EFTA01165157.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: jeevac,[email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 08/31/2014 Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 08:48:28 +0000 Attachments: The_Law-School_Scam_Paul_Campos_The_Atlantic_Aug._13,_2014.docx; These_9_Charts_Show_America's_Coming_Student_Loan_Apocalypse_Shahien_Nasiripour Huff Post Aug._20,_2013.docx; Israeli_Strike_in_Gaza_Hits_Family_of Hamas_Military_Commander Jodi_Rudoren_NYT Aug._20„2014.docx; ilas_Hamas_militaty_chief„Mohammed_Deif„escaped_death_again_Reuters_Aug._20„2 014.docx; BKS_Iyengar obituary_Mark_Tully_The_Guardian_Aug._20,2014.docx; Wrecking_an_Economy_Means_Never Having_to_Say_You_Are_Sorry_Dean_Starkman_ New_Republic_Aug._20„2014.docx; Syrian_civil_war death_toll_rises_to_more_than_191,300,according_to_UN_The_Guardia n_Aug_22,2014.docx; Kate_Bush_bio.docx; Shelf Life_of Food.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png DEAR FRIEND In a Hoveround commercial, seniors take in the Grand Canyon from the comfort of their power scooters. Members of Congress say the ads by The Scooter Store and Hoveround have led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary spending by Medicare, which is only supposed to pay for scooters when seniors are unable to use a cane, walker or regular wheelchair. EFTA01165157 As someone who watches a lot of late night television (I wondered) some of the reoccurring commercials are those from The SCOOTER Store and Hoveround, who together spent more than $18o million on advertising in 2011 and became the heart of a Medicaid fraud controversy three years ago. "Life was passing me by. I wanted to do more, be more independent. Now I'm enjoying life more, and itfeels great. I have The Scooter Store to thankfor that," says the television-ad voiceover accompanying a senior woman who is shown "enjoying life more"as she scooters around her kitchen, making cookies with a young girl. Bait like baking and granddaughters is just one of the ways companies that market power wheelchairs and mobility scooters are seducing seniors with the promise of freedom and independence. Add in birthday parties, baseball games, and plenty of high-fiving, laughter-filled moments with grandkids — all possible because of newfound mobility via power chair, or so say the commercials — and you have a $1 billion market in the U.S. for the motorized wheels. So what was the real skinny Web Link: http://www.cbsnews.cornivideos/are-power-wheelchair-companies-ripping-off-the-govemment/ Detractors said that the ads create the misleading impression that the devices are a convenience rather than a medical necessity. They claim that the scooter commercials appeal to senior emotions, and cause patients to pressure doctors to prescribe unnecessary equipment. A quarter of the fraudulent billings to Medicare are tied to durable medical equipment, said Mythili Raman, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division. "It remains a very significant problem," Raman said. "We're talking about things like power wheelchairs and braces that are expensive, and you can see whyfraudsters see those as an area where they can profit." Scooters — which are larger than power wheelchairs and often include a handlebar for steering — are covered by Medicare if they are prescribed by a doctor who has completed an evaluation showing that their patient is unable to function at home without a device. The doctor fills out a lengthy prescription form and sends it to a scooter supplier that delivers the device to the patient and then submits the paperwork to Medicare for payment. Medicare pays about 8o percent of that cost, which can range from $1,500 to $3,500. The remainder is often picked up by supplemental insurance or the government-funded Medicaid program for low-income and disabled Americans. The process can help immobile seniors get equipment that improves their lives. Ernest Tornabell of Boynton Beach, Fla., received a scooter from Pride, a smaller manufacturer, through Medicare about six years ago. The 73-year-old suffers from obesity, diabetes and lung disease and says he used to never leave his house. Now, using the scooter he can walk his dog, go to the grocery store and run other errands. "I couldn't really get out and do anything before. Now I have a lot more mobility," said Tornabell, whose doctor recommended that he get the device. Medicare is only obligated to foot the bill when seniors are unable to use a cane, walker or regular wheelchair. Government inspectors noted that some 8o percent of the scooters and power wheelchairs paid for by Medicare went to people who didn't meet the requirements. Members of Congress said the TV spots lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary spending through Medicare. "Patients have been brainwashed by The Scooter Store," Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, director of geriatric EFTA01165158 medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, told NBC News. "What they're implying is that you can use these scooters to leave the house, to socialize, to get to bingo." When a patients needs a power wheelchair to get to the toilet, into the kitchen, or back to the bedroom so that person can remain at home, well, simply put: He or she needs it. A power wheelchair (not a "scooter,"which is not covered by Medicare if used outside the home) with its zero turning radius, is a costly device that requires regular maintenance. But it is this particular device that is able to