Monday, March 23, 2020

Opuscula

Patient
In the
Middle

 >

WHEN I WAS A YOUNGSTER, back when the ice was starting to melt, I played a game with others my age called Monkey in the Middle. It’s still played today.

Basically, one player is the “monkey in the middle” while two or more players pass an object — usually a ball — around the “monkey” who tries to intercept the object and get out of the middle.

It’s a great game for kids. The really tall kids go on to become NBA players.

 

 

”Monkey in the Middle” is fun when it IS a game.

It is NOT fun when a patient is put in the monkey role.

I recently “graduated” from a cane to a “rollator,” a walker with four wheels (right).

Great idea.

Trouble is, not all rollators are equal — particularly in handle height.

My PCP (Reyes & Reyes in Hollywood FL since we’ll be naming names) ordered a rollator for me via a company called, variously, One Home Medical Equipment or One Homecare Solutions of Miramar FL. One Home something is the only provider my Humana Gold Medicare allows my PCP to use.

Still with me?

There are four entities involved:

    The patient (me)
    The PCP (Reyes & Reyes)
    The vendor (One Home)
    The Medicare insurer (Humana).

A fifth entity — Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a/k/a CMS — supposedly controls everything Medicare and some things Medicaid.

No, I don’t know why the abbreviation is not CMMS. Government decision.

 

A little history

While walking with a cane, I was threatened by a noisy ankle-biter. Trying to fend off the pest, I lost what little balance I had and fell. The dog’s owner finally collected the animal and I got to my feet.

Unfortunately, for me, one fall leads to another in short order.

I appealed to my PCP, who was aware of my balance issues, that it was time to get a walker.

The walker, a/k/a rollator, was approved by the PCP and ordered from One Home.

Someone from One Home called and asked my height and my weight. Fair questions that I answered honestly.

Within a few days, a rollator was delivered and a gentleman named “Mr. Allen” showed me how to use it.

We both realized that the rollator’s handles were too low for my height. The maximum height of the handles was 35 inches from the floor. We agreed I needed something with higher handles. Mr. Allen told me what to order.

Since I already had the walker I agreed to try it for awhile. He assured me it could be swapped for a different machine later, no problem.

I tried the Drive Medical 507S — you won’t find it on the manufacturer’s site — and discovered

    1. It causes pains in my neck

    2. It causes pain in the deltoids

    3. It puts my normal focus point about three feet in front of the walker; too low to see approaching vehicles — cars, perambulators — and small children not on the lookout for geezers unless I raised my head, putting more strain on my neck.

Bottom line: While I COULD use the walker for a few block tour, more than that and I paid the price.

So,

I asked my PCP to order a replacement rollator and provided the information Mr. Allen had given me.

And I waited.

And waited.

Apparently, One Home or Humana was not satisfied with Mr. Allen’s ID of the taller rollator.

Apparently One Home elected NOT to contact my PCP and tell the office staff (a) what was wrong with the order and (b) how to correct the problem.

Eventually “Eric” from One Home called me and told me — the patient — about the issue.

Why One Home didn’t immediately contact the PCP’s office is beyond my ken.

 

The PCP’s office, per Eric’s instruction to me for the PCP, resubmitted the order for a taller walker — but failed to include the specific item number and UPC code as Eric instructed — and marked it “STAT, 2nd Order.”

No one notified the patient that an order had been (re)submitted.

So I waited and waited and waited some more.

Finally. “Tomeka” from One Home called me and left a message on the machine to call her company.

I called and talked to a person named “Katie.”

AGAIN, WHY IS ONE HOME CALLING THE PATIENT? The problem is between it and the PCP's office.

Katie finally found the paperwork and told me what the PCP’s person must do.

At the risk of being redundant, what can the patient do; this is a PCP matter.

 

We don't have the capability
I asked “Katie” if she could email the requirements to me — obviously One Home cannot contact the PCP. Why?

   No, we don’t have the capability for that, she replied.

I then asked “Katie” if she could send a paper letter to me.

   No, we don’t have the capability for that, she replied.

You might want to read that exchange again; it IS unbelievable.

I asked “Katie” to tell me what the PCP’s staff needed to do, ”by the numbers.”

She apparently was authorized and “had the capability” to do this.

