In US, record numbers are plunged into poverty: report

In US, record numbers are plunged into poverty: report
Sat Feb 24, 7:35 PM ET





WASHINGTON (AFP) - The gulf between rich and poor in the United States is yawning wider than ever, and the number of extremely impoverished is at a three-decade high, a report out Saturday found.

Based on the latest available US census data from 2005, the McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that almost 16 million Americans live in "deep or severe poverty" defined as a family of four with two children earning less than 9,903 dollars -- one half the federal poverty line figure.

For individuals the "deep poverty" threshold was an income under 5,080 dollars a year.

"The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005," the US newspaper chain reported.

"That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period," it noted.

The surge in poverty comes alongside an unusual economic expansion.

"Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries," the study found.

"That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

"These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty -- the highest rate since at least 1975. The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades," the report said.

It quoted an American Journal of Preventive Medicine study as having found that since 2000, the number of severely poor -- far below basic poverty terms -- in the United States has grown "more than any other segment of the population."

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, a study co-author.

"We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."

US social programs are minimal compared to those of western Europe and Canada. The United States has a population of 301 million, but more than 45 million US citizens have no health insurance.










Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.


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Critics bash Mexican truck decision

Critics bash Mexican truck decision
By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Feb 23, 10:11 PM ET





WASHINGTON - The news that Mexican trucks will be allowed to haul freight deeper into the United States drew an angry reaction Friday from labor leaders, safety advocates and members of Congress.

They said Mexico has substandard trucks and low-paid drivers that will threaten national security, cost thousands of jobs and endanger motorists on the northern side of the Mexican border.

The Bush administration on Thursday announced its plan to have U.S. inspectors oversee Mexican trucking companies that carry cargo across the border.

"This program will make trade with Mexico easier and keep our roads safe at the same time," Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said Friday. She announced details of the plan to let 100 Mexican trucking companies travel beyond the border area while she was in El Paso, Texas, at the Bridge of the Americas, which connects to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Said Teamsters President Jim Hoffa: "They are playing a game of Russian roulette on America's highways."

Access to all U.S. highways was promised by 2000 under the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, as was access through Mexico for U.S. carriers.

That aspect of NAFTA was stalled by lawsuits and disagreements between the two countries, though Canadian and U.S. trucks travel freely across the northern border.

The Bush pilot project will let Mexican truck companies travel from Mexico throughout the United States and back. No hazardous material shipments will be permitted.

According to the Transportation Department, U.S. inspectors will inspect every truck and interview drivers to make sure they can read and speak English. They'll examine trucks and check the licenses, insurance and driving records of the Mexican drivers. Inspectors will also verify that the trucking companies are insured by U.S.-licensed firms.

The first Mexican trucks are expected to drive into the United States beyond the border area in about 60 days, the Transportation Department says.

National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman questioned how the U.S. could spare sending inspectors to Mexico when only a tiny percentage of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. truck companies are inspected every year.

"They lack the inspectors to conduct safety reviews of at-risk domestic carriers," Hersman said. "That situation only gets worse if resources are diverted to the border."

One-fourth of all U.S. trucks are taken off the road after random inspections because they're so unsafe, she said. An even higher percentage of Mexican trucks are taken off the road at Texas border crossings, she said.

Mexican carriers insist their rigs meet U.S. standards. And according to the Transportation Department, 240 federal and 300 state government employees deal with Mexican truck issues.

Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, said inspections will be meaningless because the trucks won't have black boxes that record how long a driver has been behind the wheel.

"They have no way of telling how many hours these truck drivers have been driving before they get to the U.S., let alone when they get here," Claybrook said.

Sen. Patty Murray (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, announced a March 8 hearing to determine whether the arrangement meets safety requirements.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., chair of the House Highways subcommittee, said Congress will keep a close eye on the program.

Mexico responded to the U.S. announcement by saying it will allow trucks from 100 U.S. companies to travel across the border.

Business groups have wanted the border opened to avoid middleman costs of transferring goods from Mexican to U.S. trucks.

The American Trucking Associations said it supports the program, but wants to make sure that U.S. and Mexican truck companies are held to the same standards.

"We also are waiting to see that when US carriers are allowed to travel into Mexico that the regulatory and permitting process that U.S. carriers undergo is fair and transparent," the ATA said in a statement.













Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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Officials To Review Rat-Infested KFC Inspection

Feb 25, 2007 2:44 pm US/Eastern
Officials To Review Rat-Infested KFC Inspection






(CBS) NEW YORK Health officials are going to review the inspection of a Greenwich Village KFC/Taco Bell, which was completed one day before CBS 2 cameras caught dozens of rats scurrying across the store, jumping on tables, and climbing into food trays.

"It doesn't look like the inspection that was done Thursday met our standards," said Geoffrey Cowley, a health department spokesman. "I don't want to prejudge that. We're concerned and we're going to carefully revaluate that inspection."

The restaurant located at Sixth Avenue and West 4th Street was investigated Thursday following complaints, but the inspector didn't see any rats.

In addition, the same restaurant passed both of its inspections last year, although it was fined $1,300 for some violations which included mice droppings.

Now the Health Department has closed the store, and said it will remain closed until it passes re-inspection.

Regardless, many people were so disgusted by the entire episode, they are rethinking their dining plans.

"When I saw the news about the rats, I was like freaking out," frequent customer Kim Pagnottan said. "I was like holy (bleep). I was like oh my god. It's disgusting!

"Now, it's like I don't want to even go out, I want to eat at my own house. I want to cook every day."

Eddie Rue, a now former customer, agreed.

"I will never eat in there again, definitely lost me as a customer," Rue said.

And countless more are sure to bail following the Health Department's actions on Friday and its stunning announcement on Saturday.

"I freaked out. A place where people eat and there are rats running around the floor. And they aren't little rats. They're huge rats!" Victor Pecone said.

Added former KFC/Taco Bell employee Marcus Bonner: "I quit because it was nasty. They don't use gloves to make the food. They use the same grease day after day after day. At night, the manager told me to put the chairs up. We don't sweep; we don't mop. So that's what the rats are eating off, the stuff that's left on the floors."

Still, some are imploring New Yorkers to keep the faith.

"Please, I hope that the public that saw that won't be turned (off), tempted not to patronize our restaurants because we have the finest and cleanest restaurants in the world," said Chuck Hunt of the New York State Restaurant Association.

Yum Brands Inc., the parent company of KFC/.Taco Bell, hastened to show that it also was taking the rodents seriously. "Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of our customers. This is completely unacceptable and is an absolute violation of our high standards," Yum Brands said in a statement.

The franchise owner "is actively addressing this issue," the statement said, adding that the restaurant will remain closed until the problem is "completely resolved."

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. )












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6 of 7 Dismissed U.S. Attorneys Had Positive Job Evaluations

6 of 7 Dismissed U.S. Attorneys Had Positive Job Evaluations
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A11





All but one of the U.S. attorneys recently fired by the Justice Department had positive job reviews before they were dismissed, but many ran into political trouble with Washington over issues ranging from immigration to the death penalty, according to prosecutors, congressional aides and others familiar with the cases.

Two months after the firings first began to make waves on Capitol Hill, it has also become clear that most of the prosecutors were overseeing significant public-corruption investigations at the time they were asked to leave. Four of the probes target Republican politicians or their supporters, prosecutors and other officials said.

The emerging details stand in contrast to repeated statements from the Justice Department that six of the Republican-appointed prosecutors were dismissed because of poor performance. In one of the most prominent examples, agency officials pointed to widely known management and morale problems surrounding then-U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan in San Francisco.

But the assertions enraged the rest of the group, some of whom feel betrayed after staying silent about the way they have been shoved from office.

Bud Cummins, the former U.S. attorney in Little Rock, who was asked to resign earlier than the others to make way for a former White House aide, said Justice Department officials crossed a line by publicly criticizing the performance of his well-regarded colleagues.

"They're entitled to make these changes for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason," Cummins said. "But if they are trying to suggest that people have inferior performance to hide whatever their true agenda is, that is wrong. They should retract those statements."

