Divernan

Divernan's Journal

February 5, 2015

She offered NO specific position on the issue-leaving typical Clinton wiggle room.

It's like any politician saying he or she is in favor of free speech, or motherhood, or apple pie. The devil is in the details.

It is unprecedented for our government, federal, state or local, to mandate medical treatment for children or adults, other than on a case by case basis. Traditionally, except in an emergency situation, parental consent is required in order to perform medical procedures on children, including adolescents. Courts throughout the world recognize that parents have rights but additionally recognize that these rights are not absolute and exist only to promote the welfare of children.

Well known international exceptions would be North Korea's current regime and Hitler's Nazi government, which arbitrarily euthanized or sterilized adults or children with physical or mental disabilities, without giving relatives or parents any hearings in a court of law. Even China, with its one child policy did not forcibly impose abortions or sterilizations, i.e., medical treatment without a patient's consent.

The One-Child Policy restricted the majority of Chinese families to one child each. The consequences of having a child without a birth permit varied by province, with fines reaching as high as several times the average annual income.

To enforce the One-Child Policy, the Chinese government used a quota reward system for Planning Officials who carried out the birth control policies. If they did not meet these quotas, they were either punished or lost the opportunity to earn promotions.

http://www.allgirlsallowed.org/one-child-policy

The U.S. has also had an abhorrent policy on forced sterilization, i.e, forced medical treatment -

1907-Indiana becomes the first state in the country to successfully pass a mandatory forced sterilization law, in this case impacting the "feebleminded" (mentally handicapped).
1909-California and Washington pass mandatory sterilization laws.
1922-Harry Hamilton Laughlin, director of the Eugenics Research Office, proposes a federal mandatory sterilization law. Like Lincecum's proposal, it never really goes anywhere.
1927-In Buck v. Bell, the U.S. Supreme Court rules (8-1) that laws mandating the sterilization of the mentally handicapped do not violate the Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes makes an explicitly eugenic argument:
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

1936-Nazi propaganda defends Germany's forced sterilization program by citing the United States as an ally in the eugenic movement, and its laws as proof of its status as same. World War II, and the atrocities committed by the Nazi government, would rapidly change U.S. attitudes towards eugenics.

1942-In Skinner v. Oklahoma, the U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously against an Oklahoma law targeting some felons for sterilization (the plaintiff, Jack Skinner, was a chicken thief) while excluding white-collar criminals. The majority opinion, written by Justice William O. Douglas, rejects the broad eugenic mandate previously outlined in Buck v. Bell (1927):
Strict scrutiny of the classification which a State makes in a sterilization law is essential, lest unwittingly, or otherwise, invidious discriminations are made against groups or types of individuals in violation of the constitutional guaranty of just and equal laws.

1970-The Nixon administration dramatically increases Medicaid-funded sterilization of low-income Americans, primarily Americans of color. While these sterilizations are voluntary as a matter of policy, anecdotal evidence later suggests that they are often involuntary as a matter of practice as patients are often misinformed, or left uninformed, regarding the nature of the procedures that they have agreed to undergo.

1979-A survey conducted by Family Planning Perspectives finds that approximately 70% of American hospitals fail to adequately follow U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines regarding informed consent in cases of sterilization.

1981-Oregon performs the last legal forced sterilization in U.S. history.
http://civilliberty.about.com/od/gendersexuality/tp/Forced-Sterilization-History.htm

True, our state governments have authorized forced sterilizations and lobotomies (Rosemary Kennedy), and even pulling the plug. But these have always been case-by-case decisions.

I personally am in favor of vaccinations for children, but as a lawyer I clearly see that this is an extremely delicate & complex legal issue. Hillary's folksy tweet is reminiscent of her phony black dialect - she's talking down to people and she's too emotionally tone deaf to realize it.

Feb 10, 2008 · Hillary Clinton speaking in a black church in a much different accent and dialect than normal. https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=Hillary+Clinton+black+accent&ei=UTF-8&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001

And the thing is, and what, as a lawyer myself, really offends me about Clinton's cutsey, insultingly simplistic little grandma tweet, is that she is a lawyer and is completely aware of the legal complexities. So she wants to be hip/au currant and tweet? Great, but this is not the topic for such shallow treatment.

