Things That Just Piss Me Off

Anyone who still says that Bush is not one-sided in favor of big business is just lying to themselves. Once again, he gets his way and big business benefits while people suffer.

Justices Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

Makers of medical devices like implantable defibrillators or breast implants are immune from liability for personal injuries as long as the Food and Drug Administration approved the device before it was marketed and it meets the agency’s specifications, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

The 8-to-1 decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which for years has sought broad authority to pre-empt tougher state regulation.

In 2004, the administration reversed longstanding federal policy and began arguing that “premarket approval” of a new medical device by the F.D.A. overrides most claims for damages under state law. Because federal law makes no provision for damage suits against device makers, injured patients have turned to state law and have won substantial awards.

The Bush administration will continue its push for pre-emption in another F.D.A. case that the court has accepted for its next term, on whether the agency’s approval of a drug, as opposed to a device, pre-empts personal injury suits. Drugs and medical devices are regulated under separate laws.

There have been numerous cases where these manufacturers have put shoddy workmanship into their devices and caused people to die. They put their bottom line against the health of the people who have to use them.

These people do not get to choose which brand of device goes into them. That means free market principles, which cause manufacturers to make better products in order to make more sales, does not apply.

All they have to do is pay doctors and hospitals to use their products. They pay these doctors by hiring them as consultants. In return the doctors use their products in their patients. The patient is not asked, “Which brand of defibrillator do you want us to use in case you have a heart attack?

So this law shields the manufacturers from any liability if the FDA approved them before marketing the product. So after the approval, the manufacturer can downgrade how they manufacture the product or how they do quality control and they cannot be sued.

Another victory for Bush. Another victory for Big Business. Another loss for the people that live in this country and have no choice what medical device is implanted into them.

Justices Add Legal Complications to Debate on F.D.A.’s Competence By GARDINER HARRIS

The Institute of Medicine, the Government Accountability Office and the F.D.A.’s own science board have all issued reports concluding that poor management and scientific inadequacies have made the agency incapable of protecting the country against unsafe drugs, medical devices and food. Randall Lutter, the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for policy, said that the agency was responding to reports of its deficiencies and improving.

Before President Bush took office, F.D.A. officials said that courts provided patients additional protection. In a 1997 brief, the agency’s chief lawyer wrote that “even the most thorough regulation of a product such as a critical medical device may fail to identify potential problems.”

With Wednesday’s ruling, those efforts proved successful for device makers. Two more cases, one to be argued Monday and the other in October, will determine whether drug makers will benefit as well. In his majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the F.D.A.’s interpretation of its rules deserves “substantial deference.” Since the administration now interprets those rules to provide similar liability protection to drug makers, Justice Scalia’s opinion suggests that the court may soon provide a liability shield to pharmaceutical companies, too.

Now Bush wants this to apply to drugs that pharmacuetical companies push on us through doctors that they also hire as consultants and give trips and bonuses to for prescibing them.

Bush got congress to approve a law that said that senior citizens cannot negotiate on the price they pay for drugs, now he wants to make sure that when bad drugs are sold by the pharmaceutical companies that kill people, no one can sue them.

I can’t wait to see Bush get out of the white house. it will take years to repair the damage he has done to all of us and to this country.

I was listening to Mitt Romney on TV and something he brought up made me do a little research. He of course believes that by cutting more taxes on corporations he will create more jobs. Those corporations won’t take that money and still outsource jobs. He trusts the kenneth Lays of the world much more than I do.

But he also said something about cutting taxes for the middle class, (sounds great hunh?), but then followed it up with how people who make $200,000 per year or less would benefit from his “middle-class” tax credits he wants to put in place.

If you ask almost anyone they will tell you they are the middle class. At least it seems they all want to be considered middle class. Then some divide it up into upper middle class and lower middle class.

I think Romney must have a new category, the super middle class and they make $200,000 per year.

To be fair, Romney is not the only politician that stretches who is or is not in poverty or in the middle class. It allows them to say things like Romney said today. It allows them to say they are for helping the middle class. They are . . . as long as they get to redefine what the middle class is and what the poverty level is.

Hillary Clinton wanted to expand health care. She said it was for the poor in this country. The poor children of this country. However her plan went to people who earned almost $90,000 per year. So they all do it.

The median income of this country is right around $48,000 per year. That’s the national average for income. The poverty level is almost $20,000 per year. So if you earn more than $20,000 per year and less than $48,000 per year, you are basically the lower middle class.

But how far can you stretch the upper middle class? To $80,000 per year? $100,000? I would say anything over $100,000 per year and you aren’t middle class.

Of course there are other factors. The poverty level for a single person is almost $10,000 per year while the $20,000 per year mark applies to a family of 4. But no matter how you slice it, if you earn over $100,000 per year, no matter how many kids you decide to have, you are not part of the middle class.

