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Tell Congress to Cancel Big Oil's Blank Check !
Submitted by MMRules on Wed, 03/17/2010 - 2:39am.A disastrous Supreme Court ruling has lifted restrictions on how much money big corporations like ExxonMobil can spend to elect their friends and defeat pro-environment allies.
This means that Big Polluters, motivated by nothing but profits, can now spend unlimited amounts on elections, drowning out the voices of the majority of Americans who support clean energy.
Congress has held hearings to address this issue. I just emailed my Members of Congress to ask them to pass legislation that fixes this wrong-headed decision. Now, will you do the same? Add your voice.
http://www.lcv.org/
(At Home page,Click on Slide-show picture showing the Supreme Court and that says,
Take Action:Supreme Court Justices give Big Blank Check to Oil Companies,to get to the petition..)
"Hello to our friends and fans in domestic surveillance."
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Thorsens's scientific integrity
Submitted by taozen on Mon, 03/15/2010 - 11:59am.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A central figure behind the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) claims disputing the link between vaccines and autism and other neurological disorders has disappeared after officials discovered massive fraud involving the theft of millions in taxpayer dollars. Danish police are investigating Dr. Poul Thorsen, who has vanished along with almost $2 million that he had supposedly spent on research.
Thorsen was a leading member of a Danish research group that wrote several key studies supporting CDC's claims that the MMR vaccine and mercury-laden vaccines were safe for children. Thorsen's 2003 Danish study reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned mercury based preservatives in its vaccines. His study concluded that mercury could therefore not be the culprit behind the autism epidemic.
His study has long been criticized as fraudulent since it failed to disclose that the increase was an artifact of new mandates requiring, for the first time, that autism cases be reported on the national registry. This new law and the opening of a clinic dedicated to autism treatment in Copenhagen accounted for the sudden rise in reported cases rather than, as Thorsen seemed to suggest, the removal of mercury from vaccines. Despite this obvious chicanery, CDC has long touted the study as the principal proof that mercury-laced vaccines are safe for infants and young children. Mainstream media, particularly the New York Times, has relied on this study as the basis for its public assurances that it is safe to inject young children with mercury -- a potent neurotoxin -- at concentrations hundreds of times over the U.S. safety limits.
Thorsen, who was a psychiatrist and not a research scientist or toxicologist, parlayed that study into a long-term relationship with CDC. He built a research empire called the North Atlantic Epidemiology Alliances (NANEA) that advertised its close association with the CDC autism team, a relationship that had the agency paying Thorsen and his research staff millions of dollars to churn out research papers, many of them assuring the public on the issue of vaccine safety.
The discovery of Thorsen's fraud came as the result of an investigation by Aarhus University and CDC which discovered that Thorsen had falsified documents and, in violation of university rules, was accepting salaries from both the Danish university and Emory University in Atlanta -- near CDC headquarters -- where he led research efforts to defend the role of vaccines in causing autism and other brain disorders. Thorsen's center has received $14.6 million from CDC since 2002.
Thorsen's partner Kreesten Madsen recently came under fierce criticism after damning e-mails surfaced showing Madsen in cahoots with CDC officials intent on fraudulently cherry picking facts to prove vaccine safety.
Leading independent scientists have accused CDC of concealing the clear link between the dramatic increases in mercury-laced child vaccinations beginning in 1989 and the epidemic of autism, neurological disorders and other illnesses affecting every generation of American children since. Questions about Thorsens's scientific integrity may finally force CDC to rethink the vaccine protocols since most of the other key pro vaccine studies cited by CDC rely on the findings of Thorsen's research group. These include oft referenced research articles published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New England Journal of Medicine and others. The validity of all these studies is now in question.
Citations
1. http://www.cphpost.dk/news/international/89-international/48229-research...
2. http://www.safeminds.org/news/pressroom/press_releases/20040518_AutismAu...
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/opinion/06sat3.html
4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/time-for-cdc-to-come-c...
5. http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/poul-thorsens-mutating-resume.html
6. http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-aarhus.pdf
7. http://www.cphpost.dk/news/international/89-international/48229-research...
Brick TeeVee Another Health Care "Debate"!
Submitted by FilthyRich on Sun, 03/14/2010 - 1:18am. Your Guest List for Sunday's Talking Head News Shows beamed across America by Corporate Media PLUS reports from the best lib/prog media! If you have other Sunday Talkie shows' guest lists we don't have please share below. DEBUNK HERE! Throw Bricks!
First brick is on us!
Healthfreedom it is political
Submitted by taozen on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 9:55am.Alice. Very, very, very, very fucked-up library
Submitted by Alice on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 12:03am.[James Ridgeway, Journalist]
Just this total mess. It's like some sort of, like, very, very, very, very fucked-up library.
- The Unreasonable Man - about the condition of Ralph's office
WSJ - Health Reform Passes the Cost Test
Submitted by Kevin © on Tue, 03/09/2010 - 1:26pm.Many people are worried that the health-care reform proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats will fail to bend the "cost curve." A number of commentators are urging no votes because of this, and Republicans have asked the president to start health reform over, focusing squarely on the issue of cost reduction.
These calls overlook the actual legislation. Over the past year of debate, 10 broad ideas have been offered for bending the health-care cost curve. The Democrats' proposed legislation incorporates virtually every one of them. Here they are:
• Form insurance exchanges. These would help curb underwriting and inefficient marketing practices that raise costs in the small-group and individual insurance markets. This is addressed in all the House and Senate bills, and the president's proposal. Grade: Full credit.
• Reduce excessive prices, including those of supplemental plans enrolling Medicare beneficiaries. The president's proposal reduces these Medicare Advantage overpayments and others to different providers, even in the face of Republican claims that reducing such overpayments is tantamount to rationing care for seniors. Grade: Full credit.