The decision by Cummins and some of the others to speak out underscores the extent to which the firings have spiraled out of the Justice Department's control. Officials initially sought to obscure the firings even from some senators, and have since issued confusing signals and contradictory information about the episode.

For example, one source who was familiar with the episode said last week that an eighth U.S. attorney was asked to resign in December along with the others. The unidentified prosecutor is negotiating to stay in the job, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of those discussions.

The end result is an unusual spectacle in which Democratic lawmakers are bemoaning the firings of Republican-appointed prosecutors. The political pressure has become so great that Cummins's successor in Arkansas, former White House aide J. Timothy Griffin, announced on Friday that he had decided not to submit his name to the Senate for a permanent appointment.

Lawmakers from both parties are pushing to strip Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales of his power to name replacement U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period, although Republicans blocked that proposal in the Senate last week. The House Judiciary Committee is planning hearings on similar legislation in March.

"I don't know how they could have mishandled this any worse," said one of the fired U.S. prosecutors, who declined to be quoted by name because he feared repercussions.

"There always have traditionally been tensions between main Justice and U.S. attorneys in the districts," said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "But it does seem like there's an effort to centralize authority in Washington more than there has been in the past and in prior administrations."

Most of the firings came on Dec. 7, when senior Justice Department official Michael A. Battle -- a former U.S. attorney himself -- called at least six prosecutors to inform them that they were being asked to resign. Battle was apologetic but offered little in the way of explanations, telling some that the order had come from "on high," according to sources familiar with the calls.

In addition to Ryan in San Francisco, the prosecutors who were called that day included Carol S. Lam in San Diego, John McKay in Seattle, David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, Daniel G. Bogden in Nevada and Paul K. Charlton in Arizona. Cummins had been informed of his dismissal last summer but stayed until December.

The breaking point for Cummins and the others was testimony this month by Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, who told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the six U.S. attorneys in the West and Southwest had been dismissed for "performance-related" reasons and that Cummins had been pushed out to make room for Griffin.

That testimony "was the moment the gloves came off," said one fired prosecutor who declined to be identified.

Five of the dismissed prosecutors -- Bogden, Charlton, Cummins, Iglesias and McKay -- told reporters that they were not given any reason for their firings and had not been told of any performance problems. Only one of the fired prosecutors, Ryan in San Francisco, faced substantive complaints about turnover or other management-related issues, officials said.

Justice Department officials in recent days have sought to clarify the performance comments, saying the dispute is mired in "semantics." The officials said McNulty was referring to policy differences between the Bush administration and some of its employees. One official also said that the department had not made a list of replacements ahead of time.

"When you are setting national policy, you cannot have U.S. attorneys setting their own policies," said a Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Bogden and Lam are among a handful of declared independents who worked as U.S. attorneys in the Bush administration. The rest of the group are viewed as moderate Republicans who have sometimes been at odds with their Washington bosses or more conservative Republicans.

In Seattle, for example, local Republicans complained to Gonzales about McKay's decision not to intervene in the disputed Washington gubernatorial race in 2006, which a Democrat eventually won by 129 votes.

Lam was the target of repeated complaints from conservative House Republicans, who asserted that she was lax in enforcing immigration laws. The Justice Department also points to drops in the number of firearms cases filed by her office.

Charlton in Arizona clashed with the Justice Department's headquarters on at least two occasions over murder cases in which he opposed seeking the death penalty, including one that prompted an outcry from Navajo groups opposed to the use of capital punishment. He was overruled in both cases, officials said.

"There was no public controversy about any of these; any controversy was within the Justice Department," said J. Grant Woods, a Republican and former Arizona attorney general.

But the cases that have gotten most of the attention among Democrats in Congress involve public-corruption investigations. In San Diego, Lam oversaw the probe that resulted in the guilty plea of then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican. Two others connected to that case, including a former senior CIA official, were indicted two days before Lam left the job on Thursday.

Bogden in Nevada and Charlton in Arizona were also in the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress when they were fired. And in New Mexico, Iglesias's office had been examining alleged wrongdoing involving state Democrats.

Gonzales, McNulty and other Justice Department officials have strongly denied that those investigations played a role in the dismissals.

"The department's commitment to pursuing prosecuting public-corruption cases is clear," said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos. "Any suggestion that removal of these particular U.S. attorneys was political or in any way would harm ongoing investigations is 100 percent false."













© Copyright 1996-2007 The Washington Post Company

House Clears Way for Wage Hike Talks

House Clears Way for Wage Hike Talks
House approves $1.8 billion business tax cut package to ease way for minimum wage vote
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2007
By JIM KUHNHENN Associated Press Writer






(AP) The House overwhelmingly approved business tax breaks worth $1.8 billion over 10 years on Friday, a key step toward forging a congressional compromise on increasing the minimum wage. The vote on the tax cuts was 360-45.

Passage of a wage hike for the lowest-paid workers now depends on how quickly the House and Senate work out differences between their tax packages. The Senate tax breaks _ worth $8.3 billion _ are more than four times bigger than the ones passed in the House.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said House and Senate negotiators could reconcile differences in the bills within two or three weeks.

"The minimum wage provision is going to trump all of this and is going to drive us to get this thing done pretty quickly," Baucus said.

Under the House bill, small businesses would see an extension in some tax write-offs that are scheduled to expire and would be able to continue to claim a tax credit for hiring disadvantaged workers. The legislation also would ensure that restaurants, which can deduct Social Security taxes paid on tips above the minimum wage, would not be hurt by the wage hike.

The House bill would also raise revenue by closing a loophole that permits wealthy taxpayers to shift income to their children and avoid higher taxes on capital gains and dividends.

The House vote displayed the influence the Senate's Republican minority can have on congressional legislation. House Democrats had demanded a minimum wage bill without any tax provisions. Senate Democrats insisted that without some tax relief, the minimum wage would lose necessary Republican backing.

Senate Republican officials predicted the final tax package would be closer to the House version than the Senate's. Small business groups have sided with the Senate, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is lobbying for the House version.

After the House vote, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the House tax cuts a "good first step."

"While I support the more robust Senate package," McConnell said, "I know we can create a stronger bipartisan package that provides meaningful benefits to both those who earn the minimum wage and those who pay it."

Eager to begin their weeklong President's Day recess, lawmakers spent little time debating the tax cuts and acted under expedited procedures that required a two-thirds majority, a threshold the vote easily met.

The bipartisan agreement behind the House tax package was in stark contrast to the largely partisan debate on Iraq that consumed the House for most of the week. Lawmakers held up the House bill as a model for legislative cooperation. Still, some Republicans complained that Democrats prevented them from offering amendments on the House floor.

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the legislation "should set the tone for the rest of the Congress as we search for common ground and solutions to tough issues."

The minimum wage bill had become the new Democratic majority's first legislative challenge. The $2.10 an hour increase _ from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years _ was a Democratic campaign issue last year and was at the top of the party's legislative agenda. But the bill stumbled when House and Senate Democrats disagreed on the need for tax cuts.

With its $8.3 billion tax package, the Senate would extend tax credits and tax write-offs, and provides new tax preferences to certain companies. It also would eliminate some tax shelters and add new taxes on lawsuit settlements and punitive damage payments and on deferred compensation packages for higher paid executives.

"The House package is puny," said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. He called for a compromise that would close tax loopholes, raise more revenue and "help small businesses that sometimes are hurt by an increase in the minimum wage."

Groups representing small businesses, such as the National Federation of Independent Business, prefer the larger Senate bill. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports the House bill because it objects to the Senate's revenue provisions, particularly the plan to eliminate deductions for payments in lawsuits.

Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, said the House bill "does a much better job of focusing" relief on businesses that could feel the pinch of a minimum wage hike.



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Afghanistan forgotten as U.S. focuses on Iraq

Afghanistan forgotten as U.S. focuses on Iraq
Fri Feb 16, 2007 9:01 AM ET
By Andrea Hopkins





WILMINGTON, Ohio (Reuters) - Brian Spurlock is in Afghanistan with the U.S. Air Force but his wife, Eileen Brady, relies on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. rather than CNN for news of America's forgotten war.

