US media, Clinton assail Obama for “bitter” truth

It’s great when politicians get real, but who knows how long it will take for MO’bama to retract his statements in the face of criticism.

Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site:

The American media and the political rivals of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama opened fire on the Illinois senator this weekend after he committed the unpardonable offense of speaking the truth, or at least a part of it, about the bitterness among working class Americans over the steady erosion of their living standards and jobs.

Obama’s comments at a closed-door fundraising event in San Francisco were reported Friday on the Huffington Post political blog. He was asked by supporters why he was trailing Senator Hillary Clinton in polls in Pennsylvania, where a state-wide primary takes place on April 22.

“Our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives,” Obama said. “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are going to regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Obama had just completed a six-day bus trip across Pennsylvania, which included dozens of town hall meetings in small towns, rather than the rallies in huge arenas that have been a feature of his campaign in other states. As a result, he engaged in face-to-face discussion with hundreds of working class voters, who told him stories of plant closings, lack of opportunity for their children, and countless broken promises from Democratic and Republican politicians alike.

Apparently, the Democratic senator is guilty of a double offense against the norms of contemporary American electoral politics: He allowed real-life experiences of social deprivation to affect him, and then spoke frankly in front of an audience, albeit a privileged one at a private fundraiser, of the economic realities of American society.

He compounded this political sin with the suggestion that religion, gun rights, economic protectionism and anti-immigrant agitation were used to divert working people from the economic oppression they face.

The response from the American media, once his remarks were published, was immediate and hostile. Obama was guilty of a “blunder,” he had “offended” rural America, he faced “a full-blown political disaster.” A commentary on the influential web site politico.com said, “this is a potential turning point for Obama’s campaign,” one that could result in the loss of the Democratic nomination to New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

It is instructive to compare this reaction to the treatment of the speech on race relations that Obama delivered last month in response to controversial comments made by the ex-pastor of his Chicago church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The bulk of the media treated Obama’s address favorably – an indication that in the America of 2008, class divisions are a much more sensitive issue than race.

Nothing that Obama said was a surprise to the media pundits or his political rivals. If anything, he understated the level of bitterness in rural and small-town America, since he left out one of the most important factors in fueling popular anger – the war in Iraq, which has taken a disproportionate toll in these communities, where a far higher percentage of young people volunteer for the military than in urban or suburban areas.

Republican political strategists have relied for years on appeals to religious sentiments – “God, gays and guns,” in the parlance of political consultants – to win support among voters whose jobs and living standards have been devastated by the decline of American industry and the unrestrained “free market” policies of successive Republican and Democratic administrations.

Thomas Frank wrote a best-selling book four years ago (What’s the Matter with Kansas?), which examined this process in his home state, and his conclusions about the use of coded appeals to religion to induce voters to ignore their own economic interests have become conventional wisdom in ruling class political and media circles.

While Frank’s book had certain insights into American culture and politics, he ignored the most fundamental factor enabling the Republican appeals to prejudice and backwardness to produce electoral successes – the drastic shift by the Democratic Party to the right and its abandonment of any policies to alleviate economic inequality or improve living conditions for working people.

Spokesmen for the campaign of the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, denounced Obama for “dismissing” the “values” and “American traditions” that “have contributed to the identity and greatness of this country.”

The response of the Clinton campaign to Obama’s remarks was no less reactionary. Her spokesman accused Obama of “offending small town America,” adding, “Americans are tired of a president who looks down on them – they want a president who will stand up for them for a change. The Americans who live in small towns are optimistic, hardworking and resilient.”

At a rally in North Carolina, Clinton campaign workers handed out stickers bearing the motto, “I’m not bitter.”

The candidate herself declared, “I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small town America. Senator Obama’s remarks were elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.”

The charge of “elitism” is remarkable coming from Mrs. Clinton, who last week released tax returns showing that she and the former president had raked in $109 million in income over the past seven years, putting them squarely in the top .01 percent of American society.

Clinton went on to identify herself with religion and patriotic values. “I was raised with Midwestern values and an unshakable faith in America and its policies,” she said. (The 60-year-old candidate grew up in the 1950s, the years of the McCarthy witch-hunt, Cold War conformism and the domination of racial oppression in the American South.)

