Judge allows clinic to evade consequences of dangerous health violations

CHICAGO, Feb. 11, 2014 /Christian Newswire/ – Today, Thomas More Society attorneys along with Illinois Right to Life issued a women’s public health memorandum demanding the Illinois Attorney General’s office appeal Judge Alexander White’s decision to permit a $ 77 payment to satisfy the Illinois Department of Public Health’s $ 36,000 fine against Women’s Aid Clinic.

According to the women’s public health memo, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) conducted its first health inspection in 15 years of Women’s Aid Clinic on September 9, 2011. Following the inspection, the IDPH shut down the women’s clinic on an emergency basis, assessing countless sanitary violations. Some of these violations included storing frozen tv dinners in the same biohazard refrigerator as eight containers of fetal tissue. All five recovery rooms contained rust and nearly twenty medication cups with Motrin and Tylenol also had crumbs in them. A technician was observed by inspectors as “retrieving a paper towel from a garbage receptacle and using the same paper towel to cover a tray that would serve food items to patients.” The IDPH inspection report also cited the women’s clinic for failing to perform CPR on a girl who died following an abortion.

“The women of Illinois deserve well-kept and sanitary health centers, not substandard ones,” said Emily Zender, executive director of Illinois Right to Life. “We demand the Illinois Attorney General’s office treat women better by holding this women’s health center fully accountable for abusing their female patients. Failure to appeal the ruling effectively creates get-out-of-jail-free cards that allow health centers to skirt fines by playing Chicago-style politics with women’s health.”

According to the memo, after the IDPH inspection and assessment of fines, Women’s Aid Clinic owner Larisa Rozansky informed the IDPH that “…Women’s Aid Clinic, IDPH LIC. NO. 7001647 will be closing as of November 10, 2011.” However, the memo details evidence that Rozansky closed Women’s Aid Clinic only to promptly open Women’s Aid Center in its place — at the same address, with the same phone number, and using the same website.

“Compelling evidence makes it clear that Women’s Aid Clinic is attempting to duck responsibility for their flagrant disregard for women’s safety simply by making a minor, technical change to their name,” said Jocelyn Floyd, an attorney for the Thomas More Society. “How can the women of this state trust the Illinois Department of Public Health to protect female patients if the consequences for not meeting Illinois’ medical standards are just brushed aside?”

According to the public health memorandum, strongly persuasive evidence was produced to Judge Alexander White that Women’s Aid Clinic changed its name and filed a new business registration to avoid paying the sanitary violation fines. However, the women’s health center’s attempt to skirt the law was ignored and its fine was reduced to $ 77, which was the amount claimed to be remaining in the bank account on the entity.

The Illinois Attorney General has until February 13, 2014, to appeal Judge Alexander’s January 14 ruling that allows a $ 77 payment to suffice for $ 36,000 worth of violations.

Conservative Daily News

Judge allows clinic to evade consequences of dangerous health violations

Unintended Consequences

One of the many unintended consequences of the political crusade for increased homeownership among minorities, and low-income people in general, has been a housing boom and bust that left many foreclosed homes that had to be rented, because there were no longer enough qualified buyers.

The repercussions did not stop there. Many homeowners have discovered that when renters replace homeowners as their neighbors, the neighborhood as a whole can suffer.

The physical upkeep of the neighborhood, on which everyone’s home values depend, tends to decline. “Who’s going to paint the outside of a rented house?” one resident was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times story.

Renters also tend to be of a lower socioeconomic level than homeowners. They are also less likely to join neighborhood groups, including neighborhood watches to keep an eye out for crime. In some cases, renters have introduced unsavory or illegal activities into family-oriented communities of homeowners that had not had such activities before.

None of this should be surprising. Individuals and groups of all sorts have always differed from one another in many ways, throughout centuries of history and in countries around the world. Left to themselves, people tend to sort themselves out into communities of like-minded neighbors.

This has been so obvious that only the intelligentsia could misconstrue it — and only ideologues could devote themselves to crusading against people’s efforts to live and associate with other people who share their values and habits.

