The Problem of War on Terror
Just like all the other modern "wars" we run in the USA, the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't working. Here is why:
Terrorists are smart and adaptive people... just like we are. Only, we use war against these people which is like building a gun that you can only fire at a solid wall. It looks impressive but is completely useless. "Terrorists" use this system against us because it's not flexible. When you start a war in Iraq, that's where it stays. They've moved on. We have not.
This is why you cannot fight terror with violence. They don't have the rules that nations do and we can't let them exploit that. They are using it, and we are falling for it.
We should end both these wars. They are illegal anyway, but that is apparently no problem for people. They should be ended because terrorists moved on. The got us stuck there, almost, as they intended. We are emptying our reserves on something so expensive that it costs $400 per gallon of gas and $1,000,000 per year to keep one troop on the ground there. This is insane.
All the while, the Chinese have Universal Health Care. They have a hard time covering all the people yes but their economy is stronger for it. How many decades of double digit growth have they had? Really, the profits on the insurance industry could be kept in the actual businesses that provide value in order to hire more people, make more investments, and grow faster. In the USA we have leeches on the economy. The more they leech, the stronger they get and the harder it is to reform. They have a HUGE lobby branch which they have shown are willing to spend a LOT of money upon.
China doesn't need to go to the moon to make real advancements. They just built the 'world's fastest train link'. In the wealthiest nation in the world, why aren't we doing stuff like that? Ah, it's because we buy nearly everything from China.
We have become a depleted country. A part of that is from the hugely expensive wars we inflict upon the world and a part of it is that we don't save money or produce much any more. The only thing we seem to be really good at is printing money. Even that is starting to look like a destitute adventure.
White House Deal w/ Drug Companies = Failure
The drug companies compromised with the Whitehouse to cut costs by $80b over the next 10 years.
The drug companies then jacked prices by 9.3%. They are now earning $10b per year more than they were before.
The net difference... The drug companies are now earning $2b more each year.
Of course, this is because they have a monopoly. 78% of the market is patented drugs but the limit of patents was raised from 5 years to 12 years.
This is a great deal negotiated by Obama. What a freaking joke.
Pharma Screwing Customers Before New Laws Take Effect
Drug Makers Raise Prices in Face of Health Care Reform
Even as drug makers promise to support Washington’s health care overhaul by shaving $8 billion a year off the nation’s drug costs after the legislation takes effect, the industry has been raising its prices at the fastest rate in years.
In the last year, the industry has raised the wholesale prices of brand-name prescription drugs by about 9 percent, according to industry analysts. That will add more than $10 billion to the nation’s drug bill, which is on track to exceed $300 billion this year. By at least one analysis, it is the highest annual rate of inflation for drug prices since 1992.
The drug trend is distinctly at odds with the direction of the Consumer Price Index, which has fallen by 1.3 percent in the last year.
Drug makers say they have valid business reasons for the price increases. Critics say the industry is trying to establish a higher price base before Congress passes legislation that tries to curb drug spending in coming years.
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But drug companies say they are having to raise prices to maintain the profits necessary to invest in research and development of new drugs as the patents on many of their most popular drugs are set to expire over the next few years.
So they are telling us that they can't plan ahead a few years in advance to anticipate patent expirations? That's a crock.
This is also a bit different than credit card companies. You can at least take your credit and debt to another place but in this case drugs are patented and thus you don't have a choice if there is not a generic. This is the other instance where a health motive conflicts with a profit motive. Is there an easy way to turn the profit motive to health motive for pharma? Maybe make them non-profits like health insurance companies?
Is the H1N1 Vaccine Causing Auto-immune Disorder?
Teen Diagnosed With Guillain-Barre Syndrome After Swine Flu Shot
A high school athlete from Virginia was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome hours after receiving a swine flu shot, but health authorities are attempting to dismiss the connection as a coincidence, precisely as they resolved to do long before the H1N1 vaccination program even started.
14-year-old Jordan McFarland developed severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs following a swine flu shot. He was diagnosed by doctors at Inova Fairfax Hospital as having Guillain-Barre syndrome, the nerve disorder that was prevalent in recipients of the vaccine during the last mass swine flu vaccination program in 1976.
“Connin and Jordan’s father, Calvin McFarland, both 38, believe the shot sparked the illness that came on 18 hours after the boy’s vaccination,” reports MSNBC.
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Efforts on behalf of health authorities to claim that debilitating side-effects and nerve disorders such as GBS have no connection to the vaccine, despite the fact that they are clearly listed on vaccine inserts as potential dangers, is unsurprising considering this is precisely what officials resolved to do before the swine flu mass vaccination program began.Back In September, Reuters reported on how public health officials were expecting “an avalanche of so-called adverse event reports, which are reports of death, illness or other health trauma,” in the two weeks after people receive the vaccine.
