Why are large life insurance companies profiting from billions of dollars they hold on behalf of the families of fallen military service members?
Bloomberg Markets magazine senior writer David Evans posed that question in an article in its September issue. The article, which took a close look at practices at Prudential Financial, has sparked sharp criticism from Cabinet members, reform proposals from U.S. lawmakers, and a fraud investigation by the New York Attorney General.
The U.S. Veterans Affairs Dept. and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners say they are reviewing military life insurance arrangements.
Fallen soldiers' families denied cash as insurers profit
Gates says Pentagon to help death-benefits inquiry
Veterans agency to probe insurers on soldier benefits
.."It's disgraceful on the part of insurance companies," Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), a onetime prisoner-of-war in Vietnam, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "We'll obviously have to be looking into it."
Under scrutiny are so-called retained-asset accounts. More than 100 carriers use the accounts to earn income on $28 billion owed to beneficiaries. New York-based MetLife, the biggest U.S. life insurer, retains about $10 billion and was among the carriers subpoenaed by Andrew Cuomo, the New York Attorney General.
Many life insurance companies suggest to beneficiaries that as an alternative to taking a lump-sum payment of death benefits, they leave the bulk of the policy proceeds with the carriers.
The accounts were set up for beneficiaries such as Cindy Lohman of Great Mills, Md. Her 24-year-old son had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. Prudential and the other insurers give the recipients limited checkbook-like access to the funds and pay modest interest.
.Meanwhile, the carriers can invest the money, obtaining a far higher return than what they offer to beneficiaries. Families often receive misleading guarantees about the safety of the accounts, which are held in corporate coffers, not in federally insured banks, Bloomberg Markets found.
A half-dozen members of President Barack Obama's Cabinet sit on an advisory council overseeing life insurance for military service-members. The last time the council met, in November, none of the Cabinet members attended the annual meeting. Aides accustomed to handling the issue for their agencies go as representatives.
"The advisory council gets briefed on what's going on, how much money is going out, how many death benefits," says John Gingrich, chief of staff for Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki.
Now, Shinseki and other Cabinet members have joined a growing number of lawmakers calling for an overhaul of insurer practices. Representative Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.), has proposed a measure to set new rules for insurance companies that profit from accounts held for dead soldiers and veterans.
Prudential, based in Newark, N.J., defended retained-asset accounts as helpful to survivors, especially the loved ones of soldiers.
"For some families, the account is the difference between earning interest on a large amount of money and letting it sit idle," company spokesman Bob DeFillippo told Bloomberg. Prudential follows the law, he added.
MetLife spokesman Joseph Madden says his company similarly adheres to legal requirements. Its customers appreciate its version of retained-asset accounts, Madden adds. Beneficiaries get "peace of mind and time to make an informed decision while earning interest in the interim."
Monday, August 9, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
CALIFORNIA FIRM RECALLING ONE MILLION POUNDS OF GROUND BEEF.
Unfortunately, food recalls have become such a regular feature of daily life that it takes one really out of the ordinary to get people's attention.
Maybe this recall will grab you. Valley Meat Co. in Modesto, Calif., just recalled 1 million pounds of beef patties and ground beef produced late last year and in early January.
You read that right: 1 million pounds. If you figure that each head of cattle yields about 432 pounds of butcherable meat, then the recall would be the equivalent of more than 2,300 animals.
The problem: 7 people came down with nasty infections caused by E. coli O157:H7 that may have come from the meat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. That bug produces toxins that can wreak havoc on your intestines and, in some case, damage other organs.
The suspect meat was sold in California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and overseas. Most of it was frozen. To identify products from Valley Meat, look for "EST. 8268" in the USDA inspection mark. The company's website is supposed to have a full list of the affected products, but the computers there seemed overwhelmed when when we tried to check late Friday.
But you can get also get a rundown from the USDA.
Maybe this recall will grab you. Valley Meat Co. in Modesto, Calif., just recalled 1 million pounds of beef patties and ground beef produced late last year and in early January.
You read that right: 1 million pounds. If you figure that each head of cattle yields about 432 pounds of butcherable meat, then the recall would be the equivalent of more than 2,300 animals.
