Canada grades the U.S. for its 2011 politics

Do you care?  If you don’t, I wouldn’t bother reading this article.  But I think it is important to know what our neighbors to the north think about us since they are more progressive in their approach to issues like gun control, consumer rights and health care than we are.  Considering just those aspects of Canada’s government, you would be right if you assume their attitude toward American politics is that 2011 was, as they describe it, a year of “lowlights.”

Gabby Giffords

The article from the Montreal Gazette starts with the assassination attempt on Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, which one year holiday will pass this coming Sunday.  As the paper put it, the year began with good intentions by President Obama in his State of the Union Address but basically ended there.  If there was ever a time in recent history where a reevaluation of gun control was called for, and just might have been demanded by the American public, it was then.

It was soon after that a Republican controlled House decided that it would block anything the Obama administration did just for the purpose of insuring that he wouldn’t be a two-term president.  The dysfunction commenced and lasted right down to the last day of December, 2011.  GOP House Speaker John Boehner was quickly reigned in by the radicals of the Tea Party, led by Rep. Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, and remained under their thumb until the end of the year.



The Keystone XL pipeline from Canada produced a flip-flop on the part of Obama, just when environmentalists thought they had won a major battle.  The President decided to allow earlier consideration of the project when the GOP became obsessed with its approval because of their claim it would create jobs.  Critics think Republicans did harm to its eventual passage by their insistence that it be included in the tax relief bill.

And then there was the birther controversy over whether Obama’s birth certificate was valid.  Canadians considered Donald Trump the “crackpot” he is when using the issue to discredit the President.  Even today there are still two fruitcakes pursuing this stupid theory after the President already provided evidence of his birth in Hawaii.  There was also Rep. Anthony Weiner’s tweeting photos of his genital to a woman.  A Democrat from New York, he first denied, then admitted what he had done, and the resigned in disgrace. 

Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin was around for a while, goading her pathetic followers into thinking she would run for President, when she had no intention of giving up the lucrative speaking engagements these feeble-minded people pay dearly for.  Canadians saw the sadness in the ineptitude of the 112^th Congress to accomplish anything, including what they consider “one of the worst pieces of kitchen-sink legislation,” the 2-month payroll tax cut.

House Speaker John Boehner gets the nod as the “weakest political leader’ due his complete lack of control over the Tea Party in the GOP caucus.  He simply could not deliver the votes ending up in a loss of credibility with the White House, Democrats, even Republicans in the Senate.  It almost seemed at one time that Boehner wanted to work with President Obama on a range of issues, but then the Tea Party jerked him back to reality through moves by Eric Cantor.

Regardless of what Canada thinks of U.S. politics, the important thing is what do Americans think of their political situation.  With Congress at its lowest favorability rating ever, 9 percent, that seems painfully obvious.  Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said it best: she commented that only the military has a favorable rating in government.

Facebook, Google help potential suicides…will they sell your data?

It is commendable that Facebook and Google have set up procedures to identify people who are contemplating suicide, passing them along to help lines that are geared up to help these folks.  Facebook has designed a system that promotes the flagging of “suicidal or otherwise violent messages.”  If there is a post about someone doing harm to themselves, friends can click on a “report suicidal content link.”

Google added something to its U.S. search engine in 2010 showing a red telephone plus the telephone number for a suicide help line to call.  They have a similar program for poison-control providing a hotline.  The latter was prompted by an actual incident of a mother unable to find the right number after her child had consumed something poisonous. 

These are good things being done by two high-profile companies in the business of providing and sharing information between their customers.  The question is whether we can trust either with this most personal of private information, that, if used against us, could be disastrous.  As an example, both companies are known to collect marketing information from online use of their sites, and what if Google or Facebook decided to sell suicide data to a life insurance company?



After all, Mark Zuckerberg, the bad-boy founder of Facebook, has been known in the past to push the limit on how he uses your personal data.  As late as November of 2011 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lodged a complaint against Facebook for assuring customers their data was secure from ad networks or FB apps, while at the same time this information was merrily streaming on its way to both. 

It’s as if Zuckerberg, genius that he may be, comes completely dumb when it gets down to your privacy.  Or is it that he just doesn’t care because he thinks your private information belongs to him?  I spent 35 years in the junk mail industry selling your personal data, but for the last seven years I have been fighting for your rights in this matter.  The problem is the average person is completely apathetic about this issue, allowing the Facebooks and Googles to do their thing.

