Verbatim

Ohhh!!! The silliness... it BURNS!!!

Rapid City Journal

Spencer's could face criminal charges; more than 2,000 products confiscated
By Emilie Rusch Journal staff | Posted: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 5:30 am

Spencer Gifts LLC could face criminal charges in the coming days because the city says the national retailer is operating an unlicensed adult-oriented business at Rushmore Mall.

On Monday, the Rapid City Police Department seized more than 2,000 sex-related products from Spencer’s as possible evidence that the store meets the definition of an adult-oriented business.

City Attorney Jason Green said Tuesday he anticipated filing charges within a week based on the information gathered from Monday’s search warrant.

“We’ll get the reports from the police department and determine what charges to file,” Green said.

Under city ordinance, operating an adult-oriented business without a license is punishable by a $200 fine and 30 days in jail for every day a business fails to register. Businesses can sell adult merchandise without a license as long as it does not make up a “substantial or significant portion of its stock.”

Kevin Mahoney, general counsel for the New Jersey-based Spencer Gifts, said he was still hopeful they will be able to resolve the issue with the city attorney’s office -- without having to register as an adult-oriented business.

“It’s our goal and intention to operate the store in compliance of the ordinance,” Mahoney said. “We think we are operating within compliance.”

Spencer’s has been in Rushmore Mall since 1979, and Mahoney said adult merchandise makes up less than five percent of the items for sale. In other jurisdictions, courts have defined “substantial” as between 20 percent and 50 percent of available merchandise, he said.

“We can sell a small percentage of that merchandise in our store without being deemed an adult-oriented business,” Mahoney said.

On Tuesday, Spencer’s was open, but there were far more empty hooks than full ones in the store’s back corner, where the adult merchandise is usually displayed.

Bachelorette party favors, including sashes, buttons and necklaces, made up most of the remaining merchandise, along with a few body paint kits, blow-up dolls and anatomically shaped candy. All of the store’s “personal massagers” were off the shelves.

The rest of the store was untouched, the shelves packed with t-shirts, band merchandise, drinking games, lingerie, adult birthday cards and accessories such as hats and belts.

A manager at the store Tuesday afternoon said she was not authorized to talk to the media.

Mahoney said the store has received “great support” from the community.

“The store will be open,” he said. “We’ll continue operations, and we expect to be at Rushmore Mall for many, many years.”

Mall officials said they were working closely with local law enforcement and Spencer’s to resolve the issue as quickly as possible for customers.

“We always require our retailers to comply with local laws and regulations,” said Karen Waltman, senior manager of Rushmore Mall. “If there is non-compliance for any reason, the tenant’s position at the center will be compromised.”

According to city officials, the city first received complaints from residents about the store’s merchandise more than a year ago. The city attorney’s office sent a letter to Spencer’s in January and again in September, asking it to comply with the city’s regulations.

Under those regulations, adult book, novelty and video stores must be licensed by the city and cannot allow anyone younger than 18 to enter. Businesses can also comply by displaying all adult merchandise in a separate room or behind a partition and posting a sign banning minors from that area.

Adult stores are defined as any commercial establishment that sells as “one of its principal purposes” books, films or other representations that depict sexual activities or anatomical areas and/or devices designed for use during sex.

During Monday’s raid, police officers entered Spencer’s about 9 p.m. and did not start loading the boxed merchandise into police vehicles until after midnight.

On multiple occasions, officers brought in more cardboard boxes, and police Lt. Tom Vlieger, who oversaw the search warrant’s execution, confirmed there was more merchandise affected than they had anticipated.

The search warrant, which was signed by Magistrate Judge Scott Bogue, allowed officers to seize all merchandise designed for use during sexual activity, books, films or other visual representations of sexual activity or anatomical areas, novelty items depicting genitals or exposed female breasts and packaging of items depicting sexual activity or anatomical areas, according to court documents.

An inventory of all of the seized merchandise included in the court documents listed more than 2,000 items.