I wrote down, exactly, what she claimed One Home — or maybe Humana — needed and sent this information to my PCP.

WHY ME ?

I’m the patient. It is not my job to order the device (although I can, and may, go buy the unit and be done with the aggravation).

I’m too old to play “Monkey in the middle” with anyone but my grand kids.

When I gave my PCP’s person the rollator ID, again, I suggested she add a second ID. The first ID is for a red-painted walker (right); the second ID is for the same walker, but painted black.

I would hate to think that the order would be rejected again because the requested unit was out of stock — I doubt anyone has the “capability” to make a decision to supply a unit of the other color.

And then I would wait and wait, and wait some more before someone from One Home called to inform the patient that there was a problem with the information the PCP’s office faxed over.

A quick word about Humana

According to my PCP, Humana is the 800 pound gorilla of Medicare insurers in South Florida.

When I signed up with Humana a few years ago, I asked the visiting salesman, Luis Gonsalez, if there was any way I could contact Humana Customer Service other than by telephone. Telephone is the only option. BUT, promised Mr. Gonsalez, I could contact him and he would resolve any issues with Humana.

My only contact with Mr. Gonsalez is when he sends me a Humana birthday card.

I complained early on to Mr. Gonzalez, via email and even USPS mail. His response: nothing, zip, nada, effis (zero).

So much for Humana promises.

Perhaps it might be better to be insured by an “Avis mentality” provider, one that “tries harder.”

Medicare is a profitable business and where there are many Medicare-eligible geezers, the competition for the business is serious.

I have options; perhaps I will exercise them in October (Medicare enrollment period).


LATER


On April 3 my PCP's office sent, for the THIRD time, an order for the higher-handled rollator.

I have a copy of the fax sent to One Home and a copy of the confirmation that the fax from the PCP was received by One Home.

On April 20 I received a recorded message from Humana that it approved the PCP's service order. Humana never states WHAT the approved service is, just that something ordered by the doctor has been approved.

Has the rollator been approved? So far only Humana and One Home know.

Still, there is hope. One Home took its own sweet time to notify me that the PCP's order was lacking. Maybe the Chinese virus will be blamed.

Meanwhile, I'm confined by City edict to my driveway, so the too low rollator sits unused.

 


 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

Comment on Patient in the Middle

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Opuscula

Best job in U.S.?
Letter carrier

 

WHAT IS THE BEST JOB IN THE U.S.?

Being a letter carrier.

 

 

IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE if you do your job diligently or if you are derelict in your duties, you are above reproach.

On my street

The ONLY time my mail is delivered

    To the correct address Before 6:30 p.m.
is one day a week when the alternate carrier makes the circuit.

The regular carrier is surly, particularly to my elderly neighbor who is a naturalized U.S. citizen.

My neighbor complained to the local USPS office — to no avail.

I have complained on several occasions to the local USPS office, usually to no avail.

    I sometimes get a response from the USPS, but the “bottom line” is that nothing is accomplished; the mail still is mis-directed.

Yesterday, Wednesday, 18 March 2020, the letter carrier did not even show up!

This particular letter carrier is on a roll.

My neighbor was waiting for a small package, probably dog food. She is elderly and, except when walking her ankle bitter, she is “in residence.”

The letter carrier, rather than get out of her vehicle to deliver the package to the door, stuck a note in the woman’s mailbox stating ”Unable to deliver, no one at home.”

Do I believe my neighbor?

You bet.

This same carrier failed to deliver a certified letter, again, because she was too lazy to walk to my door (I was in) to have be sign for the missive. I ended up going to the post office the next day to sign for and collect my certified mail.

It’s a long hike from the street to the front door — maybe 30 feet maximum.

The letter carrier seems healthy enough.

‘Course, similar to a lot of people sporting handicap hang tags, maybe appearances are deceiving. (Looking at local grocery store parking lot handicap-only spaces and watching the drivers as they go to and from the store makes me wonder why they need the tag.)

How do I know?

I know the letter carrier failed to deliver mail to my street-side mail box because

    Informed Delivery showed me four (4) mail items that should have been delivered on the 18th
    An outgoing letter was left in the box and the red flag still was raised.

Knowing complaining to the local USPS supervisor was a waste of time, I complained to the Inspector General’s office.