Google has mellowed over the years since they were accused of holding search data for too long a period of time.  However, in March of 2011, Google settled a complaint with the FTC that its Google Buzz social network violated user privacy.  With a fanfare introduction, Google failed to tell users their personal information might be shared.  These oversights are frequent in businesses who apparently don’t understand the full value of privacy.  Unlike junk mailers, who understand but either don’t care or favor profits over customer data security.

Let me leave you with yet one more example of how Facebook and Google might share this data with advertisers.  Pharmaceutical companies thrive on any means to hawk new and old drugs to the public and have little regard for consumer privacy.  Anti-depressant drug-makers could use a list like this to sell their wares, although some experts in the past say anti-depressants actually cause suicides. 

You may think this is all far-fetched but we are currently in an information-driven society and in my 35 years selling this personal data it was obvious just what a gold mine it is.  And because everything anyone needs to know about you is out there with easy access, it just may be too late to even think about your privacy anymore.

Americans favor the IRS and communism over the present Republican Congress

Yes, I said Republican Congress.  It is less popular than the dreaded tax folks and the political ideology that is a direct opposite to democracy.  In this CBS rating, the IRS comes in at a colossal 40 percent, communism at 11 percent, the lowly Congress at 9 percent.  Only Fidel Castro ranks lower at 5 percent.  These ratings are taken by major polling services like Gallup and Rasmussen, and reflect the growing feeling that the people in Washington must be replaced in 2012.

In a release from CBS of the approval rating, it is clear that the GOP is continuing to block everything that would help jump-start the economy because they want the President to fail.  It is a blockade Barack Obama has been up against since his inauguration, conceived by a deranged Tea Party and implemented by fanatics like Eric Cantor, (R-VA) House Majority Leader with help from House Speaker, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Minority leader, Rep. Mitch McConnell.

Communist symbol

According to the Addicting Info site, this is what the Republican Congress has done: “…spent their time passing anti-women bills, bills against birth control and contraceptives, anti-abortion bills, bills declaring pizza a vegetable, bills re-affirming ‘In God We Trust,’ as the national motto, anti-tax bills, anti-environmental bills.”  There is more but just as ludicrous. 

This gang of brainless GOP bullies has frittered away three years trying to convince the American public to hate President Obama and vote him out of office next November.  What they have accomplished is raising the ire of a majority of the voting public, including many Republicans and a number of Independents.  The country is fed up with their shenanigans and they’re not going to take it anymore.  The question is how to make sure voters remember this subterfuge on November 6, 2012.



Maybe it would help to illustrate more cases where the unfavorable is favored over the Republican Congress.  The airlines, which have raised rates and curtailed benefits for several years now comes in at 29 percent.  Keep in mind now Congress is at 9 percent.  Banks, one of the most hated institutions and the target of the Occupy movement rank 23 percent.  The oil and gas industry, often accused of raising the price of gasoline just to improve their bottom line, 20 percent.  And Hugo Chavez, Pres. of Venezuela, ties Congress at 9 percent.

The GOP Congress has done absolutely nothing to create jobs, improve the foreclosure crisis, and they want to repeal the health care bill that has already helped many needy Americans.  Stephen Foster of Addicting Info says, “Hell, Republicans have turned Congress into such a joke that even King George III was more popular during the Revolutionary War.”  He was the British monarch during the American Revolution, his favorability coming in between 15 and 20 percent.

I cannot remember a time in my life where the hallowed halls of Congress have been looked on with such contempt for the people who are supposed to be running our country but yet have let a small group of wacko radicals dictate their actions.  I would be talking about the Tea Party, of course, and until the GOP breaks the umbilical cord with these certifiable maniacs, there will be no breakthrough in Washington.

Iowa caucus is a group of religious extremists' much ado about nothing

I lived in Iowa at one time; still have family there that will no doubt roast me alive after this post.  But I am sick and tired of seeing religion, not just making its impact on politics like any other politicking body, but in actual control of the outcome.  And that is exactly the position the Iowa evangelicals are in when it comes to caucus results.  They are able to do it because of their numbers in the state and also because of their unlimited passion over what they believe.

University of Akron’s expert on religion and politics, John Green, says, ““Relatively few people participate in the Iowa caucuses, so it’s ideal for a group of highly committed activists to have a big influence.”  The need to attend area get-togethers is a requirement, and since evangelicals thrive on sharing their devotion, it is easy for the churches to initiate this kind of participation.  And there is nothing wrong with this loyalty to their cause.

