State Sets Record for Tourism Four Years in a Row

“This is a great day, 97.3 million tourists. I’ll look forward to passing one hundred million tourists,” said Governor Rick Scott.

Governor Rick Scott announced Monday this is the fourth consecutive record year for tourism in Florida.

“When you think about that, every 85 tourists is a job. But when tourists come down here, not only do they say we have great weather, we have a low crime rate, they want to buy a house, they want to move their businesses down here. It’s still driving our economy,” said Governor Scott.

http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/Fourth-Consecutive-Record-Year-for-Florida-Tourism-292136561.html

Florida Bill Would Help Stop Federal License Plate Tracking Program

http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2015/02/florida-bill-would-help-stop-federal-license-plate-tracking-program/

A wide-ranging privacy bill introduced in the Florida House would prohibit the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) without a warrant in most cases, and further ban retention of any legally-collected data, effectively blocking a federal program tracking millions of cars partly by tapping into ALPRs on a state-level.

Rep. Ray Rodrigues (R-Ft. Myers) introduced H0571 on Feb. 3. The legislation addresses several privacy issues, including the use of automatic license plate readers.  These ALPR systems store photographs, the license plate numbers, and the date, time, and location of vehicles. A single scanner can capture hundreds of license plate numbers in a matter of hours.

In Florida there are four types of people:

The “locals” that are part of the “good ole boy network”

The “Yankees”, those come down from up north to Florida, drop a wad of cash and go back up north… and guess who makes it possible for the “locals” not having to pay a state income tax ?

The “STUPID YANKEES”, they come down, buy some of our over priced real estate and rent it to the “YANKEES” and they can’t homestead their property because they are not a resident and they can’t vote…  guess who pays the most in taxes ?

The “DAMN YANKEES”, those that come down from up north and STAYS

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Police Officially Refuse To Hire Applicants With High IQ Scores

http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/04/police-officially-refuse-to-hire-applicants-with-high-iq-scores/

Many have suspected it, but now it appears to be official: police departments refuse to hire applicants with high IQ scores.

Critics of law enforcement have long suggested that police officers tend to be selected for their lack of critical thinking, but news that department hiring processes officially disqualify high-scoring applicants might still come as a shock to many.

While a rare exception to the rule might slip through the cracks, if you are too smart, police departments simply won’t hire you.

This policy became solidified in a federal ruling dating back almost a decade and a half ago. The ruling came with little fanfare from the mainstream, corporate media, who didn’t apparent find it to be newsworthy.

In 1999, a Federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by an applicant to the New London, Connecticut police department who was barred from being hired after successfully taking the intelligence portion of the police examinations. The disqualification came because he had scored “too high” on the test. The New London Police Department made it clear that they did not want the “bottom of the barrel” when it came to intelligence, but they also didn’t want anyone who was “too smart” either.

This little-known ruling was made public back in September of the same year. Judge Peter C. Dorsey of the United States District Court in New Haven, Connecticut confirmed that the plaintiff, Robert Jordan, 48, who holds a bachelor’s degree in literature, had been denied an opportunity to even interview for a job with the department, for no reason other than his high test scores.

Judge Dorsey ruled in favor of the department, saying that Mr. Jordan was offered no protection under the law in this case. There is no legal protection given to intelligent people from discriminatory hiring practices by individual police departments, Dorsey explained. The judge continued, explaining that police departments held all applicants to this same standard and thus they rejected all applicants who scored high. As a result, this could not be held as discriminatory in nature.

The next time you cross paths with a law enforcement officer and wonder how anyone so stupid managed to get hired by their department, now you know that this stupidity might in fact be the very thing that qualified them for the job.

(Article by Jackson Marciana; editing and contributions to this report by Arman B.)

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Is the ACA treating America without informed consent?

http://drugtopics.modernmedicine.com/drug-topics/news/aca-treating-america-without-informed-consent

Robert L. Mabee is a pharmacist and attorney practicing in Sioux Falls, S.D. He also holds an MBA. Contact him at rlmabee@mabeelaw.com.

