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October 2015

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Franz Kafka in Footie Pajamas My consignment company for secondhand children’s clothes has somehow run afoul of federal regulators.By Rhea Lana Riner

By on October 31st, 2015

When I founded Rhea Lana’s, a children’s clothing consignment company, 18 years ago, I knew that going into business would bring challenges. What I didn’t guess was that the biggest one would be the government.

For the last 34 months, I have found myself stuck between the Labor Department, which says my business model is illegal, and the federal courts, which refuse to clear the air.

I first set up shop in 1997, although it wasn’t much of a business back then. A stay-at-home mom in Conway, Ark., I realized that, like me, many mothers in the neighborhood couldn’t afford cute children’s clothes. Seeing an opportunity to help their families and mine, I began organizing consignment sales in my family’s living room. Before long these little sales grew beyond our wildest dreams. Thanks to my husband’s engineering know-how, we computerized, went online and began to offer real-time tracking of consignor sales. We converted to a franchise model in 2008 and now have 80 locations across 24 states.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Abuse Plagues System of Legal Guardians for Adults By Arian Campo-Flores and Ashby Jones

By on October 31st, 2015

Allegations of financial exploitation and abuse are rife, despite waves of overhaul efforts.
One day in March 2012, 71-year-old Linda McDowell received a knock at the door of her small Vancouver, Wash., home. Ms. McDowell needed court-appointed help, the visitor told her.

It turned out that Ms. McDowell’s former housemate and companion had pushed for a court petition claiming Ms. McDowell was unable to take care of herself. The petition said Ms. McDowell had recently made an unsafe driving maneuver, had been disruptive in a doctor’s office and, in a recent phone call, had seemed confused over the whereabouts of some personal papers.

Based on the motion, a judge ordered an attorney to act as a temporary guardian with control over Ms. McDowell’s money and medical care. Ms. McDowell was also to pay for these services.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Britain’s Tax Warning for Marco Rubio Pro-natalist credits don’t work and become new entitlements.

By on October 31st, 2015

British politics was thrown into turmoil this week when Parliament blocked David Cameron’s plan to reform family tax credits. There’s a warning here for conservatives elsewhere, especially American Presidential candidate Marco Rubio, about the dangers of social engineering through taxation.

At issue is a convoluted tax benefit developed by Tony Blair in 2003 that was supposed to reward low-income work and childbearing. Under 2015-16 rates, low-income families can receive up to £2,780 ($4,263) in refundable credits per nondisabled child and £3,140 per disabled child, in addition to a per-family credit of £545. The per-child benefits go down as incomes rise up to £35,000 a year. Low-income workers with or without children can also earn a working tax credit on incomes below £6,420. The credits now cost some £30 billion per year in lost revenue and refunds to lower earners.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Closing of a Newsroom’s Mind By Donald E. Graham

By on October 31st, 2015

I’ve seen how for-profit colleges can help students—many of them older and seeking better jobs—but the government and the media want to shut them down.
For the first time since I left the newspaper business, I feel I have some news. And it’s news that might shake up a stagnant Washington policy debate.

For-profit colleges have become a standard target of the progressive left (and not them alone). Their charges include: The students are recruited aggressively; the prices are too high; most of the students drop out and many incur high levels of debt and then default; for those who stick it out and graduate, the degrees aren’t worth much.

These charges have been so widely publicized and so often repeated that they have entered the realm of accepted truth. In some quarters, to defend any for-profit education company is to defend the indefensible. Hear me: There are huge differences among for-profit colleges, as among other colleges. Some for-profit colleges have behaved disgracefully to their students; I do not defend them.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Marilyn Penn: Dementia in Manhattan

By on October 31st, 2015

Recently, an old friend was moved into a dementia unit on the upper west side. It appeared to be as cheerful, well-run and upbeat as one could hope, with art-filled corridors and photos of patients’ families outside their rooms. Within a few weeks of his move, families were suddenly informed that the unit was closing and patients requiring this special security and care would have to be evicted. Although the facility encompassed only 28 beds, the panic and distress this notice caused made me curious about the availability of residential dementia units in NYC and I was shocked by what I discovered.

Going by the population numbers of the 2010 census, there are approximately 320,000 seniors who live in Manhattan. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that 1 in 9 people over 65 has dementia, leaving us with approximately 34,450 Manhattan residents who are afflicted with this disease. Out of these, a significant number will eventually require custodial care outside the home, preferably in Manhattan so that elderly spouses (and family and friends) would be able to visit without driving or the expense of car service. Yet, in all of our medically sophisticated borough, there are only a handful of residential facilities which accept patients with dementia – under 200 beds in all.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Israeli start-up uses Trojan horse technology to kill cancer cells By David Shamah see note please

By on October 31st, 2015

This should not be available for the BDS scoundrels…..rsk
BioSight has figured out a way to fool cancer cells into allowing themselves to be killed off – without harming normal cells.

BioSight, a medical technology start-up, has developed a technology that enables leukemia patients to avoid the worst effects of chemotherapy.

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“Our interim results in a major study of patients with leukemia shows that our system yields the maximum efficiency from chemo, with a minimum of toxicity,” said Dr. Ruth Ben Yakar, CEO of BioSight. “Our method of using chemo does not cause brain damage or weaken blood cells,” with all its attendant phenomena, such as lethargy, loss of hair, etc.

