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WPCNR’S NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey.. July 21, 2012

This column originally appeared on WPCNR on February 1, 2003, and celebrates the Dreamers, the Achievers, the High and the Mighty:

The Space Blazers:

 The Apollo 11 Crew: Nail Armstrong, Michael Collins,  Buzz Aldrin, Jr. Mr. Armstrong set foot on the moon 43 years ago on July 20 (Friday).(NASA Photo)

The two papers I receive at WPCNR White Plains News Headquarters, White Plains, New York, USA did not tell you Friday morning that it was the 43rd  anniversary of the day when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The exact hour  was  20:11 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). That was the culmination of the last great American achievement — conquering space — when Apollo 11 with Armstrong in command, with astronauts Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. blasted off to the stars .

Their mission was a success. But there have been the tragedies associated with striving for the stars and being the best, achieving the best, working for the good. Those are the persons who keep the dreams alive by their deaths and personal sacrifice. I wrote the following after the explosion of the Columbia Space Shuttle upon reentry after 19 days in space in January 2003.

Saturday’s fatal Columbia Space Shuttle accident killing all 7 astronauts aboard when the historic spacecraft broke up over East Texas at daybreak Saturday morning begins a period of national mourning.

The expected media speculations have started, guessing at the cause of the reentry that went bizarrely, awfully wrong.

The truth is the civilized world takes absolute scientific miracles for granted. We do not appreciate the courage and skills of the men and women creating the future.

Those of us with cell phones, internet connections, high-speed trains, satellite communications and entertainment (all products made possible by the space program), do not realize the magnitude of daring achievements that you and I have come to accept to be executed like clockwork.

I first learned of Columbia’s fate late Saturday afternoon when my wife mentioned that instead of sports programming being videotaped on our television, there was coverage of a live NASA event on ABC.

(Incredibly, the radio station I had been listening to on the way from a sports clinic had not reported any hint of the accident. That station was Z-100, the most listened-to station in the New York metropolitan area. America Online also on their first up page did not mention the missing craft as of midday. That kind of communications misjudgment is sad.)

As I watched the close of Mr. Jennings’ coverage at about 3 PM, he signed off with no recap, no names of astronauts, and some parting words about what he thought was the cause of the disaster.

I’ll say what he should have said.

Columbia’s seven astronauts who died — we know their names: they were

Columbus, Magellan, Cook, Lewis, Clark, the Wrights, Lindbergh, De Laroche, Earhart, Markham, Gruber, Chaffee, Grissom, White, Gargarin, Komarov, the Challenger Crew, the crew of Soyuz 11. They are the hundreds of brave men and women who went into the unknown.

Apoll 11’s Crew turned the dreams of the 1950s visualized in television shows like Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (above, Astro, Roger and Tom) and Captain Video, “The Master of Science” below  into reality.

America’s Spacemem and the explorers before them are the people who trust in their ability and their vessel to expand the world’s horizons, to know the unknown, whose legacies build a better world. Whose deeds inspire and achievements are the catalyst for achievement to come.

From Cook’s fragile vessel which sailed the Pacific, to the marvel that was the Columbia, the captains courageous who sailed the Roaring 40s, blazed the Oregon Trail, discovered how to fly, and flew the oceans, journeyed to the stars, knew the risks they were taking. 

The media  trivializes their courage, their skills, and the difficulty of what they did and wanted to do, to concentrate on the causes of their failure, as if knowing the cause will make their loss acceptable.

The Magnificent Seven

I do not know Columbia’s Magnificent Seven. I just see their smiling faces in their photograph, and I regret the loss of every one. They had achievement on their faces, pride in their demeanor. Their eyes shown with the glow of being alive and striving to do the great things they set out to do.

Civilization has been created because of people like the crew of the Columbia’s Magnificent Seven, not the incompetence we see demonstrated daily today where technology is concerned.

The Columbia itself had flown 26 missions since launching in 1981. It was guided and outfitted with the best 2003 communications and equipment had to offer.

Not like Captain James Cook’s bark, Endeavour, a 100-foot ship powered by sail that conquered the “space” of his time, the Pacific Ocean. It was the Columbia’s Magnificent Seven’s Endeavour. They were tracked, they were backed up, but they perhaps more than anyone here on the ground knew the high dangers of the shuttle mission.

Liftoff, as their predecessors, The Challenger crew fell victim to, is fraught with risk. Reentry, which needs to be negotiated at precisely the right angle of attack, is equally risky. Soyuz 11’s spacecrew of Dobrovolskiy, Volkov, and Patsayev died in 1971 on reentry, when the Russian cosmonauts took too long to descend.

