OPINION - Brooks and Marcus 3/27/2020

"Brooks and Marcus on U.S. government’s pandemic preparation failures" PBS NewsHour 3/27/2020

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SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including whether Americans are ready for the mounting coronavirus crisis, why the U.S. government wasn’t better prepared for the pandemic, the significance of the $2.2 trillion economic relief package and the status of the 2020 Democratic Presidential primary.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  As the days now become weeks, to help make sense of where we are, the analysis of Brooks and Marcus.

That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.  Mark Shields is away.

Hello to both of you.

We are keeping you distant for your safety.

David, to you first.

The U.S. is now leading the world.  We have surpassed every other country in COVID-19 cases.  The experts say it's just going to get worse because of early missed opportunities.  Do you think Americans are ready for what's coming?

David Brooks, New York Times:  Well, they have been ready so far.  I think the reaction, people are taking it seriously.  They are doing the distancing.  I have been on Zoom calls with thousands of people this week, it seems.

And people are volunteering to help each other out in ways that are safe.  And so I have been really impressed by the American public's reaction.

The government, more of a mixed bag.  Obviously, President Trump pooh-poohed it for too long, and that cost us vital weeks.  But he wasn't alone.  The CDC messed up the tests.  The FDA regulations were — got in the way.

Political scientists have been talking for years about the decay of our governing institutions, too much politics, too much regulation, not enough room to maneuver for the managers.  And that seems to all be coming true.

And so we have sort of seen an institutional failure from the White House on down.

Judy Woodruff:  Ruth, what about that?  What about the American people and the institutions?

Ruth Marcus, Washington Post:  Well, the American people are one thing, and the institutions are quite another, as David suggests.

The fact of the matter is, is that, if the American people aren't prepared, it's because their leaders, and primarily President Trump, has failed to prepare them for what is coming.

And he's failed to prepare them on a number — he's [Trump] failed to prepare the country in terms of the material and the readiness that we need to have, and he's failed to prepare them with a clear and consistent message about how we are going to defeat what he calls this invisible virus and this invisible killer.

While we were just on — while the show was on, he was on television in his nightly self-congratulatory moment, and he said — was complaining about the governor of Michigan, as she was on your air, and complaining about the governor of Washington, and saying he had told Mike Pence, if they're not nice to you, don't call them.  If they don't treat you good, don't call them.

That is not Presidential.  That is petty and beneath what the country deserves and needs at this point.

Judy Woodruff:  David, what about President Trump's leadership now?

David Brooks:  Yes, I think the word I would lead is inconstant, most of all.

We're used to his self-focus.  We're used to the narcissism.  We're used to this, I want people to love me all the time.

But it's extremely unnerving in a time like this, when the President says we don't need ventilators one hour, and says we desperately need them the next hour.  That is just a nerve-jangling problem.

The irony is that, if somebody like Steve Bannon had been in the White House, he saw this problem early.  It sort of filtered into his ideological priors.  The intelligence community saw this problem early.

It was the President doing what he thought would serve him best for his reelection that caused him to talk this down for so long.  And when he gets a bad press, like about General Motors, a story that suggests he's dragging his feet, then he reacts to that.

So he's reacting to the latest bit of bad press, which just leads to this — this pattern of inconstancy.

Judy Woodruff:  So, Ruth, we do have Congress passing, agreeing — and the President's now signed it — this $2.2 trillion, historic amount of money, supposed to go directly to aid Americans who are hurt by the response to this — to this pandemic.

How much help do you think it's going to make?

Ruth Marcus:  It's going to make a lot of help.

This is a — in a bad time, this was a good moment.  There were problems along the way.  There were disagreements along the way.  But the fact that Congress could pass this quickly a package of this amazing magnitude, $2.2 trillion — we have now spent almost $3 trillion — to get agreement, these guys can't even rename a post office.

And they managed to do this.  That's really important.

There's two things that are critical, though.  One is to make sure that this money that's been allocated, particularly the money to small businesses, and even more than that, the money to individuals to get them through, that has to — in order to be effective, that has to get out the door as quickly as humanly possible.

And that's going to be a phenomenon of oversight and execution that is up to the executive branch.  And we will see if they're up to that task.  I really hope they are.

The second thing is that, while this is an enormous sum of money, it actually may not be sufficient.  It's enough to get people through the next several — next couple months.  But we may need to dig into the national pockets and the national — scrounge for the change in the national couch cushions, and come up with more, because the President likes to pretend that this is going to be all over by Easter or at least in some counties over by Easter.

That's just not reality-based.

Judy Woodruff:  Yes, we are starting to hear a lot more money's going to be needed.

But, David, in terms of this first tranche, or whatever you want to call it, how much difference do you think it's going to make?

David Brooks:  Oh, it'll make a difference.  It's a lot of money.  We have a $14 trillion economy or so, and so $2 trillion is a lot of money.

I — personally, I applaud them for getting it done.  I think, just as Ruth said, to see Congress do anything is impressive.  I think they took the wrong strategy.  The United Kingdom and Denmark and some other countries decided what's most important is to keep people employed.

And so they gave money to employers to keep people on the payroll.  And that does a lot of things.  It keeps the firms intact.  It keeps people feeling like, I have a job, even if they have to stay home.

We went the unemployment insurance route, which was to get people out of their workplace.  Then we will subsidize them.  The problem is, once you're off — out of the labor market, for some people, it's hard to get back in.

And I worry about the organizations, the institutions of these small businesses.  If suddenly they sort of go away for a time, how many of them are going to come back?  How many of the nonprofits are going to come back?  And so I'm glad we're doing it.  I wish we had tried a different strategy.

Judy Woodruff:  How much do you worry about that, Ruth?

Ruth Marcus:  Well, I worry that, if we were going to do that, we would have needed to do it earlier, because so many of these places have already laid people off, and the imperative is to get money to them quickly.

But I don't disagree that might have been a better strategy.

The thing that I worry about more in the immediate term is also making sure — just want to go back to this supply chain question and the move that the President made today to invoke the Defense Production Act, because these are things that also are imperative to have done months ago.

We should have been understanding that there was going to need to be a need for ventilators, that we should have started — whether you invoke the Defense Production Act, or you do it another way, to start making sure that those masks and those ventilators are in the chain and ready to go and ready to be supplied.

And we need — David talked about the inconstancy of the message.  We need a constant and rational message from the President, but we also need one person in charge of making sure that all of these — as we are sending out these very needed checks to businesses and millions of people, we also need to be deploying these supplies to the hospitals and the health care workers, because, if we don't get this under control, we're just going to keep hemorrhaging money while this virus just devastates us.

Judy Woodruff:  And you do, David, hear the criticism that, because this wasn't done, organized earlier, people are going to die.

David Brooks:  Yes, that seems absolutely true.

And it's simple.  Overreact.  There has not been a moment where somebody has overreacted.  Everything that seems like an overreaction is the right reaction.  There was a University of Pennsylvania study that said, even if we cut the infection rate by 95 percent from — by social distancing, we're still going to need 960,000 people going into an intensive care ward.

That's a lot of ventilators.  That's a lot of masks.  That's a lot of equipment.

And so erring on the side of too much is probably still too little.  And so that should — everybody's instinct should be that way.

Judy Woodruff:  And, Ruth, back to what David was saying about, the President keeps talking about getting — at least getting some people back to work by Easter, hoping that some parts of the country can go back to business as usual.

Every expert you hear, however, says that would be crazy, it would — it's dangerous.  You can't do that.  I heard Bill Gates last night on CNN saying it can't be a county-by-county approach.

What happens if this is lifted too soon?

Ruth Marcus:  Well, I thought that the President's statement that he wanted to see the church pews packed on Easter, because he said it was a beautiful day, was possibly the single most irresponsible statement ever made by an American President in history.