I wish these politicians would quit misleading people into believing that they are for the middle class while giving tax cuts and claiming to want health insurance for the poor while actually giving it to the upper middle class.

Romney says giving more tax cuts to corporations will get them to create more jobs. He admits that some corporations will take the tax cuts and still not add more jobs, but he claims most of them will.

Bush said something similar when he wanted to refund 15 years of backtaxes back to corporations. When he was asked to put strings on those tax refunds that the corporations who received them would have to create specific numbers of jobs, he said no way, those american corporations would “do the right thing”.

They don’t do the right thing. I’m all for giving these corporations a tax break for creating jobs. For every American Citizen they hire full time and pay them a living wage and provide health insurance for, they get a tax break.

Look, anytime you get an email that is not personally addressed to your email address, delete it. Do not open it. That alone will reduce your chances of being scammed by at least 75%.

Then of those that were addressed to you, delete all the ones that are from someone you do not know or from websites you never visited. Now you move your protection level up to about 95% safe from being scammed by email.

The energy department refund scam is one of the latest phishing scams going around. These scammers are experts. They find current trends to use against you. Right now everyone is thinking green. They want to help conserve energy. We always want to save money.

Remember con artists depend on your greed. The emails will tell you that you have a refund coming from the energy department. You will be asked to login somewhere and provide personal information in order to mail you a check.

The energy department never sends refunds to any consumers. NEVER. N E V E R. So if you get that email or one like it, delete it.

Paypal never emails you with “Dear User”. They address you by name. Your bank likely does the same. Any banking email that starts with calling you user or member or some other generic name can be safely deleted.

Anytime you open an email that seems to be from your bank or other financial website you use, never click the links in that email. Never. N E V E R.

I hope you got that. Instead, close that email. Close the email program you use as well. Then open your browser and go to your banking website by typing in the address. You can find out anything you need to know there.

When you are done with a banking session online, logout. Close all browser windows. Then reopen one if you are going to another website. This may all seem like a hassle but if you want to protect yourself from being scammed or having your banking passwords and other info stolen, you need to do these steps.

Ok, rape is a strong word, but the online date chat scam is for real. Are you talking to a real person? Are you talking to the police? Are you talking to a TV News Program? Are you talking to a robot? Are you talking to a girl or a guy?

If you are 18 or older and trying to make dates with girls that are under 18, then you may end up talking to police or end up on TV while trying to explain why you are at some 13-year-old’s house.

We have all seen those shows and we know that those who are doing that deserve their fate.

But recently Date Bots have been running on russian dating websites that know how to actually flirt with you. They can answer questions and make comments that will fool you into thinking you are chatting with a real live girl.

They do this to thousands of online date chatters at once. They attempt to get your personal information. The bots can even send you a picture of themselves. Or rather some girl that looks hot.

The bottom line is do not ever give your personal information to anyone you met in a chat room. You may be lonely and need to chat to people on a dating website, but unless there is some way for the dating website to filter that contact info, like providing you with a way to receive messages on their site rather than using your own email, then you need to understand you may be sending your information to the police, tv news, scammers with datebots, or someone of the opposite sex you believed them to be.

Nothing like finding out that 19 year old cheerleader you have been hitting on actually turning out to be a guy named Harry and it’s also his nickname from those who have seen him.

The datebots that are trying to gather your information through onl;ine chatrooms are hitting russian dating websites right now. Coming to a chatroom near you soon.

There is no end to the people that want to take your hard-earned money away from you. On the Internet they do it mostly by email, but you need to know that a lot of your personal information is out there on the web, such as your phone number and items from your credit report can be obtained easily. They may call you on the phone as well.

The following is about how some scammers will get information about debts you owe and then act like a collection agency to get you to pay them rather than the actual creditor. You’ll pay that money to the scammer and still owe the creditor.

Beware Fake Debt Collection Agencies

Posing as a collection agency representative, the con artist will contact a victim by mail, email or telephone, claiming the person owes a specific dollar amount to a particular company.

To convince victims to wire money to pay the “delinquent accounts,” scammers will threaten to report “overdue bills” to credit bureaus, take some form of legal action or even drain money from victims’ bank accounts without their consent.

Ironically, real “deadbeats” probably wouldn’t fall for this scam, since they have no intention of repaying their creditors. But upright citizens may doubt themselves, thinking they’ve forgotten to pay a bill.

Take the time to check out who is demanding money from you. Call the creditor, (not a phone number the scammer gave you in your email), look up the creditor’s phone number yourself. Resolve it with them directly if it is real. If it isn’t you can click the link below for more info on how to deal with these scammers.

