CBS Evening News did a piece last night on the meningitis outbreak caused by contaminated steroids shipped nationwide. They interviewed a salesman who represented the “compounding company” who produced the product, and I noticed something which has not really been mentioned before on this issue.
“The necessary prescriptions,” the salesman said, “were often fraudulent. Clinics provided pages of names -- any names.” These were the names for whom the compounding company was supposedly combining certain medications on individual prescriptions. He said they were names such as Homer Simpson and John Doe.
"They -- most of them knew.” The salesman continued, “I mean, some of them wouldn't do business with us. The ones that we didn't have as clients are the ones that knew, 'Hey, you guys can't be doing this. You're not doing it right.' And we'd run into that a lot, but we'd move on to the next one. There's more big fish out there."
These clinics were buying a drug, not a compounded prescription that this company is licensed to provide, but a mass produced drug, for half the cost of the drug provided by legitimate producers, and were providing to that company a fake list of names to facilitate that illegitimate production. Before last night the role of the buying clinics is not even mentioned in this issue, and even when it finally does arise, CBS presents it as something as a minor side issue.
Why is there no national outrage that hundreds of medical clinics were knowingly buying substandard medications in order to save money? Why is there no “story” about how the cost cutting by medical clinics was the proximate cause of the suffering of their patients? These people came to them for treatment, and were betrayed for the sake of extra profit. Who cares about that?
Why is there no national outrage that hundreds of members of the medical profession were injecting into their patients medications which they knew to be substandard? Why is there no “story” about the fact that doctors who swore an oath to “First do no harm” put profit ahead to the welfare of their patients and, in so doing, caused them to become deathly ill?
NECC is the tip of the iceberg. It is the smaller part of the story. Our health care system has been so corrupted by greed and lust for money that patient care is no longer even on the horizon; it’s about money. And that has become so pervasive that we no longer even bother to comment on it.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Friday, March 8, 2013
This Is Disaster?
Yes, the "sequester" has really proven to be an economic disaster, hasn't it? The Dow hitting record highs, unemployment dropping to the lowest level in four years, record number of new jobs created... Maybe we need another disasterous spending cut.
And another Bin Laden is brought to justice. No, wait, "brought to justice" means dead. This one is merely captured and charged with "conspiring to kill Americans." Am I the only one who thinks that that charge sounds really wierd?
And another Bin Laden is brought to justice. No, wait, "brought to justice" means dead. This one is merely captured and charged with "conspiring to kill Americans." Am I the only one who thinks that that charge sounds really wierd?
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
TSA Public Service Fail
One of the “dire consequences” of the “sequester,” we are being told by no lesser a person than DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, is that air travel will become an even bigger nightmare as agents at TSA are laid off and overtime hours are cut. We can expect long lines at airports “on holidays and during peak summer travel times.” When was the last time a member of the President’s Cabinet held a press conference to talk to the public about overtime hours?
Not to mention that anyone who has traveled “on holidays and during peak summer travel times” can tell you that long lines are already the norm. They don’t really need to lay off TSA “agents” in order to create them, so what she’s actually saying is that air travel will be pretty much business as usual. The administration’s fear mongering is degrading into comedy.
The TSA at San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport provided us with a little stage play on March 2nd, the day after the “sequester” was imposed. They invited the media to come out to the airport at a certain time to see what the lines at the security checkpoints looked like with the new budget guidelines. Sure enough the media found lines stretching “down this hallway to another hallway, and down that hallway almost to a third hallway.” Horrendous. People were missing flights in droves.
The media also filmed groups of five and six uniformed TSA security agents strolling around the airport casually conversing and doing nothing, with irate passengers asking why they were not on duty at security checkpoints and getting no answers. The agents pretended that they did not see the media filming them
The television crew interviewed a supervisor who told them that “This is what happens when overtime hours are cut. No overtime,” she said, bitterly, “not one hour.”
Interestingly, Janet Napolitano announced that same evening that cutting overtime had not yet been implemented and would not be for several weeks, and the same television crew returned to the airport several hours later and found that there were no agents strolling aimlessly around the airport and no lines whatever at the security checkpoints.
I would say this is a new level of ineptitude, even for the well named Department of Homeland Stupidity.
Not to mention that anyone who has traveled “on holidays and during peak summer travel times” can tell you that long lines are already the norm. They don’t really need to lay off TSA “agents” in order to create them, so what she’s actually saying is that air travel will be pretty much business as usual. The administration’s fear mongering is degrading into comedy.
