lframerica.com Blog

http://www.enewscourier.com/statenews/local_story_087162631.html

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Allegations that the owner of a Jackson crematorium dumped the bones and ashes from numerous bodies into a barrel and returned the wrong remains has devastated families and prompted demands for an investigation.

“May God have mercy on him because I won’t,” said Tammie Holley, an attorney from New Orleans who said her stepsister was cremated in 2006 at Seepe Funeral Home and Crematorium.

Lori Wilkinson, a former employee of the facility, said she was horrified to see owner Mark Seepe shoveling bones onto a wheelbarrow after cremations, then dumping the load in a yellow 55-gallon drum. She took pictures of the open drum on March 17, then quit her job and contacted authorities.

Seepe did not respond to a message left Thursday by The Associated Press. He has denied the allegations.

Wilkinson took more than a dozen photographs after repairmen working on the crematorium discovered that bones had spilled from the retort, which collects the ashes.

“They said they couldn’t do anything until he removed the bones,” Wilkinson said. “(Seepe) left and went and got a wheelbarrow and dumped them in this 55-gallon drum like it was nothing.”

Wilkinson contacted the Mississippi State Board of Funeral Service. Other employees of the crematorium soon came forward with similarly disturbing stories.

Charles Riles, the funeral board’s chairman, said the photographs clearly show bones that were mixed with the remains of at least several others. He said a proper cremation would leave no large bones.

“The number of these bones would not be from one or two human remains, they would be from more,” Riles said after reviewing the pictures. “Of course, I can’t tell you how many more because I have no idea.”

Riles also said that Josh Hatten, a former employee of the crematorium, filed a complaint in November, claiming that Seepe gave remains to a family before their relative had even been cremated. The family of the late Edwin Van Every is suing for $5 million.

The allegations have raised deep concerns of families in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South who used the crematorium and who are left wondering if the ashes they were given belong to their loved ones.

“You just don’t think that this is going to happen to you. He got my sister’s body. I was supposed to get my sister’s ashes back,” said Colette Bryant, whose sister, Marian Connell, was cremated in November 2006. “I don’t know that I’ve got my sister’s ashes. I might have cats and dogs and Joe Blow’s ashes for all I know.”

Unfortunately, DNA is likely destroyed even during a botched cremation so there is little hope that the families will ever know for certain if they got the proper remains, Riles said. The funeral board has fielded 50-75 calls a day from people since Wilkinson came forward with her photographs earlier this week.

“When I look at these bones I see people, I don’t see bones. The questions I ask are, ’Who are these people? Why are they there? And what was to have been their final destination?”’ Riles said. “People call and ask me terribly poignant questions: ’Is this my baby? Is this my child? Is this my family member?’ And the answer to that is, ’We cannot positively tell you, but we pray so.”’

Riles is urging Attorney General Jim Hood to investigate. Hood won’t say whether he will.

“Needless to say, these are very significant allegations that we do not take lightly,” Hood said in a statement. “At present it is our policy to neither confirm nor deny an investigation, but any matter brought to the attention of this office is always taken with the utmost seriousness.”

Civil lawsuits are likely to follow.

Attorney Kelly Kyle is advertising in The Clarion-Ledger, the state’s largest newspaper, for people to call him if they used the crematorium. He said he hopes to file at least one lawsuit by next week at which time he’ll file for discovery.

Asked if he has taken many calls about the crematorium, Kyle said, “that’s about all I’ve done for the last two days.”

Holley, the New Orleans attorney whose stepsister was cremated at Seepe’s facility, says she’s planning to sue as well.

http://www.enewscourier.com/statenews/local_story_088113534.html

PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) — David Wentz was snorkeling in the St. Clair River last August when what he thought was an odd-looking rock caught his eye.

“I didn’t know what to think,” said the 16-year-old Port Huron resident.

His father, Craig, said he knew right away what it was due to hours of watching the Discovery Channel.

“It’s a shark tooth,” Craig Wentz said. “It’s petrified. It’s rock.”

Michigan State University paleontologist Michael Gottfried said the 3-inch long tooth comes from an extinct species called Carcharodon megalodon, or the “megatooth” shark. The megalodon, which went extinct 2 million years ago, reached lengths of more than 60 feet.

By comparison, Great White sharks generally are about 20 feet long.

Gottfried suspects the tooth was probably carried and dropped by a human inhabitant of the region, either in recent historical times, or by earlier native people in the area.

