Stuart G
Stuart G's JournalIowa GOP Polk County Chairman Resigns.- Says " Party is Headed in Wrong Direction"
Source: Talking Points Memo
Catherine Thompson - 2:34 PM EDT, Tuesday August 20, 2013
The co-chairman of Iowa's Polk County Republican Party has stepped down and registered as an Independent, writing in a resignation letter that the GOP is "headed in the wrong direction," the Des Moines Register reported Tuesday.
Chad Brown told the newspaper he resigned his post on Aug. 5. Brown cited Rep. Steve King's (R-IA) recent comments comparing undocumented immigrants to drug mules as an example of his disagreement with the party, along with its positions on gun control and climate change.
From Brown's resignation letter, as quoted by the Register:
"In 2012, the Polk GOP lost Polk County by over 32,000 votes. Until 2002, Republicans were elected to the State House from Des Moines. In 2012, Republicans lost 2 State House seats in suburban, Republican-leaning districts and came two dozen votes from losing a third. Facts are stubborn things. I think we are now headed in the wrong direction on several fronts and regretfully must step aside.
It’s my opinion that rather than fix the problems that led to such a massive 2012 defeat, the GOP does not seem to seriously want to fix the issues. I think helping a dysfunctional Party that does not want to address its problems is enabling. I do not believe in enabling. I debated this for weeks and am certain this is the only course."
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/iowa-gop-county-chairman-resigns-says-party-headed
Although this happened two weeks ago, it is being reported now. Nothing on this resignation on the internet before today.
Don't Use Dallas Compounding Pharmacy Products..FDA Warns : NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/dont-use-dallas-compounding-pharmacy-products-fda-warns-6C10937607Maggie Fox , NBC News
Aug. 16, 2013 at 6:24 PM ET
The Food and Drug Administration took an unusual step on Friday, warning patients and health care providers to stay away from sterile products made by a Dallas-based compounding pharmacy called NuVision.
It’s a new twist in an ongoing fight the FDA has had with compounding pharmacies, which are supposed to make individual products to order on a prescription-by-prescription basis. The FDA says these companies often act as large-scale manufacturers, but evade FDA oversight because of glitches in the law.
The FDA says its inspections show the sterility of products made by NuVision cannot be guaranteed, but the pharmacy says it doesn’t have to meet FDA standards.
The FDA forced a showdown in a battle that almost perfectly illustrates the agency’s complaints that it doesn’t have the powers it needs to regulate such pharmacies.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This story suggests that FDA may have some power that it claims it does not have. Further down, it tells that hundreds of people
were infected as a result of a similar situation with a New England company. Sad indeed that the FDA cannot stop these crooks....
I don' ever recall reading about this from that story:...
.....
"FDA has redoubled efforts to check on compounding pharmacies after an outbreak of fungal infections linked to a single Massachusetts pharmacy last year killed 63 people. So far, 749 people in 20 states have been sickened in that outbreak, the worst cases with meningitis or stroke, with some local abscesses and similar infections as well."....
You would think that some company that "killed 63 people" would get huge nation wide coverage. I don't remember a word..
Here is a link from Boston.com..but this appears to be somewhat obscure..(also there is no date to this article..although comments on it seem to be from last February..:
http://www.boston.com/whitecoatnotes/2013/02/05/just-massachusetts-compounding-pharmacies-passed-surprise-health-inspections/zFT7FKklNPfj6EdW4tYu1L/story.html
Joke: Little Johnny in the Science class
Little Johnny watched the science teacher start the experiment with
the worms. Four worms were placed into four separate jars.
The first worm was put into a jar of alcohol. The second worm was
put into a jar of cigarette smoke. The third worm was put into a jar
of sperm. The fourth worm was put into a jar of soil.
After one day, these were the results:
The first worm in alcohol - dead.
Second worm in cigarette smoke - dead.
Third worm in sperm - dead.
Fourth worm in soil - alive.