Her reliance on Canada, which sent troops to Afghanistan but not to Iraq, for news is testament to how much the Afghan war has faded next to the daily death toll in Iraq.

"That's how I get my daily news fix -- The (Toronto) Globe and Mail and the CBC," said Brady, a stay-at-home mother and sometimes journalist living in central Ohio.

While the U.S. public rallied behind the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the start of the Iraq war 17 months later quickly stole the spotlight -- and has kept it ever since.

"I think people believe the fighting's over in Afghanistan, that we're just hanging out there as some kind of noble presence," said Brady, 36.

Her husband is a nurse stationed at Bagram Air Base, treating the injured from all sides in the war. "When I tell people he's been deployed, they assume he's gone to Iraq."

While a grim death toll keeps Iraq in the news, Afghanistan is far from peaceful.

More than 4,000 people were killed in violence last year, the bloodiest since the Taliban was toppled in 2001.

On Thursday, President Bush said the United States and NATO would increase in troops in Afghanistan in preparation for an expected spring offensive from Taliban fighters.

"The situation has actually declined significantly," said Sean Kay, a security expert and professor of international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University. "Some of the combat in the south has been even more intensive than in Iraq."

Some 27,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan, compared with 140,000 in Iraq. More than 350 U.S. troops have been killed, about a tenth of Iraq's 3,100 death toll. The civilian death toll has also been much higher in Iraq.

Kay said Afghanistan needs more than a return of media attention -- it needs money and troops, a big ask in a political climate where Bush plan to increase troops in Iraq is under attack from all sides.

"If you really want to make a case for a surge in military forces where it could make a difference, then the argument is actually much stronger for Afghanistan right now than Iraq," Kay said, dismissing recent small increases in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan as insignificant.

While some U.S. presidential candidates, including Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton, have argued against sending more troops to Iraq in part because it would siphon off military strength in Afghanistan, Kay is not optimistic that political focus can be shifted.

"It may be too late before any real action is taken," he said.

GLAD TO GO TO AFGHANISTAN

In 2005, with two wars on and troops being shipped off every day, Maj. William Ewing was waiting his turn to be deployed. He didn't lobby the Kentucky National Guard to send him to one war over another, but the father of three said he was happy when it wasn't Iraq.

"I was glad to be going to Afghanistan, but wrongly so. Americans tend to think ... that soldiers going to Afghanistan have it easier or better, or it's not as dangerous there," said Ewing, a Marine veteran of the 1991 Gulf War. "But I soon learned that was not the case."

Ewing, 39, spent a year from mid-2005 to 2006 teaching Afghan soldiers to use computers and improve communications. The base came under rocket attack, but Ewing was lucky and said no one he knew personally was killed.

Now back in Kentucky, Ewing said he doesn't feel like Americans are less supportive of the war in Afghanistan -- it's simply less noticed because it's a smaller deployment.

He gets his news about Afghanistan from military news services, after scrolling past stories about Iraq.

"At the bottom of the page there's always two or three stories about Afghanistan, after 10 or 15 on Iraq."

Back in Ohio, Brady exchanges regular e-mails with her husband and he phones most days to talk to their daughter Pearl, 4.

Husband and wife have pledged to be honest with each other about what they are facing: the attacks on his base, Pearl's grief at his absence. But Brady can't bring herself to tell him everything.

"I don't tell him: 'People don't even know we're in Afghanistan, honey.' I can't tell him that."





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Christian pediatrician denies child service because parents are tattooed

Christian pediatrician denies child service because parents are tattooed
Last Update: Feb 14, 2007 7:40 PM
Posted By: brynn galindo
Posted 2/14/07




BAKERSFIELD - A family is turned away by a local pediatrician, they say because of the way they look.

The doctor said he is just following his beliefs, creating a Christian atmosphere for his patients.

Tasha Childress said it’s discrimination.

She said Dr. Gary Merrill wouldn’t treat her daughter for an ear infection because Tasha, the mother, has tattoos.

The writing is on the wall—literally: “This is a private office. Appearance and behavior standards apply.”

For Dr. Gary Merrill of Christian Medical Services, that means no tattoos, body piercings, and a host of other requirements—all standards Merrill has set based upon his Christian faith.

“She had to go that entire night with her ear infection with no medicine because he has his policy,” Tasha Childress said.

Merrill won’t speak on camera, but said based on his values and beliefs, he has standards that he expects in his office.

He does that, he said, to ensure the patients he does accept have a more comfortable atmosphere.

According to the American Medical Association and other doctors, he reserves that right.

“In the same sense that any other business person has the opportunity to decline service, be it a restaurant if they’re not dressed properly, be it any other type of business,” said Dr. Ronald Morton, Kern County Medical Society.

Morton said certain ethics apply if a person’s life is in danger, but besides that, there is no requirement to serve anyone they don’t approve of.

“I felt totally discriminated against, like I wasn’t good enough to talk to,” Tasha Childress said, “like he didn’t have to give me any reason for not wanting to see my daughter because I have tattoos and piercings.”

17 News found other patients who had a different experience with Merrill.

“I have tattoos, actually, and no, nothing’s ever been said about it,” Brandi Stanley said, Merrill’s patient.

Childress’ insurance company, Health Net of California, who referred her to Merrill, said in a statement: “We provide our customers with a wide breadth of doctors that meet certain medical quality standards … If a customer doesn’t feel comfortable with a particular physician, it is our responsibility to provide that customer with access to another doctor who does meet their needs.”

But that’s not enough for Childress who wants the policy changed immediately and an apology from the doctor for making her feel like an outsider.

“Really, it didn’t matter what he didn’t want to see us for. It isn’t right,” she said.

If you have a story idea, mail it to 2120 L Street, or submit it at KGET.com by clicking on “Your Stories.”

Merrill said he will continue to enforce the rules he has in place, which even include no chewing gum in his office.

He said if they don’t like his beliefs, they can find another doctor.
















© 2007 Clear Channel Broadcasting, Inc

Grandparents are raising slain soldier’s children

WP: Guardian denied death benefit
Grandparents are raising slain soldier’s children
By Donna St. George
The Washington Post
Updated: 8:55 a.m. ET Feb 16, 2007






Her daughter was killed by a bomb in Iraq. Eight months later, Susan Jaenke is both grief-stricken and strapped -- behind on her mortgage, backed up on her bills and shut out of the $100,000 government death benefit that her daughter thought she had left her.

The problem is that Jaenke is not a wife, not a husband, but instead grandmother to the 9-year-old her daughter left behind. "Grandparents," she said, "are forgotten in this."

For the Jaenkes and others like them, the toll of war can be especially complex: They face not only the anguish of losing a son or daughter but also the emotional, legal and financial difficulties of putting the pieces back together for a grandchild.

They confront this without the $100,000 "death gratuity" that military spouses ordinarily get -- a payment intended to ease the financial strain as families await government survivors' benefits.

"It really does get complicated for them," said Joyce Raezer of the National Military Family Association. The load of responsibilities placed on that generation -- both during deployment and if a service member is injured or killed -- "is a huge issue."

The case of Petty Officer 2nd Class Jaime S. Jaenke, a Navy construction-battalion medic killed last June in Anbar province, is particularly striking because she was a single parent who clearly meant to assign her mother the benefit. Jaenke, 29, filled in her mother's name on a form and carefully spelled out her wishes in a letter.

But by law, the $100,000 benefit goes first to a spouse or a child. So 9-year-old Kayla Jaenke collects the $100,000 -- plus $400,000 in life insurance -- after she turns 18, leaving Susan Jaenke to ask, "What about the next nine years?"

In some other families, the $100,000 death benefit has gone to neither the children nor the grandparents who are raising them.

In California, Barbie and Matt Heavrin are caring for a 2-year-old grandson without the death gratuity or life insurance. Their daughter, Pfc. Hannah McKinney, assigned her $400,000 in life insurance to the man she wed just before deployment, her father said; by law, her husband also received the gratuity.

