Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalAnd today's earworm is...and what's yours?
"Seven Bridges Road". No, not the original. I don't care if Don Henley did write it, she sang it MUCH better! (Never mind that I knew her from before she was famous, You go, Tracy!)
Andrea Mitchell To Step Back From Anchoring Duties After 16-Year Run
Veteran journalist Andrea Mitchell is stepping away from her anchoring role at MSNBC after 16 years behind the desk.
During Tuesday’s episode of “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” the newscaster announced she’ll be leaving her namesake show after next year’s presidential inauguration.
Mitchell will remain NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent and chief Washington correspondent.
“After 16 years of being in the anchor chair every day, I want time to do more of what I love the most: more connecting, listening and reporting in the field, especially as whoever is elected next week is going to undertake the monumental task of handling two foreign wars and the political divisions here at home,” she told viewers.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/andrea-mitchell-leave-anchoring-position_n_672119b4e4b0b5d43560d56f
She said this once before, so I'll believe it when I see it.
Lawsuit claims ICE withheld $300M in bond payments from immigrants
U.S. immigration authorities illegally kept more than $300 million in bond payments from tens of thousands of low-income immigrant families and U.S. citizens, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept the money for so long that $240 million was transferred to a U.S. Treasury account for unclaimed funds, said Motley Rice LLC, one of the firms that filed the lawsuit in federal court for the Eastern District of New York.
The lawsuit, which addresses longstanding complaints, seeks class-action status for those who paid cash to bail out family members detained by ICE. Motley Rice, a firm that represents clients on a wide variety of class-action lawsuits, said it had been investigating the issue for two years.
Immigration bonds are set by ICE and immigration judges and allow noncitizens who are facing removal proceedings to be released in the U.S. while their cases are decided in court. The average bail payment is $6,000 according to the lawsuit.
Once the immigration case has concluded, family and friends of those detained are entitled to get their money back. ICE, however, “regularly fails to return these funds, even when all conditions have been met and proceedings have concluded,” according to the lawsuit.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-lawsuit-bond-payment-immigrants-cash-deposits-0fb2ad6dd066c3d4d80c4389f6119d0c
Why am I not surprised?
The nation's freshmen reckon with a mass school shooting by one of their own
https://wapo.st/4fkrWZwThe ninth-grader never let himself think about it for long, but he always had questions. Where it happened. What gun the shooter used. Where the weapon came from. How many people died. Whether any of them were children, like him.
Then, when Alex had heard enough, he tried to forget. Block it out, he would tell himself. Block it out.
But on a Wednesday evening last month, after another massacre, this time at Apalachee High School in Georgia, his first question was the one his mother dreaded most: How old was the shooter?
“He was 14,” she said.
“Wow,” Alex replied. “That’s my age.”
On Sept. 4, he and millions of other 14-year-olds had just begun their freshmen years, among the most formative of their lives. It is a season of awkward homecoming dances and chaperoned mall dates, of ill-timed pimples and longed-for learner’s permits. This year, it also began with word — from TikToks, Snaps, Reels, Stories, whispers from classmates and sit-downs with parents — that one of their peers had become the youngest alleged mass school shooter in a quarter-century. Two more ninth-graders, Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, were dead.
______________
Long, but devastating, read. Not paywalled if you follow my link.
Texas attorney general's statement rejects supporters of death row inmate's appeal
The Texas attorney general is refuting claims by critics who say a death row inmate was unjustifiably convicted in the death of his toddler child.
In the Wednesday night statement posted online from his office, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he released the original autopsy report and other records about the case of Robert Roberson to rebut the "lies" from state Reps. Jeff Leach and Joe Moody.
Paxton is a Republican, while Leach is also a Republican and Moody is a Democrat.
Roberson was convicted for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. He has maintained his innocence since his trial. Prosecutors argued at the trial that the child's death was caused by head trauma from being violently shaken. Roberson's attorneys, however, maintain that the bruising on the girl's body was likely due to pneumonia, not child abuse.
It was eventually revealed that the child had pneumonia at the time of her death, and now state legislators and activists are claiming the accusation that she died from being shaken is “junk science.”
Roberson was scheduled for lethal injection last Thursday, but the procedure was postponed in the minutes leading up to the execution after the Texas House issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify in court
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5162792/texas-ken-paxton-statement-robert-roberson
I hate this bloodthirsty bastard SO much!
What's your earworm today?
Mine is "Angel from Montgomery" and has been for the past 4 days. I can't get rid of it! I wake up with it and it's driving me crazy!