 

What is wrong is the influence the Iowa Caucus has on voters’ opinions across the country of the candidates and their qualifications to be president.  What would the evangelicals do if someday this country elected an agnostic to the highest office in the land?  He or she would believe in a God, but not share the normal Christian beliefs such as the crucifixion.  This new president would have all the capabilities to perform the necessary duties, and he or she would possess all the real values of good people.  The latter is possible, you know.

 A U. of Iowa journalism professor, Stephen G. Bloom, a New Jersey transplant, has wreaked havoc in the state with his statement: "Whether a schizophrenic, economically depressed, and some say, culturally challenged state like Iowa should host the first grassroots referendum to determine who will be the next president isn't at issue. ... In a perfect world, no way would Iowa ever be considered representative of America, or even a small part of it. Iowa's not representative of much." 

When I lived in Des Moines in the late 60s, it was a dingy place, very cliquish, and when I left, knew I would never want to live there again.  Apparently a lot of people still feel the same way as Forbes magazine ranked Iowa in the top ten states losing population in 2010.  That doesn’t mean those who stay are bad, just that it is an environment in which they feel comfortable.  Perhaps many who desert the state are just not “evangelical” enough to fit in and decide to go elsewhere.

To illustrate what I feel to be the complete absurdity of the Iowa Caucus, evangelist Pat Robertson in 1988 finished second, ahead of then-Vice President George H.W. Bush.  Now I am far from being a Bush fan but finishing behind Pat Robertson, come on!  It’s like having the big “E” before his name qualifies Robertson to be president of the United States and that is ridiculous.  But this seems to be the only criteria of the current caucusers. 



Iowa caucus GOP

 As another example, former Penn. Senator Rick Santorum’s latest surge in the polls might be explained by the fact he landed on Time’s list of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals; he is also a devout Catholic.  But as the vote becomes even more fractured, Iowa’s evangelicals have become worried that it will lessen the importance of the caucuses nationwide and have yet another trick up their sleeve. 

They are attempting to get either Santorum or Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry to drop out so as not to dilute the vote for the chosen evangelicals.

At least we have a real election to look forward to in New Hampshire a week after the Iowa fiasco.  With any luck in 2012 we’ll sweep Congress clean of conservative extremists like the lunatics of the Tea Party, and the religious right that puts faith before country, and bring in some progressives that will again concentrate on what is good for America.  Hell, we might even elect an agnostic after President Obama’s second term.

Drug companies want to convince you that you are sick

Americans are going without necessary drugs to fight major aliments like cancer with no alternative available according to a new report, while pharmaceutical companies play with a new business model that emphasizes profitability.  Lipitor was the culprit when it went generic and its maker, Pfizer, was faced with losing the $13 billion in annual revenue.  The current model of betting on everyday afflictions required high priced screening programs that took up to 15 years to reach success, and requiring enormous facilities and numbers of people.

Not sure what was wrong with the old model since over the last 20 years, drug companies have been the world’s most profitable.  Pfizer, itself, is ranked 21^st in the Fortune 500 with sales of $8.257 billion in 2010; Johnson & Johnson was 9^th; Eli Lilly was 29^th; Abbott Laboratories was 33^rd.  But Scott Gottlieb writing in the Wall Street Journal says, “There’s something unanticipated in drug research that can’t be industrialized.”  The new focus of drug makers are the more serious conditions such as cancer and Alzheimer’s.

Pharma pushing drugs

The concentration is now on more finite accuracy over wide-scale experiments, but much depends on government regulation.  The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is not known for being the best at what it does, although it is the only game in town.  Gottlieb comments, “Regulatory requirement have grown enormously over the past few decades, increasing costs and deterring new investment.  But it would seem that we are being led to believe that, in spite of being the highest profit industry in the world, drug companies should be pitied.

The same report says that if pharmaceutical companies were forced to report potential shortages to the FDA in a timely manner, the agency could find alternatives to deal with the issue.  Like the situation 61-year-old Renee Mosier faced with her ovarian cancer this past June.  She needed the drug Doxil, which has no generic equivalent, and has not been available for several months.  It is a life and death thing for Mosier, particularly since this is a recurrence of her cancer.  Currently there is no legislation requiring the reporting of shortages.