‘So many blended families’
The Heavrins are happy to raise the boy -- from an earlier relationship their daughter had -- but wonder why he would get nothing. Five months after their daughter died last September, their only assistance is monthly benefits they expect will total about $800, most of which goes to day care.

In Missouri, grandmother Gail Kriete is raising 9-year-old Taylor Purdy, the child of Lance Cpl. Erik R. Heldt, a Marine killed in Iraq in June 2005. His wife collected the full $500,000. Kriete said none went to his daughter, from a previous relationship.

"It just needs to be thought out a little more carefully," Kriete said. "There are so many blended families that the suffering is very spread out."

The death gratuity, more than many other benefits, adheres to a strict next-of-kin rule, which Pentagon officials say makes it possible to pay out the $100,000 within a few days. They say that, in the "vast majority of cases," spouses are most in need when paychecks stop.


But there have been thousands of single parents deployed into combat zones since 2001. How many have died at war is unclear, but the Jaenke case shows that, in those cases, the benefit may be at odds with its original intent: to help the grieving family stay afloat when a service member's income suddenly stops.

Susan Jaenke said her family fell behind shortly after Jaime died -- and has never caught up.

Larry Jaenke is a truck driver, and Susan worked as a letter carrier for 23 years until an accident left her disabled. Their daughter Jaime and granddaughter Kayla lived with them. Susan provided child care when Jaime worked, and Jaime contributed to the family income.

Jaime's passion for horses led the Jaenkes to start a business with her on their 10-acre Iowa property. When Susan Jaenke got an insurance settlement from her accident, she put much of it toward building a horse stable on the property, which was Jaime's dream. Jaime -- energetic and skilled with power tools -- did the drywall and flooring.

Not long afterward, Jaime -- a reservist who was an emergency medical technician in her civilian life -- went to war.

It was a June afternoon last year, and the Jaenkes were returning from Kayla's softball game. She had made her team's only hit -- and her first hit ever. In a celebratory mood, they stopped to buy ice cream.

When they pulled into their driveway, the scene was one that no parent of a deployed soldier wants to see: two uniformed Navy men, waiting.

They soon learned that a roadside bomb had exploded near Jaime's Humvee, killing her and a fellow Seabee.

Family’s new reality
At the funeral, Kayla stood solemn next to her mother's flag-draped casket, the folded flag laid into her small arms.

Then came the dawning of the family's new reality -- the emotional, the practical, the financial.

There was a lawyer to hire to get legal guardianship. There were survivors' benefits to apply for. There was a trust to set up. There was health insurance to obtain for Kayla. Inexplicably, there was no official will left behind.

For the Jaenkes, the trouble was not that raising Kayla is so expensive but that their entire financial picture shifted with Jaime's death. Jaime's checks immediately stopped. Larry Jaenke was out of work for a time. The family paid $2,800 for a handsome headstone. The stable was still losing money.

Last fall, Susan Jaenke watched as Jaime's pickup truck, and then her car, were repossessed.

The family scraped by, thanks to acts of kindness, Susan Jaenke said. When the Jaenkes' dryer broke, nearby Seabee units stepped up to replace it. The Seabees have come three times to do finishing work on the stable, which Susan Jaenke says she will not give up. Kayla is there all the time, she said, and giving it up would be like losing what is left of Jaime.

The local Veterans of Foreign Wars gave the family a $1,000 Target gift card, which she said made the family's Christmas.

Since October, the Jaenke family has been collecting monthly government benefits for Kayla's care -- $1,700 in all -- but not enough to replace Jaime's contributions. From Iraq, she had been sending home $3,200 a month, her mother said. The child's father, long estranged, does not pay child support, Susan Jaenke said.


The Jaenkes can request money from Kayla's trust for certain expenses related to the girl's "health, education, maintenance and welfare," but the process involves lawyers and court appearances. The court recently agreed to a $200 monthly stipend for the family.

"The court is just very conservative here in Iowa," said Mona Bowden, an attorney for the Jaenkes.

Every now and then, Susan Jaenke rereads the letter that Jaime left behind for her:

"I have got all my paperwork done and here is what I did. My big policy [$400,000] goes to Kayla. That has to be put away for when she gets 18. You will know what to do and how to handle it. There is a smaller policy that goes to you. That is for 100,000. That is for you to raise Kayla with and 25,000 goes to the barn. . . . I can't wait to get home to my girl and my horses, so you had better take care of them all."

Patrick J. Palmersheim, executive director of the Iowa Department of Veterans Affairs, explained that the problem came down to the fine print on death gratuities. Jaime had written in her mother's name as beneficiary, but in the same blank the form said "No spouse or child surviving."

Susan Jaenke could be awarded the benefit only if there were no spouse or child to receive it.

The tight regulations are meant to guard against fraud and abuse, said Chief Petty Officer Randy Erdman, the Navy casualty assistance officer who has worked closely with the Jaenke family. "I see the need for the money going to the right spot and being protected," he said, "but at the same time I see what the family needs."

In Washington, Lt. Tommy Crosby, a Navy spokesman, said the Navy "recognizes the significant loss the family has suffered" and has done all it can, within the law, to help.

The death gratuity, created in 1908, originally was equal to six months' pay and was intended to ease financial burdens after a military death.

During the war in Iraq, the gratuity was increased markedly; it had been at $6,000, then grew to $12,000 and finally $100,000. Lawmakers had said the original award seemed offensively low, especially in contrast to the large settlements awarded to families of those killed in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Still, there was little rethinking about beneficiaries for the $100,000 gratuity, several experts said. To troops, the large lump sum came to resemble life insurance, said Raezer, chief operating officer of the National Military Family Association.

Jaime's handwritten letter and possibly her form suggest she did not realize the gratuity could not go to her mother.

Whether that is because she misunderstood what was said during a benefits briefing or was not advised well is unclear. "They don't always get that kind of counseling that they need," Raezer said.

The problem could have been avoided altogether if Jaime had directed part of her life insurance money, rather than the death gratuity, to her parents.

‘Additional flexibility’
Steve Strobridge, government relations director of the Military Officers Association of America, said Jaenke's case suggests that the regulations should be reexamined.

"We certainly need to look at whether there needs to be some additional flexibility in who the member can assign the death gratuity to and whether we need to adjust the counseling requirements to help protect people from unintended consequences," he said.

In her three-bedroom house in Iowa, Susan Jaenke said she has been reduced to worrying about grocery money and dreading calls from creditors. "It just hurts bad in so many different directions," she said. "My girl was supposed to come back."

Some days, the whole episode overwhelms her. Three of her four children have served in the Navy, and she said she considers herself "a flag waver." But she gets angry that her daughter's wishes are not being honored and that the family now struggles.

"It's not bad enough that I lost my daughter," she said. "What else do they want me to lose?"

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Tire reef off Florida proves a disaster

Tire reef off Florida proves a disaster
By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer
Sat Feb 17, 5:16 PM ET





FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A mile offshore from this city's high-rise condos and spring-break bars lie as many as 2 million old tires, strewn across the ocean floor — a white-walled, steel-belted monument to good intentions gone awry.


The tires were unloaded there in 1972 to create an artificial reef that could attract a rich variety of marine life, and to free up space in clogged landfills. But decades later, the idea has proved a huge ecological blunder.

Little sea life has formed on the tires. Some of the tires that were bundled together with nylon and steel have broken loose and are scouring the ocean floor across a swath the size of 31 football fields. Tires are washing up on beaches. Thousands have wedged up against a nearby natural reef, blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.

"The really good idea was to provide habitat for marine critters so we could double or triple marine life in the area. It just didn't work that way," said Ray McAllister, a professor of ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University who was instrumental in organizing the project. "I look back now and see it was a bad idea."

In fact, similar problems have been reported at tire reefs worldwide.

"They're a constantly killing coral-destruction machine," said William Nuckols, coordinator for Coastal America, a federal group involved in organizing a cleanup effort that includes Broward County biologists, state scientists and Army and Navy salvage divers.

Gov. Charlie Crist's proposed budget includes $2 million to help gather up and remove the tires. The military divers would do their share of the work at no cost to the state by making it part of their training.

