Do meter maids in the U.S. have quota's or performance goals to meet?

In Denver, Colorado this is the explanation used by a public employee!

"City spokeswoman Ann Williams classified a document requiring parking enforcement officers write at least 79 tickets per shift to cars blocking street sweepers as performance goals and not a ticket quota."


Link: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/18604752/detail.html

Passengers can be frisked by police, even if nothing indicates they commited a crime

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled Monday that police officers have leeway to frisk a passenger in a car stopped for a traffic violation even if nothing indicates the passenger has committed a crime or is about to do so.
The pat-down is allowed if the police "harbor reasonable suspicion that a person subjected to the frisk is armed, and therefore dangerous to the safety of the police and public," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/01/26/us_supreme_court_says_passenger_can_be_frisked/

Are MA prosecutors witholding evidence

The chief judge of the US District Court in Massachusetts is threatening to sanction a federal prosecutor for what he characterized as the latest "egregious failure" of the US attorney's office to disclose evidence that could have helped clear a defendant.
"The egregious failure of the government to disclose plainly material exculpatory evidence in this case extends a dismal history of intentional and inadvertent violations of the government's duties to disclose in cases assigned to this court," Wolf, a high-ranking prosecutor in the office in the 1980s, wrote in his 42-page ruling.
He listed at least nine major cases he presided over during the last two decades in which prosecutors working for Michael Sullivan and his predecessors allegedly withheld important evidence. In several instances, the jurist, 62, wrote, the misconduct led to mistrials and convictions that were overturned.

Link:http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/27/judge_chastises_federal_attorney/

Is there justice within the Mass. legal system?

Have a defense attorney's efforts become meaningless? Have the Commonwealth's judge's made a decision before the defense can make closing arguments?

"Much to the surprise of Nee's lawyers, Grabau started to issue his ruling close to 10 a.m., before closing arguments had been made. "The Commonwealth has proved this case beyond a reasonable doubt . . ., " he began.
Several people gasped. Some of Nee's family and friends began sobbing. Nee's father, Thomas, stormed out of the crowded courtroom, red-faced, muttering "This is due process?"
But when Nee's lawyer, Thomas Drechsler, stood up and pointed out that he had not made his closing argument yet, the judge stopped short of announcing his decision and directed the lawyer to begin his closing argument.
Almost two hours later, following Drechsler's impassioned argument on behalf of his client, the judge issued his ruling, convicting Nee on one of three charges. Nee is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday."

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/02/15/judge_convicts_ex_student_in_school_plot/

Overcharging patients and insurance companies, what's wrong with our healthcare system?

Private insurance data obtained by the Globe's Spotlight Team show that the Brigham, Mass. General, Children's Hospital, and a few others are, on average, paid about 15 percent to 60 percent more than their rivals by insurance companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The gap is even more striking for many individual procedures, which can be two or three times more expensive in one hospital than in another. If the white slip of paper directs him to do the procedure in Framingham, the insurance company will pay the hospital about $17,000, not counting the physician's fee. If Alderman is sent to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, that hospital will get about $24,500 - 44 percent more - even though the patient's care will be the same in both places

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/16/a_healthcare_system_badly_out_of_balance/

Are pilots texting and sleeping in cockpits?

We know pilots sometimes sleep in the cockpit but now they text message as well?

A pilot killed after crashing into Lake Wanaka was sending text messages as he flew the helicopter on its final journey. Friends of Morgan Saxton, 31, have confirmed the experienced Haast pilot sent texts to at least one friend from his newly rebuilt Robinson R22 helicopter, before it crashed on November 1. Another pilot says the practise is common - and claims it isn't dangerous as long as flyers aren't too distracted.
Toby Wallis said texting and flying was common among pilots and something he did himself.
"We might get a text telling us about another flight and so we might send a quick text back. It's no different to changing the radio station in a car, but it could be dangerous if you are distracted by it."

Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10552399

Reasons to blog, what every private investigator should consider

"Here's a completely honest description of what we've seen on the business development front. (Note that we're excluding all non-business reaction to the blog. The blog has caused us to be quoted in the legal and popular press, generated speaking and writing engagements, and the like. We're talking here only about new retentions that we can attribute directly to the blog.)

