this very difficult situation all sides need to work together responsibly for the sake of Greek people."

Greece was been the center of Mediterranean civilization, and closely linked with the even older first agricultural development and civilizations in the Middle East. The classical ruins and a large number of prehistoric art sites, such as chamber tombs, goes back even farther. Unfortunately that whole area has declined in economic and cultural terms. It is the one place that I would like to go to see if I ever win the Lotto, however, as I connect those ruins with Homer’s (probably partly factual) poems and with what we now call the Holy Land. The Philistines, according to an article I read, were perhaps the so-called “sea peoples” traveling up and down the Mediterranean from the Grecian Island of Cyprus. Their art, according to that article, was extremely beautiful and elegant. They were traders and conquerors. They were the original known democracy, and had a highly developed educational, scientific and intellectual life. Because of these things, I am hoping that Greece does not implode economically and culturally, and that Europe remains intact.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bike-riding-raccoon-goes-for-a-spin-on-the-feed/

Bike-riding raccoon goes for a spin, on The Feed!
By NICHOLAS DIETZ CBS NEWS
July 6, 2015

Two charming pet videos -- Take a look at them both.

Some of the latest and greatest viral videos include Melanie Raccoon showing off her cycling skills and a pit bull caught jumping on the bed.

First up, meet Melanie Raccoon. Its owner calls it the "world's most talented animal," and she may have a point. In addition to these YouTube videos of Melanie riding a bike, the raccoon has its own Instagram page. There you'll find a slew of impressive videos, featuring Melanie doing everything from sweeping the floor to closing the toilet lid and flushing.

And, the two siblings in this video from GIL ABRAMOV are well-acquainted with how great it is to jump on the bed. So, they decide to bring their dog Loco in on the fun. It doesn't take long before the pit bull gets a little extra spring in its step.

Want more of The Feed? Check out this playlist of every Feed ever!





http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/07/06/420507499/industry-payments-to-nurses-go-unreported-in-federal-database

Industry Payments To Nurses Go Unreported In Federal Database
Charles Ornstein
JULY 06, 2015

Photograph -- Following the money trail is pretty easy with doctors, but nurses are another story.
Adrianna Williams/Getty Images

A nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty in June to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company in exchange for prescribing its high-priced drug to treat cancer pain. In some cases, she delivered promotional talks attended only by herself and a company sales representative.

But when the federal government released data Tuesday on payments by drug and device companies to doctors and teaching hospitals, the payments to nurse practitioner Heather Alfonso, 42, were nowhere to be found.

That's because the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act doesn't require companies to publicly report payments to nurse practitioners or physician assistants, even though they are allowed to write prescriptions in most states.

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are playing an ever-larger role in the health care system. While registered and licensed practice nurses are not authorized to write prescriptions, those with additional training and advanced degrees often can.

A ProPublica analysis of prescribing patterns in Medicare's prescription drug program, known as Part D, shows that these two groups of providers wrote about 10 percent of the nearly 1.4 billion prescriptions in the program in 2013. They wrote 15 percent of all prescriptions nationwide (not only Medicare) in the first five months of the year, according to IMS Health, a health information company.

For some drugs, including narcotic controlled substances, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are among the top prescribers.

"Nurse practitioners see patients, order tests, recommend procedures and prescribe medications," Dr. Walid Gellad, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and co-director of its Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing, wrote in an email. "It seems straightforward to think that their relationships with the pharmaceutical and device industries are of as much relevance as physicians, dentists, chiropractors, etc."

He added, "If the purpose of the act is to shine a light on the relationship between industry and the health care sector, then you've left out an important component of that sector."

When the Sunshine Act was drafted, those involved say, nurse practitioners weren't part of the discussion. "Physician groups were among the stakeholders who were very engaged," said Allan Coukell, senior director for health programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts. "Nursing groups weren't part of the policy discussions and weren't ultimately covered by the law."

Still, Coukell said, "to the extent that a lot of prescribing now is done by health professionals who aren't physicians, and a lot of marketing is directed at them, they ideally should also be part of the disclosure."