negotiate the tight hallways and bathrooms of most dwellings, and over the years has allowed a number of my patients to function independently at home and avoid nursing home placement. Recognizing that there was little oversight by Medicare/Medicaid the power mobility device industry put a target on its own back by its ill-conceived direct-to-consumer marketing campaign. Because their ad guys know something about Americans: We don't much like looking into the real face of aging, that is, folks crippled by strokes or those with feeding tubes or urinary drainage bags, sitting in their living rooms day after day, watching TV. We'd rather see them "toodling" around the playground with their grandkids, only to resent them later when we contemplate the budget deficit. And more than just Medicare dollars are at risk: Doctors note that seniors who use scooters for convenience rather than necessity can become sedentary, leading to obesity and further health problems. It's hard to blame the patients; advertising can be strong and insidious - and who wouldn't want to have the convenience of increased mobility if their walking ability had been compromised? And indeed, for those unable to get around without some added power, what a game changer it must be. In one of the most high-profile cases involving durable medical equipment in 2012, the FBI raided the headquarters of The SCOOTER Store in New Braunfels, Texas, after a federal audit found the company had overbilled Medicare by as much as $87 million from 2009 to 2011. Known for its TV ads informing Medicare recipients, "You may qualifyfor a power chair or scooter at little or no cost to you,"the Scooter Store was the largest scooter seller in the country. As a result the company filed for bankruptcy 2012. Court papers say that at the company had $1 million to $to million in assets, and up to $too million in debt, including $19.5 million owed to Medicare, The SCOOTER Store's largest creditor. "Life was passing me by. I wanted to do more, be more independent. Now I'm enjoying life more, and itfeels great. I have The Scooter Store to thankfor that," says the television-ad voiceover accompanying a senior woman who is shown "enjoying life more"as she scooters around her kitchen, making cookies with a young girl. Bait like baking and granddaughters is just one of the ways companies that market power wheelchairs and mobility scooters are seducing seniors with the promise of freedom and independence. Add in birthday parties, baseball games, and plenty of high-fiving, laughter-filled moments with grandkids — all possible because of newfound mobility via power chair, or so say the commercials — and you have a $1 billion market in the U.S. for the motorized wheels. Insurance executives say doctors who don't understand when Medicare is supposed to pay for scooters are partly to blame for unnecessary purchases. And once a doctor has written a prescription, Medicare EFTA01165159 rarely checks whether the chairs are actually necessary. The issue was crystallized when the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General released a report, finding that industry- wide, 8o percent of Medicare payments for power chairs are made in error, with most going to people who don't need them or lack proof they need them. From 2009-2012, government auditors found The SCOOTER Store overbilled Medicare by as much as 108 million dollars. Senator Bob Corker, of the Special Committee on Aging, is looking into this very issue. "Just think about that. We have people within the bowels of government here that know we have an eighty percent error rate, and it just continues," said Corker. Three former employees of The SCOOTER Store told "CBS This Morning" the company also ranked doctors based on whether they'd prescribe chairs, and that it had a program specifically to get chairs for people that physicians had already deemed ineligible. Brian Setzer says incessant phone calls and visits wore doctors down. "They pushed the doctors so hard that they didn't want anything to do with you," he said. Physicians say the industry's television commercials are another problem. Dr. Jerome Epplin runs a family practice in Litchfield, Illinois. He says the ads give patients a sense of entitlement, and that some have left his practice because he's refused to prescribe them a chair. "They're led to believe they need them, deserve them, and if we don't sign for them, they get upset and go elsewhere." Allegations of Medicare fraud within the industry go back nearly a decade. The U.S. Justice Department sued The SCOOTER Store in 2005, alleging its advertising enticed seniors to obtain power scooters paid for by Medicare, and the company then sold patients more expensive scooters that they did not want or need. The SCOOTER Store settled that case in 2007 for $4 million. As part of the settlement, The SCOOTER Store was subject to periodic government reviews. In 2011, the latest review available, government auditors estimated that The SCOOTER Store received between $47 million and $88 million in improper payments for scooters. The company said the government's estimate was flawed and that it was willing to repay $19.5 million in overpayments. In February of 2012, dozens of law officers raided the company's headquarters in New Braunfels. That city later sued The SCOOTER Store to get back more than $2.6 million in job-creation incentives awarded to the company. Finally, in April 2012 The SCOOTER Store (the industry leader) filed for Chapter n bankruptcy protection