No guarantees in real life. Machines sometimes run out of miracles.

The magnificence of the explorers’ sacrifice and dedication, is that they accept the risk of “the endeavor.”

They accept the challenge, bear it alone, seizing challenge with an indomitable spirit and confidence, facing death when it comes with the satisfaction that they made the effort, and I suspect analyzing, coping, trying to fix it until the end, the very end. Then never give up.

Columbia’s Magnificent Seven, after 16 days in space, are gone now. My sorrow is with their families who will miss these Magnificent Seven, and who know in their hearts that they died trying to reach the pinnacle of their aspirations.

They are only human.

They tried their best, achieved their best, and experienced what they longed to experience. They dared to live the great adventure.

Not all of us have the courage to follow our longed-for adventures and make them real. You can watch movies that attempt to give that experience by transference. That’s why, I believe, you and I take it so personally when we lose heroic personalities of our time. We wonder what they are like. We glorify them, rightly so.

Follow Me! They Say.

I wonder how those Magnificent Seven felt, how satisfying it must have been, to be at your best, doing what you love, coping with the risks.I envy them that.

The Columbia Crew is the Miracle.

In reality it is not machines that conquer, it is the intrepid personalities, each unique, each contributing, who perform the miracles with God’s help. That they fall short is an example to us, not to take ourselves, our fates, or our existences for granted.

This is true of the everyday people we take for granted: the firefighter, the policeman, the train engineer, the airline pilot, the construction worker, and yes, the crusading annoying reporter. All are highly trained disciplined workers, executing precise tasks for which the non-expert has no feel or understanding . What makes for the desire to achieve? What is out there or up there that leads them on?

The Feel of the Unknown

I took Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s biographical adventure diary, Listen! The Wind down from the bookshelf.

She was the young bride of the aviator-pioneer, Charles Lindbergh. She navigated for him in his aircraft, and ran his radio communications on his many exploratory flights around the world.

In a passage she describes a night flight over the ocean, in which she was operating the radio for her husband Charles, who was at the controls. Mrs. Lindbergh is describing the feelings she had as she tries to tune in the South American coast at sea in the dark of night in 1933, 79 years ago.

The feeling, the courage of the adventurer, the explorer has not changed. This is great:

“Night was the hardest. It would be all right once it was day. I kept saying…We began to hit clouds. I could tell without looking up, for the plane bumped slightly from time to time, first one wing down and then the other. And the moon blackened out for short periods.

Then for longer periods. I could not see to write my messages. I stiffened, dimly sensing fear – the old fear of bad weather – and looked out. We were flying under clouds. I could still find a kind of horizon, a difference in shading where the water met the clouds. That was all. But it seemed to be getting darker.

Storms? Were those clouds or was it the sky? We had lost the water. We were flying blind. I turned off the light quickly (to give my husband a little more vision), and sat waiting, tense, peering through the night. Now we were out again. There were holes through which one could see the dark sky. It was all right, I felt, as long as there were holes.

More blind flying. This is it, I thought is what people forget. This is what it means to fly across the ocean, blind and at night. But day is coming. It ought to be day before long… Daybreak! What a miracle. I didn’t see any sign of day and yet it must be lighter. The clouds were distinguishing themselves more and more from water and sea.

Daybreak—thank God—as if we had been living in eternal night—as if this were the first sun that ever rose out of the sea.

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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. From  the White Plains Department of Public Safety. July 21, 2012:

The city’s Department of Public Safety in a news release distributed to media Friday announced 

“Departmental Disciplinary Charges were preferred against Police Officer Steven Hart, based on misconduct allegedly committed by Police Officer Hart outside of 135 South Lexington Avenue on November 19, 2011.”

The dispatch continues:

“The charges were served on Police Officer Hart earlier today (Friday). He has until July 30,2012 to file an answer to these charges.”

“If found guilty of the charges, Public Safety Commissioner David Chong, in his capacity as the appointing authority for police officers (under Section 220 of the City Charter), could impose a penalty on Police Officer Hart ranging from a reprimand to dismissal from the Police Bureau.

“Officer Hart has been suspended without pay. He is entitled to a hearing.  Given the pending nature of the charges, no further comments specific to this matter will be made.”

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***

In addition to the probation and forfeiture, Judge Chin ordered Kumar, 53, of Saratoga, California, to pay a $25,000 fine and a $200 special assessment fee.

Mr. Bharara praised the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also thanked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

This case was brought in coordination with President Barack Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, on which Mr. Bharara serves as a co-chair of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Working Group. President Obama established the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force to wage an aggressive, coordinated, and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.