February 4, 2015

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. A whole family of grifters.

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Marc Mezvinsky's parents were both grifters. Chelsea's father-in-law, or as some refer to him "felon-in-law" is Ed Mezvinsky. Since Ed Mezvinsky's own mother-in-law was one of his fraud victims, HRC & Bill would have been smart not to invest either their private millions or the Clinton Foundation's funds in son-in-law's hedge fund. And just where did Marc M get his faulty international insights as to Greece? Or was Bill selling short on Eaglevale's choices all along?

(F)ederal prosecutors said Ed Mezvinsky habitually dropped the Clintons' names and boasted of their friendship during the 1990s as he defrauded friends, family members and institutions out of more than $10 million.

Ed Mezvinsky was sentenced in 2003 to serve 80 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a massive fraud that prosecutors said amounted to a Ponzi scheme. He was released from custody in April 2008, but remains under federal probation supervision.
Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/mezvinsky.asp#W86TSmhCqGEkOYkR.99

After serving five years in federal prison, he was released in April 2008. He remained on federal probation until 2011, and still owes $9.4 million in restitution to his victims.

And the groom's mother, Marjorie Margolies? Well, she tried to file for bankruptcy but the bankruptcy judge wasn't having it. Somehow the female bankruptcy judge didn't believe a woman who had served in the US Congress when said woman whined that she had no knowledge of her family's finances because her husband took care of all finances.

Shortly thereafter, she filed for bankruptcy, but failed to receive a discharge from her debts, based on 11 U.S.C. §727(a)(5). The court found Mezvinsky had failed to satisfactorily explain a significant loss of assets in the four years prior to her bankruptcy filing. The bankruptcy judge stated, in her published opinion, "I find that the Debtor has failed to satisfactorily explain the loss of approximately $775,000 worth of assets (the difference between the $810,000 represented in May 1996 and the $35,000 now claimed in her Amended Schedule B)." Sonders v. Mezvinsky (in re Mezvinsky), 265 B.R. 681, 694 (Bankr. E.D. Pa. 2001).

When she filed for bankruptcy, a judge rejected her assertion of ignorance in a scathing decision that, depending on how you read it, either calls her feminist assertions into question or suggests she knows more than she’s letting on. “Her consistent response to questions asked by her creditors about the disposition of her assets is lack of knowledge or ‘my husband handled it,’ a mantra that is completely at odds with her public persona, background, and accomplishments,” the judge wrote.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/the-clinton-in-law-marjorie-margolies-100696_Page3.html#ixzz3PH7Y4Lsv

Who would HRC seat these grifters next to at state dinners? Whomever they might be, they'd better hang onto their wallets.

February 2, 2015

Fast tracking not just for TPP; raises its ugly head in PA

http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2015/02/01/Avoiding-taxes-A-fast-tracked-scheme-will-help-only-nonprofits/stories/201502010086
This Pittsburgh Post Gazette editorial opposes a state constitutional amendment being pushed by "non-profit" UPMC.

Avoiding taxes: A fast-tracked scheme will help only nonprofits (Headline)

A runaway train is rolling through Harrisburg, but it will crash and burn in cities and towns across Pennsylvania.
Hospitals and large nonprofits are pushing for a state constitutional amendment that could end attempts by local government to force them to make payments to help cover municipal services. That would leave the average residents and businesses that pay property taxes on the hook, as they are today, for more than their fair share of the cost of policing, firefighting and road maintenance.

The amendment would do this by taking away from the courts the authority to define what constitutes a tax-exempt charity and giving it to lawmakers who are susceptible to lobbying by deep-pocketed, albeit nonprofit, institutions.

Senate Bill 4 contains the proposal, which must be passed in two consecutive sessions of the Legislature to become part of the state constitution. It was OK’d once by the General Assembly and is on a fast track for second approval. If that happens soon, the plan will go before Pennsylvania voters this year, perhaps as early as the May primary, for possible final adoption — all without much public exposure or extensive debate.

Almost as a concession to the animosity rising against the Legislature’s hurry-up offense, the Senate Finance Committee has set a hearing for Wednesday on the bill. It comes, however, in the 11th hour of the amendment process — too late for a careful examination of this costly issue.

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