Another View: Accounts of Rep. Nutting's troubles ignored state's flaws | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram
Another View: Accounts of Rep. Nutting's troubles ignored state's flaws
Who made the greater mistake, the incoming House speaker or an impatient bureaucracy?
On two Sundays in November, there was an editorial (on Nov. 21) and a column (Nov. 28) that brought notice to the public of Rep. Robert Nutting's billing errors at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services up to 2003.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas F. Shields, M.D., is a resident of Auburn.
While attacking a prominent Republican legislator who has now been elected speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, the newspaper ignored a major problem of state government.
That problem is that the DHHS was blindly paying miscalculated charges for years without anyone checking the allowances. This is an egregious example of Maine government incompetency.
Rep. Nutting had done business with the DHHS since the 1970s. He was found to owe $1.6 million due to using an incorrect billing procedure that many other pharmacists also used.
If the DHS had checked the prices years ago and corrected the payments, this all could have been avoided. This glaring lack of prudent management of taxpayers' money is the real story.
Why hasn't the press investigated this?
It seems that the press prefers to smear a good man rather than determine how the state spends our money.
End of the story: Rep. Nutting paid back over $400,000 before he was forced into bankruptcy because of the impatience of the DHHS in not allowing a structure to be created to enable further payments.
The recent attack articles only revealed that nothing new has happened since 2003 and the stories caused no change in the make-up of the Legislature.
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
CIVIL LIBERTIES WITHOUT EXCEPTION: NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for Children and Families
CIVIL LIBERTIES WITHOUT EXCEPTION:
NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for Children and Families
By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director
INTRODUCTION
Suppose, when he was attorney general, John Ashcroft had proposed anti-terrorism
legislation with the following provisions:
Special anti-terrorism police could search any home without a warrant – and
stripsearch any occupant -- based solely on an anonymous telephone tip. Any occupant of
the home could be detained for 24 hours to two weeks without so much as a hearing – and
they’ll probably be detained far longer because, in the special anti-terrorism court set up by
this legislation, all the judges are afraid to look soft on “terrorists.”
At that first hearing the detainees may – or may not – get a lawyer just before the
hearing begins, and they almost never get effective counsel.
At almost every stage, the standard of proof is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”
or even “clear and convincing” but merely “preponderance of the evidence,” the lowest
standard in American jurisprudence, the same one used to determine which insurance company pays for a fender-bender.
And in most states, all the hearings and all the records are secret.
Had Ashcroft proposed such legislation, civil libertarians would have been in an
uproar. Yet this is, in fact, the law governing child welfare. And sadly, many who in other
circumstances are quick to defend civil liberties either stand silent or support it.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform believes the only way truly to
protect children is to demand civil liberties without exception. There can be no true child
protection when a government agency is given virtually unchecked power, almost no accountability, and operates in secret.
That is why enacting meaningful due process protections for families is at least as
important as improving the “services” they receive from child welfare agencies.
Since 2000, NCCPR has issued reports on 13 state or local child welfare systems.
Below are some of the due process recommendations from these various reports.
RECOMMENDATION 1:
TRANSPARENCY
All court hearings in child
maltreatment cases and almost all
documents should be subject to a
“rebuttable presumption” of openness.
Hearings and records would be
closed only if the lawyer for the parents
or the guardian ad litem for the child
could persuade the judge, by clear and
convincing evidence, that opening a given
record or portion of a hearing would
cause severe emotional damage to a child.
The judge then would keep closed
only the minimum amount of material
needed to avoid the damage.
The people who work for child pro
tective services agencies are not evil. But
even the best of us would have trouble cop
ing with nearly unlimited power and no
accountability. One caseworker allegedly
told some parents: “I have the power of
God.” It’s alarming if he said it. But what’s DUE PROCESS AGENDA/2
even more alarming is: It’s true. Casework
ers for CPS agencies do have the power of God!
Read More:
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/dueprocess.pdf
NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for Children and Families
By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director
INTRODUCTION
Suppose, when he was attorney general, John Ashcroft had proposed anti-terrorism
legislation with the following provisions:
Special anti-terrorism police could search any home without a warrant – and
stripsearch any occupant -- based solely on an anonymous telephone tip. Any occupant of
the home could be detained for 24 hours to two weeks without so much as a hearing – and
they’ll probably be detained far longer because, in the special anti-terrorism court set up by
this legislation, all the judges are afraid to look soft on “terrorists.”
At that first hearing the detainees may – or may not – get a lawyer just before the
hearing begins, and they almost never get effective counsel.