“I can’t say just how it came to be in the St. Clair River, but I can assure you that there aren’t any sharks with 3-inch teeth living there now.”

Why is the business that is also breaking the law being ignored? Most likely answer is because UPS is so well known and so badly needed by big businesses that they would hate to see anything jeopardize their bottom dollar profit. 

(Thoughts in BOLD)

Seattletimes 

UPS Crackdown Hits Workers, Spares Business

By Lornet Turnbull: Seattle Times Staff Reporter

A year after one of King County’s biggest work-site raids, fully two-thirds of the 51 illegal immigrants arrested have either been deported or told to leave the country.

But no charges have been brought against Spherion, the employment agency that hired the immigrants, or UPS Supply Chain Solutions, the UPS subsidiary that operated the two Auburn warehouses where they worked.

The results are consistent with an ongoing enforcement pattern: Even as the Department of Homeland Security talks big about cracking down on employers who hire illegal immigrants — grabbing headlines in some high-profile cases — it’s generally the workers who take the hardest hit. Actions against employers are still relatively rare.

Nationally, arrests of undocumented workers more than tripled between 2005 and 2007. And last year, while such arrests increased more than 11 percent from the year before, the number of employers criminally charged declined.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials explain that it’s far tougher to build a criminal case showing an employer knowingly hired an illegal immigrant than to prove that an immigrant is working in the U.S. illegally.

That’s in part because current federal law does not require employers to verify the immigration status of prospective workers, so many simply accept at face value the documents workers show them.

Only 53,000 of the nation’s estimated 10 million employers are signed up to use the E-Verify federal database, through which they can verify the Social Security numbers of newly hired workers.

Critics say immigration officials shouldn’t allow employers to hide behind legal loopholes.

E-Verify should be mandatory for all businesses to have. This does create a big “grey area” loophole that should not be allowed if our Government is serious about cracking down on illegals and illegal hiring employers. 

“In general, if they really want to send a strong message about illegal immigration, they’ll start marching some suits out of buildings in handcuffs,” said Ira Mehlman, Seattle-based spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports strong immigration controls.

“When some of the executives start facing criminal prosecution, the employer down the street will say maybe I don’t want to take that chance.”

Promises of action

In recent weeks, Homeland Security has been vowing anew to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants.

The U.S. attorney general joined the department recently in announcing a 25 percent increase in penalties — the first in more than a decade — for employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Under the plan, which takes effect March 27, the minimum penalty for willingly hiring an unauthorized worker will go from $275 to $375. The maximum penalty will jump from $2,200 to $3,200, and the maximum for multiple violations will increase from $11,000 to $16,000.

And Homeland Security expects soon to announce new rules to force employers to act when they receive notices about employees whose Social Security numbers don’t match their names. Currently there are no penalties for ignoring such notices.

All this comes as several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia, have passed laws penalizing employers of illegal immigrants. The states were responding to Congress’ failure to pass immigration legislation, and some are now seeing a gradual exodus of illegal immigrants.

“Pursuing criminal charges is a major priority for us,” said Lorie Dankers, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We look at the evidence available to determine if it’s enough to pursue criminal charges [against employers].”

And sometimes it is.

Last summer, immigration agents raided a Fresh Del Monte Produce complex in Portland where only 48 of the nearly 600 employees had valid Social Security numbers.

Agents had carefully built a criminal case that focused on an employment agency, American Staffing Resources, detailing how its managers helped some of the workers get phony Social Security numbers so they could work.

More than 160 illegal-immigrant workers were arrested, and two managers from the staffing agency are facing criminal prosecution. One has already been sentenced.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle has attorneys working on such cases, and “there are investigations under way here,” said spokeswoman Emily Langlie.

Such cases are labor-intensive for several reasons, she said.

“One defense is the good-faith belief that employees had legitimate documentation when they obtained their jobs,” Langlie said.

And because knowingly hiring an illegal immigrant is a misdemeanor — not a felony — building a case that carries serious penalties means investigators must determine whether crimes such as money laundering or identity theft were committed, and then find substantial evidence to show that.

“So while it might seem to outsiders that we should be able to pursue them criminally, these are not simple cases to put together,” Langlie said.

In the UPS case, Dankers said while there might not be enough information to bring charges now, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen at some point. “If you ask me if any investigation is ever closed, the answer is no,” she said.

Spherion, which continues to staff the UPS plants, did not return telephone calls seeking comment. At UPS, a spokeswoman said operations were back to normal within a day of the raid and the company continues to contract with Spherion to staff its facilities.

