Category: Corporate Statism

‘Trust us’

~ susie

TEPCO transfers fuel rods

I’m sure it’ll all be fine. I mean, I’m sure they’d tell us if it was going to be a problem!

A senior adviser to the operator of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has told the firm that it may have no choice but to eventually dump hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking to reporters who were on a rare visit to the plant on the eve of the third anniversary of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, Dale Klein said Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco] had yet to reassure the public over the handling of water leaks that continue to frustrate efforts to clean up the site.

“The one issue that keeps me awake at night is Tepco’s long-term strategy for water management,” said Klein, a former chairman of the US nuclear regulatory commission who now leads Tepco’s nuclear reform committee.

“Storing massive amounts of water on-site is not sustainable. A controlled release is much safer than keeping the water on-site.

“Tepco is making progress on water management but I’m not satisfied yet. It’s frustrating that the company takes four or five steps forward, then two back. And every time you have a leakage it contributes to a lack of trust. There’s room for improvement on all fronts.”

Tepco’s failure to manage the buildup of contaminated water came to light last summer, when it admitted that at least 300 tonnes of tainted water were leaking into the sea every day.

That revelation was followed by a string of incidents involving spills from poorly assembled storage tanks, prompting the government to commit about $500m (£300m) into measures to contain the water.

They include the construction of an underground frozen wall to prevent groundwater mixing with contaminated coolant water, which becomes tainted after coming into contact with melted nuclear fuel deep inside the damaged reactors.

Poor people in the U.S. can’t afford treatment for pneumonia

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Doxycycline_(as_Doxycycline_Hyclate)_100_Mg_Oral_Tablet_1

I found this on Democratic Underground:

Yes, this is a scary headline. Almost sounds sensational. It isn’t. It is a cold hard fact. At this moment, if you are counting your pennies, trying to scrape up enough to pay for a $4 drug at Wal-Mart or Target, you can not afford an antibiotic that will treat your walking pneumonia—meaning that you could end up in the hospital saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills.

For years, doxycycline has been a valuable drug for physicians who treat the indigent — unemployed or underemployed folks without insurance. A staple of $4 drug lists, it can be used to treat everything from bronchitis to “walking” pneumonia to urinary tract infections to skin infections to acne to venereal disease—and it covers some rarer infections like Lyme’s and is sometimes used for malaria prevention, too.

For as long as I can remember–and I am pretty damn old—doxycycline, a twice a day form of tetracycline has been widely available and cheap as dirt.

And then, this winter, something surprising and very troubling happened. A patient with a list of medical problems longer than his arm and no income (he was still appealing a Social Security Disability denial) came down with bronchitis, possible early pneumonia–the two can be difficult to differentiate. I wrote him a prescription for doxycycline. He took it to the pharmacy. They wanted over $50 for it. He did not have over $50. He had $4. That was how much the drug used to cost at the same pharmacy.

He is not alone. Here is an LA Times Story about someone who had the same problem last year. Turns out that the difference can depend upon which generic drug manufacturer is making a specific medication at any given time. And apparently, right now, the one making doxycycline http://articles.latimes.com/2013/mar/07/business/la-fi-lazarus-20130308“>charges an arm and a leg for it.

A CVS pharmacist in Los Angeles, who asked that his name by withheld because of fear of retaliation by the company, shared with me the average wholesale price of different makers’ doxycycline, as made available to pharmacists by the McKesson Connect online ordering system.

The system shows that the average wholesale price of 100 doxycycline pills made by Watson with a strength of 100 milligrams is $328.20. The same number of doxycycline pills at the same strength made by Mylan cost $1,314.83.

Mylan? Where have I heard that name before? Oh, yes. ALEC. As in “http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/ALEC_Corporations“>the Koch Brothers” and their corporate welfare mentality.

Where else have I heard of Mylan? Oh yes, the great http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117795“>lorazepam price fixing scandal.

The Federal Trade Commission approved a $100 million settlement with Mylan Laboratories, the largest monetary settlement in the commission’s history.

The agency had charged Mylan, of Pittsburgh, Pa., with conspiring to deny four competitors ingredients necessary to manufacture widely prescribed generic versions of anti-anxiety drugs. The practice resulted in a 3,000 percent boost in the price of the drugs, according to the FTC.

“Anti-competitive acts in the pharmaceutical industry potentially cost consumers millions of dollars in higher prescription prices,” says Richard Parker, director of the commissions’ bureau of competition.

Mylan is now the third largest generic drug manufacturer in the world since it acquired an Indian generic drug manufacturer–meaning that it is in great shape to corner the market http://triblive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_582510.html#axzz2vVDPxdWb“>on all these important key ingredients needed for drug manufacturing.

