From George Washington to Roman Catholics in America, c.15 March 1790
To Roman Catholics in America
United States of America [New York]
Gentlemen,[c.15 March 1790]
While I now receive with much satisfaction your congratulations on my being called, by an unanimous vote, to the first station in my Country; I cannot but duly notice your politeness in offering an apology for the unavoidable delay. As that delay has given you an opportunity of realizing, instead of anticipating, the benefits of the general Government; you will do me the justice to believe, that your testimony of the increase of the public prosperity, enhances the pleasure which I should otherwise have experienced from your affectionate address.
I feel that my conduct, in war and in peace, has met with more general approbation than could reasonably have been expected: and I find myself disposed to consider that fortunate circumstance, in a great degree, resulting from the able support and extraordinary candour of my fellow-citizens of all denominations.
The prospect of national prosperity now before us is truly animating, and ought to excite the exertions of all good men to establish and secure the happiness of their Country, in the permanent duration of its Freedom and Independence. America, under the smiles of a Divine Providence—the protection of a good Government—and the cultivation of manners, morals and piety, cannot fail of attaining an uncommon degree of eminence, in literature, commerce, agriculture, improvements at home and respectability abroad.
As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow, that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the Community are equally entitled to the protection of civil Government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their Government: or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed.
I thank you, Gentlemen, for your kind concern for me. While my life and my health shall continue, in whatever situation I may he, it shall be my constant endeavour to justify the favourable sentiments which you are pleased to express of my conduct. And may the members of your Society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free Government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity.
G. Washington
LS, MdBAd; LB, DLC:GW.
The address, dated 15 Mar. and signed by John Carroll on behalf of the Roman Catholic clergy and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Daniel Carroll, Thomas FitzSimons, and Dominick Lynch on behalf of the Roman Catholic laity, reads: “We have been long impatient to testify our joy and unbounded confidence, on your being called, by an unanimous vote, to the first station of a country, in which that unanimity could not have been obtained without the previous merit of unexampled services, of eminent wisdom, and unblemished virtue. Our congratulations have not reached you sooner, because our scattered situation prevented the communication and the collecting of those sentiments, which warmed every breast: But the delay has furnished us with the opportunity, not merely of presaging the happiness to be expected under your administration, but of bearing testimony to that which we experience already. It is your peculiar talent, in war and in peace, to afford security to those, who commit their protection into your hands. In war, you shield them from the ravages of armed hostility: in peace you establish public tranquillity by the justice and moderation, not less than by the vigour of your government. By example as well as by vigilance, you extend the influence of laws on the manners of our fellow citizens you encourage respect for religion, and inculcate, by words and actions, that principle, on which the welfare of nations so much depends, that a superintending Providence governs the events of the world, and watches over the conduct of men. Your exalted maxims and unwearied attention to the moral and physical improvement of our country have produced already the happiest effects. Under your administration, america is animated with zeal for the attainment and encouragement of useful literature; She improves her agriculture, extends her commerce, and acquires with foreign nations a dignity, unknown to her before. From these happy events, in which none can feel a warmer interest than ourselves, we derive additional pleasure by recollecting, that you, Sir, have been the principal instrument to effect so rapid a change in our political situation. This prospect of national prosperity is peculiarly pleasing to us on another account; because whilst our country preserves her freedom and independence, we shall have a well founded title to claim from her justice equal rights of citizenship, as the price of our blood spilt under your eyes, and of our common exertions for her defence, under your auspicious conduct, rights rendered more dear to us by the remembrance of former hardships. When we pray for the preservation of them, where they have been granted; and expect the full extension of them from the justice of those States, which still restrict them; when we solicit the protection of Heaven over our common country: we neither omit nor can omit recommending your preservation to the singular care of divine providence; because we conceive that no human means are so available to promote the welfare of the united States, as the prolongation of your health and life, in which are included the energy of your example, the wisdom of your counsels, and the persuasive eloquence of your virtues” (DLC:GW). John Carroll (1735–1815) was educated at Jesuit schools in Maryland and France. He returned to America as a Roman Catholic priest shortly before the Revolution and after the war was a leader in organizing the church. He was selected on 14 Nov. 1789 to be the first American Roman Catholic bishop by a convocation of clergy meeting at Whitemarsh, Md., and consecrated in England on 15 Aug. 1790. This address to GW was one of Carroll’s first official acts as leader of the church in the new nation.
Unraveling President Trump's top 5 claims | The Fact Checker
In the 466 days since he took the oath of office, President Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.
Indeed, since we last updated this tally two months ago, the president has averaged about 9 claims a day.
Our interactive graphic, created with the help of Leslie Shapiro and Kaeti Hinck of The Washington Post’s graphics department, displays a running list of every false or misleading statement made by Trump. We also catalogued the president’s many flip-flops, since those earn Upside-Down Pinocchios if a politician shifts position on an issue without acknowledging that he or she did so.
Trump has a proclivity to repeat, over and over, many of his false or misleading statements. We’ve counted at least 113 claims that the president has repeated at least three times, some with breathtaking frequency.
Seventy-two times, the president has falsely claimed he passed the biggest tax cut in history — when in fact it ranks in eighth place. Fifty-three times, the president has made some variation of the claim that the Russia probe is a made-up controversy. (If you include other claims about the Russia probe that are not accurate, the count goes to 90.) Forty-one times, the president has offered a variation of the false claim that Democrats do not really care about the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that Trump terminated.
Thirty-four times, the president has wrongly asserted that a border wall was needed to stop the flow of drugs across the southern border, even though the Drug Enforcement Administration says a wall would not limit this illegal trade, as much of it travels through legal borders or under tunnels unaffected by any possible physical barrier.
Thirteen times in the past five weeks, Trump has claimed his long-promised border wall is already being built, even though Congress denied him the funding and prohibited the use of prototypes he had viewed with great fanfare.
Of course, not every day is filled with falsehoods, but the president makes up for his slow days with days that offer an extraordinary number of misleading claims — such as 53 on July 25, 2017, or 49 on Nov. 29, 2017. These are often days when the president has had a series of freewheeling interviews or given a campaign-rally-style speech.
For example, only days ago, on April 28, Trump racked up 44 claims, many of which came from the president’s 80-minute speech in Michigan. (April 28 is tied in third place with Dec. 8, 2017 for most number of claims in a single day.) In his speech, Trump touched on many of his main themes, such as immigration and jobs, adding in a liberal dose of his favorite false facts. Among them:
He took credit for 3 million jobs “since the election,” even though he did not become president until almost three months later. About 2.5 million jobs have been created since Trump took the oath of office.
He cited his “incredible success” in terms of job growth, even though annual job growth under his presidency has been slower than the last five years of Obama’s term.
He said “wages are going up for the first time in many, many years,” even though they have been rising steadily since 2014.
He once again cited the unemployment rate — especially for African Americans — even though he repeatedly said during his campaign that the unemployment rate was phony and could not be trusted.
He said the border wall was being built even though Congress only provided funds for fencing.
He claimed he had attracted 32,000 people at a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on the eve of the election when the venue held only 4,200 and local media estimated that perhaps that many were waiting outside, for a total of 8,000.
He claimed he had “essentially” gotten rid of Obamacare, when he has not. He also falsely suggested he only failed to pass repeal legislation because of one vote, ignoring the fact that none of the substantive replacement bills got nearly enough votes. Sen. John McCain’s vote was against a “skinny” repeal that was only to lead to talks with the House on a common position, with no guarantee of an agreement that would pass both Houses.
He falsely claimed that Democrats colluded with the Russians, and the whole probe started with “a document that was paid for by the DNC [Democratic National Committee] and Hillary Clinton.” But the DNC was a victim of Russian activities, as its emails were hacked and then released via WikiLeaks. The House Intelligence Committee has confirmed that the FBI’s counterintelligence probe began with a tip from the Australian government, which notified U.S. authorities about a drunken conversation between a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, and an Australian diplomat in May. Papadopoulos claimed the Russians had “political dirt” on Clinton. The information in the dossier funded by Democrats came to the attention of the FBI later.
He got simple facts wrong, such as claiming that Henry Ford invented the assembly line (it was Ransom Eli Olds) and that Franklin D. Roosevelt served 16 years (it was 12). He also said the European Union was created “to take advantage of the United States” even though it was created after World War II with the aim of ending bloody conflicts on the continent — and with the active support of the United States.
He once again claimed that under the Iran nuclear agreement, the United States gave the country $150 billion. But this was always Iran’s money. Iran had billions of dollars in assets that were frozen in foreign banks around the globe because of international sanctions over its nuclear program. The Treasury Department estimated that once Iran fulfilled other obligations, it would have about $55 billion left. The Central Bank of Iran said the number was actually $32 billion.
He falsely said that major newspapers and television networks make up nonexistent sources. That is grounds for firing in the news business. Sources can certainly be wrong, but they exist.
For the 31st time, he used a made-up number — $7 trillion — for how much the United States supposedly has spent on wars in the Middle East.
He falsely claimed that fired deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe “took $700,000 for his wife’s campaign.” McCabe’s wife ran for Virginia Senate, receiving about $700,000 from then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and the state Democratic Party. But campaign records show that every cent raised for the campaign was spent. McCabe also did not participate in his wife’s campaign.
He once again claimed that President Xi Jinping of China instantly agreed to a request from Trump to allow the sale of U.S. beef after years of blocking it. But China had already agreed to such sales under a deal brokered by the Obama administration.
He said — for the 29th time — that the U.S. trade deficit with China is $500 billion. But it’s really about $300 billion. He also said “we lose about $500 billion” through the trade deficit even though countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits.
He claimed “we have done more than anybody in a year” and “I accomplished more than I promised.” In reality, at the end of his first year, Trump had signed fewer bills than any president since Dwight D. Eisenhower (though he has since caught up and passed Obama and is tied with George W. Bush). As for promises, our Trump Promise Tracker shows Trump has only kept 23 percent of 60 key promises and broken 27 percent.
Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than three decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him, tweeting at him, or sending him a message on Facebook.
Salvador Rizzo is a reporter for The Fact Checker. He previously covered New Jersey politics, courts, state finances and Gov. Chris Christie, with stints at the Star-Ledger, the Bergen Record and the Observer.
The TRUMP Administration's racism is irrefragable. Enough flummery, dupery and nincompoopery. Let justice be done. Now.
Civil Rights Groups Plan to Sue HUD Over Fair Housing Rule
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Houston after Hurricane Harvey. The suit claims that Ben Carson is leaving the Department of Housing and Urban Development without a way to prevent a pattern of discrimination in the distribution of $28 billion in relief funding after disasters like Hurricane Harvey.CreditGeorge Etheredge for The New York Times
Civil rights advocates plan to sue the Trump administration on Tuesday over enforcement of the 50-year-old Fair Housing Act, part of an effort to prevent discrimination in the allocation of funds for Gulf Coast hurricane housing and infrastructure reconstruction.
On Tuesday, a coalition of national and Texas-based housing groups are expected to file suit in Federal District Court in Washington to reinstate an Obama-era rule that required localities receiving federal development funding to submit plans detailing their efforts to end segregation based on race, income, ethnicity or physical disability.
Ben Carson, the secretary of housing and urban development, suspended the rule, known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing provision, this year over concerns that it put too heavy a burden on local governments that would have to allocate resources to produce the plans.
The advocates filing the lawsuit argue that Mr. Carson’s actions violated the 1968 Housing Act, a law that was pressed by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shortly before his assassination. The suit claims that Mr. Carson is leaving HUD without a system to prevent a pattern of discrimination in the allocation of $28 billion in disaster relief funding after a succession of natural disasters, including Hurricane Harvey, last year.
The fight centers on an affirmative fair housing rule put in place in 2015 after two years of study and public hearings. At the time, Julian Castro, Mr. Carson’s predecessor as HUD secretary, said the regulation would “provide all Americans with access to safe, affordable housing in communities that are rich with opportunity.”
But housing advocates say the administration has not followed through with ensuring equitable treatment in housing, and they are concerned that HUD may discriminate against vulnerable populations when awarding funds to reconstruct areas damaged by natural disasters.
Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance, one of the groups bringing the suit, said the litigation was intended to prevent racial bias in the reconstruction of housing, drainage systems and other infrastructure. The group wants to ensure that black, Hispanic and low-income residents of Houston and Corpus Christi are not put at risk in the event of another natural disaster.
“This is the fight Dr. King envisioned, even 50 years later,” Ms. Rice said.
Madison Sloan, director of Texas Appleseed’s Disaster Recovery & Fair Housing Project, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the suit was about not leaving people behind.