The task force includes representatives from a broad range of federal agencies, regulatory authorities, inspectors general, and state and local law enforcement who, working together, bring to bear a powerful array of criminal and civil enforcement resources. The task force is working to improve efforts across the federal executive branch and, with state and local partners, to investigate and prosecute significant financial crimes, ensure just and effective punishment for those who perpetrate financial crimes, combat discrimination in the lending and financial markets, and recover proceeds for victims of financial crimes.

The case is being handled by the Office’s Securities and Commodities Task Force. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Reed Brodsky and Richard Tarlowe are in charge of the prosecution.

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WPCNR FBI WIRE. SPECIAL TO WPCNR FROM THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. JULY 17, 2012:

Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Janice K. Fedarcyk, the Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Raymond W. Kelly, the Police Commissioner of the City of New York (NYPD); and Robert Doar, the Commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration (HRA), announced today the unsealing of charges against 48 defendants.

They will be charged for their participation in a massive fraud scheme involving the unlawful diversion and trafficking of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of prescription drugs that had previously been dispensed to Medicaid recipients in the New York City area (“second-hand” drugs), in a national underground market.

As a result of the fraud, Medicaid lost more than an estimated $500 million in reimbursements for pills that were diverted into this second-hand black market. Forty-two of the defendants were charged in a superseding indictment, and six more were charged in a complaint.

Thirty-four of the defendants were arrested this morning in connection with today’s charges. Fifteen defendants were taken into custody in New York and New Jersey, and an additional defendant from the area was expected to surrender today. These 16 defendants were to  be presented and arraigned in Manhattan federal court before U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas later this afternoon.

Nineteen other defendants were arrested in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida, and Texas and are expected to appear today and tomorrow in federal courts in those states. The remaining defendants charged are at large.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said,

“As alleged, these defendants ran a black market in prescription pills involving a double-dip fraud of gigantic proportions. It worked a fraud on Medicaid—in some cases, two times over—a fraud on pharmaceutical companies, a fraud on legitimate pharmacies, a fraud on patients who unwittingly bought second-hand drugs, and ultimately, a fraud on the entire health care system. With the dozens of arrests we made today, we have taken a significant step toward exposing and shutting down the black market for second-hand drugs, and our investigation is very much ongoing.”

FBI Assistant Director in Charge Janice K. Fedarcyk said,

“The scheme to collect, aggregate, and resell costly prescription drugs was bad medicine in three ways: profiting so obscenely by breaking the law is the very definition of unjust enrichment. The scheme was theft, plain and simple, from a program funded by taxpayers. And the scheme posed serious health risks at both the collection and distribution ends. People with real ailments were induced to sell their medications on the cheap rather than take them as prescribed, while end-users of the diverted drugs were getting second-hand medicine that may have been mishandled, adulterated, improperly stored, repackaged, and expired.”

NYPD Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said,

“It’s one thing when people sell their blood for money; it’s another when they sell their drugs, especially when the diversion compromises the pharmaceutical supply with tainted and outdated drugs.”

HRA Commissioner Robert Doar said,

“This case is an egregious example of individuals preying on our most vulnerable population. The diversion, repackaging, and reselling of HIV/AIDS medications, in some cases expired, is a danger to our public health. The integrity of the Medicaid Program has been threatened by these criminals who have used taxpayer dollars for the opposite reasons for which they are intended. But make no mistake, together with our law enforcement partners, we will continue to pursue these types of criminals and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”

The following allegations are based on the superseding indictment, the complaint, and other documents unsealed today in Manhattan federal court:

The prescription drugs involved in this scheme were drugs designed to treat various illnesses, including HIV, schizophrenia, and asthma, and were non-controlled substances that did not lend themselves to abuse. These second-hand drugs were originally dispensed to Medicaid recipients in the New York City area who then sold them into collection and distribution channels that ultimately ended at pharmacies for resale to unsuspecting consumers.

The defendants and their co-conspirators profited by exploiting the difference between the cost to the patient of obtaining the prescription drugs through Medicaid, which was usually nothing, and the hundreds of dollars per bottle that pharmacies paid to purchase those drugs to sell to their customers. In order to maximize their profits, the defendants and their co-conspirators targeted the most expensive drugs, which often cost more than $1,000 per bottle.

The Fraudulent Distribution and Trafficking Scheme

The lowest level participants in the scheme (the “Medicaid beneficiaries”) were typically AIDS patients or individuals who suffered from other illnesses that required expensive drug therapies. Using their Medicaid benefits to cover the costs, the Medicaid beneficiaries filled prescriptions for month-long supplies of drugs at pharmacies throughout the New York City area and then sold them to “collectors” for cash instead of using them for treatment.

