Rep. Trey Radel charged with cocaine possession

Rep. Trey Radel, a Florida Republican elected in 2012, will be in court Wednesday on charges that he possessed cocaine.

Radel, 37, was charged with misdemeanor possession of cocaine in D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday.

He faces a maximum of 180 days in jail, as well as a fine of up to $1,000. Several sources with direct knowledge say it was the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration who were involved in the charges.

Radel has missed all four votes in the House this week.

Radel, in a statement released by his office, made no mention of resigning from the House. He said he struggles “with the disease of alcoholism, and this led to an extremely irresponsible choice. As the father of a young son and a husband to a loving wife, I need to get help so I can be a better man for both of them.”

A spokesman for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “Members of Congress should be held to the highest standards, and the alleged crime will be handled by the courts. Beyond that, this is between Rep. Radel, his family, and his constituents.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined to comment on Radel’s arrest and case.

The Associated Press, citing an unnamed DEA official, said Radel allegedly bought cocaine from a dealer in the Dupont Circle area who had been previously arrested as part of a federal probe. “Later that night, federal authorities went to his apartment and informed him that he would be facing criminal charges related to his purchase of cocaine,” the AP said.

The Florida Republican, who holds a district on the western coast of Florida that includes the tony Marco Island, is a former journalist, TV anchor and radio talk-show host. He never held elective office before winning his House seat last November. His district was vacated by former Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who ran for the Senate.

In the statement, Radel said he realizes “the disappointment my family, friends and constituents must feel. Believe me, I am disappointed in myself, and I stand ready to face the consequences of my actions.”

The arrest, he said, has a “positive side.”

“It offers me an opportunity to seek treatment and counseling,” he said. “I know I have a problem and will do whatever is necessary to overcome it, hopefully setting an example for others struggling with this disease.”

Text by John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman (Politico), 11/19/2013

 

Rich People Just Care Less

Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them.

These metaphors for condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive. They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate the soaring inequality in the United States.

A growing body of recent research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to those with little such power. This tuning out has been observed, for instance, with strangers in a mere five-minute get-acquainted session, where the more powerful person shows fewer signals of paying attention, like nodding or laughing. Higher-status people are also more likely to express disregard, through facial expressions, and are more likely to take over the conversation and interrupt or look past the other speaker.

Bringing the micropolitics of interpersonal attention to the understanding of social power, researchers are suggesting, has implications for public policy.

Of course, in any society, social power is relative; any of us may be higher or lower in a given interaction, and the research shows the effect still prevails. Though the more powerful pay less attention to us than we do to them, in other situations we are relatively higher on the totem pole of status — and we, too, tend to pay less attention to those a rung or two down.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain. In 2008, social psychologists from the University of Amsterdam and the University of California, Berkeley, studied pairs of strangers telling one another about difficulties they had been through, like a divorce or death of a loved one. The researchers found that the differential expressed itself in the playing down of suffering. The more powerful were less compassionate toward the hardships described by the less powerful.

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at Berkeley, and Michael W. Kraus, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have done much of the research on social power and the attention deficit.

Mr. Keltner suggests that, in general, we focus the most on those we value most. While the wealthy can hire help, those with few material assets are more likely to value their social assets: like the neighbor who will keep an eye on your child from the time she gets home from school until the time you get home from work. The financial difference ends up creating a behavioral difference. Poor people are better attuned to interpersonal relations — with those of the same strata, and the more powerful — than the rich are, because they have to be.

While Mr. Keltner’s research finds that the poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in all directions, in general, those with the most power in society seem to pay particularly little attention to those with the least power. To be sure, high-status people do attend to those of equal rank — but not as well as those low of status do.

This has profound implications for societal behavior and government policy. Tuning in to the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy, which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the circumstances are right, compassionate action.