That is an outrage.  It is dangerous that.

And the problem with the — even if we were packing church pews in individual counties, you can't — this is America.  We don't build walls around counties.  We don't — we have known unknowns, as Donald Rumsfeld used to say.  The known unknown here is, where is the virus?

If we had the tests, and we could test — do widespread testing, we would know where the virus is, and we might be able to know where it's easier to lift restrictions.

But because we haven't — didn't prepare for the tests, we don't know where the virus is.  And so lifting it in this county or that county because it doesn't seem to have a lot of illness right now is just a very, very dangerous move.

And, by the way, even when we lift restrictions, when we think it's safe to lift restrictions, we can't just open up the floodgates and tell everybody to go start shaking hands, and…

Judy Woodruff:  Right.

Ruth Marcus:  … getting smashed together in church pews again.

We have to do it intelligently and slowly, or we're going to find ourselves in this Groundhog Day of pandemic.

Judy Woodruff:  David, how much — how concerned are you about that?

David Brooks:  I don't think — one of the nice things is, (A) Donald Trump doesn't control a lot of this.  [B] This is done on the state level.  And we're going to see the virtues and the vices of our federal system.

And I think he is surrounded — I don't take him always that literally.  I think some of the statements are — cause extreme harm, but he doesn't actually run a lot of the things, because people are just going to take control around him.

And we know how this ends up.  We have seen successful countries, in Asia particularly.  And it ends up, as Ruth said, when we have the tests, and when we use sophisticated high technology to trace the actual individuals who have the infection, we trace their networks, we trace their movements.

It's possible to do this with the right level of execution.  We did not have the advantage of having the SARS system, so we don't yet have the — sort of the infrastructure to do that.  But, eventually, presumably, we're going to get it.

TERROR AT HOME - New York, New Jersey

"Bombing suspect arrested, but New York security still elevated" PBS NewsHour 9/19/2016

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SUMMARY:  Following a shootout, New York police apprehended their suspect for Saturday's actual and attempted bombings in New York and New Jersey.  Twenty-eight-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan, was seized after being recognized sleeping in the doorway of a New Jersey bar.  Earlier in the day, a text message alert urged New Yorkers to call 911 if they saw him.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  They say they've got their man.  Now they're trying to figure out his motive.  An arrest this morning in New Jersey has ended a manhunt in a series of bombings and attempted bombings around New York City and New Jersey.

MAN:  That's definitely him.

GWEN IFILL:  Ahmad Khan Rahami was loaded into an ambulance, bloody and dazed after a gun battle with police.  The 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan was captured in Linden, New Jersey, after he was recognized sleeping in the doorway of a bar.

That was just hours after police sent text alerts to millions in the New York metro area to be on the lookout for him.  After the shoot-out, in which two police officers and the suspect were injured, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio firmly labeled the bombings terrorism.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, New York City:  We have so more much information obviously than we even had a few hours ago.  Based on the information we have now, we have every reason to believe this was an act of terror.

GWEN IFILL:  It all began on Saturday morning in a bomb attack in the beach town of Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity race to benefit Marines.  No one was injured there.

Later that night, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, another bomb went off, injuring 29 people.  Surveillance video allegedly caught Rahami planting the device.  A second device, made from a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel, was found undetonated a few blocks away.

And last night, five more pipe bombs were found at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  As robots worked to dismantle them, one exploded suddenly.  Officials linked all of the attacks to Rahami, but offered limited details about how they made that connection.

But, with Rahami as a named suspect, police descended on his family home in Elizabeth.

MAN:  He's a very friendly guy.  That's what's so scary.  It's hard when it's home.  They never seemed out of the ordinary.  They were just Americanized.  You would have never known anything.

"The challenge of recognizing radicalization before it’s too late" PBS NewsHour 9/19/2016

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SUMMARY:  The suspect behind this weekend’s bombings has been apprehended; now authorities are trying to figure out what motivated him and whether he acted alone.  Judy Woodruff talks to George Washington University’s Lorenzo Vidino and former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem about what the investigation has uncovered so far and how we can try to prevent future attacks.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Juliette, what do you make of the fact that we learned late this afternoon his family moved to the United States in 1995?  We figured he would have been 7 years old then.

END OF AIDS - Getting to Zero

"San Francisco’s bold AIDS mission is ‘getting to zero’ by 2030" PBS NewsHour 7/11/2016

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SUMMARY:  There’s still no vaccine and no cure, but the medical community is increasingly focused on ambitious plans to bring about an end to HIV/AIDS.  The NewsHour launches its series, “The End of AIDS?” with a look at intense prevention efforts underway in one of the cities most impacted by the epidemic, San Francisco.  William Brangham reports with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Now we kick off a special series about efforts to try to end the AIDS epidemic.

Leaders and researchers from around the globe will be meeting at the International AIDS Conference in South Africa next week.  One major focus:  How to stop the epidemic.

But with no vaccine or cure in sight, how likely is that?  This week, we’re looking at efforts around the world.

We start in San Francisco, where we have followed people for the past six months.

Correspondent William Brangham and producer Jason Kane reported this series, with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  San Francisco’s gay pride events went off this summer like they usually do, loud and colorful and celebratory.

But there’s additional reason to celebrate.  San Francisco, one of the cities where the AIDS epidemic first emerged, and one that suffered terribly from it, has now launched the country’s most ambitious campaign to control it.

It’s called, “Getting to Zero.”

Luis Canales is a living example of that campaign.  Canales is HIV-positive.  He got infected having unprotected sex with another man three years ago.  But — and this is one of the linchpins of San Francisco’s effort — Canales was tested and then started on HIV treatment immediately after diagnosis.

LUIS CANALES (AIDS victim):  Yes, right away.  And I think it was the next day, I came in and started my meds.

DR.  STEVEN DEEKS, University of California, San Francisco:  That, as a physician, is my goal:  To keep people on therapy for their own good.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Steven Deeks is Canales’ doctor.

DR.  STEVEN DEEKS:  Luis, how you doing?

LUIS CANALES:  Pretty good.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  This approach is called RAPID.

And Deeks says, the sooner the virus can be stopped with antiretroviral drugs, the better.  But it’s not just for the patient.

DR.  STEVEN DEEKS:  From a public health perspective — and I think this is what’s really driving a lot of interest in the RAPID program — someone’s on therapy, they can’t pass the virus to other people.

"Why the South is the epicenter of the AIDS crisis in America" PBS NewsHour 7/12/2016

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SUMMARY:  The epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in America is Atlanta and the southeast, and among the hardest hit populations are gay and bisexual black men.  According to the CDC, half of them will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetimes if current trends continue.  William Brangham reports with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in the second part of the NewsHour’s “The End of AIDS?” series.

COMMENT:  For Atlanta, the problem is based on - you're black and in a fundamentalist Bible-belt.  It IS predjustice.


"‘Ending AIDS' in New York means finding the most vulnerable" PBS NewsHour 7/13/2016

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SUMMARY:  Nearly one in 10 Americans living with HIV live in New York, where an ambitious plan aims to cut new infections and HIV-related deaths.  But it has serious challenges, including keeping people on their meds, and stopping the spread among IV drug users.  William Brangham reports with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in the third installment of our “The End of AIDS?” series.

"How Rwanda, once torn by genocide, became a global anti-AIDS leader" PBS NewsHour 7/14/2016

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SUMMARY:  Rwanda emerged from its 1994 genocide to build one of the most successful AIDS responses in Africa and is working mightily to halt mother-to-child HIV transmissions.  They’ve done it with a mix of science, technology and “aggressive neighborliness.”  William Brangham reports with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting for the fourth part of our series, “The End of AIDS?”