These transactions occurred at street corners and bodegas in and around New York City, including in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and in the Bronx. Collectors then sold the second-hand bottles to higher level participants in the scheme (“aggregators”), who typically bought large quantities of second-hand drugs from multiple collectors.

These transactions repeated themselves at increasingly higher levels of aggregators who purchased the drugs from multiple, lower level aggregators. The pills were ultimately sold to wholesale prescription drug distribution companies (“corrupt distribution companies”), which then sold them to pharmacies and to other wholesale prescription distribution drug companies across the United States.

Ultimately, these pharmacies then dispensed the second-hand drugs to unsuspecting customers, some of whom likely were Medicaid beneficiaries. Therefore, in some cases, Medicaid would have reimbursed patients for the same drugs twice—the second time for drugs that were misbranded, adulterated, and possibly expired—and would thereby have been defrauded twice.

The defendants charged in the superseding indictment and the complaint include collectors, aggregators, and owners and operators of the corrupt distribution companies who were carrying out this scheme in states including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, Utah, Nevada, Louisiana, and Alabama.

In addition, several defendants were also charged with narcotics trafficking offenses for buying and reselling drugs including Oxycodone and Oxymorphone.

The Fraudulent Labeling Scheme

Because the prescription drugs involved in the scheme were not drugs of abuse and were ultimately going to be resold in the legal drug distribution chain, it was essential that they be packaged in bottles that appeared to contain new drugs that came directly from the manufacturer via authorized and licensed wholesale distributors. Therefore, the defendants and their co-conspirators had to restore the previously dispensed bottles to their original appearance, with the manufacturer’s label still intact but without the patient labels that pharmacies affix when dispensing drugs to a patient.

After purchasing the second-hand bottles originally dispensed to Medicaid beneficiaries, the defendants and their co-conspirators used lighter fluid and other means to dissolve the adhesive on the patient labels so that they could be removed. During the process, the manufacturers’ labels sometimes became damaged, and/or the second-hand drugs were close to their expiration dates or had already expired.

When the bottles were not resaleable because of damaged manufacturers’ labels or expiration date problems, some of the defendants replaced the original manufacturers’ labels with counterfeit labels and/or altered the labels to backdate their expiration dates. Some of these counterfeit prescription drug manufacturers’ labels were obtained by two of the defendants from the Dominican Republic. In other instances, the defendants and their co-conspirators removed the drugs from the bottles and trafficked in loose pills, which were then completely untraceable.

E-mails obtained by search warrant revealed that a certain subset of the defendants bought and sold more than $62 million worth of second-hand prescription drugs during an approximately 12-month time period during the conspiracy, which they meticulously documented in a business-like manner through purchase orders and receipts scanned onto their computers and uploaded into e-mail accounts.

The Second-Hand Pills

The second-hand pills that found their way back into the legal drug distribution stream were potentially dangerous to the unwitting consumers who purchased them for several reasons. For example, the defendants and their co-conspirators stored the drugs in uncontrolled conditions, such as car trunks, residences, and rented storage facilities, which would have compromised the medical efficacy of the drugs over time.

During the investigation, the FBI seized more than $16 million worth of second-hand prescription drugs, comprised of more than 33,000 bottles and more than 250,000 loose pills, kept in uncontrolled and sometimes egregious conditions by various defendants and their co-conspirators.

* * *

Charts identifying each defendant, the charges, and the maximum penalties are below. The indicted case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote.

Mr. Bharara praised the efforts of the FBI’s Health Care Fraud Task Force and thanked FBI, NYPD, and HRA for their work on the case. The New York FBI Health Care Fraud Task Force was formed in 2007 in an effort to combat health care fraud in the greater New York City area. The task force is comprised of agents, officers, and investigators from the FBI, NYPD, the New York State Insurance Fraud Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Inspector General, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, New York State Attorney General’s Office, New York State Office of Medicaid Inspector General, New York State Health and Hospitals Inspector General, and the National Insurance Crime Bureau.

Mr. Bharara thanked the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, and the New York State Office of the Medicaid Inspector General for their assistance. He also thanked the FBI’s Boston, Houston, Miami, Newark, Philadelphia, and Salt Lake City Field Offices, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s offices in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Texas (Southern), Florida (Southern), Pennsylvania (Eastern), and Utah for their assistance in the investigation.

If you think you may have purchased second-hand prescription drugs or were otherwise victimized by this scheme, you can call the FBI Hotline at 212-384-3555.