We're leaving open the possibility that blogging may be an effective business development tool over time, when used in conjunction with other tools. Thus: Giving one talk is unlikely to generate business; giving one talk a month for five years is more likely to work. Writing one article is unlikely to generate business; writing one article a year for twenty years is more likely to work. Blogging for a couple of years (by itself) may not generate business; blogging over time, while also giving talks, writing articles, and never dining alone, may be more effective. But it's awfully hard to run a controlled experiment of that hypothesis.What's our advice? Same as it's always been: Blog for pleasure; blog to stay abreast of your field of law; blog to influence the public debate; blog to raise both your firm's and your personal profile in a your legal niche."


Link: http://druganddevicelaw.blogspot.com/2009/01/blogging-as-business-development-tool.html

U.S. nursing home database, ratings for health inspections, patient care and staff

Health inspection ratings are drawn from a score based on nursing home surveys over the past three years, as well as reports from inspections carried out to investigate complaints. The quality measures include how well a nursing home responds to residents' declining mobility, high-risk bed sores, catheter problems, urinary tract infections and pain. They also take into account whether a facility uses excessive physical restraint.
Staffing is drawn from two complex formulas, both based on nursing hours per day per patient. One is for registered nurses only, and the other includes registered nurses and other health workers.
A nursing home’s overall quality rating is based on three factors: its health inspections, how well the home scores in 10 measures of the quality of patient care and how well each home is staffed.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-12-18-nursing-home-database_N.htm

High court OKs using evidence from search arising from police error

WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that drug evidence found during an unlawful arrest arising from a computer error about a warrant could be used at trial against the defendant.
When police mistakes that lead to an unlawful search arise from "negligence … rather than systematic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements," evidence need not be kept from trial, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority in the case from Alabama.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-14-court_N.htm

Death rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia for every hospital in the nation

USA TODAY has created an easy-to-navigate database that allows you to compare the performance of the hospital next door with the hospital across town. Want to check the performance of every hospital in your state? See the 100 hospitals that performed the best? The worst? We've put the information at your fingertips.
You can view the hospitals on a map, chart or several lists. When you click on a hospital, you'll see an estimate of the hospital's average death rate for one of the three conditions, bracketed by a high-end estimate or a low-end estimate. By presenting the information in this way, we can say with 95% confidence that the hospital falls in that range. We've included separate estimates for 2005-06 and 2006-07.
Underlying the calculations is a complicated "risk-adjustment" formula for ironing out differences in hospitals' patient mix, so the comparison will be fair.
The formula focuses on all deaths of heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia patients that occur within 30 days of a patient's admission to a hospital. If a patient is admitted more than once, one admission is randomly plucked out for analysis. CMS chose to include all deaths for any cause so that no death is missed that might be meaningful.
CMS picked 30-day mortality as its main benchmark of performance so it can include in the analysis patterns of deaths that might have escaped hospitals' notice because the patients didn't die until several days after they were discharged.
Finally, patients who were transferred from one hospital to another for more sophisticated care were credited to the first hospital. That's to avoid penalizing hospitals that receive the sickest patients.

Links: http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/hospital/mortalitytool/index.asp
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/hospitals-graphic.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-08-20-hospital-death-rates_N.htm

Business is booming for private investigator DiNatale in MA

According to the Licensed Private Detectives Association of Massachusetts, which represents 450 agencies, business is up because crime is up. "When the economy gets rough, our business tends to increase," says executive director Phil White. "There's more crime of all kinds. People who can't make a living still need things, so the next alternative is to try to get away with stealing. We get called to do either criminal defense work or a company will call us to investigate internal theft by employees. We work both sides of the street."
Much of the work is civil, too. "Word leaks out that there are layoffs coming, and people have unwitnessed accidents," says John DiNatale. "It's, 'I slipped on the floor and gotta go out on workmen's comp.' . . . Insurance claims are going up. In a bad economy, there's more theft, there's more white-collar crime, and all of that means more business for us."