THE WELCOME MAT - Refugees and a Struggling Town

"How refugee resettlement became a revival strategy for this struggling town" PBS NewsHour 4/7/2016

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SUMMARY:  In the midst of a campaign season filled with anti-migrant rhetoric, the once-downtrodden town of Utica in upstate New York has been more welcoming; one out of every four citizens there is a refugee.  But Utica's commitment to resettlement isn’t purely humanitarian -- its open door policy is also a pioneering economic tool for revitalizing the Rust Belt.  Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  Post-industrial Utica, New York; Upstate, downtrodden, and, in the heart of downtown, where the United Methodist Church used to be, a thriving mosque.

In the world beyond Utica, the tide of refugees rises, the fear of foreigners swells.  Muslim terrorists, real and imagined, haunt us.  Ted Cruz calls for increased policing of Muslim neighborhoods.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), Republican Presidential Candidate:  Focus on communities where radicalization is a risk.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Donald Trump’s first campaign ad went further.

NARRATOR:  The politicians can pretend it’s something else, but Donald Trump calls it radical Islamic terrorism.  That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on.

PAUL SOLMAN:  But when we asked Utica Mayor Robert Palmieri if the city would be willing to resettle Syrian refugees?

MAYOR ROBERT PALMIERI, Utica, New York:  I would say, absolutely, we would be, because Utica starts with you.  It’s as simple as that.

PAUL SOLMAN:  There’s the humanitarian aspect, of course, America’s historic promise to extend a hand to huddled masses yearning to breathe free.  But Utica likes the economics.

MAYOR ROBERT PALMIERI:  They’re willing to work and they work extremely hard.  It’s the rebound for our great city.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Refugee resettlement as an economic development tool, a Rust Belt revival strategy Utica has pioneered.  After decades of decline — the city lost a third of its population when its factories closed — Utica is growing again, back up to 62,000 people, thanks in part to its reputation as — quote — “the town that loves refugees,” who now make up one out of every four residents.

Thousands are Muslims from Bosnia, refugees of the war there in the 1990s.

SAKIB DURACAK, Bosnian War Refugee:  We left everything what we have at that time and start from zero again.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Sakib Duracak, who trained in Bosnia as a construction engineer, started a small business in Utica rehabbing cheap, often crumbling, houses for refugees looking to build a new life.

SAKIB DURACAK:  A huge opportunity, because, at the time when we came in Utica, it’s a relatively, very dead and poor city.

NEW YORK - When Caregivers Harm

"Weak Oversight Lets Dangerous Nurses Work in New York" by Daniela Porat, Rosalind Adams, Jessica Huseman; ProPublica 4/7/2016

NOTE:  Bullet-formatting by me

This story was co-published with WNYC and the Albany Times Union.

Thomas Maino knew he was going to die.  Suffering from serious ailments, the 93-year-old veteran had rejected invasive treatments and asked only that he be made comfortable after he was admitted to a Syracuse nursing home in November 2008.

But on a snowy Saturday morning the following January, his moans could be heard down the hallway.

Over the next eight hours, coworkers reported to the nurse in charge of Maino's unit that he needed pain medication.  That nurse, Maura Quinn, gave him only Tylenol and never alerted the doctor.  Other nurses told her Maino was in agony, but she ignored them, even when his moaning turned to yelling, seven staffers at the home later testified in depositions taken during an investigation by the state Attorney General's office.

“Oh great, now people are going to tell me how to do my freaking job,” Quinn said when a nurse from a nearby wing left a note for her about Maino, according to one deposition.

Maino died that evening.

After an administrator reported the incident to New York nursing home regulators, Quinn was fired and, in December 2010, convicted of a misdemeanor for providing Maino with inadequate care.  The state Attorney General's office reported Quinn to the Office of the Professions, the agency that licenses and disciplines nurses, when she was sentenced two months later.

But it would take another three years for the Office of the Professions to suspend her from nursing.  By then, the agency had learned that Quinn lied on her initial licensing application, failing to disclose a 1988 conviction for drug possession, and that she was convicted in 2012 of driving without a license — both grounds for more disciplinary action.  The agency finally suspended Quinn's nursing license for three months in May 2014.

Over the past 15 years, nursing boards across the country have taken steps to tighten oversight of nurses, screening applicants more extensively before issuing licenses and instituting swifter, tougher sanctions for problem licensees.

Not New York.

Unlike many states, New York does not require applicants for nursing licenses to undergo simple background checks or submit fingerprints, tools that can identify those with criminal histories and flag subsequent legal problems.  And it often takes years for New York to discipline nurses who provide inept care, steal drugs or physically abuse patients.

A ProPublica review of hundreds of disciplinary records, arrest reports and court filings shows New York's system for overseeing nurses is deeply flawed.  Among our findings:

• The Office of the Professions often fails to act when it is informed that other states or even other New York agencies have disciplined New York nurses.  One example: The state health department penalized a nurse in early 2014 for administering an overdose of insulin that nearly caused a patient's death, but the Office of the Professions has taken no action against her license.

• Though the Office of the Professions can take immediate action against nurses accused of endangering the public's health or safety, it has not done so, even in egregious cases.  After a nurse in the Bronx was caught sexually assaulting a patient in February 2014, the agency didn't revoke his license for more than a year and a half, records show.

• New York disciplines nurses far less often than other large states.  In 2014, the Office of the Professions disciplined fewer than 350 licensees, which works out to 1 in 1,190.  In the same year, Ohio disciplined more than 1,600 (1 in 153), and Texas disciplined almost 2,300 (1 in 167).  In fiscal 2014, California disciplined over 1,600 nurses, roughly 1 in 325.

• “As a professional nurse who is registered in the state of New York, I'm appalled,” said Donna Nickitas, the executive officer of the nursing PhD program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  “This is [about] the health and welfare of the general public.”

• The Office of the Professions is an arm of the New York Department of Education.  In response to these ratios, a spokeswoman for the education department said that New York's numbers only reflected actions that needed the approval of the Board of Regents.  The department did not respond to multiple requests to quantify or elaborate on this.

• Even inside the Office of the Professions, concerns have grown so pronounced that one investigator wrote to New York State Sen. Michael Venditto last July about the consequences of not performing background checks on nurses, as well as delays in disciplinary action, letters obtained by ProPublica show.  The investigator cited one nurse who was licensed despite a violent criminal history because he never reported it on his application.  Another nurse maintained an active license for three years while she awaited trial on charges of selling prescription drugs, the investigator wrote.

• In response to a letter from Venditto about the investigator's concerns, New York State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia said in October 2015 that her agency would support background checks and fingerprinting for nurses if state legislators proposed a measure requiring them.  (They have not done so.)

• But Elia cited an “extraordinarily high” success rate for the investigations completed by the Office of the Professions.  “We are very proud of the work the office does and believe that New York's licensed professionals are among the safest in the country,” Elia wrote in a second letter in December 2015.  She did not clarify how she was defining success, and also declined requests to be interviewed.

• Peggy Chase, a member of the New York nursing board, the licensing board for nurses that is part of the Office of the Professions, acknowledged the blind spots in the oversight system.  She said she did not remember the issue of background checks being raised at any of the board's meetings.  In a phone interview, she conceded that “people can lie and we will never know,” but said the responsibility for spotting and dealing with problem nurses should not fall exclusively on the Office of the Professions.

• In an e-mailed response to ProPublica's findings, Jeanne Beattie, a spokesperson for the education department, acknowledged that the Office of the Professions had limited ability to discipline nurses.

• “We are working with the chairs of the Senate and Assembly Higher Education Committees to improve the disciplinary process to include greater authority and tools for the department,” said Beattie.

• Quinn could not be reached by phone and did not respond to a letter sent to her most recent address in Florida.  The education department declined to comment on Quinn's discipline record or the cases of any other individual nurses that ProPublica asked about.