“I grew up in a church-going family,” she continued, “a family that believed in the importance of living out and expressing our faith. The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter. People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”

Obama’s initial reaction to the barrage of criticism was to reiterate his views at a town hall meeting in Indiana, where, as a Washington Post reporter described it, “he repeated the offending word ["bitter"] three times.” He ridiculed Clinton for denying that working-class people in Pennsylvania are resentful over the state of the economy, and he called both McCain and Clinton “out of touch” for their apparent lack of understanding of the growing anger against the political establishment.

“People are fed up,” Obama said. “They’re angry and they’re frustrated and they’re bitter, and they want to see a change in Washington.”

By the following day, however, Obama had begun to change his tune and back away from this too-blunt assessment of the popular mood in America – and above all from any implied criticism of the role of religion. “I didn’t say it as well as I could have,” he told a campaign rally in Muncie, Indiana. In an interview with the Raleigh News & Observer, he said, “Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.”

By Sunday, he was in full contrition mode, prostrating himself before those who accused him of offending the religiously devout, although he continued to assert his original statement that there is widespread alienation in rural and small town America.

It remains to be seen whether the political furor of the last few days has a lasting effect on the outcome of the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, or the November election contest. But the episode has been a revealing exposure of both the media and the political establishment.

The near-unanimous consensus that Obama has committed a huge blunder by referring to working class bitterness and resentment has two sources: the enormous social distance of the millionaire pundits and politicians from the real lives of working people, and the fear that under conditions of convulsions in the financial markets and the onset of a deep recession, any discussion of the underlying social antagonisms in America has potentially explosive consequences.

Surprise! No signs of Al Qaeda™ at U.S.-Mexican border: official

By Randall Mikkelsen, Reuters. Comments from Signs of the Times:

Authorities have seen no signs of al Qaeda trying to insert operatives into the United States from Mexico, but the militant group has considered doing so, a U.S. intelligence official said on Friday.

Comment: Interesting how intelligence officials know even what is in the mind of the “al Qaeda” masterminds – yet they are unable to find them.

The comments by Charles Allen, Homeland Security undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, could undercut one argument by advocates in and out of government for get-tough tactics to fight illegal crossings at the southern U.S. border — that they are needed to fight terrorism.

Comment: As usual, the excuse of terrorism serves the purpose of justifying measures which are completely unrelated.

In contrast, at least one Islamist militant has been caught trying to enter the United States from Canada by land to attempt an attack.

“We know of no trained al Qaeda operatives who have crossed over our southern border,” Allen told reporters.

“We do know that going back to 2004, the southern border is something that al Qaeda’s central leadership has looked at. But we know of no specifics of where al Qaeda has really endeavored to cross our borders in the south,” he said.

The U.S. government is seeking to complete this year a planned 670-mile border fence to fight illegal crossings from Mexico.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has cited the anti-terrorism argument in waiving environmental laws and other legal restrictions to quickly build the fence.

“The flow of illegal traffic through the border region imperils our ability to fight terrorism by stopping the illegal entry of terrorists,” the Homeland Security department said earlier this month in justifying the latest waivers, for 500 miles of potential fencing.

Allen said there have been militant “sympathizers and fund-raisers for Hizbollah” trying to cross from the south, but no trained operatives have been discovered.

SUFFICIENT THREATS

A Homeland Security Department official said those crossings, and the potential for operatives to cross, are sufficient threats to help justify the fence construction’s urgency.

On the other hand, Vancouver-based militant Ahmeed Ressam, with suspected links to al Qaeda, was stopped with explosives in his car at the U.S. border with Canada in December 1999, foiling a suspected plot to bomb Los Angeles.

Comment: That makes it one (failed) case of smuggling explosives across the border in almost a decade.

The United States was working closely with Canadian authorities, Allen said, and he credited them with breaking up in 2006 a plot by militants to carry out an “al Qaeda-inspired” bombing campaign in the Toronto area.

Allen also said al Qaeda is trying to recruit both white and nonwhite people so it can train “western-looking” operatives to help it carry out attacks in Europe and the United States.

Comment: Therefore we are all automatically suspects – for the simple fact that we all look either white or nonwhite.

No such suspects have yet been caught trying to enter the United States, but the effort remains a concern. “This is something to which we must pay a lot of attention,” Allen said.