But the above isn’t even the worst of a pharmaceutical industry gone bonkers.  Ever hear of disease mongering?  It’s a term that’s been around 20 years and refers to the way drug companies promote their blockbuster drugs to those who are “sick.”  Lynn Payer, author of Disease-Mongers: How Doctors, Drug Companies, and Insurers Are Making You Feel Sick, lists four disease mongering tactics:

• taking a normal function and implying that it is potentially dangerous and should be treated, preferably for a long time
• taking a common symptom that could mean anything and making it sound as if it is a sign of a serious disease    
• saying that a large percentage of the population might be suffering from the “disease”
• recruiting doctors to spread the message

To me the last one is the most alarming, assuming some docs would recommend a drug just because the salesman is pushing it because the company wants to promote it at all costs.  And Dr. Andrew Weil adds yet another contrivance: allocating a clinical-sounding name to what is really an everyday malady like heartburn, which becomes “gastro-esophageal reflux disease or GERD.”  In the article done by David Wallechinsky, he says, “Aggressive and creative marketing has permitted drug manufacturers to convince millions of people they have a problem that requires treatment and medication.”  Like depression.

But when depression became passé, pharmaceutical companies switched to adult ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).  ADHD cases skyrocketed; doubling, even tripling among important age groups 20 to 44 and 45 to 65.  Disease mongering has also led to “cooked up” diseases like female sexual dysfunction leading over 60 percent of women to think they had it.  Pfizer even tried promoting Viagra to women until it was proven it was no more effective than a placebo. 

Wallechinsky adds, “Sometimes, the therapy being pushed can be more harmful than the condition it’s supposed to treat.” Like exploiting rheumatoid arthritis with immune suppressors such as Remicade, Enbrel, and Humira.  “Taking these, however, can ‘invite cancers, lethal infections, and activate TB [tuberculosis],’” according to Martha Rosenberg at AlterNet. 

There’s more to be said about the shenanigans of large pharmaceutical companies like shady lobbying and how they use your personal data that I will cover in a later post.  In the meantime, isn’t it nice to know that these big corporations have the consumer’s best interest at heart, and that we have the FDA to protect us if something happens?  Yeah…right!

Congress enjoys fat pensions and 401(k) plans while Americans just get poorer

The current Congress will have a hard time convincing the American public they should be re-elected, except for those dolts that walk around in a daze and end up voting for who they are told to vote for.  It’s pathetic, but in my estimation, it is this apathetic group that can often sway elections.  Otherwise, how would you explain nit-wit incompetents like Arizona’s sham Gov. Jan Brewer getting into office?  There is no other explanation, and it is likely that 2012 will be the long awaited reckoning.

In the meantime, these blundering blockheads we have sent to Washington will go on their merry way and even if we throw them out will enjoy a hefty pension of an average $40,000 per Congress member per year.  The taxpayer’s portion of that nice nest egg is 23 percent, according to newspaper columnist Laurie Roberts who laments “…the number of the people who approve of the job they're doing could fit comfortably into a Smart car…”  In addition there is a lucrative 401(k) plan which taxpayers also must contribute to.



All this while recent Census figures show that almost 1 in every 2 people in the United States are now considered poor or low-income.  You read that right; 146,400,000 people now fall into that category, based on current population figures from the U.S. Census.  And the numbers could go up if states continue to make further cuts.  But a conservative researcher says some of those in this class “…live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.”  There is always the exception, but this does not explain the overall situation.

The actual figures are 97.3 million in the low income category and 49.1 million below the poverty line.  And the total is up by 4 million since 2009.  Yet the GOP refuses to allow a tax on millionaires that could help in stabilizing the economy and putting many of these people at the poverty level back to work.  But Tom Coburn of CNN says the millionaire tax won’t work but suggests instead ending  earmarks for the wealthy.

These earmarks include tax write-offs for second homes and luxury yachts, gambling losses, business expenses, electric vehicle credits, even child care tax credits.  There are unemployment checks in the amount of $74 million, $316 million in farm subsidies, $9 billion in retirement checks, and $16 million in government-backed loans to attend college.  If we can’t tax the filthy rich, at least we should be able to take away perks that could be going to help low income and poor.