Turns out the complaint, via the USPS web, went to the Inspector Lieutenant’s office in Miami.

I promptly was informed that the Miami office forwarded my complaint to the local USPS office.

Worse, Miami effectively told me ”Don’t bother us again.”

Doubly protected

Letter carriers have more protection than a hazmat responder.

They have union protection from The National Association of Letter Carriers (NARC), part of the AFL-CIO. (https://www.nalc.org/)

The letter carriers, and other USPS employees, also are covered by Civil Service, even though many are anything BUT civil.

Given the number of times mail addressed to my house number has ended up in a neighbor’s mail box — sometimes a neighbor more than a mile away! — I wonder if the Civil Service exam requires the potential letter carrier to read arabic (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) digits and house numbers composed of those digits.

Perhaps the only requirement to be a letter carrier is the ability to drive a right-hand drive vehicle. Admittedly, that IS tricky unless the person learned to drive in England or a few other British colonies (Canada excluded).

    Yes, some letter carriers walk their routes and they have my respect when the weather is anything but nice — here temperatures easily climb into the 90s, with equal relative humidity; sudden storms can put an inch or more of rainwater on the ground in minutes. Still, most deliver mail by vehicle.

To be fair

Some, probably most, letter carriers are good, conscientious people who take their work seriously.

I met the alternate carrier and she was polite, on time, and delivered the mail to the correct address.

We used to have a good carrier on this route, but Miss Take has seniority and took over the route.

We had a letter carrier in Clearwater FL, “Vic” by name, who not only delivered the mail to the right address, but he KNEW most of the families on his route. When my children were young, they used to run to meet him. (But then they, like their father, waved to the garbage men when they came by.)

The folks at the local USPS branch are fine; they try, but there is nothing they can do about the letter carrier who is supposed to work the route on which my house is included.

She has seniority and bid on the route when the previous letter carrier — a nice guy who was a model carrier — retired.

My neighbors and I went from good service by a personable man to unsatisfactory service from the current carrier.

To whom to complain?

To whom can I complain? Who can possibly take this woman to task for her inefficiencies and dereliction of duty?

The powers that be in the post office obviously are powerless to replace, or even reassign, this carrier.

If anyone wants a job from which they cannot be fired for anything less than murder, take the test to be a letter carrier.

You will have absolute job security.

And you can tell your customers and managers what you think of them with impunity.

 



 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

Comment on Letter Carriers


Thursday, March 19, 2020

Opuscula

U.S. jurisprudence:
Seeking deep pockets,
And ignoring obvious

 

SUE! SUE SOMEONE. SUE ANYONE.

Anyone can play the “blame game.”

ONE OF MY FAVORITE emails, Advisen FPN, presented me with blog fodder this morning. It almost always has one or two items of interest.

Duluth woman paralyzed by driver who was 'huffing' sues 3M

FPN picked up this headline from the Duluth News Tribune1 that reported

    Walking along East Superior Street with her young daughter, the Duluth woman was struck by a driver who ran a red light and careened onto the sidewalk after "huffing" a chemical compound from an aerosol can.

    Ashen Diehl, then 33, suffered a shattered vertebra, a collapsed lung, broken ribs and bruises all over her body. At 40, she remains paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

    The driver, Robert Nicholas Buehlman, received a probationary sentence and, later, some prison time.

    But Diehl is now pursuing another legal option. She's suing 3M, the Twin Cities-based multinational conglomerate that manufactures the dust-removal product Buehlman was reportedly inhaling at the time of the crash.

Did 3M make the dust removal product to be “huffed?”2

Did 3M force, suggest, or in any way encourage huffing?

A quick check in my garage turned up many containers, both aerosol and otherwise that insist the products be used in “well ventilated” areas. The only product with a specific warning is good ol’ WD-40. Written in capitol letters, the warning reads: DELIBERATE OR DIRECT INHALATION OF VAPOR OR SPRAY MIST MAY BE HARMFUL OR FATAL.

If Buehlman was a huffing recidivist, he HAD to know the vapors would effect his mental and physical capabilities.

Even sans a warning label a la WD-40, huffing has been around long enough and the dangers promulgated sufficiently that the dangers are well known.

How, then, is 3M responsible for Buehlman’s abuse of the product.