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Veterans Day rememberance

In August of 2009, Jacksonville, FL threatened to cancel its annual Veterans Day parade. The city council cut the funding. A virtual firestorm of protest by residents forced a cowed council to reverse the decision.

Jacksonville is not alone. Fresno, CA threatened the same this year, and similar stories have been appearing in newspapers across the nation for the last couple years. When it isn’t an outright cancellation of veterans activities, often it is some curtailment of government involvement.

Cities from New York to California have cut back on observances of the holiday, citing waning public interest. Cities are feeling the crunch from the recession and are looking for ways to scale back, and with public participation in Veterans activities declining, the holiday makes an easy target for budget hawks.

Veterans Day is an odd duck of a holiday. Many public schools, colleges and universities remain open - even with thousands of veterans sitting in their classrooms. While I sit here at home this morning, my teacher neighbor and her 8^th grade son departed their home at their normal time.

Businesses operate as if nothing is going on. Such signs of business as usual give city officials what they see as reason to cut funds for Veterans Day events. Some even commit the ultimate insult of asking the veterans’ organizations themselves to front the money to pay for police and sanitation workers required for the parade, saying that tax revenues are better spent on holiday events and parades that turn a profit, or are of more interest to the public.

Veterans Day, November 11^th, was originally called Armistice Day. Some call it Remembrance Day. The day of remembrance was established to commemorate the 11th day at the 11th hour of the 11th month when, with the stroke of a pen, World War I ended.

In the United States it became an official day of observance in 1926, and was declared a national holiday by Congress in 1938. For many years, American school children paid tribute with a moment of silence at 11:00 AM. On June 1, 1954, Congress changed the name from Armistice to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans.

When Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act_ in 1968, it moved Veterans Day and three other Holidays to increase the number of long holiday weekends for federal employees. But Americans overwhelmingly objected to moving Veterans Day, so in 1978 the Day of Remembrance was restored to its proper place.

In those days the November 11^th holiday had great public support, but today many communities want to de-emphasize Veterans Day. This displays great disrespect to the 23 million men and women, Americans who have served or are serving in uniform.

It is insulting to the point of being unpatriotic to show such disrespect. The cities asking the poorly funded veterans’ organizations to foot the bill for municipal services for Veterans Day parades have no shame. There should be no public institution open on this day, and private businesses forcing veterans to work on this day should suffer the wrath of the people. If these businesses and institutions cannot allow a full day of respect, perhaps they could at least allow a few hours for students and employees to attend the ceremonies.

This country owes much to our soldiers and seamen. They deserve a public that will stand for at least a few moments to honor their sacrifice and bravery. Many lost their lives, and many others placed themselves in harm’s way in service to this nation. They have earned our respect. We should take a few moments today to show them our appreciation.

My personal salute goes to five names engraved in black granite on the National Mall that may also found in my 1967 High School yearbook.

They are not forgotten.

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In Cowtown, you can only have two cocks

If you live in a Fort Worth residential neighborhood, where once you were allowed 10 cocks, you may soon be limited to just two.

They say this is a compromise.

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Wishing

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Sunday Funnies

Paying the bills

President Obama called it a shellacking, but that doesn’t go far enough in describing the events of November 02, 2010. The leader of the Democrats had his chewed up ass handed to him in a sack. Various pundits have analyzed the reasons for this ad nauseum, so I will belabor only one… that which the right so fondly calls Obamacare, but more correctly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or PPACA.

We’ve discussed the bill as if it were healthcare reform, but in reality the crux of the bill addressed the public and private medical insurance systems. The only people in this nation who don’t feel like those systems need work are either insurance industry executives, people in the pockets of insurance industry, or partisan fools blindly parroting industry pawns.

We needed legislation that would restrain the careless, greedy practices of the private providers while maintaining the positive practices, that would reform the public insurers to better serve both the patients and the healthcare providers, and that would address fraud, waste and abuse of both private and public programs. What we got was the proverbial lipsticked pig.