and laid off 1,50o employees. On September, 14 2013 The SCOOTER Store announced that it was closing for good and furloughing its remaining 370 employees as Medicare and Medicaid said that they would no longer pay for its products as a government audit found that The SCOOTER Store had overbilled Medicare $108 million from 2009 to 2012. Medicare accounted for about 75 percent of The SCOOTER Store's revenue. Companies may go out of business; geriatricians and other physicians caring for the frail and disabled will find it harder than ever to get a power wheelchair for a needy patient. Medical students will continue to steer clear of the never-ending, uncompensated hassles of primary care practice. The hard-working taxpayer will be sated by scandal. When the dust settles and the scandal turns out to be less than black and white, we will never hear about it. Medicare fraud costs taxpayers an estimated $6o billion annually and in 2012 a government audit estimated that power wheelchairs cost the program hundreds of millions of dollars a year. To fight fraud and waste, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have introduced competitive bidding and a pilot program that requires approval before Medicare will pay for power wheelchairs and scooters for beneficiaries in seven states with high rates of fraud and errors: California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Florida and Texas, CMS spokesman Tony Salters said in an email. For now, pre-approvals aren't required in most states for most equipment. Medicare officials say the agency also is taking advantage of tools in the new health care law, the Patient Protection and EFTA01165160 Affordable Care Act, to better screen suppliers and claims using state-of-the-art analytics to identify patterns of fraud. As scandals go the, this is a small one. Meanwhile, our society ages. Currently, custodial nursing home care consumes 32% of state and federal Medicaid dollars. That's $132 billion, growing year by year. Compare this to the 0.2% of Medicare's budget that goes to power wheelchairs. In many instances, this device can help maintain a frail elder at home, delaying the time to institutionalization. Granting the disabled and the frailest among us the benefit of power mobility when appropriate should be both a goal and obligation of our society, but we need to be careful to not then obfuscate the process by throwing bureaucratic stumbling blocks in the way of obtaining it, in the name of oversight. There will always be people, groups and companies trying to game the system, evidence by The SCOOTER Store. And it is up to us to do as much as possible to make sure that these desperately needed services get to the needy while keeping fraud like this at a minimum. ****** Last week Israeli airstrikes killed a wife and baby son of the top military commander of Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates the Gaza Strip, hours after rocket fire from Gaza broke a temporary cease-fire Tuesday and halted talks aimed at ending the six-week conflict collapsed in Cairo. It appears that the commander, Mohammed Deif, the target of this and several previous Israeli assassination attempts, though Palestinian officials and witnesses that his was not one of three bodies pulled Wednesday from the rubble of the bombed Gaza City home. Mr. Deif, who is believed to be about 50 years old, has topped Israel's most-wanted list since at least 1996. He took over the Qassam Brigades in 2002 after its previous commander was killed by an Israeli bomb. Deif was born in Khan Younis refugee camp in 1965, according to the Hamas source. His family was poor and his father, an upholsterer, insisted the children pursue their education. He earned a degree in science from the Islamic University in Gaza, where he studied physics, chemistry and biology. Deif EFTA01165161 also displayed an affinity for the arts, heading the university's entertainment committee and performing on stage in comedies. He joined the then new movement Hamas during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, which began in 1987, and was imprisoned by Israel in 1989, spending more than a year in jail, according to some accounts. Rising up the ranks of Hamas, Deif has topped Israel's most wanted list for decades, held personally responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings. Yoram Schweitzer of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies described Deft's current role as somewhere between armed forces chief-of-staff and defense minister. Since then, he has become known as the brains behind Hamas's military strategy on the whole, and its network of underground tunnels in particular, making him a particularly high-prized target for Israel. And today he is the number one person on Israel's hit list. Mr. Deif, who is considered to be the designer of Hamas's signature Qassam rockets and the leader of its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, is a shadowy figure who was severely injured in a 2003 Israeli strike. After Mr. Deif claimed in a recorded message last month that Hamas was "winning the war," a senior Israeli minister vowed to hunt him down. "For years, Mohammed Deif has been hiding in the tunnels underneath Gaza, and that is where he will remain because he's a dead man,"Yair Lapid, Israel's finance minister and a member of its so-called security cabinet, said on July 3o. Later, Mr. Lapid declared, "To Deif and his gang, I want to say clearly: Just as the United States did not rest until