TexasTowelie
TexasTowelie's JournalDoctors reject feds' claim they lined their pockets at patients' expense in big Dallas medical
Doctors reject feds' claim they lined their pockets at patients' expense in big Dallas medical bribery trialThey're medical innovators and pioneers, their attorneys said, who saved some lives and improved many others.
The surgeons brought patients to a "state-of-the-art" Dallas hospital called Forest Park Medical Center.
But did they illegally put their own financial interests before everything else, including their patients? That's the basic question before jurors in the Forest Park Medical Center bribery case during opening statements Thursday in a packed Dallas federal courtroom.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Wirmani told jurors that the doctors acted out of pure greed, making medical decisions to "line their own pockets." The bribes and kickbacks, he said, were not bags of cash exchanged in dark alleys. Rather, the hospital gave the doctors financial perks in the form of paid business expenses -- expensive advertising to promote their practices, he said.
Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/02/21/doctors-reject-feds-claim-lined-pockets-patients-expense-big-dallas-medical-bribery-trial
Enron swindler Jeffrey Skilling freed from Texas halfway house after 12 years behind bars
Former Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling has been released from federal custody after more than a decade behind bars.
Skilling, convicted in 2006 over one of the worst corporate meltdowns in history, was freed Thursday after 12 years in a minimum-security Alabama prison camp and six months in a Texas halfway house.
Skilling, now 65, was sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined $45 million for multiple counts of securities fraud, conspiracy and other crimes. In 2013, the sentence was reduced to 14 years.
Houston-based Enron collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001 after years of illicit business deals and accounting tricks that put more than 5,000 people out of work, eliminated over $2 billion in employee pensions and rendered worthless $60 billion in Enron stock.
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2019/02/21/enron-swindler-jeffrey-skilling-freed-texas-halfway-house-after-12-years-behind-bars
(no more at link)
Another Rural Hospital Closing
Alabama is losing another rural hospital. Georgiana Medical Center in Butler County is closing at the end of the next month.
Ivy Creek health care company, which owns the hospital, made the announcement Tuesday {February 5}.
Six rural hospitals have closed in Alabama during the last eight years. The Alabama Hospital Association, which is advocating for Medicaid expansion in the state, said the closure reflects the struggle facing rural hospitals Alabama Hospital Association President Don Williamson says he is concerned that additional rural hospitals will close because of financial pressures. The organization estimates that 88 percent of all rural hospitals operate in the red, meaning reimbursements do not cover the cost of providing medical care. Last year Alabama Public Radio covered the Alabama rural health crisis in our documentary "Help Wanted: Alabama's Health Care Crisis"
https://www.apr.org/post/another-rural-hospital-closing
(no more at link)
Montgomery Church Removes Pew Honoring Jefferson Davis
An Alabama church has removed a pew honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis, saying the memorial has no place in the church at a time when Confederate symbols have been adopted by white supremacists.
The pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church in Montgomery, Robert C. Wisnewski Jr., posted a message on the church website last week saying the wooden pew was dedicated more than 90 years ago at a service featuring a pro-lynching segregationist.
After learning of the pew's history at a recent planning retreat, church leaders discussed it and then voted to remove the pew from the sanctuary and place it in the church archive.
"Confederate monuments and symbols have increasingly been used by groups that promote white supremacy and are now, to many people of all races, seen to represent insensitivity, hatred, and even evil," Wisnewski wrote. "The mission of our parish is diametrically opposed to what these symbols have come to mean."
Read more: https://www.apr.org/post/montgomery-church-removes-pew-honoring-jefferson-davis
Editor who wrote Klan editorial has penned countless racist, sexist, xenophobic pieces
The Linden newspaper The Democrat-Reporter has a track record of publishing racist and offensive editorials.
Warning: This story quotes offensive language.
The same editor who penned an editorial calling for the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and elaborated on those views by calling for lynchings of Democratic politicians has a long track record of penning racist, homophobic and sexists editorials in his small-town newspaper.
The Democrat-Reporter, a community newspaper in West Alabama, published the editorial on Feb. 14 entitled “Klan needs to ride again.” In it, the paper’s editor, Goodloe Sutton, called for the Klan to “raid the gated communities” of Democrats and “Democrats in the Republican Party” who are “plotting to raise taxes in Alabama.”
I posted a copy of the story on Twitter yesterday. Fellow APR writer Mikayla Burns and I found the editorial in a print copy of last week’s issue of the paper. Burns works with me at The Auburn Plainsman.
Sutton’s editorial immediately drew ire, and he is facing calls to resign over the content he published in the editorial.
Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/02/19/editor-who-wrote-klan-editorial-has-penned-countless-racist-sexist-xenophobic-pieces/
Cross-posted in the Alabama Group.
Editor who wrote Klan editorial has penned countless racist, sexist, xenophobic pieces
The Linden newspaper The Democrat-Reporter has a track record of publishing racist and offensive editorials.
Warning: This story quotes offensive language.
The same editor who penned an editorial calling for the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and elaborated on those views by calling for lynchings of Democratic politicians has a long track record of penning racist, homophobic and sexists editorials in his small-town newspaper.
