South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham enters the 2016 presidential race, becoming the ninth Republican to seek the party’s nomination.
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DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
Monday, June 01, 2015
How Much do you Need to Earn to Afford a Modest Apartment in Your State?
See the entire report by clicking HERE
Alleged Nazi war criminal wanted by Russia dies in Quebec
MONTREAL — The second most wanted man on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of Nazi war criminals — charged earlier this month by Russia with genocide — has died at age 93, his lawyer said.
Vladimir Katriuk passed away last week after a long illness, Orest Rudzik said Thursday.
News of Katriuk's death emerged several hours after the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said Ottawa should take the necessary steps to ensure that he be held accountable if he were found guilty of war crimes committed in collaboration with the Nazis.
Russia charged Katriuk earlier this month with genocide in connection with the 1943 killing of civilians in Khatyn, now part of Belarus. According to war reports, Katriuk was a member of a Ukrainian battalion of the SS, the elite Nazi storm troops, between 1942 and 1944. He had denied the accusations against him.
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Vladimir Katriuk passed away last week after a long illness, Orest Rudzik said Thursday.
News of Katriuk's death emerged several hours after the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said Ottawa should take the necessary steps to ensure that he be held accountable if he were found guilty of war crimes committed in collaboration with the Nazis.
Russia charged Katriuk earlier this month with genocide in connection with the 1943 killing of civilians in Khatyn, now part of Belarus. According to war reports, Katriuk was a member of a Ukrainian battalion of the SS, the elite Nazi storm troops, between 1942 and 1944. He had denied the accusations against him.
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Baltimore's Murder Total For May Climbs To 43
Baltimore City has now recorded 43 murders in May, making this the second deadliest month on record.
The latest killing took place Sunday morning in the 1900-block of North Collington Avenue in East Baltimore. Police say two men were shot in the back. One of them died at the scene. The other was hospitalized.
This is one of three murders that took place Sunday in the city.
Police say two men were found shot in the head at around 1:15 Sunday morning in the 2000-block of Belair Road.
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The latest killing took place Sunday morning in the 1900-block of North Collington Avenue in East Baltimore. Police say two men were shot in the back. One of them died at the scene. The other was hospitalized.
This is one of three murders that took place Sunday in the city.
Police say two men were found shot in the head at around 1:15 Sunday morning in the 2000-block of Belair Road.
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Crabs Are Plentiful This Year
8,000 Chinese students were expelled from US universities last year, mostly for cheating and bad grades
“Chinese students used to be considered top-notch, but over the past five years their image has changed completely—wealthy kids who cheat,” Chen, chief development officer at WholeRen, told the Wall Street Journal. According to Chen, past generations of Chinese students were poorer and relied on their grades and scholarships to get into universities abroad, but now these students are often wealthy Chinese who weren’t able to get admitted to a good school at home.
This challenge to the stereotype of the “studious Chinese student” also calls into question the quality of education that Chinese students are used to at home. Critics say that China’s university drop-out rate is so low—just 3%, compared to 54% in the US or 32% in the United Kingdom—because professors rarely fail their students. (One theory is that the students, after years of enduring punishing hours of study and testing in order to get into university, are given a break.)
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Judge Roy Moore: Impeach Ginsburg
(CNSNews) – On May 17, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiated the marriage of two men and used the occasion to cite her constitutional right to do so. In June, the high court – including Ginsburg’s vote - will announce its decision on whether homosexual marriage is guaranteed by the Constitution.
That’s grounds for impeachment, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore told CNSNews.com in an exclusive interview.
“She’s basically thumbing her nose in front of the other justices that she’s going to say what she wants to say and do what she wants to do, and she’s going to ignore the rules of ethics,” Moore said, adding that judges are bound by those rules.
“I think there’s grounds for the legislature of the United States and Congress to act,” Moore said. “They could act to impeach her; they could remove her for bad behavior, because judges serve for good behavior under Article 3 (of the Constitution).
Moore said the fact that Ginsburg made a public statement that she had a right under the Constitution to perform a same-sex wedding, under the ethics rules, is bad behavior given her role in deciding the Obergefell v. Hodges case.
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That’s grounds for impeachment, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore told CNSNews.com in an exclusive interview.
“She’s basically thumbing her nose in front of the other justices that she’s going to say what she wants to say and do what she wants to do, and she’s going to ignore the rules of ethics,” Moore said, adding that judges are bound by those rules.
“I think there’s grounds for the legislature of the United States and Congress to act,” Moore said. “They could act to impeach her; they could remove her for bad behavior, because judges serve for good behavior under Article 3 (of the Constitution).
Moore said the fact that Ginsburg made a public statement that she had a right under the Constitution to perform a same-sex wedding, under the ethics rules, is bad behavior given her role in deciding the Obergefell v. Hodges case.
