Sen. Sanders Announces $1M to Expand Dental Care at Vermont Health Centers Awarded By HHS

Thursday, June 16, 2016

BURLINGTON, Vt., June 16 – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders today announced the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded $1.05 million to three community health centers in Vermont. The health centers will use this new federal funding to expand access to dental care. “We have a real crisis in terms of access to affordable dental care in our country,” said Sanders, who serves as the ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health.  “To my mind, it is unacceptable that millions of low-income children and adults – and many middle-class families, as well – go each year without seeing a dentist.” “Access to dental care is about much more than having a nice smile,” Sanders said. “We’re talking about people going through their whole lives experiencing severe pain, tooth loss, and infection, problems that can lead to serious, even deadly, medical conditions.” “I am very pleased that these new federal funds will help address this crisis here in Vermont,” Sanders said. “However, millions of Americans – including many Vermonters – still do not have access to the primary medical, mental health, and oral health care they need. Congress should expand community health centers to help ensure people in Vermont and throughout the United States have access to affordable health care, including oral health.” Thanks to a significant expansion of community health center funding in the Affordable Care Act, secured by Sanders, Federally Qualified Health Centers now serve one in four Vermonters at more than 50 locations across the state.  Health centers deliver high-quality primary, oral and mental health care services, regardless of a person’s ability to pay. They also provide low-cost prescription drugs to patients covered by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and those without insurance. The Vermont awards announced today are part of nearly $156 million in federal funds to increase access to dental care at 420 community health centers in 47 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.

Read on.

This teen puts all presidential candidate impersonators and night time comedians to shame

OMG! You have to watch this video. This is hilarious!!!! Bravo, Jack!!!

Jack Aiello, a 14-year-old middle schooler from Arlington Heights in the Chicago area, gave a hilarious graduation speech on June 7 that included near perfect impressions of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

BofA exec dies suddenly, weeks after creating website urging politicians to collaborate

Nancy Crown was longtime advocate for affordable housing, equality

Erskine Bowles: She did her best to make our country whole again

 

Nancy Crown spent her final days trying to make America a better place.

Crown, 54, a Bank of America senior vice president in Charlotte, died unexpectedly Saturday.

On June 7, she was featured in a Charlotte Observer story on how she and her three sisters created a website to send a grassroots message to politicians: Agree to disagree, but cooperate, compromise and solve the challenges facing our nation.

Two days later, she and daughter, Molly, 17, and son, Sam, 14, left Charlotte for a reunion in California. They hiked on Friday, laughed, reconnected with friends.

But by Saturday night, word began to filter back to Charlotte that Crown had died suddenly.

Sunday morning, at the 8 a.m. service that Crown rarely missed, the Rev. Amanda K. Robertson, associate rector at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church, told the congregation of her death.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article84009652.html#storylink=cpy

Trump Accused of Using His Charity as a Political Slush Fund

When the presumptive GOP nominee doled out money to veterans’ groups over the past few months, he did so using the Trump Foundation—which, according to FEC and IRS rules, should not be engaged in political activity.

The Trump Foundation, Donald Trump’s nonprofit organization, is under fire for allegedly operating as more of a political slush fund than a charity. The foundation is accused of violating rules prohibiting it from engaging in politics—prompting ethics watchdogs to call for public investigations.

On numerous occasions this year, Trump’s campaign work and his foundation work have overlapped—putting himself at risk for penalties and his charity at risk of being shut down.

It’s the latest example of Trump courting controversy: not merely through inflammatory rhetoric, but also through private dealings that raise serious legal questions—all of which indicate how he might govern if elected president of the United States.

Trump is listed as the president of the foundation in the charity’s annual disclosures, and his children Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump are all listed as directors. Foundations like theirs are exempt from paying taxes, and as such are barred from engaging in political causes.

“A 501(c)(3) [nonprofit organization], like the Trump Foundation, is strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity. On its tax forms, the Foundation told the IRS that it does not,” said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Read on.

Senator: Red Cross Misled Congress, Refused To ‘Level With the People’ on Haiti Money

This story was co-published with NPR.

A blistering Senate report on the American Red Cross raises fundamental questions about the integrity of the country’s most storied charity and its stewardship of donors’ dollars.

The report, which was released today by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and contains nearly 300 pages of supporting documents, found:

• After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Red Cross spent tens of millions of dollars more than it has previously acknowledged on internal expenses. The Red Cross told Grassley that the money was largely spent on oversight to make sure the Haiti aid was used properly. But Grassley’s office found that the charity “is unable to provide any financial evidence that oversight activities in fact occurred.”
• Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern made false statements to Grassley’s office about whether the charity cooperated with congressional investigators.
• McGovern and her subordinates have kept the charity’s own internal investigations and ethics unit “severely undermanned and underfunded.” The charity is “reluctant to support the very unit that is designed to police wrongdoing within the organization.”

There are “substantial and fundamental concerns about (the Red Cross) as an organization,” the report concludes.

In an interview about the report, Grassley said that even after a year of back-and-forth with the Red Cross, “we did not get satisfactory answers. It was like pulling teeth.”

Grassley launched his investigation following stories by ProPublica and NPR on Red Cross failures in providing disaster relief, including after the Haiti earthquake. The group raised nearly half a billion dollars after the disaster, more than any other nonprofit. But our reporting found that, for example, an ambitious plan to build housing resulted in just six permanent homes.

Red Cross officials, including McGovern, have repeatedly told the public that the charity retains 9 percent of donations to cover management and administrative costs. But Grassley found that a full 25 percent of donations — or around $125 million — were spent on fundraising and management, a contingency fund, and a vague, catchall category the Red Cross calls “program costs.”

Read on.