The problem: 7 people came down with nasty infections caused by E. coli O157:H7 that may have come from the meat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says. That bug produces toxins that can wreak havoc on your intestines and, in some case, damage other organs.
The suspect meat was sold in California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona and overseas. Most of it was frozen. To identify products from Valley Meat, look for "EST. 8268" in the USDA inspection mark. The company's website is supposed to have a full list of the affected products, but the computers there seemed overwhelmed when when we tried to check late Friday.
But you can get also get a rundown from the USDA.
ROALD DAHL -- A JAMES BOND STYLE SPY
Apparently motivated by a combination of duty and lust, Dahl slept with countless high society women while gathering intelligence in the United States.
His life as a young, handsome and dashing RAF officer in the early 1940s is detailed in a new book by Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, which is serialised today in The Sunday Telegraph.
MI5 is looking for a James Bond-style QAntoinette Haskell, a wealthy friend of Dahl's who looked up to him as a brother even though he was "drop dead gorgeous", said the author had a "whole stable" of women to wait on his every need. "He was very arrogant with his women, but he got away with it. The uniform didn't hurt one bit – and he was an ace [pilot]," she said. "I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that had more than $50,000 a year."
Dahl had fought as a fighter pilot earlier in the war, until injuries grounded him. He then worked for a secret service network based in the United States called British Security Coordination (BSC). It had been initially established to promote UK interests in the United States and to counter Nazi propaganda.
It is not known exactly how Dahl was recruited as a British agent, but it is thought he was working loosely for BSC by the first four months of 1944 when, officially, he had a public relations role at the British Embassy in Washington DC. He was "run" from New York by William Stephenson, a buccaneering Canadian industrialist and businessman.
Yet Dahl's secretive role went against the grain because he was a terrible gossip who frequently betrayed confidences, according to his family and friends. His daughter Lucy admitted: "Dad never could keep his mouth shut."
The new biography also examines Dahl's allegations of bullying and brutality during his public school days at Repton, which the children's author wrote about in his book Boy. Dahl blamed Geoffrey Fisher, the Headmaster of Repton and who went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a vicious caning that left him bloodied and questioning his religious faith.
However, it has emerged that Dahl, who died in 1990 aged 74, was wrong to blame Fisher for his beating in the summer of 1933. By then, Fisher had left Repton to become Bishop of Chester and so the caning was, in fact, administered by John Christie, his successor as Headmaster.
His life as a young, handsome and dashing RAF officer in the early 1940s is detailed in a new book by Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl, which is serialised today in The Sunday Telegraph.
MI5 is looking for a James Bond-style QAntoinette Haskell, a wealthy friend of Dahl's who looked up to him as a brother even though he was "drop dead gorgeous", said the author had a "whole stable" of women to wait on his every need. "He was very arrogant with his women, but he got away with it. The uniform didn't hurt one bit – and he was an ace [pilot]," she said. "I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that had more than $50,000 a year."
Dahl had fought as a fighter pilot earlier in the war, until injuries grounded him. He then worked for a secret service network based in the United States called British Security Coordination (BSC). It had been initially established to promote UK interests in the United States and to counter Nazi propaganda.
It is not known exactly how Dahl was recruited as a British agent, but it is thought he was working loosely for BSC by the first four months of 1944 when, officially, he had a public relations role at the British Embassy in Washington DC. He was "run" from New York by William Stephenson, a buccaneering Canadian industrialist and businessman.
Yet Dahl's secretive role went against the grain because he was a terrible gossip who frequently betrayed confidences, according to his family and friends. His daughter Lucy admitted: "Dad never could keep his mouth shut."
The new biography also examines Dahl's allegations of bullying and brutality during his public school days at Repton, which the children's author wrote about in his book Boy. Dahl blamed Geoffrey Fisher, the Headmaster of Repton and who went on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, for a vicious caning that left him bloodied and questioning his religious faith.
However, it has emerged that Dahl, who died in 1990 aged 74, was wrong to blame Fisher for his beating in the summer of 1933. By then, Fisher had left Repton to become Bishop of Chester and so the caning was, in fact, administered by John Christie, his successor as Headmaster.