• In a handwritten statement three days after Maino died, Quinn said she had left her shift that Saturday afternoon believing Maino was stable and resting.  “I was not concerned [with] Thomas's yelling act because that's what he had been doing for weeks,” she wrote.

• Quinn's disregard for her patient left a lasting impression on her former colleagues.  “Whenever I think about what happened that day I get sick to my stomach,” Veronica Barricella, one of the aides who tended to Maino, said in her February 2009 deposition.  “I have also had nightmares.”

There may be no better illustration of the value of checking nurses' criminal histories than the strange tale of Randall Silsby.

Silsby received a New York nursing license in 1992.  Five years later, faced with two divorces and child support payments, Silsby decided to solve his “midlife crisis” by faking his own death.  He left Niagara Falls for the Dominican Republic, where he paid a lawyer to draw up a fake death certificate and assumed the name of Julio DiMuerte (muerte means “death” in Spanish).  When he decided to resurrect himself and head back to New York, the federal government charged him with making a material false statement to the government, a felony.  He was sentenced to six months in prison in 2001.  As a condition of his release, Silsby was ordered to receive mental health treatment.

But in 2002, Silsby was able to renew his New York nursing license and return to work simply by not disclosing his conviction on the renewal application.  As is typical, the Office of the Professions didn't independently seek out records on his criminal past.  It only does this if nurses admit they have been convicted of crimes or are accused of wrongdoing, officials say.

Silsby's scheme only came to light more than a decade later, when state officials investigated a claim that he touched the breasts of a sedated 85-year-old patient at Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, New York.  According to a 2014 nursing board document, Silsby was not disciplined for the sexual abuse allegation, and was suspended for one month for forging his death certificate.  His license is still active in New York.

Silsby did not respond to multiple emails or phone calls.

New York's approach to vetting nurses is increasingly out of step with that of other states.  In 2005, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, the trade group representing state nursing boards, issued a report recommending that nursing boards conduct state and federal criminal background checks on all applicants and licensees.  “Consumers needing health care are vulnerable.  Nursing is a stressful profession. Stress tends to cause bad habits to reappear,” it said, adding that it was “appropriate to establish high behavior standards” for nursing applicants.

In the last decade, a majority of state boards have adopted such measures.  In 1998, only five states performed background checks on nurses; by 2014, 37 states did them and more were initiating these procedures.

New York not only relies on nurses to self-report criminal convictions, it also only requires them to do so every three years, when they renew their licenses.  Other states mandate that nurses report problems far sooner.  Florida, for example, requires nurses to report convictions within 30 days.  Georgia gives nurses 10 days to report felony convictions.  And nurses in Pennsylvania must report criminal convictions as well as pending criminal charges within 30 days.

As Silsby's case demonstrates, in the absence of background checks, nurses aren't always honest.  Kathy Thomas, the executive director of the Texas Board of Nursing, said her board instituted background checks and fingerprinting in 2003 after consulting other state boards that discovered many nurses with criminal histories when they stopped relying exclusively on self-reporting.

“We knew self reports were unreliable,” Thomas said.  When Texas added background checks, the board discovered “serious criminal history that hadn't been disclosed.”

According to data provided by the Texas Board of Nursing, the board received just over 4,000 reports filed against Texas nurses in 2004.  The state gradually began implementing the fingerprinting system that year.  By 2015, the number of reports against nurses had ballooned to almost 14,000, largely as a result of a system that automatically sends reports of criminal convictions and arrests to the nursing board.

David Keepnews, a professor at the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, said background checks and fingerprinting would likely turn up a relatively small number of nurses with serious criminal convictions.  But that should not deter New York from pursuing reform, he said.

The “nursing profession as a whole has an interest in ensuring safe nursing care and in maintaining the public's trust,” he said.  “We should see this as an opportunity to make the practice even safer by working to plug the holes in our disciplinary system.”

Even when nurses do report their own misconduct, New York's system falters.  The unit within the Office of the Professions that renews licenses is separate from the unit that pursues investigations, so both processes — renewals and investigations — can proceed simultaneously, on separate tracks.

In August 2012, licensed New York nurse Matthew Schroeder was sentenced to three years in prison for selling a drug without a prescription over eBay.  The FDA had initiated an investigation after a Georgia teenager who purchased drugs from him died of an overdose.

“I thought what I was doing was legal.  I was trying to branch out and become a self-made business man,” Schroeder said in a phone interview, explaining that the drug he sold was not listed as a controlled substance.

In April 2015, Schroeder applied to renew his state nursing license, although he was not released from prison until that July.  Schroeder said he admitted his conviction on the application but the state renewed his license anyway, though it later informed him it had opened an investigation.

“I think it is completely OK for me to be a nurse.  I have always taken great care of my patients,” he said, adding that he expected to pay a fine but continue practicing.

Schroeder voluntarily surrendered his California license in March 2014 while he was in prison because he said he could not be present for the hearing in front of the state board.  States share disciplinary actions against their nurses, but Schroeder's New York license has remained active.

New York nurses who report minor crimes say the Office of the Professions can take years to complete investigations, leaving their professional lives in limbo.

Registered nurse Danielle DiSciullo was nervous when she reported a December 2010 DUI on her renewal application in 2013, and was relieved when her license arrived in the mail the following month.  But months later, DiSciullo received a letter informing her that the nursing board was investigating her.  State records indicate she had a hearing in May 2014, nine months after she voluntarily disclosed the conviction.  She received a month-long suspension the following September.

“It was torture at times; I just wanted to know what was going to happen,” said DiSciullo, whose license is now clear.

Edie Brous, an attorney who represents nurses in front of the Office of the Professions, said DiSciullo's situation is not uncommon.  Many of her clients have been disciplined for minor crimes several years after admitting to them.  The drawn-out process ill serves nurses without protecting the public, she said.

“If you believe that this is a licensee that needs to be disciplined in order to protect the public's safety, you don't sit on it for six months or a year.”

In most states, nurses are overseen either by health departments or independent nursing boards.  In New York, however, the Office of the Professions, like the rest of the Department of Education, comes under the Board of Regents, whose primary responsibility is to oversee the state's vast public education system.

The education department once oversaw all licensed professionals, but in 1975, the health department assumed authority over doctors and physician assistants after the Board of Regents was criticized for failing to provide adequate oversight.  “It has been our experience that the response of the Regents to our investigations has been inaction,” Dr. Lawrence Essenson, chairman of the Medical Society of the County of New York's Board of Censors, wrote in a 1975 letter quoted by the New York Times.

Under the Board of Regents' umbrella, there's a complex disciplinary process for nurses accused of misconduct.  First, a member of the state nursing board partners with an investigator for the Office of the Professions to determine what happened and, in some cases, recommend discipline.  Then a member of the Board of Regents' Professional Practices Committee reviews and refines their recommendation.  Then the full Board of Regents has to approve the final recommendation at its monthly meeting, along with recommendations for disciplinary action from the other 53 professions overseen by the Office of the Professions.

Regent Wade Norwood, the co-chair of the regents' Professional Practice Committee, defended this process, saying the layers involved created a more “fair and thorough review.”

But Regent Catherine Collins, the only licensed nurse on the Board of Regents, was concerned by the comparatively few disciplinary actions against nurses approved by the board and felt the board does not have a deep enough understanding of individual professions.  She said it was crucial for the regents to pay special attention to professions that care for those who are vulnerable, such as nurses.

“People look for loopholes when they want to commit bad behavior.  If there is a hole in our system we need to plug it,” Collins said.

Doctors received closer scrutiny after the health department took over their discipline, but legislators say it would be near-impossible to shift authority over nurses.