He said al Qaeda shifted its strategy to seek Western-appearing recruits after the December 2005 death of al Qaeda external operations chief Abu Hamza Rabia. Rabia recruited operatives who had little experience with the West, he said.

(Editing by Sandra Maler and Bill Trott)

Bush Launches Economic ‘Shock and Awe’ on Iran

By Chris Floyd, Global Research:

In recent days, we’ve been noting stories indicating a definite “surge” in the Bush Administration’s drive toward war with Iran. First, the Saudi government revealed – one day after a visit from Dick Cheney – its urgent plans to deal with “radiations hazards” stemming an attack on Iran’s nuclear power facilities. Then General David Petraeus declared that Iran was responsible for a major attack on Baghdad’s Green Zone, and the main driver of violence in Iraq generally, laying out, once more, a clear (if mendacious) casus belli for striking at Iran.

Now financial analyst John McGlynn reveals that the Administration has quietly launched a “shock and awe” attack on the Iranian economy, using little-known – and little-understood – financial weapons provided by the Patriot Act to begin “the complete financial and economic destruction of Iran,” as McGlynn puts it, with the ultimate goal of turning the nation into “another Gaza or Iraq under the economic sanctions of the 1990s, with devastating impact on the economy and society.”

McGlynn’s article, in Japan Focus, is long and complex – necessarily so, in order to detail the intricate punitive mechanisms involved, and their earlier test run against North Korea in 2005. You should read the article in full, but to put it briefly, last week the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), set in motion a process that could make any bank or financial institution in the world that does business with Iran subject to an economic death sentence: complete exclusion from the U.S. financial system. McGlynn, speaking plainly and with no addition, calls the move “a declaration of war on Iran.”

The move is part of a steady escalation that has seen Washington move from urging sanctions against any firm or bank connected to Iran’s nuclear program to its current, highly belligerent stance: seeking to strangle all financial investment or dealing with Iran, nuclear-related or not. As McGlynn notes:

During a daily press meeting with reporters on March 19, the State Department’s spokesperson was asked about a deal recently signed between Switzerland and Iran to supply Iranian natural gas to Europe. After condemning the deal, the spokesperson explained that the US is opposed to any “investing in Iran, not only in its petroleum or natural gas area but in any sector of its economy.”

All of this, McGlynn says, is an extension of the “Shock and Awe” doctrine formulated by Harlan Ullman and James Wade for the National Defense University in 1995. The strategy became famous after the Pentagon adopted it for the military invasion of Iraq – but as McGlynn points out, the doctrine has always had an economic side too. In fact, the authors believed that the economic ruin visited upon a target nation might be more effective than bombs and bullets – largely because they are more invisible, more politically palatable than big-bang extravaganzas. McGlynn notes:

But Shock and Awe’s authors (apparently with something like Vietnam or the 1993-1994 Somalia fiasco in mind) also envisioned that “[i]n certain circumstances, the costs of having to resort to lethal force may be too politically expensive in terms of local support as well as support in the U.S. and internationally.” Consequently, they wrote:

“Economic sanctions are likely to continue to be a preferable political alternative or a necessary political prelude to an offensive military step… In a world in which nonlethal sanctions are a political imperative, we will continue to need the ability to shut down all commerce into and out of any country from shipping, air, rail, and roads. We ought to be able to do this in a much more thorough, decisive, and shocking way than we have in the past… Weapons that shock and awe, stun and paralyze, but do not kill in significant numbers may be the only ones that are politically acceptable in the future.”

It was only a matter of finding a sanctions strategy systematic enough to make this more obscure portion of the Shock and Awe doctrine operational. What Ullman and Wade could not have imagined was that Washington’s global planners would use extraterritorial legal powers and its financial clout to coerce the global banking industry into accepting US foreign policy diktat.

McGlynn notes that even the Chinese – Iran’s biggest trading partner – is feeling the heat from the Patriot Act’s “nuclear option” of banishment from the U.S. financial system:

In December 2007 ArabianBusiness.com reported that Chinese banks were starting to decline to open letters of credit for Iranian traders. Asadollah Asgaroladi, head of the Iran-China chamber of commerce, was quoted as saying that China’s banks did not explain the refusal but “if this trend continues it will harm the two countries’ economic cooperation and trade exchange.” In February, ArabianBusiness.com found that China’s cutbacks in its banking business with Iran was affecting a joint automobile production arrangement.