“We know that disasters have a disparate impact on the most vulnerable populations, especially communities of color,” she said. “Historically, segregation has forced these communities into the areas most vulnerable to natural disasters. We have to make sure we are rebuilding in a way that remedies, rather than perpetuates, these inequalities.”
A HUD spokesman did not return a call for comment.
Mr. Carson has said he delayed the rule to give localities more time to comply. But his previous comments suggest a lack of affinity for the provision. In a 2015 editorial in the conservative Washington Times, Mr. Carson criticized the effort in sweeping ideological terms, calling it “social engineering,” and predicted that its enforcement would repeat “the failure of school busing” in the 1970s.
Mr. Carson, during testimony before congressional committees last month, said he intended to comply with other department regulations requiring that the majority of disaster relief funding be directed to those most in need.
But he gave little ground on the Obama-era provision when he met with fair housing advocates late last month by rejecting their calls to reinstate the rule. Some department officials said Mr. Carson’s efforts at HUD so far include slowing enforcement actions and investigations of some fair housing violations.
Housing segregation has long been an issue for HUD and has landed previous secretaries in the cross hairs.
George Romney, the first HUD secretary, clashed with President Richard M. Nixon when he tried to withhold federal funding for sewer, highway, water and infrastructure projects in areas that encouraged segregation. Mr. Nixon blocked the program, known as “Open Communities.”
Mr. Romney, the father of the former Republican presidential candidate and current Utah Senate candidate Mitt Romney, forged ahead with the plan and was eventually ejected from the cabinet.
Wonderful comedienne. Magnificent performance at 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Watch her again, and late night comics' riffs. Venceremos! We SHALL overcome!
Great article, reminds me of Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who has covered up a murder by Deputy JEREMY BANKS of his girlfriend, Michelle O'Connell on September 2, 2010 in BANKS' home with BANKS' service weapon on September 2, 2010. "Suicide" was the rote incantation from St. Johns County Republican political boss, Sheriff DAVID BERNARD SHOAR, who viciously attacked an FDLE agent and Michelle's grieving family, stating her mom and siblings "molested" the body by authorizing an exhumation and autopsy -- which found her jaw was broken -- a datum missed by malfeasant 23rd District Medical Examiner Dr. PREDRAG BULIC, M.D..
Sheriff SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994, procured an ambulance chaser to sue the FLDE agent, Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers because he got a search warrant from Judge Charles Tinlin, who found probable cause that BANKS committed murder.
The lawsuit hung over the head of FDLE Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers for four (4) years, four (4) months and seventeen (17) days until April 15, 2018 (Good Friday/Passover), when U.S. District Court Judge Brian J. Davis dismissed the lawsuit, joining Judge Tinlin in finding probable cause that a homicide was committed.
Deputy BANKS did NOT appeal. Sheriff SHOAR has NEVER apologized. He stands astride the corrupt Republican political machine in St. Johns County, scaring tourists and terrorizing decent people.
Wikipedia reports that Republican Congressman David Perley Lowe (August 22, 1823 – died April 10, 1882) was:
Perhaps best remembered for his support of civil rights legislation, Lowe was quoted by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1961 in Monroe v. Pape, discussing Congressional debate of the 1871 Civil Rights Act (Ku Klux Klan Act): "While murder is stalking abroad in disguise, while whippings and lynchings and banishments have been visited upon unoffending American citizens, the local administrations have been found inadequate or unwilling to apply the proper corrective. Combinations, darker than the night [which] hides them, conspiracies, wicked as the worst felons could devise, have gone unwhipped of justice. Immunity is given to crime, and the records of the public tribunals are searched in vain for any evidence of effective redress." Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 175 (1961), quoting Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong., 1st Sess., App. 166-167.
Jimmy Carter says, "America does not have a functioning democracy today." True.
Exposed by The New York Times and PBS Frontline, SHOAR has been aided and abetted by the St. Augustine and St. Johns County Republican Establishment, with only Mayor Nancy Shaver speaking out for Justice for Michelle O'Connell.
Three (3) State's Attorneys -- two of them Special Prosecutors Appointed by Republican Governor RICHARD LNN SCOTT, ALL refused to take the case to a grand jury. SCOTT invoked the Fifth Amendment five times in his deposition on Medicare fraud, for which his company paid $1.6 billion. Naturally, SCOTT is running for U.S. Senate.
NOW, Republicans have candidates convicted of crimes. See story below.
Misguided miscreants.
Sick twists. Check out The Washington Post article:
Crimes are no longer a disqualification for Republican candidates
Then-Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) outside his Capitol Hill office in 2014. He admitted to hiring undocumented workers, hiding $900,000 from tax authorities and making false statements under oath but thinks Staten Island Republicans should vote him back into office. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Former New York congressman Michael Grimm is a felon who has admitted to hiring undocumented workers, hiding $900,000 from tax authorities and making false statements under oath. To hear him tell it, that’s a reason Staten Island Republicans should vote him back into office.
“It’s almost identical to what the president has been going through,” Grimm says of the federal investigation that led to his imprisonment. “It’s not an accident that under the Obama administration, the Justice Department was used politically. And that is all starting to come out.”
Grimm has uncovered a new reality in the constantly changing world of Republican politics: Criminal convictions, once seen as career-enders, are no longer disqualifying. In the era of President Trump, even time spent in prison can be turned into a positive talking point, demonstrating a candidate’s battle scars in a broader fight against what he perceives as liberal corruption.
In a startling shift from “law-and-order Republicans,” Trump has attacked some branches of law enforcement, especially those pursuing white-collar malfeasance, as his allies and former campaign officials are ensnared in various investigations.
Following his lead, Republican Senate candidates with criminal convictions in West Virginia and Arizona have cast themselves as victims of the Obama administration’s legal overreach. Another former Trump adviser who pleaded guilty to a felony has also become an in-demand surrogate, as Republicans jump at the chance to show their opposition to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Here’s a general rule of thumb: Lawmakers should not be lawbreakers,” said Susan Del Percio, a New York GOP consultant who advised Grimm in 2010 but opposes his candidacy. “I guess it’s a different political norm we are facing today.”
1:20
Trump's attacks on the FBI
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a felony count of lying to the FBI, has become an unexpected star on the Republican campaign trail, with a planned appearance May 6 in Montana for Senate candidate Troy Downing. He plans to shoot skeet, dine with donors and hold a rally in the state, where select VIPs will be offered a chance to take their picture with him.
A retired Army general, Flynn faces up to five years in prison after he admitted to making false statements about his contacts with Russian officials and his work for the government of Turkey. “It is time to stand up for our #American Heroes,” Downing wrote when he announced the event, shortly after Trump sent out a tweet suggesting again that the Justice Department had treated Flynn unfairly.
In West Virginia, former coal baron Don Blankenship, who calls himself “Trumpier than Trump,” has advertised heavily about what he says is the injustice of his misdemeanor conviction for conspiring to violate mine safety laws, which sent him to prison for a year. Echoing Trump, Blankenship casts himself as a “political prisoner” who was targeted unfairly by the Obama administration after an explosion at one of his mines killed 29 people.
In Arizona, former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio is campaigning for Senate, with respectable fundraising and poll numbers, after receiving a pardon from Trump for his conviction on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge for his failure to follow a judicial order to curtail his immigration enforcement efforts.
The conviction has done little to dampen the praise he continues to receive from the Republican establishment. At an event Tuesday in Tempe, Ariz., Vice President Pence introduced Arpaio as a “favorite,” calling him “a tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law who has spent a lifetime in law enforcement.”
2:22
'I can read his mind': Joe Arpaio takes to Arizona Senate race with Trump-like campaign
Arpaio has compared his prosecution, which he considers politically motivated, to Republican claims that the Obama administration improperly sought warrants to monitor officials connected to the Trump campaign.
“It’s not something that has affected my campaign,” Arpaio said of his conviction, noting that a recent Magellan Strategies poll found him running second in a three-person race with a 67 percent favorable rating among Republican primary voters.
The campaigns are playing out in the shadow of a public effort by Trump and his allies to discredit the Justice Department’s investigation of the 2016 election. Trump has called it a “total witch hunt” and called Mueller’s investigators “the most biased group of people.”
The message is getting through to Trump supporters. A recent NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll found declining support for Mueller and his investigation among Republicans. In the second week of April, 55 percent of Republicans said the investigation was “not fair,” up from 46 percent in March. The same poll found 56 percent of Republicans thought the FBI was biased against the president.
“The whole world changed when Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch met on the tarmac with former president [Bill] Clinton,” said Michael Caputo, a former adviser to Trump who has been helping the Grimm campaign, referring to an encounter during the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of private emails for work. “The lines between politics and law enforcement have been blurred for a decade, but they are absolutely indistinguishable now.”
In California, Republican candidate Omar Navarro, 29, who is running against Rep. Maxine Waters (D), invited Arpaio and Flynn to fundraisers on his behalf, saying both drew large crowds and enabled him to raise more money.
“When I knock doors, and I knock a lot of different doors and meet a lot of people, and they will see Flynn on my endorsement or they will see Arpaio,” he said. “A lot of people will say that guy was unfairly prosecuted.”
Navarro has legal troubles of his own. He recently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to placing a tracking device on his wife’s car without her knowledge. He said local prosecutors moved forward with their case even after his wife said she did not object to the device, which he says was intended to protect the car against theft.
“I’m not here to complain about who has done me wrong, or how unfairly I have been treated or how unfair the entire process has been,” Flynn said at the start of his remarks for Navarro, getting sympathetic laughs from the crowd. “You know, it is what it is.”
Grimm says if he is elected, he will use his experience to become a “credible voice” in Congress to denounce what he and Trump call political bias in the Justice Department, particularly in the investigation by Mueller. Early polls in the congressional district that also encompasses a slice of Brooklyn suggest the argument has legs. Grimm recently benefited from the endorsement of former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who will hold a May fundraiser for the campaign in Staten Island.
Grimm’s opponent, incumbent Rep. Daniel Donovan (R-N.Y.), says he expects the primary fight to be tighter than any race he has run.
Donovan, a former federal prosecutor, rejected Grimm’s comparison of his situation to Trump’s.
“The president has never been indicted, the president didn’t perjure himself under oath, the president hasn’t confessed to a federal crime,” Donovan said about Grimm’s argument. “I put my record up against his, quote, record.” (In court documents, Grimm admitted to making false statements under oath in a deposition, not perjury, which has a different burden of proof under the law.)
Grimm, a former FBI agent, does not dispute the facts that led to his guilty plea, which arose from his operation and part-ownership of a Manhattan restaurant.
But he argues on the campaign trail that the decision by the FBI and federal prosecutors to seek his conviction was a political act, meant to remove him from Congress. He said he should have faced a civil penalty instead.
Grimm says only some convicted criminals have a justification to run in a Republican primary.
“You can’t say a guy that was an ax murderer can use this,” he said. “It has to be that you only were criminalized because of the politicization of the Justice Department.”
Oleaginous Republicans undoing consume protection laws for fun and profit. Deplorable. Read:
‘Like a Mosquito in a Nudist Colony’: How Mick Mulvaney Found Plenty to Target at Consumer Bureau Boxed out of budget negotiations, Mick Mulvaney’s second job running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau represents a second chance for him to leave his mark.
WASHINGTON — In his time in the Trump administration, Mick Mulvaney has produced two budgets that slashed federal spending and were heralded as blueprints for the deconstruction of the administrative state. Even Republicans ignored them, and Congress then added billions to the very programs he targeted in what seemed a personal rebuke.
But Mr. Mulvaney — President Trump’s exasperated, restless, but deeply determined budget director — has found an alternative path to relevance in Mr. Trump’s Washington.
A firebrand fiscal hawk as a congressman from South Carolina, Mr. Mulvaney has seized on his second job as the interim chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as an opportunity to dismantle an Obama-era watchdog agency vilified by Republicans since its inception as an example of government overreach.
He is making the most of his opportunity, unapologetically attacking the signature accomplishment of one of Mr. Trump’s most nettlesome enemies, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and taking on the other Democratic legislators outraged by his efforts to gut the bureau.
“There are lots of targets of opportunity over there for Mick,” said Marc Short, Mr. Trump’s legislative affairs director. “He’s like a mosquito in a nudist colony.”
Testifying last month about the bureau before the House Financial Services Committee, Mr. Mulvaney looked forlorn as he slumped under a whirring national debt clock projected on the wall by committee Republicans, a reminder of his failure to rein in federal spending. Then Democrats started attacking him and he sprung to life like a Jack Russell terrier off leash.
Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota struck first, chiding Mr. Mulvaney for installing frosted glass on the glass walls of his office, what he described as a literal effort to subvert “transparency.”