“We went back and certainly reviewed our measures and had discussions with Spherion to ensure workers at our facility are authorized to work,” spokeswoman Susan Rosenberg said.

“We’ve had no other issues with work force in that location. Really, it was a nonevent for us … .”

20 deported

Not so for the workers.

“The whole community was spooked,” recalls Dianne Aid of St. Matthew Episcopal Church in Auburn, where some of the workers worshipped.

It was on Valentine’s Day last year that immigration agents swarmed the two UPS plants, arresting workers who had used a number of counterfeit identity documents, including fraudulent Social Security numbers, to obtain their jobs.

Among them was a mother of six who had been at the UPS job seven months when agents arrested and detained her and the other 50 workers from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Twenty people were deported over the next few months, and an immigration judge allowed another 13 to leave the country voluntarily.

Over the next few weeks, those released on bond are to appear before an immigration judge to plead their cases for remaining in the U.S. Most are seeking a common form of relief called cancellation of deportation.

To make this claim, immigrants must have been in the country at least 10 years and be able to prove that their deportation would cause extreme hardship to an immediate family member who is a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

The standard for proving such cases is high, but the Tacoma mother is hoping she can meet it.

Five of her six children, ranging in ages from 5 to 21, were born in the U.S. and her 17-year-old has a child of her own. All would be out of place in Mexico, she said.

“My children were born here, and I wouldn’t want to take them to a country they know nothing about,” she said in Spanish.

The woman, who owns a small home in Tacoma, said a friend had recommended her for the UPS job and she had used a fake Social Security number to apply for and get it.

It was steady work, and the pay, at $9 an hour, wasn’t bad.

Since the raid, she’s had odd jobs and most recently has worked at a recycling plant.

“When I’m working, things are good,” she said. “I don’t need handouts for my children. We don’t take public assistance because if I work, I can support them and we do well.”

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

They committed ID theft and fraud, American citizens who committed those same crimes would be sitting in a jail cell and paying a hefty fine for their actions. 

This woman has five out of six children ages 5-21, a 17 year old child with a child of her own, and at NO time during that period did any of them attempt to apply for legal citizenship in this country?  If the woman has been here for 10 years, she should have filed paperwork before she ever stepped foot on U.S soil.  This squatters rights mindset it getting extremely old.

For those that keep watchful eyes on out Government happenings, so frequently we see Unconstitutional actions and deceitful acts on the floor being played off as something else.  This is a wonderful read about yet another Unconstitutional action that our Government squeaked through. 

NewsWithViews 

By Cliff Kincaid

March 9, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

The liberals have come up with a clever way of ratifying dangerous treaties, which now require a two-thirds vote (67) to pass in the Senate. They will introduce them as legislation, requiring only a majority vote to pass. The model for this new approach is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which President Bush mistakenly refers to as a treaty.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been portrayed by our media as being opposed to it. In fact, they want to make NAFTA stronger. They want to renegotiate the pact and attach binding commitments and strong enforcement mechanisms on labor and environmental issues. In effect, the Democrats are calling for NAFTA to assume even more supranational authority over economic activity in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. This could be the next step on the road to a proposed North American Union.

Regarding NAFTA, Hillary says she wants “to fix NAFTA by making it clear that we’ll have core labor and environmental standards in the agreement. We will do everything we can to make it enforceable, which it is not now. “Obama says, “As president of the United States, I intend to make certain that every agreement that we sign has the labor standards, the environmental standards and the safety standards that are going to protect not just workers, but also consumers.”

When President Bush criticized these comments as tantamount to threatening a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, he said that “It’s not good policy on the merits and it’s not good policy as a message to send to…people who have in good faith signed a treaty and worked with us on a treaty.”

But it was not treated as a treaty in the U.S.

Clinton submitted NAFTA as an agreement, requiring only a majority of votes in both Houses of Congress for passage, and not a treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote in favor in the Senate. NAFTA passed by votes of 234-200 in the House and 61-38 in the Senate.

Clinton did it this way because he didn’t have the votes to pass NAFTA as a treaty (requiring 67 votes) in the Senate. But how did he pull off such a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional move?

Although the strict text of the U.S. Constitution includes the treaty clause as the only means by which the U.S. can enter into such international agreements, there’s a growing body of mostly liberal-left “legal opinion” that holds that “congressional-executive agreements” like NAFTA can serve as substitutes for treaties.

