Pfizer Supports Price Controls?

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Monday May 16, 2005 · 10:16 PM PDT

2005/05/16 · 22:16

The "American Jobs Creation Act" "allows companies a one-year window to return foreign profits to the United States at a 5.25 percent tax rate, compared with the standard 35 percent rate." Now big pharma is bringing $56 billion back into the U.S. and two of these companies are considering repatriating another $18 billion on top of that.

For many years now drug makers have been telling the IRS that most of their profits are earned overseas. This is despite the fact that 60% of their sales are in the U.S. which also happens to pay the highest prices in the world for their products.

So if we take Pfizer and the other pharmaceutical companies at their word, they are earning higher profits in those countries with price controls on drug prices. Which would mean they would welcome price controls and universal health care here in the U.S., right?

Racism's Rising Tide

madison

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Tuesday February 15, 2005 · 9:41 AM PST

2005/02/15 · 09:41

Dave Neiwert has blogged about the cover the rise of the Republicans has given extreme right wing ideologies and organizations like white supremacy and the neo-Nazis.

Here are some examples: Read More

Misery Index Map

madison

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Thursday February 10, 2005 · 8:41 AM PST

2005/02/10 · 08:41

In run up to and the aftermath of the election some red state vs. blue state maps and rants were posted. Most of this was done in a spirit of bashing the red states. Read More

How Religious Nationalism Lost in India

madison

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Friday November 05, 2004 · 12:52 PM PST

2004/11/05 · 12:52

Here's an interesting article comparing the defeat of the religious nationalist party called the BJP in India's parliamentary elections to the victory of the religious nationalist party called the GOP here in the U.S.

The opposition Congress party was able to defeat the BJP by standing up for secularism, and getting the votes of the poor who had an unexpectedly large turnout.

At least one moral of this story here I think is that we have to stop "reaching out" to the religious nationalists. Instead we need to be advocates for secularism. Secularism has a long history in this country that goes back to Thomas Jefferson.

The problem the Democrats are having isn't that they're out of sync with America; it's that Americans have no idea what it would mean to be in sync with the Democrats. That's not going to change until we act as forceful advocates for our beliefs in the way that the Republicans have been all along.

The New Paper of Record

madison

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Saturday October 16, 2004 · 10:49 PM PDT

2004/10/16 · 22:49

Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and John Walcott have a story about the complete lack of planning for postwar Iraq.

You already knew about the lack of planning, but this story has some interesting anecdotes about the lead up to the war.

Like this one:
Read More

Offshoring Speeding Up

madison

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Saturday October 16, 2004 · 10:30 PM PDT

2004/10/16 · 22:30

In today's San Jose Mercury News is a story that the rest of the media should be covering instead of going on and on about Lynne Cheney.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission issued a report finding that 406,000 jobs will be relocated to China, Mexico, and other countries this year. That's double the number of jobs that left the country in 2001.

The Commission, which was created by Congress, also found that:

Companies that are engaged in production shifts ``tend to be large, publicly held, highly profitable, and well established.''

The principal motive for production shifts to China is cost reduction rather than producing for the Chinese market.

The number of jobs lost because of production shifts far exceeds that reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in its report on mass layoffs due to overseas relocation.

Pirate Television

madison

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Tuesday October 12, 2004 · 6:32 PM PDT

2004/10/12 · 18:32

At times when people have been locked out of the very airwaves they own they often start what are sometimes called "pirate television" stations.

In Argentina, for example, Utopia Television was a pirate station that broadcast from 1992-1997. The station was frequently shut down and equipment confiscated as the government sought to maintain the monopoly on control of the airwaves by corporate interests.

Another pirate station in Argentina which is still broadcasting is TV-piquetera.

TV-piquetera's objective is to transmit in different neighborhoods with the intention of ultimately building a network of community television stations that can function autonomously under a large umbrella of collaboration and mutual support. As media activists the debate of whether the reach of the camera is enough is an inevitable discussion. Making technologies accessible to exploited sectors by democratizing audiovisual production and language has been a priority of Grupo Alavío and TV-piquetera.
...
If anyone is interested in collaborating or knowing more about the TV-piquetera experience please contact mtrigona@riseup.net

Bush-Cheney Passed on Chance to Kill Zarqawi

madison

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Tuesday October 05, 2004 · 7:04 PM PDT

2004/10/05 · 19:04

Cheney tried to justify the invasion of Iraq by talking about connections between Zarqawi and Saddam.

But if Cheney's so concerned about him, why did they pass up on a plan the Pentagon drafted to kill Zarqawi not once, not twice, but three times?

In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
....
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
...
In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.
The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.
Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi's operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.
The United States did attack the camp at Kirma at the beginning of the war, but it was too late -- Zarqawi and many of his followers were gone. "Here's a case where they waited, they waited too long and now we're suffering as a result inside Iraq," Cressey added.