In politics, readily dismissing inconvenient people can easily extend to dismissing inconvenient truths about them. The insistence by some House Republicans in Congress on cutting financing for food stamps and impeding the implementation of Obamacare, which would allow patients, including those with pre-existing health conditions, to obtain and pay for insurance coverage, may stem in part from the empathy gap. As political scientists have noted, redistricting and gerrymandering have led to the creation of more and more safe districts, in which elected officials don’t even have to encounter many voters from the rival party, much less empathize with them.

Social distance makes it all the easier to focus on small differences between groups and to put a negative spin on the ways of others and a positive spin on our own.

Freud called this “the narcissism of minor differences,” a theme repeated by Vamik D. Volkan, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, who was born in Cyprus to Turkish parents. Dr. Volkan remembers hearing as a small boy awful things about the hated Greek Cypriots — who, he points out, actually share many similarities with Turkish Cypriots. Yet for decades their modest-size island has been politically divided, which exacerbates the problem by letting prejudicial myths flourish.

In contrast, extensive interpersonal contact counteracts biases by letting people from hostile groups get to know one another as individuals and even friends. Thomas F. Pettigrew, a research professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, analyzed more than 500 studies on intergroup contact. Mr. Pettigrew, who was born in Virginia in 1931 and lived there until going to Harvard for graduate school, told me in an e-mail that it was the “the rampant racism in the Virginia of my childhood” that led him to study prejudice.

In his research, he found that even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed one another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had close friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice. They seemed to realize the many ways those demonized “others” were “just like me.” Whether such friendly social contact would overcome the divide between those with more and less social and economic power was not studied, but I suspect it would help.

Since the 1970s, the gap between the rich and everyone else has skyrocketed. Income inequality is at its highest level in a century. This widening gulf between the haves and have-less troubles me, but not for the obvious reasons. Apart from the financial inequities, I fear the expansion of an entirely different gap, caused by the inability to see oneself in a less advantaged person’s shoes. Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.

 

* Text By  Daniel Goleman (NYT, Oct. 5, 2013)

 

Ratio of Pay: CEO compared to Average Workers

If we do not make the difference between people who earn more than those who earn less, be reasonable. Then the economic world, businesses or jobs will be chaos, for most people, where injustice, selfishness, greed and arrogance is something considered normal executive.

There should be a limit on earnings regardless one has several professional degrees or doctorates at Harvard.

 

We pay fair wages to all workers, without exception, according to the cost of living in the country, where human dignity is quantified.

In this way we will have a better world, a more just and where justice, peace and social solidarity is normal.

Also make sure that the domestic market is positive. Be Sure that most people will have some money left over to use it to make purchases of various products or services. Otherwise only a small group will do it and many companies or businesses will have to close its doors.

See You.

CTsT

 

Weakest suffer twice: US jails child victims of sex trafficking

The FBI estimates that each year more than 100,000 underage American girls are exploited for commercial sex

Underage prostitution in the US is organized crime’s third biggest money-maker after guns and drugs. But the kids get blamed instead of the criminals. Young girls are put behind bars for walking the streets, with no offer of rescue or help.

The US State Department regularly puts out reports on how horrific human trafficking is in other countries.
Yet for the home country, the FBI estimates that each year more than 100,000 underage American girls are exploited for commercial sex. The average age is 13 years old. But the usual treatment the children get, when arrested, is either jail time or probation.

In the US, prostitution laws do not exempt minors from prosecution. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported 1,600 juveniles were arrested for prostitution within just one year.
But lawyers say in the US, the paradox of the system is that the children are prosecuted for crimes for which they cannot legally give consent.

“We say that this child is a victim and yet we send them to jail. Somewhere along the line, there’s something wrong with that and we need to take a look at ourselves and a look at the fact that we have made detention, and law enforcement, and the criminal justice system, and juvenile justice system a default setting for what happens to these kids. And we just kind of lock them up and shove them away. And that’s the end of our response to these issues, this system. We wanna make sure that these kids are treated as victims,” says Raychel Lloyd from Girls Educational and Mentoring Services.

