Mahony voting for a new pope rankles some Catholics

Nearly two weeks ago, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced he had removed Cardinal Roger Mahony from all public duties amid revelations that he plotted to conceal child molestation by priests from law enforcement.

But Mahony on Monday found himself back at the center of church business, as one of 117 cardinals who will elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.

Mahony was quick to weigh in on the papal news — posting a statement on his online blog at 8:38 a.m., two hours before the archdiocese announced that Gomez would issue his own remarks at the midday Mass at the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

In the posting, Mahony called Benedict an "extraordinary" successor to St. Peter and that he intended to participate in choosing the next pontiff.

"I look forward to traveling to Rome soon to help thank Pope Benedict XVI for his gifted service to the Church, and to participate in the Conclave to elect his successor," Mahony wrote.

Benedict's unexpected decision to step down created a seemingly awkward situation in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which is reeling over newly released documents showing how church leaders handled the abuse cases. Documents show that Mahony and Bishop Thomas Curry worked to shield abusers from police. Both have since issued detailed apologies.

Gomez wrote in a letter to parishioners last month that the priest files were "brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil. There is no excuse, no explaining away what happened to these children."

Gomez wrote that Mahony, his predecessor as leader of the archdiocese, "has expressed his sorrow for his failure to fully protect young people entrusted to his care. Effective immediately, I have informed Cardinal Mahony that he will no longer have any administrative or public duties." A church spokesman later clarified that Mahony remained a priest "in good standing" and that he maintained all his powers as a cardinal.

Mahony is one of 11 U.S. cardinals who will vote for the next pope.

Father Thomas Rausch of Loyola Marymount University said Mahony has no choice in the matter: Church law requires him to vote, along with all cardinals under age 80, he said.

"It is a sacred responsibility of every cardinal of the church who is able to attend the conclave to vote," said Tod Tamberg, archdiocese spokesman.

Still, Mahony's role in selecting a pope drew mixed reactions among Catholics in Southern California.

Manuel Vega, a retired Oxnard police officer who as an altar boy was molested from the age of 12 to 15 by Father Fidencio Silva, said Mahony would bring shame on the Catholic Church by going to Rome to vote.

"Mahony is going without clean hands. His hands are dirty ... from covering up years of sexual abuse. How can he be part of the conclave?" Vega asked.

Other Catholics said they were pleased that Mahony would be voting. They said they hoped that he would bring a more liberal and American point of view to the conclave, which will be dominated by the conservative cardinals whom Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have appointed over the last three decades.

Jane Argento, a parishioner at Holy Family Church in South Pasadena, said she was livid at Mahony when she read about his actions after the archdiocese's release of sex abuse documents. But she said the relatively liberal Mahony reflected her own Catholic convictions about larger roles for women in the church, among other issues. Mahony, she said, was the architect of a pastoral associate program in Los Angeles that had trained several women to run parishes, including her own.

"I'm relieved that Mahony is going," Argento said. "Frankly, it's one more vote for a more progressive church."

Larry Loughlin, 77, a parishioner and social worker, said it was reasonable that Mahony vote, given church rules, and that he was not the only cardinal accused of failing to remove predatory priests from churches and schools. Others include Cardinal Justin Regali, who was accused of ignoring evidence of sex abuse, including rape, in the Philadelphia archdiocese before retiring in 2011.

"Mahony is not the only cardinal to be accused of protecting priests, it is a worldwide crisis," Loughlin said.

Parishioners who attended Monday's midday Mass at the downtown cathedral said they were saddened by news of Benedict's resignation but hailed it as a chance to renew a church still suffering from the repercussions of the abuse scandals. The scandals also appeared to be on the mind of Gomez, who celebrated the Mass and called for prayer "for anyone who has been hurt by a member of the church" and for "the healing for wounds and restoration of trust."

Read More..

Bloomberg Lauds Companies for Cutting Salt Content

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in the midst of a long-running campaign to change the eating habits of New Yorkers and consumers across the country, declared a victory against salt on Monday, as 21 companies, from Kraft and Goya to FreshDirect, said they had met the first stage in reductions in salt content in foods.

After focusing on reducing trans fats and smoking, Mr. Bloomberg turned his attention to salt in 2010, announcing that about 30 companies had signed up to reduce salt in foods by 25 percent within five years, as a way of lowering consumers’ blood pressure and saving lives lost to heart attack and stroke.

“These companies have a huge presence on our shelves and in our diets,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall as he announced the results, surrounded by a half-dozen executives of food companies.