itfound Bin Laden and eliminated him, we willfind you and bring you to justice." Israel has not killed many well-known Hamas military leaders during the air-and-ground assault on Gaza that began on July 8; most of the more than 2,000 Palestinians killed have been civilians, according to rights groups. A more limited operation in November 2012 started with the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, who was Mr. Deifs deputy but actually ran the day-to-day operations of the Qassam Brigades because of Mr. Deifs injuries. The Israeli military would not confirm whether it had targeted Mr. Deif or his family, or if there had been a change in strategy since the violence resumed. Witnesses in Gaza said that F-16 warplanes had dropped five bombs at about 9:3opm. Tuesday on a three-story building owned by Rabah al-Dalo a government employee whose wife and two teenage sons were among those killed. "It was like an earthquake, earthquake," said a neighbor, Alm Fayez al- Shorafa. "Everybody went out to check what happened." Mr. Shorafa said he had no idea whether Mr. Deif had been living in the home, a part of which other neighbors said had been rented out for more than a year. It is common practice for senior militants in Hamas to move from apartment to apartment, often rented in others' names, to avoid detection by Israeli intelligence services. Mustafa Asfoura said his daughter Widad, 28, had married Mr. Deif, who has other wives, about four years ago, and that they had four children. The youngest, 8-month-old Ali, was killed alongside his mother on Tuesday and the other children were injured. Mr. Asfoura, 55, said he did not know where his daughter was living, that he had last seen her 10 days ago and that he had long expected her to die in such a way because she was married to "the No. 1 wanted man in Israel." "She agreed to marry Deif, that was her choice, I can't stand against her decision," said her father, a thin man who runs a modest shoe-manufacturing workshop. He said that Widad also had three children from a previous marriage to a Hamas militant, who was killed in 2007. "If Israel wants to kill afighter, why would it kill women and children beside him?"Mr. Asfoura asked. "Let them kill him alone." Not knowing much about Hamas and nothing about its leadership and Mohammed Deif specifically I wondered how he and other Hamas stay hidden although they must know that they will probably be killed sooner or later. As the leader of the Hamas military wing, he has to expect to die in office. The EFTA01165162  _ trick is to postpone Israeli assassination for as long as possible. And up to and perhaps including the Israeli air strike on his home in Gaza City late on Tuesday, Mohammed Deif was successful in doing this, using secrecy and luck to outwit and elude the Israeli intelligence agencies. Mr Deif, the commander-in-chief of Hamas's army, must have followed some basic rules, according to a former Mossad official. He never held meetings or gave orders face to face, using messengers instead; he made sure only trusted people knew where he was; he changed hideouts and vehicles constantly; and he did not keep a mobile phone so he could not be traced. He is also believed to have used techniques to misdirect the Israelis, such as by having false information about his whereabouts discussed over non-secure communications systems. The senior Hamas political leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, and other political leaders such as Mahmoud Zahar have also gone into the secret life of hiding from Israeli assassination since the start of the Gaza war. This has left Gaza with only junior leaders appearing in public, such as the young Hamas spokesmen Sami Abu Zuhri and Mushir al- Masri. The Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal, whom Israel tried to assassinate in 1997, takes stringent security precautions although living far away from Gaza in Qatar. Four times since he took over from his assassinated predecessor Salah Shehadeh, in 2002, Mr Deif escaped from assassination attempts, though he was injured in the last one in 2006. His wife, Widad, and seven-month-old son, Ali, died in the Israeli air strike, which Hamas says Mr. Deif survived. But I wonder if the press would treat this same situation differently if had been the wife and infant of the commander of the Israeli army. Somehow, I don't think that the reporting would be this cavalier. More than 2000 people have died in Gaza since the beginning of this most conflict began. And it is estimated that almost 1800 have been innocent civilians. This is criminal. Life is important everywhere, a Palestinian life is no less precious as an Israeli life. And people on both sides are to blame, so this conflict has to stop because an eye for an eye blinds everyone. Since I first wrote this piece both sides have agreed to a cease fire but until both value peace over winning this conflict will never end. EFTA01165163  How Are Obamacare Premiums Changing In Your State Next Year? ND cN MN ID WI -----MA SO MY MI %.:', Ri CT NE NV OH PA UT IL 0 viv .C.::O mENj n CO N 0 a MO Ky tic ON SC OA Mg AL TX LA AberNo Preens" rcrea: .074 HI 0-514 S.01%-10% 10 01'4-15% Moiled itikaralte anibble 'Data as claw-rat 7 :OM 1.07flina p Oral repatep 043 from fl amers raf are rerosestro ION and Nona rale Increases %T's erne "•CartIrma is retcring a 4 Z..s werahle0 aseorpe Orernsm rite increase Source Slats amoranc• dna/4mM llet000cAnt 'Ater. aviAitise reemsum Soda toltrictr tors a:lual rinorarCe liels N