Now the screws are growing even tighter. And the effects will be devastating – not to the leaders of Iran, of course, but, as with the genocidal sanctions against Iraq, to Iran’s general population – a population, as we noted recently, made up overwhelmingly of young people and children: almost 70 percent of Iranians are under 30. As McGlynn puts it:

If the US succeeds, an international quarantine on Iran’s banks would disrupt Iran’s financial linkages with the world by blocking its ability to process cross-border payments for goods and services exported and imported. Without those linkages, Iran is unlikely to be able to engage in global trade and commerce. As 30% of Iran’s GDP in 2005 was imports of goods and services and 20% was non-oil exports, a large chunk of Iran’s economy would shrivel up. The repercussions will be painful and extend well beyond lost business and profits. For example, treating curable illnesses will become difficult. According to an Iranian health ministry official, Iran produces 95% of its own medicines but most pharmaceutical-related raw materials are imported.

The American people are told nothing about this, of course. The presidential candidates will say nothing about it – or about any of the other flashing danger signals as we careen toward another murderous catastrophe. The “progressive” movement, now consumed with the minutiae of the squabble between Clinton and Obama – both of whom have repeatedly declared their bellicosity toward Iran, and their fierce insistence that all options, including the use of nuclear weapons, remain “on the table” – will no doubt continue its long inaction and avoidance of the subject, as Arthur Silber notes so powerfully here, while also providing active, practical steps that could be taken to head off another war — something no one else is bothering to do.

We’ll let Silber have the last word here:

So what is your choice? Do the world — and your life, and the lives of those you love — mean so little to you, that you will risk losing them all? Is that what you want? Do you still choose to do nothing?

Do you?

Public lack basic disaster survival skills, study shows

Now is a good time to buy bulk grains and other dried foods, and don’t forget water!

Nina Muslim, Gulfnews:

Dubai: The public do not have the basic knowhow that can save their lives in a disaster. In a recent study it was found most 16-year-olds in Bahrain and Scotland did not know that simply by boiling water it would be made safe to drink.

For the study, which will be published in an emergency medicine journal, 590 16-year olds in Bahrain and 450 in Scotland were asked about disaster preparedness.

More than 96 per cent of teenagers surveyed in Bahrain did not know how to make water safe to drink, while 63 per cent in Scotland did not.

Dr. Tudor Codreanu, emergency physician at Dr. Gray’s Hospital in Scotland, told participants at the International Emergency and Catastrophe Management (IECM) conference in Dubai the finding was symptomatic of the lack of public knowledge in how to deal with disasters.

“My colleague and I at first did not want to ask the question about making water safe because we thought it might be insulting, but the finding shocked us,” he said, adding none of the respondents considered discussing the question with their parents.

In a previous US study it was also found that a majority of the respondents had little to no motivation to prepare for a tornado or hurricane.

He said educating the public on what to do in the event of disasters was crucial, as ignorance could mean death, citing the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as an example. More than 280,000 people died in the disaster.

To prepare the public, authorities first have to identify potential hazards and then provide information on how to deal with it. In the UAE, the daily hazards are traffic accidents, chemical accidents, fires and heat-associated medical problems. Uncommon but possible threats include tsunamis and earthquakes.

Authorities should provide the public with low-cost measures to prepare for disasters.

Despite the necessity, Dr. Codreanu said public education was the most neglected area of disaster preparedness, for various reasons. “Disaster preparedness [is that] you have to think of the unthinkable and prepare for it.”

A New Reason to Go to War

by Sheldon Richman, The Future of Freedom Foundation:

President Bush acts like a teenager with a credit card and rich parents. He never sees the bill, so he just buys what he wants and charges it. The problem is that instead of rich parents, this president has debt-ridden taxpayers and a gutted military.

A few days before Gen. David Petraeus confirmed for Congress how overworked the military is in Iraq — Bush has now promised to shorten the tours from 15 to 12 months — the president was in Croatia talking about the significance of that country’s and Albania’s invitations to join NATO.

“Henceforth, should any danger threaten your people, America and the NATO alliance will stand with you, and no one will be able to take your freedom away,” he said.