The first stage focused on the low-hanging fruit — salsa, dips, bacon, ketchup, barbecue sauce, cold cuts, processed cheese, salad dressing, canned beans and pizza — foods whose salt content is so high that reducing it up to a point probably would not be noticed by many consumers.

Mr. Bloomberg called them “some of America’s most beloved and iconic foods,” suggesting that the cuts might have a disproportionately salutary effect. But Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said he did not know how much salt the results so far had removed from the average person’s diet.

One side effect of the salt reduction drive is that food companies are looking for salt substitutes to make food taste better.

The main way to do that is to add potassium chloride instead of sodium chloride, said Russ Moroz, vice president for research at Kraft Foods. But because potassium tends to have a bitter, mineral taste, other ingredients have to be added. He said these were proprietary secrets, and he declined to name them.

Potassium is good, Dr. Farley said, because it lowers blood pressure and most people do not get enough of it. It is removed from fruits and vegetable during processing, he said. Mr. Bloomberg said he thought fears of additives were overdone.

But a salt industry scientist said Monday that too much potassium could be bad for the kidneys, and that the “cocktail of chemical constituents” added to balance the bitterness and enhance the salty taste could present unknown risks, as those ingredients were undisclosed.

“They do it with one eye on the lab and the other eye on the label,” said Morton Satin, vice president for science and research at the Salt Institute, a trade association. “They make sure it’s below the level that the F.D.A. requires for it to be on the label.”

Mr. Satin said that the link between high blood pressure and salt was just “a theory,” and that reducing salt too much could have harmful effects, like iodine deficiency in children, a cause of mental retardation, and diabetes.

Some companies said reducing salt proved to be a popular marketing tool. Goya reported that it had reduced salt in its regular canned beans by 5 or 6 percent, without any drop in sales. “We tasted them, and you really wouldn’t notice the difference,” Joseph Perez, senior vice president of Goya Foods, said Monday.

Mr. Bloomberg said it might surprise many people to know that bread and rolls were the “biggest contributor” to salt in the diet. Eating a muffin, he said, could be worse than eating a small bag of Lays potato chips.

Bread makers are hard to spot on the list of companies that have pledged to reduce salt, perhaps, Mr. Satin said, because it is more difficult to make bread without salt. However, some companies, like Au Bon Pain, have reduced salt in some baked goods.

On an irreverent note, Mr. Bloomberg said that he loved Subway sandwiches and would eat his favorite, the Italian B.M.T. — it includes salami, pepperoni and ham — regardless of the salt content, but that he was glad that it now contained 27 percent less.

Read More..

DealBook: S.E.C. Nominee Mary Jo White Discloses Law Firm Wealth

It is no secret that the partners at the white-shoe law firms Debevoise & Plimpton and Cravath, Swaine & Moore earn a decent living. The financial disclosure form of Mary Jo White, the Obama administration’s pick to become the next chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, reveals just how decent.

Ms. White and her husband, John White, have amassed at least $16 million, according to the filing. Ms. White, 65, heads the litigation department at Debevoise; Mr. White, 65, is co-chairman of the corporate governance practice at Cravath.

As part of her disclosures, Ms. White also explained how she would deal with potential conflicts of interest. In a surprise move, she wrote that her husband would convert his partnership at Cravath from equity to nonequity status.

While many large corporate law firms have nonequity partners, meaning they hold the title of partner but have no ownership stake, each of Cravath’s 87 partners has equity in the firm. As a nonequity partner, Mr. White will receive a fixed salary and an annual performance bonus, according to the filing.

Ms. White also said that, for the time she serves as the S.E.C.’s chairwoman, Mr. White would not communicate with the commission on behalf of Cravath or any client in connection with rules proposed by the S.E.C. Such a restriction is not immaterial for Cravath, as Mr. White has vast experience in securities law and deep connections to the S.E.C., having served as the director of the commission’s corporation finance unit from 2006 to 2008.

The disclosure form contained a number of other revelations. Mr. White has investments in three hedge funds, including a vehicle managed by Och-Ziff, a large publicly traded investment firm started by a former Goldman Sachs partner. He will divest his interest in all three funds upon her confirmation, according to the filing.

The couple also owns 40 acres of farmland and unsold crops in Pocahontas County, Iowa, that are valued at $100,000 to $250,000.