The TSA at San Diego’s Lindbergh Airport provided us with a little stage play on March 2nd, the day after the “sequester” was imposed. They invited the media to come out to the airport at a certain time to see what the lines at the security checkpoints looked like with the new budget guidelines. Sure enough the media found lines stretching “down this hallway to another hallway, and down that hallway almost to a third hallway.” Horrendous. People were missing flights in droves.
The media also filmed groups of five and six uniformed TSA security agents strolling around the airport casually conversing and doing nothing, with irate passengers asking why they were not on duty at security checkpoints and getting no answers. The agents pretended that they did not see the media filming them
The television crew interviewed a supervisor who told them that “This is what happens when overtime hours are cut. No overtime,” she said, bitterly, “not one hour.”
Interestingly, Janet Napolitano announced that same evening that cutting overtime had not yet been implemented and would not be for several weeks, and the same television crew returned to the airport several hours later and found that there were no agents strolling aimlessly around the airport and no lines whatever at the security checkpoints.
I would say this is a new level of ineptitude, even for the well named Department of Homeland Stupidity.
Monday, March 4, 2013
A Pox On All Their Houses
Look, I don’t care whether we reduce the deficit or not. I am with neither the Republicans or the Democrats on this “sequester” nonsense, and I don’t care whether or not it is implemented because I fail to see how a 2% cut in federal spending is going to significantly affect us one way or the other.
What I do object to is the utter dishonesty with which both sides approach the issue and at this point, unusually enough, the Democrats are being the more dishonest of the two. What I do object to is the insatiable demand of the American public for being provided with endless government programs and benefits and being totally unwilling to pay for them.
The Democrats are wrong on this issue. Usually I am critical with the way Democrats are going about an issue, have issues with their tactics in dealing with it, but accept that they are on the right side of the issue. On this one they are just plain wrong.
Arguing over whether the sequester should be tax increases or spending cuts at this point is an exercise in demagoguery, because the sequester is a done deal for spending cuts, signed sealed and delivered; passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. You don’t change legislation after it has become law.
There is a provision in the law that other spending cuts could be substituted for the ones spelled out in the sequester, but there is no provision that it could consist of anything other than spending cuts. There were other provisions in the law that Democrats sought, including but not limited to an increase in the federal debt ceiling, and the sequester was a concession to the Republican demand for spending cuts in return for that debt ceiling increase and other things that Democrats wanted.
The Democrats got what they wanted and now they don’t want to honor their part of the agreement and deliver that which they agreed to provide to meet Republican demands.
Further, they got Republicans to agree to a $150 billion annual tax increase only one month ago and are now claiming that Republicans are “inflexible on taxes” and that the sequester cannot be resolved because the Republicans “refuse to budge on taxes,” even though the sequester is not about taxes.
And the American public buys these lies because they have a knee-jerk reflex to being given benefits by the government and being totally unwilling to pay for them. When 2% of the slop in their feeding trough is threatened they rise up in outrage and demand that the spending cuts be replaced with “taxes on the rich” so that they can continue their feeding frenzy with someone else paying the cost.
Ten-year-old children expect that everything will be given to them at no cost. Adults usually accept that they have to open their wallets when they want something; that there is no free lunch. The voters of this nation are contemptible in their insatiable childish demands for government spending and “tax the rich.”
What I do object to is the utter dishonesty with which both sides approach the issue and at this point, unusually enough, the Democrats are being the more dishonest of the two. What I do object to is the insatiable demand of the American public for being provided with endless government programs and benefits and being totally unwilling to pay for them.
The Democrats are wrong on this issue. Usually I am critical with the way Democrats are going about an issue, have issues with their tactics in dealing with it, but accept that they are on the right side of the issue. On this one they are just plain wrong.
Arguing over whether the sequester should be tax increases or spending cuts at this point is an exercise in demagoguery, because the sequester is a done deal for spending cuts, signed sealed and delivered; passed by Congress and signed into law by the President. You don’t change legislation after it has become law.
There is a provision in the law that other spending cuts could be substituted for the ones spelled out in the sequester, but there is no provision that it could consist of anything other than spending cuts. There were other provisions in the law that Democrats sought, including but not limited to an increase in the federal debt ceiling, and the sequester was a concession to the Republican demand for spending cuts in return for that debt ceiling increase and other things that Democrats wanted.
The Democrats got what they wanted and now they don’t want to honor their part of the agreement and deliver that which they agreed to provide to meet Republican demands.