“There would be a lot of logic to that, but it would be like moving heaven and earth in terms of a legislative task,” said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Health and sits on the Committee on Higher Education.

Legislative oversight of nurses falls to higher education committees, so the committees charged with overseeing health have no ability to initiate legislation concerning the profession.

Kemp Hannon, chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Health, said there had been “incredible” resistance from the higher education committee when his committee had attempted to write measures that included nurses.

Some have pointed to budgetary issues as an explanation for the inefficiency of the Office of the Professions.  Democrat Deborah Glick, who chairs the state Assembly's Higher Education Committee, said the professions office had been “systematically starved” of finances since it doesn't have the power to raise licensing fees without legislative approval.

But data from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing shows New York's licensure fees are comparable to other states across the country.  Ohio charges lower licensing fees than New York but disciplined almost five times as many nurses in 2014.  ProPublica requested a breakdown of the Office of the Professions' spending to compare with that of other state nursing authorities, but a spokeswoman was unable to provide one beyond aggregate numbers for revenue and expenses.

The Office of the Professions also does not post disciplinary documents online (as its neighbors, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, do), instead providing short summaries for why nurses have been disciplined on its website.  The summary of Silsby's case, for example, simply states that he made a false statement to the government and not that he faked his own death.

While it is routine for states to track the average time it takes to discipline a nurse, New York could not provide this information.  Beattie, the education department spokeswoman, said because “there is no average case, it is nearly impossible to define an average time.”

While the Office of the Professions has sole authority over nurses' licenses, multiple other agencies have a hand in investigating misconduct by nurses.

The state health department enforces care standards at many types of health facilities, from hospitals to nursing homes.  If regulators find facilities have not met nursing requirements, they can levy civil fines and report nurses to the Office of the Professions.  The state attorney general's office also tells the Office of the Professions when nurses are convicted of crimes, including cases involving Medicaid fraud.

Still, even when the Office of the Professions is alerted to wrongdoing by other agencies, it re-investigates the allegations from square one.

Between 2013 and 2015, 48 nurses with active licenses were convicted of crimes related to Medicaid fraud investigations, according to data provided by the New York Attorney General's office.  All were referred to the Office of the Professions for disciplinary action, yet 17 have not been disciplined.  The office has not disciplined a nurse convicted of Medicaid fraud since November 2014.

The Office of the Professions also rarely acts on cases referred over by the health department, ProPublica found.  Documents obtained under New York's Freedom of Information Law show that out of 54 nurses the health department recommended for discipline in 2014, only 13 were disciplined by the end of 2015.

In March 2012, on her first unsupervised day as a nurse, Linda Ansa administered insulin to a resident of the Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home on Manhattan's Upper East Side.  The 99-year-old patient was supposed to receive two units of the drug, but Ansa recorded that she'd administered 100.  The nurse who took over on the next shift found the patient with labored breathing, sweating, and unresponsive.  It took 24 hours to get her blood sugar back to normal, and days later she was still disoriented.  Records show the patient nearly died.

The Health Department investigated.  Ansa claimed in a hearing that the entry of “100” was simply a clerical error, and that the patient's symptoms could have reflected her age or other circumstances.  In October 2013, a Department of Health administrative judge ruled that Ansa had neglected the patient and therefore violated public health law, though he did not levy a fine.  “The Petitioner has been fired from this position and will, in all likelihood, lose her license for her deeds.  This is a severe enough penalty for the proven facts of this case,” he wrote.

But even though the health department reported Ansa's case to the Office of the Professions in January 2014, no action has been taken on her license since then.  When reached by telephone, Ansa declined to comment on the case.  A health department spokesperson said in an email that “the New York State Department of Education is responsible for overseeing the Office of the Professions, not [the] State Department of Health.”

In addition to receiving reports when other New York agencies sanction nurses, the Office of the Professions is also alerted automatically when other states discipline New York practitioners through NURSYS, a national system run by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing.

But an analysis of disciplinary records in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey shows that the Office of the Professions routinely does not sanction New York licensees disciplined by those states.  Of 13 nurses disciplined by Connecticut since 2013 who also held active New York licenses, the Office of the Professions has only imposed its own sanction in three cases.  In the same time span, it took action against four of 17 nurses disciplined in Pennsylvania who also had active New York licenses and zero out of 26 disciplined in New Jersey.

In March 2012, Heather Graham was summoned before the Pennsylvania nursing board.  A physical examination done that month at the board's request showed she was suffering from “opiate dependence in full early remission” as well as ongoing anxiety and depression due to medical and legal problems, Pennsylvania disciplinary records say.

Court records show Graham was arrested with three other nurses in June 2013 for stealing 31 vials of hydromorphone, an opioid pain medication, from a Watertown, N.Y. hospital where she was employed.  She then made false entries in the medication dispensing system to cover up the theft, according to the testimony of a narcotics investigator for the state health department.

In August 2013, New York received a notification through NURSYS that Pennsylvania had revoked Graham's license.  The following year, Graham was convicted and sentenced to three years' probation in a New York court for falsifying business records and acts prohibited under the public health law.

Yet the Office of the Professions took no action on Graham's New York license until September 2015.  At that time, she was fined $500, but her license was not suspended, according to a summary of her disciplinary action.  Graham's New York license remains active to this day.

Graham could not be reached for comment through her former attorney.

Cindy Powell, a former nurse who worked for the investigative arm of the Office of the Professions for more than two decades until 2011, said she often handled cases of nurses stealing medications who had already been disciplined by another state.  Asked whether New York should screen applicants for out-of-state discipline, she said, “That would have made our job so much easier.”

ProPublica's analysis turned up several other nurses with troubling records in other states and clear licenses in New York.

Celeste Nwanna voluntarily surrendered her New Jersey license in February 2013 while facing criminal charges for improperly drugging an elderly resident of a group home, landing the patient in the emergency room.  She had previously been disciplined in New Jersey for making up entries on a patient's chart.  Two years later she applied for a license in Connecticut and to renew her license in New York.  Connecticut denied her application because she lied about her criminal history.  New York approved the renewal and Nwanna's license remains active in the state.  (Nwanna could not be reached for comment.)

Diane Posthauer voluntarily surrendered her Connecticut nursing license in February 2015 after she was caught taking oxycodone from her hospital.  A few months later, Wyoming and North Carolina revoked her licenses in those states.  But the same month that she surrendered her Connecticut license, Posthauer's license was renewed by New York.  New York is the only state where her license remains active.

Contacted by phone, Posthauer said she had been prescribed the drug by a doctor and was not addicted.  She said that instead of undergoing an expensive drug treatment program, she decided to retire.

Just after 1 a.m. on a February morning in 2014, a nurse's aide walked in to find Nanic Aidasani in the bed of a 64-year-old dementia patient at a Bronx nursing home.  The nurse was moving his body back and forth on top of the patient, according to a police report.  The woman had suffered a stroke, which left her unable to speak.  Her gown was found unsnapped and her vagina was exposed, the police report said.

Aidasani was charged with attempted rape, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of an incompetent person, and the story soon made the local news.  The day after his arrest, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing sent a news article to the Office of the Professions to alert it to the incident, a spokeswoman for the NCSBN confirmed.

The Office of the Professions can suspend a nurse's license on an emergency basis, pending a full hearing, in cases in which it decides someone could pose a serious public safety risk.  Aidasani's case appeared tailor-made for such a step.  But for more than a year and a half, Aidasani's license remained active in New York.

It remained active after Aidasani posted $20,000 bail and walked out of Rikers Island days after his arrest.  It was active in April 2015, when he was sentenced to prison and agreed to relinquish his license to the court under the terms of a plea deal.  Although the Bronx District Attorney's office notified the Office of the Professions of his sentence, and Aidasani submitted paperwork to voluntarily surrender his license at the time of his sentencing, his license remained active and reflected no punishment even when he was released from jail in August.