Were the American people consulted on this? Are they aware they are now committed to go to war to protect Croatia and Albania if “any danger” threatens them? Is this administration filled with madmen?

Oh, I forgot. The legal eagles in this administration don’t believe the president has to consult anyone before sending troops anywhere. In their view, that prerogative is part of the inherent powers of the presidency. The recently released 2003 “torture memo” by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo states, “The decision to deploy military force in the defense of U.S. interests is expressly placed under presidential authority by the Vesting Clause … and by the commander-in-chief clause.”

As conservative legal analyst Bruce Fein notes, “In other words, the president may launch pre-emptive war against any state or nonstate actor by his simple assertion that U.S. interests require it. Venezuela or Iran could be invaded on the president’s say-so alone to secure adequate oil and gas supplies…. In sum, the president has proclaimed the White House an uncrowned kingship.”

It’s there in the Constitution — if you read it just right. Which is to say, if you ignore Article I’s setting out the powers of Congress. Reading that section will fool you into believing that Congress has lots to say about warmaking and the military. How “quaint,” as this administration once referred to the Geneva Conventions.

This is where the imperial mindset gets you. The Bush administration might try to sell his views on the unitary executive as a government-streamlining program. Why have three branches of government if one will do? Think of all the money the taxpayers could save! It’s a deficit-slashing measure.

But seriously, where is the outrage? Bush already has U.S. troops bogged down in two open-ended occupations, at a cost of more than $10 billion a month. Ten billion dollars every 30 days! We mere taxpayers can’t get our minds around that idea. Preoccupied with our petty concerns, such as raising our children and saving for retirement, we actually think we have better things to do with our money. That’s why we need wise leaders; they see the bigger picture.

More than 4,000 American troops have been killed in Iraq. Thousands more lives have been ruined. Tens of thousands of Iraqis civilians have been killed and maimed. The surge in Iraq has been so successful that American bombers had to be called in to put down the Shi’ites in Basra — Shi’ites who were resisting a Shi’ite-led government with close ties to Iran, the bogeyman of the Middle East. In Baghdad, residents were fleeing with as many personal belongings as they could carry because of the violence. The Green Zone, where the Iraqi government and American officials are hunkered down, has been under Shi’ite attack.

Meanwhile, American officials — and Republican standard-bearer John McCain — talk up the threat of Sunni al-Qaeda. Well, we can forgive McCain; despite constant reminders, he thinks al-Qaeda is Shi’ite and taking its orders from Iran.

While Bush, McCain, and the rest of the war chorus tout signs that the surge is working, it has become clear that by the end of the year, there will be more U.S. troops in Iraq than were there before the surge began. This, by administration standards, is success. Stay the course, they say.

And in the midst of all this, President Bush is finding new reasons to send Americans into combat, oblivious to the fact that if you bring NATO, that Cold War relic, up to Russia’s doorstep, the Russians may not believe it’s the Welcome Wagon.

When will this idiocy stop?

The Dollar Hasn’t Bounced

Commentary by James Turk, Founder of GoldMoney:

I first presented the following chart with its downward pointing arrow in my alert on November 11, 2007, and made the following observation. “When taken together, the eerie calm as the dollar collapses and the arrow in the above chart pointing to the building downside momentum suggest that the dollar is nowhere near its final low.”

I drew the downward pointing arrow back then purposefully. All the signs indicated to me that years of dollar mismanagement were finally taking its toll. I concluded that the dollar was heading for a major collapse that would culminate in a currency crisis by this summer, which is the time frame indicated by the arrow.

Anyone who has read these alerts or the book I co-authored with John Rubino knows that I am expecting a total collapse in the dollar. As I have said many times, the dollar is on the road to the fiat currency graveyard. But the question I am always asked is when will it get there? When will it collapse? The answer is in the above chart – this summer.

The dollar of course has been collapsing for years. Inflation has eroded its purchasing power, and inferior assets on bank balance sheets have debased its quality. What’s more, rather than being left unfettered as a neutral tool for use in global commerce by one and all – which is the role required of the world’s reserve currency – U.S. politicians have turned the dollar into an imperial weapon to extend their influence, further undermining its usefulness as currency. So it is not surprising that the Dollar Index has declined 41% from its peak on July 5, 2001, nor is what is happening now a surprise. Maybe I should say what isn’t happening now. The dollar hasn’t bounced.