The case is being prosecuted by the Office’s Organized Crime Unit. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jason A. Masimore and Russell Capone are in charge of the prosecution. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Wilson of the Office’s Asset Forfeiture Unit is responsible for the forfeiture of assets.

The charges contained in the indictment and the complaint are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

* * *

U.S. v. Viera, et al.

U.S. v. Oria, et al.

Defendants’ Ages and Residencies

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WPCNR SOUTH END TIMES. From  The French American School of  New York. July 9, 2012:

The French-American School of New York (FASNY) said today that it has contracted with one of the region’s leading environmental education organizations to conduct an in-depth baseline biodiversity study of the 84 acres of the former Ridgeway County Club that it is dedicating for its Greens to Green Conservancy, permanent publicly accessible open space. 

The school, which purchased the 130-acre former private golf club in January 2011, said the study would be conducted by Teatown Lake Reservation Inc., headquartered in Yorktown in northern Westchester, a respected regional environmental research and education center with expertise in assessing natural conditions and species.  Teatown’s assessment will serve as the foundation for all future management and research decisions relating to the Greens to Green Conservancy at the French-American School of New York in White Plains.  The study will commence this month and will assess the site during all four seasons.

The school’s concept for the conservancy is to restore the natural character of what for a century had been an intensively managed, artificial golf course environment to a more natural state, which the school refers to as ‘undevelopment.’ Key aspects of the study will include analysis of habitat and meadow restoration. Teatown will evaluate various strategies applicable to the site including meadow, wetland, pond and forest restoration. Potential short- and long-term agricultural uses for the site will also be evaluated and a protocol for on-site evaluation of meadow restoration practices will be developed.

“We are fortunate that Teatown agreed to serve as the primary consultant on the Greens to Green Conservancy, a significant component of the plan for our school campus and conservancy on the former golf course property,” said Mischa Zabotin, Chairman of the School’s Board of Trustees.

 “The members of our Conservancy Task Force spent many months visiting and meeting with the leaders of virtually every environmental education organization, land conservancy, nature center and land trust in the region, including Westchester, adjacent Connecticut and the Lower Hudson Valley. From this very impressive array, Teatown stood out as offering a science-based program that could provide the kind of in-depth analytic knowledge we need to create this unique conservation opportunity.”

Dianne Barron, Teatown’s Interim Executive Director, said the chance to work with the French-American School of New York at the early stages of the Greens to Green Conservancy was welcomed by the organization and its staff.

“To be able to work on a creative plan for the restoration of a golf course back to a natural state comes along very rarely. We applaud the French-American School of New York for its willingness not only to set aside nearly two thirds of the property it acquired as permanent publicly accessible open space, but for its commitment to exploring the unique educational opportunities that it affords. We look forward to a successful collaborative relationship as Greens to Green evolves.”

The site studies will be led by Michael Rubbo, Ph.D., Teatown’s Director of Conservation Science. Rubbo directs Teatown’s scientific research program and has extensive experience as an environmental consultant specializing in biodiversity assessments and conservation planning. He received his Ph.D. in Biology from The Pennsylvania State University and his B.S. from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He held a post-doctoral appointment at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He has authored numerous articles on ecology and conservation in international scientific journals as well as in the mainstream media.

Through the Greens to Green project, Teatown extends its involvement in White Plains. In partnership with the White Plains Youth Bureau and Kids Excel program, Teatown has worked with 450 White Plains students a year for the past three years, a demonstration of the city’s belief in the impact of environmental education.

John Botti, parent of a student at the school, Trustee, and member of the Conservancy Task Force, said the biodiversity study and restoration analysis are evidence of the school’s commitment to the project and is the next step in developing a management plan for the Conservancy.

“A great deal of preliminary study has gone into the Greens to Green concept planning, but at this stage we need to turn to experts to conduct the in-depth evaluation that will provide the baseline upon which a management and stewardship program will be based. The Conservancy will play an integral role in the future educational program of our school as well as providing a significant addition to the open space inventory of White Plains. We have a chance to make this a unique teaching and learning opportunity while at the same time providing a beautiful natural setting for the enjoyment of the public. We want to get it right, and Teatown has the expertise to help assure that we do.”

The school recently launched the www.GreenstoGreen.org website that provides a comprehensive overview of the concept including maps and renderings. There is also an on-line petition for those who wish to express their support for the project. The City of White Plains is currently reviewing the Draft Environmental Impact Study for the proposed plan to create the French-American School of New York’s campus in White Plains, including the Greens to Green Conservancy.