Clinton’s move was seen at the time, even by some on the left, as an effort to bypass constitutional processes and the United Steelworkers challenged NAFTA’s constitutionality in court. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001, after lower courts had thrown the case out, saying it was a political matter between the President and Congress. The Bush Administration sided with Clinton and the Supreme Court declined to get involved.

The Bush Administration’s support for the unconstitutional Clinton approach could easily backfire on conservatives if the Democrats take the White House and hold Congress in the fall elections. Citing NAFTA as a precedent, liberal Democrats could submit and pass treaties by a simple majority vote.

In an article in the liberal American Prospect, Thomas Geoghegan lamented that the Kyoto global warming treaty and the International Criminal Court “are among the great global projects of our day” but are not getting through the Senate because of the two-thirds majority required for passage. “So what’s the way out of this bind? It’s the same way out we used for NAFTA or for fast-track free-trade agreements. That is, we just pass a simple law,” he said.

Geoghegan says the reason liberals can’t get these measures currently passed in the Senate is because this body “overrepresents” states like “Wyoming, Idaho and America’s backwoods.” In other words, Red State Senators have too much clout under the Constitution. They are obstructing the “progressive” vision.

Geoghegan says legal justification for this new approach can be found in an article in the American Journal of International Law by Steve Charnovitz, an associate professor of international law at the George Washington University School of Law. The article complains about Senate inaction on such treaties as the feminist Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the anti-parent U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on Biological Diversity, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, and various U.N. human rights treaties.

Since this article appeared, in October of 2004, the Bush Administration has been trying to pressure the Senate into ratifying the Law of the Sea Treaty. It now awaits full Senate action.

Charnovitz admits the approach of pushing these treaties as mere agreements would be controversial. But he finds comfort in the fact that the legal action against NAFTA was thrown out.

It would make a good issue for John McCain, except for the fact that he’s for NAFTA and most of the U.N. treaty agenda.

© 2008 Cliff Kincaid - All Rights Reserved

March 10, 2008

Sen. Byron Dorgan, (Dem-N.C.) has called for an investigation by the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the Transportation Department has broken the law by spending federal funds on a program allowing Mexican trucks on U.S. roads.

This call came just hours after Transportation Secretary Mary Peters warned of economic losses if Mexican trucks were prohibited from driving deep into the United States.  Peters has been busy fighting in court to prevent the program’s end, disregarding that Congress prohibited spending money on the program last year.

NAFTA granted Mexican trucks greater access to U.S. roads beginning in 1995.  When the pilot program began in September only a few trucks were agreed upon.  Without the program at all, Mexican trucks are confined to only 20 miles beyond the border where the goods they bring in are picked up by U.S. drivers to carry the final U.S. destination.

Dorgan firmly states that the agency is violating the Antideficiency Act with their current policy, an act which prohibits spending federal money which has not been authorized or appropriated.

Peters claims the agency is not violating any law as the law, according to her, prohibits using funds to establish the program, but that the money is being used on the existing program.

This argument is the same as was given in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who are considering an appeal by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to stop the program all together.

In much the same way that a bad marriage is not healthy if one partner is in it for what they can get out of it, and the other is co-dependent on that partner. Illegal immigration is unhealthy for the co-dependent country involved.

Almost daily we hear how our crashing economy is causing an exodus of illegals returning to their homelands when the work, money, and handouts runs out. Many of these are represented in the media as hardship stories built to display the “poor undocumented worker”, “poor businesses”, and in some cases “poor community” who are being affected by the loss. While no one can dispute the effect this loss has on those elements, they are in essence, no different then those who are co-dependent marriage partners who suddenly find themselves struggling to learn to survive.

What needs to be understood, and understood firmly, is that illegal immigrants are not here “for better or for worse”. They will not hang around when this country struggles. They will not hang around if the country falls. Their loyalty is not to this country at all and they will return home to the place their loyalty lies, or move on to another country that has what they desire. In this case money, work, and someone to take care of them.

American citizens and many legal immigrants have a deep loyalty to the United States. No matter how hard it gets in the nation, they will hold on, they will struggle through, and they will work to improve the situation of the home they love unconditionally. “For better or for worse” is not even a thought for them, it’s a way of life.

