Remember the guy caught on a security camera wheeling a suitcase stuffed with a body down 114th Street in Manhattan? Police think they've found him: Fifty-five-year-old Hassan Malik, who apparently confessed to the murder on Tuesday.
Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.
"We're becoming a nation of wussies." —Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, on postponing the Eagles-Vikings game for snow.
Send an email to Maureen O'Connor, the author of this post, at maureen@gawker.com.
Medicare Regulation Revives End-of-Life Planning As Part of Obamacare
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, rests her arm on an autographed copy of the Democrats’ health care bill after it passed the House on Sunday, March 21, 2010. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Washington (AP) - A new health regulation issued this month offers Medicare recipients voluntary end-of-life planning, which Democrats dropped -- under pressure -- from their health care overhaul last year.
The provision allows Medicare to pay for voluntary counseling to help beneficiaries deal with the complex and painful decisions families face when a loved one is approaching death.
But the practice was heavily criticized by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and some other Republicans who have likened the counseling to "death panels."
The "voluntary advance care planning" is included in a Medicare regulation issued Dec. 3 that covers annual checkups, known as wellness visits. It goes into effect Jan. 1.
The new regulation was first reported by The New York Times.
For years, federal laws and policies have encouraged Americans to think ahead about end-of-life decisions and make their wishes known in advance through living wills and similar legal documents. But when House Democrats proposed last year to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, it touched off a wave of suspicion and anger.
Opponents said end-of-life planning should be left to families, while proponents said doctors' advice was a basic element of health care.
Prominent Republicans singled it out as a glaring example of government overreach. Palin's use of the phrase "death panels" solidified GOP opposition to the health care bill.
Although advance planning never made it into the law, few Republicans joined in supporting the health care overhaul, President Barack Obama's signature domestic legislative achievement.
An undercover cop slapped Milwaukee resident Terry Duncan with a $500 ticket for cursing on a bus. Cursing! On a bus! Apparently, the words he used "started with an 'f' and an 's.'" So... "fart"? And "sex"? [WISN]
Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.
World Woman Comes to Life While Being Prepared for Burial…Then ‘Dies’ Again
A Brazilian undertaker got the surprise of his life when he noticed a woman who was declared dead and being prepared for burial was actually breathing and moving.
Maria das Doreswas actually breathing and moving.
The London Telegraph reports:
Maria das Dores was a few hours from being buried alive when an official noticed she was still breathing.
Doctors declared her dead on Dec 22 after noticing she had no vital signs.
The 88-year-old was rushed back to the same hospital who had earlier declared her dead.
She had been brought to the hospital in the town of Ipatinga suffering from blocked arteries. She also suffered from Alzheimer’s and was bedridden.
Officials in Brazil have now launched an investigation into how medical chiefs failed to realise the woman was alive and not dead when they sent her body for burial.
“We are happy to know my mother is alive and unhappy with the lack of respect due her,” the family told the Telegraph. Das Dores is now recovering in the intensive care unit. The family is considering a lawsuit against the hospital.
(H/T: FARK)
UPDATE:
The woman has now “officially” passed away…again:
First she died, then she didn’t. Now, sadly, she has, again.
As 88-year-old Maria das Dores da Conceição’s body was being readied for burial, funeral parlour staff noticed her twitch.
And though hospital doctors in Ipatinga, Brazil, signed her death certificate citing clogged arteries and hypertension, they have ashamedly admitted Mrs Conceicao was very much alive.
Maria Das Dores was spotted breathing and moving in her coffin at a funeral parlour and was promptly rushed back to a hospital, where she has again been declared dead.
But just a day after being rushed back to an intensive care ward, still in her coffin, she has died, again.
Doctors gave her emergency treatment while still in her coffin at the same time as her funeral was due to be held on Christmas Day.