A monthlong pilot project is set for June. The full-scale salvage operation is expected to run through 2010 at a cost to the state of about $3.4 million.

McAllister helped put together the ill-fated reef project with the approval of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He helped raise several thousand dollars (the county also chipped in), organized hundreds of volunteers with boats and barges, and got tires from Goodyear.

Goodyear also donated equipment to bind and compress the tires, and the Goodyear blimp even dropped a gold-painted tire into the ocean in a ceremonial start to the project.

The tire company issued a press release at the time that proclaimed the reef would "provide a haven for fish and other aquatic species," and noted the "excellent properties of scrap tires as reef material."

It was a disappointment, just like other tire reefs created off coastal states and around the world in recent decades.

"We've literally dumped millions of tires in our oceans," said Jack Sobel, an Ocean Conservancy scientist. "I believe that people who were behind the artificial tire reef promotions actually were well-intentioned and thought they were doing the right thing. In hindsight, we now realize that we made a mistake."

No one can say with certainty why the idea doesn't work, but one problem is that, unlike large ships that have been sunk for reefs, tires are too light. They can be swept away by the tides and powerful storms before marine life has a chance to attach. Some scientists also believe the rubber leaches toxins.

Virginia tried it several decades ago. But Hurricane Bonnie in 1998 ripped the tires loose, and they washed up in North Carolina.

New Jersey scientists thought they had a solution to the weight problem. In 1986, the state began a small reef project with about 1,000 tires split in half, bound together and weighted with concrete. It didn't work. Pieces of rubber broke loose and floated free.

"We had to go up and down the coast of New Jersey and collect 50 to 100 of those pieces that were all along the beaches," said Hugh Carberry of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection.

The state then tried stacking tires 10-high and filling the cylindrical center with concrete. Each stack weighed about a ton. While the tires stayed in place, scientists soon learned they did not have enough surface area for marine life to attach, so they switched to using concrete balls.

Indonesia and Malaysia mounted enormous tire reef programs back in the 1980s and are just now seeing the consequences in littered beaches and reef damage, Sobel said.

Most states have stopped using tires to create reefs, but they continue to wash up worldwide. In 2005, volunteers for the Ocean Conservancy's annual international coastal cleanup removed more than 11,000 tires.

The tires retrieved from the waters off Fort Lauderdale will be ground up for use in road projects and burned for fuel, among other uses.

"It's going to be a huge job bringing them all up," said Michael Sole, chief of the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It's vigorous work. You have to dig the tires out of the sand."













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Exclusive: Andrew Victim Gets Power After 15 Years

Feb 17, 2007 12:19 am US/Eastern
Exclusive: Andrew Victim Gets Power After 15 Years

Cutler Bay Woman Lived In the Dark Since Hurricane Andrew

Shoddy Repairs Prevented Her From Connecting Electricity

Volunteers Helped End 15 Years Of Cold Showers
Natalia Zea
Reporting

(CBS4) CUTLER BAY An elderly woman who had been living without power in her home due to hurricane damage was finally seeing the light Friday night, when power to her home was restored. What makes her story amazing is that the hurricane which put her in the dark was Andrew, almost 15 years ago, and she's been living without power to her house since August 24, 1992.

No heat when the winter chill settled over South Florida. No air conditioning when the mercury climbed into the 90's and the humidity clung to 100% .

Not one hot shower at home in nearly 15 years. Every morning started with an icy blast.

"I think it's like everything, you learn how to step into it, and wait, and when you feel it, you take your quick shower," she recalled.

Norena, who didn't want her full name used because she is embarrassed by her situation, lives in Cutler Bay, and her home was severely damaged when Hurricane Andre slammed South Miami-Dade in August, 1992.

Like many people after that horrific storm, she had a problem with an unscrupulous contractor, and when the money from the insurance settlement ran out, the contractor did too, leaving her home half-repaired and not up to code, which meant it would not have the electricity connected.

She didn't have the money to complete the work, and she didn't have anyplace else to go.

"It just never got done, and the money was gone, so I couldn't do a lot of things to allow me with Dade county to get my power back on," she said.

So she lived with it. She celebrated the new millennium with one tiny lamp and a single burner. On the 10th anniversary of Andrew in 2002, her neighbors celebrated their recovery; she was still living in the disaster.

Electrical contractor Kent Crook was amazed when he saw how she managed to get a tiny amount of electricity into the house for a Spartan existence.

"She has extension cords running into her house, plugged into a tiny little refrigerator and a cook top, and a lamp or two in front of her house," he marveled.

Somehow, her situation fell through the cracks. Her neighbors never noticed her near-pioneer lifestyle, and County code inspectors never caught the violations which prevented her from connecting up the power.

A tip got the city and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez involved, along with a visit from Crook's company. A few hours of work and an inspection was all it took to get the power flowing again to her home. When darkness fell Friday night, she no longer had to huddle in a single dimly lit room.

Something as simple as getting light by flicking a wall switch, something most people do a dozen times a day without thinking, almost overwhelmed Norena.

"It's hard to describe having it come on, to switch on. It's overwhelming," she said.

Now, her house is flooded with light, and the hot water is flowing through the pipes for the first time since that terrible night in August, 1992 when the wind shook her home to its foundations and set her life on end.

Her plan is to let the water get hot, really hot, and then take her first bubble bath, in her own bathtub, in a decade and a half.

While the power is back on, and Norena is again living in the 21st century, many problems remain. Her home still needs repair, and her overgrown yard is a danger in future hurricanes.

Volunteers say they'll be back to help clean up the yard and assist with repairs, but for now Norena is happy for one thing.

She can say "Let there be light", and there will be.


dg
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McCain: Roe V. Wade Should Be Overturned

Feb 18, 9:36 PM EST
McCain: Roe V. Wade Should Be Overturned
By JIM DAVENPORT
Associated Press Writer





SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party's conservative voters, said Sunday the court decision that legalized abortion should be overturned.

"I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned," the Arizona senator told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

McCain also vowed that if elected, he would appoint judges who "strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States and do not legislate from the bench."

The landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade gave women the right to choose an abortion to terminate a pregnancy. The Supreme Court has narrowly upheld the decision, with the presence of an increasing number of more conservative justices on the court raising the possibility that abortion rights would be limited.

Social conservatives are a critical voting bloc in the GOP presidential primaries.

McCain's campaign also announced early Sunday that he had been endorsed by former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who had been considering his own bid for the White House, and former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who failed in his bid for the Republican nomination in 1996.

Keating told the crowd that McCain is the "only candidate who is a true-blue, Ronald Reagan conservative."

McCain later attended an evening rally promoting an abstinence program. He told the crowd of more than 1,000 teens and parents that young people have pressures far different from the ones he faced while growing up. "Sometimes I've made the wrong choice," McCain said.

He also talked about his experience as a prisoner of war during Vietnam, and described some of the torture he suffered. His captors "wanted to make us do things that we otherwise wouldn't do," including confessing to war crimes, McCain said.

He and fellow prisoners were beat up for practicing their religion, but they continued to do it. "Sometimes it is very difficult to do the right thing," he said.

McCain has strong name recognition and the largest network of supporters in South Carolina. That backing comes in part from his staunch support for the Iraq war, something on which he focused a day earlier in Iowa. But it's the same state that dealt a crushing blow to his presidential aspirations in 2000.

McCain is trying to build support among conservatives after a recent rebuke from Christian leader James Dobson, who said he wouldn't back McCain's presidential bid. Conservatives question McCain's opposition to a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He opposes same-sex marriage, but says it should be regulated by the states.

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Wounded soldiers face neglect, frustration at Army’s top medical facility

WP: Battling system at Walter Reed
Wounded soldiers face neglect, frustration at Army’s top medical facility
By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
The Washington Post
Updated: 5:43 a.m. ET Feb 18, 2007





WASHINGTON - Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.

They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.

Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."


Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.

"It creates resentment and disenfranchisement," said Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker at Walter Reed. "These soldiers will withdraw and stay in their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are meant to be helpful."


Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed, said soldiers "get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved," but, "Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, 'You saved me for what?' The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This leads to anger."

This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their regular visits to the hospital's spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.