Just as one would not support a loved on, or friend in an unhealthy relationship. America needs to not support this unhealthy relationship that’s been created by illegal immigrants and their advocates. Americans need to support and advocate for healthy relationships with Citizens and legal immigrants who had a deep unseated love for this country. Who will stick with her through thick and thin, no matter how thin it gets. It is that, and that alone that makes for a healthy relationship and a healthy nation.
As for the “woe is me” tales, well just like the co-dependent partner learns to live again. These co-dependent individuals, businesses, and communities will also learn to live again. In many cases they will learn to be stronger, stabler, and healthier then before when they were in the unhealthy relationship. In some cases they might not ever break the bonds of co-dependency but above all they will learn what the signs of co-dependency are and be able to advocate against it, while helping awake other co-dependents to be able to survive the “life without” too.

Hispanic exodus is under way
Workers leave Lee as jobs disappear
The News Press
March 9, 2008

In this case, cold, hard statistics don’t tell the story.

“I am not aware of anyone who would track that locally,” said Glen Solier, business development specialist for the Lee County Department of Economic Development.

“Those people are off the grid. Undocumented,” said Susanna Patterson, economic analyst for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

But the oh-so-human snapshots of everyday living are revealing.

Like a weekend soccer league down from 32 teams to 25 because more than 100 players have had to leave.

Or a church that has cut two Sunday services to one because about 200 former members have returned to their homeland.

Or the western-wear clothier who gave up one of his three shopping center units and said business is off by 40 percent because customers are gone.

Put these and other pictures together and the collage tells the story of Hispanics who are leaving Southwest Florida to find work or to return to the support of their families back home.

“There is a loss in the number of Hispanics in our communities,” said Robert Selle, director of the Amigos Center, which aids Hispanics with immigration issues and offers other services in Lee County. “The underlying reason is economic; the same reason they came here in the first place.”

Population drain

The loss comes from a good portion of Lee County’s population. The U.S. Census Bureau listed the county’s Hispanic population at more than 90,000 - about 16 percent of Lee’s 571,000 population - in 2006.

What the statistics further show is that work is gone. Unemployment in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral region has risen this past year, from 2.7 percent to 6.3 percent.

Many of the lost jobs are in construction, which has been put on hold as the sluggish market struggles with a glut of unsold houses.

Because many Hispanic construction workers are believed to be illegal immigrants, because construction and agricultural workers are a mobile population anyway, because many are single with families back in their native lands, and because their leaving was often spur-of-the-moment, no governmental or social service agency is keeping accurate records of this exodus.

Lee County School District reported a loss of Hispanics in all grades totaling 388 pupils through January of this school year - this after growing by almost 3,000 Hispanic students a year earlier.

But the white student population dropped as well. The big difference was while dropout rates tend to increase as the year goes on in the upper grades, the Hispanic population was the only one also to lose ground in the kindergarten through fifth-grade range. It fell by 87 pupils - an indication their families moved from the district, according to Michael Smith, director of planning, growth and school capacity.

“Many workers in the construction industry and related industry are leaving the area and following the money,” said Barbara Hartman, spokeswoman for the state’s Career and Service Center in Fort Myers. “It seems to be an increasing number of people who are temporarily relocating. I wish we did track that.”

Hartman said she knows people are leaving because they tell counselors when they come in seeking work, saying they need the higher construction industry wages, which begin at $10 to $11 an hour for the most unskilled, to maintain their standard of living……..

New England Lost Ski Area Project

The site lists former ski areas in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont.

For those who visited these places in their prime, it is a Memorial well worth the making, and the memories.

March 6, 2008

NATIONWIDE — Ford Motor Co. is recalling about 100,000 2008 F-Series trucks due to the drivers seat failing to conform with federal standards. The recall covers F-250 through F-550 Super Duty trucks.
Weld connecting the bracket and the driver seat back could crack causing a severe hazard to drivers.

Owners are to be contacted this month regarding the recall. For more information, owners can call Ford at 1-800-392-3673.

March 6, 2008

NATIONWIDE — 482,000 Hamilton Beach and Proctor-Silex toasters have been recalled due to fire hazard.

The toasters were manufactured in China and imported by Hamilton Beach Brands Inc.

The toasters were sold between August 2007 and February 2008. Consumers should stop using the recalled toasters and contact Hamilton Beach for instructions to receive a free replacement toaster.

For additional information customers should call Hamilton Beach at 1-800-574-6800 or visit its website at Hamiltonbeach.com  or  Protctor-Silex.com

Lou Dobbs will not be silenced! Lou Dobbs 3 hour radio program via live satellite.

Launching March 3, 2008

Monday - Friday, 3-6pm ET.

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