At almost every stage, the standard of proof is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”
or even “clear and convincing” but merely “preponderance of the evidence,” the lowest
standard in American jurisprudence, the same one used to determine which insurance company pays for a fender-bender.
And in most states, all the hearings and all the records are secret.
Had Ashcroft proposed such legislation, civil libertarians would have been in an
uproar. Yet this is, in fact, the law governing child welfare. And sadly, many who in other
circumstances are quick to defend civil liberties either stand silent or support it.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform believes the only way truly to
protect children is to demand civil liberties without exception. There can be no true child
protection when a government agency is given virtually unchecked power, almost no accountability, and operates in secret.
That is why enacting meaningful due process protections for families is at least as
important as improving the “services” they receive from child welfare agencies.
Since 2000, NCCPR has issued reports on 13 state or local child welfare systems.
Below are some of the due process recommendations from these various reports.
RECOMMENDATION 1:
TRANSPARENCY
All court hearings in child
maltreatment cases and almost all
documents should be subject to a
“rebuttable presumption” of openness.
Hearings and records would be
closed only if the lawyer for the parents
or the guardian ad litem for the child
could persuade the judge, by clear and
convincing evidence, that opening a given
record or portion of a hearing would
cause severe emotional damage to a child.
The judge then would keep closed
only the minimum amount of material
needed to avoid the damage.
The people who work for child pro
tective services agencies are not evil. But
even the best of us would have trouble cop
ing with nearly unlimited power and no
accountability. One caseworker allegedly
told some parents: “I have the power of
God.” It’s alarming if he said it. But what’s DUE PROCESS AGENDA/2
even more alarming is: It’s true. Casework
ers for CPS agencies do have the power of God!
Read More:
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/dueprocess.pdf
Adoptions of Children with Public Child Welfare Agency Involvement by State FY 2002 - FY 2009
Adoptions of Children with Public Child Welfare Agency Involvement by State
FY 2002 - FY 2009
State FY 2002 FY 2003 FY 2004 FY 2005 FY 2006 FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009
Alabama 249 329 396 336 387 349 442 629
Alaska 224 204 172 201 211 254 269 329
Arizona 809 839 729 1,066 1,400 1,629 1,661 1,653
Arkansas 297 385 331 323 395 404 505 601
California 8,011 7,406 7,308 7,556 7,393 7,622 7,777 7,438
Colorado 882 953 930 954 947 1,084 1,005 1,070
Connecticut 613 354 644 743 677 717 772 768
Delaware 133 101 73 78 94 118 111 125
District of Columbia 252 239 378 310 179 152 113 103
Florida 2,302 2,775 3,221 3,018 3,046 3,089 3,870 3,711
Georgia 1,067 1,057 1,227 1,037 1,233 1,269 1,340 1,389
Hawaii 366 316 360 452 397 265 273 279
Idaho 118 138 173 149 177 195 236 353
Illinois 3,633 2,684 2,163 1,833 1,408 1,516 1,472 1,429
Indiana 920 724 994 1,006 1,180 1,292 1,510 1,488
Iowa 882 1,102 1,029 947 986 1,060 1,041 967
Kansas 467 542 631 649 524 789 721 836
Kentucky 551 594 724 869 753 689 772 842
Louisiana 487 497 453 469 466 428 596 578
Maine 285 287 291 319 330 332 322 323
Maryland 927 718 758 564 371 462 610 734
Massachusetts 808 733 809 832 874 794 712 790
Michigan 2,845 2,610 2,742 2,883 2,590 2,617 2,731 3,200
Minnesota 618 636 597 755 662 599 785 660
Mississippi 234 124 270 242 244 295 281 306
Missouri 1,538 1,379 1,359 1,321 1,253 1,149 1,087 1,096
Montana 247 223 176 244 272 246 242 192
Nebraska 311 278 353 359 468 496 520 588
Nevada 322 298 287 380 446 466 470 525
New Hampshire 114 130 102 124 135 141 167 135
New Jersey 1,376 936 1,317 1,452 1,368 1,564 1,265 1,347