OBAMA'S MOTHER'S PASSPORT RECORDS DESTROYED !!
State Dept. claims records gone for Stanley Ann Dunham prior to 1968.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's 1961 birth are missing.
The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other "nonvital" passport records, including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.
Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding light on whether Dunham did or did not travel out of the country around the time of Barack Obama's birth.
The claim made in the Freedom of Information response letter that many passport records were destroyed during the 1980s comes despite a statement on the State Department website that Passport Services maintains U.S. passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present.
The records released, however, contain interesting tidbits of new information about Obama's mother, including the odd listing of two different dates and locations for her marriage to Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.
In the released documents Dunham listed both March 15, 1965, in Molokai, Hawaii, and March 5, 1964, in Maui, Hawaii, as the dates and places of her marriage.
Dunham later divorced Lolo Soetoro in Hawaii. The divorce decree took effect Nov. 5, 1980, but the divorce papers do not list the date of the marriage.
No marriage certificate between Dunham and Soetoro has yet publicly surfaced, but a released application to amend Dunham's 1965 passport to her married name Stanley Ann Soetoro includes a checked box indicating a passport officer had seen the marriage certificate.
The released records also document that on Aug. 13, 1968, Dunham applied to have her 1965-issued passport renewed for two years, until July 18, 1970.
Under 22 USC Sec. 217a, from 1959 through 1968, passports were initially issued for three years, but they could be renewed for an additional two years.
Obama, by any other name
Also revealed by the released records is a heretofore unknown, alternative name for Barack Obama.
In the 1968 application to renew her 1965 passport, Dunham listed as her son Barack Hussein Obama, including in parenthesis below the name, "Soebarkah," in what appears to be a variation of an Indonesian surname not previously associated in the public record with the president.
For some unexplained reason, the designation of "Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah)" is crossed off the 1968 application by five handwritten, diagonal hash marks.
Dunham also appears to have used two different variations of her name in obtaining and amending passports while married to Lolo Soetoro: Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro and, without her maiden name, Stanley Ann Soetoro.
On April 27, 1981, Dunham applied from Jakarta, Indonesia, for a U.S. passport, indicating that she was in Indonesia working on a two-year contract from the Ford Foundation, from January 1981 through December 1982.
At that time, Dunham was working on a microfinance program for the Ford Foundation, which was overseen by Peter Geithner, the father of Timothy Geithner, the current U.S. secretary of the treasury.
Ann Dunham's occupation in the 1981 passport application was listed as "Program Officer, Ford Foundation."
No passport records subsequent to 1986 for Ann Dunham were released, though presumably a passport was issued following her 1986 application, such that the 10-year period prior to expiration would have extended one year past her death.
Dunham died Nov. 7, 1995, and was known to have been in Indonesia in 1994 when an Indonesian doctor first misdiagnosed as indigestion the first signs of the ovarian cancer that was the cause of her death the following year.
The released documents shed no light on proving or disproving whether Dunham might have held a passport prior to Barack Obama's birth that she could have used to travel to Kenya for his birth, as has been speculated in the absence of the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate from Hawaii.
The State Department released the Dunham passport documents July 29, responding to a Freedom of Information request submitted by Christopher Strunk, a New York resident who has actively pursued obtaining documents regarding Obama's birth and his eligibility to be president under the "natural born citizen" requirement of Section 1, Article 2 of the United States Constitution.
The Dunham documents have been archived on the Internet.
The controversy continues
A prominent array of commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Lou Dobbs, Peter Boyles and WND's Chuck Norris and Pat Boone have all said unequivocally and publicly that the Obama eligibility issue continues to be legitimate and worthy.
Longtime New York radio talker Lynn Samuels did the same.
"We don't even know where he was born," she said. "I absolutely believe he was not born in this country."
WND has reported on multiple legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether Obama was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.
Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and his appointment of lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation.
While his supporters cite an online version of a "Certification of Live Birth" from Hawaii as his birth verification, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's 1961 birth are missing.