Perhaps Diehl should sue the city and the state for allowing Buehlman to be on the road in any condition. That is about as logical as suing 3M.

This is the same illogic anti-gun people are taking. Sue the gun manufacturers when some crazy shots at someone. Sue the ammo makers, too. And the governments that allowed the shooter to possess the weapon.

I know every lawyer tells his or her clients to “sue everyone,” hoping to find some deep pockets.

Ex-pitcher sues Astros, says sign stealing a ‘death knell’ for his MLB career

According to the Texas Sports Nation website3

    In the filing made Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court, former Toronto Blue jays pitcher Mike Bolsinger accused the Astros, who have been penalized by MLB for electronic sign stealing in 2017, of unfair business practices, negligence and intentional interference with contractual and economic relations.

Perhaps the Astros didn’t play fair, but stealing signs is as common — more common — than stealing bases.

The person Bolsinger should be suing is the Blue jays’ manager.

If a manager is on the ball and if that manager detects sign stealing, the manager should trot over to the pitcher and the catcher and tell them to change their signs.

Do it as often as necessary.

Catchers are supposed to be among the most intelligent people on the team; surely they could manage to memorize multiple signs at least for the basic pitches.

The web site claims that Bolsinger is seeking unspecified “consequential and general damages” from the Astros, who the suit says “interfered with and harmed” his career.

Bolsinger may have a case. After getting bombed by the Astros and then being benched, he was sent down.

Before the Astros’ game, Bolsinger had an Earned Run Average (ERA) of 4.77. By the time he left on game day, his ERA had jumped to 4.92. In the minors his ERA was a respectable 1.70. He later played in Japan, compiling a 3.87 ERA in 232 2/3 innings.

    In 2019, the average ERA was 4.51.4

Sign stealing on both sides — catcher to pitcher and the bench to base coaches — has a long tradition in baseball. Everybody knows it, everybody does it, and every coach or manager should know how to combat it.

No secret.

The Astros did get their collective wrists slapped for electronic sign stealing in 2017.

    No, Virginia, the Astros didn’t steal an “electronic sign”; sports writers are not known for their command of English. What is meant is that the Astros used a camera in center-field to decode signs and then relayed them to hitters by banging on a trash can.

I can empathize, a little, with Bolsinger, but I think his “raw deal” came from his own teams’ apparently inept management that failed to comprehend what the Astros were doing.

 



Sources

1. Duluth huffing: https://tinyurl.com/thyudum

2. Huffing: https://tinyurl.com/yx6voqsq

3. Baseball: https://tinyurl.com/uuhsa3o

4. ERA: https://tinyurl.com/y9frv49k

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

Comment on U.S. jurisprudence

Monday, March 16, 2020

Opuscula

Obama claims Biden
Protected women,
Gave us gun control

IN A TV COMMERCIAL touting Joe Biden for president, Obama claims that Biden was point man for gun control and he lead the way to protect women.

 

JOBS NOT WELL DONE.

 

Gun Control

At least not well done if the number of shootings is any indication.

Biden is quoted as saying "During my 12 and a half years as a member of this (Senate) body, I have never believed that additional gun control or federal registration of guns would reduce crime. I am convinced that a criminal who wants a firearm can get one through illegal, nontraceable, unregistered sources, with or without gun control." (Source: https://tinyurl.com/y4xpm22q)

Biden IS correct that criminals are able to get guns, including those with high-capacity magazines (clips) and assault-type rifles and pistols converted to full automatic.

Hardly a day goes by in South Florida that someone is crying before a tv camera asking for someone, anyone, who knows anything about a relative or friend’s murder to come forward and to help stop the violence.

No one does come forward.

The violence continues.

 

Women’s Welfare

If Biden and his master for 8 years did so much to protect woman, why are there now so many #MeToo legal actions?

The Me Too movement, with a large variety of related local or international names, is a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual harassment survivor and activist Tarana Burke. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/yckl4pqb)

Tell me again who was president and vice-president when this movement started?

According to a Biden web site, Since Joe Biden wrote the Violence Against Women Act of 1994, our culture has changed for the better. Gender-based violence is no longer considered a private issue or a “family matter,” and the fight to end it is now front and center in our national dialogue.