New Mexico 275 220 265 289 338 355 427 437
New York 3,791 3,858 4,006 3,419 2,772 2,488 2,394 2,398
North Carolina 1,324 1,296 1,198 1,203 1,234 1,521 1,694 1,725
North Dakota 137 120 128 152 150 125 159 137
Ohio 2,396 2,420 2,201 2,044 1,868 1,779 1,638 1,453
Oklahoma 995 1,157 1,165 1,029 1,142 1,271 1,516 1,564
Oregon 1,115 849 943 1,030 1,095 1,016 1,050 1,101
Pennsylvania 1,944 1,946 1,897 2,065 1,926 1,940 2,090 2,243
Rhode Island 256 262 233 217 258 239 260 272
South Carolina 343 278 366 415 425 431 525 513
South Dakota 145 144 126 113 150 160 176 167
Tennessee 922 954 883 1,114 994 1,214 1,046 1,001
Texas 2,265 2,479 2,537 3,177 3,408 4,022 4,526 4,976
Utah 346 311 292 346 501 454 536 502
Vermont 152 167 220 166 164 199 182 156
Virginia 424 487 525 510 551 680 664 663
Washington 1,074 1,320 1,244 1,293 1,195 1,291 1,261 2,091
West Virginia 361 322 384 368 419 403 523 541
Wisconsin 1,021 1,168 1,138 906 883 734 722 769
Wyoming 52 58 64 67 58 73 84 71
Puerto Rico 193 222 207 235 236 180 152 202
Total 51,419 49,629 51,019 51,629 50,633 52,657 55,303 57,466
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/adoptchild09.pdf
FY 2002 - FY 2009
State FY 2002 FY 2003 FY 2004 FY 2005 FY 2006 FY 2007 FY 2008 FY 2009
Alabama 249 329 396 336 387 349 442 629
Alaska 224 204 172 201 211 254 269 329
Arizona 809 839 729 1,066 1,400 1,629 1,661 1,653
Arkansas 297 385 331 323 395 404 505 601
California 8,011 7,406 7,308 7,556 7,393 7,622 7,777 7,438
Colorado 882 953 930 954 947 1,084 1,005 1,070
Connecticut 613 354 644 743 677 717 772 768
Delaware 133 101 73 78 94 118 111 125
District of Columbia 252 239 378 310 179 152 113 103
Florida 2,302 2,775 3,221 3,018 3,046 3,089 3,870 3,711
Georgia 1,067 1,057 1,227 1,037 1,233 1,269 1,340 1,389
Hawaii 366 316 360 452 397 265 273 279
Idaho 118 138 173 149 177 195 236 353
Illinois 3,633 2,684 2,163 1,833 1,408 1,516 1,472 1,429
Indiana 920 724 994 1,006 1,180 1,292 1,510 1,488
Iowa 882 1,102 1,029 947 986 1,060 1,041 967
Kansas 467 542 631 649 524 789 721 836
Kentucky 551 594 724 869 753 689 772 842
Louisiana 487 497 453 469 466 428 596 578
Maine 285 287 291 319 330 332 322 323
Maryland 927 718 758 564 371 462 610 734
Massachusetts 808 733 809 832 874 794 712 790
Michigan 2,845 2,610 2,742 2,883 2,590 2,617 2,731 3,200
Minnesota 618 636 597 755 662 599 785 660
Mississippi 234 124 270 242 244 295 281 306
Missouri 1,538 1,379 1,359 1,321 1,253 1,149 1,087 1,096
Montana 247 223 176 244 272 246 242 192
Nebraska 311 278 353 359 468 496 520 588
Nevada 322 298 287 380 446 466 470 525
New Hampshire 114 130 102 124 135 141 167 135
New Jersey 1,376 936 1,317 1,452 1,368 1,564 1,265 1,347
New Mexico 275 220 265 289 338 355 427 437
New York 3,791 3,858 4,006 3,419 2,772 2,488 2,394 2,398
North Carolina 1,324 1,296 1,198 1,203 1,234 1,521 1,694 1,725
North Dakota 137 120 128 152 150 125 159 137
Ohio 2,396 2,420 2,201 2,044 1,868 1,779 1,638 1,453
Oklahoma 995 1,157 1,165 1,029 1,142 1,271 1,516 1,564
Oregon 1,115 849 943 1,030 1,095 1,016 1,050 1,101
Pennsylvania 1,944 1,946 1,897 2,065 1,926 1,940 2,090 2,243
Rhode Island 256 262 233 217 258 239 260 272
South Carolina 343 278 366 415 425 431 525 513
South Dakota 145 144 126 113 150 160 176 167
Tennessee 922 954 883 1,114 994 1,214 1,046 1,001
Texas 2,265 2,479 2,537 3,177 3,408 4,022 4,526 4,976
Utah 346 311 292 346 501 454 536 502
Vermont 152 167 220 166 164 199 182 156
Virginia 424 487 525 510 551 680 664 663
Washington 1,074 1,320 1,244 1,293 1,195 1,291 1,261 2,091
West Virginia 361 322 384 368 419 403 523 541
Wisconsin 1,021 1,168 1,138 906 883 734 722 769
Wyoming 52 58 64 67 58 73 84 71
Puerto Rico 193 222 207 235 236 180 152 202
Total 51,419 49,629 51,019 51,629 50,633 52,657 55,303 57,466
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/adoptchild09.pdf
Friday, December 10, 2010
Foster Murder: Foster Dad Arrested for Murder - KTXL
Foster Murder: Foster Dad Arrested for Murder - KTXL
SUISUN CITY — A 3-month-old baby boy is dead.