Link: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/articles/2009/01/12/the_watchmen/

Environmental watchdog website, provides numerous gov't. databases, toxic release etc.

The Right-to-Know Network provides free access to numerous databases and resources on the environment. With the information available on RTK NET, you can identify specific factories and their environmental effects; find permits issued under environmental statutes; and identify civil cases filed.There are no fees; RTK NET is free. It was established in order to empower citizen involvement in community and government decision-making. You can access RTK NET via the web at www.rtknet.org. RTK NET offers the following:
Databases: We provide access to several government databases on the environment and we let you search them for free. We are continuously adding and updating our databases as soon as the information becomes available. To find out when databases were last updated or what databases will be updated next, see our Status of RTK NET Databases page.
Technical Support: We provide a user manual and other materials that help you access and search the databases (online access to these materials are available under help and documents). In addition, you are welcome to call us if you have problems accessing or searching the databases. RTK NET was started in 1989 in support of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), which mandated public access to the Toxic Release Inventory. It is operated by OMB Watch. In the past it was funded by various government agencies through a previous partner, Unison Institute, and foundations.


Link: http://www.rtknet.org/rtkdata.php

Hazardous waste, toxic release website locator for the United States

TOXMAP helps users create nationwide, regional, or local area maps showing where TRI chemicals are released on-site into the air, water, and ground. It also identifies the releasing facilities, color-codes release amounts for a single year or year range, and provides multi-year aggregate chemical release data and trends over time, starting with 1987. Maps can also show locations of Superfund sites on the National Priority List (NPL) (http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl), listing all chemical contaminants present at these sites. Users can search the system by location (such as city, state, or ZIP code), chemical name, chemical name fragment, release medium, release amount, facility name and ID, and can filter results to those residing within a pre-defined or custom geographic region. TOXMAP also overlays map data such as US Census population information, income figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and health data from the National Cancer Institute (http://www.cancer.gov/) and the National Center for Health Statistics (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/).



Link: http://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov/toxmap/main/index.jsp

FDA approves melamine in baby food?

The decision by the Food and Drug Administration to allow U.S.-manufactured infant formula contaminated with melamine or its byproducts onto store shelves is "seriously flawed" and medically risky because parents may feed their babies more than one product, scientists at the nonprofit group Consumers Union said Friday.
The FDA detected melamine and its byproduct cyanuric acid separately in four of 89 containers of infant formula tested in the fall, but never at the same time. A can of milk-based liquid Nestle Good Start Supreme Infant Formula with Iron contained traces of melamine while three different cans of Mead Johnson's Enfamil LIPIL with Iron had traces of cyanuric acid.
There has been very little research on what levels are safe. Cats had kidney failure after eating 32 parts per million of cyanuric acid and 32 parts per million of melamine

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-01-09-melamine-formula_N.htm

Scammers billing millions of credit card users

Several Internet complaint boards are filled with comments from credit card customers from coast to coast who have noticed a mysterious charge for about 25 cents on their statements.
The charge shows up on statements as coming from "Adele Services" in Melville, N.Y. There is no business by that name listed in Melville, or registered to any business anywhere in New York, for that matter.
Two theories of what is going on have advanced on message boards and among consumer advocates: Someone is trying to find out whether an illegally obtained credit card number will work before making a bigger charge, or they're trying to rip off tiny amounts from tons of people.

Link: http://www.boston.com/business/personalfinance/articles/2009/01/11/mysterious_credit_card_charge_may_have_hit_millions_of_users/

Here are three links to aid in researching whether schools are healthy

Healthy Schools Campaign, an independent not-for-profit organization, is the leading authority on healthy school environments and a voice for people who care about our environment, our children, and education.
Our mission is to advocate for policies and practices that allow all students, teachers and staff to learn and work in a healthy school environment.