“I’ve been to your office,” Mr. Mulvaney shot back. “I can’t see into it.”
But Mr. Mulvaney’s intentions at the bureau are anything but opaque. Since taking over in November, he has halted all new investigations, frozen hiring, stopped data collection and proposed cutting off public access to a database of consumer complaints. He dropped most cases against payday lenders — a primary focus of the consumer bureau — and also proposed scrapping a new rule that would have heightened scrutiny of an industry accused of trapping vulnerable customers in a cycle of debt. And he has tried hard to persuade Congress to take away funding authority for the bureau from the Federal Reserve — so that Congress can cut it.
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People protesting outside the consumer bureau’s office in Washington after Mr. Mulvaney was named acting director in November.CreditJacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
Polite Civil War
Mr. Mulvaney insists he has the bandwidth for both the budget and consumer jobs — and, in a sign of his seriousness, has brought over his top communications adviser from the Office of Management and Budget. But he is an intermittent presence at the bureau’s headquarters, according to current and former staff members. He works there no more than two or three days a week, a few hours at a time, and seldom on Saturdays, as he initially suggested he would do.
Some Republicans question the wisdom of Mr. Mulvaney’s working only part time as the director, whose duties include reviewing major regulations coming out of any federal agency as a federal court deliberates the legality of his running an independent agency like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“I’m sure it’s hard to wear those two pretty big and important hats,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana. “I think being O.M.B. director is a full-time job; he’s probably spread pretty thin.”
At the bureau’s headquarters near the White House, Mr. Mulvaney has touched off a polite but ferocious civil war, walling himself off behind the new frosted glass walls, while career civil servants, largely excluded from decision making, battle him to preserve the original mission of the agency.
Mr. Mulvaney, a hypercompetitive golfer with an 8 handicap, is determined to prevail while maintaining he is strictly adhering to dictates of the law. In his view, that means giving equal weight to reducing “burdensome regulations” on the industries he regulates, as he described his approach to a meeting of lenders last month.
During his April congressional testimony, Mr. Mulvaney said career lawyers were proceeding with about 25 existing cases. But enforcement lawyers said they have been asked to draft extensive memos for the bureau’s new political leadership to justify their work.
Some cases have been closed or paused indefinitely, and several current bureau staff members expressed concern that Mr. Mulvaney could soon drop a major case against Navient, the student loan company accused of cheating borrowers.
Last month, in what seemed like an unexpected return to the bureau’s Obama-era enforcement, Mr. Mulvaney announced a $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo for well-documented abuses within the bank’s consumer and auto loan divisions.
But the case was in the works before Mr. Mulvaney’s tenure and had the public support of Mr. Trump, who warned in a Twitter post in December of “fines and penalties” against the bank after a news report said that Mr. Mulvaney was considering dropping the case.
“I’m glad that the really devoted public servants at the bureau were allowed to do their jobs this one time,” Richard Cordray, the Democrat who ran the bureau from its inception in 2011 to last November, when he resigned to run for governor of Ohio, said, referring to the Wells Fargo case. “I guess it would have been embarrassing to let someone get away with doing something this gross.”
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Last week, Mr. Mulvaney announced a $1 billion fine against Wells Fargo for well-documented abuses within the bank’s consumer and auto loan divisions.CreditSwayne B. Hall/Associated Press
Mr. Mulvaney’s move to weaken the bureau’s consumer protection efforts have prompted some state attorneys general to fill the void.
“As it became clear that they were not going to be pursuing these cases and working with us, we picked up the slack,” said Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general.
Wooing the President
But Mr. Mulvaney’s approach is finding favor with the person who may matter the most: the president. Mr. Trump, several administration aides said, is delighted at the idea of Ms. Warren watching an institution she spent years building being undermined from within — and eager to see Mr. Mulvaney continue waging a battle to reduce federal regulations through the Office of Management and Budget.
Mr. Trump was so intent on changing the consumer bureau’s direction that he planned to fire Mr. Cordray as soon as he became president, but he was talked out of it by advisers. They pointed out that under the statute creating the agency, the president can remove the bureau’s director only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance,” and advised that he wait to make a recess appointment.
Mr. Trump did not like waiting. At one point last summer, he instructed the White House operator to call Mr. Cordray so he could fire him but was talked down by John F. Kelly, according to two former administration officials. In late November, Mr. Cordray resigned and installed his deputy, Leandra English, as acting director. That set off a scramble within the White House to shove Ms. English aside.
The White House, seeking to avoid a new confirmation battle, considered sliding the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, into an interim leadership role. Gary D. Cohn, then the chairman of Mr. Trump’s National Economic Council, lobbied for Mr. Mulvaney, his sometimes golf partner. Mr. Mulvaney leapt at the chance, arguing that he would be aggressive in dismantling the bureau, according to an administration official.
Democrats have questioned Mr. Mulvaney’s relationships with the industry he is supposed to be policing. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, asked Mr. Mulvaney if he had ever “rubbed elbows with payday C.E.O.s or their lobbyists and lawyers in exotic locations.”
In February, Mr. Cohn had invited Mr. Mulvaney to a tournament at an exclusive club in the Bahamas. Eating lunch, they were approached by J. Paul Reddam, the founder of CashCall, who told Mr. Mulvaney he wanted to discuss the bureau’s case against the California-based lender over high-cost loans. Mr. Mulvaney responded that he thought all of the payday cases had already been dismissed, but would refer the request to a deputy, according to two people with knowledge of the encounter.
The intervention had no apparent effect. Career lawyers at the bureau recently appealed a judge’s order that reduced CashCall’s fine to $10 million from the proposed $287 million.
Image
At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mr. Mulvaney has halted all new investigations, frozen hiring, stopped the agency’s data collection and proposed cutting off public access to a database of consumer complaints.CreditJoshua Roberts/Reuters
Mr. Mulvaney’s position was that Mr. Reddam was the head of a mortgage company, not a payday lender.
“I think this administration has a lot of trouble with the truth,” Mr. Brown said.
Limited Reach
Sometimes it is telling too much truth that has gotten Mr. Mulvaney into trouble. Last month, he breezily informed a conference of 1,300 bankers and their lobbyists that he had a standing rule in his congressional office: “If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you.”
His comments annoyed White House officials and prompted calls among Democrats, including Mr. Brown, to investigate whether he had committed a violation of federal Hatch Act pay-to-play rules.
Mr. Mulvaney does not lack confidence — he listed a membership to MENSA on his personal biography during his 2017 confirmation hearings. (An aide said he quit the high I.Q. society in 2004, after four years, to save on the dues.) And he is fond of making a stir. When reporters posted pictures on Twitter of his aides sipping beers on the balcony of the budget office near the White House last summer, he shrugged off a suggestion to scrap or relocate his Friday office happy hours.
“Hey, we already took the hit in the media, so let’s keep doing it,” he told a colleague at the time.
During a pre-inauguration tour of the offices, Mr. Mulvaney skipped policy questions and instead asked about the gym and whether there was a place to sleep in his office. When they got to the White House mess hall, he was unimpressed with the tacos, telling his predecessor, Shaun Donovan, the meal did not measure up to the Mexican restaurants he once owned in Charlotte, N.C., according to a person to whom Mr. Donovan related the encounter.
Mr. Mulvaney has not wielded much power over the budget and played a back-seat role in budget negotiations. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, did not consider him a central player, Republican aides who do not work for the majority leader said.
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who leads a powerful appropriations subcommittee, recently told a friend that Mr. Mulvaney’s proposed cuts were “absurd” and proved he was not a “serious” negotiator, according to a Republican official with knowledge of the exchange.
Still, he has not given up — he has been prodding Mr. Trump to demand a symbolic $20 billion to $30 billion in cuts to social programs and the State Department’s foreign aid budget, according to an administration official with knowledge of his plans. Mr. Trump plans to send a letter to Congress this week asking to cut a fraction of that amount — about $15 billion. The savings would come partly from unused Obama-era funds that were already appropriated but never spent.
Mr. Mulvaney seems happiest when describing new ways to undermine the consumer bureau by, say, removing its online complaint system from public view — or using the agency’s obscure statutory name, the “Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection,” to undo years of branding.
“The reading of the statute actually revealed some very fun things,” an excited Mr. Mulvaney told his friendly audience of bankers last week. “C.F.P.B. doesn’t exist! C.F.P.B. has never existed!”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Budget Hawk Hones Claws At Top of Consumer Bureau.
Cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach opted to renew FPL "electricity tax" franchises, making them codependent on FPL's monopoly, flummery, dupery, nincompoopery, fraud, waste and abuse?
State questions $55M of FPL’s $318M Matthew recovery cost ‘allowance’ By John Haughey | Watchdog.org May 9, 2018 (0)
The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) has scheduled two days of hearings in Tallahassee beginning May 22 to review its 2017 approval of Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) petition to recover $318.5 million in “incremental storm restoration costs” related to Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
In February 2017, the PSC granted FPL’s request and allowed the state’s largest utility to assess its 5 million rate-payers an additional $3.36 per 1,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity used. The 12-month surcharge expired in March 2018.
As part of that approval, however, the PSC asked the state’s Office of Public Counsel (OPC) to verify FPL’s documentation to determine if the $318.5 recovery allowance was too little or too much.
According to an analysis on behalf of OPC by Helmuth W. Schultz, a Michigan-based senior regulatory analyst, as much as $55 million claimed by FPL should be “disallowed” because of questionable documentation.
Schultz’s recommended the $18 million FPL claimed for hotel lodging to house responders and contractors be disallowed because of “insufficient supporting detail” to justify that costs were “prudently incurred and reasonable.”
He also recommended removing $24.026 million from FPL’s recovery allowance seeking to replenish its storm reserve from $93 million to $117 million because FPL “failed to meet its burden of proof regarding these costs.”
In addition, Schultz questioned how FPL “tracked” contractor costs, recommending reductions be considered for contractor mobilization and demobilization time and costs because “there is a lack of documentation and justification for those specific activities.”
Schultz did not specifically stipulate how much that reduction should be, but during a May 7 pre-hearing, the OPC recommended a 10-percent decrease.
FPL Senior Counsel Ken Rubin said a 10-percent reduction would “add $13.704 million to disallowed costs” and objected to the proposal because it is “an entirely new position that does not conform with pre-filed testimony.”
“For the very first time the Public Counsel says ‘disallow 10 percent,’ introducing this without any pre-filed testimony,” he said. “Where it comes from, we have no idea.”
Rubin requested the proposed 10-percent reduction not be introduced during the May 22 hearing.
OPC attorney Patty Christensen said Schultz recommended a reduction “be considered” and a 10-percent reduction is what OPC wants to consider.
“It is inappropriate to strike a position because it is a position,” Christensen said. “If the company has a different position, they can bring it up and we can have that discussion in the hearing.”
FPL Senior Attorney Kevin I.C. Donaldson said the scrutiny applied to mobilization costs represents a new venue of verification that should be clarified in rule-making workshops before being imposed.
“You are imposing this solely on FPL with no testimony specifically on how you are going to do this,” Donaldson said. “This is something you do generically, not in a cost-recovery prudence review. It is clearly inappropriate for it to be included as an issue.”
Attorneys for the Florida Retail Federation (FRF) and the Florida Industrial Power Users Group (FIPUG) maintained mobilization should be reviewed and the proposed 10-percent reduction is appropriate.
This is “something to be ferreted out during the hearing,” said FIPUG’s Jon C. Moyle, Jr., noting verifying mobilization costs should be “fairly put in play. It is appropriate to have an issue like this considered.”
Hurricane Mathew was a Category 4 hurricane in the Caribbean in early October 2016. In anticipation of a Florida landfall, FPL mobilized 14,600 FPL employees, contractors and mutual aid responders to restore services after the storm. Matthew side-swiped Florida before making landfall in the Carolinas, knocking out power to 1.2 million FPL customers.
In rebutting Schultz’s findings, FPL said it paid $21.790 million in lodging costs — not $18 million — for 127,087 “room-nights” to house contractors and others mustered to respond to the storm.
The utility clams it provided invoices reflecting the initial prepayments made to its hotel vendor and added subsequent invoices that reflected additional payments for the final total billing.
FPL maintains it needs the $24 million to replenish its storm reserve to comply with a 2012 agreement with the PSC that it maintain $117 million in the account.
FPL objected to Schultz’s criticism of its record-keeping, maintaining it is unable to provide the “total costs associated with mobilization/demobilization” because those expenditures are not always specifically itemized on contractors’ invoices.
