Student Orientation to be held August 5-7
 
WHAT:          New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy (NOMMA), a public charter school adjacent to the Marine Forces Reserve national headquarters in Federal City, will return to school for the 2019-20 school year. It is the only public charter of its kind in the metro area. The following activities provide a colorful and unique back-to-school visual and message. This is the first year the school has expanded by adding an 8thgrade.
 
WHEN:          August 5-7: Cadet orientation 
Monday, August 5: New Cadet Uniform Issue, 7:45am to 3:05
Wednesday, August 7: Formation Initial Inspections will be held throughout the afternoon from Noon-3pm
 
August 12: First day of school for students (grades 8-12) 7:35am to 3:05pm
 
Please contact Heather at hharper@h2nola.net or (504) 289-0499 if you would like to visit the school on one of these dates.
 
WHERE:      New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy
                       425 O'Bannon St., NOLA 70114, in Algiers
 
WHY:
NOMMA’s high quality academic program has a 100 percent student body participation in the Marine Corps Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (MCJROTC), and was designated as a Naval Honor School due to superior performance of its MCJROTC program.  NOMMA has a rigorous college preparatory curriculum and also offers career and technical training. 
 
It is one of the top open-enrollment public high schools in the four-parish metropolitan area with a graduation rate over 95 percent.  NOMMA exceeded both the city and state averages for ACT scores, End-of-Course (EOC) exams, and LEAP 2025 assessments and was recognized by the Louisiana Department of Education as a Top Gains Honoree for consistently demonstrating exceptional student progress.

 
NOMMA is open to all students in the Greater New Orleans metro area. Any student can apply for 8-11 grade at NOMMA through enrollnola.org with priority given to military dependents in the greater New Orleans area. For more information call (504) 227-3810 or go to www.nomma.net

Read full statement here: http://www.stuarthsmith.com/hackers-virtual-assault-rifles-and-how-jeff-bezos-has-lost-control-of-amazon/

Customer complaints against Amazon have become a dime-a-dozen thanks to a hack in 2017 of more than 143 million Americans' credit card numbers in association with a data breach for the retail giant.

But two Louisiana residents, who just happen to be prominent litigators, have decided it’s time to make Jeff Bezos more accountable.

Attorneys Stuart H. Smith and Barry J. Cooper, Jr. of New Orleans discovered last summer that more than $9000 had been charged to Mr. Cooper’s credit cards for the purchase of 50 “crates” of virtual assault rifles to use in online video games. Because each charge was $200, fraud detection did not kick in until the scam added up.

Mr. Cooper stopped payment of the fraudulent charges and Amazon responded by freezing his account—even though the scam was perpetrated by a wholly-owned Amazon subsidiary, Twitch Interactive. His account remains frozen and ironically so is Mr. Smith’s, since as his husband, he is associated with Mr. Cooper.

The two attorneys repeatedly tried to resolve the matter through personal and written correspondence, but now feel forced to put the Seattle-based tech retailer on notice of their intention to sue Amazon allowing the egregious data breach and for violating Louisiana’s Unfair Trade Practices Act in hounding the two over these fraudulent charges. Mr. Cooper and Mr. Smith are domiciled in New Orleans and the Louisiana Unfair Trade Practices Act bars companies from seeking to collect fees from fraudulent activity such as the hacking of Cooper’s account.

“It shouldn’t have had to come with this. But going to court seems to be the only way to get the attention of a company whose owner Jeff Bezos has become the richest man in the history of the planet and that has grown so arrogant that rather than profusely apologize to its customers for a significant privacy breach and trying to track down and arrest the criminals, it adds insult to injury by blocking and billing the victims,” said Mr. Smith in a written statement. 

“Amazon is harassing two longtime Prime account holders, when it could have reported this data breach to the proper authorities, identified the thieves and worked with law enforcement to make the criminals repay the money.  Surely Twitch Interactive — Amazon’s wholly owned subsidiary and retailer of the virtual rifles — could help identify who the wrongdoers are. A theft of this magnitude is punishable with substantial prison time,” Mr. Smith added.

Amazon controls nearly half of the online retail market in the U.S., and is “the judge, the jury, and the executioner” in its actions, according to critical reports. The filed legal action on Cooper’s behalf seeking damages from Amazon for the data breach and for its clear violation of the Additionally, the attorneys claim the firm is in violation of both the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act as well as the Louisiana Fair Debt Collection Act for its multiple, bad-faith efforts to coerce Cooper into paying for the bogus charges. It asks Amazon to halt its collection activities and restore Cooper’s account. A copy of the letter was forwarded to Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry.  

"When customers plea for help, Amazon does not pick up the phone. But you know what: A jury can make Jeff Bezos pick up the phone. That is the beauty of our incredible Constitution, that gives us the right to speak truth to power,” said Mr. Smith. He has also taken his case to every member of the U.S. Congress. “This is a matter of justice not just for one consumer, but for the millions of consumers who are at risk both from Amazon’s reckless handling of their most personal and private data and from the arrogance of Jeff Bezos’s monopolistic giant, which functions less as a corporation and more as a rogue state making its own harsh and inscrutable rules.”

One Senator, Elizabeth Warren, has already declared that it’s past time for government regulators to break up the tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google. The Democratic presidential candidate told a rally in Queens, N.Y., that Amazon reminds her of the dystopian novel “The Hunger Games,” with its ability to impose its will on the less-fortunate masses. “I’m sick of freeloading billionaires!” she proclaimed.

“Amazon has a choice. It can start taking its awesome public trust to safeguard the data of its customers – and to treat them as human beings – more seriously. Or it can face the growing chorus calling for a more sweeping kind of change who say it is time for Bezos’ empire to be broken up,” said Mr. Smith.

Stuart H. Smithis an attorney with the Cooper Law Firm of New Orleans and author of Crude Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know About the New Environmental Attack on America.