March 27, 2019

Mike Hubbard's lawyers ask Supreme Court to overturn 'legally baseless conviction'

Lawyers for former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard on Monday filed a 72-page appeal brief asking the Alabama Supreme Court to overturn what they called his “legally baseless conviction.”

The lawyers wrote that prosecutors expanded the scope of the ethics law beyond what the statute says is illegal conduct.

“The issue as a whole is whether Hubbard should receive a judgment of acquittal or a new trial, because when the statutes at issue are read correctly, there was no proof that Hubbard violated any law,” they wrote.

Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office has two weeks to file a response. The AG’s office had no comment on Hubbard’s brief. Earlier this month, Marshall issued a statement saying he was confident the convictions would be upheld.

Read more: https://www.al.com/news/2019/03/mike-hubbards-lawyers-ask-supreme-court-to-overturn-legally-baseless-conviction.html

March 27, 2019

Navy awards $1.47B contract for ship to Mississippi shipyard

PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — The U.S. Navy has awarded a $1.47 billion contract to a Mississippi shipyard to build a new amphibious warship, following through on a plan announced last year.

The money will go to Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula to design and build the 14th in the San Antonio class of amphibious transport dock. The ship will be the first with a modified design following 13 earlier ships. Ingalls has delivered 11 of those and is building two more to launch in coming years.

The vessel will be used to carry Marines and their equipment around the world, putting them ashore with landing craft or amphibious assault vehicles. The ship will also be able to host helicopters or tiltrotor aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey.

Ingalls is a unit of Huntington Ingalls Industries of Newport News, Virginia, and has 11,500 employees. Tuesday's award will provide them work in coming years.

Read more: https://www.dothaneagle.com/news/ap/national/navy-awards-b-contract-for-ship-to-mississippi-shipyard/article_54dd7f9b-85ec-5023-a0c9-f67cbf19f480.html

March 27, 2019

Man who took Opelika residents for $1.9M sentenced to 5 years

The founder of business incubator who pleaded guilty to scamming residents of an Alabama city was sentenced Tuesday to more than five years in prison and ordered to return $1.9 million to investors.

Kyle Sandler, 43, opened the Round House in 2014 as a launching pad for new tech companies in the east Alabama town of Opelika, raising about $1.9 million from more than 70 investors. He pleaded guilty last year to fraud.

U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin said Sandler "violated the trust of his investors with lies and deception."

"They trusted him with their hard-earned money, and he used it as his personal piggy bank," Franklin said.

Read more: https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/03/26/man-who-took-opelika-alabama-residents-sentenced-5-years/3278906002/

March 27, 2019

Alabama medical marijuana bill would allow cannabis treatment for 33 conditions

Alabama has allowed limited use of marijuana derivatives to help patients in recent years. Now some of the people behind those efforts want broader access to medical marijuana.

Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison, filed a bill last week that would allow people suffering from one of nearly three dozen medical conditions to use medical marijuana if they get a recommendation from a physician, a physician’s assistant or a nurse practitioner.

Ball championed Carly’s Law in 2014 and Leni’s Law in 2016. The legislation granted access to cannabidiol (CBD), an oil derived from the marijuana plant, for those suffering severe seizures. Ball insisted in a phone interview on Monday that he introduced the bill for strict health reasons.

“Its time has come,” he said. “When I first introduced Carly’s Law, there was no support hardly. There certainly wasn’t enough to get it done.”

Read more: https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2019/03/25/alabama-medical-marijuana-bill-would-allow-cannabis-treatment-33-conditions/3270702002/

March 27, 2019

Jones: Alabama is one of the states with the most to lose if health care law is reversed

Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, said Tuesday that Alabama would be one of the hardest-hit states if President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law, the Affordable Care Act, is reversed by federal courts.

“If the courts dismantle this law, Alabama is one of the states with the most to lose,” Jones said. “It’s already a challenge for many Alabamians to access the health care they need, particularly in our rural communities.”

Jones’ comments come after President Donald Trump’s administration announced it would ask the federal courts to invalidate the Affordable Care Act. The Justice Department filed the notice to the court late Monday, which seeks to strike down the whole law including Medicaid expansion and protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

“Instead of making that even more difficult, we need to be focusing on making some much-needed improvements to our current system, like lowering the cost of prescription drugs, combating the opioid epidemic, increasing access to rural health care and finally expanding Medicaid in the state of Alabama,” Jones said. “The Administration is playing politics with health care and we have to stand up to protect folks from losing their coverage and the vital protections that the federal health law guarantees.”

Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/03/27/jones-alabama-is-one-of-the-states-with-the-most-to-lose-if-health-care-law-is-reversed/

March 27, 2019

Expert witnesses differ over what medical data mean in Forest Park bribery trial

Data is only as good as who's crunching it.

Jurors hearing the Forest Park Medical Center bribery and kickback trial in Dallas have gotten two very different conclusions from the same medical billing and claims data for certain surgeries that are at the heart of the case.

An expert witness for the defense told jurors Monday and Tuesday that her analysis of the data shows that surgeries Dr. Michael Rimlawi and Dr. Douglas Won performed at Forest Park fluctuated over the years and revealed no clear patterns.