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FCC Chairman: Expand ‘Obama Phone’ Program to Internet
(CNSNews) - Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler announced on Thursday that he intends to expand Lifeline, popularly known as the “Obama Phone” program, to the Internet.
“I am circulating new proposals to “reboot” Lifeline for the Internet age,” Wheeler wrote in a blog post on the FCC’s Website. He said the reboot would include “establishing minimum standards of service for voice and broadband,” in addition to subsidies for low-income consumers.
Lifeline is a government benefit program that provides a monthly subsidy of $9.95 on telephone service for those at or below 135 percent of the poverty line so they can connect to the nation's communications networks, find jobs, access health care services, connect with family and their children's schools, and call for help in an emergency.
The money comes out of the Universal Service Fund (USF), which is funded through fees paid by consumers on telephone service. The fee is generally itemized on customers’ monthly telephone bills and is currently assessed at a rate of 16.1 percent of the bill.
The size of the Lifeline program has doubled since 2008, increasing from $819 million to $1.6 billion in 2014. It reached a high of $2.19 billion in 2012 amid allegations of fraud and abuse.
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“I am circulating new proposals to “reboot” Lifeline for the Internet age,” Wheeler wrote in a blog post on the FCC’s Website. He said the reboot would include “establishing minimum standards of service for voice and broadband,” in addition to subsidies for low-income consumers.
Lifeline is a government benefit program that provides a monthly subsidy of $9.95 on telephone service for those at or below 135 percent of the poverty line so they can connect to the nation's communications networks, find jobs, access health care services, connect with family and their children's schools, and call for help in an emergency.
The money comes out of the Universal Service Fund (USF), which is funded through fees paid by consumers on telephone service. The fee is generally itemized on customers’ monthly telephone bills and is currently assessed at a rate of 16.1 percent of the bill.
The size of the Lifeline program has doubled since 2008, increasing from $819 million to $1.6 billion in 2014. It reached a high of $2.19 billion in 2012 amid allegations of fraud and abuse.
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IRS Indifferent to Hacking Incident
Apparently the arrogance of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen knows no bounds. Facing questions about the ease by which hackers accessed the tax returns of more than 100,000 Americans from February to mid-May, he remained unapologetic. “These are actually organized crime syndicates that not only we but everybody in the financial industry are dealing with,” he declared — before boasting about the agency’s ability to stop approximately half the attacks.
Koskinen also offered up an exercise in semantics. “This is not a hack or data breach. These are impostors pretending to be someone,” he said according to The Wall Street Journal. Technically the Commissioner is correct in that the IRS systems themselves weren’t compromised. But one suspects the efforts, now attributed to Russian hackers engaged in a sophisticated scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds, will be scant comfort to American taxpayers waiting for those refunds. Furthermore, Americans might not have known about the source of the attack at all: two officials contacting Breitbart News “spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation,” the website reported.
The hackers used Social Security numbers, street addresses and other critical information obtained elsewhere to complete a multistep authorization process. It allowed them to gain access and request refunds and other filings, the IRS admitted. Before detecting the scheme, the agency sent out nearly $50 million in refunds. As a result the IRS has temporarily shut down its “Get Transcript” application that had allowed taxpayers to access their own information.
Perhaps Koskinen and company see this as an improvement. In 2013, the IRS paid out a whopping $5.8 billion in fraudulently claimed refunds.
More here
Koskinen also offered up an exercise in semantics. “This is not a hack or data breach. These are impostors pretending to be someone,” he said according to The Wall Street Journal. Technically the Commissioner is correct in that the IRS systems themselves weren’t compromised. But one suspects the efforts, now attributed to Russian hackers engaged in a sophisticated scheme to claim fraudulent tax refunds, will be scant comfort to American taxpayers waiting for those refunds. Furthermore, Americans might not have known about the source of the attack at all: two officials contacting Breitbart News “spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation,” the website reported.
The hackers used Social Security numbers, street addresses and other critical information obtained elsewhere to complete a multistep authorization process. It allowed them to gain access and request refunds and other filings, the IRS admitted. Before detecting the scheme, the agency sent out nearly $50 million in refunds. As a result the IRS has temporarily shut down its “Get Transcript” application that had allowed taxpayers to access their own information.
Perhaps Koskinen and company see this as an improvement. In 2013, the IRS paid out a whopping $5.8 billion in fraudulently claimed refunds.
More here
The flip side of years of no hurricanes: Good luck runs out
Cities like Tampa, Houston, Jacksonville and Daytona Beach historically get hit with major hurricanes every 20 to 40 years, according to meteorologists. But those same places have now gone at least 70 years — sometimes more than a century — without getting smacked by those monster storms, according to data analyses by an MIT hurricane professor and The Associated Press.