As for Ms. White, a former United States attorney in Manhattan, she received more than $2.4 million as a Debevoise partner last year, according to the filing. And she said that she planned to retire as a Debevoise partner upon becoming S.E.C. chairwoman, at which point she would enjoy the benefits of the firm’s lucrative retirement plan. The disclosure says that Ms. White will receive a monthly lifetime retirement payment of $42,500, amounting to $510,000 annually.

However, instead of making a monthly retirement payment for the next four years while she runs the commission, Debevoise will make a lump-sum payment within 60 days of her appointment, the filing disclosed.

The Whites’ net worth is most likely far greater than $16 million, which represents the low number in a range of possible amounts. Government officials are required to disclose their net worth only within broad ranges.

For instance, the Whites own seven different investments — including a Vanguard high yield bond fund and a Vanguard emerging markets fund — worth $1 million to $5 million. At the low end, those seven funds would be worth $7 million; but at the high end, they would be valued at $35 million.

Ms. White also said that she would avoid some matters for a period of time that involve her former clients, a list that includes JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and UBS.

Read More..

Venice program gives the homeless a place to keep belongings

Bone-chilling fog swirled along Venice Beach one recent afternoon when Robert and Nani Valencia and Ana Maria Reyes stopped by the long, metal storage container beside the sand.

After they showed IDs and claim checks, a volunteer wheeled out two blue recycling bins in which the three recent arrivals from Texas had stashed their suitcases. They pulled out toiletries, sweaters and blankets and stuffed them into reusable grocery bags.

"It makes us feel a lot better to store our things here," said Nani Valencia, 37. "When you have all your [suitcases] with you, people treat you like you have rabies."

With bags in hand, she, her husband and his 64-year-old mother joined dozens of others waiting for a bus to take them to a shelter. The three would rest, eat dinner and have a shower that night at the West Los Angeles National Guard Armory on Federal Avenue; most of their meager possessions would remain locked up at the beach.

In the wake of court rulings that bar cities from randomly seizing and destroying homeless people's property, communities such as Venice are seeking long-term storage options to keep their streets and alleys clean.

"We're not going to let [homeless people] keep items on the beach anymore," said Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents Venice. "We're going to bag and tag [them]. We want to make it inconvenient but within the law."

Contributing to the problem was a rule governing use of the city's Westside winter shelter.

Homeless individuals who choose to sleep at the shelter are allowed to take with them only the items they can carry on their laps. And some were reluctant to leave their possessions for fear they would be stolen or seized. That meant many of the shelter's 160 beds went unused.

Rosendahl and a local social services agency — Venice Community Housing Corp. — launched a pilot program late last month called Check-in Storage. The initiative allows individuals to store personal belongings in the container for a week at a time and retrieve them between 3 and 5 p.m. daily. (The program is slated to end March 1, when the shelter closes.)

To publicize the service, volunteers and social service agencies distributed bright orange fliers: "If your stuff will fit into a big trash can," they read, "bring it to our storage container." The flier noted that the program would not accept medicine, identification, weapons or "anything illegal."

The storage option, said Steve Clare, executive director of Venice Community Housing, is modeled on successful programs in downtown L.A.'s skid row and cities including San Francisco, San Diego and Costa Mesa.

In September, a federal appeals court ruled in a lawsuit filed against the city of Los Angeles that seizing and destroying property left temporarily unattended on public sidewalks was unconstitutional. Personal possessions may be removed only if the items pose an immediate threat to public safety or health or constitute criminal evidence, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found.

Even then, the city must notify owners where they can pick up their property.

On the afternoon the Valencias and Reyes retrieved some items, about half of the 25 bins were in use. Also there for safekeeping was a Schwinn bicycle. Its owner, Love Sha Un of Nigeria, came by to check on his $215 purchase and thank the volunteers. Without the storage option, he said, "it might have gone missing."

Not everyone is pleased with the program.

Mark Ryavec, a Venice resident who lobbied against overnight parking by RV dwellers, said the city should have sought a permit from the California Coastal Commission before plopping a storage container at the beach. Marc Saltzberg, vice president of the Venice Neighborhood Council, said the program was implemented without a public process that would have enabled residents and other interested parties to weigh in.

Rosendahl said he hoped to notify street denizens of a new location by the end of February and have a new program up and running by March. He said he was working with the Los Angeles city attorney's office to ensure that any seizures of items would be done legally.

martha.groves@latimes.com

Read More..