The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other "nonvital" passport records, including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.
Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding light on whether Dunham did or did not travel out of the country around the time of Barack Obama's birth.
The claim made in the Freedom of Information response letter that many passport records were destroyed during the 1980s comes despite a statement on the State Department website that Passport Services maintains U.S. passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present.
The records released, however, contain interesting tidbits of new information about Obama's mother, including the odd listing of two different dates and locations for her marriage to Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.
In the released documents Dunham listed both March 15, 1965, in Molokai, Hawaii, and March 5, 1964, in Maui, Hawaii, as the dates and places of her marriage.
Dunham later divorced Lolo Soetoro in Hawaii. The divorce decree took effect Nov. 5, 1980, but the divorce papers do not list the date of the marriage.
No marriage certificate between Dunham and Soetoro has yet publicly surfaced, but a released application to amend Dunham's 1965 passport to her married name Stanley Ann Soetoro includes a checked box indicating a passport officer had seen the marriage certificate.
The released records also document that on Aug. 13, 1968, Dunham applied to have her 1965-issued passport renewed for two years, until July 18, 1970.
Under 22 USC Sec. 217a, from 1959 through 1968, passports were initially issued for three years, but they could be renewed for an additional two years.
Obama, by any other name
Also revealed by the released records is a heretofore unknown, alternative name for Barack Obama.
In the 1968 application to renew her 1965 passport, Dunham listed as her son Barack Hussein Obama, including in parenthesis below the name, "Soebarkah," in what appears to be a variation of an Indonesian surname not previously associated in the public record with the president.
For some unexplained reason, the designation of "Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah)" is crossed off the 1968 application by five handwritten, diagonal hash marks.
Dunham also appears to have used two different variations of her name in obtaining and amending passports while married to Lolo Soetoro: Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro and, without her maiden name, Stanley Ann Soetoro.
On April 27, 1981, Dunham applied from Jakarta, Indonesia, for a U.S. passport, indicating that she was in Indonesia working on a two-year contract from the Ford Foundation, from January 1981 through December 1982.
At that time, Dunham was working on a microfinance program for the Ford Foundation, which was overseen by Peter Geithner, the father of Timothy Geithner, the current U.S. secretary of the treasury.
Ann Dunham's occupation in the 1981 passport application was listed as "Program Officer, Ford Foundation."
No passport records subsequent to 1986 for Ann Dunham were released, though presumably a passport was issued following her 1986 application, such that the 10-year period prior to expiration would have extended one year past her death.
Dunham died Nov. 7, 1995, and was known to have been in Indonesia in 1994 when an Indonesian doctor first misdiagnosed as indigestion the first signs of the ovarian cancer that was the cause of her death the following year.
The released documents shed no light on proving or disproving whether Dunham might have held a passport prior to Barack Obama's birth that she could have used to travel to Kenya for his birth, as has been speculated in the absence of the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate from Hawaii.
The State Department released the Dunham passport documents July 29, responding to a Freedom of Information request submitted by Christopher Strunk, a New York resident who has actively pursued obtaining documents regarding Obama's birth and his eligibility to be president under the "natural born citizen" requirement of Section 1, Article 2 of the United States Constitution.
The Dunham documents have been archived on the Internet.
The controversy continues
A prominent array of commentators, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Lou Dobbs, Peter Boyles and WND's Chuck Norris and Pat Boone have all said unequivocally and publicly that the Obama eligibility issue continues to be legitimate and worthy.
Longtime New York radio talker Lynn Samuels did the same.
"We don't even know where he was born," she said. "I absolutely believe he was not born in this country."
WND has reported on multiple legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the lawsuits question whether Obama was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Further, others question his citizenship by virtue of his attendance in Indonesian schools during his childhood and question on what passport did he travel to Pakistan three decades ago.
Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and his appointment of lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation.
While his supporters cite an online version of a "Certification of Live Birth" from Hawaii as his birth verification, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.