So the Science teacher asked the class, "What can you learn from
this experiment?."
Little Johnny quickly raised his hand and said "As long as you
drink, smoke and have sex, you won't have worms."
More Disabled Workers Earn Just Pennies An Hour: NBC News
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/10/19916979-more-disabled-workers-paid-just-pennies-an-hourBy Anna Schecter, Monica Alba and Mark Schone
NBC News
A national charity whose executives earn six-figure salaries used a legal loophole to pay disabled workers as little as three and four cents an hour, according to documents obtained exclusively by NBC News.
An NBC News investigation recently revealed that Goodwill Industries, which is among the non-profit groups permitted to pay disabled workers far less than minimum wage because of a federal law known as Section 14 (c), had paid workers as little as 22 cents an hour.
Now newly obtained federal documents show that at least 13 Goodwill franchises in 10 states paid 140 workers even less.
According to Department of Labor filings acquired via the Freedom of Information Act, two Goodwill franchises in Fort Worth, Texas paid 51 employees less than 10 cents an hour in 2011, with 14 earning just four cents an hour for tasks described as “assembly.”
Franchises in Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Virginia also paid employees 21 cents or less between 2008 and 2011, according to the documents. One franchise in Fairfield, Ohio paid a worker just three cents an hour for hanging clothes in 2008.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sometimes, when you think the news cannot get more disgusting, it does. This story was around last June, but evidently this is an update, from yesterday, with more information. The story lists of states that have Goodwill franchise that pay a few cents per hour. So not all of them do this. At least this is what the story implies. Who knows?
Fed Up Consumers..Email Bomb Execs, Get Results..NBC News
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/fed-consumers-email-bomb-execs-get-results-6C10867946Ben Popken, NBC News
4 hours ago
If you find yourself at war with a company's customer service department, you might consider aiming higher.
Disappointed consumers are finding success using a technique called the "EECB" or "executive email carpet bomb," emailing their complaints directly to a company's top executives. The novel approach often times gets results, and is changing how companies do business.
Late last year, Jesse Harris' newborn son suffered from constant diarrhea and vomiting, apparently due to the type of formula he was eating. The solution was a special, more expensive hypoallergenic formula. United Healthcare had initially agreed to cover the roughly $2,000 in costs, but every time Harris submitted the claim they asked for another piece of information. "I kept getting bounced from person to person," said the 32-year-old from Sandy, Utah. "There didn't seem to be any kind of case ownership."
After going back and forth a dozen times, he emailed the top executives. Within four days the company agreed to reimburse the formula.
Divided We Fall: Krugman October 2010..Boy, did he hit it on the head.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?_r=2&src=me&ref=homepage&October 28, 2010,
Paul Krugman
Barring a huge upset, Republicans will take control of at least one house of Congress next week. How worried should we be by that prospect?
Not very, say some pundits. After all, the last time Republicans controlled Congress while a Democrat lived in the White House was the period from the beginning of 1995 to the end of 2000. And people remember that era as a good time, a time of rapid job creation and responsible budgets. Can we hope for a similar experience now?
No, we can’t. This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness.
U.S. Forest Service. Very recent cam shot. few min ago.. of Montana Mountains..enjoy
http://www.fsvisimages.com/fstemplate.aspx?site=GAMO1It is near Helena Montana...The pictures are updated every 15 minutes...remember mountain time.
Bachmann's Leadership PAC Spends 145 Times on Legal Fees As It Spends On Candidates: Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/08/02/2405581/michele-bachmanns-leadership-pac/By Josh Israel on August 2, 2013 at 11:49 am
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who announced in May that she would not seek re-election, operates a PAC with the stated aim of helping to elect other conservatives nationally. But while her “leadership PAC” spent more than $250,000 in the first half of 2013, just $400 of that went to supporting other political candidates — the lowest percentage of any such committee of its size.