FPL incurred approximately $1.3 billion in recovery costs associated with Hurricane Irma in September 2017. It announced in January that it would not increase rates to pay for the restoration effort and, instead, use federal tax savings to avoid a surcharge that would have cost its customers an average of approximately $250 each.
At UF's May 2018 graduation, a unnamed Marshall, a Chemistry Professor, brandished bigotry, tackling and pushing African-American graduates offstage for taking three seconds to celebrate, acting like an anti-literate energumen, a robotic tackling-dummy.
This brandishes bigotry.
Likewise, so did the parent who made a police call out of two Mohawk Indian boys from "[New] Mexico" did not look like they belonged on a Colorado State University tour group. The squirrelly paranoid-parent-snitchs' complaint resulted in embarrassing public police investigation. Yes, body cam video of Colorado State's police officers showed they responded professionally. But why did the parent call?
Bigotry.
In hostile DONALD JOHN TRUMP's AmeriKKA, bigotry happens.
Enough. Speak out. Teach your children.
We all may be uncomfortable around people who don't look like us. But it's not their fault.
Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., in 2017. The mother of two Native American teenagers who campus police pulled from a campus tour after a parent reported feeling nervous about them said she believes her sons were victims of racial profiling. (David Zalubowski / AP) By Dahleen Glanton Chicago Tribune
Over the weekend, African-American students decided to celebrate years of hard work at the University of Florida by doing a little dance on stage as they received their diplomas.
There was nothing threatening about these young men and women. They were future lawyers, doctors and teachers dressed in graduation caps and gowns. Yet they were treated like thugs.
A faculty member hustled the students off the stage one by one as they paused to joyfully celebrate their accomplishments. Some white students were hurried off the stage as well, but much less aggressively.
The choreographed moves, popularized by African-American sororities and fraternities, were symbolic. But someone deemed the display inappropriate.
So in front of thousands of adoring parents, relatives and friends in the audience, a stunning message was sent: Being black is a stigma that even a college diploma cannot remove.
The message — now being repeated in viral videos on social media — was not intentional. It was so subtle, in fact, that most people likely did not catch it right away. But the image of young African-Americans being shoved around allegedly for misbehaving surely registered with someone who filed it away for future use.
This often is how seeds of bigotry are planted and stereotypes are reinforced, without us even knowing it. If you ask most Americans, we will insist that we harbor no preconceptions about people who are different.
But we do, each and every one of us. Somewhere in the recesses of our minds, a tidbit of information has settled in, waiting to reveal itself whenever the time seems right.
For some, it is a matter of self-survival. America is changing, and a lot of people simply aren’t ready for it.
There are too many different faces from cultures they don’t understand and traditions they have never heard of being thrust into the mainstream. To them, America is becoming unrecognizable, and they are terrified.
But for others, the bias appears much less sinister. They just feel uncomfortable around certain people. It isn’t based on anything concrete; it’s just a feeling they can’t seem to shake.
But don’t be fooled. Both types of bigotry are equally as harmful. It is up to individuals to put their bias in check before it goes too far.
Consider the woman who recently called the police on two Native American teenagers who were participating in a campus tour at Colorado State University.
The caller, the mother of another prospective student on the tour, decided that the young men who joined the group late were suspicious because they were dressed in black and one of them laughed when she asked what he wanted to study.
“They were lying the whole time,” she told the dispatcher, adding that at least one of them was Hispanic “for sure” because he said he’s from Mexico.
The teenagers’ outfits made them stand out, she said.
“Their clothing has dark stuff on it, like dark things. … Just weird symbolism or wording on it, and one of them has their left hand in his oversize sweatshirt the whole time.”
Though this is how most teenagers dress, the woman surmised that “they're … definitely not a part of the tour.”
But they were part of the tour. The teenagers had gotten lost driving from New Mexico — not Mexico — and arrived late. They had an email confirmation, which they promptly showed to police.
Even the caller began to question her own biases when she was rattling off concerns to the dispatcher. She can be heard on the audiotape raising doubt.
“It's probably nothing. I'm probably being completely paranoid with just everything that's happened,” she said.
“I feel completely ridiculous. They're probably fine and just creepy kids,” she added later.
In the end, she justified her overreaction by blaming the teenagers for making her feel uncomfortable. Their appearance and lack of communication forced her to make a call she didn’t really want to make.
“If it's nothing, I'm sorry, but they … actually made me feel, like, sick, and I've never felt like that,” she told the dispatcher.
With that, she relieved herself of responsibility for her own bigotry. The problem, though, is that bigots think others have an obligation to prove that they are not who the bigots think they are.
These young men weren’t required to even say hello to anyone in the group if they didn’t feel like it, much less respond to a stranger’s obvious interrogation.
Ethnic and racial groups experience this all the time, often with much worse consequences.
Years ago while shopping in the suburbs, a security guard from the mall followed me to my car and demanded to see my purchases. As other shoppers looked on, I demanded to know why.
He said he had observed me going in and out of several stores without buying anything. Yet I had bags in hand and he needed to see the receipts.
I told him that I would gladly remove the bags from the trunk of my car and carry them back into the mall so that we could open them in front of his supervisor. We did, and there was nothing unaccounted for.
The supervisor apologized profusely and acknowledged that the employee, who actually was off-duty, had acted inappropriately. He had decided using his own biased criteria that I was a thief.
I demanded that the security guard be reprimanded. The supervisor promised to follow up.
But it was too late. The message had already been sent: Being black is a stigma that even a college degree and a good-paying job cannot remove.
"SICK RicKKK" SCOTT took the Fifth Amendment some 75 times in deposition before his COLUMBIA/HCA paid $1.6 billion to settle False Claims Act case involving ripoff of Medicare/Medicaid. As Senator Gary W. Hart once said, "You won't get the government off your back until you get your hands out of its pocket."
"X marks the spot at every HCA location where (Gov. Rick Scott) probably defrauded taxpayers."
Florida Democrats slam Gov. Rick Scott for defrauding US taxpayers
By Allison Graveson Thursday, April 19th, 2018 at 5:11 p.m.
Rick Scott, right, after resigning as CEO of Columbia/HCA in 1997.
Democrats had some fun with Photoshop after Florida Gov. Rick Scott released an ad promoting term limits in Congress.
The TV ad shows Scott, who is running for U.S. Senate, in front of a white board with an outline of the United States behind him. Halfway through the ad, Scott puts a red X next to Washington to illustrate his point that it's "the only place that doesn’t want term limits."
The Florida Democratic Party recycled the image of Scott on Twitter to insert a joke about his tenure as CEO the Columbia/HCA hospital chain. Federal agents went public with an investigation into the company for Medicare fraud in 1997. Scott resigned from his post shortly after, and the company wound up paying a record $1.7 billion in fines after pleading guilty to 14 corporate felonies.
"Hey @ScottforFlorida - we fixed it for you. #SelfServingScott," the Florida Democratic Party tweeted.
"X marks the spot at every HCA location where I probably defrauded taxpayers," the edited image says.
Florida Democrats told us the eight X marks weren’t intended to refer to specific cases at hospitals. "Probably" is barely squeezed in, roughly half the size of the rest of the words. Democratic Party spokeswoman Caroline Rowland said that should indicate the tweet was a joke.
But is it true? Scott certainly hasn't been immune from claims surrounding his time as CEO of Columbia/HCA. In 2014, Florida Democrats claimed Scott "oversaw the largest Medicare fraud in the nation’s history," which PolitiFact Florida rated Mostly True. We wanted to see how this new claim stacked up.
X marks the spot?
Scott started Columbia in the spring of 1987, purchasing two El Paso, Texas, hospitals. Over the next decade he added hundreds of hospitals, surgery centers and home health locations. In 1994, Scott’s Columbia chain purchased Tennessee-based HCA and its 100 hospitals and merged the companies.
In 1997, federal agents seized records from four El Paso-area hospitals and then expanded their investigation across the country. They focused on whether Columbia/HCA had committed Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
Scott resigned as CEO in July 1997, almost four months after the inquiry became public. In December 2000, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $840 million in criminal fines, civil damages and penalties. The government settled a second series of similar claims with Columbia/HCA in 2002 for an additional $881 million.
We’ve covered specific charges against the company in several fact-checks since Scott’s first race, such as the company billing Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs for tests that were not necessary or had not been ordered by physicians; attaching false diagnosis codes to patient records to increase reimbursement to the hospitals; and illegally claiming non-reimbursable marketing and advertising costs as community education.
We don’t know a lot about the exact hospitals where fraud was found. But the scope of the settlement suggests the Democrats’ map of eight spots isn’t that much of a stretch.
By the time Scott resigned, Columbia/HCA had grown to more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers and 550 home health locations in 37 states and two foreign countries, Scott's campaign said in 2010.
That includes HCA networks in Houston, Miami, Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas City, Utah (either Payson or Salt Lake), Nashville and Falls Church, Va. In each of those cities, there is at least one hospital in the HCA network.
The 2000 release does mention a few different places where subsidiary of HCA entered in to a plea agreement for fraudulent activities: the Southern District of Florida (Miami); the Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta); the Middle district of Florida (Tampa); the Western District of Texas (El Paso); and a Tennessee facility.
Columbia Homecare Group and Columbia Management Companies Inc. entered into a criminal plea agreement and plead guilty to several charges involving "a wide range of criminal conduct which occurred at HCA's hospitals nationwide."
In Miami, Columbia Homecare Group Inc., a subsidiary, plead guilty to violating the anti-kickback statute.
We could not find any other direct evidence that shows tax payers were specifically defrauded in all eight of the cities pointed out by the Florida Democratic Party, but the release indicates that the fraud was a national issue.
Then-Attorney General Janet Reno said in the 2000 release that the investigation was the "the largest multi-agency investigation of a health care provider ever undertaken by the U.S."
"Health care fraud impacts every American citizen. When a company defrauds our nation's health care programs, it takes money out of the pockets of the American taxpayers," Reno said in 2000. "It is wrong."
The DOJ also noted in the release that prosecutors from more than 25 states across the country assisted in the case.
Adam Levine, an adjunct professor at Stetson University College of Law, said it’s "mostly correct" to assume that there was fraud in areas where HCA is located given the amount of money involved.
"We don’t know where the offenders were and which were worse than others," he said. "So all are equally culpable."
One final point: Scott was in charge, so he bears some responsibility and has said so. But it's worth pointing out that we don't know how much he knew, and when he knew it.
"While I would agree that a CEO or corporate officer cannot know everything, the depth and breadth of the fraud indicates systemic, company-wide policies and procedures that had to be flawed," Levine said.
Our ruling
The Florida Democratic Party distributed a cheeky map of the country and Scott, saying "X marks the spot at every HCA location where I probably defrauded taxpayers."
The post involves the health care fraud settlement against Scott, who used to be CEO of Columbia/HCA. We don’t know if fraud occured at those eight exact places on their map, but experts said the scope of the settlement with Columbia/HCA suggests the Democrats' claim isn’t too much of a stretch. The Department of Justice and the attorney general said the case affected facilities nationwide and taxpayers across the country.
We rate this Mostly True.
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"X marks the spot at every HCA location where (Gov. Rick Scott) probably defrauded taxpayers."
Flori-DUH Governor "SICK RICK" SCOTT does it again.
Editorial: Scott sinks to new low on cronyism at Revenue Department
Published: May 9, 2018
Updated: May 11, 2018 at 10:25 AM
The Florida Department of Revenue is one of those arcane state agencies that quietly keeps the wheels of government turning. It should be led by seasoned experts in tax law and property valuations, but now its top ranks have been compromised by young, inexperienced, unqualified hires who have friends in high places, particularly Rick Scott. This is political patronage at its worst and a shamelessly political scheme by the lame duck governor.
The shakeup is in DOR’s Office of Property Tax Oversight, which oversees and assists local governments in property tax administration. The work it does is apolitical and largely unseen by the public but vitally important in ensuring uniform and efficient tax collections. Local property appraisers regularly rely on the office for guidance. Over the last month, Leon Biegalski, the head of DOR, pushed out several of the office’s leaders and replaced them with newbies whose only apparent qualification is blind loyalty to a governor who could care less about the inner workings of government.
Mary Ellen Klas of the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau reported the staff changes. The director of the Office of Property Tax Oversight, Maurice Gogarty, was ousted despite his 30 years of experience. In his place is Brandi Gunder, a 34-year-old lawyer and Scott’s former education budget coordinator. She has no tax policy experience but will be paid $6,000 more than Gogarty was making. The office’s new deputy director is a 31-year-old lawyer who also has no tax experience, replacing a woman who had worked her way up over the last eight years. The new budget manager is 24. She started as an intern for Scott in 2015. That job was previously held by someone with 34 years of budget experience. Another new appointee is a friend of Biegalski with no college degree, and another was put in a job that state law requires be held by a lawyer but who doesn’t have a law degree. In a statement, Biegalski called this new crew "highly qualified."