We can see on the above chart the dollar’s steep drop from December 20, 2007 to March 17, 2008. Under intense selling pressure, the dollar fell on 40 of these 60 trading days from 77.79 to its record low of 71.46. That 8.1% drop equates to a breathtaking 50% annual rate of decline. After a drop like that, one would expect a bounce in normal circumstances, just like the dollar bounced after the other huge drops that we can see on the chart. But it didn’t happen. Why not?

One can only conclude that these are not normal circumstances. In other words, I think we have reached the ‘tipping point’.

More people want out of the dollar than those who are willing to hold it. The final collapse of the dollar begins now. It will I expect play out over the next three to six months, culminating in a major dollar crisis.

I have been waiting for two events in particular to signal that the final collapse of the dollar had begun. One was for the Dollar Index to make a new record low by breaking below 78.30, which it did just a few weeks before I drew the arrow in the above chart last November. The other event was for gold to break above $1,000, which I anticipated would happen this year. Gold did briefly break above $1,000 last month before being beaten back down below that much-watched level by the gold cartel. I recommend reading the article in the current issue of Investor’s Digest by John Embry of Sprott Asset Management describing this brief encounter with $1,000.

So the gold cartel once again ‘circled the wagons’, just like it has done for years at other critical price levels. It temporarily put a lid on gold, thereby keeping it from rising in order to blunt gold’s signal that severe problems with the dollar are building. This activity by the gold cartel will be a major topic in next week’s conference sponsored by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee. GATA’s international press release announcing this important conference can be found at the following link: http://www.gata.org/node/6226. Extensive documentation about government intervention in the gold market is available free on GATA’s website.

Regardless of these recent price capping activities by the gold cartel, there is an important message about recent events embedded in the price action of the above chart. Despite all the central bank intervention, despite the repeated declaration of the so-called “strong dollar” policy, despite all the maneuvering by the Federal Reserve to remove inferior assets off over-leveraged bank balance sheets, despite all the tough talk about being vigilant to “fight inflation”, the dollar hasn’t bounced. None of these things have helped strengthen the dollar’s exchange rate to the world’s other major currencies. To me that means the front gate of the fiat currency graveyard is wide open, and the grim reaper is waiting for the dollar to enter on the next new low in the Dollar Index. When that happens, it won’t take long for gold and silver to climb back above $1,000 and $20 – and this time stay there.

Patients in U.S. foot more of the bill for vital drugs

If you’re poor you better not get sick!

By Gina Kolata, International Herald Tribune:

Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.

No one knows how many patients are affected, but hundreds of drugs are priced this new way. They are used to treat diseases that may be fairly common, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, hemophilia, hepatitis C and some cancers. There are no cheaper equivalents for these drugs, so patients are forced to pay the price or do without.

Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.

But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.

The system, often called Tier 4, began in earnest with Medicare drug plans and spread rapidly. It is now incorporated into 86 percent of those plans. Some have even higher co-payments for certain drugs, a Tier 5.

Now Tier 4 is also showing up in insurance that people buy on their own or acquire through employers, said Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a research organization in Washington. It is the fastest-growing segment in private insurance, Mendelson said. Five years ago it was virtually nonexistent in private plans, he said. Now 10 percent of them have Tier 4 drug categories.

Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.

But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said Dr. James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”

Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.

“This is an erosion of the traditional concept of insurance,” Mendelson said. “Those beneficiaries who bear the burden of illness are also bearing the burden of cost.”

And often, patients say, they had no idea that they would be faced with such a situation.

It happened to Robin Steinwand, 53, who has multiple sclerosis.

In January, shortly after Steinwand renewed her insurance policy with Kaiser Permanente, she went to refill her prescription for Copaxone. She had been insured with Kaiser for 17 years through her husband, a federal employee, and had had no complaints about the coverage.

She had been taking Copaxone since multiple sclerosis was diagnosed in 2000, buying 30 days’ worth of the pills at a time. And even though the drug costs $1,900 a month, Kaiser required only a $20 co-payment.

Not this time. When Steinwand went to pick up her prescription at a pharmacy near her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, the pharmacist handed her a bill for $325.

