We have all heard of lobbyists, both from “good” and “bad” organizations, companies and trade associations roaming through the halls of Congress and pretty much everywhere, trying to further their myriad economic, social and political agendas.

Those who still watch TV network news are very familiar with all kinds of erectile dysfunction drugs, arthritis, asthma, mental disorder, prostate, stomach, bladder, toe nail and other kinds of remedies offered by large pharmaceutical companies.

A lot of these drugs are found later to be downright deadly and pulled from the shelves, but until that time, they are perfectly able to bring billions to their manufacturers. After all, in most cases a huge part of the research leading to the development of many drugs is funded directly by government research grants and not really by the manufacturers, who have the gall of offering pills, costing them pennies for an often-exorbitant price. The Big Pharma excuses usually refer to “development costs”, indeed, those same costs, which you the taxpayer have already borne by paying for the research grants.

But lets not forget those expensive drug commercials during the network news, or multi-page ads in newspapers and magazines – those supremely annoying page-after-page ads, which contain warnings and disclaimers in fine print. Don’t be fooled for a minute that this information is meant as a “public service”. What it really amounts to is: “we warned you ahead of time, so if the drug damages your body, or kills you, you have been forewarned and shouldn’t sue us”.

This is not to say that all drugs are dangerous, or bad for you. There are some that actually help people, or cure them of all kinds of diseases. The lowly, inexpensive aspirin comes to mind, along with some antibiotics and some of the statin drugs (which should be used with care, in our opinion).

There is also no doubt that most drugs – at least those sold and pushed in the U.S. are way overpriced, others are way overused and others – at least according to Big Pharma-are actually underused.

That’s why you see so many of those drug ads and commercials and that is why that the big and even small pharmaceutical companies employ legions of sales representatives – not necessarily in the halls of Congress, but in physician’s offices, medical schools, publishing houses and everywhere their presence is deemed to be necessary for the financial well being of their companies.

How many of you have noticed the usually attractive, well-dressed women and men, towing roller cases through buildings housing “doctors’” offices? They seem to be ever-present. How about the reps bringing in catered lunches to the physician’s offices on a regular basis? Leaving tons of samples of their products, so the physicians can use them themselves, give them free of charge to their family members, or friends and to their patients?

Lets not be gullible and think that the samples and the lunches are given out of the goodness of the Big Pharma’s “hearts”. How about the exotic trips, golf vacations, dinners and gifts of all sorts?

Its is a nice, comfortable arrangement for many “doctors”, who in return for all of these favors often prescribe the drugs pushed by the reps, instead of treating their patients with the best (and often cheaper) of the available medicines.

At the same time, several university medical centers such as Yale have barred drug company sales reps from bringing free lunches to staff physicians. Yale might have been motivated to do so by the ‘C’ grade it received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

We wonder if this trend will flourish and eventually bring about a ban throughout the medical industry. Frankly, we doubt it, as the whole shtick is much too comfy and profitable for all of the beneficiaries of such practices. This is corruption on a grand scale.

In the meantime, expect for the medical and drug expenses to continue climbing out of sight and to continue paying through the nose for health care, whether the Democrats manage to push the health care reform through, or not.

Technorati Tags: ads, Big Pharma, commercials, dinners, Drugs, free lunches, gifts, golf vacations, sales reps, Unethical Game

As most of you probably know by now, Democratic Representative from New York, Eric Massa, has resigned his post, which he has held only since 2009.

The official House of Representatives website of the former congressman resolves into one, where Office of the Clerk informs that:

“Office of the Twenty-Ninth Congressional District of New York
Formerly the Office of Representative Eric J. J. Massa

The Washington, D.C. office and the district of the Honorable Eric J. J. Massa will continue to serve the people of the Twenty-Ninth Congressional District of New York under the supervision of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Representative Massa resigned on March 8, 2010. The vacancy became effective March 9, 2010.”

And what was the reason for the resignation? That’s all very unclear at this point.

The Atlantic’s Josh Green reports that Massa was “notorious for making unwanted advances toward subordinates” during his 20-year Naval career.

Massa, who is married and has four children, was never formally accused of inappropriate behavior. Asked by CNN’s Larry King if he is gay, he declined to answer the question and deemed it offensive.

The day before Massa told Fox News’ Glenn Beck that he had groped one of his staffers, though he said it had been non-sexual. He had previously said he told a male aide he should be “frakking” him while at a wedding.

Reports surfaced earlier in the day that Massa had been under investigation for allegedly groping multiple male staffers and behaving inappropriately with interns.

Eric Massa announced his resignation last week after it came to light that the House ethics committee was investigating him on sexual harassment charges. Massa said he had been pushed out because of his opposition to the health care reform bill, a charge the White House and top Democrats deemed ridiculous.

Massa has cited his battle with cancer as the primary reason he is leaving office.

As the Ides of March approach, we might all reflect on the age-old question: To grope, or not to grope?

Technorati Tags: cancer, congress, democrats, Eric Massa, groping, health care bill, resignation

We offer you another excellent view on the Republican approach to health care by Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

Technorati Tags: Republican 'Health Care'

Democrats united Saturday night to push the health care legislation past a key Senate hurdle over the opposition of Republicans eager to inflict a punishing defeat on President Barack Obama.

The Republican’s position does indeed appear to be a continuation of the campaign to defeat the president’s initiatives, rather than proposing anything constructive and helpful to the American people. The desire to “show him” seems stronger than the desire to actually achieve something that’s needed and at least in the long run – beneficial. That’s nothing new, of course. Just listen to the de-facto leader of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the other conservative blabbermouths. There is no doubt that the interest of the country as a whole has been put on the back burner, in favor of hurting, or even destroying anything that Barack Obama is doing.