Scott has just months left in office and is focused on his run for U.S. Senate. When he leaves the Governor’s Mansion, many people in the offices under him will be out of a job. Thus the moves at DOR have been long planned — as vacancies opened up and employees retired over the last year, the Office of Property Tax Oversight was told to hold the positions open, Klas reported. Then a stack of resumes from Scott’s office arrived. The director and deputy director positions were never advertised, the new people in those jobs were not trained by the veterans they replaced, and none of the new hires filled out applications. Why mess with all that paperwork when the fix is in?
Putting these loyalists in the Office of Property Tax Oversight was especially shrewd, because DOR answers to both the governor and the state Cabinet. So the next governor won’t be able to unilaterally fire these unqualified hires. But it’s a transparently terrible way to operate a state agency, about as swift as having your next-door neighbor do your taxes. He’s not an accountant, but he comes to all of your barbecues.
Scott, a former health care CEO, has long preached the idea of running government like a business. Does any smart business person push out veterans and experts in favor of unqualified and inexperienced replacements because they never question the boss? It would be foolish in any industry. In government, it’s called cronyism.
Insights into the reason able expeditions of probity at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from Jay Furr, the holder of a nonpaying sinecure in Vermont small town. Witty.
From The Washington Post May 11, 2018.
I am my town’s weigher of coal. I have no responsibility. But I sign an ethics policy.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt at the White House in February 2018. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
By Jay FurrMay 11 at 6:56 PM
Jay Furr is a resident of Richmond, Vt.
I have been a Vermont resident for 20 years and, as it happens, serve as the duly appointed weigher of coal for the town of Richmond (population 4,000 or so). Said job has no responsibilities whatsoever and pays nothing in return — it’s a carryover from bygone days. Since the town’s voters have never seen fit to get rid of the position, the town manager finds some sucker to take on the title each year and the select board ratifies the appointment. Then the weigher of coal gets down to the hard work of not actually weighing coal.
The position comes directly from Vermont statutes, which state that “a weigher of coal shall be sworn and shall not be directly or indirectly interested in the sale of coal. Upon request of the seller or purchaser, he or she shall weigh all coal sold in his or her town” and that “the fees of a weigher of coal shall be $0.10 for the first ton and $0.04 for each additional ton, to be paid by the person applying for the weighing.”
This dates back to the days when homes were primarily heated by coal and you wanted to make sure you got a fair weight for the price you paid. Towns would have official municipal scales, and the weigher of coal would be in charge of them.
As it happens, Richmond doesn’t have official municipal scales. No town in Vermont does. I’ve thought about showing up at the select board meeting and asking them to buy some, but I figure I’ve only got so many opportunities to be the town kook. I want to make the most of them.
This week, after I had served as the weigher of coal for three years or so, the town finally got around to asking me to read and agree to abide by the town’s ethics policy. I take the nonperformance of my duties very seriously, so I read and signed the policy accordingly.
You can read it yourself online. It says that public officials such as myself should “work towards the public interest” and “recognize the proper role of all government bodies.” This includes refusing to accept anything of economic value and refraining from using the public position to further a personal interest.
I’m glad to have finally gotten a copy. My master’s degree is in public administration, and I know about these sorts of things. It makes sense that there would be an ethics policy; it just had never come up before.
I will need to take all this very seriously. I want no conflicts of interest when it comes to my not weighing coal. I want to show no favoritism to family members and other individuals in the nonpursuance of my duties.
But as I sit here, enlightened and filled with a new sense of responsibility regarding the public trust placed in me as weigher of coal, it occurs to me: There seem to be more stated policies for ethical nonperformance of coal-weighing than there are for the office of president of the United States.
Crook convicted again. Retrial due to erroneous jury instructions. This time, trial took only two weeks, not five weeks for original convictions.
Three cheers for FBI and USDOJ. My compliments for trying complex cases in real rather than geologic time.
Good work.
Sheldon Silver Is Convicted in 2nd Corruption Trial
The first trial of Sheldon Silver, the former State Assembly speaker, lasted five weeks; his retrial took only two weeks, with jurors in both cases arriving at the same guilty verdict.CreditMary Altaffer/Associated Press
By Benjamin Weiser
May 11, 2018 The New York Times
Sheldon Silver, the former powerful Democratic speaker of the New York State Assembly, was found guilty of federal corruption charges on Friday, less than a year after his first conviction on the same charges was thrown out.
The guilty verdict was another turn in the extended epilogue of Mr. Silver’s long career, which included decades holding sway over nearly every major aspect of New York politics, and an uncanny ability to dodge attacks from competitors, investigators and, until recently, prosecutors.
Mr. Silver was convicted in 2015 on charges related to nearly $4 million he obtained in illicit payments in return for taking actions that benefited a cancer researcher at Columbia University and two real estate developers in New York.
The case was among a number of political corruption cases that were overturned after the United States Supreme Court in 2016 narrowed the activity that could constitute corruption. In a ruling that reversed the conviction of Bob McDonnell, a former Republican governor of Virginia, the court found that such activity must involve concrete and formal government decisions or actions, and not mere political courtesies like setting up a meeting.
Mr. Silver’s retrial was widely watched as a test of the government’s ability to prosecute official corruption under the narrower definition. But from the outset, prosecutors this time seemed to hold an upper hand: The original verdict was only thrown out because the judge’s jury instructions were too broad, as defined by the Supreme Court decision.
The retrial in Federal District Court in Manhattan seemed to move at double speed: Instead of stretching over one month, as the first trial had, the second trial was completed in two weeks, as prosecutors quickly made their case that Mr. Silver, 74, had obtained the illicit payments. In return, prosecutors said, Mr. Silver took a series of official actions that benefited a cancer researcher at Columbia University and two real estate developers in New York.
“Sheldon Silver repeatedly used his enormous public power for his own enormous private gain,” a prosecutor, Tatiana R. Martins, told the jury in a closing statement on Thursday.
Mr. Silver sat impassively as the jury forewoman announced the verdict, which came at the end of the first full day of deliberations. His lawyer, Michael S. Feldberg, said he planned to appeal, citing “multiple legal issues.”
Sentencing is set for July 13; in the first trial, Judge Valerie E. Caproni imposed a 12-year sentence. Mr. Silver spent more than two decades as the Assembly speaker, and along with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Dean G. Skelos, the former Republican State Senate majority leader, became known as one of New York’s “three men in a room” who controlled decision making in Albany.
Both Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos forfeited their seats in late 2015 after each was convicted in separate corruption trials. But both men’s convictions were overturned last year.
Mr. Skelos is to be retried in June. That same month, another Albany-related corruption trial will begin against Alain E. Kaloyeros, the former president of the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute. That case involves bid-rigging allegations in Mr. Cuomo’s signature upstate economic development plan, the so-called Buffalo Billion.
The following month, the government will retry Norman Seabrook, the former head of the New York City correction officers’ union, whose corruption case ended in a mistrial in November after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
In reflecting on Mr. Silver’s conviction, Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, cited the “importance of pursuing cases against corrupt politicians, no matter the difficulty.”
Mr. Silver had taken an oath to act in the best interests of the people of New York State, Mr. Berman said, adding, “As a unanimous jury found, he sold his public office for private greed.”
Governor Cuomo, in a statement, said, “The justice system shows no one is above the law.”
As in Mr. Silver’s first trial, the prosecutors — a new team of Ms. Martins, Daniel C. Richenthal and Damian Williams — presented evidence that he had arranged to have the State Health Department award two grants totaling $500,000 to Robert N. Taub, who ran a clinic dedicated to mesothelioma research.
In return, Dr. Taub, over about a decade, referred nearly 50 cancer patients with legal claims to the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, which gave Mr. Silver a portion of its fees.
Dr. Taub, testifying last week, recalled that a mutual friend had told him that “Shelly wants cases.”
“Silver knew that Dr. Taub was sitting on something worth a lot of money, an active medical practice full of mesothelioma patients with valuable legal claims,” Ms. Martins told the jury on Thursday.
In the second scheme, prosecutors showed Mr. Silver had the two developers, Glenwood Management and the Witkoff Group, move certain tax business to a law firm, Goldberg & Iryami, which also kicked back to Mr. Silver a portion of its fees.
In return, the government alleged Mr. Silver supported real estate legislation that benefited the developers.
Mr. Feldberg, Mr. Silver’s lawyer, had argued in his summation that Mr. Silver’s actions were legal, contending that there was “not one whit of evidence of quid pro quo, not a shred of evidence of bribery.”
On Friday, Mr. Silver was again convicted of all seven counts, which included two counts of honest services fraud and one of extortion under color of official right for each of the cancer and real estate schemes, and a count of money laundering.
As jurors left the courthouse, one, Marvin Carson, told several reporters how the jury worked carefully as they went through each of the seven charges.
“There was always somebody who wasn’t ready to agree,” Mr. Carson said. “And we wanted every detail checked off.”
He described the deliberations as “emotional,” a process that left several jurors in tears, and him longing for a whiskey.
Mr. Silver, as he exited the courthouse, still expressed optimism at his chances of a successful appeal. “I’m very confident the judicial process will play out in my favor,” he said.
“Obviously, I’m disappointed at this point,” Mr. Silver added, “but, you know ——”
Mr. Feldberg interjected, “It’s a long battle.”
With his hat in hand, Mr. Silver then walked down the block. He took his MetroCard from his wallet and descended the stairs into the Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall subway station, only to re-emerge a few moments later.
Here in St. Johns County, Corporate Socialist Republicans dole out millions in incentives, including for the The Players Championship and the Professional Golfers Association, neither of which needed incentives to remain in St. Johns County.
When All Else Fails, Tax Incentives Probably Will, Too
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President Trump with Terry Gou, chairman of the Taiwanese electronics supplier Foxconn, at the White House in July after the company announced plans for a plant in Wisconsin.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
On its face, Wisconsin’s development policy looks somewhat unhinged. The $3 billion it offered to attract Foxconn’s $10 billion flat-screen-television plant to Racine, near the state’s southeastern tip, is an outrageous price tag.
New Jersey’s offer of $5 billion to lure Amazon to Newark — which comes out at $100,000 for each employee the online retailer would bring to town — is also pretty extravagant. Chicago’s $2 billion in incentives seems sensible only by comparison.
Timothy J. Bartik, an economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Kalamazoo, Mich., estimates that eight of every 10 new jobs will be filled by outsiders. While the new workers will pay taxes, most of the revenue will be spent on public services for a growing population. And the incentives themselves will blow a hole in state and local budgets, draining resources that would be better invested in, say, public education.
So why does everybody do it? State and local government spending on tax incentives like those offered by Wisconsin and New Jersey has increased sharply since 1990, to about $45 billion in 2015, by Mr. Bartik’s count. It amounts to roughly all the money that state governments collect from corporate income taxes.
Is this just about opportunistic politicians dipping into state coffers so they can be photographed cutting the ribbon at a spanking new factory? I wouldn’t doubt it. But I would also suggest another, more troublesome motivation: desperation. Fiscal incentives are one of few tools for cities like Racine and Newark to create jobs.
Whether Racine or Newark, Indianapolis or Detroit, Decatur, Ohio, or Bethlehem, Pa., too many of the cities that built the United States into an industrial power through the first two-thirds of the 20th century still haven’t figured out how to recover from the blow that knocked them over in the third.
Racine County, once a healthy manufacturing hub churning out household cleaners, radiators for Caterpillar rigs and the like, has spent a good part of the last 35 years in a funk. Since 1970 it has lost nearly a fourth of its factory jobs, while jobs over all have grown at less than half the national pace. Household incomes in the middle of the distribution have shrunk 14 percent, adjusted for inflation.
It has plenty of company. A study by Alan Berube and Cecile Murray of the Brookings Institution that I wrote about last week looked at 185 urban counties of at least 50,000 people where manufacturing in 1970 accounted for at least one-fifth of all jobs. It found that 70 of the counties had failed to adapt to the economic transformations since then, and 62 of them were in the Northeast or the Midwest.
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Others have come to similar conclusions. In a report published on Tuesday, Mr. Bartik identifies 105 large labor markets of at least 200,000 people that rely heavily on manufacturing. Only 22 of them “succeeded” — which means that job growth has been positive since 2000 and has exceeded the national pace since 2007.