Aidasani's license was finally revoked in September, and he was deported to the Philippines in November.

“A discipline that takes that long is an injustice,” said Barbara Zittel, the former executive secretary to the New York Board of Nursing, when told of Aidasani's case.  The Office of the Professions declined to comment on Aidasani's case, other than to say officials had “cooperated fully” with the investigation and his sentencing.

Loida Rivera, the victim's daughter, was surprised to learn it had taken so long for the Office of the Professions to revoke his license.  She had been disappointed with the six-month prison sentence and hoped at least his license would be revoked immediately so others wouldn't be hurt.

After the attack, Rivera's mother suffered nightmares and broke out into cold sweats, and it took her months to trust the home health aide that now cares for her.  In the first few months, she trembled and clutched onto her diaper when the aide tried to help her change it.

“It's something she is unable to understand because she is disabled,” said Rivera.  “She just knows something happened to her body.”

The family is now suing Manhattanville Health Center, the nursing home that employed Aidasani.  The home did not respond to calls about the case.

In the last 10 years, the Office of the Professions has used its emergency suspension powers just twice, according to a review of disciplinary action summaries posted online.  Both times, it was in response to a nurse sexually abusing a patient.

By comparison, the Department of Health levied 89 summary suspensions against physicians between 2011 and 2013.  Other nursing boards in large states often use this power, saying they view it as a critical tool to protect patients.  The Florida board of nursing issued 87 emergency orders against nurses in the 2013–2014 fiscal year, while Michigan filed 134 emergency suspensions in the same period.

These suspensions allow the state “to act quickly to ensure public safety,” said Michael Loepp, a spokesman for Michigan's Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.  Without them, “a licensee who presents a risk to patients could continue to practice for months before a decision to suspend the license could be reached through the administrative process.”.

Florida even created a special unit to handle emergency actions.

New York's education department said that in part, the low number of emergency suspensions against nurses is due to how the law was written.

Unlike other states, which often can issue summary suspensions before a hearing, New York nurses can only be summarily suspended after a hearing and with the approval of the Regents board.  This process said Beattie, the education spokesperson, “takes a fair amount of time, which makes it not as an effective tool” when compared to the authority the health department has over its physicians.

Beattie added that the numbers for emergency suspensions do not reflect cases in which the Office of Professions initiated actions and nurses voluntarily surrendered their licenses before this process was finished.  She did not say how many such cases there have been.

Even when New York's nurses face accusations of horrible abuse, discipline comes slowly.  In April 2015, nurse Oluyemisi Adebayo was accused of killing a 2-year-old toddler by submerging her in a bath so hot that her skin peeled off, police said.  The national nursing board trade group sent New York nursing overseers a news notification the day after Adebayo's arrest, a spokeswoman said.  But nearly a year later, the state has not taken any action.

The family of the toddler is suing Adebayo and the agency that employed her.  Adebayo is currently in jail facing second-degree murder charges.  A lawyer for the family, Mark Shaevitz, was surprised to learn that despite the charges, Adebayo's license remains active.

“For someone to do something like this, even to be alleged, and still be able to retain their nursing license is absolutely ludicrous,” he said.

Support for this project was provided by the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University.  Reporting research was contributed by Nina Agrawal, Malena Carollo, Darwin Chan, Tyler Daniels, Folasade Falebita, Zoe Kirsch, Alexandra Levine, Liza Lucas, Emily Silber, Miriam Sitz, Tal Trachtman and Mohamad Yaghi.  The project was supervised by Columbia University adjunct professor Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica.

NEW YORK - Alarm, Hidden Finances of Charter Schools

"NY State Official Raises Alarm on Charter Schools — And Gets Ignored" by Marian Wang, ProPublica 12/16/2014

A top official in the New York State Comptroller’s Office has urged regulators to require more transparency on charter-school finances. The response has been, well, nonexistent.

Add another voice to those warning about the lack of financial oversight for charter schools.  One of New York state's top fiscal monitors told ProPublica that audits by his office have found "practices that are questionable at best, illegal at worst" at some charter schools.

Pete Grannis, New York State's First Deputy Comptroller, contacted ProPublica after reading our story last week about how some charter schools have turned over nearly all their public funds and significant control to private, often for-profit firms that handle their day-to-day operations.  The arrangements can limit the ability of auditors and charter-school regulators to follow how public money is spent – especially when the firms refuse to divulge financial details when asked.

Such setups are a real problem, Grannis said.  And the way he sees it, there's a very simple solution.  As a condition for agreeing to approve a new charter school or renew an existing one, charter regulators could require schools and their management companies to agree to provide any and all financial records related to the school.

"Clearly, the need for fiscal oversight of charter schools has intensified," he wrote in a letter to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio last week.  "Put schools on notice that relevant financial records cannot be shielded from oversight bodies of state and local governmental entities."

It's a plea that Grannis has made before.  Last year, he sent a similar letter to the state's major charter-school regulators – New York City's Department of Education, the New York State Education Department, and the State University of New York.

He never heard back from any of them.  "No response whatsoever," Grannis said. Not even, he added, a "'Thank you for your letter, we'll look into it.'  That would have been the normal bureaucratic response."

We contacted all three of these agencies and the mayor's office for comment.  None of them got back to us.

The charter-school debate in New York, as elsewhere, is politically fraught.  De Blasio's cautious stance on charters has put him at odds with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose financial backers include some big-dollar charter-school supporters.  The state comptroller's office has faced repeated lawsuits from charter groups and operators challenging its authority to audit charter schools.

To Grannis, though, his efforts aren't about politics.  His office is "agnostic on charters," as he put it.  His office also audits the finances of traditional public-school districts, he pointed out.

"We're the fiscal monitors.  We watch over the use or misuse of public funds," Grannis said.  "This isn't meant to be anti-charter.  Our job is not to be pro or anti."

Grannis has not yet gotten a response from the mayor's office about the letter he sent last week.

As to the charter-school regulators who got his letter the year before?  He's still puzzled why they wouldn't be more interested in a possible fix, or why the charter regulators never bothered to respond.

"I honestly don't know," Grannis said.  He said he's going to send another round of letters to them.

BANKING ON IT - Big-Banks and the New York FED

"Cozy relationship between Fed and big banks draws scrutiny" PBS NewsHour 12/2/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  .....new questions about how the Federal Reserve supervises big banks.

ProPublica and public radio’s “This American Life” have produced reports focusing on the role of a former supervisor from the New York Fed, Carmen Segarra, who was monitoring Goldman Sachs.  Segarra was placed inside the bank, as required by law, but she also made secret audio recordings that seemed to show other Fed officials were going too soft on Goldman, including over a deal one regulator called legal, but shady.

Segarra was fired a few months later.  The Fed has denied any connection, but said it will conduct its own review.

Those issues were the subject of a recent Senate hearing with New York Fed President William Dudley.

Jake Bernstein helped break the initial story for ProPublica.

Judy spoke with him recently.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Jake Bernstein, welcome.

So, tell us more about what has sparked interest in the Fed all over again and how it does its job.

JAKE BERNSTEIN, ProPublica:  Sure.

The genesis of this is really a bank examiner who was at the Fed in 2011 and 2012.  She was fired after about seven months on the job.  But before she was fired, she secretly recorded hours, approximately 46 hours, of meetings of her on the job with her colleagues and at the bank that she was supervising, which happened to be Goldman Sachs.

We got access to those recordings and have written some stories based on them.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  And how does the Fed explain it?  As we mentioned before, they seemed to suggest the Fed going soft on Goldman Sachs.  How — is that a fair interpretation?  And how does the Fed explain it?

