Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalA 7-year-old boy was killed at a Kentucky foster care center. Now another alleged victim is stepping
A 7-year-old boy was killed at a Kentucky foster care center. Now another alleged victim is stepping forward.A mother says her developmentally delayed son was choked, scratched and verbally abused at the same Kentucky youth facility where a 7-year-old boy’s death by suffocation is under investigation by police.
Autumn Janeway said her son Anthony, 11, endured “physical and emotional abuse” at the Brooklawn facility in Louisville during his stay from July 2021 until March.
Janeway, who on Friday filed a lawsuit against the facility’s parent company alleging negligence, said she had voluntarily checked Anthony into the location for private residential therapeutic treatment for a litany of issues: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and because the boy was harming himself and his younger siblings, and running away.
She said she struggled to keep Anthony — who is developmentally delayed and had been in special needs care since he was 5 — at home and was constantly anxious about his and his siblings’ safety.
Brooklawn, which is owned and operated by the nonprofit organization Uspiritus and treats children with mental and behavioral needs, was the first residential home Anthony lived in.
“I needed help and when you take a parent like me that is desperate to get their child help, we put trust into places like Brooklawn.”
That trust was quickly tested, she said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boy-was-choked-verbally-abused-kentucky-facility-7-year-old-was-killed-rcna57076
Yet another story about abuse of our most vulnerable. Will it never stop?
With a nod to '1984,' a federal judge blocks Florida's anti-'woke' law in colleges
A federal judge in Florida partially blocked a law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis designed to limit the discussion of racism and privilege in schools and workplace training.
In a 139-page order issued Thursday, Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker excoriated the Republican-led bill and blocked it from taking effect in the state's public universities.
"The State of Florida's decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all," Walker wrote. "But the First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark."
The legislation, previously called the Stop W.O.K.E. Act – the acronym standing for "Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees" – is now known as the Individual Freedom Act. DeSantis signed the bill into law this spring; it initially took effect in July.
The bill prohibits schools and workplaces from any instruction that suggests that any individual, by virtue of their race, color, sex or national origin, "bears responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress" on account of historical acts of racism. The bill also forbids education or training that says individuals are "privileged or oppressed" due to their race or sex.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137836712/college-university-florida-woke-desantis-1984
A nice little "FU" to DeSatan
Oklahoma proposes landmark rule to keep mailed medications safe from extreme temperatures
Patients who get their prescription medications by mail in Oklahoma may soon have better protections for the safety of those drugs than any other state. On Wednesday, Oklahoma regulators proposed the nation’s first detailed rule to control temperatures during shipping, according to pharmacy experts.
“This is a huge step,” said Marty Hendrick, executive director of the Oklahoma State Board of Pharmacy, after the board voted to approve the rule Wednesday. “We’ve got a tremendous amount of prescriptions that get mailed to patients. … What we did today was make sure our patients in Oklahoma are receiving safe products.”
Exposure to extreme temperatures can degrade or weaken drugs, potentially changing their dosage or chemical makeup and rendering them ineffective or unsafe for patients. But while government oversight of how pharmacies store medications to keep them in defined safe temperature ranges is very detailed, an NBC News investigation in 2020 found oversight of shipping to patients — during which drugs might be exposed to heat waves and below-freezing temperatures — is largely a system of blind trust. Mail-order pharmacy is a booming business, with soaring profits for some of the nation’s largest companies last year and more than 26 million people receiving their medication by mail in 2017 — more than double the number two decades earlier, according to federal data.
NBC News found that most state pharmacy boards, the regulators responsible for pharmacy safety, did not have specific rules for how pharmacies should ship customers’ medication, few asked about this process in their inspections, and many said it was simply up to the pharmacy to ensure safe shipping.
Industry standards are clear that pharmacies should ship medications in their safe temperature range — set by the manufacturer after extensive testing under Food and Drug Administration guidelines — yet many patients have no way of knowing if the medications that arrive at their door have stayed within that range.