A pig it may be… but this pig is not all pork. There are aspects of PPACA where the promise is coming true.

For many years now in this country there have existed certain groups of people who were perfectly satisfied with the pre-reform system. Insurance executives and stockholders, of course, but as bad as those guys behaved, they are not the truly bad guys. For the most part they have worked within the system, even if motivated by greed.

Greed is also a mark of con artists, fraudsters and organized criminal groups who really loved the ease with which the system could be scammed. Estimates in 2009 pegged the cost of fraud and waste to both private and public insurance systems at $100 billion. The private insurers are smaller and able to do a far better job policing claims, so the lion’s share of loss is bilked from the public coffers; an amount estimated somewhere between $60 and $80 billion annually.

Prior to PPACA, government enforcement efforts were sporadic and ineffective overall. This has since changed.

One of the main reasons fraudsters have found such an easy time with Medicare is the system's "pay and chase" system. Under current law Medicare must make payment for any claimed benefit within a very short time period, inhibiting any possibility of prior review. The process creates a system where the government finds itself reacting to fraud, rather than preventing the abuse before it happens... and in a swamped system the reactions are painfully slow.

Published reports late last year indicate about $47 billion was paid out in questionable claims. Some is simple billing mistakes, most of it is fraud, and very little will ever be recovered. Criminal elements have grown wise to the detection schemes and often disappear before any effort at recovery can commence.

This is where Obama’s reforms have started to play a role, and the efforts began even before PPACA was passed. The first administration effort to overhaul the health care system and stop the billions of dollars lost to abuse came in 2009 with the creation of the multi-agency Medicare Fraud Task Force (HEAT). In just over a year and a half the task force has racked up scores of indictments in 22 separate investigations over 11 states and the District of Columbia.

Next came the recovery audit contractors, of which there are two varieties.

Many improper Medicare and Medicaid claims are due simply to billing mistakes rather than fraud. To address this the administration created the Recovery Audit Contractors (RAC) program. The RACs provide valuable audit tools to combat overpayments and eliminate false claims. Since the providers targeted by the RACs are not considered criminal, certain limitations are imposed to ensure an audit does not negatively impact patient care.

RAC purview currently is only Medicare Part A and B, but PPACA reforms mandate them covering Part D prescription and Advantage plans by the end of next year. States will also be required to establish RAC contracts to address Medicaid claims.

Another layer of protection, one which is more geared toward fraud and intentional abuse, is known as a Zone Program Integrity Contractor (ZPIC). ZPICs have the authority to audit any Medicare or Medicaid related claim, and unlike the RACs who earn a paycheck based upon a percentage of recoveries, and are thus motivated to shoot for the stars, ZPICs are paid a a flat, annual contract rate and are thus motivated to find even small amounts of fraud. Their incentive is in maintaining a lucrative federal contract.

RAC and ZPIC audits may be triggered through data analysis, in response to complaints, or as a result of whistleblower information.

These new levels of integrity protection are already having profound impact. Within months of the establishment of these programs, a RAC initiated federal Qi Tam lawsuit accusing Dallas Fire Rescue of bilking Medicare by overbilling an estimated $41 million was filed by a whistleblower who once worked for the City. At about that same time, various ZPICs were working the lower end of the scale. In May, the Texas contractor identified $2.9 million is false claims filed by a home health provider. There have been scores of lesser audits all over the country revealing various levels of fraud. To date the ZIPCs have identified problem areas in 10 states, and audits are expanding into those areas.

President Obama identified the reduction of healthcare fraud and insurance abuse as a primary means of paying the price tag for PPACA. These three programs are showing good promise toward fulfilling that promise.

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More on the Arkansas Douche-bag

Last month I made a post on the turkey George Takei is speaking to in this video. I know I said we should blow him off and leave him alone, but this is too good to pass up.

H/T PZ

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