Healthy Schools Network, Inc. is a 501 c3 national environmental health organization that does research, information, education, coalition-building, and advocacy to ensure that every child has a healthy learning environment that is clean and in good repair. Founded in 1995,we have documented and publicized school environmental problems; shaped and won new education, health, and environmental policies; fostered dozens of local and state policy groups; won systemic federal and state reforms; and helped thousands of parents and schools make classrooms and buildings healthier through our EPA award-winning Healthy Schools/Healthy Kids Clearinghouse (Information and Referral Services). Major efforts include: building the platform and the forum for school environments through the collaborative Coalition for Healthier Schools which we founded and convene with more than 400 local, state, and national partners; leading National Healthy Schools Day; offering steady assistance through the Clearinghouse's publications and referrals; and refining our model New York Program. Throughout, we are focused on: 1) High Performance School Design/Construction consistent with children's needs for healthy environments; 2) Greening Existing Schools; and 3) Environmental Public Health for Children who are disproportionately affected by environmental exposures.




Link: http://www.healthyschools.org/
Link: http://www.healthyschoolscampaign.org/
Link: http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues175.shtml

What affect does living in close proxomity to industrial plants have on us?

USA today has numerous articles that show links to your health and toxic fumes emitted by industrial plants. A disturbing series of articles concerning our health!

Link: http://content.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/smokestack/index

Leaving a trail of bread crumbs after a robbery or better yet let's use popcorn!

Who needs a private investigator to locate this alleged thief?

"They also found popcorn on the ground that led away from the store to a nearby apartment complex and trailed to one unit in particular."

Link: http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/37075464.html

A web blog about surveillance for the private investigator

This blog seems to be dated, since the last posting was in July of 2008. However it does provide some helpful hints for surveillance.

Link: http://www.confidentialresource.com/tag/surveillance/

How To Find the Sender's Original IP Address Using Email Message Headers

So you'd like to to find out just who is sending those email love letters, determine the sender of a blackmail message, or just root out the source of a virus emailed to you. This article will teach you how to use "Email Headers" to backtrack and find the original sender's IP address. Don't worry, it's not rocket science.
Email messages, as in the case of their non-electronic cousins, have "envelopes" of a sort. In the case of email the envelope is composed of a series of "Headers". These are just a series of lines of characters which precede the actual email message. Email programs such as Outlook do not normally display these Headers when displaying a message. From these Headers however, the email program is able to extract important information about the message, such as the message encoding method, the creation date, the message subject, the sender and receiver, etc.
Moreover, just as a postal envelope contains an address, a return address and the cancellation stamp of the post office of origin, an email message in these "Headers" carries with it a history of its journey to your email inbox. Because of this, it's possible to determine the original IP address of the sender.
Since email programs do not normally display these Headers, we must first learn how to display them. Depending on the program, this is done in a variety of ways. The following sequence details the way to do this using the Windows default email program, "Outlook Express". First, select "Properties" from the "File" Menu, or just press ALT+Enter. Next, select the "Details" tab.

For the complete story, click on the link below...
Link: http://www.johnru.com/active-whois/trace-email.html

Chains' ties run deep on pharmacy boards, who runs our states pharmacy boards?

USA today report:

When the Illinois Board of Pharmacy meets, Philip Burgess, national director of pharmacy affairs at Walgreens (WAG), the Illinois-based firm that's the nation's largest drugstore chain in sales and profits, chairs the sessions.
Michael Podgurski, vice president of pharmacy services for Rite Aid, (RAD) leads pharmacy board meetings in Pennsylvania, the headquarters of the East Coast's largest pharmacy chain.
READ OUR SPECIAL REPORT: Rx for Errors
Bob Dufour, the former director of pharmacy services for Arkansas-based Wal-Mart (WMT), chairs that state's board.
Kay Hanson, the pharmacy regulatory affairs manager for Target (TGT), serves on the board in Minnesota, the firm's corporate base. And James DeVita, CVS' (CVS) quality assurance director, is on the Massachusetts board
The five executives aren't the only retail chain pharmacists who serve on the state panels assigned to oversee prescription drug safety for the American public. A USA TODAY examination shows employees of major drugstore chains or supermarket pharmacies accounted for nearly one in four of the 295 pharmacists on the panels this year.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2008-12-30-pharmacies-boards-mistakes-prescriptions_N.htm