Not so long ago, the nation watched as patent drug manufacturers paid generic drug makers NOT to produce their product—keeping drug prices high. Keep that in mind as you ask yourself why a drug as popular as doxycycline is in short supply. This is not one of those orphan drugs that no one wants to make because almost no one needs it. This stuff sells itself. The more that is made, the more we will see it used. Why isn’t supply attempting to keep up with demand? Where is the bottleneck in the so called “free market economy”?

If this were a fictional mystery, I would now tell you why doxycycline has gotten so expensive that poor folks can no longer afford it. Since this is real life, I don’t know. If someone out there knows the answer, please tell me. Meanwhile, when a patient without money and without prescription drug coverage comes in with bronchitis/and or pneumonia, I am going to be hard pressed to get him treated with what is currently available on most $4 lists.

Why did the chicken cross the ocean?

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Key West chickens trying to cross the road.

To increase shareholder value, silly! What could possibly go wrong?

Scores of Americans are in an uproar since Food Safety News revealed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will soon allow U.S. chickens to be sent to China for processing before being shipped back to the states for human consumption.

This arrangement is especially disturbing given China’s subpar food safety record and the fact that there are no plans to station on-site USDA inspectors at Chinese plants. Also, American consumers won’t know which brands of chicken are processed in China because there’s no requirement to label it as such.

To ease concerns, lobbyists and chicken industry proponents argue no U.S. company will ever ship chicken to China for processing because it wouldn’t work economically.

[…] Yet, a similar process is already being used for U.S. seafood.

H/t Seth Okin.

ALEC is coming to a town near you

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Briefing on Deaf-Hearing Communications Outreach

They’re like zombies. They never die, and they never give up:

The rightwing group Alec is preparing to launch a new nationwide network that will seek to replicate its current influence within state legislatures in city councils and municipalities.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, founded in 1973, has become one of the most pervasive advocacy operations in the nation. It brings elected officials together with representatives of major corporations, giving those companies a direct channel into legislation in the form of Alec “model bills”.

Critics have decried the network as a “corporate bill mill” that has spread uniformly-drafted rightwing legislation from state to state. Alec has been seminal, for instance, in the replication of Florida’s controversial “stand-your-ground” gun law in more than 20 states.

Now the council is looking to take its blueprint for influence over statewide lawmaking and drill it down to the local level. It has already quietly set up, and is making plans for the public launch of, an offshoot called the American City County Exchange (ACCE) that will target policymakers from “villages, towns, cities and counties”.

The new organisation will offer corporate America a direct conduit into the policy making process of city councils and municipalities. Lobbyists acting on behalf of major businesses will be able to propose resolutions and argue for new profit-enhancing legislation in front of elected city officials, who will then return to their council chambers and seek to implement the proposals.
Continue reading “ALEC is coming to a town near you” →

Putin serves a useful function

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

VLADIMIR PUTIN

Whether we like him or not:

Recently, the debate about Ukraine has begun to move on to whether the opposition to Yanukovych is driven by civilized people or dangerous neo-Nazis and fascists. The problem with this debate is that, even in a best case scenario, with a clean slate of rosy-cheeked “reformers” in place, you’ll have a new government that must turn to the West, further isolating Russia and goading Putin to lash out.

And then there’s this little thing: everything, pretty much, is about money. And not just Yanukovych’s hankering for the finest gold toilet fixtures. The battle with Russia, like coming battles with China, and like just about every intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere, is for control of energy supplies—the greatest source of wealth in the history of the world.

It’s worth noting that the Middle East is not the next big thing when it comes to energy supplies. The former Soviet Union is. And after that, it’s the Arctic—where guess who is the West’s biggest competitor? Why, Russia.

Who blocked the impending coalition invasion of Syria? A wily Vladimir Putin.

So you can recognize Putin for what he is—another egomaniacal tyrant —and still recognize that he provides an essential balance to what would otherwise be an unchallenged superpower hegemony.

If Putin and Russia continue to be surrounded and marginalized, the world will become ever more hostage to the whims of the Wolves-of-Wall-Street class that drives the energy industry, which in turn drives the policies of the White House, Downing Street and other similar addresses.

In a strange way, by allowing uncontested victories by this unelected alliance operating putatively on our behalf, we the people marginalize our own interests and ensure that we ourselves never break free of our own political corruption to at least try to inaugurate a functioning democracy.