JAKE BERNSTEIN:  Well, what is interesting is that that is not our interpretation, or simply our interpretation, because, in 2009, the Fed brought in an outside consultant to do a top-to-bottom review of their supervisory practices involving big banks.

And this outside consultant found that the New York Fed was too deferential to the banks it was supervising and that there was a climate of fear.  I mean, he basically said that the culture of the New York Fed was the biggest obstacle to completing its mission.

And so we sort of used that as a baseline to then look at what these recordings showed.  And what they seemed to demonstrate was that not a lot had changed since that consultant’s report in 2009.

RED CROSS - Hurricane Sandy Responce Two Years Later

"Red Cross defends response to Hurricane Sandy two years on" PBS NewsHour 10/29/2014

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Today marks two years since Superstorm Sandy slammed into the East Coast, leaving enormous damage in its path.

As is the often the case, the Red Cross was at the center of major relief activity, but its efforts and its coordination at the time are now the subject of new scrutiny.

Howling winds and sheets of rain pounded New Jersey and New York when the storm made landfall late on October 29, 2012.  Millions of people lost power, as water poured into streets, flooding subways and tunnels.  When it was over, ocean-front communities lay devastated, with thousands of homes damaged or destroyed, and 182 people dead.  The Red Cross helped lead the relief effort with endorsements coming from the highest levels.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:  The Red Cross knows what they’re doing.  They’re in close contact with federal, state, and local officials.  They will make sure that we get the resources to those families as swiftly as possible.

GWEN IFILL:  But, today, a report released by NPR and ProPublica painted a starkly critical picture of the agency’s actions.

JUSTIN ELLIOTT, ProPublica:  In many cases after Sandy, the Red Cross just didn’t show up to the most devastated areas until weeks after the storm.

GWEN IFILL:  ProPublica reporter Justin Elliott says internal documents and interviews with current and former Red Cross staffers found some decisions were dictated by appearances.

JUSTIN ELLIOTT:  Several Red Cross officials who worked on the Sandy effort complained at the time that emergency response vehicles which are used to deliver relief items like blankets and also food were diverted by headquarters to be backdrops at press conferences, as well as at photo-ops with celebrities.

GWEN IFILL:  The report says logistical problems and communication snafus led to wasteful spending and unmet needs.

NEW YORK - Automatically Deleting State Employee Emails

I retired from my last workplace as an IT Technician and have a comment that is not addressed in this article.

Microsoft's Office 365 email system is an online system that keeps eMails on Microsoft computers, not your companies, and by default includes user archives (saved eMails).  This means there is an extra security consideration when you have company data on someone else's system.  Also, Microsoft can charge by amount of storage used depending on the agreement, the 50gb is just a maximum limit.

I'm no lawyer, but on the policy of allowing employees to determine which eMails are legal 'records' (not to be deleted) is opening the New York and the employee to lawsuits.

"Why is the Cuomo Administration Automatically Deleting State Employees’ Emails?" by Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica 8/11/2014

Excerpt

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration — which the governor pledged would be the most transparent in state history — has quietly adopted policies that allow it to purge the emails of tens of thousands of state employees, cutting off a key avenue for understanding and investigating state government.

Last year, the state started deleting any emails more than 90 days old that users hadn't specifically saved — a much more aggressive stance than many other states.  The policy shift was first reported by the Albany Times Union.

A previously unpublished memo outlining the policy raises new questions about the state's stated rationale for its deletions policy.  What's more, the rules on which emails must be retained are bewilderingly complex – they fill 118 pages – leading to further concern that emails may not be saved at all.

"If you're aggressively destroying your email, it looks like you're trying to hide something," said Benjamin Wright, a Dallas lawyer who has advised companies and government agencies on records retention.

ProPublica obtained the memo through a public records request.

In the June 18, 2013, memo, Karen Geduldig, the general counsel of the state's Office of Information Technology Services, described New York's decision to automatically delete emails as a way to cut down on the state's "enormous amount of email data."

But the state implemented the policy as part of a move to Microsoft's Office 365 email system, which offers 50 gigabytes of space per email user — enough to store hundreds of thousands or even millions of emails for each state worker.  The state's version of Office 365 also offers unlimited email archiving.

The Office of Information and Technology Services declined to comment on the record.  An official in the office said even though the state can store large quantities of email, it can still be difficult to manage.

"Just because you have a big house doesn't mean you have to shove stuff in it," the official said.

Geduldig's memo also pointed out that some federal government agencies and corporations automatically purge employees' email.  "Such a system will aid the State in improving its email management," Geduldig wrote.

But many states take a different tack.

Florida, for instance, requires state employees to keep routine administrative correspondence for at least three years, and emails dealing with policy development for at least five years.  Connecticut requires employees to keep routine emails for at least two years.  Washington State requires workers to keep emails dealing with public business for two years, and emails to and from top officials for four years.  Those states also do not automatically delete email.

"It shouldn't be an automatic process," said Russell Wood, the records manager for the Washington State Archives.  "There should be some point of review in there."

Emails that qualify as "records" are supposed to be preserved under New York's policy.  But determining which emails qualify and which don't — a task left up to individual state employees — can be mind-numbingly complicated.

POLITICS - Republicans Beat-Back Tea Party in Primaries

"After Cantor’s upset, incumbents hold their ground in close primary races" PBS NewsHour 6/25/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Two weeks after the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, Republican in Virginia, went down to a stunning primary defeat, the establishment struck back Tuesday night.

From Mississippi to New York to Colorado, there were plenty of close races for incumbents, but they all survived.

The NewsHour’s political editor, Domenico Montanaro, is back with us to decipher what happened.

So, Domenico, what did happen?  This was supposed to be comeback night for the Tea Party, Mississippi.

DOMENICO MONTANARO, Political Editor:  Maybe, right?

I mean, we were wondering whether or not the Eric Cantor race would be an aberration or whether or not it would be the start of some kind of anti-incumbent trend.  And what it certainly looked like last night is that it really was just an aberration for Cantor, because there were some other issues at play where he ignored his district.

There were plenty, like we said in the intro, of very close races, Mississippi being one of them, but Thad Cochran, the incumbent senator there, longtime senator, eked out a win by just less than 2 percentage points over his Tea Party opponent.  And he did it in a very unique way.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Well, talk about that, because there’s a lot of discussion — and you have been looking into this today — about what happened in some of these heavily Democratic parts of the state.

DOMENICO MONTANARO:  Well, if you told me three weeks ago that a Republican would wind up winning a Republican primary by appealing to Democrats and black voters, I would have said he’s done.

And I think that’s why a lot of the political community was fairly skeptical that Thad Cochran and his team, with the Haley Barbour machine really in Mississippi, being able to pull that off.  And that’s exactly what they wound up doing.

ECONOMY - Survival on $8/hr Job in Brooklyn

"One NYC family's struggle to survive on a fast food salary" PBS Newshour 11/4/2013

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  Twenty-five-year-old Shenita Simon has worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Brooklyn, New York, for two years.  She's a full-time shift supervisor, helping manage other workers and filling in wherever she's needed, from being a cashier to running the fryer.

Do you get benefits?

SHENITA SIMON, resident of New York City:  No.  No vacation, no benefits, no sick days, no personal days.  That's luxury.  That's unheard of now.  No.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And all this for how much an hour?

SHENITA SIMON:  I currently get paid $8 an hour.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  After taxes, that wage translates into about $270 a week in take-home pay, and with that, she is supporting a household of seven.

OUT OF ORDER - When Prosecutors Cross the Line

"A Powerful Legal Tool, and Its Potential for Abuse" by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica 8/16/2013

Excerpt

This story has been updated to include a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the case of a Queens woman who says she was illegally held as a material witness in 2008.