150 Boom Boxes and the Best Dance Party You've Never Been To

Finding the right place to stage a Decentralized Dance Party is more art than science. Which is why Gary Lachance is standing against a railing near San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, looking perplexed. It’s nearly midnight and he’s just beginning what will be an all-night search of the city, looking for locations to flood with revelers for tomorrow night’s mobile bash. He might be tired—he just arrived in California today after a brutal 50-hour RV drive from Houston—but that doesn’t change the fact that he has less than 24 hours to find locations and plan a route. The wharf is just one of the possible stops as the party snakes through the city.

The sounds of foghorns and sea lions ripple through the darkness. He stares at the empty wharf, visualizing an ocean of revelers swarming it tomorrow night. His mind brushes past possible logistical snags until it sticks on one in particular. “Too many sea lions,” he says.

As coinventor of what is officially known as Tom and Gary’s Decentralized Dance Party, Lachance has to balance the meticulousness of an urban planner with the conviviality of a good host. Since 2009 he’s held more than 50 semi-spontaneous outdoor throw-downs in major cities, insisting on a leave-no-trace ethos, noise complaints and perturbed marine mammals included. It looks like Pier 39 won’t make the cut after all. Lachance gets back on his bike, as do his ridemates—a group of superpowered partyers who help scout locations in each city and keep the events running smoothly. They’re called the Elite Banana Task Force. And, yes, they wear banana suits. “It’s impossible to have a bad time in a banana suit,” Lachance says.

If you flipped on the local news last year, you may have caught snippets of DDP’s latest exploits. Its goal: to free us from our humdrum nightlife. In Austin, a partygoer dressed in a lab coat leans into the YNN news camera: “I could be spending $30 going to a bar and doing the same-old, same-old,” he says in a hoarse voice. “This is something different. This is something new. And it’s free!” In the video, you can see people carrying daisy-chained boom boxes, their tuner knobs duct-taped into place to ensure that all stay locked to a vacant radio frequency. That’s what lets them groove to the crowd-fueled PA system: volumes cranked, the DDP’s pirate radio broadcasts anything from booty bass to Jimmy Soul’s “If You Wanna Be Happy.”

“Nightclubs are too forced,” says Kyle Del Bonis, who attended a New Year’s Eve DDP in LA. “Most DJs sit around like lumps, unengaged with their audience.” Decentralized Dance Parties attempt to subvert that formula utterly, burning the velvet rope and bringing the inside out. What makes them sustainable for the organizers, though, is how mobile they are. Once DDP arrives in a city—heralded by Twitter and Facebook and with travel costs underwritten via Kickstarter or Indiegogo crowdfunding—the nerve center of the operation can be carried by a single person. A high-powered FM transmitter hooks into an antenna, which in turn is rigged to a backpack. Inside is a vintage disco mixer (held in place with a rubber band), mic receivers, a 12-volt battery, and a separate Ramsey FM transmitter—and a blue slipper “for good luck.”

And all of it is controlled (symbolically) by a Nintendo Power Glove—an old-school videogame peripheral that is as revered by nostalgic ’80s babies as it was ignored in its day. Over the years, the Power Glove has become a symbol of DDP’s abandon. The glove was at a DDP when people skied down subway escalators and when DDP-goers swarmed ferryboats with pogo sticks and trampolines. It was there in February 2011, coaxing 20,000 Canadians out of taverns onto Vancouver’s streets. And it’ll be here tomorrow night when DDP’s San Francisco party—the theme is “strictly business”—hits the streets.

Right now, though, Ryan Stomberg bikes alongside Lachance on Market Street’s sidewalk. A guy named Tom Kuzma was Lachance’s original partner and cofounder. But after they had a falling-out, a different person took over the role of “Tom”—the 27-year-old Stomberg is the third. (Lachance looks to be in his thirties but will give his age only as “18 till I die.”) Stomberg’s orange flannel fanny pack—the JammyPack—plays music continuously amid the gentle hum of the overnight street sweepers. He points northeast. “I don’t think we’re gonna have any problem parading down that block,” he says. Farther east is the contorted Lego-block sculpture and fountain in Justin Herman Plaza, the party’s intended endpoint. Lachance computes all of this, and the Bananas ride on. Thanks in no small part to this type of extensive preparty legwork, DDP has had no difficulty with law enforcement—indeed, officers often end up escorting the crowd along city streets. “Cops expect to find a Jäger-guzzling frat boy leading this,” says Lachance’s friend Kerry Leonard, another Banana. Instead they find a deep-thinking Canadian whose vision of street-level abandon is part of what he calls a “Libertarian mindset” about how the world should be.

Pages: 1 2 View All

Read More..