But there is more work to be done. Despite significant progress — annual rates of domestic violence decreased by 64 percent from 1994 to 2010 — the figures have remained all too high for our nation’s young people. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/wcrq3dd)

In fact, Biden sponsored the bill; he did not, as the Biden web site falsely claims, write the bill.

According to Time magazine, Sally Goldfarb, now a law professor at Rutgers Law School, and Victoria Nourse, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University helped to draft the bill as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time.

Lawyers who helped to draft the bill say that part of the reason the legislation has been so successful is that it has helped to create a profound cultural change, and has encouraged Americans to take gender-based violence seriously. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/sz5xp2g)

 

Blacks for Biden — why?

A defining moment was when Sen. Kamala Harris took former Vice President Joe Biden to task over his recent comments about segregationist senators, as well as his opposition to using federally mandated busing to racially integrate schools in the 1970s. She pointed directly to how busing affected her life as a young child.

“I did not oppose busing in America,” Biden, who represented Delaware in the US Senate from 1973 to 2009, responded. “What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed.” (Source: https://tinyurl.com/yyb37jnp)

In reality, Mr. Biden was a leading opponent of busing in the Senate during the 1970s and 1980s, and his opposition went beyond the federal government’s role in the practice.

But speaking at a conference Friday in Chicago, Mr. Biden doubled down, claiming that he had “never, never, never ever opposed voluntary busing,” implicitly drawing a distinction between voluntary busing allowed by some local governments and the mandatory, court-ordered busing that also took place decades ago. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/y5myg5hn)

“The new integration plans being offered are really just quota systems to assure a certain number of blacks, Chicanos, or whatever in each school. That, to me, is the most racist concept you can come up with,” the senator from Delaware told a home-state newspaper in 1975. “Who the hell do we think we are, that the only way a black man or woman can learn is if they rub shoulders with my white child?" (Source: https://tinyurl.com/y5yo4gcr)

Old comments from 1977 resurfaced, quoting Biden as saying that non-"orderly" racial integration policies would cause his children to "grow up in a racial jungle."

He then said: "Unless we do something about this, my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point."

Reviewing thousands of documents from the time, The Times reported that Biden preferred expanding affordable housing in suburbs as a tool of integration over busing, and that he teamed up with the famed segregationist Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina on an amendment that would take away the federal government's ability to withdraw funding as a punishment for school districts that did not sufficiently integrate their student bodies. (Source: https://tinyurl.com/y6gnvt5b)

 



 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

Comment on Biden’s record

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Opuscula

Who is the real
Joe Biden who
Wants your vote

 

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY’S PRE-PRIMARY bloodletting is over and only two candidates are left standing.

The party faithful have a choice: Socialist Bernie (“Feel the Bern”) Sanders or Joe (“Foot in Mouth”) Biden.

The Democrats have a choice and its candidates are very different from each other.

 

A LITTLE HISTORY on the former senator and former two-term Obama VP.

 

Joe Biden, Obama’s point man for almost everything

Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers writes:

  • Meeting with prominent deficit and tax policy experts as President Barack Obama seeks bipartisan agreements on both fronts.
  • Zipping through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq on a whirlwind war-policy tour.

(https://tinyurl.com/udc978f)

How did any of those “point man” efforts work out?

  • In Egypt, following his boss’ “Arab Spring” that threw many Muslim countries into turmoil, Biden told PBS' Jim Lehrer that Mubarak (despite protests against him at the time) "has been an ally of ours in a number of things" and "I would not refer to him as a dictator," angering Egyptian activists. Mubarak was ousted and Egypt’s current dictator is Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi.
  • U.S. troops still are in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq.
  • U.S. troops still are being murdered in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq.

Did Obama place Biden as “point man” to escape blame rightly his for the failures in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq?

Regardless, U.S. soldiers are still in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq, and el-Sisi is in control of Egypt, trying to fend off the Islamic Brotherhood and other Iran-funded foes.

 

Obama praises Biden for Gun Control

In the shocked aftermath of Sandy Hook, the president asked vice-president Joe Biden to lead a taskforce to evaluate what could be done. He came back with a set of concrete proposals, including four major legislative areas of change and 23 executive orders.

But, almost three years later, progress appears stalled and the relentless carnage continues unabated.