ensue ar:rnearCy Becamesot eery stale prerrOes ereOinstrat ads wipe inegm inegices re OSMAN b Saw moil rartnl CarsoarrIC•r> 07 avrera0e sstr"rurn rifles aMOSS Me Mies Five years ago opponents of healthcare reform were continually warned that there would be death panels and that health insurance premiums were going to skyrocket under Obamacare next year, maybe even double! No, wait -- they're only increasing a little, and less than before Obamacare! No, wait -- they're ... decreasing in some places? The crucial question about the second year of enrollment on the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges is: How much will coverage cost? Actual prices won't be available in most states until the exchanges open Nov. 15, or shortly before that, so consumers are left to sort through political spin and preliminary reports that don't make things any dearer. So what's going on? First, most people will pay more for health insurance next year. That's true whether you get coverage from a job, on your own through an exchange or directly from an insurer, or from Medicare. Health insurance prices tend to go up. It's their nature, and it's closely tied to how much the cost of medical care rises. The good news is that available information indicates the doomsayers were wrong, and premiums under President Barack Obama's health care law aren't going through the roof. The average increase for Obamacare plans will be 8.2 percent next year in 29 states and the District of Columbia where data about health insurance premiums for 2015 are available, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has conducted the most thorough review to date. That's significant, but it's a little lower than the 10 percent annual rate hikes typical before the Affordable Care Act, according to a recent analysis published by the Commonwealth Fund. The map above shows average premium increases in the states PricewaterhouseCoopers reviewed, with darker shades indicating higher rate hikes. States with limited information are shown in gray and EFTA01165164 states where no data were available are shown in white. But none of that is worth much to an individual consumer worried about her pocketbook, and ifs no consolation to the family seeing rates for their coverage increase by to percent or more, even if that happens only to a fraction of the more than 15 million people the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates are in this market. Averages mask a lot of variation between the states, and even within them, because rates typically are set on a local level. Also, these big-picture numbers don't account for individual variables that affect prices, like age, family size and tobacco use. There are multiple health insurance companies operating in nearly all states, and each sells numerous products to individual households, both on and off the exchanges. The plan one consumer has this year could cost 15 percent more, while her next-door neighbor may see his price go down. Take Florida, where the anti-Obamacare administration of Gov. Rick Scott (R) says health insurance premiums will go up 13.2 percent on average next year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services responded to Florida's announcement by arguing that rates for the most popular type of insurance are actually going down in the areas where three-quarters of Sunshine State Obamacare enrollees live. Similarly, in California, the health insurance exchange touted a 4.2 percent "weighted average" statewide increase, a calculation that considers the number of people on each health insurance plan, rather than a simple average of the price hikes. The state didn't release a plain average. Comparing states, there's a wide gulf between a place like Oregon, where the average rate will be 2.5 percent lower, and Indiana, where the average price is set to increase 15.4 percent, the PricewaterhouseCoopers report shows. Even within those two states, the change in premiums varies a lot -- from 20.6 percent lower to 10.6 percent higher in Oregon, and from no increase to 35 percent higher in Indiana. Rates vary this year, too, as they have in the past. The problem is, all of these numbers can be correct, but are are being placed into context by people who have an agenda. And they don't factor in the tax credits that subsidized premiums for 85 percent of the 8 million people who signed up on an exchange this year. While subsidies could shield those enrollees from higher premiums, these consumers still may have to shop around for a new, cheaper plan to keep their costs down next year. Why will health insurance premiums rise, and why does it vary so much from location to location? There are a host of reasons. Some reflect the nature of the U.S. health care system, and some are Obamacare-related. Mostly, insurance rates climb because health care costs climb, even though the growth in national health care spending has been historically slow for several years. Factors like prices for medical services and drugs and how much health care people use, vary by state and local area, for reasons that aren't always clear. Generally, premiums are lower in states where multiple insurers compete. All of this was true for 2014, and for every previous year. EFTA01165165 What about the Obamacare effect? The most important change this year is that the law required insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, which led to the expectation that they would need more health care and drive up costs. The share of young adults