"Accute head injuries," Suisun City police Cmdr. Tim Mattos said.
Suisun City police believe the infant died at the hands of his foster care father - 54-year-old, Reginald Tanubagijo.
He is in custody at the Solano County jail, booked for murder.
It all began when police received a call the night of Nov. 29th, for an unresponsive baby at this Youngstown Lane home.
Paramedics did CPR and the baby was flown to an Oakland trauma hospital, where he later died on Sunday.
"They never saw improvement on the baby's condition. So we believed that at some point, the baby would succumb to injuries," Mattos said.
Hospital staff told investigators that the infant's injuries weren't accidental.
Although the injury isn't considered blunt force trauma, the baby suffered from bruising and bleeding to the brain.
"Could it be shaken baby?" Fox40 asked.
"We're gonna wait until the medical examiner gives us their report," Mattos said.
We went to the suspect's home tonight to contact his wife. She wasn't there.
Investigators say the couple's 2-year-old adopted daughter has been placed in protective custody.
At this point, police say the wife is not a suspect.
Cops say the Tanubagijo has been cooperative, offering this explanation to police for the baby's injury:
"Shaking the baby to save the baby, revive the baby is something that is very common in this kind of defense."
SUISUN CITY — A 3-month-old baby boy is dead.
"Accute head injuries," Suisun City police Cmdr. Tim Mattos said.
Suisun City police believe the infant died at the hands of his foster care father - 54-year-old, Reginald Tanubagijo.
He is in custody at the Solano County jail, booked for murder.
It all began when police received a call the night of Nov. 29th, for an unresponsive baby at this Youngstown Lane home.
Paramedics did CPR and the baby was flown to an Oakland trauma hospital, where he later died on Sunday.
"They never saw improvement on the baby's condition. So we believed that at some point, the baby would succumb to injuries," Mattos said.
Hospital staff told investigators that the infant's injuries weren't accidental.
Although the injury isn't considered blunt force trauma, the baby suffered from bruising and bleeding to the brain.
"Could it be shaken baby?" Fox40 asked.
"We're gonna wait until the medical examiner gives us their report," Mattos said.
We went to the suspect's home tonight to contact his wife. She wasn't there.
Investigators say the couple's 2-year-old adopted daughter has been placed in protective custody.
At this point, police say the wife is not a suspect.
Cops say the Tanubagijo has been cooperative, offering this explanation to police for the baby's injury:
"Shaking the baby to save the baby, revive the baby is something that is very common in this kind of defense."
Child-Snatching to Reap Federal Funds: The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 | OpenMarket.org
Child-Snatching to Reap Federal Funds: The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 | OpenMarket.org
An article called “The 7 Most Horrifying Cost-Cutting Measures of All Time” decries the role of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in children being snatched from loving families by state officials and then put into foster homes by Child Protective Services (CPS). According to the 1997 law, “for each child adopted into a foster family, the responsible state receives $4,000 to $6,000, with an additional $20 million bonus if it exceeds the average number of adoptions from previous years.” The article says that that incentive “encourages CPS to make an increasingly liberal interpretation of the term ‘rescue.’ Consider that, a few years ago, CPS employee Pat Moore was fired for refusing to put a child in a foster home simply because everyone in the foster family had a felony conviction, and the family occasionally hired a convicted sex offender to babysit. “ Similarly, the article alleges that “when Vanessa Shanks’ child was taken away and she fought the decision in court, CPS responded . . . by taking away children of her relatives, and after Shanks finally won in court, they took away her attorney’s children.”
The problem of government officials seizing children and adopting them out to receive bonuses is even more severe in England, as I explained a few years ago at Point of Law. But improper seizures of children from loving parents is also a problem in the United States, as I previously chronicled.
English children have been taken from their parents based on mere speculation that they may abuse them in the future, even if the government concedes the child has never actually been abused.