The Democrat-Reporter, a community newspaper in West Alabama, published the editorial on Feb. 14 entitled “Klan needs to ride again.” In it, the paper’s editor, Goodloe Sutton, called for the Klan to “raid the gated communities” of Democrats and “Democrats in the Republican Party” who are “plotting to raise taxes in Alabama.”
I posted a copy of the story on Twitter yesterday. Fellow APR writer Mikayla Burns and I found the editorial in a print copy of last week’s issue of the paper. Burns works with me at The Auburn Plainsman.
Sutton’s editorial immediately drew ire, and he is facing calls to resign over the content he published in the editorial.
Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/02/19/editor-who-wrote-klan-editorial-has-penned-countless-racist-sexist-xenophobic-pieces/
Cross-posted in the African American Group.
Alabama Power closes coal-fired plant, cites Obama-era regulations
The Alabama Public Service Commission blamed Obama-era regulations and emissions mandates for the closing of a historic coal-fired power plant in Walker County on Wednesday.
“In 2008, candidate Obama declared war on coal and promised to bankrupt anyone who built a coal-fired electricity plant,” the PSC said. “President Obama immediately went to work signing one after another punitive, burdensome federal mandates on the coal industry. Now, his promise has come to fruition at Plant Gorgas in Parish, Alabama.”
The PSC said the “astronomical rising cost to comply with Obama era mandates,” has left Alabama Power with no choice but to close Plant Gorgas.
“The company has taken every possible step to keep the plant up and running, but the war on coal finally took its toll,” said Public Service Commission President Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh. “Obama said he wanted to make it too expensive to run coal-fired plants, and he did. I commend President (Donald) Trump for rolling back as many of the Obama mandates as he could. The problem for us here in Alabama was that Obama placed the biggest bullseye on us, and Trump’s valiant effort at finally implementing common sense came along a little too late.”
Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/02/21/alabama-power-closes-coal-fired-plant-cites-obama-era-regulations/
Doug Jones, John Lewis, Terri Sewell, and Martha Roby to lead Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage
The Faith and Politics Institute will return to Alabama March 1 through March 3 to lead a bipartisan Congressional delegation of nearly 50 members from the U.S. House and U.S. Senate on the 2019 Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage.
The delegation will visit historic civil rights sites in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma and engage members of Congress on the events of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s.
This year’s pilgrimage will be led by Alabama born civil rights legend, U.S. Representative John Lewis, D-Georgia, and co-hosted by U.S. Senator Doug Jones, D-Alabama, U.S. Representatives Terri Sewell, D-Selma, and Martha Roby, R-Montgomery.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina, and Republican Conference Vice Chair Mark Walker, R-North Carolina, will join the delegation, along with dozens of members of Congress including more than ten freshman House members, dozens of students, seminarians and clergy.
Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/02/21/doug-jones-john-lewis-terri-sewell-and-martha-roby-to-lead-congressional-civil-rights-pilgrimage-to-alabama/
Hurricanes create natural climate change labs in Puerto Rico
EL YUNQUE, Puerto Rico (AP) — The hurricanes that pounded Puerto Rico in 2017, blasting away most of its forest cover, may give scientists clues to how the world will respond to climate change and increasingly severe weather.
Researchers at El Yunque, the only tropical rain forest overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, are running controlled studies on how plants respond to higher temperatures combined — since the cataclysmic blow from Hurricane Maria — with severe weather. Not far away, another group is looking at how hurricanes affect the forest environment.
“It’s a once-in-a-century opportunity to look at these two aspects of climate change together,” said Tana Wood, a research ecologist with the Forest Service.
Wood heads a team testing how plants themselves respond to higher temperatures. The 2017 hurricane season, with Maria following a lesser blow from Hurricane Irma, has given them a chance as well to see how storms affect the recovery of ecosystems already under stress, a key concern in the Caribbean, where scientists say warmer temperatures could lead to more intense hurricanes.
Read more: https://apnews.com/ba991184859c4e22b2163121f6846106
EU blacklists American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, USVI and other countries
BRUSSELS, Belgium — Afghanistan, American Samoa, the Bahamas, Botswana, North Korea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guam, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, US Virgin Islands and Yemen have all been blacklisted in a report published by the European Union (EU) Commission last week.
Individual EU governments and parliamentarians still have to sign off on the new list, but if accepted, it would prove painful for EU banks that handle payments connected to the blacklisted countries and territories. Those lenders would have to conduct “enhanced due diligence” on any cash that moves to and from the EU and the blacklisted jurisdictions.
The EU report states that the list has been established on the basis of an analysis of 54 priority jurisdictions the EU had constant investigations on over the course of the last few years, which was prepared by the Commission in consultation with the member states and made public on 13 November 2018. The countries assessed meet at least one of the following criteria:
• They have systemic impact on the integrity of the EU financial system;
• They are reviewed by the International Monetary Fund as international offshore financial centres; and
• They have economic relevance and strong economic ties with the EU.
Read more: https://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/2019/02/18/eu-blacklists-panama-the-bahamas-puerto-rico-trinidad-and-tobago-usvi/
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Gender: MaleHometown: South Texas. most of my life I lived in Austin and Dallas
Home country: United States
Current location: Bryan, Texas
Member since: Sun Aug 14, 2011, 03:57 AM
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