who enrolled is below what the Obama administration hoped, and there's evidence that previously uninsured people are getting medical care, but that doesn't seem to be leading to widespread, massive price hikes. The initial enrollment period didn't end until spring, so insurers still don't have a great idea of how much their new customers will cost them, As a result, they're making educated guesses about next year's premiums. This is one reason some companies are cutting rates or seeking big increases -- they guessed wrong last year and set prices too high or too low and want to boost enrollment next year. Increased competition in states where more insurers are joining exchanges also could keep premium increases down. Most important, there have been no death panels as suggested by Sarah PalM and other healthcare reform opponents. Syrian civil war death toll rises to more than 191,300, according to UN A Syrian man cries as he sits among the rubble of a building following a reported barrel-bomb attack by Assad forces in Aleppo earlier this month The death toll from Syria's civil war has risen to more than 191,300 people, the United Nations has said. The figures for March 2011 to April 2014 are the first to issue by the UN's human rights office since July 2013, when it documented more than 100,000 killed. The UN's top human rights official, Navi Pillay, who oversees the Geneva-based office, said the figures are so much higher because they include additional killings from earlier periods, as well as deaths since the last report. The exact figure of confirmed deaths is 191,369, Pillay said. "As the report explains, tragically it is probably an underestimate of the real total number ofpeople killed during thefirst three years of this murderous conflict," she said. EFTA01165166 Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, criticized what she described as the world's "paralysis" over the fighting in Syria, which "has dropped off the international radar" in the face of so many other armed conflicts. In January, her office said it had stopped updating the death toll, blaming a lack of access in Syria and its inability to verify source material. It was unclear why it has released new figures now. The UN also would not endorse anyone else's count, including the widely quoted figures from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has closely counted the deaths since Syria's crisis began in March 2011. On Thursday, the observatory said the number of deaths has reached 180,000. What I don't understand why none of Syria's neighbors have made any serious attempts to stop this carnage. Instead of funding their sons and daughters purchases of $2 million gold plated Bugatti with 77777 vanity license plates, multi-million dollar spending sprees at Harrods in London and £38 million pied-à-terres that lay vacant more than eleven months a year, why don't these same gazillionaires shower their wealth in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Yemen and even in their own countries to reduce sectarian and economic inequality instead of waiting for the United States to deal with these situations. And for you conservatives, Syria is not Obama's or American's problem, it is first a regional problem, then it is a world problem and if Syria's neighbors don't want to lead the charge and the rest of the world ignores the slaughter, please don't blame it on President Obama, especially when Bush and Cheney have already exhausted that card. If the official numbers are 191,300 lets except that the real death toll is probably much higher and to see little or no visible response from Syria's neighbors is disgraceful. Bank of America Corp has reached a $16.65 billion settlement with U.S. regulators to settle charges that it misled investors into buying troubled mortgage-backed securities. The settlement announced on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Justice calls for the second-largest U.S. bank to pay a $9.65 billion cash penalty, and provide $7 billion of consumer relief to struggling homeowners and communities. It is expected to resolve the vast majority of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank's remaining liabilities tied to its purchases of Countrywide Financial Corp, once the nation's largest mortgage lender, and Merrill Lynch & Co. 'This historic resolution - the largest such settlement on record - goesfar beyond 'the cost of doing business,'" U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. Bank of America said the accord is expected to reduce third-quarter earnings by about $5.3 billion before taxes, or about 43 cents per share after taxes. Chief Executive Brian Moynihan has spent more than four years trying to rid Bank of America of liabilities from the purchases of Countrywide and Merrill, which were made by his predecessor, Kenneth Lewis. In a statement, Moynihan said the accord is in shareholders' best interests. Shares of Bank of America rose 11 cents to $15.63 in early EFTA01165167 morning trading. The settlement's outlines had surfaced earlier in the month, and the formal announcement may increase the chance that many of the bank's mortgage problems are behind it. Bank of America admitted having sold billions of dollars of risky mortgage-backed securities while concealing key facts about the quality of the underlying loans. It also admitted to having made misrepresentations to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac about the quality of loans sold to those government-controlled mortgage