Source: The Guardian, undated but “more than four years old” (https://tinyurl.com/v2g76ww)

Joe Biden has taken on the National Rifle Association (NRA) on the national stage and won – twice. In 1993, he shepherded through Congress the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which established the background check system that has since kept more than 3 million firearms out of dangerous hands. In 1994, Biden – along with Senator Dianne Feinstein – secured the passage of 10-year bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

    The Act was named after James Brady, who was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. during an attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981. The original legislation was introduced into the House of Representatives by Representative Charles E. Schumer in March 1991, but was never brought to a vote. The bill was reintroduced by Rep. Schumer on February 22, 1993 and the final version was passed on November 11, 1993.

    The ban expired in 2004.

Joe Biden also knows how to make progress on reducing gun violence using executive action. After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, President Obama tasked Vice President Biden with developing both legislative proposals and executive actions to make our communities safer. As a result of this effort, the Obama-Biden Administration took more than two dozen actions, including narrowing the so-called “gun show loophole,” increasing the number of records in the background check system, and expanding funding for mental health services.

Source: https://joebiden.com/gunsafety/

    In 2020, guns still are sold at gun shows sans criminal and mental health records checks.

But, "During my 12 and a half years as a member of this (Senate) body, I have never believed that additional gun control or federal registration of guns would reduce crime. I am convinced that a criminal who wants a firearm can get one through illegal, nontraceable, unregistered sources, with or without gun control."

Source: NBC News (https://tinyurl.com/y4xpm22q)

Six weeks after their reelection, the president put Joe Biden in charge of the most serious push for gun control in decades, sparked by the massacre of children at Sandy Hook Elementary. It seemed like the moment when national outrage might lead to congressional action.

Biden did not deliver.

Four months after Biden took on the mission, a modest measure to require expanded background checks died on the Senate floor.

POLITICO interviews with more than a dozen people involved in the effort show that Biden made several strategic missteps that delayed action and may have sacrificed the emotional pull that offered a chance to break a historic logjam. He urged grieving families who wanted to take their case to Capitol Hill to go home, trying to protect them from difficult conversations.

Source: Politico (https://tinyurl.com/txdms9p)

 

Education and Racial Equality

Per EdWeek,com, Former Vice President Joe Biden, who last week made his entrance into a crowded Democratic field of 2020 presidential candidates, has a K-12 record that touches on several issues, although he never made education policy one of his signature issues during his lengthy tenure in Washington.

Biden, who served as Delaware's senator for 36 years prior to joining President Barack Obama's White House in 2009, was a fan of the No Child Left Behind Act in its early days but later soured on the landmark federal education law.

Biden’s views about race and education from several decades ago have also re-emerged in headlines. The Washington Post in March highlighted Biden’s opposition to busing as a means to promote school integration during the 1970s. “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation,” Biden said in 1975. “And I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.”

Source: https://tinyurl.com/v6wys2q

 

Ukraine

Hunter Biden’s leveraging of his father’s political connections appear to be routine practice. While his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine in 2014, Hunter Biden was hired to serve on the board of a Ukrainia, an energy company making at least $50,000 a month despite no prior experience in the industry.

A Federalist analysis of Hunter Biden’s pay (https://tinyurl.com/ssp8cdc) reveals just how much the former vice president’s son was being showered in excess compensation. Hunter Biden was paid at least twice the amount of board members at comparable corporations. At Exxon Mobil, a global energy company dwarfing Burisma in size and earnings, its board members only made little more than half of Hunter Biden’s reported payout.

Hunter Biden also served on the board of a trade coalition that sought additional aid to Ukraine from the United States while his father remained the key figure in the White House dictating policy towards the eastern European nation, according to Daily Caller reporting last month.

From 2012 to 2018, Hunter Biden was on the board of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) which lobbied the U.S. government for increased Ukrainian spending and assistance.

Since it seems most politicians leave office far more wealthy then when they were elected, the success of other Biden kin are ignore here. The Internet is replete with Biden stories.

 


 

PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.

Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.

Web sites (URLs) beginning https://tinyurl.com/ are generated by the free Tiny URL utility and reduce lengthy URLs to manageable size.

 

Comment on Real Joe Biden

Opuscula

Who is the real
Joe Biden who
Wants your vote