A Sports Analogy

madison

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Saturday October 02, 2004 · 11:25 AM PDT

2004/10/02 · 11:25

Some Bush defenders like to say that we can't change horses midstream so we need to stick with the President while we fight the war on terror.

I think a better analogy would be to firing a coach after a losing season. This has lots of potential I think.

"We've got incredible talent out in the field in Iraq, but they don't have the coaching they deserve."

"We saw a couple of years ago what a big difference a change in coaching can do with the New England Patriots, and on Nov. 2 we can show the terrorists what change in leadership at the White House can do."

"You can't expect to win with a leader who doesn't even understand his own playbook."

People should get the feeling that there's some untapped potential there that the current President just doesn't know how to reach.

The Truth About Malpractice

madison

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Friday October 01, 2004 · 11:06 PM PDT

2004/10/01 · 23:06

If your doctor is nervous about John Edwards, you should let your doctor know that malpractice damage caps, or responsibility caps as I like to call them, didn't have any effect on insurance rates here in California. The problem isn't lawyers preying on doctors. It's the insurance companies that are the problem.

In fact in the first decade after caps were passed in California, insurance premiums rose 175%.

It wasn't until Proposition 103, which regulated the insurance industry, passed that medical practice rates stabilized. Between 1988 and 2000 rates actually fell 8% in California while nationally they rose 25%.

But the law which limits responsibility for doctors is still on the books here, and it can have horrible consequences for patients.

Economic damages cannot always be anticipated. California juries are not informed of the cap on non-economic damages, so they are often not careful about apportioning economic damages. In one famous case, for example, Harry Jordan, a Long Beach man, was hospitalized to have a cancerous kidney removed but the surgeon took out his healthy kidney instead. A jury awarded Jordan more than $5 million dollars, but the judge was required to reduce the verdict to $250,000 due to California's cap on "non-economic" damages - plus a mere $6,000 in "economic costs". Jordan, who lived for years on 10% kidney function, could no longer work, though the jury (which lawfully can not be notified about the "non- economic" cap) did not take this into account. Jordan's court costs -- not including attorney fees -- amounted to more than $400,000 and his medical bills, that arose after frequently being denied by insurers, totaled more than $500,000. He paid $1700 per month in health insurance.

Malpractice insurers are clearly deceiving their customers, but for some reason doctors keep falling for it.

"The American Medical Association says that 100 doctors were put out of business last year in West Virginia because of rising medical malpractice insurance rates, yet the damages paid out in West Virginia dropped by 31 percent during the same period. If that $15 million in savings didn't help, how would damage caps solve the problem?" Claybrook asked.

The reality is that more than half of all the damages paid out by malpractice insurers are caused by about 5% of all doctors. But for some reason these doctors are rarely discplined, despite the fact that they often are repeat offenders.

These bad doctors are allowed to go on practicing medicine despite the fact that taking them out of business would save everyone money on malpractice insurance, and the fact that medical errors are the sixth leading cause of death in the country.

Dropped the Ball

madison

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Friday October 01, 2004 · 2:47 PM PDT

2004/10/01 · 14:47

I think "dropping the ball" should be Kerry's answer to the "flip flop" charge.

Bush dropped the ball when he let bin Laden get away at Tora Bora.

Bush dropped the ball when he passed on a Pentagon plan to kill Zarqawi.

Bush dropped the ball when he actually slowed down the pace for securing loose nukes in Russia.

Bush dropped the ball when he didn't plan for what would happen after we won in Iraq.

Bush dropped the ball when he sent troops to guard the oil ministry in Iraq, but not nuclear sites.

Bush dropped the ball when decided to cut funding for first responders.

Bush dropped the ball when he resisted the 9/11 commissions recommendations for reforming the intelligence community.

Bush dropped the ball when he let North Korea and Iran make progress in acquiring nuclear technology and weapons.

Anything else?

We need to send a consistent message that says Bush is someone who means well, but is just no match for the job at hand. Repeating Drudge's claim that he was exhuasted and drained might help too.

Why Political Science Isn't

madison

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Friday October 01, 2004 · 10:04 AM PDT

2004/10/01 · 10:04

This CBS story where "experts" claim the debate was a tie is a perfect example of why so many people in the soft sciences don't really understand science.

The job of a scientist is to explain the facts in front of them. In the face of three polls which clearly show that Kerry won the debate, CBS's political "scientists" instead choose to explain the facts away. They claim the debate is a draw but then offer no evidence to support their claims.

Reading the CBS article critically shows that the only thing we know for sure is that political "scientists" have no way of really predicting what will happen next. They have no models, no testable predictions, nothing that even closely approximates the scientific method.

The only fact that can be agreed on at this point is that the polls show that viewers of the debates judged by wide margins that Kerry won and Bush lost. Anybody who says they know more is just spinning.

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