Clearing Off My Desk
This is an experiment and of course, it’s not really clearing a desk but a computer-file; all the stuff that was immediate not so immediately ago. It's gotta be dealt with, shuttled off to long-term or ignored. We’ll see.
If it works, the title may appear from time to time.
This is an experiment and of course, it’s not really clearing a desk but a computer-file; all the stuff that was immediate not so immediately ago. It's gotta be dealt with, shuttled off to long-term or ignored. We’ll see.
If it works, the title may appear from time to time.
Eli Lilly Said To Play Down Risk of Top Pill-- The drug maker Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. NYTimes Select (requires membership)
What a schizoid thing to do. Isn’t any of that stuff lying about for the benefit and use of staff?
Powerful Interests Ally to Restructure Agriculture Subsidies--Politicians have joined a host of interest groups from across the political spectrum, that are pressing for changes in government assistance to agriculture. They want the money moved from large farmers to conservation, nutrition, rural development and energy research. Washington Post
Well, that certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Farmers, who used to sit on tractor-seats and vote Democrat, have gone industrial and now sit in Wall Street offices. The push-back from Nancy Pelosi is all rhetoric. When the smoke clears, family farmers will be showcased, but the industrial guys will bank the money.
The Nuclear Threat From China--Nuclear competition between mature and newly emerging powers is neither unprecedented nor unexpected, but the rule has always been that if nuclear potential exists it must be countered. Although we may no longer subscribe to this, China does. Aware that the United States planned to use nuclear weapons had China violated the Korean armistice, China would understandably seek nuclear balance, if not preponderance. Washington Post
Does Wal-Mart know about this? China is a real threat to attack, holding as it does between two and three trillion dollars of our debt. Which America is unlikely to repay while under attack. Talk about killing geese that lay golden eggs. A non-event to keep the defense contractors busy.
Worth Every Last Million--Tell me if I'm wrong: You think America's top corporate executives are obscenely overpaid. You think recently ousted Home Depot chairman Robert Nardelli was just the latest in a long line of high-flying CEOs to negotiate himself an overinflated severance package and to waft out the door thumbing his nose at us all. You think it's about time that the Senate started considering, as it did last week, closing some of the tax loopholes that have made it possible for these corporate scalpers to get away with highway robbery for so long. I say, think again. Washington Post
I did think again. Thanks for that, I needed it. You’re wrong. There is a difference between corporate value and next quarter’s stockholder value. We have been conned into the belief that they are the same, hence the auto industry’s demise.
Drug Advertising on TV--Drug advertising aimed at consumers, a fast-growing category that reached $4.5 billion last year, will face hard scrutiny in the new Congress, according to industry critics in both the House and Senate.
The consumer ads will be on the griddle early in this session at hearings on the user fees that manufacturers pay to speed the reviewing of new drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. The user fee law will die in the fall unless Congress acts to renew it. NYTimes Select (requires membership)
Some griddle. Also dying in the fall, will be thousands of victims of this unending pharmaceutical greed , expressed by going around doctors and appealing directly to consumers. Vioxx alone has been accused of killing more than 40,000 Americans.
Justice Official Bought Vacation Home With Oil Lobbyist --A senior Justice Department official who recently resigned her post bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries.
Sue Ellen Wooldridge, former assistant attorney general in charge of environment and natural resources, bought a $980,000 home on Kiawah Island, S.C., last March with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Don R. Duncan. Washington Post
There’s a third owner of the house, Steven Griles, Wooldridge’s boyfriend and a former deputy interior secretary. Steve’s targeted in the fed investigation of Jack Abramoff. So, Interior not only sleeps with Justice, but Abramoff as well in this fast-moving neocon world, where the watchword is take the money and run. Another Gonzales Assistant Attorney General greasing her own wheel. Any surprise here?
'We Called It Hurricane FEMA' --Hammond, La. -- Shortly after noon, FEMA agents began rapping on the trailer doors, their knocks resounding inside the tinny white homes. Everyone in the park, the agents announced without warning, would have to pack and leave within 48 hours.
Where do we go now?
Why?
What about school?
To the residents of the Yorkshire Mobile Home Park, all of them families displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency crews offered answers that were uncertain and sometimes contradictory. As residents spilled out of their homes to meet their similarly bewildered neighbors, the adults wondered where they would be sent next, and how far they might wind up from their jobs. Some began sobbing. Then the children, seeing their parents' tears, began crying, too. A woman fainted, and an ambulance came. Washington Post
The skinny is, this finds its sad origins in a newspaper report about bills not being paid and electricity shut off. So, Jim Stark, director of FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office did the FEMA thing.
"Quite frankly, we received press earlier that week that pointed the finger at FEMA for not paying the bills. We were getting beaten up. At this point, we said, 'Enough is enough.' "
Well, he’s wrong about that. At FEMA, too little is always enough. Heckuva job, Jim.
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