But treating the victims and providing for their recovery requires funding.
“There’s no federal money for US victims of trafficking,” says Tina Frundt who works with a non-profit group in Washington, which helps the children to get their lives back providing them with housing and medical treatment. She herself was trafficked at the age of 13.

Tina says it is easier for the government to label the children as prostitutes, charge them and send them to detention centers, rather than fund shelters and invest in their future.

“There’s not enough housing for sex trafficking victims at all. So what they’re saying is that for their safety we will arrest them and put them in jail. Then we charge the victim. We don’t put rape victims in jail, why would we put victims who were trafficked in jail?” asks Frundt.

Almost all of the victims of child trafficking remember being constantly raped and abused both by pimps and clients.
“Many of the young people we served have been incarcerated and charged as an adult under the age of 16. So they have this lengthy 15, 20, 30, 40 arrests both as a juvenile and as ‘an adult’ for prostitution. When they go to apply for public housing, they are not eligible for that. When they go to do certain employment, that pops up in a background check and they are booted out of an employment training program,” says Raychel Lloyd.

The past of such children is already scarred as it is. And the non-profit organizations that help victims of sex trafficking say by prosecuting the children and by not investing in their recovery it is the government that scars their future.

Published: 16 April, 2011

 

Doctors Without Morals

AFTER five years of investigation, the Justice Department has released its findings regarding the government lawyers who authorized waterboarding and other forms of torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere. The report’s conclusion, that the lawyers exercised poor judgment but were not guilty of professional misconduct, is questionable at best. Still, the review reflects a commitment to a transparent investigation of professional behavior.

In contrast, the government doctors and psychologists who participated in and authorized the torture of detainees have escaped discipline, accountability or even internal investigation.

It is hardly news that medical staff at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon played a critical role in developing and carrying out torture procedures. Psychologists and at least one doctor designed or recommended coercive interrogation methods including sleep deprivation, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding. The military’s Behavioral Science Consultation Teams evaluated detainees, consulted their medical records to ascertain vulnerabilities and advised interrogators when to push harder for intelligence information.

Psychologists designed a program for new arrivals at Guantánamo that kept them in isolation to “enhance and exploit” their “disorientation and disorganization.” Medical officials monitored interrogations and ordered medical interventions so they could continue even when the detainee was in obvious distress. In one case, an interrogation log obtained by Time magazine shows, a medical corpsman ordered intravenous fluids to be administered to a dehydrated detainee even as loud music was played to deprive him of sleep.

When the C.I.A.’s inspector general challenged these “enhanced interrogation” methods, the agency’s Office of Medical Services was brought in to determine, in consultation with the Justice Department, whether the techniques inflicted severe mental pain or suffering, the legal definition of torture. Once again, doctors played a critical role, providing professional opinions that no severe pain or suffering was being inflicted.

According to Justice Department memos released last year, the medical service opined that sleep deprivation up to 180 hours didn’t qualify as torture. It determined that confinement in a dark, small space for 18 hours a day was acceptable. It said detainees could be exposed to cold air or hosed down with cold water for up to two-thirds of the time it takes for hypothermia to set in. And it advised that placing a detainee in handcuffs attached by a chain to a ceiling, then forcing him to stand with his feet shackled to a bolt in the floor, “does not result in significant pain for the subject.”

The service did allow that waterboarding could be dangerous, and that the experience of feeling unable to breathe is extremely frightening. But it noted that the C.I.A. had limited its use to 12 applications over two sessions within 24 hours, and to five days in any 30-day period. As a result, the lawyers noted the office’s “professional judgment that the use of the waterboard on a healthy individual subject to these limitations would be ‘medically acceptable.’”
The medical basis for these opinions was nonexistent. The Office of Medical Services cited no studies of individuals who had been subjected to these techniques. Its sources included a wilderness medical manual, the National Institute of Mental Health Web site and guidelines from the World Health Organization.

The only medical source cited by the service was a book by Dr. James Horne, a sleep expert at Loughborough University in Britain; when Dr. Horne learned that his book had been used as a reference, he said the C.I.A. had distorted his findings and misrepresented his research, and that its conclusions on sleep deprivation were nonsense.