To me this sounds absolutely ridiculous and reeks of the grounds on which most Social Democracies are founded.  A financial inequity such as we have in America today has all the elements of a revolution and there are many out there that have already been pushed to the limit.  The Occupy Movement is an example and considering its longevity so far, could easily pave the way to more disorder in the trenches.  The extreme conservative right must take full credit for the situation we are in, and progressives must realize the opportunity at hand and take full advantage.

Arizona tough Sheriff Joe Arpaio under fire from all directions

The federal government issued a harsh report recently that illustrates the scope of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s civil rights violations against Arizona Hispanics.  It includes a history of racial profiling and discrimination, emphasizing the regular raids that Arpaio conducts to find illegals.  The investigation has been going on for three years according to the Associated Press, and exposes a culture of bias that starts with the Sheriff and works its way down through the agency.

Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division says that Arpaio stimulates this environment of hostility and bias by sending “racially charged letters” to top aides and even saved them.  DOJ’s expert on racial profiling said, “it's the most egregious case of racial profiling in the nation that he has seen or reviewed in professional literature.”  As an example here is an excerpt from the report:

“The investigation found a number of instances in which "crime suppression activities" were initiated on complaints that ‘described no criminal activity, but rather referred, for instance, to individuals with 'dark skin' congregating in one area, or the individuals speaking Spanish at a local business.’"

And then there’s Arpaio’s botched sex crime investigations where 432 cases had fallen through the cracks and were not investigated.  A now-retired detective left a “poor paperwork trail” which resulted in these unprosecuted sex crime cases.  The Sheriff tried his usual cover-up strategy by saying Phoenix police had a much larger caseload of similar cases.  Phoenix police countered that, unlike Arpaio’s inaction, they immediately assigned a task force to the issue.

The Sheriff’s latest headache is a Mexican woman, an inmate in the county jail, who claims sheriff’s officers mistreated her during and after a pregnancy which included shackling her while in labor and following a Caesarean delivery.  Miriam Mendiola-Martinez has filed suit against the Sheriff, his agency and deputies, which follows right on the heels of the federal report.  The Arizona Dept. of Corrections, the U.S. Marshall’s Service and the FBI have eliminated the practice of using shackles on pregnant women.

Arpaio giving up right to detain illegals

But that’s still not all.  On the day before Christmas, a judge ruled that Sheriff Joe Arpaio could no longer detain people for being in the country illegally.  The ruling is a direct result of a 2007 lawsuit against Arpaio and his officers of racially profiling Latinos in traffic stops that occurred during Arpaio’s infamous immigration sweeps.  At the same time the judge sanctioned the Sheriff for destroying documents related to the case.

The feds report had a number of other interesting revelations.  It found that Arpaio and his staff had tried to silence people speaking out against him and the department.  Hispanics are 4 to 9 times more likely to be detained in traffic stops than non-Hispanics.  From 2006 to 2009, 20 percent of traffic stops handled by Arpaio’s immigrant smuggling squad were done without reasonable suspicion and involved almost 100 percent Latinos.  Deputies were encouraged to make high-volume traffic stops in “targeted” locations, often arresting Hispanics who were in the country legally.  And there’s much more.

Another quote from the report:

“Investigators believe the sheriff's office followed a pattern or practice of unconstitutional treatment of Hispanics both inside the jails and in traffic stops, especially by the sheriff's human smuggling and work-site enforcement units.”

The Tucson Citizen newspaper commented: “Arpaio is equivalent to ‘Bull’ Connor and our Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is equivalent to Alabama’s George Wallace.”  “Bull” Connor was the bigoted Birmingham, Alabama Commissioner of Public Safety with control over a police force that directed the use of fire hoses, and police attack dogs against peaceful demonstrators, including children.  George Wallace was the Governor of Alabama and an avid pro-segregationist.  Both are very accurate comparisons to the people who run the state of Arizona.

Racist JT Ready with Russell Pearce

But wait, that’s still not all.  Randy Parraz, president of Citizens for a Better Arizona, the guy who was responsible for removing racist Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce from office in a recall election, is asking the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to pass a resolution to dump Arpaio.  Parraz has said in the past that he might consider a recall for Joe Arpaio as well as Arizona’s bogus Gov. Jan Brewer.

Unfortunately Arizona has all of a sudden discovered it is in the hands of a gang of bigoted, extreme conservatives that have almost brought the state to its knees.  Being the great place Arizona is, the question is will its people find their way once again and return to a sane environment to live and visit.