There is a little thing called Cause and Effect. The chances of developing GBS is 1 in 50,000 to 1 in 100,000. Meaning, 3,000 to 6,000 cases in the US every year. There is no chance that the vaccine could cause this GBS? This has even been documented in with the swine flu vaccine in 1976 when 500 vaccine takers were diagnosed... in just the way Jordan was: right after the vaccine.
There is also a chance of this happening too
Where 72 kg of seasonal flu vaccine were contaminated with bird flu. How exactly could this have been an accident? The government contracts removes all liability for the companies. A pandemic is now easy to declare (because there is no death clause now). They stand to earn billions from the vaccine.
BELL TOLLING for the Swine Flu
For those of you with less patience to watch 60 minutes of Spanish audio with English subtitles with just a talking head, it goes like this:
- The Swine Flu is less deadly than normal flu.
- Some companies mix other scrap in with their vaccines. Like one put a high mortality virus in with a highly infectious virus. It killed all animals given the test vaccine.
- The USA and the WHO have changed their definitions of pandemics infections to remove the mortality as a factor in calling it that. This change happened in 2007 or 2008.
- In a pandemic situation they can mandate vaccines for everyone or pay a fine even in cases where it has a 0% mortality rate.
- She talks about having three flu shots and this has never been done before.
- Glaxo Smith Kline is using a coadjuvant that has never been used before except for the Anthrax vaccine given to troops in the Gulf War. They have been testing it on Spanish children to find it's secondary effects. It's much stronger than the normal coadjuvant and they are putting it in the swine flu vaccine. This is 10x the normal immune response. (Coadjuvants are used to stimulate and energize the immune system to produce a higher immune system response thus making the vaccine more effective). Serious side effects include changes to the central neurological system, paralysis, and arthritis. Companies say this is needed because they need to produce billions of doses for total population vaccination.
- Less Antigens are needed but there is also less immune system excitation. Different coadjuvants are used each year so we don't know what degree this artificial excitation of the immune system is going to cause autoimmune diseases. We've seen this before with Guillain-Barre. In 1976, 48 million Americans were vaccinated. 3000 people were paralyzed with Guillain-Barre syndrome. So we just say, this is a known problem... deal with it. What if a side effect is death?
- So many doses are needed that forced contracts were sign with Big Pharma that absolves them of any legal responsibility in case of serious side effects.
- Politicians have no responsibility either for the safety of their constituents.
- They can announce a pandemic without real or objective basis. Use possibly contaminated vaccines. Use coercive legislation to impose it on the people. This risk must not be minimized.
- Swine flu has not mutated in 70 years. Yet, it's possible for them to "announce" that next year it will have mutated.
- If it mutates and does become more deadly, it becomes more important NOT to take the vaccine. The vaccine is not effective due to the mutation. It may also be a different virus in which case the vaccine won't be at all effective. The risk may be higher than the benefit. The vaccine may even contain the virus!
- What to do: stay calm, take usual precautions to avoid infection, and avoid the vaccine.
- We need to really fight for the ability to 1) not take a vaccine if we don't want 2) hold the vaccine creators responsible if something goes wrong with the side effects like paralysis and death.
- We must not be scared of the known swine flu because it has a lower mortality rate than seasonal flu. Normal seasonal flu kills 40,000 to 220,000 people each year in Europe. We don't sensationalize each death like we are doing with the swine flu.
- "Empire" always has good intentions. There have always been people who want to dominate the world. That is to say, they want to control a chaotic world.
- In Catalonia, an initiative with twice the minimum number of signatures was looked at by their Congress and outright rejected. This was to place a label on food that was genetically modified.
- In monitoring the quality of our democracies, she's seen things closer to dictatorship.
- In the USA we use terrorist attacks to remove people's freedoms.
- We can see through their dictatorial leadership and vote for people that actually believe in democracy.
The only thing i question is if a mortality mutation also means a infection mutation. If this is so, then it's likely that a more deadly swine flu won't respond to current vaccines. If these are highly independent, then the current vaccines may still work against the mutation. My guess is that, there are links between the two.
The Investor Revolution
I've been wondering recently why stock market investors don't have much power over companies. This explains it very well.
From what i understand this bill allows investors to have some say in selecting board members. This is a FANTASTIC idea. This is how private corporations work. The owners have a say. Any venture capital firm will tell you that this is how they operate. Companies aren't just allowed to do what they want without the owners authorization. This bill essentially brings this mentality to publicly traded companies. How good is it? Well, it sounds awesome and is a great start toward restoring capitalism in the economy.