In 2010, Bachmann registered the Many Individual Conservatives Helping Elect Leaders Everywhere political action committee (MICHELE PAC) with the Federal Election Commission. In 2012, the PAC raised more than $1.2 million from supporters. More than $100,000 of that went to conservative Republican candidates for U.S. House and Senate. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is reportedly investigating whether some of the money was also improperly spent to pay the national political director of her unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign.
But a Think Progress analysis of campaign finance data reveals that, so far this year, the PAC has done almost nothing that would qualify as “political action.” Between January 1 and June 30, the committee reported raising nearly $300,000 and has spent more than $250,000. Of that, just 0.16 percent — a $400 contribution to a former staffer running for Mahaska County Supervisor in Oskaloosa, Iowa — went to the PAC’s alleged purpose of “helping elect leaders everywhere.”
Where did the rest of the money go? More than $58,000 went to legal fees — unsurprising given the legal imbroglio, but hardly helpful to her political cause. About $170,000 went to telemarketing, direct mailing, list rental, credit card fees, and other expenses associated with fundraising. The rest went to accounting and other overhead.
Spain Train Crash Driver Francisco Jose Garzon Amo Ignored 3 Signals To Slow Down
Source: Huffington Post, AP
MADRID -- The driver of a Spanish train that derailed, killing 79 people, ignored three warnings to reduce speed in the two minutes before the train hurtled off the tracks on a treacherous curve, crash investigators said Friday.
A court statement said the driver was talking on the phone to a colleague when he received the first automatic warning in his cabin of a sharply reduced speed zone ahead. The statement said the warning was by means of an audible sound but provided no further detail.
Police forensic tests on the train's black box data recorders showed the last warning came just 250 meters (yards) before a dangerous curve where the accident occurred last week in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/spain-train-driver-ignored-signals_n_3696053.html
Probably drunk, high, or whatever.. Not one, but 3 signals....A commuter train driver in LA, missed two red lites...he was texting and killed 25 people. .he was killed too...Hard to do..miss three signals..Like going thru 3 red lites on a street that ends at a cliff. with a red lite at the cliff..and you still go thru it...Oh..you don't believe it..about that crash..here is a link..read it yourself..the fellow driving was texting..
Chatsworth train collision...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chatsworth_train_collision
Tony Bennett Florida Education Commisioner Resigns Over Indiana Scandal
Source: Huffington Post
Less s than eight months after starting his job, Florida's education commissioner Tony Bennett is expected to resign Thursday, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
Bennett, who previously served as Indiana's education chief, has faced increasing pressure to step down since the Associated Press published emails on Monday showing that he quietly changed Indiana's school grading formula. The emails show that the formula change happened when Christel House Academy, a charter school backed by influential Republican donors, received a low grade under the original formula.
Since the AP story was published, Bennett has defended himself by saying that the grading formula unfairly dinged Christel House and some other schools for not having traditional grade structures. Christel House didn't offer classes to high school juniors and seniors, he said, so "the data for grades 11 and 12 came in as zero," Bennett said.
But an analysis by New America Foundation's education expert Anne Hyslop claims that Bennett's defense "doesn't add up." "In truth, Christel House was never evaluated on its poor high school performance," Hyslop wrote. "Instead, all of the high school data were thrown out – a little detail Bennett failed to mention."
Florida has been among the fastest states to adopt changes favored by education reformers, from school report cards to radical changes to teacher evaluations and tenure. Some reformers worry that Bennett's resignation could set the state back as it tries to implement Common Core State Standards and grapples with a new wave of standardized testing tied to the core.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/tony-bennett-resigns_n_3688690.html
This asshole changed grades...to benefit a charter school, funded by Republicans. He got found out, and took some time to figure he got found out....He has earned a very low rung in hell....And........screw the so called "reformers" they are really out to destroy unions that is all these assholes are about..........
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Skokie, Illinois
Current location: Skokie, Illinois
Member since: Tue Dec 18, 2007, 12:07 PM
Number of posts: 38,427