Quite aside from the question of whose values and habits may be better is the question of the effects of people living cheek by jowl with other people who put very different values on noise, politeness, education and other things that make for good or bad relations between neighbors. People with children to protect are especially concerned about who lives next door or down the street.

But such mundane matters often get brushed aside by ideological crusaders out to change the world to fit their own vision. When the world fails to conform to their vision, then it seems obvious to the ideologues that it is the world that is wrong, not that their vision is uninformed or unrealistic.

One of the political consequences of such attitudes is the current crusade of Attorney General Eric Holder to force various communities to become more “inclusive” in terms of which races and classes of people they contain.

Undaunted by a long history of disasters when third parties try to mix and match people, or prescribe what kind of housing is best, they act as if this time it has to work.

It doesn’t matter how many government housing projects that began with lofty rhetoric and heady visions have ended with these expensive projects being demolished with explosives, in the wake of social catastrophes that made these places unlivable.

To those with the crusading mentality, failure only means that they should try, try again — at other people’s expense, including not only the taxpayers but also those who lives have been disrupted, or even made miserable and dangerous, by previous bright ideas of third parties who pay no price for being wrong.

This headstrong dogmatism and grab for power is not confined to housing. Attorney General Holder is also taking legal action against the state of Louisiana for having so many charter schools, on grounds that these schools do not mix and match the races the way that public schools are supposed to.

The fact that those charter schools which are successful in educating low-income and minority students that the public schools fail to educate are giving these youngsters a shot at a decent life that they are not likely to get elsewhere does not deter the ideological crusaders.

Nor does it deter the politicians who are serving the interests of the teachers’ unions, who see public schools as places to provide jobs for their members, even if that means a poor education and poor prospects in life for generations of minority students.

All this ideological self-indulgence and cynical political activity is washed down with lofty rhetoric about “compassion,” “inclusion” and the like. 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Unintended Consequences

Unintended Consequences

One of the many unintended consequences of the political crusade for increased homeownership among minorities, and low-income people in general, has been a housing boom and bust that left many foreclosed homes that had to be rented, because there were no longer enough qualified buyers.

The repercussions did not stop there. Many homeowners have discovered that when renters replace homeowners as their neighbors, the neighborhood as a whole can suffer.

The physical upkeep of the neighborhood, on which everyone’s home values depend, tends to decline. “Who’s going to paint the outside of a rented house?” one resident was quoted as saying in a recent New York Times story.

Renters also tend to be of a lower socioeconomic level than homeowners. They are also less likely to join neighborhood groups, including neighborhood watches to keep an eye out for crime. In some cases, renters have introduced unsavory or illegal activities into family-oriented communities of homeowners that had not had such activities before.

None of this should be surprising. Individuals and groups of all sorts have always differed from one another in many ways, throughout centuries of history and in countries around the world. Left to themselves, people tend to sort themselves out into communities of like-minded neighbors.

This has been so obvious that only the intelligentsia could misconstrue it — and only ideologues could devote themselves to crusading against people’s efforts to live and associate with other people who share their values and habits.

Quite aside from the question of whose values and habits may be better is the question of the effects of people living cheek by jowl with other people who put very different values on noise, politeness, education and other things that make for good or bad relations between neighbors. People with children to protect are especially concerned about who lives next door or down the street.

But such mundane matters often get brushed aside by ideological crusaders out to change the world to fit their own vision. When the world fails to conform to their vision, then it seems obvious to the ideologues that it is the world that is wrong, not that their vision is uninformed or unrealistic.

One of the political consequences of such attitudes is the current crusade of Attorney General Eric Holder to force various communities to become more “inclusive” in terms of which races and classes of people they contain.

Undaunted by a long history of disasters when third parties try to mix and match people, or prescribe what kind of housing is best, they act as if this time it has to work.

It doesn’t matter how many government housing projects that began with lofty rhetoric and heady visions have ended with these expensive projects being demolished with explosives, in the wake of social catastrophes that made these places unlivable.