These are places where people may think they know what to expect from a major hurricane —with more than 110 mph winds, such as Katrina or Andrew — but they really don’t. They are cities where building construction has boomed but haven’t been tested by nature at its strongest. In the Tampa region, an Andrew-sized storm could cause more than $200 billion in damage, according to a local government study in 2010.
Few of Tampa’s current residents witnessed the last major hurricane that hit there in October 1921. Movies were silent, booze was illegal and Warren Harding was president. For northeast Florida and southern Georgia, the last major hurricane was sometime in the 19th century.
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Krauthammer: Why Doctors Quit
About a decade ago, a doctor friend was lamenting the increasingly frustrating conditions of clinical practice. “How did you know to get out of medicine in 1978?” he asked with a smile.
“I didn’t,” I replied. “I had no idea what was coming. I just felt I’d chosen the wrong vocation.”
I was reminded of this exchange upon receiving my med-school class’s 40th-reunion report and reading some of the entries. In general, my classmates felt fulfilled by family, friends and the considerable achievements of their professional lives. But there was an undercurrent of deep disappointment, almost demoralization, with what medical practice had become.
The complaint was not financial but vocational — an incessant interference with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to “provider.”
As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doctor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies, and lawyers … progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.
I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors' group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”
Read more..
“I didn’t,” I replied. “I had no idea what was coming. I just felt I’d chosen the wrong vocation.”
I was reminded of this exchange upon receiving my med-school class’s 40th-reunion report and reading some of the entries. In general, my classmates felt fulfilled by family, friends and the considerable achievements of their professional lives. But there was an undercurrent of deep disappointment, almost demoralization, with what medical practice had become.
The complaint was not financial but vocational — an incessant interference with their work, a deep erosion of their autonomy and authority, a transformation from physician to “provider.”
As one of them wrote, “My colleagues who have already left practice all say they still love patient care, being a doctor. They just couldn’t stand everything else.” By which he meant “a never-ending attack on the profession from government, insurance companies, and lawyers … progressively intrusive and usually unproductive rules and regulations,” topped by an electronic health records (EHR) mandate that produces nothing more than “billing and legal documents” — and degraded medicine.
I hear this everywhere. Virtually every doctor and doctors' group I speak to cites the same litany, with particular bitterness about the EHR mandate. As another classmate wrote, “The introduction of the electronic medical record into our office has created so much more need for documentation that I can only see about three-quarters of the patients I could before, and has prompted me to seriously consider leaving for the first time.”
Read more..
Maryland Gov. Hogan appoints two Common Core supporters to Board of Education
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan just named two new members of the state Board of Education — both supporters of the Common Core as well as charter schools.
Hogan, a Republican, tapped Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Andy Smarick, partner at Bellwether Education Partners, to take the open seats on the 12-person board created by the departures of Charlene M. Dukes and Donna Hill Staton.
Hogan, who was sworn in as Maryland governor in January, had during the campaign characterized the implementation of school reforms in the state as “a train wreck” and said he believed in local control of assessments. In late January, a spokeswoman for Hogan said in an e-mail, “Governor Hogan believes that we need to hit the ‘pause’ button on Common Core and give control back to teachers and parents.”
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Hogan, a Republican, tapped Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, and Andy Smarick, partner at Bellwether Education Partners, to take the open seats on the 12-person board created by the departures of Charlene M. Dukes and Donna Hill Staton.
Hogan, who was sworn in as Maryland governor in January, had during the campaign characterized the implementation of school reforms in the state as “a train wreck” and said he believed in local control of assessments. In late January, a spokeswoman for Hogan said in an e-mail, “Governor Hogan believes that we need to hit the ‘pause’ button on Common Core and give control back to teachers and parents.”
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Tragedy haunts Joe Biden once again
In the latest personal devastation, the Vice President must now endure the torment of burying a second child, after his beloved son Beau died from brain cancer Saturday night.
It's particularly heartrending because Beau, 46, was also a victim of an earlier incident that shattered Biden's life, a car crash at Christmas in 1972 that killed his first wife and an infant daughter and badly injured another son as well as Beau.
Stricken with grief back then, Biden contemplated vacating the Delaware Senate seat he had just won as a young rising star of the Democratic Party, but his decision to endure became the foundation on which he built his political creed and public service. In a famous photo at the time, Biden was seen being sworn into the chamber in his sons' hospital room.
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Kodi's Back Home!
Look who's back!!!! Thank you J-E-S-U-S for answering the prayers of everyone who prayed for us during this nightmare...
Posted by Help Bring Kodi Home on Sunday, May 31, 2015
How To Spend A Beautiful Day In West Ocean City
This is how neighbors and their friends like to use their spare time on the peaceful and quiet Herring Creek.
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