Taylor Swift kicks off Grammys, Adele wins best pop solo award

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country-pop singer Taylor Swift brought the circus to the Grammy stage on Sunday, kicking off the annual awards with a lively performance and British singer Adele picked up the show’s first award.

The Black Keys, Skrillex and Gotye started the night strong, each picking up multiple awards prior to the televised ceremony.

The 55th Grammy Awards will hand out their gramophone-shaped trophies in more than 80 categories, but only a handful of winners are announced during the three-hour live telecast airing on CBS. More than 60 categories were announced prior to the televised show.

The top categories are dominated this year by male artists, with British folk band Mumford & Sons, indie-pop trio FUN. and R&B singer Frank Ocean going into the show with six nominations each, including Album of the Year.

Swift kicked off the live telecast dressed as a ringmaster with a circus-themed performance of her infectious chart-topping hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” backed by dancers in jester and acrobat costumes.

The 23-year-old singer picked up an early Grammy for her collaboration with T-Bone Burnett and The Civil Wars on the song “Safe and Sound” from “The Hunger Games” movie soundtrack.

Britain’s Adele, 24, who swept the Grammys with six major awards last year, landed another this year for Best Pop Solo Performance for her live rendition of “Set Fire to The Rain.”

The singer recognized the other female nominees in the audience, saying, “We work so hard, we make it look so easy.”

Presenting the award, rapper Pitbull joked that Jennifer Lopez, who joined him onstage in an asymmetric dress with a daring slit up to the top of her thigh, “inspired the memo,” referring to an advisory issued by CBS asking all performers and presenters to keep their breasts, buttocks and genitals covered.

VETERANS AND NEWCOMERS

The Grammys have a reputation for pairing up old-timers and newcomers, and this year had several collaborations.

Veteran Elton John took the stage with rising British star Ed Sheeran, 21, to sing a stripped down duet of “The A Team,” Sheeran’s song for which he’s nominated in the Song of the Year category.

One of the night’s leading nominees, New York indie-pop trio FUN., lived up to their name with a performance of “Carry On,” while rain fell on stage, soaking the band as they played.

The band, which received six nominations, was the only act to be nominated in the top four categories of Album, Song and Record of the Year and Best New Artist.

Rockers The Black Keys, formed by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, started the night strong, picking up two Grammys – Best Rock Album for “El Camino” and Best Rock Song for “Lonely Boy.” Auerbach was also named the Producer of the Year in the non-classical category.

The band went into the night with five nominations, including top categories Album of the Year and Record of the Year.

British folk band Mumford & Sons went into Sunday’s awards with a leading six nominations. They picked up one win for Best Long Form Music Video for “Big Easy Express,” a collaboration with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and Old Crow Medicine Show.

Australian singer Gotye, 32, picked up two Grammys for Best Alternative Album for “Making Mirrors” and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Somebody That I Used To Know” featuring Kimbra.

DJ Skrillex, 25, who won three Grammy awards last year, picked up three more, including Best Dance/Electronica Album for “Bangarang.”

Jay-Z and Kanye West picked up two awards, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song for their collaboration “N****s in Paris.” Jay-Z’s wife, Beyonce, won Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Love on Top.”

(Additional reporting by Nichola Groom and Sue Zeidler; Editing by Jill Serjeant, Peter Cooney and Stacey Joyce)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Taylor Swift kicks off Grammys, Adele wins best pop solo award
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/taylor-swift-kicks-off-grammys-adele-wins-best-pop-solo-award/
Link To Post : Taylor Swift kicks off Grammys, Adele wins best pop solo award
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

For Families Struggling with Mental Illness, Carolyn Wolf Is a Guide in the Darkness

When a life starts to unravel, where do you turn for help?

Melissa Klump began to slip in the eighth grade. She couldn’t focus in class, and in a moment of despair she swallowed 60 ibuprofen tablets. She was smart, pretty and ill: depression, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, either bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.

In her 20s, after a more serious suicide attempt, her parents sent her to a residential psychiatric treatment center, and from there to another. It was the treatment of last resort. When she was discharged from the second center last August after slapping another resident, her mother, Elisa Klump, was beside herself.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ”

That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

Carolyn Reinach Wolf is not a psychiatrist or a mental health professional, but a lawyer who has carved out what she says is a unique niche, working with families like the Klumps.

One in 17 American adults suffers from a severe mental illness, and the systems into which they are plunged — hospitals, insurance companies, courts, social services — can be fragmented and overwhelming for families to manage. The recent shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., have brought attention to the need for intervention to prevent such extreme acts of violence, which are rare. But for the great majority of families watching their loved ones suffer, and often suffering themselves, the struggle can be boundless, with little guidance along the way.