BioSight’s “Trojan horse” chemo technology doesn’t only work for leukemia patients, said Ben Yakar. “We believe it will be effective in many other kinds of cancer as well. It’s a matter of finding the amino acid that a specific cancer is ‘allergic’ to, and packaging it in a structure that the cancer cell thinks contains material that strengthens it, while in reality it contains material that destroys it.”

The technology, said Ben Yakar, could become very important in the field of cancer treatment.”This really could be the cure for cancer.”

BioSight was one of a dozen start-ups that presented their technology at the annual Go4Israel conference in Tel Aviv Monday. Considered one of the most important gatherings of international investors in Israel, the conference discussed issues relevant to investors and start-ups, including raising funds and establishing strategic alliances between corporate, entrepreneurs and investors from around the world. Companies presenting at the event included firms in high-tech, life sciences, renewable energy, and others. Among the investors was a large delegation from Europe – particularly France – and from China.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Assault on Common Sense The phony campus rape crisis Heather Mac Donald

By on October 30th, 2015

In August 2012, two rapes by unknown assailants were reported at Harvard University, sending the school into crisis. Police cruisers idled around the campus; uniformed and plainclothes officers came out in force. Students were advised not to walk alone. A member of the undergraduate council called for the closing of Harvard Yard. “I thought Cambridge wasn’t a dangerous area,” a freshman told the student newspaper. “It was Harvard—it was supposed to be safe, academic.” (In fact, Harvard still was safe. The campus authorities ultimately deemed at least one of the rape allegations baseless, judging by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Since Harvard never disclosed the outcome of either of its investigations, its findings regarding the other supposed incident remain secret.)

In September 2015, Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust announced that Harvard students experience sexual assault with “alarming frequency.” Faust was responding to the results of a sexual assault survey conducted at Harvard and 26 other colleges earlier in the year. According to the survey, spearheaded by the Association of American Universities (AAU), 16 percent of Harvard female seniors had experienced nonconsensual sexual penetration during their time at the college and nearly 40 percent had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact. The “severity of the problem” required “an even more intent focus on the problem of sexual assault,” Faust said. Harvard professor and former provost Steve Hyman decried the “terribly damaging” problem that “profoundly violates the values and undermines the educational goals of this University.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

HOW DO YOU SPELL APPARENT FRAUD? THE CLINTON FOUNDATION, SHADY ACCOUNTING AND AIDS : KEN SILVERSTEIN

By on October 30th, 2015

The Clinton Foundation has until November 16 to amend more than ten years’ worth of state, federal and foreign filings, but it’s going to be virtually impossible to do so without acknowledging that it has engaged in massive accounting fraud since its inception
The Clinton Foundation has gotten a good deal of unflattering attention as of late, which isn’t surprising given that its best known namesakes are Bill, a former president and chronic philanderer, and Hillary, who hopes to be the nation’s next leader. Furthermore, the foundation portrays itself as do-gooder nonprofit organization but a cursory look reveals questionable and incomplete disclosures of its activities and accounts, as well as incredible misspending of donor money, virtually since its inception.
Naturally, this can’t be stated in polite society. For example, the New York Times just had a story on the Clinton Foundation that found highly questionable conduct but buried it under the bland headline, “Rwanda Aid Shows Reach and Limits of Clinton Foundation.” Other stories have mentioned that the foundation has partnered with assorted dictators and robber barons. Among the latter is Canadian “mining magnate” (read: “penny stock artist”) Frank Giustra, who donated millions to the foundation after Bill Clinton helped him land a mining concession for him in Kazakhstan.
(Note: I have an upcoming story on the Clinton Foundation’s links to Giustra and to Washington-based consultant Alexander Mirtchev, who is a front-man for powerful Kazakh government officials.)

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Rashid Khalidi Heads Pro-PLO Panel in Bashing Israel The Jewish State is, apparently, a greater threat to America than anything emanating from the Muslim world. Andrew Harrod

By on October 30th, 2015

Israel is a greater threat to America than anything emanating from the Muslim world, according to participants in an October 15 panel titled “The Future of Bipartisanship on Israel.” One of the nation’s largest Democratic Party campaign contributors, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), provided an appropriately partisan setting in their Washington, DC, headquarters for this biased panel. Columbia University professor and former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi moderated before an audience of around seventy, including Jerusalem Fund director Zeina Azzam.

Former CIA analyst and Georgetown University security studies researcher Paul Pillar (“one of the wisest people” on the Middle East, according to Khalidi) began the panel by dredging up the well-worn assertion that the U.S. suffers from its alliance with Israel. Downplaying broader jihadist motives, he claimed that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a “highly exploitable issue” that exacerbates “extremism and specifically, terrorist threats to the U.S.” American support for Israel is a “major drain on U.S. political and diplomatic capital,” he added.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Where is the Church Militant on persecuted Christians? Robin Mitchinson

By on October 30th, 2015

Of the 100-200 million Christians at risk, the majority are in Muslim-dominated countries. Of the world’s three largest religions Christians are the most persecuted with 80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination being directed at them. So why the inaction from the Church?

My text for the day is, ‘By their fruits shall ye know them’, inspired by the 84 bishops who have called upon the Prime Minister to admit not 20,000 refugees over the next five years but 50,000, with 20,000 over the next 2 years.

Here is what they wrote:

“We believe such is this country’s great tradition of sanctuary and generosity of spirit that we could feasibly resettle at least 10,000 people a year for the next two years, rising to a minimum of 50,000 in total over the five year period you foresaw in your announcement. Such a number would bring us into line with comparable commitments made by other countries. It would be a meaningful and substantial response to the scale of human suffering we see daily.”

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