companies. The settlement resolves pending and potential future cases by the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, the Federal Housing Administration and several U.S. states, including over activity since Countrywide and Merrill were bought. It does not cover the $1.27 billion fraud penalty imposed last month by a federal judge over a fraudulent Countrywide mortgage scheme known as "High Speed Swim Lane," or "Hustle," which Bank of America is appealing. The accord also does not cover potential criminal claims or claims against individuals. Including the latest accord, Bank of America will have paid well over $65 billion to resolve mortgage issues with consumers, investors and government agencies tied to its purchase of Countrywide in July 2008 and Merrill six months later. The $16.65 billion settlement eclipses the respective $13 billion and $7 billion accords that JPMorgan Chase & Co and Citigroup Inc recently reached to resolve similar claims. This is ridiculous. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and the rest of Wall Street should be ecstatic as they are getting slaps on the wrist when what they deserve are jail sentences. As for the multi-billion penalties/settlements/punishments — it's just the cost of doing business, evidence when Bank of American share rose no news of the settlement. And the fact that Eric Holder took a victory lap when he was gamed, is further evidence that the nation's top prosecutors are clueless. As Dean Starkman wrote last week in The New Republic — Wrecking an Economy Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry. It bears saying one more time: It's a disgrace that the Justice Department has failed to bring a single criminal charge against any Wall Street or mortgage executive of consequence for their roles in wrecking the economy, despite having managed to make arrests in the comparatively piddling schemes of Enron and the Savings & Loan flimflam. (The latter resulted in more than 800 convictions, including those of many top executives.) These settlements are wan consolation. The sums being surrendered, for starters, are large only until compared with the $13 trillion or so the public lost in the financial crash—or, for that matter, with the banks' own coffers. (Citi's pure profit in the two years before the wipeout was more than triple its penalty.) Not to mention that the money won't be paid by any parties actually responsible, but by the banks' current shareholders, who pretty much had nothing to do with the misdeeds in question. And the bulk of the settlements will be tax deductible. For destroying trillions in wealth and thousands of jobs, banks will get a write-off. There's a much deeper problem here, however, and one that has received far less attention: Not only has the Department of Justice (DOJ) failed to build any criminal cases for financial-crisis misdeeds, but it's also now settling with these banks without even filing civil complaints. A complaint is the cornerstone of civil litigation, the foundation for even routine lawsuits. One of its primary benefits— and of adversarial legal proceedings generally—is that a complaint can bring huge amounts of previously undisclosed information into the public record. In these mortgage securities cases, the Justice Department had not only an obligation but an opportunity: to show the country what it found, to deter future misconduct, to complete the story of the financial crisis in humanizing, clarifying, EFTA01165168 searing detail. And to do all that, the department didn't need to do anything special. Just what lawyers normally do. Instead, by imposing a fine without documenting the underlying abuses, the Justice Department has permitted the banks, for a price, to bury their sins. One way to appreciate the DOJ's negligence is to compare these settlements with the civil action that New York's Department of Financial Services brought against the French banking giant BNP Paribas a few weeks before the Citi deal was announced. The state accused BNP of concealing more than $190 billion in transactions that allowed warlords, mullahs, and other miscreants to evade U.S. sanctions and spirit money in and out of Sudan, Iran, and Cuba. We know which executive did what bad thing when, because it's all laid out in a consent order, complete with the de rigueur damning e-mails. In one of them, the head of ethics and compliance for the bank's North American unit expressed his glee at another bank's bust for sanctions evasion: "The dirty little secret isn't so secret any more, oui?" he wrote to a colleague. Now BNP's own dirty little secrets have been exposed as well. In a press release accompanying the filing, the regulator gives the name of that compliance officer, Stephen Strombelline, along with those of four other executives fired as a result of the investigation, including the bank's chief operating officer, Georges Chodron de Courcel. In announcing the BNP penalty, New York's superintendent of financial services, Benjamin M. Lawsky, made the following observation: "In order to deterfuture offenses, it is important to remember that banks do not commit misconduct—bankers do." Many of his predecessors in white-collar law enforcement also understood the corrective power of publicity. Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken became household names in the 1980s because of the riveting civil complaints brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an agency that evoked a fear on Wall Street that is hard to imagine today. Robert M. Morgenthau, the legendary Manhattan district attorney, is legendary partly for actually sending bankers to prison, but he also pursued devastating civil suits against wayward financiers. The sweeping white-collar civil complaints that Eliot Spitzer filed as New York's attorney general read like detective novels; his blockbuster settlement with American International Group was preceded by a lawsuit that explicitly targeted the titan Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, to Greenberg's everlasting fury. Detailed airing of past wrongdoing doesn't just put would-be malefactors on notice. It does more than bolster public confidence in the legal system. It can also force structural change. In 1933, the Pecora hearings hauled banking chieftains (including those who ran the predecessors of U. Morgan and Citi) before the Senate banking committee to scrutinize their actions before the 1929 crash. These hearings led to the Glass-Steagall reforms and the Securities Exchange acts, the foundations of U.S. financial stability for half a century. Later in the century, the Savings & Loan prosecutions led to the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 that, among other things, effectively disposed of failed thrifts. The Enron debacle was followed by the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting and governance reforms of 2002. Spitzer's suit against Wall Street banks produced a global pact to reform bogus stock research, and so on. But in the current cases, in which institutions are accused of systematic wrongdoing with historic consequences, the government is letting banks discreetly settle out of court, as if the facts at issue were some kind of fender bender. And this is an outrage and as such.... my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS EFTA01165169  SianMaIkea% ••••••••••• as eas. mimes.= .••• r.. Ow •••••• •• bobs • op• Gie • boy. •••• 4.7* While researching last week I ran across an article in The Atlantic by Paul Campos that caught my curiosity - The Law School Scam - based on the premise that For-Profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and socialized losses. But for their debt-saddled, no-job-prospect graduates, they can be a nightmare. Without a doubt a law education does have merit and a degree at one of the top Law Schools almost guarantees a reasonably good job with a salary above $100,000 and for top candidates close to $200,000 at a major firm or on Wall Street. But for those students who do not graduate from one of the top 25 with reasonably good grades that dream is often a fantasy. There are approximately 2.23 million accredited lawyers in the United States of which less than 800,000 are employed in their chosen discipline. Once a sure entry to a good job with a good salary, this is not true today, especially for many of the graduates from the bottom of the list of the approximately 200 fully-accredited by the ABA's Section for Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar as of today. Couple with this is that there has been a profound decline of students applying to our nation's law school, down from 100,000 in 2004 to only 30,000 this year. As a result, the number of law schools is likely to decline with many of the remaining drastically reducing their staffs. The reason for the drop in the number of applications to law school seem to be based on simple math. An American Bar Association study last year found that only 55% of law school graduates had gotten a job requiring a law license while the average student took on $125,000 in debt to earn the license. But the declining job prospects did nothing to tamp down rising tuition. Between 2001 and 2011, the average private law school tuition nearly doubled from $23,000 to $40,500. Most law schools are stuck with the idea that law is a dignified profession with elegant theories that should be the principal focus of law school classes. Those law schools do not want to teach students the nuts and bolts of lawyering — assuming that law firms will do that after students graduate. But law firms and corporations no longer want to foot the bill for that. Nor, presumably do they see a need to pay enormous bills for doing things like legal research that was formerly the province of law school graduates aspiring to partner in a big firm. EFTA01165170 Now the Internet and cheap telecommunications make it easy for law firms and companies to hire low- wage temps in places like India to do that work. ValueNotes, a research company in India, reported that the number of Indian firms offering legal related services nearly tripled between 2006 and 2011 to 140 and is expected to generate $1.1 billion in revenues next year. Some schools are adapting to the needs of companies. For example, the Times reports that Stanford has put more attention on clinics that give students "hands-on training."And Boston's Northeastern Law School "has long emphasized in-the-field training" and suffered among the "smallest decreases in its applicant pool this year" as its dean, Jeremy R. Paul, told the Times. It used to be that law school was a three year refuge for those who were not sure what they wanted to do after college. But it looks like the basic laws of economics are scaring tens of thousands of those slow-to-grow-up graduates away from the bar. And that should make anyone think that 200 odd law schools maybe too many for America. EFTA01165171  aabial SOS OS OM aln. MU MS D. 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