The 20-year-old document – labeled the Hotel Custody log by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office – is not easy to decipher.  It contains a list of New York City hotels beside columns labeled “Date In” and “Date Out.”  There are names of individual prosecutors and the units they worked for at the district attorney’s office.

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office, asked to explain the document, refused to say anything.  And a judge recently placed the document under seal at the request of lawyers for the city.

Ruddy Quezada and his lawyers, however, are pretty sure they have figured the document out, and that it – in particular the third line from the bottom – holds a key to Quezada’s freedom after more than 20 years behind bars for a murder he insists he didn’t commit.

Quezada’s lawyers assert that the document is a record of witnesses in criminal trials held in hotel rooms by the district attorney in the winter of 1993.  Some of the witnesses were prisoners released to testify and held overnight in custody.  Others were witnesses who were fearful for their safety.

But some on the list were held under what are known in the criminal justice system as material witness orders, men and women who were deemed “uncooperative,” arrested by detectives and not freed until they agreed to testify.

Most specifically, Quezada’s lawyers say that on March 11, 1993, a man named Sixto Salcedo was checked into the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza.  Salcedo, they say, was released the following day, after he agreed to do what prosecutors wanted: testify that he had seen Ruddy Quezada shoot dead a man named Jose Rosado on the streets of Brooklyn.

Salcedo did testify, and Quezada was convicted.  But a lot has happened since – Salcedo has recanted his testimony, another man has confessed to the murder, and Quezada has asked a federal judge to free him from prison.  And much of what happens next could turn on what took place at the Crowne Plaza that night 20 years ago.

Salcedo now says in sworn testimony that he never saw Quezada shoot anyone, and that he only agreed to say otherwise after he had been arrested on a material witness order, threatened by detectives and held overnight in one of the hotels used by the district attorney’s office.

“I’m not trying to justify myself,” Salcedo said in the sworn statement, “I’m just trying to have a clear conscience, since I regret the harm that I have caused.”

For some defense lawyers in New York, the Quezada case is just one example of a wider abuse of material witness orders.

The orders are meant to help prosecutors compel testimony from problematic witnesses in criminal cases.  But the orders, which must be signed by judges, are supposed to be used only in extraordinary circumstances, as a kind of last resort, often when prosecutors fear a potential witness might flee instead of testifying.

Prosecutors are required to honor basic protocols aimed at protecting the rights of such witnesses: once detained, they are to be brought directly before a judge and provided with a lawyer.  A hearing is then supposed to be held to explore the reasons behind a witness’ reluctance to testify:  Is it fear? Possible complicity in the crime?  Or are witnesses being intimidated into testifying falsely?

Determining much about the use of material witness orders is not easy.  Court administrators in New York State are able to say that prosecutors continue to seek them and judges continue to grant them, but can’t say definitively how often the orders are issued or whether prosecutors abide by the law in executing them.

A spokesman for the Queens District Attorney said prosecutors in the office always take such witnesses before a judge.  But the city’s other four district attorneys told ProPublica they would not answer questions about how material witness orders are handled by their offices.

But the Quezada case is not the only one dealing with the possible abuse of material witness orders to have surfaced in recent years.  Some defense lawyers say they are concerned about how often local prosecutors might have disregarded the safeguards meant to protect the witnesses.

A lawyer for a Queens woman who says she was illegally held as a material witness in 2008 is now pressing to hold prosecutors accountable, seeking to find them personally liable.  She scored a considerable victory in her effort this week when a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that prosecutors in the case were not entitled to “absolute immunity” from her lawsuit, and ordered the case to be reconsidered by a district court.

"A material witness warrant secures a witness’s presence at a trial or grand jury proceeding," Judge Gerard E. Lynch of the Second Circuit wrote in an opinion made public Friday.  "It does not authorize a person’s arrest and prolonged detention for purposes of investigative interrogation by the police or a prosecutor."

Another lawyer, Joel Rudin, has asked a federal judge in Brooklyn to force the Brooklyn District Attorney to turn over its records concerning the detention of witnesses in hotels over the years.  Rudin, who is suing the city over a wrongful conviction that was achieved in part by the abuse of a material witness order, already has won rare access to some material.

Rudin said some witnesses held in hotels were formally classified as prisoners; they may have been inmates brought to court to testify in a criminal trial.  But scores of others on the logs he has seen were likely innocent men and women who were being detained under material witness orders, he said.

“If they were not happening in Brooklyn, we would associate such practices with a police state,” Rudin said in court documents filed in May.

The Brooklyn District Attorney declined to respond to Rudin’s allegations.

Controversy arose around federal prosecutors’ deployment of material witness orders after 9/11, when it came to light that they had used the warrants to detain large numbers of people to provide information about terror cases.

But the use of these orders at the state-level remains largely unexamined.  In New Jersey, legislators adopted reforms to the state’s material witness statute two decades ago, prompted by a case in which a man was held in jail to testify against a defendant who hadn’t even been charged with a crime yet.

The reforms came after a state commission surveyed the laws on material witness orders across the country.

“Some states had some protections for witnesses, some had none, but no state had a comprehensive set of protections,” said John Cannel, a member of the New Jersey Law Revision Commission, an arm of the state legislature.

NEW YORK - Anniversary of the 'Baby Hope' Case

"$12K Reward in 1991 'Baby Hope' Case" from AP, ABC News 7/24/2013

More than two decades after the body of a young girl was found inside a cooler, the New York Police Department is seeking help identifying the victim dubbed "Baby Hope."

On Tuesday, the 22nd anniversary of the discovery, police offered a $12,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest and conviction in the unsolved crime.
Baby Hope.JPEG

Officers put up posters and handed out fliers with sketches of how the victim might have looked.

The cooler was found in Washington Heights, on an embankment off the Henry Hudson Parkway.

The girl was believed to be between 3 and 5 years old.  Tests showed she was malnourished and had been sexually abused.

DNA testing has yielded no matches with databases of convicted felons or active missing person cases.

ADOLESCENTS - New York's Rikers Island, Teen Recidivism Rate (Report 2 of 2)

"At Rikers Island, Investing in Decision-Making Lessons for Teens in Trouble" PBS Newshour 4/10/2013

Excerpt

GWEN IFILL (Newshour):  Now the second of a two-part look at efforts to prevent felons from returning to New York's Rikers Island jail once they have served their time.

Last night, NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman reported on a new way of creating private financing for such public programs.

Tonight, he explores how the program hopes to keep participants from ending up in jail again.

It's part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.

PAUL SOLMAN (Newshour):  High school on New York City's Rikers Island, the world's largest jail.  Though they make up just 6 percent of the population, the teen inmates here pose some of the biggest problems.

DORA SCHRIRO, New York City Department of Corrections:  They contribute to 28 percent of all of the fights, which is the most common form of misconduct in a jail setting.

ART - Masterpiece Windfall at the New York's 'Met'

"Lauder's Collection of Cubist Masterpieces Bound for Metropolitan Museum of Art" PBS Newshour 4/10/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the recipient of a "transformative" collection of Cubist works by the likes of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and others.  The donation, worth more than $1 billion, was made by Leonard Lauder, philanthropist and former chairman of Estée Lauder. Margaret Warner talks to the Met's Rebecca Rabinow.

MARGARET WARNER (Newshour):  Philanthropist Leonard Lauder, an heir to the Estee Lauder estate, is giving the Met his entire collection of cubist art.  The 78 paintings, drawings and sculptures are valued together at more than $1 billion dollars.  They include 33 pieces by Pablo Picasso, like Woman in an Armchair from 1913, 17 works by Georges Braque, including Bottle of Rum from 1914, and other major pieces by Fernand Leger and Juan Gris.

For more on the collection and its significance, we turn now to Rebecca Rabinow, a curator from the Met's Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.  And she joins us from San Francisco.

Cubist Art at the Met slide show