Of the 45 metropolitan areas in the Northeast, 27 have experienced what they call “chronic distress” since the late 1970s, with much slower job growth than in the country as a whole for an extended period. In the Midwest, 33 of 90 metropolitan areas have suffered the same fate. And fewer than half of these distressed areas have managed to snap out of their stagnation.
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Construction in Newark last year. New Jersey has offered $5 billion to lure Amazon to the city, or $100,000 for every job the retailer would create there.CreditBryan Anselm for The New York Times
This is a new problem for the American economy. Through the 1970s, the income gap between rich and poor regions narrowed significantly. It was rare to find areas of persistently high unemployment. Workers moved to high-wage areas. Investment flowed to poor places where wages were lower.
In the face of persistent stagnation across a broad swath of the country, economists are reconsidering their longstanding objection to place-based policies, directed at improving the conditions of a local economy.
Lawrence H. Summers, once a top economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and two colleagues from Harvard University note in a new paper that the “Eastern heartland” — roughly the states east of the Mississippi that are not on the Atlantic coast — has consistently underperformed in terms of economic growth and employment.
Job growth has lagged, as has overall economic growth. “America appears to be evolving into durable islands of wealth and poverty,” the authors conclude. And that raises a sort of intractable question: What is the appropriate policy tool to bring a decaying industrial island back to life?
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There are places that have somehow managed. In last week’s column I mentioned St. Cloud, Minn. Grand Rapids, Mich., also inspires optimism. As its auto-parts industry was falling apart, it pivoted to biotech, raising money from local philanthropists to attract the main campus of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine to town.
Mr. Bartik argues that government initiatives can help to clean up environmentally damaged industrial sites, improve transportation infrastructure and train workers in the skills that local employers seek. So can offering technical assistance to help small businesses develop.
“You need to invest in services that increase local businesses’ productivity,” he told me.
Count me with the pessimists. I agree with Mr. Bartik’s ultimate proposition. But I doubt that a new airport or a few new roads or some technical assistance for small businesses can achieve the productivity jolt that the Rust Belt needs. And no amount of training will work if there are no local jobs to be had.
“A variety of things can make things somewhat better,” Professor Wolman told me, but “explicit policies don’t have much to do with whether you are going to be able to claw your way out of chronic distress.”
The grand solution — of course — is investing in human capital. Study after study finds that areas with more educated work forces perform better. They earn higher wages and are more nimble in adapting to economic change.
But “invest in education” is hardly a prescription that Racine can simply pick up and run with. Indeed, solutions are easier to state than to carry out.
“Chronically distressed regions need to regenerate through diversification, entrepreneurship and innovation,” Professor Wolman and his co-authors argue. “But these are more aspirations than strategies or policies.”
The old expectations of the industrial heartland — about wages and benefits, about career ladders and job stability — are no longer valid. The region’s social contract, which promised a decent job to anybody who wanted one, has been ripped up. But nothing has yet been put in its place.
As decrepit industrial enclaves wait for some new deal to replace the yanked promises of their glory days, one might forgive the billion-dollar incentives with which they try to recapture their lost prosperity. As Professor Wolman put it, incentives might be a bad idea from the standpoint of overall welfare. But “if I were a state government,” he said, “I would be trying like mad to attract Amazon.”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: Tax Breaks to Draw Jobs: A Bad Option, and Often the Only One. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Should the National Park Service and City of St. Augustine resume horseback patrols here?
What of St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994? Would the HOAR ride a horse? Or is the HOAR an full-time, overtime energumen -- already encumbered with the highest social status in St. Johns County, being Political Boss, tortfeasor, fraudfeasor and horse's arse, Republican Lord of All He Surveys?
Hoof beat back on patrol as equine enforcers revived in Jacksonville
Posted at 2:57 PM Updated at 8:55 PM Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
The call came in to check on some suspicious characters in a city park in Arlington, and Jacksonville sheriff’s officers Casey Griffis and Thoren Dudley saddled up.
Yes, they literally saddled up a pair of powerful Percherons named Maverick and Tonka as part of the Sheriff’s Office’s newly revived mounted patrol and clip-clopped down Merrill Road to investigate Cesery Park.
Sitting 6 feet high in the saddle above drivers who slowed to gape at a sight not seen in seven years, Griffis, Dudley and the huge horses showcased one aspect of the job, Lt. Michael Shell said.
“People have been really excited to see them,” said Shell, head of the the Sheriff’s Office’s mounted and canine units. ”... They get noticed where they are at so the public sees and knows they are there. The officers can see a lot more of what’s going on. And there’s community relations. People absolutely love seeing them and it’s a great way for the Sheriff’s Office to reach out to the public.”
It’s great to be back on the hoof beat, added Griffis, 23 years an officer, 10 on horseback.
“I was just thrilled. You can’t believe it until you actually see it,” he said. ”... Finally, you see it on paper and get transferred back. Man, it’s a great thrill, almost as good as the first time.”
It’s a police technique as old as law enforcement itself, begun in the early 1900s in Jacksonville with a mounted unit whose duties included pulling paddy wagons, the Sheriff’s Office said. In 1919 the unit was disbanded, but archive photos show a Duval County mounted patrol on duty in 1942. The mounted unit was revived about 1982, duty including crowd control at events like the 2005 Super Bowl in Jacksonville and a 1992 rescue at Huguenot Park of two children caught in a riptide, the Times-Union reported.
But in 2011, Jacksonville’s mounted force of five was dismounted as part of then-Mayor Alvin Brown’s budget cuts, the Sheriff’s Office said. The officers went back to patrol while the horses retired to the city’s Montgomery Correctional Center prison farm on Lannie Road, tended by staff and trustees with visits from their former riders.
“It was terrible, kind of unreal in the beginning,” Griffis said.
But that wasn’t the end of the equine enforcers.
“There was always a hope they would be coming back and the opportunity to get them with the public again,” Shell said. “It’s been a slow process. The policy for the unit was officially published several weeks ago. At that point, they were officially a unit again.”
Two horses were considered too old to be reactivated. But Midnight, Maverick and Tonka, who sport ground-pounding hooves clad in steel shoes, were saddled up again with Griffis and Dudley. Back at the canine and mounted patrol center on West Duval Street in LaVilla, equipment had to be checked, repaired or replaced after years of disuse. The horses relearned how to react to crowds and work around obstacles, then began patrolling in pairs monitoring parks and other public areas like Riverside, downtown and Brooklyn.
Dudley and Griffis also take time to groom the horses and clean stalls and equipment. They rotate among the three horses where you can “see great, hear great and be seen,” especially at Jacksonville’s big events, Griffis said.
“You have to have a mounted patrol because officers on horseback can do the same amount of work that 10 officers can do on the ground,” he said. “We can clear streets a lot faster and hardly have anyone get hurt, especially officers.”
They also respond to calls like Tuesday’s check of Cesery Park. The officers parked at Lighthouse Christian School on Merrill Road to saddle up for patrol, giving students a quick visit.
“There’s a lot of muscle there, isn’t there,” Griffis said as 11-year-old Tania Duncan gently touched Maverick’s chestnut brown side. “These steel shoes, you have to be careful.”
“I am just really amazed in seeing a horse,” Tania said after meeting the 2-ton equine. “I’ve never seen a horse before. It’s big.”
The horses and riders carefully clopped down the center turn lane on Merrill Road to the park where they found nothing of note. That’s their task now, enforcer and equine, including a job a week ago rounding up a loose pig. And maybe, more will join the force.
“The focus is on patrol,” Shell said. “But there is the potential down the road. The long-term goal is to get the unit back up to five officers.”
"The future should be entirely renewable." So saith a very wise man, former Jimmy Carter energy advisor and former Tennessee Valley Authority Board Chairman S. David Freeman. Watch this wise man in seventeen minute YouTube video (below).
N.B. In 1979, David Freeman told Nat Caldwell of the Nashville Tennesseean that I was "the biggest smarts he ever met in his entire life," after I queried him about $300 million in price-fixed coal purchases. In 1981, I asked David a question at a TVA Board meeting and he responded, "Ed, is that another one of those 'when did you stop beating your wife' questions?'" He says our Civilization is on Death Row, citing nuclear power plants next to earth quake fault zones in California (I've been there, tried that case).
Thanks to heroic St. Augustine Mayor Nancy Shaver for being a state and national leader on sea level rise and global climate change. We need more leaders like her.
Why do we believe hurricane science, but ignore the facts about rising seas?
Here’s one sure bet about the hundreds gathering for the annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference, which runs this week in West Palm Beach: They’ll all want to hear forecasters’ predictions on how active the 2018 hurricane season is going to be.
And whenever a tropical storm forms in the Atlantic Ocean, they’ll keep a nervous eye on the computers’ predicted hurricane paths. They’ll become fluent on wind speeds and shear, drops in barometric pressure, cones of uncertainty.
They’ll be talking, in other words, about science.
And they’ll be heeding scientists. When the experts say a hurricane is about to make landfall, the governor and other leaders will urge Floridians to take appropriate action: Stay put or evacuate, open shelters, stock up on bottled water, kennel the pets.
But if science is to be trusted when it comes to hurricanes, why is it so hard for state officials in Florida and federal officials in the Trump administration to respect science when it comes to climate change and sea-level rise?
How is it that everyone will accept science whenever it shows that Florida is in danger of getting slammed by a storm, but that many stubbornly refuse to believe in science when it shows that the southern end of the peninsula is on a decades-long course to disappear under water?
This is not just a theoretical question. This is no parlor game. The scientists who have measured the global temperatures, the melting of the world’s great ice sheets and the rising of the oceans are no less worthy of our trust than are the weather experts who will alert us to the next tropical storm.
They’re in the exact same business: reading the data and warning us of imminent danger. The only difference is that the creeping rise of the sea level is far less visible than the ominous spiral of a hurricane.
In fact, the warnings are interrelated. One of the greatest dangers of global warming and rising seas to us will be the increasing intensity of hurricanes as they feed on warmer ocean water. As the sea level gets higher, storm surges will be stronger, more destructive and deadlier.
Climate expert Harold Wanless, chairman of the University of Miami Department of Geological Sciences, says that if Hurricane Irma had remained a Category 5 and hit the east coast of Florida — instead of veering west — our region would have suffered a devastating, transforming blow from a 20-foot surge that would have pounded us for hours.
The destruction would have been “much worse” than Katrina’s hit on New Orleans. South Beach’s famous row of Art Deco hotels, to take one example, would be gone.
As Wanless explains, half the heat generated by greenhouse gases since 1997 has been stored in the ocean. This means that even if we could halt CO2 pollution immediately, the climate would keep heating up for a long time. Since 1995, the sea level has risen 3 inches in Key West. By 2060, it’s predicted to rise another 2 feet — and to shoot even higher, more quickly, after that.
As the Union of Concerned Scientists said last year: “In the future, there may not necessarily be more hurricanes, but there will likely be more intense hurricanes that carry higher wind speeds and more precipitation as a result of global warming. The effects of this trend are likely to be exacerbated by sea-level rise and a growing population along coastlines.”
An overwhelming 97 percent of climate scientists agree that humans are the primary cause of climate change. But conservative interests have done such a good job of creating a false narrative about divisions in the scientific community that only 42 percent of Republicans “say most scientists believe global warming is occurring,” according to a recent Gallup poll. In contrast, 65 percent of Independents and 86 percent of Democrats understand that the scientific consensus is definitive.
And here we have this conference, 1,600 people gathering for a week of speeches, workshops and conversations on almost every conceivable aspect of hurricane preparation and response — everything but the one factor that threatens the region’s ongoing viability more than any other. There’s not one word in the program about climate change or sea-level rise.
Not one word about how to mitigate the destructiveness of hurricanes, while we may still have time. Actions like building up shoreline with dunes or mangroves to soften the impact of storm surges. Or constructing more resilient buildings to cope with huge waves. Or updating and improving the region’s aging flood-control system.
This is all too predictable when the governor who is the host of this 32nd Annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference is Rick Scott, famous for allegedly banning the words “global warming” and “climate change” from all state correspondence.
But this head-in-the-sand attitude must end. If this annual get-together on preparations for hurricane season shows anything, it is that state, federal, county and municipal officials can work together to address a common threat.
We need the same attitude to cope with the certain threat of sea-level rise. The sea isn’t going to wait for us to get our act together. It’s time to start now.
“THE INVADING SEA” IS A COLLABORATION OF THE EDITORIAL BOARDS OF THE MIAMI HERALD, THE SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL AND PALM BEACH POST, WITH REPORTING AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT ASSISTANCE FROM WLRN PUBLIC MEDIA. FOR MORE INFORMATION, GO TO THEINVADINGSEA.COM
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article211019229.html#storylink=cpy
Sounds like this might be a political patronage job.