"We owe them all we can give them," Bush said during his last visit, a few days before Christmas. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."

Along with the government promises, the American public, determined not to repeat the divisive Vietnam experience, has embraced the soldiers even as the war grows more controversial at home. Walter Reed is awash in the generosity of volunteers, businesses and celebrities who donate money, plane tickets, telephone cards and steak dinners.

Yet at a deeper level, the soldiers say they feel alone and frustrated. Seventy-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their experience was "stressful." Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the narrative here.

Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."

Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed staff members.

Evis Morales's severely wounded son was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for surgery shortly after she arrived at Walter Reed. She had checked into her government-paid room on post, but she slept in the lobby of the Bethesda hospital for two weeks because no one told her there is a free shuttle between the two facilities. "They just let me off the bus and said 'Bye-bye,' " recalled Morales, a Puerto Rico resident.

Morales found help after she ran out of money, when she called a hotline number and a Spanish-speaking operator happened to answer.

"If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can't they have Spanish-speaking translators when he's injured?" Morales asked. "It's so confusing, so disorienting."

Soldiers, wives, mothers, social workers and the heads of volunteer organizations have complained repeatedly to the military command about what one called "The Handbook No One Gets" that would explain life as an outpatient. Most soldiers polled in the March survey said they got their information from friends. Only 12 percent said any Army literature had been helpful.

"They've been behind from Day One," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investigated problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities. "Even the stuff they've fixed has only been patched."

Among the public, Davis said, "there's vast appreciation for soldiers, but there's a lack of focus on what happens to them" when they return. "It's awful."

Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, said in an interview last week that a major reason outpatients stay so long, a change from the days when injured soldiers were discharged as quickly as possible, is that the Army wants to be able to hang on to as many soldiers as it can, "because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with an all-volunteer force since the Revolution."

Acknowledging the problems with outpatient care, Weightman said Walter Reed has taken steps over the past year to improve conditions for the outpatient army, which at its peak in summer 2005 numbered nearly 900, not to mention the hundreds of family members who come to care for them. One platoon sergeant used to be in charge of 125 patients; now each one manages 30. Platoon sergeants with psychological problems are more carefully screened. And officials have increased the numbers of case managers and patient advocates to help with the complex disability benefit process, which Weightman called "one of the biggest sources of delay."

And to help steer the wounded and their families through the complicated bureaucracy, Weightman said, Walter Reed has recently begun holding twice-weekly informational meetings. "We felt we were pushing information out before, but the reality is, it was overwhelming," he said. "Is it fail-proof? No. But we've put more resources on it."

He said a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq has Walter Reed bracing for "potentially a lot more" casualties.

Bureaucratic battles
The best known of the Army's medical centers, Walter Reed opened in 1909 with 10 patients. It has treated the wounded from every war since, and nearly one of every four service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The outpatients are assigned to one of five buildings attached to the post, including Building 18, just across from the front gates on Georgia Avenue. To accommodate the overflow, some are sent to nearby hotels and apartments. Living conditions range from the disrepair of Building 18 to the relative elegance of Mologne House, a hotel that opened on the post in 1998, when the typical guest was a visiting family member or a retiree on vacation.

The Pentagon has announced plans to close Walter Reed by 2011, but that hasn't stopped the flow of casualties. Three times a week, school buses painted white and fitted with stretchers and blackened windows stream down Georgia Avenue. Sirens blaring, they deliver soldiers groggy from a pain-relief cocktail at the end of their long trip from Iraq via Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Andrews Air Force Base.

Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed's hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.

A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn't even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions.

Shannon had led the 2nd Infantry Division's Ghost Recon Platoon until he was felled in a gun battle in Ramadi. He liked the solitary work of a sniper; "Lone Wolf" was his call name. But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.

"I thought, 'Shouldn't they contact me?' " he said. "I didn't understand the paperwork. I'd start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: 'I'm your case manager. Where have you been?'

"Well, I've been here! Jeez Louise, people, I'm your hospital patient!"

Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.

One outpatient, a 57-year-old staff sergeant who had a heart attack in Afghanistan, was given 200 rooms to supervise at the end of 2005. He quickly discovered that some outpatients had left the post months earlier and would check in by phone. "We called them 'call-in patients,' " said Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley, whose dormant PTSD from Vietnam was triggered by what he saw on the job: so many young and wounded, and three bodies being carried from the hospital.

Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands -- most of them off-post -- to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases.


The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there, after a clerk couldn't find a record of her service.

Shannon, who wears an eye patch and a visible skull implant, said he had to prove he had served in Iraq when he tried to get a free uniform to replace the bloody one left behind on a medic's stretcher. When he finally tracked down the supply clerk, he discovered the problem: His name was mistakenly left off the "GWOT list" -- the list of "Global War on Terrorism" patients with priority funding from the Defense Department.

He brought his Purple Heart to the clerk to prove he was in Iraq.

Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors.

The Army has tried to re-create the organization of a typical military unit at Walter Reed. Soldiers are assigned to one of two companies while they are outpatients -- the Medical Holding Company (Medhold) for active-duty soldiers and the Medical Holdover Company for Reserve and National Guard soldiers. The companies are broken into platoons that are led by platoon sergeants, the Army equivalent of a parent.

Under normal circumstances, good sergeants know everything about the soldiers under their charge: vices and talents, moods and bad habits, even family stresses.

At Walter Reed, however, outpatients have been drafted to serve as platoon sergeants and have struggled with their responsibilities. Sgt. David Thomas, a 42-year-old amputee with the Tennessee National Guard, said his platoon sergeant couldn't remember his name. "We wondered if he had mental problems," Thomas said. "Sometimes I'd wear my leg, other times I'd take my wheelchair. He would think I was a different person. We thought, 'My God, has this man lost it?' "

Civilian care coordinators and case managers are supposed to track injured soldiers and help them with appointments, but government investigators and soldiers complain that they are poorly trained and often do not understand the system.

One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. "I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me," he said.

Finally, his wife met an aide to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who got the erroneous paperwork corrected with one phone call. When the aide called with the news, he told the soldier, "They don't even know you exist."

"They didn't know who I was or where I was," the soldier said. "And I was in contact with my platoon sergeant every day."

The lack of accountability weighed on Shannon. He hated the isolation of the younger troops. The Army's failure to account for them each day wore on him. When a 19-year-old soldier down the hall died, Shannon knew he had to take action.

The soldier, Cpl. Jeremy Harper, returned from Iraq with PTSD after seeing three buddies die. He kept his room dark, refused his combat medals and always seemed heavily medicated, said people who knew him. According to his mother, Harper was drunkenly wandering the lobby of the Mologne House on New Year's Eve 2004, looking for a ride home to West Virginia. The next morning he was found dead in his room. An autopsy showed alcohol poisoning, she said.

"I can't understand how they could have let kids under the age of 21 have liquor," said Victoria Harper, crying. "He was supposed to be right there at Walter Reed hospital. . . . I feel that they didn't take care of him or watch him as close as they should have."

The Army posthumously awarded Harper a Bronze Star for his actions in Iraq.

Shannon viewed Harper's death as symptomatic of a larger tragedy -- the Army had broken its covenant with its troops. "Somebody didn't take care of him," he would later say. "It makes me want to cry. "

Shannon and another soldier decided to keep tabs on the brain injury ward. "I'm a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, and I take care of people," he said. The two soldiers walked the ward every day with a list of names. If a name dropped off the large white board at the nurses' station, Shannon would hound the nurses to check their files and figure out where the soldier had gone.

Sometimes the patients had been transferred to another hospital. If they had been released to one of the residences on post, Shannon and his buddy would pester the front desk managers to make sure the new charges were indeed there. "But two out of 10, when I asked where they were, they'd just say, 'They're gone,' " Shannon said.

Even after Weightman and his commanders instituted new measures to keep better track of soldiers, two young men left post one night in November and died in a high-speed car crash in Virginia. The driver was supposed to be restricted to Walter Reed because he had tested positive for illegal drugs, Weightman said.