There must be a mistake, Steinwand said. So the pharmacist checked with her supervisor. The new price was correct. Kaiser’s policy had changed. Now Kaiser was charging 25 percent of the cost of the drug up to a maximum of $325 per prescription. Her annual cost would be $3,900 and unless her insurance changed or the drug dropped in price, it would go on for the rest of her life.

“I charged it, then got into my car and burst into tears,” Steinwand said.

She needed the drug, she said, because it can slow the course of her disease. And she knew she would just have to pay for it, but it would not be easy.

“It’s a tough economic time for everyone,” she said. “My son will start college in a year and a half. We are asking ourselves, can we afford a vacation? Can we continue to save for retirement and college?”

Although Kaiser advised patients of the new plan in its brochure that it sent out in the open enrollment period late last year, Steinwand did not notice it. And private insurers, Mendelson said, can legally change their coverage to one in which some drugs are Tier 4 with no advance notice.

Medicare drug plans have to notify patients but, Mendelson said, “that doesn’t mean the person will hear about it.” He added, “You don’t read all your mail.”

Some patients said they had no idea whether their plan changed or whether it always had a Tier 4. The new system came as a surprise when they found out that they needed an expensive drug.

That’s what happened to Robert Banning of Arlington, Virginia, when his doctor prescribed Sprycel for his chronic myelogenous leukemia. The drug can block the growth of cancer cells, extending lives. It is a tablet to be taken twice a day — no need for chemotherapy infusions.

Banning, 81, a retired owner of car dealerships, thought he had good insurance through AARP. But Sprycel, which he will have to take for the rest of his life, costs more than $13,500 for a 90-day supply, and Banning soon discovered that the AARP plan required him to pay more than $4,000.

Banning and his son, Robert Banning Jr., have accepted the situation. “We’re not trying to make anybody the heavy,” the father said.

So far, they have not purchased the drug. But if they do, they know that the expense would go on and on, his son said. “Somehow or other, myself and my family will do whatever it takes. You don’t put your parent on a scale.”

But Steinwand was not so sanguine. She immediately asked Kaiser why it had changed its plan.

The answer came in a letter from the federal Office of Personnel Management, which negotiates with health insurers in the plan her husband has as a federal employee. Kaiser classifies drugs like Copaxone as specialty drugs. They, the letter said, “are high-cost drugs used to treat relatively few people suffering from complex conditions like anemia, cancer, hemophilia, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and human growth hormone deficiency.”

And Kaiser, the agency added, had made a convincing argument that charging a percentage of the cost of these drugs “helped lower the rates for federal employees.”

Steinwand can change plans at the end of the year, choosing one that allows her to pay $20 for the Copaxone, but she worries about whether that will help. “I am a little nervous,” she said. “Will the next company follow suit next year?”

But it turns out that she won’t have to worry, at least for the rest of this year.

A Kaiser spokeswoman, Sandra Gregg, said on Friday that Kaiser had decided to suspend the change for the program involving federal employees in the mid-Atlantic region while it reviewed the new policy. The suspension will last for the rest of the year, she said. Steinwand and others who paid the new price for their drugs will be repaid the difference between the new price and the old co-payment.

Gregg explained that Kaiser had been discussing the new pricing plan with the Office of Personnel Management over the previous few days because patients had been raising questions about it. That led to the decision to suspend the changed pricing system.

“Letters will go out next week,” Gregg said.

But some with the new plans say they have no way out.

Julie Bass, who lives near Orlando, Florida, has metastatic breast cancer, lives on Social Security disability payments, and because she is disabled, is covered by insurance through a Medicare HMO. Bass, 52, said she had no alternatives to her HMO. She said she could not afford a regular Medicare plan, which has co-payments of 20 percent for such things as emergency care, outpatient surgery and scans. That left her with a choice of two Medicare H.M.O’s that operate in her region. But of the two H.M.O’s, her doctors accept only Wellcare.

Now, she said, one drug her doctor may prescribe to control her cancer is Tykerb. But her insurer, Wellcare, classifies it as Tier 4, and she knows she cannot afford it.

Wellcare declined to say what Tykerb might cost, but its list price according to a standard source, Red Book, is $3,480 for 150 tablets, which may last a patient 21 days. Wellcare requires patients to pay a third of the cost of its Tier 4 drugs.