In the practice of medicine, informed consent is essential. Before treating a patient, the provider must make sure the patient understands what is going to be done and consents to the treatment. Failure to obtain informed consent is a basis for a claim of negligence as medical malpractice. Lying to a patient or intentionally misleading a patient is gross negligence in many jurisdictions and might be the basis for criminal charges.

The case can be made that the ACA was passed without the informed consent of voters because their legislators were misled. While some naïve supporters in the Congress and Senate freely admitted they had never even read the act or the regulations before voting for it, in fact there is evidence to suggest that they were systematically and intentionally misled. Such conduct could constitute gross negligence.

Is a Pharmacist lying or misleading a patient about the availability of a specific medication.. either in stock or not, on order or not, unavailable from the manufacturer or not.. Is that a basis for CRIMINAL CHARGES ?

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http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=1164216  (Video)

Anonymous tips about drug activity can be sent through text messaging

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Are Your Medications Safe?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/02/fda_inspections_fraud_fabrication_and_scientific_misconduct_are_hidden_from.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

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Utah bill would prevent law enforcement from abusing substance abuse database

http://www.cachevalleydaily.com/politics/article_21c64776-b3ed-11e4-b3b6-5bd21f5bd591.html

Republican Senator Todd Weiler of Woods Cross has a bill before the Utah Legislature that would create a new substance abuse control database. On KVNU’s For the People program Thursday, Weiler said the state has had a database in place for 19 years.

When it was created, then-governor Mike Leavitt expressed the fear that it would be abused and Weiler said it has definitely been abused. He said if you go to your doctor for a prescription for oxycotin or other controlled substance your prescription goes into this database.

Your doctor can check it to make sure you are not doctor-shopping and also law enforcement can check it and that’s where abuse has come in.

“We’ve had incident after incident of abuse,” Weiler explained. “I’m basically running a bill to say that law enforcement would have to go to court and show probable cause in order to look inside your electronic medicine cabinet, which is the same standard they would have to do to look inside your actual medicine cabinet.”

Weiler said that the adjustment to the law protects people’s privacy and holds law enforcement to the same standards they would need to go through for any other type of search. But Weiler’s bill does emphasize the need

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Clerk targeted in Dania Beach Walgreens robbery speaks out

http://www.wsvn.com/story/28121231/clerk-targeted-in-dania-beach-walgreens-robbery-speaks-out

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I-Team: Report Suggests Trend In Prescription Drug Errors Filled By Pharmacists

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2015/02/13/i-team-report-suggests-trend-in-prescription-drug-errors-filled-by-pharmacists/

BOSTON (CBS) — Anyone who has waited in a drug store for a prescription knows a pharmacy counter can be a busy place.

“It’s a high-pace, high-stress environment,” a former CVS pharmacy technician told the I-Team.

She did not want to be identified, but she believes that stress leads to mistakes.

“Somebody gets the wrong strength of medication, somebody gets the wrong number of pills,” she said.

The I-Team obtained documents detailing prescription drug errors reported to the State Department of Public Health.  Since 2010, pharmacies reported 194 serious drug errors.  In one case, an allergy drug was given to a patient instead of a high blood pressure medication.  In another case, a patient got something for acid reflux instead of an anti-depressant, and an arthritis drug was given to someone who needed a medicine for seizures.

The pharmacy technician believes a growing trend in pharmacies is behind all that stress and the errors.  It is called performance metrics, a system used to measure how many prescriptions a pharmacist fills and how fast.  It also counts flu shots and phone calls pharmacists make to patients urging them to fill prescriptions. If the pharmacist falls behind, she says, they’ll hear about. “You didn’t make all of your 50 phone calls. I want you to write an action plan to tell me how tomorrow you are going to get all of your prescriptions filled, get  your phone calls made plus give out x number of flu shots,” she said describing what pharmacists she worked with were told.