Part of the tension at Walter Reed comes from a setting that is both military and medical. Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, the squad leader who lost one leg and the use of his other in a grenade attack, said his recovery was made more difficult by a Marine liaison officer who had never seen combat but dogged him about having his mother in his room on post. The rules allowed her to be there, but the officer said she was taking up valuable bed space.

"When you join the Marine Corps, they tell you, you can forget about your mama. 'You have no mama. We are your mama,' " Groves said. "That training works in combat. It doesn't work when you are wounded."

Frustration at every turn
The frustrations of an outpatient's day begin before dawn. On a dark, rain-soaked morning this winter, Sgt. Archie Benware, 53, hobbled over to his National Guard platoon office at Walter Reed. Benware had done two tours in Iraq. His head had been crushed between two 2,100-pound concrete barriers in Ramadi, and now it was dented like a tin can. His legs were stiff from knee surgery. But here he was, trying to take care of business.

At the platoon office, he scanned the white board on the wall. Six soldiers were listed as AWOL. The platoon sergeant was nowhere to be found, leaving several soldiers stranded with their requests.

Benware walked around the corner to arrange a dental appointment -- his teeth were knocked out in the accident. He was told by a case manager that another case worker, not his doctor, would have to approve the procedure.

"Goddamn it, that's unbelievable!" snapped his wife, Barb, who accompanied him because he can no longer remember all of his appointments.

Not as unbelievable as the time he received a manila envelope containing the gynecological report of a young female soldier.

Next came 7 a.m. formation, one way Walter Reed tries to keep track of hundreds of wounded. Formation is also held to maintain some discipline. Soldiers limp to the old Red Cross building in rain, ice and snow. Army regulations say they can't use umbrellas, even here. A triple amputee has mastered the art of putting on his uniform by himself and rolling in just in time. Others are so gorked out on pills that they seem on the verge of nodding off.

"Fall in!" a platoon sergeant shouted at Friday formation. The noisy room of soldiers turned silent.

An Army chaplain opened with a verse from the Bible. "Why are we here?" she asked. She talked about heroes and service to country. "We were injured in many ways."

Someone announced free tickets to hockey games, a Ravens game, a movie screening, a dinner at McCormick and Schmick's, all compliments of local businesses.

Every formation includes a safety briefing. Usually it is a warning about mixing alcohol with meds, or driving too fast, or domestic abuse. "Do not beat your spouse or children. Do not let your spouse or children beat you," a sergeant said, to laughter. This morning's briefing included a warning about black ice, a particular menace to the amputees.

Dress warm, the sergeant said. "I see some guys rolling around in their wheelchairs in 30 degrees in T-shirts."

Soldiers hate formation for its petty condescension. They gutted out a year in the desert, and now they are being treated like children.

"I'm trying to think outside the box here, maybe moving formation to Wagner Gym," the commander said, addressing concerns that formation was too far from soldiers' quarters in the cold weather. "But guess what? Those are nice wood floors. They have to be covered by a tarp. There's a tarp that's got to be rolled out over the wooden floors. Then it has to be cleaned, with 400 soldiers stepping all over it. Then it's got to be rolled up."

"Now, who thinks Wagner Gym is a good idea?"

Explaining this strange world to family members is not easy. At an orientation for new arrivals, a staff sergeant walked them through the idiosyncrasies of Army financing. He said one relative could receive a 15-day advance on the $64 per diem either in cash or as an electronic transfer: "I highly recommend that you take the cash," he said. "There's no guarantee the transfer will get to your bank." The audience yawned.

Actually, he went on, relatives can collect only 80 percent of this advance, which comes to $51.20 a day. "The cashier has no change, so we drop to $50. We give you the rest" -- the $1.20 a day -- "when you leave."

The crowd was anxious, exhausted. A child crawled on the floor. The sergeant plowed on. "You need to figure out how long your loved one is going to be an inpatient," he said, something even the doctors can't accurately predict from day to day. "Because if you sign up for the lodging advance," which is $150 a day, "and they get out the next day, you owe the government the advance back of $150 a day."

A case manager took the floor to remind everyone that soldiers are required to be in uniform most of the time, though some of the wounded are amputees or their legs are pinned together by bulky braces. "We have break-away clothing with Velcro!" she announced with a smile. "Welcome to Walter Reed!"

A bleak life in Building 18
"Building 18! There is a rodent infestation issue!" bellowed the commander to his troops one morning at formation. "It doesn't help when you live like a rodent! I can't believe people live like that! I was appalled by some of your rooms!"

Life in Building 18 is the bleakest homecoming for men and women whose government promised them good care in return for their sacrifices.

One case manager was so disgusted, she bought roach bombs for the rooms. Mouse traps are handed out. It doesn't help that soldiers there subsist on carry-out food because the hospital cafeteria is such a hike on cold nights. They make do with microwaves and hot plates.

Army officials say they "started an aggressive campaign to deal with the mice infestation" last October and that the problem is now at a "manageable level." They also say they will "review all outstanding work orders" in the next 30 days.

Soldiers discharged from the psychiatric ward are often assigned to Building 18. Buses and ambulances blare all night. While injured soldiers pull guard duty in the foyer, a broken garage door allows unmonitored entry from the rear. Struggling with schizophrenia, PTSD, paranoid delusional disorder and traumatic brain injury, soldiers feel especially vulnerable in that setting, just outside the post gates, on a street where drug dealers work the corner at night.

"I've been close to mortars. I've held my own pretty good," said Spec. George Romero, 25, who came back from Iraq with a psychological disorder. "But here . . . I think it has affected my ability to get over it . . . dealing with potential threats every day."

After Spec. Jeremy Duncan, 30, got out of the hospital and was assigned to Building 18, he had to navigate across the traffic of Georgia Avenue for appointments. Even after knee surgery, he had to limp back and forth on crutches and in pain. Over time, black mold invaded his room.

But Duncan would rather suffer with the mold than move to another room and share his convalescence in tight quarters with a wounded stranger. "I have mold on the walls, a hole in the shower ceiling, but . . . I don't want someone waking me up coming in."

Wilson, the clinical social worker at Walter Reed, was part of a staff team that recognized Building 18's toll on the wounded. He mapped out a plan and, in September, was given a $30,000 grant from the Commander's Initiative Account for improvements. He ordered some equipment, including a pool table and air hockey table, which have not yet arrived. A Psychiatry Department functionary held up the rest of the money because she feared that buying a lot of recreational equipment close to Christmas would trigger an audit, Wilson said.

In January, Wilson was told that the funds were no longer available and that he would have to submit a new request. "It's absurd," he said. "Seven months of work down the drain. I have nothing to show for this project. It's a great example of what we're up against."

A pool table and two flat-screen TVs were eventually donated from elsewhere.

But Wilson had had enough. Three weeks ago he turned in his resignation. "It's too difficult to get anything done with this broken-down bureaucracy," he said.

At town hall meetings, the soldiers of Building 18 keep pushing commanders to improve conditions. But some things have gotten worse. In December, a contracting dispute held up building repairs.

"I hate it," said Romero, who stays in his room all day. "There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water. . . . I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. . . . My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up!' "

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company











© 2007 MSNBC.com

She honked at cops, then got hit by stun gun, convicted

She honked at cops, then got hit by stun gun, convicted
February 11, 2007




KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A 69-year-old woman who was shocked with a stun gun after she honked her car horn at a police car has been convicted of resisting arrest for sparking a quarrel with officers.

But a Circuit Court jury refused to send Louise Jones to jail, fining her $650 instead.

Jones' attorney, Basil North, said he might appeal. ''We don't think she should have been convicted of anything,'' he said.

On June 15, 2004, police officers Cory Le Moine and Ryan VanDeusen responded to a domestic disturbance call near Jones' home. The officers were cruising the street slowly, watching for trouble. Jones was in her car behind the police vehicle when she honked her horn and pulled into her driveway.

Scuffled with police

Police, spooked by the horn, parked and questioned Jones, leading to a scuffle after they threatened to write her a ticket. The stun gun of one of the officers discharged, according to testimony.