Most newspapers and legal commentators don’t cover this sort of thing, assuming that such actions are either non-existent, or isolated aberrations, and that CPS officials are omniscient and wise when they seize children from their parents. A few exceptions are the Washington Examiner, and Walter Olson, the dean of law bloggers. Olson has discussed the subject, and the devastating effects when parents are not in fact abusive or dangerous yet are put through investigations, or worse yet see their children taken away, at his web site Overlawyered, the world’s oldest law blog, which has been cited by federal court rulings on other subjects.
Children seized by CPS often experience devastating harm. In Doe v. Lebbos, 348 F.3d 820 (9th Cir. 2003), Judge Andrew Kleinfeld’s dissent described the tragedy that befell a little girl who was seized from her father as a result of false abuse accusations:
After being bounced around in the agency and foster parent bureaucracy for over a year, Lacey . . . was ‘diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, hearing voices, and suicidal ideation.’ She was put on anti-psychotic medication. She had taken to smearing feces and to other abnormal and highly disruptive behavior. . . what the county did to her to ‘protect’ her apparently destroyed her. Something in this experience, perhaps being ripped away from her father for whom she consistently expressed love during the whole miserable period, perhaps having strangers strip her and search her heretofore private parts, perhaps being put with caretakers instead of her father, amounted to a trauma that was too much for her.
Ironically, after CPS seizes your kid and places him or her with a foster family, it will sometimes argue that the child should not be returned to you even if you prove you did nothing wrong and that the allegations were false. Why? They’ll argue that the kid has bonded with the foster family and thus would suffer emotional harm from being returned to you. Yet the emotional harm that kids experience being taken away from their parents in the first place seems to be given little weight.
An article called “The 7 Most Horrifying Cost-Cutting Measures of All Time” decries the role of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 in children being snatched from loving families by state officials and then put into foster homes by Child Protective Services (CPS). According to the 1997 law, “for each child adopted into a foster family, the responsible state receives $4,000 to $6,000, with an additional $20 million bonus if it exceeds the average number of adoptions from previous years.” The article says that that incentive “encourages CPS to make an increasingly liberal interpretation of the term ‘rescue.’ Consider that, a few years ago, CPS employee Pat Moore was fired for refusing to put a child in a foster home simply because everyone in the foster family had a felony conviction, and the family occasionally hired a convicted sex offender to babysit. “ Similarly, the article alleges that “when Vanessa Shanks’ child was taken away and she fought the decision in court, CPS responded . . . by taking away children of her relatives, and after Shanks finally won in court, they took away her attorney’s children.”
The problem of government officials seizing children and adopting them out to receive bonuses is even more severe in England, as I explained a few years ago at Point of Law. But improper seizures of children from loving parents is also a problem in the United States, as I previously chronicled.
English children have been taken from their parents based on mere speculation that they may abuse them in the future, even if the government concedes the child has never actually been abused.
Most newspapers and legal commentators don’t cover this sort of thing, assuming that such actions are either non-existent, or isolated aberrations, and that CPS officials are omniscient and wise when they seize children from their parents. A few exceptions are the Washington Examiner, and Walter Olson, the dean of law bloggers. Olson has discussed the subject, and the devastating effects when parents are not in fact abusive or dangerous yet are put through investigations, or worse yet see their children taken away, at his web site Overlawyered, the world’s oldest law blog, which has been cited by federal court rulings on other subjects.
Children seized by CPS often experience devastating harm. In Doe v. Lebbos, 348 F.3d 820 (9th Cir. 2003), Judge Andrew Kleinfeld’s dissent described the tragedy that befell a little girl who was seized from her father as a result of false abuse accusations:
After being bounced around in the agency and foster parent bureaucracy for over a year, Lacey . . . was ‘diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, hearing voices, and suicidal ideation.’ She was put on anti-psychotic medication. She had taken to smearing feces and to other abnormal and highly disruptive behavior. . . what the county did to her to ‘protect’ her apparently destroyed her. Something in this experience, perhaps being ripped away from her father for whom she consistently expressed love during the whole miserable period, perhaps having strangers strip her and search her heretofore private parts, perhaps being put with caretakers instead of her father, amounted to a trauma that was too much for her.
Ironically, after CPS seizes your kid and places him or her with a foster family, it will sometimes argue that the child should not be returned to you even if you prove you did nothing wrong and that the allegations were false. Why? They’ll argue that the kid has bonded with the foster family and thus would suffer emotional harm from being returned to you. Yet the emotional harm that kids experience being taken away from their parents in the first place seems to be given little weight.
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