“Michael Jackson's doctor was much admired but financially strapped - Los Angeles Times” plus 2 more |
- Michael Jackson's doctor was much admired but financially strapped - Los Angeles Times
- State fought several times to keep Saints - Alexandria Daily Town Talk
- Michael Gaynor - RenewAmerica
| Michael Jackson's doctor was much admired but financially strapped - Los Angeles Times Posted: 08 Feb 2010 04:19 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. In the Holmby Hills chateau where Michael Jackson lived his final months, Dr. Conrad Murray seemed a benevolent figure. The physician arrived at night dressed in scrubs or a neat blazer and slacks, offering a ready smile for the household staff, and sometimes, gifts for Jackson's children. Most of his time was spent upstairs in the singer's private quarters, but occasionally he sat at the dining room table chatting with the family in his lilting Caribbean accent. "They loved him," Kai Chase, the singer's personal chef, recalled last summer. "A very nice man, very charming, very well-groomed, very respectful, well-spoken." The image of the respectable, competent doctor -- a profession Murray began striving toward as a youth in Trinidad -- started to crack the day the world's most famous entertainer died in Murray's care, and is likely to break further Monday when L.A. County prosecutors are expected to charge him with involuntary manslaughter. "Here's a guy who was on top of the world . . . talk about a fall from grace," said his attorney, Ed Chernoff. The job Jackson offered Murray, 56, last spring was a lifeline for a man struggling financially. Courts in Las Vegas, where he lived with his physician wife, 19-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter, had ordered him or his business to pay $435,000 to creditors, including a student loan. His home near the 18th hole of a country club was in jeopardy. Property records show he had refinanced the mortgage at least three times in five years and owed close to $1.7 million on a property now assessed at $1.08 million. By the time the Jackson job came along, it had been months since Murray had paid the mortgage and foreclosure proceedings loomed, according to court records. He had also fallen behind on child support payments. Birth certificates and other public records indicate that in addition to the two children he had with his wife, Murray had fathered at least four children with three other women. Files from Las Vegas family court proceedings show he owed thousands of dollars to a California woman with whom he had a son, now 11. He was also helping support two daughters, ages 16 and 8, who lived with their mother in Las Vegas, according to the records. And last March, an actress from Santa Monica gave birth to Murray's son, according to a California birth certificate. According to his lawyer, many of Murray's financial problems arose from providing medical care for the poor. (Murray declined repeated requests for interviews, as did members of his family, but he did respond to some questions posed to him through his attorney.) Multiple practices Born in Grenada, he was raised in Trinidad by his grandparents and later by his mother and stepfather, according to a biography provided by his attorney. He had no contact with his own father until he was 25, although he knew as a child that his father was a doctor who lived in Houston. In addition to his Las Vegas cardiology practice, Murray treated patients two days a month at a Houston heart clinic. He founded the clinic in 2006 in a poor, predominantly African American area in honor of his father, by then deceased. Among some of his clinic patients, Murray was adored for his accessibility and bedside manner. He gave patients his personal cellphone number and used plastic heart models and charts to help elderly patients understand their ailments, patients recalled. "He was really kind and sat there and explained. No rushing you. He would hold a good conversation. A whole lot of doctors could learn something from that type of treatment," said the Rev. Prince James, a 67-year-old Baptist minister. Few at the Houston clinic could pay Murray's normal rates, and he lost money with nearly every patient he saw. But when it came to setting a price for one very famous patient, Murray did not offer a discount, according to people involved in his hiring. Frank DiLeo, Jackson's manager, said last summer that Jackson told him Murray wanted $5 million to work during rehearsals and the eight months of concerts. "I said, 'Michael, for $5 million, I'll buy you a hospital,' " DiLeo recalled. "He said this guy was his family doctor, and he was comfortable with him. It made sense to me, to a degree." Murray's lawyer disputed that the doctor demanded $5 million.