“So many insurance providers are really pushing patients to use mail order,” said Erin Fox, director of drug information at the University of Utah Health hospital system, who researches drug quality and shortages. “Unfortunately, many patients don’t have a choice in their insurance coverage to be able to use a local pharmacy, so having these protections is important.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/oklahoma-proposes-rule-keep-drugs-safe-hot-cold-rcna57492
I trash Oklahoma a lot, but this is a good thing. I hope they pass it.
Moms for Liberty-backed school board members fire superintendent, ban critical race theory
On Tuesday evening, the Berkeley County School District in South Carolina swore in the board members who were elected last week, six of whom were endorsed by the conservative activist group Moms for Liberty.
Within two hours, the school board had voted to fire the district’s first Black superintendent, terminate the district’s lawyer, ban critical race theory and set up a committee to decide whether certain books and materials should be banned from schools.
In addition, the board voted to replace the chair with Mac McQuillin, a local attorney and one of the board members backed by Moms for Liberty.
The rapid moves Tuesday in the Berkeley County district, the fourth largest in the state, showed the impact of Moms for Liberty’s focus on electing conservative school board members, and prompted uproar among some community members in attendance.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/moms-liberty-berkeley-county-school-board-superintendent-rcna57528a
If I lived there, my house would be up for sale yesterday.
Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma could get first delegate to Congress in 200 years
The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress.
Chuck Hoskin Jr, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, was among those who testified before the US House rules committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the US House. Hoskin, the elected leader of the 440,000-member tribe, put the effort in motion in 2019 when he nominated Kimberly Teehee, a former adviser to Barack Obama, to the position. The tribe’s governing council then unanimously approved her.
The tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised. A separate treaty in 1866 affirmed this right, Hoskin said.
“The Cherokee Nation has in fact adhered to our obligations under these treaties. I’m here to ask the United States to do the same,” Hoskin told the panel.
Hoskin suggested to the committee that Teehee could be seated as early as this year by way of either a resolution or change in statute, and the committee’s chairman, the Massachusetts Democrat James McGovern, and other members supported the idea that it could be accomplished quickly.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/16/cherokee-nation-oklahoma-first-congress-delegate
About damn time. But all these nations, commonwealths, and territories should also be allowed to vote on matters that affect them.
'The sheriff who went rogue': Alex Villanueva's scandal-plagued tenure ends in LA
For only the second time in more than a century, Los Angeles residents have voted out an incumbent sheriff, ending the reign of Alex Villanueva, a scandal-plagued official who civil rights leaders say had become a “danger to the people”.
Villanueva conceded to Robert Luna, the former police chief of the city of Long Beach, on Tuesday, one week after the election, with latest count showing Luna had 60% of the vote compared with the incumbent’s 40%. The results marked a decisive rejection of the leader of the largest county sheriff’s agency in the US.
The downfall of the cowboy hat-wearing sheriff comes at the end of a four-year term marked by a dizzying pace of misconduct, abuse and corruption scandals. As the race heated up in the last year, Villanueva faced increasing national scrutiny for his frequent, at times weekly, lashing out at politicians, community leaders, journalists, whistleblowers, watchdogs and other law enforcement officials who tried exposing problems at the department.
“He’ll be remembered as the sheriff who went rogue, who operated as if he was above and outside of the law, who acted with impunity,” said Mark-Anthony Clayton-Johnson, executive director of Dignity and Power Now, a group that advocates for people in LA county jails, which are run by the LA sheriff’s department (LASD).
A registered Democrat who had become a favorite of far-right pundits for his “tough on crime” talk and opposition to criminal justice reform, Villanueva has derided his critics as people who “worship at the altar of woke-ism”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/16/alex-villanueva-la-county-sheriff-loses-robert-luna
Another one down. Hoping the new sheriff can also cleanse the department of the internal gangs.
Witness reveals U.Va. shooting was not random
The shooting at University of Virginia on Sunday night was not random, according to a witness account in court on Wednesday morning.
Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. was scheduled for a bond hearing at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Albemarle General District Court. Jones appeared emotionless as his charges were read to him via video link.
According to the Commonwealth’s Attorney James Hingeley, a witness told authorities that Jones shot Devin Chandler in his sleep. The witness said that they saw Jones point the gun at Chandler while he was sleeping.