Dr. Horne had used healthy volunteers who were subject to no other stresses and could withdraw at any time, while C.I.A. and Pentagon interrogators used a broad array of stresses in combination on the detainees. Sleep deprivation, he said, mixed with pain-inducing positioning, intimidation and a host of other stresses, would probably exhaust the body’s defense mechanisms, cause physical collapse and worsen existing illness. And that doesn’t begin to acknowledge the dire psychological consequences.

The shabbiness of the medical judgments, though, pales in comparison to the ethical breaches by the doctors and psychologists involved. Health professionals have a responsibility extending well beyond nonparticipation in torture; the historic maxim is, after all, “First do no harm.” These health professionals did the polar opposite.

Nevertheless, no agency — not the Pentagon, the C.I.A., state licensing boards or professional medical societies — has initiated any action to investigate, much less discipline, these individuals. They have ignored the gross and appalling violations by medical personnel. This is an unconscionable disservice to the thousands of ethical doctors and psychologists in the country’s service. It is not too late to begin investigations. They should start now.
Leonard S. Rubenstein is a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Stephen N. Xenakis is a psychiatrist and a retired Army brigadier general.

Text  By LEONARD S. RUBENSTEIN and STEPHEN N. XENAKIS
March 1, 2010
Op-Ed Contributors-New York Times

 

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A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality

When a new crop of future business leaders graduates from the Harvard Business School next week, many of them will be taking a new oath that says, in effect, greed is not good.

Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.
What happened to making money?

That, of course, is still at the heart of the Harvard curriculum. But at Harvard and other top business schools, there has been an explosion of interest in ethics courses and in student activities — clubs, lectures, conferences — about personal and corporate responsibility and on how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community.
“We want to stand up and recite something out loud with our class,” said Teal Carlock, who is graduating from Harvard and has accepted a job at Genentech. “Fingers are now pointed at M.B.A.’s and we, as a class, have a real opportunity to come together and set a standard as business leaders.”

At Columbia Business School, all students must pledge to an honor code: “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The code has been in place for about three years and came about after discussions between students and faculty.

In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.

Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors.

“I don’t see this as something that will fade away,” said Diana C. Robertson, a professor of business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s coming from the students. I don’t know that we’ve seen such a surge in this activism since the 1960s. This activism is different, but, like that time, it is student-driven.”
A decade ago, Wharton had one or two professors who taught a required ethics class. Today there are seven teaching an array of ethics classes that Ms. Robertson said were among the most popular at the school. Since 1997, it has had the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research. In addition, over the last five years, students have formed clubs around the issues of ethics that sponsor conferences, work on microfinance projects in Philadelphia or engage in social impact consulting.

“It’s been a dramatic change,” Ms. Robertson added. “This generation was raised learning about the environment and raised with the idea of a social conscience. That does not apply to every student. But this year’s financial crisis and the downturn have brought about a greater emphasis on social ethics and responsibility.”

At Harvard, about 160 from a graduating class of about 800 have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” which its student advocates contend is the first step in trying to develop a professional code not unlike the Hippocratic Oath for physicians or the pledge taken by lawyers to uphold the law and Constitution.

Part of this has emerged by the beating that Wall Street and financiers have taken in the current economic crisis, which can set the stage for reform, Harvard students say.

“There is the feeling that we want our lives to mean something more and to run organizations for the greater good,” said Max Anderson, one of the pledge’s organizers who is about to leave Harvard and take a job at Bridgewater Associates, a money management firm.

“No one wants to have their future criticized as a place filled with unethical behaviors,” he added. “We want to learn from those mistakes, do things differently and accept our duty to lead responsibly. Realistically, we have tremendous potential to affect society for better or worse. Let’s humbly step up. We are looking out for our own interest, but also for the interest of our employees and the broader public.”