"The Republican chaired the House Local and Military Affairs; Finance and Tax; and Rules, Calendar and Ethics committees." As Gary Hart said, "You won't get the government off your back until you get your hands out of its pockets." What do you reckon?
Former Florida Rep. Ritch Workman hired by Palm Bay City Hall as special projects manager
Former Florida Rep. Ritch Workman recently began work at Palm Bay City Hall as a special projects manager in the facilities maintenance department.
His mission is to oversee a $4 million effort to make all city facilities more energy efficient, which ultimately will lead to saving money in utility costs.
Workman served as business development director at Keiser University from 2014 until March when he was let go because of budget cutbacks. He was responsible for building business-to-business relationships for Florida’s second-largest not-for-profit university, his resume states.
"I did project management for Keiser and really that was the favorite part of that job," Workman said. "That type of work really is one my attributes, that I enjoy and do well."
Workman added: "At the end of the day, Palm Bay has decided to do the right thing, both for the taxpayer and the environment."
Workman earns $62,000 per year. Salary range for this position is $50,478 to $75,811.
Palm Bay City Manager Gregg Lynk said of Workman: "We will be able to utilize his skill set and experience working in local government to help ensure continued success working with outside vendors and project managers. Mr. Workman comes highly recommended from colleagues at the county level and we believe he will be a valuable addition to our staff as we continue our work to make Palm Bay thrive."
Workman, a Melbourne resident, represented District 52 in the Florida House from 2008-16. The Republican chaired the House Local and Military Affairs; Finance and Tax; and Rules, Calendar and Ethics committees.
He could not seek re-election in 2016 because of term limits, and he lost the Florida Senate District 17 race to Debbie Mayfield in the GOP primary.
Prior to work in Tallahassee, Workman was owner/branch manager of Workman Mortgage Co. from 1995-2013.
Workman earned a bachelor’s degree in real estate and urban analysis from Appalachian State University in 1995. He was also a captain in the Florida Army National Guard, serving from 1990-2005.
According to the job description, Workman will implement and manage special projects for Palm Bay’s facilities maintenance department, such as obtaining project quotes from outside vendors, planning, estimating, scheduling and measuring performance data.
Last December, Workman withdrew his nomination to the five-member Florida Public Service Commission after Florida Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, accused him of inappropriate behavior at a 2016 charity event.
Neale is South Brevard watchdog reporter at FLORIDA TODAY.
Excellent article by two of New York Times reporter Walt Bogdanich's graduate students at Columbia University.
Dangerously defective system/design.
Automobiles are still "Unsafe at Any Speed," apparently even while motor vehicles are parked. Another example of "invidious conspicuous consumption," in the words of Thorstein Vebein.
Due to this irritating invention: 1. People dosed with carbon monoxide poisoning are dying. 2. Distracted car owners, wasting lots of gasoline while polluting the planet, indoors and out, and annoying their fellow critters.
NHTSA has been slow to protect the public.
Surely there's an invention to solve the problem, which was apparently created by this invention and a lack of human factors engineering.
What do you reckon?
Credit
Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll
Weaned from using a key, drivers have left cars running in garages, spewing exhaust into homes. Despite years of deaths, regulatory action has lagged.
Without having to turn and remove a key to shut off the motor, drivers can be lulled into mistakenly thinking that the car has stopped running.CreditPhoto illustration by Christina Gandolfo for The New York Times
By David Jeans and Majlie De Puy Kamp
It seems like a common convenience in a digital age: a car that can be powered on and off with the push of a button, rather than the mechanical turning of a key. But it is a convenience that can have a deadly effect.
On a summer morning last year, Fred Schaub drove his Toyota RAV4 into the garage attached to his Florida home and went into the house with the wireless key fob, evidently believing the car was shut off. Twenty-nine hours later, he was found dead, overcome with carbon monoxide that flooded his home while he slept.
“After 75 years of driving, my father thought that when he took the key with him when he left the car, the car would be off,” said Mr. Schaub’s son Doug.
Mr. Schaub is among more than two dozen people killed by carbon monoxide nationwide since 2006 after a keyless-ignition vehicle was inadvertently left running in a garage. Dozens of others have been injured, some left with brain damage.
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Keyless ignitions are now standard in over half of the 17 million new vehicles sold annually in the United States, according to the auto information website Edmunds. Rather than a physical key, drivers carry a fob that transmits a radio signal, and as long as the fob is present, a car can be started with the touch of a button. But weaned from the habit of turning and removing a key to shut off the motor, drivers — particularly older ones — can be lulled by newer, quieter engines into mistakenly thinking that it has stopped running.
Seven years ago, the world’s leading automotive standards group, the Society of Automotive Engineers, called for features like a series of beeps to alert drivers that cars were still running without the key fob in or near the car, and in some cases to shut the engine off automatically.
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“After 75 years of driving, my father thought that when he took the key with him when he left the car, the car would be off,” said Doug Schaub, whose father, Fred, died of carbon monoxide poisoning last year.CreditAndrea Morales for The New York Times
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The gas level in Fred Schaub’s home was at least 30 times the level that humans can tolerate.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a federal regulation based on that idea, a software change that it said could be accomplished for pennies per vehicle. In the face of auto industry opposition, the agency let the plan languish, though it says a rule is still under consideration.
For now, regulators say they are relying on carmakers to incorporate such warning features voluntarily. But a survey of 17 car companies by The New York Times found that while some automakers go beyond the features recommended by the standards group, others fall short.
Safety measures have been a matter of contention among automakers, sometimes even internally. Toyota, for example, has a system of three audible signals outside the car, and one inside, to alert drivers getting out of a vehicle that the motor is still running. But when Toyota engineers determined that more effective warning signals were needed — like flashing lights or a unique tone — the company rejected the recommendation, according to testimony in a wrongful-death suit.
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Toyota models, including Lexus, have figured in almost half of the carbon monoxide fatalities and injuries identified by The Times. Toyota says its keyless ignition system “meets or exceeds all relevant federal safety standards.”
Some automakers have designed newer models that alert drivers more insistently when the engine is left running — or that shut it off after a certain period. Ford’s keyless vehicles now have a feature that automatically turns off the engine after 30 minutes of idling if the key fob is not in the vehicle, the company said recently. (According to a federal lawsuit, Ford began introducing the feature in 2013.)
But many older vehicles have not been retrofitted to reduce the hazard, despite the modest expense of doing so. It cost General Motors $5 per car to install the automatic shutoff in a 2015 recall, according to a G.M. report to the safety agency.
Regulations require automakers to address other hazards associated with keyless vehicles — theft and rollaways — and those measures might also reduce the carbon monoxide danger. But the safety agency has found shortcomings and inconsistencies by automakers in meeting those rules.
As the number of carbon monoxide deaths grows, the hazard is no secret. A Florida fire chief saw so many cases that he took to handing out carbon monoxide detectors. And litigation against the companies is mounting.
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“It’s just been so hard,” said Kimberlin Nickles, whose daughter, Chasity Glisson, died after she left her Lexus running in her Florida garage.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times
“We’re going to continue to see deaths and injuries,” said Sean Kane, founder of Safety Research and Strategies, an auto safety research group. “And the manufacturers will continue to settle cases.”
The exact number of deaths related to carbon monoxide from keyless-ignition vehicles left running is unknown, as no federal agency keeps comprehensive records. Through 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, the safety agency had investigated only four fatal incidents. From news reports, lawsuits, police and fire records and incidents tracked by advocacy groups, The Times has identified 28 deaths and 45 injuries since 2006, but the figures could be higher.
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Carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless, depriving the heart, brain and other vital organs of oxygen. Victims are sometimes found with a cherry red rash, a symptom of carbon monoxide molecules attaching to red blood cells. Some who survive live with irreversible brain damage. One couple described a life where they now struggle with severe memory loss and are dependent on hired assistants.
The gas level in Fred Schaub’s home was at least 30 times the level that humans can tolerate. His body was found in his bed, with a rash on his head and chest.
“The plants inside the house lost their leaves,” said Doug Schaub, his son.
A Risk Detected Early
The keyless ignition was introduced as a luxury feature in Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Germany in 1998, a year after Daimler-Benz filed for a German patent, and entered the American market in 2002. Some carmakers called it the “smart key,” a wireless device sending a code to the car’s computer so the driver can start the engine with a button, instead of a mechanical key. It was meant as an additional selling point for luxury cars: no more fumbling for keys.
The risk identified initially was theft, because drivers might leave the key fob in the vehicle by accident. (In conventional ignitions, under regulations adopted in the 1990s, the key cannot be removed unless the car is in park.) The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s general counsel warned automakers in 2002 that keyless ignitions would be prone to mishaps arising from human error. In 2006, the agency updated its regulations to state that with keyless ignitions, “a warning must be sufficient to catch a driver’s attention before he or she exits the vehicle without the keys.”
Two weeks later, a 70-year-old Florida woman, Jeanette Colter, failed to notice that she had left her keyless Toyota Avalon running in the garage. The home filled with carbon monoxide and she collapsed and died between the bedroom and the kitchen, according to her daughter Vickie. Her 89-year-old husband, David, died in the bedroom. They appear to have been the first victims of carbon monoxide poisoning linked to keyless vehicles.
By 2009, a number of such incidents had come to the attention of the Society of Automotive Engineers, which formed a panel to develop recommended practices to address keyless ignition hazards. The objectives included minimizing “user-instigated errors” like “exiting the vehicle while the propulsion system is enabled.”
The engineering group’s recommendations, issued in January 2011, called on carmakers to install an “externally audible or visual alert” — implying an unspecified number of beeps, or a warning light — when all doors are closed, the key fob is not present and the engine is still running. If the engine automatically shuts off, the alerts are not necessary.
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The same year, the traffic safety administration proposed a key fob rule that would require car manufacturers to provide additional internal and external warning beeps. In addition to protecting against rollaways, it said this would reduce “incidents of carbon monoxide poisoning.” Although it made no provision for an auto-shutoff function — an option that the Society of Automotive Engineers cited — the agency said its own proposal would be “more enforceable.”
Compliance would cost the industry less than $500,000 a year in software coding for millions of keyless vehicles, the traffic safety administration said, adding, “Preventing even one serious injury over three years would make the proposed rule cost-beneficial.”
The auto industry opposed the proposal, and a trade group asserted that the regulator’s use of vehicle owners’ questionnaires to compile a database of defects did not meet the evidence standards of federal vehicle-safety law.
The traffic safety administration released a video two years ago that highlighted the risks of keyless vehicles, including carbon monoxide poisoning. But the agency has postponed adoption of the keyless ignition regulation three times, and in the meantime at least 21 people have died.
“Once N.H.T.S.A. has finished its review and determined the best path forward, N.H.T.S.A. will take appropriate action,” the agency said in a statement in March.
‘I Couldn’t Breathe’
A bad dream woke Michael Sobik on Oct. 8, 2015, at his home in Miramar Beach, Fla. The smell of fumes filled his nostrils and he looked over at his wife, Jamie, realizing his motor skills were slow. Car fumes and carbon monoxide emitted from Mrs. Sobik’s Lexus had filled the garage overnight and flooded the home.
They were overcome by nausea as their blood cells were starved of oxygen. Mr. Sobik stumbled through the house to the garage and was knocked by a rush of fumes. Unable to make sense of what was happening, he opened the garage door and went back into the house.
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Mrs. Sobik, in the meantime, had fallen out of bed in an attempt to stand up. “I couldn’t breathe, I was gasping,” she said, recalling that her husband shouted at her to get outside. “Next thing you know he’s dragging me onto the grass.”
Disoriented and vomiting, she asked if they were about to die.
“I remember the fear in telling her no because I didn’t know,” Mr. Sobik said. When fire marshals arrived, the gas reading inside the house was 80 times the tolerable level for humans, and over 100 times inside the Lexus.
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Timothy Maddock was left with a brain injury in the carbon monoxide incident that killed his girlfriend, Chasity Glisson. They were found lying motionless on the bathroom floor.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times
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Mr. Maddock and Ms. Glisson in an undated photo. No federal agency keeps comprehensive records of deaths arising from carbon monoxide episodes involving keyless vehicles.
Others have experienced similar episodes. One couple, Timothy Maddock and Chasity Glisson, were found motionless on the bathroom floor of Ms. Glisson’s Florida home in 2010 after she unwittingly left her Lexus running in the garage. Ms. Glisson died, and was found covered in a rash. Mr. Maddock survived and now lives with a brain injury.
“It’s just been so hard,” said Ms. Glisson’s mother, Kimberlin Nickles. “All I’ve ever wanted is something to be done for the cars to be safer.”