Chandler — along with Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry — was killed in the shooting. Marlee Morgan and Michael Hollins were wounded in the shooting.
The witness also said Jones was targeting certain people and that the gunfire was not random.
https://www.wric.com/news/virginia-news/witness-reveals-u-va-shooting-suspect-christopher-darnell-jones-jr-shot-victim-while-he-was-sleeping-shooting-not-random/
As soon as I heard the shooter was a former football player, I figured it was personal.
Is anyone doing NaNoWriMo?
I was going to, but I got tied up because I have a major gem show on Veterans Day weekend. I'm done with that for the year and only have the local gallery to worry about (and plenty of things from show stock to put there) so thinking of putting in the time to at least work on something.
I have several books started in various stages of progress:
A story, partially based on true events, about girls brought up in a fundamentalist family whose father molests them. Until one shocking event, none of them knows that he's done it to all of them. The rest of the story deals with the aftermath.
A sci-fi story of sorts about a girl who grows up on a world somewhere and becomes a midwife. It's kind of a socio-cultural study.
Two romances, one about the reunion of high school sweethearts, the other about a woman and her new next door neighbor who is the single father of three adopted sons. (The first is a reworking of something I started years ago and I'm still not all that happy with it but Harlequin might be LOL)
Which one to concentrate on?
Hand of Irulegi: ancient Spanish artefact rewrites history of Basque language
More than 2,000 years after it was probably hung from the door of a mud-brick house in northern Spain to bring luck, a flat, lifesize bronze hand engraved with dozens of strange symbols could help scholars trace the development of one of the world’s most mysterious languages.
Although the piece – known as the Hand of Irulegi – was discovered last year by archaeologists from the Aranzadi Science Society who have been digging near the city of Pamplona since 2017, its importance has only recently become clear.
Experts studying the hand and its inscriptions now believe it is both the oldest written example of Proto-Basque and a find that “upends” much of what was previously known about the Vascones, a late iron age tribe who inhabited the area before the arrival of the Romans, and from whose ancient language modern-day Basque, or euskera, is thought to descend.
Until now, scholars had understood that the Vascones had no written language – save for words found on coins – and only began writing after the Romans introduced the Latin alphabet. But the five words written in 40 characters identified as Vasconic, suggest otherwise.
The first – and only word – to be identified so far is sorioneku, a forerunner of the modern Basque word zorioneko, meaning good luck or good omen.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/15/hand-of-irulegi-ancient-spanish-artefact-rewrites-history-of-basque-language
Basque is said to be one of the most difficult languages in the world. There's a Spanish joke that when God wanted to punish a fallen angel, he sentenced him to study Basque for seven years.
'I don't have the funds': a diabetic prisoner pleaded for insulin supplies before his death
On a cold December day in 2021, the echoes of an emergency code cut through the bustling sounds of the Stafford Creek corrections center in Aberdeen, Washington.
The alarm could mean there had been a scuffle at the poker table, an officer was having a bad day, or a new lockdown due to yet another Covid outbreak was being imposed.
This time around, though, word spread across the facility that Clifford Farrar, an incarcerated resident, had collapsed in a common area.
Farrar, a 51-year-old with type 1 diabetes, had been insulin dependent since age 15. On the day he died, his medical records show, his blood sugar was dangerously low. When staff gave him glucagon to raise his levels, the records say, his blood sugar shot up, at which point he had a seizure and heart attack and died. The coroner said Farrar’s cause of death was “natural”, due to heart disease and diabetes.
But Farrar’s family believes the prison neglected his health throughout his detention, including by denying him access to life-saving supplies. A state committee found that staff responding to his collapse lacked proper training and that the medical devices they used had malfunctioned.
Farrar’s death, advocates argue, was a tragic but predictable consequence of the inadequate medical care within the Washington department of corrections (DOC), which has experienced repeated public health crises and scandals in recent years.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/15/prison-healthcare-washington-diabetes-death-clifford-farrar
If you know me at all, you know that prison medical neglect is one of my hot buttons.
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 9,966