Bruce Kogut, director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Company Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia, said that this emphasis did not mean that students were necessarily going to shun jobs that paid well. Rather, they will think about how they earn their income, not just how much.

At Columbia, an ethics course is required, but students have also formed a popular “Leadership and Ethics Board,” that sponsors lectures with topics like “The Marie Antoinettes of Corporate America.”

“The courses make people aware that the financial crisis is not a technical blip,” Mr. Kogut said. “We’re seeing a generational change that understands that poverty is not just about Africa and India. They see inequities and the role of business to address them.”

Dalia Rahman, who is about to leave Harvard for a job with Goldman Sachs in London, said she signed the pledge because “it takes what we learned in class and makes it more concrete. When you have to make a public vow, it’s a way to commit to uphold principles.”

* By LESLIE WAYNE, NYT, May 30, 2009

******************************************************************

Some Comments

* 20% of Harvard’s MBA students signed it?? I’m not even sure if I can call that “a good start.” Naturally, the majority of the students, regardless of oath, will go on to lead lives in which they show at least a moderate degree of compassion towards their fellow humans…but in a field marred by ethics scandal after scandal after scandal, for a mere 20% to swear an oath of ethical practice is still embarassing, even worrisome. Imagine if 20% of medical students at a school were to accept the Hippocratic Oath. Would we be proud of those 20%, or shocked at the other 80%? The reality remains: significant further reform – years, if not decades – is necessary before the business sector will regain the trust it has spent decades losing.
— David, Ithaca, NY

* Experience is a wonderful teacher. None of these new graduates have it and I doubt they will gain the moral bearings they need to fulfill their pledges working for Goldman Sachs and Bridgewater Associates as their first ‘real’ jobs.

When I earned my MBA 40 years ago this month we didn’t even think about greed. I don’t remember it ever being mentioned.

These kids need to work for small businesses where the decisions they make will materially impact the value of the business and the lives of every employee associate.

After they learn how to take care of their colleagues and their customers, then they can consider meeting the pledge obligations at a larger firm where the experience they gained will truly serve the larger human cause.
— rlk, chappaqua, NY

* Isn’t it insulting for grown men and women to have to promise that they won’t lie, cheat, or steal? It’s like asking young doctors to promise out loud that they won’t fondle their female patients, or young lawyers to promise that they won’t forge documents. If young businessmen feel a need to make promises like that, it’s an appalling indictment of the management environment they’re going into.
— Schigolch, Bernalillo, NM

* My name is Max Anderson. I’m one of the student organizers of the MBA Oath. I want to thank everyone for reading the article and posting your thoughts. It is eye-opening to read some of the more cynical and pessimistic remarks. Perhaps the reputation of MBAs is even worse than we feared. Perhaps we have all the more reason to push for this. Some of you have said that it is the system that is corrupt and we can’t change it. Maybe you are right, but we are actually looking for long-term systemic change. We know this isn’t the total answer. Far from it. There are no silver bullets. But we have to start somewhere. Why not start by stating our values and aspirations. Sure it will be hard to keep these. But if it weren’t hard it wouldn’t mean anything.

Making an oath on graduation day isn’t like saying “abracadabra” and magically everyone is always ethical all of the time. The real test will be the thousands of decisions we make in our careers when we have to put our necks on the line for our values. However I don’t think these are empty words. Making a marriage vow a guarantee that a marriage will stay together. Yet we still believe in the power of marriage vows. A public commitment can be powerful.

A few of you have asked “why the other 80% haven’t signed.” Well we just got started this week. We graduate next week. We expect the number will rise, we’re already closer to 30%.
— Max Anderson, Cambridge, MA

* Recently, sitting at a bar in Philadelphia, I was subjected to a loud conversation by three young men who were either Wharton students or recent graduates. The outburst by the most inebriated of the bunch was dedicated to his role models in the business world. At the absolute top were Michael Milken and Jeffrey Skilling.

I felt sick and it was not the beer.