“If you Google ‘mental health lawyer,’ ” said Ms. Wolf, a partner with Abrams & Fensterman, “I’m kinda the only game in town.”

On a recent afternoon, she described in her Midtown office the range of her practice.

“We have been known to pull people out of crack dens,” she said. “I have chased people around hotels all over the city with the N.Y.P.D. and my team to get them to a hospital. I had a case years ago where the person was on his way back from Europe, and the family was very concerned that he was symptomatic. I had security people meet him at J.F.K.”

Many lawyers work with mentally ill people or their families, but Ron Honberg, the national director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he did not know of another lawyer who did what Ms. Wolf does: providing families with a team of psychiatrists, social workers, case managers, life coaches, security guards and others, and then coordinating their services. It can be a lifeline — for people who can afford it, Mr. Honberg said. “Otherwise, families have to do this on their own,” he said. “It’s a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week job, and for some families it never ends.”

Many of Ms. Wolf’s clients declined to be interviewed for this article, but the few who spoke offered an unusual window on the arcane twists and turns of the mental health care system, even for families with money. Their stories illustrate how fraught and sometimes blind such a journey can be.

One rainy morning last month, Lance Sheena, 29, sat with his mother in the spacious family room of her Long Island home. Mr. Sheena was puffy-eyed and sporadically inattentive; the previous night, at the group home where he has been living since late last summer, another resident had been screaming incoherently and was taken away by the police. His mother, Susan Sheena, eased delicately into the family story.

“I don’t talk to a lot of people because they don’t get it,” Ms. Sheena said. “They mean well, but they don’t get it unless they’ve been through a similar experience. And anytime something comes up, like the shooting in Newtown, right away it goes to the mentally ill. And you think, maybe we shouldn’t be so public about this, because people are going to be afraid of us and Lance. It’s a big concern.”

Her son cut her off. “Are you comparing me to the guy that shot those people?”

“No, I’m saying that anytime there’s a shooting, like in Aurora, that’s when these things come out in the news.”

“Did you really just compare me to that guy?”

“No, I didn’t compare you.”

“Then what did you say?”

Read More..

Wave of Investor Fraud Extends to Ordinary Retirement Savers

Regulators across the country are confronting a wave of investor fraud that is saddling retirement savers with steep losses on complex products that until a few years ago were pitched only to the most sophisticated investors.

Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times

Mary Beck and her husband invested $470,000 in a part ownership of a fleet of luxury cars, a venture that later went bankrupt.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Jeremy C. Stein, a Federal Reserve governor.

The victims are among the millions of Americans whose mutual funds and stock portfolios plummeted in the wake of the financial crisis, and who started searching for ways to make better returns than those being offered by bank deposits and government bonds with minuscule interest rates.

Tens of thousands of them put money into speculative bets promoted by aggressive financial advisers. The investments include private loans to young companies like television production firms and shares in bundles of commercial real estate properties.

Those alternative investments have now had time to go sour in big numbers, state and federal securities regulators say, and are making up a majority of complaints and prosecutions.

“Since the crisis, we’ve seen more and more people reaching out into different types of exotic investments that are a big concern to us,” said William F. Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth.

Last Wednesday, Mr. Galvin’s office ordered one of the nation’s largest brokerage firms, LPL Financial, to pay $2.5 million for improperly selling the real estate bundles, known as nontraded REITs, or real estate investment trusts, to hundreds of state residents from 2006 to 2009, in some cases overloading clients’ accounts with them.

LPL said it agreed, as part of the settlement, to reform its process for selling such alternative investments.

There are few good statistics on the extent of the problem nationally. But cases are mounting in the offices of regulators like A. Heath Abshure, the securities commissioner in Arkansas, where a majority of the 66 open securities cases involve complex investments sold to less sophisticated investors looking for a steady return.

J. Bradley Bennett, chief of enforcement at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, Wall Street’s self-regulatory group, said that for the last two years, 10 staff members have looked at the “proliferation of these products, to understand how they are being sold.”

“It’s got our attention,” he said. “We recognize the trends.”

Brokers promoting bad investments to unsophisticated investors is nothing new. But while the easy prey used to be people looking to get rich quick, the pool has widened to include savers looking for ways to earn the kind of income once reliably available from traditional investments.

