Category Archives: News

Democrat Maxine Waters charged with ethics violations

Story from Yahoo News.

Excerpt:

A House investigative panel has decided to charge Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California with ethics violations, raising the possibility of a second high-profile trial with political implications for Democrats this fall.

People familiar with the investigation, who were not authorized to be quoted about unannounced charges, say the allegations could be announced next week. The House ethics committee declined Friday to make any public statement on the matter.

Waters has been under investigation for a possible conflict of interest involving a bank that was seeking federal aid. Her husband owned stock in the bank.

New York Democrat Rep. Charles Rangel also faces an ethics trial this fall on separate charges that included failure to disclose assets and income, nonpayment of taxes and doing legislative favors for donors to a college center named after him.

Both Waters and Rangel are prominent members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Dual ethics trials would be a major political liability for Democrats, forcing them to defend their party’s ethical conduct while trying to hold on to their House majority.

While Rangel is a former chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Waters is a prominent member of the Financial Services Committee.

Waters came under scrutiny after former Treasury Department officials said she helped arrange a meeting between regulators and executives at Boston-based OneUnited Bank without mentioning her husband’s financial ties to the institution.

So that’s two Democrats on trial for ethics violations. I wonder if we can get three before the mid-term elections?

MUST-READ: New study on public health care in South Africa

Story from the SA Times Live. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

A damning report, the “South African Child Gauge for 2009/2010”, released by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute, blames the crumbling public health system for much of our children’s woes.

South Africa holds the dishonorable distinction of being one of only 12 countries – including war-torn Afghanistan – to have failed to reduce child mortality since 1990.

It ranks in the company of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.

South African child deaths have risen from 56 deaths per 1000 births in 1990 to 67 deaths per 1000 births in 2008, according to Unicef.

This is despite South Africa’s high GDP and the billions of rands pumped into providing public health services.

Just imagine that it was your child. Or a the child of someone you care about.

When will things get bad enough for people to try something different? How about trying consumer choice and competition? How about consumer-driven health care?

Woman suffocates eight of her own newborn babies

This AFP story is very popular right now.

Excerpt:

A French nursing assistant admitted Thursday suffocating eight of her newborn babies “because she did not want any more children”, prosecutors said.

Dominique Cottrez, 45, was charged with murder after telling police that after having two daughters she did not want more nor “to see a doctor to get contraception”, prosecutor Eric Vaillant told reporters.

Cottrez’s husband Pierre-Marie Cottrez was freed after denying any knowledge of the killings, which came to light when police found skeletal remains buried in a garden and dumped in plastic sacks in a garage.

[…]Investigators said she had confessed to suffocating the babies shortly after their births between 1989 and 2006 or 2007, and to concealing the bodies from her husband under household clutter in the garage.

[…]In past cases some defendants have said they were in denial about their pregnancies and not fully responsible for their actions, but Vaillant said Cottrez had admitted to being “perfectly aware” of her condition.

[…]Prosecutors described it as the worst case of infanticide in recent French history, following a string of similar cases in which isolated and troubled mothers disposed of their newborns.

What could possess a woman to act in such a selfish way? How can she put her own selfish desires before the moral obligations she freely chose to impose on her self through her own decision to get pregnant? How can a woman believe that she is justified in killing her own children just so that her quality of life is not diminished?