CVS would not talk to us on camera, and would not allow our cameras inside their stores, but they did invite the I-Team inside a store to see how the system works. Company representatives told us if metrics contributed to mistakes they would change the system.  They insist it does not.

In a written statement the company said: “The health and safety of our customers is our number one priority and we have comprehensive policies and procedures in place to ensure prescription safety.”

In spite of those assurances, pharmacists are starting to speak out against metrics. Susan Holden is the president of the Massachusetts Association of Pharmacists. She worked under a metrics system at a different drug store chain. “It was very nerve-wracking, very stressful, sometimes tearful,” she recalled.  Holden now works as a hospital pharmacist and she says metrics puts too much stress on pharmacists. “Ultimately, I was afraid of harming a patient,” she said.

A survey of nearly 700 pharmacists conducted by the institute for safe medication practices found that more than 83 percent believed performance metrics contributed to dispensing errors.

Susan Holden believes if something doesn’t change, the problem could get worse. “The worst case scenario, it could be a very dangerous prescription error. I think anybody could draw a conclusion about what could happen,” she said.

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy is urging states to restrict the use of metrics that are proven to compromise safety.  The Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy has taken no action.

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I had been getting my inbox loaded with notices that my blog was down.. then it was up.. then it was down..  and it was slow loading and throwing errors… I reached out to my ISP if they could furnish some insight into what was going on..  well… apparently the server that my blog was on.. was having some unusual spikes in usage.. and on top of that the database for my blog was split between  two different servers..  they have moved the entire database to one server and hopefully will resolve some of the access issues that has been plaguing my blog…

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Florida Residents Form Human Shield to Prevent Police from Arresting Man for Weed

http://www.hightimes.com/read/florida-residents-form-human-shield-prevent-police-arresting-man-weed

An army of Florida police officers was nearly impaled and used to decorate the lawn of a Delray Beach residence last weekend, when a mob of angry neighbors stepped up and formed a human shield to prevent cops from arresting an individual accused of smoking marijuana.

The rowdy scene took place last Saturday night when officers in an unmarked patrol car pulled up to a house and began harassing nearly 30 people attending a birthday party. According to a report from The Sun Sentinel, officers got out of the car and began to shake down people standing outside because they claimed someone they had witnessed smoking a joint minutes earlier had run inside the house.

Residents told police that no one at the party was smoking pot, and would not give officers permission to come inside the home. Yet the cops refused to vacate the premises and radioed for backup. “There was a lot of shouting back and forth,” Cory Provost, who posted a video of the incident on YouTube, told the Sentinel. “The residents were asking the cops to leave the yard and they didn’t do so.”

At one point, nearly 20 residents banded together to form a human shield in order to keep police from gaining control and arresting their friend – an alleged “drug user” that officers claim to have encountered in the past. In the video, a resident can be heard telling police to, “Please, leave the yard,” a command that is given with a few more expletives as the incident becomes more intense.

Delray Beach Police Sergeant Nicole Guerriero told the press earlier this week that the video is not an accurate record of the incident because it only reveals a small part of the events that transpired. “Someone hit [an] officer and pushed him away, they were throwing bottles, they were cursing and screaming at them,” she said. “The next thing they know, there’s 70 to 75 people out there. The officers had to use pepper spray to get people back.”

In the end several people were arrested and charged with obstruction and assault on a police officer, but no one went down for possession of marijuana. Recent controversy surrounding the murders of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO are rumored to be at the root of the residents’ frustration and hostility towards Delray Beach police. Yet the fact that none of these people were found in possession of marijuana indicates their animosity towards police may have simply been driven by innocence and the desire to stop being bullied by the boys in blue.

Arguably, while the individuals taken into custody may be guilty of “obstructing” police officers from doing their jobs, let’s not forget the entire situation took place because the cops may or may not have witnessed someone smoking weed–a plant that nearly 60 percent of Florida voters were in favor of legalizing during the November 2014 general election.

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