Stiffer sentencing and enforcement are what’s needed instead of some juvenile pledges.
— BB, PA

 

Holding On to Our Humanity

Overload is a real problem. There is a danger that even the most decent of people can grow numb to the unending reports of atrocities occurring all around the globe. Mass rape. Mass murder.

Torture. The institutionalized oppression of women.
There are other things in the world: a ballgame, your daughter’s graduation, the ballet. The tendency to draw an impenetrable psychic curtain across the worst that the world has to offer is understandable. But it’s a tendency, as Elie Wiesel has cautioned, that must be fought.

We have an obligation to listen, for example, when a woman from a culture foreign to our own recalls the moment when time stopped for her, when she was among a group of women attacked by soldiers:
“They said to us: ‘If you have a baby on your back, let us see it.’ The soldiers looked at the babies and if it was a boy, they killed it on the spot [by shooting him]. If it was a girl, they dropped or threw it on the ground. If the girl died, she died. If she didn’t die, the mothers were allowed to pick it up and keep it.”
The woman recalled that in that moment, the kind of throbbing moment when time is not just stopped but lost, when it ceases to have any meaning, her grandmother had a boy on her back. The grandmother refused to show the child to the soldiers, so both she and the boy were shot.

A team of female researchers, three of them physicians, traveled to Chad last fall to interview women who were refugees from the nightmare in Darfur. No one has written more compellingly about that horror than my colleague on this page, Nick Kristof. When I was alerted to the report that the team had compiled for Physicians for Human Rights, my first thought was, “What more is there to say?”

And then I thought about Mr. Wiesel, who has warned us so eloquently about the dangers inherent in indifference to the suffering of others. Stories of atrocities on the scale of those coming out of Darfur cannot be told too often.

The conflict has gone on for more than six years, and while the murders and mass rapes have diminished, this enormous human catastrophe is still very much with us. For one thing, Sudan has expelled humanitarian aid groups from Darfur, a move that Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, recently told Mr. Kristof “may well amount to genocide by other means.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict and the systematic sexual attacks on Darfuri women have been widely reported. Millions have been displaced and perhaps a quarter of a million Darfuris are living in conditions of the barest subsistence in refugee camps along the Chad-Sudan border.

The report by Physicians for Human Rights, to be released officially on Sunday (available at darfuriwomen.org), focuses on several dozen women in the Farchana refugee camp in Chad. The report pays special attention to the humanity of the women.

“These are real people with children, with lives that may have been quite simple, but were really rich before they were displaced,” said Susannah Sirkin, a deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights.
The conditions in the refugee camps are grim, made worse by the traumas that still grip the women, many of whom were witnesses — or the victims — of the most extreme violence.
“I don’t think I was prepared for the level of just palpable suffering that they are continuing to endure,” said Dr. Sondra Crosby, one of the four interviewers. “Women were telling me they were starving. They’re eating sorghum and oil and salt and sugar.”

Dr. Crosby and her colleagues had a few crackers or cookies on hand for the women during the interviews. “I don’t think I saw even one woman eat the crackers, even though they were hungry,” she said. “They all would hide them in their dresses so they could take them back to their children.”

The women also live with the ongoing fear of sexual assault. According to the report, rape is a pervasive problem around the refugee camps, with the women especially vulnerable when they are foraging for firewood or food.
“It is so much easier to look away from victims,” said Mr. Wiesel, in a speech at the White House in 1999. “It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes.”

But indifference to the suffering of others “is what makes the human being inhuman,” he said, adding: “The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.”

By BOB HERBERT, NYT, May 30, 2009

 

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MADOFF BLISTERED HIS SISTER

Bernard Madoff didn’t even spare his own family.

The Ponzi schemer scammed millions from his sister, who is now desperately selling her Florida home, sources told The Post.

Sondra Wiener, 74, “has nothing,” said one of her neighbors in the BallenIsles Country Club, a gated Palm Beach enclave where she and her husband, Marvin, live alongside such celebrities as Serena and VenusWilliams.