More and more every day American Companies are selling stock in their companies to foreign investors. It’s a great deal for the corporations and stock brokers becaus ethese foriegn investors are willing to pay a lot more than the stock is worth to make the aquisition.

No matter who the investor is, they don’t do anything for nothing. You have to ask that if they are willing to pay more than something is worth, why are they willing to do that?

>From The NYTimes

Shares rose on Monday after a billion-dollar investment deal between Merrill Lynch and the Singapore government raised hopes that wealthy foreign investors would come to the rescue of America’s ailing investment firms.

Investors were cheered by news that Alcoa, the aluminum producer, was selling its packaging and consumer businesses to a company in New Zealand for $2.7 billion. Reynolds Wrap, the kitchen staple, will no longer be an American product.

>From the Washington Post

A report issued by Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Jen estimated that funds such as the United Arab Emirates ADIA ($875 billion), Russia’s stabilization fund ($32 billion) and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings ($100 billion) collectively hold $2.5 trillion in assets — a sum equal to about 18 percent of the value of the S&P 500.

General Electric sold its plastics unit to Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), which is 70 percent government owned. The private equity firm Blackstone Group announced that China’s State Investment Co. is buying a 10 percent stake for $3 billion.

This phenomenon presents opportunities for Americans… Portfolio managers on Wall Street are salivating at the idea that China’s government may start rolling cash into the S&P 500 index, for example.

Of course they are salivating. It allows them to make huge commissions while they sell these corporations to foriegn investors. They don’t care what it means to America. They care that they can buy another really cool car or another vacation house.

When governments own companies, that creates the potential for geopolitical mischief. Hugo Chavez has used the Venezuelan government’s shares of Citgo … to poke his fingers in the eyes of the U.S. government. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has used state control of energy companies as a political tool against domestic enemies and a diplomatic tool against Russia’s neighbors.

Foreigners own 45 percent of U.S. publicly held debt, in the form of low-yield government bonds. As long as we pay the interest, the debt doesn’t entitle the foreigners to any say in how we run our Government.

But stock investors have a say in how the corporations they own are run. … One could imagine a day when the Chinese or Saudi government is a top shareholder in blue-chip companies.

What’s more, the foreign state-affiliated companies tend to cluster in industries that have a bearing on national security: logistics, infrastructure, oil, petrochemicals, airlines. Remember the outrage when Dubai Ports World wanted to buy a British company that operated U.S. ports? Or when the Chinese-government-controlled petroleum company CNOOC tried to buy Unocal in August 2005? Expect more of these episodes. China is thought to be setting up a $300 billion investment fund…

Other concerns arise from the prospect of foreign governments acquiring big chunks of corporate America. Fortune 500 companies such as General Electric are comparatively enlightened employers when it comes to issues of gender, race, sexual orientation and religion. Can anybody say the same about Saudi Arabia? What kind of future might a female Jewish engineer with G.E. plastics have at SABIC?

These governments could buy up the controlling interest in these huge corporations. These are the same corporations that exert a huge amount of influence on our politicians and provide the money for their campaigns.

That means that foreign governments could soon be controlling our foriegn policy and even domestic policy. Are you ready for election reform yet?

We either need to get the money out of politics or make laws about how much stock major corporations can sell to foreign investors.

source

This was a comment by one of my subscribers that I wanted to share with others and make sure as many people as possible see it.

In a desperate attempt to get a job, my wife was lead to believe such thing, by heartless telemarketers !!!!

“The U.S. Postal Service is hiring for full-time and part-time employment. Hourly salaries start at $25 an hour. For employment information, call 1-800-555-5555.”

Have you seen advertisements like this in your local newspaper? Postal Inspectors warn that if you should call these promoters for “employment information,” you are probably going to very disappointed.

In most instances, you will find that you are going to have to pay about $30 to receive information of very dubious value. The con artists may lead you to believe you are talking to someone from the U.S. Postal Service, but no postal jobs will be offered.

Frequently, the con artists promoting this “service” offer to provide you with training that they say will help you pass a required Postal Service pre-employment examination. Naturally, this training is expensive and requires you to purchase books, study guides and other training materials.

Those who complete the promoter’s training are often told by the scammers that they will be placed in Postal Service jobs. This produces further disappointment.

Other promoters advertise that they can guarantee that you will be placed on a U.S. Postal Service register of applicants from which new hires are selected. Postal Inspectors warn that such guarantees are false.

For accurate information about career opportunities or application requirements for the U.S. Postal Service, call your local postmaster. This information is free to the public.

Please Note: The United States Postal Service offers study materials free of charge at www.usps.com or your local post office. Publication 60-A is a 32 page orientation guide for exam 473. Publication 60-E is a 32 page orientation guide for exam 460.

http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/uspsjobs.htm

Thank you for the heads up on this scam Vic.