The 60-39 vote cleared the way for a full-scale debate beginning after Thanksgiving on the legislation, which is designed to extend coverage to roughly 31 million who do not have it, control insurance company practices that deny or dilute benefits and curtail the growth of spending on medical care.

Majority Leader Harry Reid accused Republicans of trying to prevent a historic debate that the nation needed.

“Imagine if, instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities the right to vote, those who disagreed had muted discussion and killed any vote,” he said.

The Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell said the vote was anything but procedural – describing it as a referendum on the bill itself, which he said would raise taxes, cut Medicare and create a “massive and unsustainable debt.”

The fate of the Saturday night showdown had been sealed hours earlier, when two final Democratic holdouts, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, announced they would join in clearing the way for a full debate.

We will be watching the upcoming debate, although we do not intend to waste our time in hearing the usual, vicious opinions of the conservative pundits.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a statement saying the president was gratified by the vote, which he says “brings us one step closer to ending insurance company abuses, reining in spiraling health care costs, providing stability and security to those with health insurance, and extending quality health coverage to those who lack it.”

The legislation would require most Americans to carry insurance and provide subsidies to those who cannot afford it. Large companies could incur penalties if they do not provide coverage to their workforce. The insurance industry would come under significant new regulation under the bill, which would first ease and then ban the practice of denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions.

Congressional budget analysts put the legislation’s cost at $979 billion over a decade and said it would reduce deficits over the same period while extending coverage to 94 percent of the eligible population.

In relation to the health-care reform debate and to the Republican (and Joe Lieberman’s) opposition to it, it might be worthwhile to quote a letter by George Washington to his nephew supporting adoption of the Constitution, to which there was considerable opposition as well..

General Washington castigated critics of the Constitution and stated that they seek to “rouse the apprehensions of the ignorant & unthinking . . . [with] objections . . . better calculated to alarm the fears, than to convince the judgement of their readers.”

These comments seem equally applicable to those Republican senators opposed to health-care reform.

______________________________________________________________________________________

And since the new mammography recommendations seem to have brought outrage from both sides of the aisle, we would like to present another incisive cartoon on the subject from Washington Post’s Tom Toles.

Technorati Tags: bill, Clears, democrats, Health care, Hurdle, insurance industry, reform, republicans, senate

The livestock industry as a result of its reliance on corn and soy-based feed accounts for over half the synthetic fertilizer used in the United States, contributing more than any other sector to marine dead zones. It consumes about 70 percent of the water in the American West – water so heavily subsidized that if irrigation supports were removed, ground beef would cost $35 a pound.

In addition, livestock accounts for at least 21 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions globally – more than all forms of transportation combined. Domestic animals – most of them healthy – consume (not by their choice, mind you) about 70 percent of all the antibiotics produced. Undigested antibiotics leach from manure into freshwater systems, impairing the sex organs of fish. The antibiotic use in animals has also contributed to the growing antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which infect humans.

It takes a gallon of gasoline to produce a pound of conventional beef. If all the grain fed to animals fed people instead, you could feed China and India.

Meat that’s produced according to “alternative” standards (accounting for about one percent of meat in the United States) might be a better choice but not nearly so much better as some would have us believe. “Free-range chickens” would theoretically have access to the outdoors. But many of the so-called “free-range” chickens never see the light of day because they cannot make it through the crowded shed to the opening, which leads usually to a patch of concrete, anyway.

“Grass-fed” cows produce four times the methane – a greenhouse gas 21 times as powerful as carbon dioxide – and many grass-fed cows are raised on heavily fertilized and irrigated grass. Pastured pigs are still typically mutilated, fed commercial feed and prevented from rooting – their most basic instinct besides sex.

Deforestation is the single largest contributor to climate change – far larger that all the transportation-related pollution, power generation and livestock flatulence. As it stands, huge tracts of forests are cut down for a variety of reasons – for wood, farming, industry, human habitation and yes: the factory farming of livestock.

Issues of animal welfare are also related to all forms of meat production. Domestic animals suffer immensely, feel pain and may even realize the fate that awaits them. In an egg factory, male chicks (economically worthless) are summarily run through a grinder. Pigs are castrated without anesthesia, crated, tail-docked and nose-ringed. Milk cows are repeatedly impregnated through artificial insemination, confined to milking stalls and milked to yield 15 times the amount of milk they would produce under normal circumstances. When calves are removed from their mothers at birth, the mothers mourn their loss with heart-rending moans.

Then comes the slaughterhouse, an operation that’s left with millions of pounds of carcasses – called deadstock – that are incinerated or dumped in landfills.

If someone told you that a particular corporation was trashing the air, water and soil, causing more global warming than the transportation industry, consuming massive amounts of fossil fuels; unleashing the cruelest sort of suffering on innocent and defenseless beings; failing to recycle its waste, and clogging our arteries in the process, how would you react?

We are looking forward to hearing from all of you out there. This isn’t an attempt to turn everybody into vegetarians, or vegans, but for a variety of reasons we believe that meat consumption and large-scale livestock farming should be reduced by a noticeable margin.

There are horror stories and horrific videos being leaked out of factory farms everywhere. This PETA video is just one example, featuring a factory pig farm in North Carolina. It is patently obvious the the “people” involved in this sadistic acts are the real animals. To put it politely – scum of the earth. And to think that our jails are full of people sentenced for writing a bad check, or for possessing a small amount of marijuana…

Technorati Tags: climate change, cruelty, Environment, factory, farming, global warming, Health, Livestock, meat, pollution, production