Regulators are warning investors that the dangers are unlikely to recede, given the Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep interest rates near zero and the push among financial firms to earn more revenue from so-called alternative investments marketed to retail investors. Brokers are eager to sell these investments because they often bring in higher commissions than standard mutual funds and stocks.

The money that retail investors have in alternative investments in the United States, ranging from baskets of commodities to mutual funds that employ sophisticated trading, more than doubled from 2008 to 2012, to $712 billion from $312 billion, according to McKinsey & Company. Many of the products hold out the promise of higher returns while ostensibly being immune to the volatility of stock markets.

The phenomenon of investors’ actively moving money in pursuit of higher interest rates, known as chasing yield, is reverberating through the economy. Jeremy C. Stein, a Federal Reserve governor, said in a speech on Thursday that he worried that investors desperate for yield could be creating a bubble in widely available investments like junk bonds.

Mary Beck, a furniture business consultant in Pasadena, Calif., said that in 2008, as the stock investments in her husband’s I.R.A. began to fall quickly, the couple moved $470,000 to a new product recommended by their broker.

While the offering was unfamiliar — part ownership in a fleet of luxury cars — Ms. Beck bought the pitch because her broker had been around for years, and the product offered what seemed to be a modest annual interest rate of 7 percent.

“We knew that 12 percent wasn’t realistic, but 7 percent seemed realistic,” Ms. Beck said. “To us, it was a very conservative way to ensure that we’d increase our savings.”

Soon after they stopped receiving interest payments, the Becks lost their money when the venture went bankrupt in 2012. Ms. Beck and her husband have been reconfiguring their retirement and are planning to work longer.

Read More..

A delicate new balancing act in senior healthcare

When Claire Gordon arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, nurses knew she needed extra attention.

She was 96, had heart disease and a history of falls. Now she had pneumonia and the flu. A team of Cedars specialists converged on her case to ensure that a bad situation did not turn worse and that she didn't end up with a lengthy, costly hospital stay.

Frail seniors like Gordon account for a disproportionate share of healthcare expenditures because they are frequently hospitalized and often land in intensive care units or are readmitted soon after being released. Now the federal health reform law is driving sweeping changes in how hospitals treat a rapidly growing number of elderly patients.

The U.S. population is aging quickly: People older than 65 are expected to make up nearly 20% of it by 2030. Linda P. Fried, dean of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said now is the time to train professionals and test efforts to improve care and lower healthcare costs for elderly patients.

"It's incredibly important that we prepare for being in a society where there are a lot of older people," she said. "We have to do this type of experiment right now."

At Cedars-Sinai, where more than half the patients in the medical and surgical wards are 65 or older, one such effort is dubbed the "frailty project." Within 24 hours, nurses assess elderly patients for their risk of complications such as falls, bed sores and delirium. Then a nurse, social worker, pharmacist and physician assess the most vulnerable patients and make an action plan to help them.

The Cedars project stands out nationally because medical professionals are working together to identify high-risk patients at the front end of their hospitalizations to prevent problems at the back end, said Herb Schultz, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"For seniors, it is better care, it is high-quality care and it is peace of mind," he said.

The effort and others like it also have the potential to reduce healthcare costs by cutting preventable medical errors and readmissions, Schultz said. The federal law penalizes hospitals for both.

Gordon, an articulate woman with brightly painted fingernails and a sense of humor, arrived at Cedars-Sinai by ambulance on a Monday.

Soon, nurse Jacquelyn Maxton was at her bedside asking a series of questions to check for problems with sleep, diet and confusion. The answers led to Gordon's designation as a frail patient. The next day, the project team huddled down the hall and addressed her risks one by one. Medical staff would treat the flu and pneumonia while at the same time addressing underlying health issues that could extend Gordon's stay and slow her recovery, both in the hospital and after going home.

To reduce the chance of falls, nurses placed a yellow band on her wrist that read "fall risk" and ensured that she didn't get up on her own. To prevent bed sores, they got her up and moving as often as possible. To cut down on confusion, they reminded Gordon frequently where she was and made sure she got uninterrupted sleep. Medical staff also stopped a few unnecessary medications that Gordon had been prescribed before her admission, including a heavy narcotic and a sleeping pill.

"It is really a holistic approach to the patient, not just to the disease that they are in here for," said Glenn D. Braunstein, the hospital's vice president for clinical innovation.

Previously, nurse Ivy Dimalanta said, she and her colleagues provided similar care but on a much more random basis. Under the project, the care has become standardized.