Asked whether payments to these providers should be reported, a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages the disclosure system, said: "Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are currently not covered recipients under the statute for Open Payments."

A representative of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry trade group, declined comment.

Although payments to nurse practitioners are not required to be reported under the law, a handful of companies did so anyway. Of the 606,000 providers who received payments in 2014, several hundred self-identified as nurse practitioners or physician assistants. The rest were doctors, dentists, optometrists, podiatrists and chiropractors. (Some of the self-identified nurse practitioners and physician assistants actually appear to be doctors, but have misclassified themselves.)

Alfonso was employed as an advanced-practice nurse at Comprehensive Pain and Headache Treatment Center in Derby, Conn. An investigation revealed that she was a heavy prescriber of Subsys, an expensive drug used to treat cancer pain, the U.S. Attorney's Office for Connecticut said. Between January 2013 and March 2015, she wrote more than $1 million in Subsys prescriptions to Medicare patients alone, more than any other prescriber in Connecticut, prosecutors alleged.

"Interviews with several of Alfonso's patients, who are Medicare Part D beneficiaries and who were prescribed the drug, revealed that most of them did not have cancer, but were taking the drug to treat their chronic pain," the U.S. attorney's office said in a press release.

Prosecutors said Alfonso was paid as a promotional speaker by Subsys' maker, Insys Therapeutics Inc., for more than 70 dinner programs at a rate of about $1,000 per event. "In many instances, the dinner programs were only attended by Alfonso and a sales representative for the drug manufacturer," the U.S. attorney said in the release. "In other instances, the programs were attended by individuals, including office staff and friends, who did not have licenses to prescribe controlled substances. For the majority of these dinner programs, Alfonso did not give any kind of presentation about the drug at all."

The charge against Alfonso carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing is scheduled for September.

Alfonso could not be reached for comment and her attorney has not returned a phone call. A phone call to Insys was also not returned, though the company said in a statement to The New York Times that it was committed to promoting Subsys "lawfully and appropriately."

A ProPublica report last year identified Alfonso as among the top 20 prescribers nationally of the most-potent controlled substances within Medicare's Part D program in 2012. At the time, we noted that she had been reprimanded and fined by the Connecticut health department in July 2014 for allegedly failing to examine a patient before prescribing/refilling narcotics.

Elissa Ladd, an associate professor of nursing at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston, surveyed 263 nurse practitioners several years ago about their interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. Her survey, published in 2010 in the American Journal of Managed Care, found that nearly all had regular contact with drug company sales representatives. Nine in 10 believed that it was acceptable to attend lunch and dinner events sponsored by the industry.

Ladd said she supports mandatory disclosure of payments for nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

"Nurse practitioners think that they're somewhat immune to this but I think that we're no different than any other provider," she said. "If nurse practitioners were reported on, I think that would be a huge concern for them. I don't think they want to be perceived in a negative light."

Look up your doctor in our Dollars for Docs interactive database to see if he or she has received payments from drug or device companies in 2013-2014. Also read our story about doctors who had the most interactions with industry.




“A nurse practitioner in Connecticut pleaded guilty in June to taking $83,000 in kickbacks from a drug company in exchange for prescribing its high-priced drug to treat cancer pain. In some cases, she delivered promotional talks attended only by herself and a company sales representative. But when the federal government released data Tuesday on payments by drug and device companies to doctors and teaching hospitals, the payments to nurse practitioner Heather Alfonso, 42, were nowhere to be found. That's because the federal Physician Payment Sunshine Act doesn't require companies to publicly report payments to nurse practitioners or physician assistants, even though they are allowed to write prescriptions in most states.”

This is a long article with lots of detail about this, but it is simply clear to me that we need to rewrite all appropriate laws and root out the unethical exchange of money from drug and equipment suppliers to all medical care professionals. It is corrupt, biases the decisions of those providers as to which drug they will chose to give their patient, and drives up medical costs. Bummer!!