But a government expert told the jury earlier in the trial that her analysis revealed that the doctors' surgeries at Forest Park generally tracked with the amount of marketing money the hospital paid them. Prosecutors allege bribes and kickbacks paid to the doctors were disguised as marketing payments. The more money Forest Park paid the doctors, the more surgeries they performed at the hospital between 2009 and 2012, the government argued.

What the data really mean matters in this case because doctors cannot be compensated based on the volume or value of patient referrals to a certain health care facility.

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/03/26/expert-witnesses-differ-medical-data-mean-forest-park-bribery-trial

March 27, 2019

Gohmert digs in on linking Democrats with Nazis, insisting that both are 'socialist'

WASHINGTON - With the president and other Republicans regularly trying to slap the label of "socialist" on Democrats, Rep. Louie Gohmert and others took the effort a step further by conflating Nazis -- the genocidal fascists who led Germany in World War II -- with socialists.

"The potential is out there for another Hitler, a socialist like Hitler to come along" unless Congress puts a check on the Justice Department, the East Texas Republican warned Tuesday at a Judiciary Committee hearing.

When several Democrats sought to set him straight about the difference between genuine socialists and National Socialist German Workers' Party -- known as Nazis -- Gohmert insisted that he was correct.

"I'm sorry -- we need to do everything we can to avoid another Holocaust," he said, but "they were the National Socialist Party. It's what they were. ... They claimed to be socialists, and they were."

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2019/03/26/gohmert-catches-flak-conflating-democrats-socialists-nazis

March 27, 2019

An Islamic movement, fraud and improper hires: Even more (and weirder) questions arise about

An Islamic movement, fraud and improper hires: Even more (and weirder) questions arise about Montgomery’s first charter school


When the leadership team behind Montgomery charter school LEAD Academy began putting together an application to start a school, the members knew they lacked experience. None of them had opened a charter or had experience running a school. So, they made the unique decision to turn the management of their school over to a Charter Management Organization.

Acting as a sort of central office, the CMO takes care of the daily details of running a charter school. For this hefty task, LEAD chose Unity School Services, a newly-formed group headed by Soner Tarim, the since-retired founder of Harmony Schools — a massive charter school chain that began in Texas.

But here’s where things get dicey. And where even more questions surface about the approval process that allowed LEAD to open.

Tarim is a divisive figure in the world of charter schools, and his Harmony Schools has been used as both a model of excellence and a cautionary tale for how awry things can go when you start mixing public money and private businesses.

Read more: https://www.alreporter.com/2019/03/27/an-islamic-movement-fraud-and-improper-hires-even-more-and-weirder-questions-arise-about-montgomerys-first-charter-school/

March 27, 2019

Man Pleads Guilty To Health Care Fraud, Money Laundering And Tax Evasion Charges For Role in $200M

Mississippi Man Pleads Guilty To Health Care Fraud, Money Laundering And Tax Evasion Charges For Role In $200 Million Compounding Pharmacy Scheme


WASHINGTON – A Hattiesburg, Mississippi man pleaded guilty today for his role in a $200 million compounding pharmacy scheme to defraud health care benefit programs, including TRICARE, which is the program that covers U.S. military service members and their families.

Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst of the Southern District of Mississippi; Special Agent in Charge Christopher Freeze of the FBI’s Jackson, Mississippi Field Office; Special Agent in Charge Thomas J. Holloman III of IRS Criminal Investigation’s (IRS-CI) Atlanta Field Office and Special Agent in Charge John F. Khin of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s (DCIS) Southeast Field Office made the announcement.

Glenn Doyle Beach Jr., 46, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and tax evasion, before U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett of the Southern District of Mississippi. Beach was charged in May 2018 in a 26-count indictment and had been scheduled to begin trial today. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 2, 2019.

“Glenn Doyle Beach and his co-conspirators stole hundreds of millions of dollars from federal health care programs, including TRICARE, which provides benefits to brave members of our military and their families,” said Assistant Attorney General Benczkowski. “The Criminal Division remains dedicated to rooting out and punishing this kind of misconduct, and to protecting America’s important health care programs from fraud and abuse.”

Read more: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdms/pr/mississippi-man-pleads-guilty-health-care-fraud-money-laundering-and-tax-evasion

March 27, 2019

O'Rourke Favors Statehood for Puerto Rico

Democratic presidential nomination hopeful Beto O’Rourke said he endorses statehood for Puerto Rico as “the only way to to permanently resolve the problem of a permanent second-class citizen status.”

O’Rourke emphatically denounced what he considered to be a second class treatment by the U.S. government to the people of Puerto Rico.

“The only way I see us being able to permanently resolve the problem of a permanent second-class status for the citizens of Puerto Rico is to ensure they are a state, so that they have two U.S. senators who can vote, that they are fighting day in and day out for their [citizens’] rights, their protections, their investment in infrastructure, and their ability to provide for one another.

“So, Puerto Rico needs to have that first-class status and it won’t get it until it is a full first-class state, O’Rourke said during a rally in Las Vegas this weekend.

Read more: http://www.sanjuanweeklypr.com/pdf/Mar-26-19/local.pdf
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