Further, they got Republicans to agree to a $150 billion annual tax increase only one month ago and are now claiming that Republicans are “inflexible on taxes” and that the sequester cannot be resolved because the Republicans “refuse to budge on taxes,” even though the sequester is not about taxes.
And the American public buys these lies because they have a knee-jerk reflex to being given benefits by the government and being totally unwilling to pay for them. When 2% of the slop in their feeding trough is threatened they rise up in outrage and demand that the spending cuts be replaced with “taxes on the rich” so that they can continue their feeding frenzy with someone else paying the cost.
Ten-year-old children expect that everything will be given to them at no cost. Adults usually accept that they have to open their wallets when they want something; that there is no free lunch. The voters of this nation are contemptible in their insatiable childish demands for government spending and “tax the rich.”
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Alternate Reality
Ezra Klein explains in his blog at the Washington Post why there has been and will be no deal on the “sequester” and of course, it’s all the fault of the Republicans. “It’s what Hill Republicans have told me,” he says, “it’s what the White House has told me, it what Hill Democrats have told me.” It never occurs to him, apparently, that any of them are lying in order to grind their own political axes. It never occurs to him that he could observe what’s going on and arrive at his own conclusions instead of parroting “sources.”
“The bottom line on American budgetary politics right now” Klein says, “is that Republicans won’t agree to further tax increases and so there’s no deal to be had.” And this is today’s great lie of American politics. This is the current administration’s equivalent of “We don’t want the confirmation to come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
In January of this year the Obama administration got the Republicans to go along with $150 billion annual tax increase based on “Let’s get this tax issue dealt with now and we’ll deal with spending cuts later,” and less than one month later they are saying that Republicans are refusing to compromise on tax increases in dealing with the sequester.
Obama’s pitch in January was that the spending cuts were too complex, and that the tax issue was urgent because we could not permit taxes to be increased on “hard working middle class Americans.” He then signed a tax bill that allowed the “payroll tax holiday” to expire and that increased taxes for every working middle class person in this nation.
The dishonesty that this president successfully promotes simply staggers the imagination. He campaigns against raising taxes on the middle class, immediately raises taxes on the middle class, and the media and his supporters simply pretend that it never happened. He raises taxes and immediately flagellates the Republicans for refusing to accept tax increases and the media and his supporters join the chorus.
Logic and reality mean nothing to Obama and his supporters. Like the administration which preceded his, they create their own reality, and alter and distort processes to suit the argument of the day.
“Technically,” Klein says, “Obama did move first on spending. Over the course of 2011, Obama signed into law a set of bills that cut about $1.8 trillion from discretionary spending, and that included no tax increases at all.” Klein apparently does not understand the American democratic process. Since those were revenue bills they originated in the Republican House, Obama did not “move first;” the Republican House did. The Democratic Senate was next and Obama acted third.
He also presents these bills as if there was nothing in them that benefited Obama; that the President was signing these bills for the sole purpose of building good will with Republicans and creating an obligation which the Republicans were supposed to return at some future date. The concept is nothing short of idiotic. Those bills contained, among other things, an increase in the debt ceiling and were an even trade all the way. Otherwise Obama would not have signed them.
As with his normalization of the loss of civil liberties, making it a bipartisan form of government, Obama has normalized the “we create our own reality” form of government.
“The bottom line on American budgetary politics right now” Klein says, “is that Republicans won’t agree to further tax increases and so there’s no deal to be had.” And this is today’s great lie of American politics. This is the current administration’s equivalent of “We don’t want the confirmation to come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
In January of this year the Obama administration got the Republicans to go along with $150 billion annual tax increase based on “Let’s get this tax issue dealt with now and we’ll deal with spending cuts later,” and less than one month later they are saying that Republicans are refusing to compromise on tax increases in dealing with the sequester.
Obama’s pitch in January was that the spending cuts were too complex, and that the tax issue was urgent because we could not permit taxes to be increased on “hard working middle class Americans.” He then signed a tax bill that allowed the “payroll tax holiday” to expire and that increased taxes for every working middle class person in this nation.
The dishonesty that this president successfully promotes simply staggers the imagination. He campaigns against raising taxes on the middle class, immediately raises taxes on the middle class, and the media and his supporters simply pretend that it never happened. He raises taxes and immediately flagellates the Republicans for refusing to accept tax increases and the media and his supporters join the chorus.
Logic and reality mean nothing to Obama and his supporters. Like the administration which preceded his, they create their own reality, and alter and distort processes to suit the argument of the day.