Education Disgraced Teacher Enjoys Well-Paid 13th Year in ‘Rubber Room’ After Sexually Molesting 6th Grade Student
On June 26, 1997, New York teacher Roland Pierre was was arrested on felony sex-abuse charges after allegedly calling one of his PS 138 sixth-grade students into an empty classroom, closed the door and molested her. Pierre was permanently removed from the classroom, but like many tenured teachers accused of wrongdoing, he wasn’t fired. Instead, he joined other disgraced educators in the so-called “rubber room” — the “purgatory of teachers yanked for the classroom for alleged wrongdoing” — where he’d wait out the union-guided appeals process.
But, as the NY Post notes, 13 years later, Pierre is still receiving full pay and fringe benefits from his old teaching job, including health benefits, pension and vacation time. In all, the 75-year-old continues to pull down $97,101 a year for a job he hasn’t done in 13 years.
According to the Post, Pierre is one of six tenured teachers that Chancellor Joel Klein has refused to let back into the classroom, even after the Department of Education refused to fire him. But of the other educators, Pierre has been “permanently reassigned” the longest of all.
The school investigator at the time had recommended Pierre’s termination after he gripped the student in a “bear hug” and “kissed her on the mouth, inserted his tongue in her mouth, fondled her chest and reached under her skirt.” In his March 1998 report, the investigator said the frightened young girl went to the administrative office and “burst into tears.” But when investigators questioned Pierre, he refused to speak, opting instead for a written statement that admitted he had met the girl behind closed doors, but denied any wrongdoing.
The Post reports that in the intervening years, the Department of Education dropped disciplinary actions against Pierre “on a technicality” but he remains in the rubber room until he is reassigned. Though he was eligible for retirement at 62, Pierre continues to collect his full teaching salary.
At his age, he’d be able to collect a full pension and is eligible to collect Social Security, making his post-retirement annual income as high as $125,000.
Another teacher accused of serious wrongdoing — including impregnating a 16-year-old student and allegedly molesting a string of other girls — finally retired this month after spending seven years in his own “rubber room”:
For seven years, math teacher Francisco Olivares, 61, did nothing but rake in his $94,154 salary.
The DOE bungled a chance to boot Olivares in 1978 after he impregnated a 16-year-old former student at IS 61 in Corona. He skirted rape charges by marrying the teen; their baby was born less than nine months later.
Still in the classroom, he was criminally charged a decade later with showing one 12-year-old girl porn, photographing her with pants down and rubbing up against another 12-year-old girl. His conviction was reversed on technicalities.
Now retired, Olivares collects a cushy pension of $62,000 a year.
In April, the United Federation of Teachers announced that New York City’s controversial “rubber rooms” would be gone by the year’s end. The city called the news a “breakthrough.”
“Starting this September, you’ll be happy to know that rubber rooms will be a thing of the past,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “To say that this is a big deal is probably an understatement.”
But as the above cases make clear, so-called “rubber rooms” are still alive and well. Earlier this month, the New York Times noted that the unions’ pledge had gone unfulfilled:
While hundreds of teachers have had their cases resolved, for many of those still waiting, the definition of “work” has turned out to be a loose one. Some are now doing basic tasks, like light filing, paper-clipping, tracking down student information on a computer or using 25-foot tape measures to determine the dimensions of entire school buildings. Others sit without work in unadorned cubicles or at out-of-the-way conference tables.
“They told me to sit in a little chair in a corner and never get up and walk around,” said Hal Lanse, a $100,000-a-year teacher from Queens who had been accused of sexual harassment. He was assigned to an administrative office on Fordham Road in the Bronx in September as part of a deal that led the city to drop the charges against him.
One day he plopped down on a couch in the hallway and began reading a novel, he said. Eventually, he dozed off. Then he was asked to “paper-clip some papers” and refused: he was charged with insubordination. He is now collecting his full salary at home in Queens, with plans to retire in January; the city is trying to fire him for insubordination before then, which would reduce his pension.
“There are indeed still rubber rooms,” he said. “They just don’t call them that.”