WYOMING GOVERNOR TO SELL NATIONAL PARKS TO PAY FOR EDUCATION
The governor is threatening to sell the National Parks to pay for education in his state if the Obama Administration doesn't fund it.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
ISRAEL EXPELLING 400 CHILDREN TO SAFEGUARD THEIR JEWISH IDENTITY
JERUSALEM:
Israel will expel 400 native-born children of non-Jewish foreign workers to help safeguard the country's Jewish identity.
Migrant advocacy groups responded angrily to the decision, arguing that it will punish innocent children by sending them to back to the impoverished nations their parents had left in search of better lives in Israel.
Announcing the decision on Sunday, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the new policy was also aimed at halting the flow of illegal immigrants across Israel's border with Egypt.
''This decision is influenced by two main considerations, of humanity and Zionism,'' Mr Netanyahu said. ''On the one hand, this problem is a humanitarian problem - we all feel and understand the hearts of children - but, on the other hand, there are Zionist considerations and ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel.''
Israel did not want to create an incentive for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to flood the country, he said.
Under new immigration rules, children born to foreign workers who entered Israel legally, and who have lived there for at least five years, speak Hebrew and are enrolled in an Israeli school, will be eligible for permanent residency.
The cabinet voted 13 to 10 in favour of the decision on Sunday. Some ministers voted no because not enough children were being expelled; others voted no because they were opposed to the expulsion of any children.
The decision means that about 400 children of foreign workers must leave Israel by the end of the month with their parents, while 800 children will be eligible to stay.
''This isn't the state of the Jews that I know, that expels children,'' said the Industry Minister, Benyamin Ben-Eliezer, a member of the Labour Party. ''This is not the right time to let people see Israel expelling 400 children.''
Rotem Ilan, the chairwoman of Israeli Children, an advocacy group for migrant workers' families, said: ''They are the children of people who came to Israel legally to work. We brought these people here to plough our fields, build our houses and take care of our grandparents. And with people, come families.''
Ms Ilan said it was the deportation of children that threatened Israel's Jewish character.
''The obligation to act with kindness and compassion to foreigners is the most frequently repeated commandment in the Torah,'' she said.
Several Israeli commentators expressed concern at the impact of the decision on Israel's reputation abroad.
Israel will expel 400 native-born children of non-Jewish foreign workers to help safeguard the country's Jewish identity.
Migrant advocacy groups responded angrily to the decision, arguing that it will punish innocent children by sending them to back to the impoverished nations their parents had left in search of better lives in Israel.
Announcing the decision on Sunday, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said the new policy was also aimed at halting the flow of illegal immigrants across Israel's border with Egypt.
''This decision is influenced by two main considerations, of humanity and Zionism,'' Mr Netanyahu said. ''On the one hand, this problem is a humanitarian problem - we all feel and understand the hearts of children - but, on the other hand, there are Zionist considerations and ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel.''
Israel did not want to create an incentive for hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to flood the country, he said.
Under new immigration rules, children born to foreign workers who entered Israel legally, and who have lived there for at least five years, speak Hebrew and are enrolled in an Israeli school, will be eligible for permanent residency.
The cabinet voted 13 to 10 in favour of the decision on Sunday. Some ministers voted no because not enough children were being expelled; others voted no because they were opposed to the expulsion of any children.
The decision means that about 400 children of foreign workers must leave Israel by the end of the month with their parents, while 800 children will be eligible to stay.
''This isn't the state of the Jews that I know, that expels children,'' said the Industry Minister, Benyamin Ben-Eliezer, a member of the Labour Party. ''This is not the right time to let people see Israel expelling 400 children.''
Rotem Ilan, the chairwoman of Israeli Children, an advocacy group for migrant workers' families, said: ''They are the children of people who came to Israel legally to work. We brought these people here to plough our fields, build our houses and take care of our grandparents. And with people, come families.''
Ms Ilan said it was the deportation of children that threatened Israel's Jewish character.
''The obligation to act with kindness and compassion to foreigners is the most frequently repeated commandment in the Torah,'' she said.
Several Israeli commentators expressed concern at the impact of the decision on Israel's reputation abroad.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
HOW WAR GAMES LURES TEENS IN TO MILITARY
I think this is despicable that you have to fool them to get them to enlist.
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