The healthcare system has not been well designed to address the needs of seniors who may have had a lifetime of health problems, said Mary Naylor, gerontology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. As a result, patients sometimes fall through the cracks and return to hospitals again and again.

"That is not good for them and that is not good for society to be using resources in that way," Naylor said.

Using data from related projects, Cedars began a pilot program in 2011 and expanded it last summer. The research is continuing but early results suggest that the interventions are leading to fewer seniors being admitted to the intensive care unit and to shorter hospital stays, said Jeff Borenstein, researcher and lead clinician on the frailty project. "It definitely seems to be going in the right direction," he said.

The hospital is now working with Naylor and the University of Pennsylvania to design a program to help the patients once they go home.

"People who are frail are very vulnerable when they leave the hospital," said Harriet Udin Aronow, a researcher at Cedars. "We want to promote them being safe at home and continuing to recover."

In Gordon's case, she lives alone with the help of her children and a caregiver. The hospital didn't want her experiencing complications that would lengthen the stay, but they also didn't want to discharge her before she was ready. Under the health reform law, hospitals face penalties if patients come back too soon after being released.

Patients and their families often are unaware of the additional attention. Sitting in a chair in front of a vase of pink flowers, Gordon said she knew she would have to do her part to get out of the hospital quickly. "You have to move," she said. "I know you get bed sores if you stay in bed."

Gordon said she was comfortable at the hospital but she wanted to go back to her house as quickly as she could. "There's no place like home," she said.

Two days later, that's where she was.

anna.gorman@latimes.com

Read More..

DC Comics Turns the Occupy Movement Into a Superhero Title

Eighteen months after the phrase first entered the collective public consciousness, the plight of the 99 percent is coming to mainstream superhero comics — via a new series from the second biggest publisher in the American comic industry, which just happens to be a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation that makes around $12 billion a year. Irony, anybody?

In May, DC Comics will launch two new series taking place in their mainstream superhero universe that offer different insights into the class struggle in a world filled with superheroes, alien races and inexplicable events. The Green Team, written by Tiny Titans and Superman Family Adventures creators Art Baltazar and Franco, with art by Ig Guara, revives an obscure 1975 concept about teenage rich kids who try to make the world a better place with their outrageous wealth. In an interview promoting the series, Franco promised that it would address questions like “Can money make you happy?” and “If you had unlimited wealth, could you use that to make the lives of people better?”

Obviously, this is one of the more fanciful series DC will be publishing.

But while DC is promoting The Green Team series as the adventures of the “1%,” its companion title, The Movement, is teased as a chance for us to “Meet the 99%… They were the super-powered disenfranchised — now they’re the voice of the people!”

“It’s a book about power,” explained The Movement writer Gail Simone. “Who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse. As we increasingly move to an age where information is currency, you get these situations where a single viral video can cost a previously unassailable corporation billions, or can upset the power balance of entire governments. And because the sources of that information are so dispersed and nameless, it’s nearly impossible to shut it all down.”

“The thing I find fascinating and a little bit worrisome is, what happens when a hacktivist group whose politics you find completely repulsive has this same kind of power and influence,” she elaborated in an interview at Big Shiny Robot. “What if a racist or homophobic group rises up and organizes in the same manner?”

While the concept is ambitious, the idea that a comic capable of living up to the book’s populist inspiration could come from DC Entertainment still strikes some as unlikely. Matt Pizzolo, the editor of the Occupy Comics anthology, told Wired that “though DC Comics did help launch Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s seminal anarchist epic V For Vendetta over two decades ago, it’s unlikely they would do so today. Between dismantling Vertigo and frankensteining Watchmen, the past year has demonstrated DC isn’t a safe place for bold creators who want to tell the kinds of stories that would inspire things like Occupy, rather than just cash in on them.”

Still, Simone says that the use of the iconography and language of a real-world populist movement is deliberate, promising that the book will reflect today’s decentralized political world and offer ”a slice of rarity that we’re unlikely to see in most superhero books.”

This wouldn’t the first time that DC has attempted to offer pre-packaged populist rebellion, of course; in addition to the aforementioned publication of the anti-establishment V For Vendetta, the company’s Vertigo imprint also published Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, a series centering around an international organization struggling against forces of authority and repression that included anti-corporate themes.

Only time will tell whether The Movement will live up to the subversive examples of these earlier books, or just end up a well-intentioned piece of topical super heroics that trades on, and commodifies, a real political movement.

The Movement #1 will be available in both print and digital formats on May 1, while The Green Team #1 will be released on May 22.

Read More..