The trial was Jones' second. She and her husband, 78-year-old Fred Jones, who tried to break up the scuffle, were convicted and sentenced to probation in Municipal Court. Both appealed, and charges against Fred Jones were dismissed. Louise Jones was granted a retrial in Circuit Court.

AP

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.













© Copyright 2007 Sun-Times News Group

Employers are cutting back hours, laying off young staffers

New wage boost puts squeeze on teenage workers across Arizona
Employers are cutting back hours, laying off young staffers
Chad Graham
The Arizona Republic
Feb. 10, 2007 12:00 AM





Oh, for the days when Arizona's high school students could roll pizza dough, sweep up sticky floors in theaters or scoop ice cream without worrying about ballot initiatives affecting their earning power.

That's certainly not the case under the state's new minimum-wage law that went into effect last month.

Some Valley employers, especially those in the food industry, say payroll budgets have risen so much that they're cutting hours, instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees.

And teens are among the first workers to go.

Companies maintain the new wage was raised to $6.75 per hour from $5.15 per hour to help the breadwinners in working-poor families. Teens typically have other means of support.

Mark Messner, owner of Pepi's Pizza in south Phoenix, estimates he has employed more than 2,000 high school students since 1990. But he plans to lay off three teenage workers and decrease hours worked by others. Of his 25-person workforce, roughly 75 percent are in high school.

"I've had to go to some of my kids and say, 'Look, my payroll just increased 13 percent,' " he said. " 'Sorry, I don't have any hours for you.' "

Messner's monthly cost to train an employee has jumped from $440 to $580 as the turnover rate remains high.

"We go to great lengths to hang on to our high school workers, but there are a lot of kids who come in and get one check in their pocket and feel like they're living large and out the door they go," he said. "We never get our return on investment when that happens."

For years, economists have debated how minimum-wage increases impact the teenage workforce.

The Employment Policies Institute in Washington, which opposed the recent increases, cited 2003 data by Federal Reserve economists showing a 10 percent increase caused a 2 percent to 3 percent decrease in employment.

It also cited comments by notedeconomist Milton Friedman, who maintained that high teen unemployment rates were largely the result of minimum-wage laws.

"After a wage hike, employers seek to take fewer chances on individuals with little education or experience," one institute researcher told lawmakers in 2004.

Tom Kelly, owner of Mary Coyle Ol' Fashion Ice Cream Parlor in Phoenix, voted for the minimum-wage increase. But he said, "The new law has impacted us quite a bit."

It added about $2,000 per month in expenses. The store, which employs mostly teen workers, has cut back on hours and has not replaced a couple of workers who quit.

Kelly raised the wages of workers who already made above minimum wage to ensure pay scales stayed even. As a result, "we have to be a lot more efficient" and must increase menu prices, he said.

While most of the state's 124,067 workers between the ages of 16 and 19 made well above $5.15 per hour before the change, the new law has created real-life economic opportunities.

Liliana Hernandez brings home noticeably more under the new law. The 18-year-old, who attends Metro Tech High School in Phoenix and works part time at Central High School, is saving the extra money, maybe to put towards buying a used car.

Hernandez said she deserves the raise just like any other Arizona worker even if she still lives with her parents.

"I'm doing the best I can and working hard like everyone else," she said.

In the months leading up to last November's vote, advocates of the new law maintained that it would help Arizona create a "living wage" for some of the poorest workers.

The Economic Policy Institute estimated that 145,000 Arizonans would receive a pay raise. That was how many made $5.15 to $6.74 per hour.

At one press conference, a mother described how she was unable to afford basic school supplies for her son.

Opponents, however, said there was little talk about teenage workers. "Everyone wanted to focus on the other aspects of the minimum-wage campaign," said Michelle Bolton, Arizona state director of the National Federation of Independent Business.

An Employment Policies Institute study determined that 30.1 percent of affected workers in Arizona fell between the ages of 16 and 19.

"Workers affected by the minimum-wage increase are less likely to be supporting a family than the typical Arizona worker," it stated. "For example, 30.4 percent of the workers are living with their parent or parents, while only 7.6 percent of all Arizona workers are in this category."

John Weischedel, a senior at the East Valley Institute of Technology in Mesa, knows he is lucky to be making $8 per hour at an auto dealership and learning technical skills. So are most of his friends who make $9 or more per hour while still attending high school.

After the minimum-wage law went into effect, "a couple of my friends got laid off - they worked in fast food," he said. "They're going to wait until they're out of high school to find other jobs."



Matt Dempsey contributed to this article.













Copyright © 2007, azcentral.com. All rights reserved.

U.S., Britain faulted on child welfare

U.S., Britain faulted on child welfare
By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Writer
Wed Feb 14, 6:16 PM ET





BERLIN - The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a U.N. survey of child welfare in 21 wealthy countries that assessed everything from infant mortality to whether children ate dinner with their parents or were bullied at school.

The Netherlands, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland, finished at the top of the rankings, while the U.S. was 20th and Britain 21st, according to the report released Wednesday by UNICEF in Germany.

One of the study's researchers, Jonathan Bradshaw, said children fared worse in the U.S. and Britain — despite high overall levels of national wealth — because of greater economic inequality and poor levels of public support for families.

"What they have in common are very high levels of inequality, very high levels of child poverty, which is also associated with inequality, and in rather different ways poorly developed services to families with children," said Bradshaw, a professor of social policy at the University of York in Britain.

"They don't invest as much in children as continental European countries do," he said, citing the lack of day care services in both countries and poorer health coverage and preventative care for children in the U.S.

The study also gave the U.S. and Britain low marks for their higher incidences of single-parent families and risky behaviors among children, such as drinking alcohol and sexual activity.

Britain was last and the U.S. second from the bottom in the category focusing on relationships, based on the percentage of children who lived in single-parent homes or with stepparents, as well as the percentage that ate the main meal of the day with their families several times per week. That category also counted the proportion of children who said they had "kind" or "helpful" relationships with other children.

The report's authors cautioned that the focus on single-parent families "may seem unfair and insensitive" and noted that many children do well with one parent.

"But at the statistical level there is evidence to associate growing up in single-parent families with greater risk to well-being — including a greater risk of dropping out of school, of leaving home early, poorer health, low skills and of low pay," the report said.

On average, 80 percent of the children in the countries surveyed live with both parents. There were wide variations, however, from more than 90 percent in Greece and Italy to less than 70 percent in Britain and 60 percent in the U.S., where 16 percent of adolescents lived with stepfamilies.

Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of The Children's Fund charity in Britain, said the UNICEF report also showed that less than half of British children reported good relations with their peers.

"That really jumped off the page," he said, citing concerns about the competitive, ratings-based school environment in Britain and higher reported incidences of bullying and fighting. "The environment for these young people is quite negative."

The study ranked the countries in six categories, based on national statistics: material well-being, health and safety, education, peer and family relationships, behaviors and risks, and young people's own subjective sense of well-being. Both the U.S. and Britain were in the bottom two-thirds of five of the six categories.

The U.S. finished last in the health and safety category, based on infant mortality, vaccinations for childhood diseases, deaths from injuries and accidents before age 19, and whether children reported fighting in the past year or being bullied in the previous two months.

Britain finished at the bottom in behaviors and risks, which considered factors such as the percentage of children who had breakfast, ate fruit regularly, exercised, were overweight, used drugs or alcohol, were sexually active or became pregnant.

Both the U.S. and British governments criticized the report.

Wade Horn, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the study's standard of measuring poverty differed from that of the United States.

A family of four is defined by the U.S. as living in poverty if its combined income is less than $20,650 a year. The poverty threshold used by the report was an income of $35,000 a year for a family of four, he said.

"I think when you try to compare nations in a report like this, you tend to ignore so many other factors specific to those nations that the comparison becomes somewhat meaningless," Horn said.

Britain said the report did not take account of recent improvements to education, health and general living standards in the country. Some of the statistics also went back as far as 2001, it said.

In general, northern European countries with strong social welfare systems dominated the upper half of the rankings. Southern European countries, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, ranked higher in terms of family support and levels of trust with friends and peers.

___

Associated Press Writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report from Washington.

___

On the Net:

http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf












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