A few other ideas i had regarding investor ownership. Remove corporate personhood. This would make investors responsible for corporate actions... both good and bad. A rising stock price is worth being an active investor. Another idea i had was an investor union. This would allow investors to have one or a set of representatives within the company. I'm not sure exactly how it would work but maybe an investor tax on the company like a penny per outstanding share per year to pay for this union. Shrug. just an idea. Maybe have a Chief Investor Outreach Officer. Anyway. Please register and comment on other methods of controlling corporations.
I'm also fond of making all health insurance companies into non-profit entities. This would remove the profit motive and allow them to focus on the health motive.
The most interesting thing to ponder is what would happen if investors really had a say in public companies.
- Green investors would love to buy big oil and convert them, for their own good, into future energy providers of solar, wind, and ocean. (I'd even buy some shares in Exxon-Mobil to help this happen!!). Yeah, it may be expensive but it's better than not being forward thinking, letting the companies fail, or worse, bailing them out.
- Investors could demand that companies split up to create more jobs if deemed too big to fail
Basically, investors have their lives to draw upon in making decisions, not just their pocket books. This could inject a longer term view into corporate culture.
There could be harm done, but investors would have to keep each other in check just as they need to keep the board and management in check.
Government was designed around three branches for checks and balances. Companies should be designed around this same model of checks and balances. Management (like the White House), Board of Directors (like the Court system), and Investors (like Congress). There are similarities but there are also differences. Regardless, three is better than two for checks and balances.
For example, just look at our two party political system and how corrupted by money and influence it has become. A third party candidate could provide a much need breath of fresh air, but also the balance to keep the Republicrats focused on the benefit of the people. This is why I believe we should institute all elections as instant run off voting. People wouldn't be afraid to vote their real values instead of the lesser of two evils.
House Health Care Bill Exceeds $1 Trillion
House Health Care Bill Exceeds $1 Trillion
Strong healthcare reform is needed to keep the American economy strong.
So the part that feels like a rock and a hard place is that without health care reform we'd be toast. The rock is the cost. They can monetize the deficit or tax us more. These are essentially the same thing. In one case the just take it and the other they inflate it (aka steal it with a hidden tax of the devaluation of the dollar). It sure seems like the dollar is going to inflate very quickly when all those foreign dollars come flooding home. If we didn't have to pay the Federal Reserve interest on the National Debt we could afford even more costly healthcare reform and still lower the deficit to boot. Seriously, why is the Federal Government paying interest on its own money? What kind of nonsense system are we living under? BTW, the Fed is a private corporation with little or no real oversight by the public Federal Government. They should be audited to prove that our financial system really is strong. This would boost the value of the dollar. That is to say, confidence would be restored. That's what we want, no? Otherwise it would be nice to know if our monetary system is just a ponzi fraud that makes all other fraud combined like a drop in the Great Lakes.
Any way this happens it's going to be ugly. My only hope is that democracy for and by the people is chosen.
Apple Resigns From U.S. Chamber of Commerce Over Climate Change Stance
Apple Resigns From U.S. Chamber of Commerce Over Climate Change Stance
Apple is committeed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world. We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases.
Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort. We would prefer that the Chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a construtive role in addressing the climate crisis. However, because the Chamber's position differs so sharply with Apple's, we have decided to resign our membership effective immediately.
Even big companies are telling our leaders that they NEED to do something. Yet they don't listen.
Are you convinced yet that this is corporate fascism? Oil. Why did we put a failed oil man in office?
Healthcare… Help me, help you.
You know all this talk about public option and single payer seems like chatter in the wind. Yes, I'm for them but that's not all the options we have.
Why not just regulate health insurance companies so they may only be non-profit and be required to pick up the uninsured with their former profit. Money isn't going to like that but it always fears giving real value in exchange. We have real value in our healthcare system, now the health insurance industry needs to stop plundering us.
These newly insured people are leeching off those that can pay, yes, but how is that different than the insurance companies leeching off you? I'll tell you how it's different. The rich get richer (with money), and the poor get poorer (with health problems, possibly unable to work, lower life expectancy) when the companies are leeching. Where has the equality gone?
When it comes to life or death, why are companies allowed to profit off of seeking death? That is just about the most morally reprehensible idea I've ever heard. Making them non-profit would at least stop them from deciding peoples' death in order to influence next quarter's profit margin. I hope they don't think like this individually but such a system can be built through cogs and systems so it doesn't look as immoral even though it achieves the same effect.