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| State fought several times to keep Saints - Alexandria Daily Town Talk Posted: 08 Feb 2010 05:02 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. By Mike Hasten Periodically over the years, the Saints' owners have come to the state seeking concessions, and several requests have been accompanied with threats of leaving Louisiana for greener pastures -- or at least new stadiums. New Orleans Saints history began on Nov. 1 -- appropriately All Saints Day -- in 1966 when New Orleans was awarded the NFL's 16th franchise. Oilman John W. Mecom Jr. was majority owner. The team initially played in Tulane Stadium, but Mecom sought better quarters that were promised. Then-Gov. John McKeithen gained legislative approval of a domed stadium that would dwarf the recently constructed "8th Wonder of the World" -- Houston's Astrodome. It was to be, as reports of the day said, a "Super Dome." The construction cost of the Superdome was grossly underestimated, so additional money had to be pumped into the nation's only state-funded arena for professional sports. The Saints also are the only NFL team to receive a direct state subsidy. Edwin Edwards was the first governor to be approached by a Saints owner asking for more money and threatening to move elsewhere. In Edwards' biography, author Leo Honeycutt recalls, "To celebrate New Year's 1985, New Orleans' Saints owner John Mecom shook New Orleans and the state, announcing he was selling the NFL franchise. Asking price: $75 million. Jacksonville, Florida, couldn't meet the price and Chicago's A.N. Pritzker family wanted Louisiana to pitch in money to help keep the team in New Orleans. Edwin felt another plea for big money coming on." Edwards called News Orleans car dealer Tom Benson to a meeting, supposedly with other investors. But when Benson got there, he was the only investor invited. He offered $11 million less than the asking price, and Mecom accepted. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Posted: 08 Feb 2010 04:41 AM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. By Michael Gaynor Did Ms. Reid mesmerize the Beckster? Is Beck educable, or doomed to remain a Reid dupe? Why has Glenn Beck enthusiastically promoted Marcel Reid and her ACORN 8 band and repeatedly called her his "Rosa Parks" while (rightly) exposing President Obama as radical and calling out self-identified "communist" Van Jones? The answer appears to be either that Beck is woefully ignorant, or shamelessly inconsistent, or hopelessly hypocritical. Except from Ms. Reid's biography for the 2009 National Whistleblower Assembly held March 8-11 in Washington, D.C.(http://makeitsafecampaign.org/news/?page_id=969): "Community Activist, Organizer and Leader (Mortgage Fraud Workshop) "Marcel Reid began her involvement in grassroots and community organizations at a very young age. At age 16 she was elected President of the Youth Advisory Committee for Compton, California. She studied under Ron Karenga (founder of Kwanzaa) at California State University, Long Beach State where she acquired her B. S. degree in Sociology." The same biography can also be found at http://www.njcdlp.org/files/MReid.bio.pdf (Ms. Reid also spoke at a No FEAR Citizens Tribunal at Capitol Hill on May 15, 2007) and appears to have been provided by Ms. Reid (who was included in the other speakers category for the conference). The only difference is that this sentence is not in the 2007 version (since it involves subsequent events): "True to her convictions for democracy and representation in grassroots advocacy, Marcel is also a leader in the ACORN 8 the people's movement to reform ACORN." You be the judge whether Ms. Reid seems proud of her relationship to Karenga. Being a Karenga protege is not a worthy accomplishment, but it IS an amazing accomplishment to be a Karenga protege AND Beck's "Rosa Parks." On December 27, 2006, astute, acerbic Ann Coulter's "Kwanzaa: Holiday from the FBI" appeared. It focused on Ron Karenga, under whom Ms. Reid reported that she had studied. It's hard to believe that Beck knew about that. Karenga is not the kind of fellow Beck admires. Wikipedia: "Ron Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett on July 14, 1941, and also known as Ron Everett and as Maulana Karenga) is an African American author, political activist, and college professor best known as the creator of Kwanzaa. Karenga was active in the Black Power movement in the 1960s and 1970s and founded the black nationalist group US Organization which remains active to this day promoting Karenga's philosophy of Kawaida." It's worse. "Karenga founded the Organization Us, a Cultural Black Nationalist group, in 1965. He is also known for having co-hosted, in 1984, a conference that gave rise to the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, and in 1995, he sat on the organizing committee and authored the mission statement of the Million Man March." "In 1971, Karenga, Louis Smith, and Luz Maria Tamayo were convicted of felony assault and false imprisonment for assaulting and torturing over a two day period two women from the US Organization, Deborah Jones and Gail Davis. An article in the Los Angeles Times described the testimony of one of the women: 'Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis' mouth and placed against Miss Davis' face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said'." Compared to Karenga, Beck target Van Jones seems nice. Ms. Coulter exquisitely exposed both Karenga and Kwanzaa: Kwanzaa is a "phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks. "It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI pawn, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI. "In what was probably a foolish gamble, during the madness of the '60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Karenga's United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American '60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police. "Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented 'African' names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named 'Jamal' currently sit on death row?) "Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the 'framed' murder of two whites included 'the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department' and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. 'was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt' — an interesting standard of proof.) "In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, 'Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents.' "Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death Black Panthers Al 'Bunchy' Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach. "Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven 'principles' of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life — economics, work, personality, even litter removal.... "When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from 'classical Marxism,' he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the 'best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism' — which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment for homosexuals and forced labor — Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity 'determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding.' There's an inclusive philosophy for you." "Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani — the same seven 'principles' of Kwanzaa." "Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves — the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa." Did Ms. Reid mesmerize the Beckster? Is Beck educable, or doomed to remain a Reid dupe? By the time Beck delivers the keynote address at CPAC 2010 later this month (February 20), we should know. © Michael Gaynor
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