“She lost millions in this whole thing,” said a source who estimated her loss at $3 million.

In response to questions about their financial straits, Wiener’s son, David, said, “Yes, my family’s a victim. More so than anybody else. It’s very painful.”

Wiener was one of five family members who received packages filled with pricey baubles allegedly mailed by Madoff and his wife, Ruth, on Christmas Eve. The riches were collected by lawyers in recent weeks.

That was around the time Wiener put her 3,409-square-foot home on the market. She and her husband are asking between $850,000 and $950,000 for the three-bedroom home, according to two separate listings.

“It seems like she was a victim in this,” said the neighbor, who was told Wiener is selling off her property in the hopes of starting over. “It didn’t seem like she saw it coming. What kind of person scams their own sister?”

Although Wiener herself is not connected to Madoff Securities, her son Charles, 50, has worked there since 1978. He was listed as director of administration in 2000.

Wiener’s home is “in perfect condition” and features a pool, spa, granite counters, a golf cart and the “best water view with sunsets every evening,” according to a listing with real-estate firm Illustrated Properties.

Country-club membership – which costs from $35,000 to $115,000 – is a requirement for residency in the community.

The couple purchased the home for $650,000 in 2003, the year it was built, according to Palm Beach County property records.

Wiener appears to be close to her brother, who also owns a home in Palm Beach.

The package she received contained a total of $1 million in valuables, including Cartier and Tiffany watches.

The items were returned after Madoff’s sons alerted prosecutors to the mailings, which violated a federal order.

Authorities also discovered checks totaling $173 million that Madoff had made out to family and friends before his Dec. 11 arrest.

Prosecutors pushed to revoke his bail after the packages were mailed. A judge will decide tomorrow whether Madoff, currently under house arrest in his swanky Park Avenue pad, should go to jail.

Wiener declined comment.

* NYP-January 11, 2009

 

MADOFF WITH $49 BILLION

Man, what a terrible return on your investment. Of the $50 billion Bernard Madoff swindled, investigators have been able to uncover only about $1 billion in remaining assets.

If the number holds, that means the recovery of money from his massive Ponzi scheme may total only 2 percent of what his victims gave him.

So far, the trustee liquidating Madoff’s firm has found $830 million in liquid assets. When the value of Madoff’s real-estate holdings, boats, jewelry and other property is factored in, the figure rises to approximately $1 billion, according to Bloomberg News.

Madoff coughed up a list of his holdings when prosecutors demanded he be jailed without bail after he tried to send $1 million in jewelry to family and friends.

US Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis yesterday considered arguments on whether Madoff, 70, should be allowed to remain under house arrest at his swanky East Side penthouse or be thrown in jail.

Ellis is set to deliver his ruling Monday at noon, officials said.

Prosecutors also received a 30-day extension yesterday to indict the alleged scammer after reaching a deal with the defense team.

The list of Madoff’s alleged victims include some of the world’s wealthiest people and the most sophisticated investment funds. One of his most high-profile victims, Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, called the swindle “extremely painful and humiliating for me.”

“It has done extraordinary damage to my philanthropy,” he told CNBC.

Katzenberg, who runs Dreamworks Animation, would not say how much money he lost, but the Los Angeles Times has reported it was at least $20 million.

Katzenberg, 58, had his funds invested with Madoff through his business manager, Gerald Breslauer, the LA Times reported.

“The first time I heard the name Bernie Madoff was about three weeks ago, when I found out that, you know, he had swindled all this money,” Katzenberg said.

In other developments, a Massachusetts-based hedge fund, GMB Capital Management, said it was shutting down a fund that was bilked out of more than $50 million by Madoff.

Also, investigators in Britain were trying to determine whether Madoff embezzled $150 million from his company’s operation there.

And Austria’s Bank Medici, which may have invested as much as $3 billion with Madoff, announced it was restructuring its board of directors and business strategy following the massive swindle. With Post Wire Services

* By LUKAS I. ALPERT and BRUCE GOLDING,January 10, 2009 (NYP)