Trump Says Federalist Society Will Pick His Judges For Him

This is frightening…

Law360, Chicago (June 14, 2016, 3:29 PM ET) — Donald Trump gave some insight into his judicial selection process on Monday, suggesting to a conservative news outlet that all of his judges will be selected by the conservative/libertarian Federalist Society.

“You saw the 11 names I gave,” Trump told Breitbart News Daily, referring to the list of 11 potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees he released last month. “And we’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by Federalist Society.”

The presumptive Republican nominee appeared on the SiriusXM radio show on Monday to discuss the…

Source: Law360

Michael Winston, “Wall Street’s Greatest Enemy,” tells all

Whistleblowers come in all shapes and sizes and my friend and fellow Bank Whistleblowers United colleague is certainly not one that fits most descriptions of a whistleblower.

Former Countrywide Financial executive Michael G. Winston, PhD, was at the pinnacle of establishment success. He’d held C-suite positions at Motorola, Lockheed, and Merrill Lynch before being enticed by Countrywide’s potential.

The company was one of the fastest growing in the country, with a 15,000% growth rate and one of the fastest growing stocks on Wall Street. It’s founder, Andrew Mozilo had been named CEO of the year just the year prior. They wanted Michael to help them build the “Goldman Sachs on the Pacific.”

Michael was interviewed this last week by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times on their new whistleblower series on the Times’ Facebook channel, which I’d had the opportunity to help initiate just the month before. In his interview, Michael talked about the signs he saw at Countrywide that led him to the choice he made.

Read More

Hacker Who Breached Democratic National Committee Server Posts Confidential Trump, Hillary Files

Dumb, dumb, dumb…

One of the bigger news items to hit yesterday was that the Democratic National Committee accused Russian government hackers of penetrating the DNC’s computer network and gaining access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. The DNC further said that no financial, donor or personal information appears to have been accessed or taken, suggesting that the breach was traditional espionage, not the work of criminal hackers.

It appears that was not entirely true, because barely 24 hours later, the alleged “Russian” hackers has emerged under the Guccifer2 handle, and instead of a group of government operatives and/or spies appears to be a “lone” hacker who incidentally adds, “DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said no financial documents were compromised. Nonsense! Just look through the Democratic Party lists of donors!”

He also denounces the claim that no secret docs were stolen: “They say there were no secret docs! Lies again! Here is a secret document from Hillary’s PC she worked with as the Secretary of State.”

He concludes by saying that “the main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish them soon.”

Which in turn may explain why on Monday “Julian Assange Warns WikiLeaks Will Publish “Enough Evidence” To Indict Hillary Clinton”

Guccifer 2.0 DNC’s servers hacked by a lone hacker

Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers had been hacked by “sophisticated” hacker groups.

I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly))) But in fact, it was easy, very easy.

Guccifer may have been the first one who penetrated Hillary Clinton’s and other Democrats’ mail servers. But he certainly wasn’t the last. No wonder any other hacker could easily get access to the DNC’s servers.

Shame on CrowdStrike: Do you think I’ve been in the DNC’s networks for almost a year and saved only 2 documents? Do you really believe it?

Here are just a few docs from many thousands I extracted when hacking into DNC’s network.

They mentioned a leaked database on Donald Trump. Did they mean this one?

View this document on Scribd

Some hundred sheets! This’s a serious case, isn’t it?

And it’s just a tiny part of all docs I downloaded from the Democrats networks.

DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said no financial documents were compromised. Nonsense! Just look through the Democratic Party lists of donors!

This one:

Read more from Zerohedge. Click here.

California bill to protect surviving homeowners up for vote

The Homeowner Survivor Bill of Rights

California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights went into effect in 2013 and stopped mortgage servicers from engaging in abusive practices that were leading to unnecessary foreclosures on families throughout California.

However, some homeowners, mostly senior, recently widowed women, are finding that banks and servicers refuse to extend the consumer protections included in HBOR to them.  Instead, these homeowners are getting caught in a bureaucratic trap.

“Surviving homeowners” are homeowners or other heirs who are not listed on a mortgage, but who have an ownership interest in a home. In the most common scenario, a husband was the only person listed on the mortgage. After he passes away, his widow tries to contact their mortgage company to find out information about their monthly payment and if she can remain in the house by assuming the loan.  She may also inquire about the possibility of modifying the loan if the household income was just cut in half with the loss of her spouse.

Instead of getting help, many survivors are facing bureaucratic runarounds, mixed messages, and long delays. In one particularly egregious case near Los Angles, the servicer “forgot” to tell a widow that her deceased husband had purchased insurance to pay off the home if he passed away.

Absent a careful review by a paralegal who caught the bank’s error, and media attention from McClatchy, the servicer had planned to foreclose on her ten days before Christmas.

Read on.

Eli Lieb and Brandon Skeie Sing Emotional Duet for Orlando, ‘Pulse’ – WATCH

A very powerful song dedicated to the Orlando victims. Hat tip to Towleroad. Thank you Eli and Brandon.

Here are the lyrics to the song:

So you say this is human
Your heartbeat versus mine
Im in chains cause I’m choosing
showing love or living life
I shouldn’t have to leave where I stand
I shouldn’t have to change who I am
To count as a human
Feel my pulse
With your hand on my heart
You know it beats just as hard as yours
Feel my pulse
Feel my pulse
Can’t you see that im scarred
I’m just the same as you are so just
Feel my pulse
I wish I could reach them
And strip away what separates
It’s the same air we’re breathing
The same tears run down our face
So I don’t have to leave where I stand
And I don’t have to change who I am
To count as a human
Feel my pulse
With your hand on my heart
You know it beats just as hard as yours
Feel my pulse
Feel my pulse
Can’t you see that im scarred
I’m just the same as you are so just
Feel my pulse