• Moving to value-based payment in Medicare. Both Democrats and Republicans have called for moving from a system where volume drives reimbursement to one where value drives reimbursement. The president's proposal includes virtually every idea offered for doing this. Grade: Full credit.
• Tax generous insurance plans. Health-insurance benefits are excluded from income taxation, providing incentives for excessively generous insurance. Many economists have proposed capping the tax exclusion to reduce these incentives. The president's proposal taxes some of the most generous policies, though it has deferred the date by which these taxes take effect. Grade: Partial credit.
• Empower an independent Medicare advisory board. Interest-group politics intrudes too deeply within the mechanics of Medicare policy, raising program costs and hindering efforts to improve care. Despite powerful opposition, the president proposes this independent board and a process for fast-tracking such recommendations through Congress. Grade: Full credit.
• Combat Medicare fraud and abuse. The administration has started an active task force to combat these problems. Other ideas to reduce fraud and abuse were presented at the recent health-care summit, and were incorporated in the president's proposal. Grade: Full credit.
• Malpractice reform. Defensive medicine is a small but important driver of medical spending. The reform proposal makes some headway, encouraging states to experiment with alternative mechanisms to reduce malpractice burdens. More could be done—for example, specialized malpractice courts and a safe harbor for physicians practicing evidence-based medicine—but the president's proposal makes a start. Grade: Partial credit.
• Invest in information technology. Many studies suggest savings in the tens of billions of dollars from IT investment. The stimulus bill passed a year ago contains funds to wire the medical system over the next few years, and the administration is supplementing this with significant funds to analyze the comparative effectiveness of different treatments—even in the face of "death panel" claims. Grade: Full credit.
• Prevention. The president's proposal includes significant public-health investments, provides new incentives for physicians to focus on preventive and chronic care, and opens Medicare to finding new ways of supporting prevention. The only area of weakness is the lack of a junk food tax or tax on sugar sweetened beverages. Grade: Partial credit.
• Create a public option. A public insurance option would provide competition for insurers in areas that are nearly a monopoly and provide a path for reforms in Medicare to expand readily in the under-65 population. The public option was eliminated because of Republican opposition, however. Grade: No credit.
So reform gets full credit on six of the 10 ideas, partial credit on three others, and no credit on one. The area of no credit (a public option) is because Republicans opposed the idea. One area receives only partial credit because of Democratic opposition (malpractice reform) and two other areas reflect general hesitancy to increase taxes (taxing Cadillac plans and taxing drivers of obesity).
Why is reform viewed so negatively? In part, it may reflect the perfect being the enemy of the good. If the only passing grade is 10 out of 10, then reform clearly fails. But given where the Republican Party is on a public option, no reform will get a passing grade. If both parties were willing to raise taxes and Republicans negotiated malpractice reform for their overall support, we could probably get a nine out of 10.
Reform is also viewed negatively because official scorekeepers do not believe anything on this list other than reducing prices will save much money. The Congressional Budget Office has consistently estimated that policies built around changing incentives and thus encouraging more efficient care will not have any effect on cost trends. My own calculations, mirrored by other observers and a host of business and provider groups, suggest that the reforms will save nearly $600 billion over the next decade and even more in the subsequent one.
Of course, no one knows precisely how much medical spending increases will moderate. But one cannot doubt the commitment to try. What is on the table is the most significant action on medical spending ever proposed in the United States. Should we really walk away from that?
Mr. Cutler is a professor of economics at Harvard University.
Am I an American Person?
Submitted by btchakir on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 1:32pm.I listened to a Congressman from Alabama give the Republican's weekly statement (after the President's weekly statement) on NBC this morning and was told that despite what Pelosi and Reid want, despite the threat of using reconciliation to push the Health Care bill through, the American People don't want the Health Care bill as it has been debated and argued over the past year. He said the American People want Congress and The President to "start over on a new page."
Here in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, about as American a location as you can find, I sit watching this knowing that I WANT a Health Care bill to be passed NOW. I know that if the government starts on a NEW PAGE it will be in the face of a rate-raising, highly profitable private insurance system and a 10-to-1 ratio of lobbyists who are NOT starting on a new page, who will work day and night to weaken any progress.
Do I want to allow this to happen? Do I not want to see the potential for Health Care plans that will be made available for 30 million more people, that will allow insurance companies to cancel existing plans or not let folks with pre-existing conditions (like little ol' diabetic me) sign up if they change jobs? Am I not an American Person?
I asked my wife, who also wants to see Health Care passed NOW if she was an American Person. Oddly enough, she said she was. Last night we sat in a lounge with friends from the Philadelphia area (they are pretty American, too, and all 4 were People) and they had the same feelings about Health Care politics that we had.
Yet the Republicans keep pointing out that the American People want things to start again on a NEW Page.
Well, as an official American Person, in contact with lots of other American People, may I say that WE DON'T WANT TO START ON A NEW PAGE. We want the Health Care plan to go through NOW. We have too many other things to get to and we don't want to throw away all the work that has been done so far. And we don't want the Insurance Industry and the Lobbyists to be given still another advantage in the debate.
No Republicans have asked me for my opinion, yet, as an American Person, they are willing to form their opinion as reported words from my mouth. Maybe they should get on board with the rest of us and put America ahead of Party Politics.
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Brick TeeVee Oscar Special: It's all an act!
Submitted by FilthyRich on Sun, 03/07/2010 - 1:03am. Your Guest List for Sunday's Talking Head News Shows beamed across America by Corporate Media PLUS reports from the best lib/prog media! If you have other Sunday Talkie shows' guest lists we don't have please share below. DEBUNK HERE! Throw Bricks!
First brick is on us!