“Technically,” Klein says, “Obama did move first on spending. Over the course of 2011, Obama signed into law a set of bills that cut about $1.8 trillion from discretionary spending, and that included no tax increases at all.” Klein apparently does not understand the American democratic process. Since those were revenue bills they originated in the Republican House, Obama did not “move first;” the Republican House did. The Democratic Senate was next and Obama acted third.
He also presents these bills as if there was nothing in them that benefited Obama; that the President was signing these bills for the sole purpose of building good will with Republicans and creating an obligation which the Republicans were supposed to return at some future date. The concept is nothing short of idiotic. Those bills contained, among other things, an increase in the debt ceiling and were an even trade all the way. Otherwise Obama would not have signed them.
As with his normalization of the loss of civil liberties, making it a bipartisan form of government, Obama has normalized the “we create our own reality” form of government.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Seriously?
The aid that the US has promised to the Syrian rebels will strictly be of the "non-lethal" variety, we are being told, but it has dissolved into farce when one State Department official said the aid would include “anything from radios for local police to schoolbooks that you’re trying to buy for kids.”
Seriously? Aid for rebels engaged in a fight to the death for two years against a dictatorship is to consist of school books for kids?
Seriously? Aid for rebels engaged in a fight to the death for two years against a dictatorship is to consist of school books for kids?
Can You Spell Hyperbole?
The hyperventilation about the spending cuts is really getting out of hand. You should hear the wailing in San Diego, which has shipyards and lots of other defense contractors in addition to the world’s largest US Navy base. Now we’ll never get a new stadium for the Chargers. Hell, we may not even be able to operate the old one.
There’s a guy over at Mish’s Global Economics who, as you might expect from the title, has a little larger viewpoint that the American one of “how does this affect my own personal job?”
He points out that in 2006 government spending was $2.6 trillion. In 2008 it had gone up to $2.9 trillion, an increase of "only" 12.2% in two years. He points out that this is not caused by inflation, because the Fed is bragging about how they have successfully held inflation to 2% for the past several decades. That’s pretty hilarious in itself, but is a separate subject.
Then the financial crisis hit and we had a “one-time” boost in spending that raised government spending to $3.5 trillion, an 18% increase over 2008, but no less than 36% over just three years earlier in 2006. The stock market loved it, of course, but it really hasn’t done much for the middle class in terms of wages or number of jobs.
He then points out that government spending has then stayed at $3.5 trillion or more ever since. The “one-time stimulus” continued into 2010, 2011, 2012, and now into 2013. Nobody actually voted for a budget to spend that much, it just continued that way because nobody voted to stop it. It has continued because of a series of “continuing resolutions” passed by a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, and signed into execution by a Democratic President.
How many times did I name the Democratic Party there? Right.
So now we hit a point where we are having to cut $85 billion of that spending, and all hell is breaking loose. We are, all sides are claiming, destroying the economy with this $85 billion cut in spending. That $85 billion represents 2.5% of total government spending, and 6.5% of the increase since 2008.
Think about it; 2.5% leads us to financial Armageddon. Madness.
There’s a guy over at Mish’s Global Economics who, as you might expect from the title, has a little larger viewpoint that the American one of “how does this affect my own personal job?”
He points out that in 2006 government spending was $2.6 trillion. In 2008 it had gone up to $2.9 trillion, an increase of "only" 12.2% in two years. He points out that this is not caused by inflation, because the Fed is bragging about how they have successfully held inflation to 2% for the past several decades. That’s pretty hilarious in itself, but is a separate subject.
Then the financial crisis hit and we had a “one-time” boost in spending that raised government spending to $3.5 trillion, an 18% increase over 2008, but no less than 36% over just three years earlier in 2006. The stock market loved it, of course, but it really hasn’t done much for the middle class in terms of wages or number of jobs.
He then points out that government spending has then stayed at $3.5 trillion or more ever since. The “one-time stimulus” continued into 2010, 2011, 2012, and now into 2013. Nobody actually voted for a budget to spend that much, it just continued that way because nobody voted to stop it. It has continued because of a series of “continuing resolutions” passed by a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, and signed into execution by a Democratic President.
How many times did I name the Democratic Party there? Right.
So now we hit a point where we are having to cut $85 billion of that spending, and all hell is breaking loose. We are, all sides are claiming, destroying the economy with this $85 billion cut in spending. That $85 billion represents 2.5% of total government spending, and 6.5% of the increase since 2008.
Think about it; 2.5% leads us to financial Armageddon. Madness.
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