In Palm Beach County, Fla., which has a large number of older residents, the fire department noticed a spike in incidents as keyless ignitions became common.
“They were literally driving their own vehicles into the garage and closing the door,” said Doug McGlynn, a veteran firefighter. Mr. McGlynn says such incidents became so numerous in Palm Beach County, where he is a district chief for the Fire Rescue Department, that his unit began handing out carbon monoxide detectors and signs for residents to display in their garages, with a clear message: “Carbon Monoxide Kills. Is Your Car Off?”
The tactic appears to have worked. The department started a public information campaign in 2015, and from March 2016 to October 2017 it recorded a 30 percent decline in carbon monoxide incidents caused by vehicles, most with keyless ignitions. But despite the local progress, deaths and injuries are mounting across the country.
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The Sobiks live with severe brain injuries and have hired assistants to help them carry out day-to-day tasks. Mrs. Sobik, a former figure skater, can no longer run. Her husband once prided himself for “running circles around people” as a businessman, but now routinely forgets to return calls.
“Memory loss has been absolutely terrible,” he said. “I have to think: ‘Have I eaten lunch today? Did I take vitamins this morning?’ I find myself doing things and I’m not sure where I’m going. It’s a very frightening and very scary aftermath.”
‘No Adequate Punishment’
With no standard in place for alerts or other features that would address the problems of keyless vehicles left running in confined spaces, the traffic safety administration has said repeatedly that it is convinced that automakers intend to meet the Society of Automotive Engineers’ recommended practices. And some do.
But it can be difficult to determine with precision what measures automakers have taken on their own — even when they are asked directly.
“You can’t trust car corporations to police themselves,” said John Uustal, a Florida-based lawyer involved in two keyless ignition cases. “There’s no adequate punishment.”
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Doug McGlynn, a veteran firefighter in Palm Beach County, Fla., started handing out carbon monoxide detectors at community meetings after responding to several incidents in which a car was left running in a garage.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times
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Mr. McGlynn’s fire rescue unit also distributed signs for residents to display in their garages. The county has a large number of older residents.CreditScott McIntyre for The New York Times
Even among cars from the same automaker, there is inconsistency. Fiat Chrysler said that on its keyless cars, a dashboard warning is displayed if the key fob is removed while the motor is running, and that “on certain 2018 model year vehicles,” an internal chime sounds for 30 seconds. (For older models, it said, the chime sounds until the key fob returns to the vehicle.) But a spokesman would not discuss the feature on a model-by-model basis.
At Mazda, keyless ignition is now standard, and some vehicles have an “advanced keyless entry” system that helps alert the driver to a running engine. If the driver gets out, the doors are closed and the engine is running, six repetitions of a double beep sound inside and outside the car, and a warning light activates on the instrument panel. On other Mazda vehicles in the same circumstances, the external warning sounds only if the key fob is still in the vehicle.
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And neither Mazda nor Fiat Chrysler has incorporated a system that automatically shuts off the engine after a certain time of idling.
Even when precautions are in place, some safety experts, lawyers and victims say the automakers need to do more. At Toyota, such voices came from inside the company.
According to testimony in a wrongful-death lawsuit, Toyota began an investigation into its keyless technology, conducted by its technical center in Michigan, after an employee drove 250 miles to Chicago in 2007 and realized that the remote key was still in Ann Arbor, Mich. (The witness did not know how this happened — for example, whether the fob was close enough to send a signal, but not inside the vehicle, when the car started.) Toyota engineers noted that Mazda vehicles beeped externally six times, as opposed to three external beeps in Toyota models. According to a company document cited in a deposition, they concluded that “Toyota vehicles do not have adequate smart-key-absent warning system.”
Shaun Austin, a quality control manager for Toyota in North America who testified in a wrongful-death suit, stressed the issue internally. A Toyota team in North America was in touch with corporate headquarters in Japan about adding flashing lights and a unique tone that would alert the driver if the car was still running without the key fob present, he said in a court deposition, but all those suggestions were rejected.
Contacted for this article, Mr. Austin directed questions to Toyota. When asked why the suggestions were rejected, Toyota declined to comment.
Its three external beeps satisfy the engineering society’s recommendations.
An Inquiry Without Action
At one point, the traffic safety administration appeared to start taking a keener interest in the hazards. It undertook an investigation of seven automakers in 2013-14, conducting tests and asking for documentation of their safety features for keyless vehicles. But the inquiry was quickly and inconclusively wound down.
In a statement in March, the agency said it was evaluating comments on the proposed rule and the data for carbon monoxide deaths and injuries.
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In the meantime, in a society increasing growing older, the hazard is likely to be compounded by demographics.
At the funeral of Fred Schaub, his family said farewell while he lay in the coffin wearing a New York Police Department hat from his detective years. It partly covered the rash on his head.
“My dad isn’t going to be the last one who passes away from this,” Doug Schaub said.
A version of this article appears in print on of the New York edition with the headline: Keyless Cars Are Convenient, But Can Lead to a Deadly Error. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
So glad we moved to St. Augustine in 1999. Before our eyes, it is becoming a magical place where people are now working for justice and making a difference. We're promoting diversity, preserving history and protecting our environment from ocean level rise. Keep up the good work. Quoted this at St. Augustine City Commission tonight, from The Washington Post:
Where you live has a bigger impact on happiness and health than you might imagine
An average American may move almost a dozen times in a lifetime, according to the Census Bureau. (iStock)
By Jenny RoughMay 14 at 7:00 AM
When my husband and I moved from Los Angeles to Washington for his job, I saw only the cons in our new city: overcast skies, solemn monuments and women wearing an accessory I’d forgotten about from junior high dances: pantyhose. The humidity was oppressive, the gray a wet blanket.
I wanted to move back to Los Angeles, where the sun gave a warm welcome, the open sky made me feel free and purple flowers hung like grape clusters from the jacaranda trees.
Ron wanted to stay put. Facing off, we planted our feet and tried to pull one another in opposite directions, a tug-o-war.
We weren’t dealing with mere whims. Where we live is a matter of medical interest. Geospatial medicine, sometimes called geomedicine, studies how location affects our health and well-being. Just as a person has a genetic DNA, a person has an environmental DNA, says biologist and geographer Amy Blatt, author of “Health, Science, and Place.” “I don’t think people take into account how importantly a place impacts their health until it’s too late,” Blatt says.
In “The Blue Zones of Happiness,” Dan Buettner wrote about pockets of the world where people live longer, happier, healthier lives: enclaves that tend to have abundant sunshine, green spaces, an emphasis on fitness and access to whole foods. “Where a person lives determines their level of happiness more than any other factor,” Buettner says.
I grew up in Ohio, near dreary Lake Erie. Once, after a blizzard, my dad placed my two younger brothers and me on a toboggan and tied the rope around his waist. We cheered with delight as he ran across the back yard, whisking us through a winter wonderland. Exhausted, he dropped the rope, and I volunteered to take over.
I slipped the loop around my puffy coat, lifted my foot and — splat! — face-planted in the snow. The toboggan hadn’t budged. As a child, I wasn’t strong enough to move my brothers.
As an adult, my strength was no match for Ron’s, either. He was older, wiser and made more money. With all my might, I tried to drag him back across the country. Like my brothers, he didn’t give way.
The average American may move almost a dozen times in a lifetime, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Americans move for all sorts of reasons: jobs, bigger houses, retirement, family or — as was the case in my early 20s when I packed my Jeep and headed to California — because we think it’ll make us happier.
I still remember standing on a coastal bluff the first day I arrived. The air smelled like jasmine and honeysuckle. Sunlight sparkled like glitter on the Pacific. I tugged off my wool sweater, raised my arms to the heavens and decided on the spot I’d stay until I died.
Despite my mental-health boost, the move may have increased my risk of early death. According to the American Lung Association, 70 percent of California residents live in an area with unhealthy air. The jasmine-infused breeze I adored was contaminated with pollutants that have been linked to cancer, asthma, heart attack and stroke.
An article published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that when it comes to premature death, genetics has only a 30 percent influence; the other 70 percent is attributed to nongenetic factors such as environment, access to health care and individual behaviors.
Although the article separated environment and individual behaviors, research suggests the two are linked. In a recent British study that examined data on more than 400,000 men and women, those who lived near gyms, pools and sport fields weighed less than the others, as did those who lived farther away from fast-food joints.
“To help people achieve good health outcomes, we have to take into consideration where they live, work and play,” says Marie Lynn Miranda, head of the National Center for Geospatial Medicine at Rice University. Indeed, geography may soon be routinely included in electronic medical records.
“The next generation of health-care providers will be well versed in geospatial medicine,” Blatt says. “Just as you get tested for cholesterol or glucose levels, doctors will ask your place history — all the places where you have lived.”
In a 2009 TEDMED Talk, “Your Health Depends on Where You Live,” health and human services expert Bill Davenhall said such an assessment will allow physicians to determine which environmental toxins and stressors a person has been exposed to and for how long.
Online tools can help reveal health risks of geographic locations: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maps chronic-disease risk factors for 500 American cities; the University of Cincinnati has a Web page about the quality of drinking water for major metropolitan areas; the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index ranks the happiest areas of the country; and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website shows life expectancy by Zip code.
But the best tool may be Google Maps or real estate websites such as Zillow’s, says Blatt. The zoom feature allows you to evaluate whether a neighborhood is set up to help you make healthy choices. When relocating, “think about how your health vulnerabilities match up against potential exposures and triggers,” Miranda advises.
All this research might suggest it would be a good idea to pack up and move somewhere with parks, clean water and fresh mountain air. Yet that’s precisely where the link between geography, health and happiness begins to tangle in its own roots.
Relocating is considered a type of loss — like death, divorce or a job layoff — because it disrupts social ties.
Stephan Goetz, a professor of agricultural and regional economics at Penn State, published a study that showed suburban residents were happier than rural or metro folks. Interestingly, people who hadn’t moved at all in the past five years also reported being happier. “This may be related to not having to find new friends and social networks,” Goetz says.
Another study shows that close friendships, even more than family attachments, are key to health and happiness, especially as we age.
Moving has been associated with adverse outcomes on the young, too, according to findings published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research. The study tracked more than 1.4 million Danes from age 15 to their early 40s. Researchers had a record of all the residents’ moves from birth to age 14. A 14-year-old who moved even once had double the risk of abusing drugs or developing certain mental disorders by midlife compared with those who did not move at all; those risks increased with multiple moves.
When I was a teenager, my family relocated frequently for my dad’s job. As an introvert, I preferred a good book to slumber parties, and the moves hit me hard. Home was my sanctuary, my safe place. Meaningful friendships came slowly. Every time we uprooted, those hard-won social networks were torn away, and I silently swore I’d never become a trailing spouse.
Over a sushi dinner a decade into my life in Los Angeles and 2 1/2 years into my marriage, Ron told me he wanted to take a job in D.C.
I pointed my chopsticks at the palm trees. “We’re eating outside in February.”
Despite the refrain that lapped inside me like ocean waves — don’t move; don’t move; don’t move — we moved.
When we arrived in our new city, I wheeled my beach cruiser into the garage and parked it next to my inline skates. I missed my best friend, my book club, my favorite coffeehouse. I wrinkled my nose at the heavy colonial decor and longed for stucco. My area code, now 301 instead of 310, caused confusion among the California-based clients with whom I still worked, but mostly those two transposed numbers summed up how I felt: rearranged.
Susan Miller, who moved 14 times in 25 years while her husband was in the prime of his hotel corporate management career, founded the faith-based nonprofit Just Moved Ministry to help people cope with letting go of an old place and starting over in a new one. I took Miller’s class at a church in McLean even though, by then, I’d been around six years.
“Cherish, don’t cling,” the leader said, speaking to the danger of clutching to the past. The next day, I looked around. Could I learn to love this city? The Washington Monument stuck straight up in the air and taunted me like a middle finger.
My outlook finally changed when Ron took me to Los Angeles for my birthday. One morning I met a friend for coffee at Shutters on the Beach. She told me she was divorcing. The tension in her marriage had torn it apart.
As the plane approached Reagan National on the flight home, I wondered: Maybe loving Washington didn’t mean I had to wear Nats swag, become a political junkie or even stop pining for the mountains, sun and sea. Despite the links among geography, health and happiness, maybe the most important components were attitude and a willingness to adapt.
To love a city is to care for the people who live there. Ron loves Washington, and I love Ron. Real love means letting go of my own preferences to honor his. For years I’d been unable to embrace D.C. and its people because my hands were tied. In that moment on the plane from Los Angeles, I knew what to do: I laid down my rope.