Foster failure
No, this is not the usual kind of "foster fail". This is a sad story. Today I had to take my foster kitty, Sarai, back to the shelter. I've had her for 6 weeks and really have made no progress. She would come up to me for pets and even roll over to be petted (and let me know when enough is enough) but I have never been able to pick her up. The one time I even got close she tore me up. So finally the decision was made to trap her and take her back. I felt absolutely awful, like I had betrayed her, but honestly, I'd tried really hard and tried everything I knew, but she'd never gotten any closer. The foster coordinator was honest with me, saying that they'd do another behavioral assessment but might be moving forward with euthanasia since she isn't eligible for the barn cat program (she's never lived outside) and doesn't seem adoptable at this point. I feel awful.
A court orders Missouri's AG to give in and let a wrongly convicted death row inmate go free
In a unanimous opinion, the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Sandra Hemme, 64, was wrongly convicted of murder and she should be freed.
In a single sentence, the Missouri Court of Appeals changed the trajectory of Hemme’s life.
“Hemme’s 1985 conviction of capital murder in Buchanan County, Missouri… is vacated,” the court wrote.
Hemme spent 43 years in prison for the murder of Patricia Jeschke, a librarian from St. Joseph. It's the longest sentence any woman wrongly convicted in the U.S. has ever served.
The 71-page ruling was handed down remarkably fast — just 13 days after oral arguments — and rejected every argument made by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey.
“The opinion was a powerful statement from the court,” said Innocence Project attorney Jane Pucher. Hemme’s family “is grateful and relieved,” Pucher said, especially for how quickly the judges ruled.
https://www.kcur.org/news/2024-10-22/missouri-court-vacates-sandra-hemme-murder-conviction-blasts-attorney-generals-arguments
Now let's see if he does it. He's a notorious scofflaw.
Jailed reporters, silenced networks: What Trump says he'd do to the media if elected
Former President Donald Trump often basks in the glow of press attention. Just as often, he trashes the press and threatens journalists.
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Trump has suggested that if he regains the White House, he will exact vengeance on news outlets that anger him.
More specifically, Trump has pledged to toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he didn't like.
"It speaks directly to the First Amendment — and the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy," Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, tells NPR.
To be clear, the government does not license national networks like those targeted by Trump, but the FCC does license local TV and radio stations to use the public airwaves.
"While the FCC has authority to provide licenses for television and radio, it is pretty fundamental that we do not take them away because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes any kind of content or coverage," Rosenworcel says.
Trump's declarations arrive at a time of increasing concern about his more autocratic impulses. And press advocates say he is intentionally fueling a climate hostile to independent reporting.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5161480/trump-media-threats-abc-cbs-60-minutes-journalists
"Not Medically Necessary": Inside the Company Helping America's Biggest Health Insurers Deny Coverage for Care
Every day, patients across America crack open envelopes with bad news. Yet another health insurer has decided not to pay for a treatment that their doctor has recommended. Sometimes it’s a no for an MRI for a high school wrestler with a strained back. Sometimes for a cancer procedure that will help a grandmother with a throat tumor. Sometimes for a heart scan for a truck driver feeling short of breath.
But the insurance companies don’t always make these decisions. Instead, they often outsource medical reviews to a largely hidden industry that makes money by turning down doctors’ requests for payments, known as prior authorizations. Call it the denials for dollars business.
The biggest player is a company called EviCore by Evernorth, which is hired by major American insurance companies and provides coverage to 100 million consumers — about 1 in 3 insured people. It is owned by the insurance giant Cigna.
A ProPublica and Capitol Forum investigation found that EviCore uses an algorithm backed by artificial intelligence, which some insiders call “the dial,” that it can adjust to lead to higher denials. Some contracts ensure the company makes more money the more it cuts health spending. And it issues medical guidelines that doctors have said delay and deny care for patients.
EviCore and companies like it approve prior authorizations “based on the decision that is more profitable for them,” said Barbara McAneny, a former president of the American Medical Association and a practicing oncologist. “They love to deny things.”
EviCore says it scrutinizes requests to make sure that procedures recommended by doctors are safe, necessary and cost-effective. “We are improving the quality of health care, the safety of health care and, by very happy coincidence, we’re also decreasing a significant amount of unnecessary cost,” an EviCore medical officer explains in a video produced by the company.
But EviCore’s cost-cutting is far from coincidental, according to the investigation.
EviCore markets itself to insurance companies by promising a 3-to-1 return on investment — that is, for every $1 spent on EviCore, the insurer would pay out $3 less on medical care and other costs. EviCore salespeople have boasted of a 15% increase in denials, according to the investigation, which is based on internal documents, corporate data and dozens of interviews with former employees, doctors, industry experts, health care regulators and insurance executives. Almost everybody interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity because they continue to work in the industry.
https://www.propublica.org/article/evicore-health-insurance-denials-cigna-unitedhealthcare-aetna-prior-authorizations
This company should be called EvilCore!
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
Member since: Wed Jun 1, 2011, 07:34 PM
Number of posts: 10,782