Rape and pillage in Detroit

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Red Wings vs. Blackhawks NHL hockey game

I’m beginning to wonder if our country is too corrupt to save:

Back in December, Pando reported on how Michigan and Detroit officials were simultaneously pleading poverty to justify cuts to municipal workers’ average $19,000-a-year pensions all while promising to keep spending taxpayer cash on a new professional hockey stadium. Now, the Detroit Free Press reports that on top of the money taxpayers spent to finance the stadium and to give the Red Wings a rent-free stadium, the deal will mean a loss of “$7 million in revenue the city received annually from the team’s home games.” Under the agreement, the newspaper reports the Illitch family that owns the Red Wings “will no longer have to share 10% of ticket proceeds, 7% of suite sales, 10% of food and beverage concessions, 5% of souvenir sales and other revenue from parking.” The Free Press adds that “all of that money would belong to the Ilitches.”

The kids are alright

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

http://youtu.be/-pWLNoRZ9mg

Obama’s legacy will be as the president who let it all happen so he could get reelected:

More than 300 anti-Keystone XL protesters were arrested Sunday afternoon outside the White House in the latest push by environmentalists to convince the Obama administration to reject the Canadian oil pipeline.

The student-led protest, organized by XL Dissent, started with a rally at Georgetown University. The students marched from there to the White House — with a stop at Secretary of State John Kerry’s house along the way.

Students from 80 colleges participated in Sunday’s event, and another protest will be held on Monday in San Francisco, said Aly Johnson-Kurts, a freshman at Smith College and one of the organizers of the event.

“The youth really understand the traditional methods of creating change are not sufficient … so we needed to escalate,” said Johnson, shortly before she was arrested at the White House.

An organizer estimated the crowd at about 1,200 people. U.S. Park Police could not immediately provide a count of those arrested Sunday afternoon.

Organizers held civil disobedience training on Saturday to ensure that the demonstration went peacefully.
The crowd marched down H Street, holding banners and chanting songs. Some wore painter’s scrubs with black paint on them — “hazmat suits” with oil — while others held signs with slogans like “Keystone XL: pipeline to hell” and “Keep your oil out of my soil.”

A tide of energy undulated through the crowd as speaker after speaker got up to encourage them to risk arrest.
“I want you to know how important what you’re doing is,” Chris Wahmhoff, a member of the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands and candidate for the U.S. Senate, told the crowd, holding a block of oil sands in his hand. “The sick people in Michigan, the sick people in Canada, they’re looking to you.”

“They say we are too young to make a difference, but we are proving them wrong, right here, right now,” Earthguradians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez said to the cheering crowd.

“I think when the public sees college students coming out and getting arrested,” he said to POLITICO later, “people can say the youth came out. We were here. Because our generation will be the most impacted by whatever decision is made by the government.”

Was the fix in?

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

JAPAN GOLD

Well, why wouldn’t they? It’s not as if they’d be sent to jail, amirite?

The London gold fix, the benchmark used by miners, jewelers and central banks to value the metal, may have been manipulated for a decade by the banks setting it, researchers say.

Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University’s Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper.

You really didn’t build that

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Uncle Santa

Send this one to your teabagger relatives:

Remember when President Obama was lambasted for saying “you didn’t build that”? Turns out he was right, at least when it comes to lots of stuff built by world’s wealthiest corporate behemoths. That’s the takeaway from a new study of 25,000 major taxpayer subsidy deals over the last two decades.

Entitled “Subsidizing the Corporate One Percent,” the report from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First shows that the largest corporations in the world aren’t models of self-sufficiency and unbridled capitalism. To the contrary, they continue to receive tens of billions of dollars in government handouts. Such subsidies might be a bit more defensible if they were being doled out in a way that promoted upstart entrepreneurialism. But as the study also shows, a full “three-quarters of all the economic development dollars awarded and disclosed by state and local governments have gone to just 965 large corporations” — not to the small businesses and startups that politicians so often pretend to care about.

The true beneficiaries of subsidies are often hidden under layers of holding companies, shell firms and complex ownership agreements. But Good Jobs First did the tedious work of connecting the subsidies to the parent firms. In the process, the group discovered that a whopping $110 billion — or 75 percent of cumulative disclosed subsidy dollars — are going to these 965 large companies. Fortune 500 firms alone receive more than 16,000 subsidies at a total cost of $63 billion. Additionally, eight out of the top 20 firms receiving U.S. taxpayer subsidies are not even U.S. companies, meaning American taxpayers are being forced to directly subsidize foreign firms.

These kind of handouts, of course, are the opposite of anything having to do with a “free market.” They are the definition of government intervention in the market. Yet, the free-market image of companies is rarely tarnished when those companies accept the huge welfare payments.

Consider Koch Industries. Despite the Koch Brothers being the biggest financiers of the anti-government right, and despite their billing as libertarian “free market” activists, their company has relied on $88 million worth of government subsidies.

Similarly, behold the big tech firms. They are often portrayed as self-made up-from-the-bootstraps success stories. Yet, as Good Jobs First shows, they are among the biggest recipients of the subsidies.