To those with the crusading mentality, failure only means that they should try, try again — at other people’s expense, including not only the taxpayers but also those who lives have been disrupted, or even made miserable and dangerous, by previous bright ideas of third parties who pay no price for being wrong.

This headstrong dogmatism and grab for power is not confined to housing. Attorney General Holder is also taking legal action against the state of Louisiana for having so many charter schools, on grounds that these schools do not mix and match the races the way that public schools are supposed to.

The fact that those charter schools which are successful in educating low-income and minority students that the public schools fail to educate are giving these youngsters a shot at a decent life that they are not likely to get elsewhere does not deter the ideological crusaders.

Nor does it deter the politicians who are serving the interests of the teachers’ unions, who see public schools as places to provide jobs for their members, even if that means a poor education and poor prospects in life for generations of minority students.

All this ideological self-indulgence and cynical political activity is washed down with lofty rhetoric about “compassion,” “inclusion” and the like. 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Unintended Consequences

McConnell: President, Congressional Dems Need To Explain Obamacare Consequences

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the need for the President and Senate Democrats to explain the consequences of Obamacare to the American people instead of spending millions on a campaign-style P.R. blitz:

“Last year, President Obama was asked about the lessons he had learned from his first term. Instead of focusing on errors in judgment or policy, he seemed to indicate that he really just needed to do a better job of telling ‘a story to the American people.’

“In other words, the policy was fine. And if Americans didn’t get it, it’s because they had a listening problem.

“Well, that’s an attitude that has really come to define the Administration. And that’s why folks will be rallying on the Capitol grounds today. They, like a growing number of Americans, are losing faith in government – they think it’s working against them, not for them.

“For good reason. Take Obamacare. This law has been pretty unpopular for several years now. And it’s not like the American people haven’t been exposed – probably overexposed – to the arguments on both sides of the issue.

“Obamacare must have been discussed hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of times over the past few years. That includes political debates. More speeches than any of us care to count. Issue ads, both pro and con. And guess what? Americans still don’t like the idea of Obamacare. Not because they’re unable to understand, or because they just haven’t ‘seen the right messaging.’

“It’s because most of them like their health plan and want to keep it. It’s because they don’t want to pay more to the health insurance companies. And it’s because they just don’t think the law is going to work as promised. And yet, the Washington Democrats’ explanation for Obamacare’s enduring unpopularity still seems to be that the law is just too complicated for their constituents to understand. And the Washington Democrat solution seems to be not to actually change the policy, but to spend millions in a campaign-style P.R. blitz.

“News flash: If you still don’t think Americans are able to understand a law you passed more than three years ago, then there’s something wrong with your law – not with the American people.

“Instead of going around the country trying to convince Americans why they’re wrong, the Administration could actually listen for a change. I think they should start over on health care and embrace the types of common-sense, step-by-step reforms that would actually lower costs. But I won’t hold my breath for that.

“So, at a minimum, they at least need to do this: the President, members of his Cabinet, and the Congressional Democrats who voted for this law need to get out and explain to Americans what’s headed their way. Not feed them the sunny picture painted in the Obamacare ads that the President’s campaign team is running, but actually explain the reality of the situation to them.

“For instance, Americans need to know about the coming wave of premium hikes. We’ve already seen projected double-digit increases in some states. They need to know we’re likely to see even more Americans lose the health care they want to keep, just like the thousands of Californians who will probably have to look for new plans after Aetna pulled out of the individual market in their state – likely because of Obamacare. And they need to know that they could lose their jobs, or see their hours cut, or struggle to find work in the first place. In fact, a recent survey showed that about 70 percent of small businesses say the law will make it harder to hire.

“Americans need to know all of these things, because they need to prepare for them. And it’s supremely unhelpful when the President claims that those who already have health care won’t see changes, as he did a few weeks ago. He knows that’s not what many experts are saying. And he owes it to the country to be frank about that.

“So it’s time to get off the campaign trail. Call off the P.R. spinmeisters. Put down the communications plan. It’s time to level with the American people.”

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McConnell: President, Congressional Dems Need To Explain Obamacare Consequences