“For everybody in my position with metastatic breast cancer, there are times when you are stable and can go off treatment,” Bass said. “But if we are progressing, we have to be on treatment, or we will die.”

“People’s eyes need to be opened,” she said. “They need to understand that these drugs are very costly, and there are a lot of people out there who are struggling with these costs.”

1.1 in 10 children suffer medication errors in hospital

“Mean adverse drug event rates were 11.1 per 100 patients.”

Source: PEDIATRICS Vol. 121 No. 4 April 2008, pp. e927-e935 (doi:10.1542/peds.2007-1779)

OBJECTIVES. The purposes of this study were to develop a pediatric-focused tool for adverse drug event detection and describe the incidence and characteristics of adverse drug events in children’s hospitals identified by this tool.

METHODS. A pediatric-specific trigger tool for adverse drug event detection was developed and tested. Eighty patients from each site were randomly selected for retrospective chart review. All adverse drug events identified using the trigger tool were evaluated for severity, preventability, ability to mitigate, ability to identify the event earlier, and presence of associated occurrence report. Each trigger and the entire tool were evaluated for positive predictive value.

RESULTS. Review of 960 randomly selected charts from 12 children’s hospitals revealed 2388 triggers (2.49 per patient) and 107 unique adverse drug events. Mean adverse drug event rates were 11.1 per 100 patients, 15.7 per 1000 patient-days, and 1.23 per 1000 medication doses. The positive predictive value of the trigger tool was 3.7%. Twenty-two percent of all adverse drug events were deemed preventable, 17.8% could have been identified earlier, and 16.8% could have been mitigated more effectively. Ninety-seven percent of the identified adverse drug events resulted in mild, temporary harm. Only 3.7% of adverse drug events were identified in existing hospital-based occurrence reports. The most common adverse drug events identified were pruritis and nausea, the most common medication classes causing adverse drug events were opioid analgesics and antibiotics, and the most common stages of the medication management process associated with preventable adverse drug events were monitoring and prescribing/ordering.

CONCLUSIONS. Adverse drug event rates in hospitalized children are substantially higher than previously described. Most adverse drug events resulted in temporary harm, and 22% were classified as preventable. Only 3.7% were identified by using traditional voluntary reporting methods. Our pediatric-focused trigger tool is effective at identifying adverse drug events in inpatient pediatric populations

Despite spreading recession, US CEOs rake in huge pay raises

Alex Lantier, World Socialist Web Site. Comment from Signs of the Times.

Amid the onset of a recession sparked by the ongoing collapse of the mortgage bubble, and calls for massive wage and benefits concessions from workers, US corporate management is continuing to award itself immense salaries and golden parachutes.

On April 6 the New York Times reported on a survey by research firm Equilar of chief executive officer (CEO) pay at 200 companies with yearly revenues over $6.5 billion. Equilar found that average pay for CEOs with two years’ experience or more in 2007 was $11.2 million, up 5 percent from 2006. Including newly hired CEOs, average pay was $11.7 million. By comparison, US median household income in 2006 was $48,000.

CEOs in larger firms typically rake in far larger salaries, even when they have presided over financial catastrophes for their firms. Equilar’s report found that the CEOs of the 10 largest financial firms in the survey were collectively paid $320 million, while their firms reported mortgage-related losses of $55 billion and the market price of their stock fell by over $200 billion.

On March 19 Business Week reported on the compensation of top executives at Bear Stearns, the major Wall Street investment bank that failed in March due to a collapse in the value of its mortgage-backed securities. The Federal Reserve intervened to take Bear Stearns’ obligations onto its books, organizing a bailout with JPMorgan Chase. Tens of thousands of workers have lost their jobs and, with the collapse in the value of Bear Stearns stock, their retirement.

From 2002 to 2006, Bear Stearns Chairman James Cayne, CEO Alan Schwartz, and former Co-President Warren Spector received total compensation – in salary, bonuses, restricted stock, and stock options – of $156 million, $141 million, and $168 million, respectively. Their bonuses between 2002 and 2005 ranged between $9 million and $12 million.

Business Week writes: “Then came the fattest year of all, 2006. Bear’s mortgage origination and other credit products grew at a 27 percent clip, and the company’s expansion into these areas really paid off, at least for those at the top of the pay pyramid…. Cash bonuses jumped to more than $16 million for Cayne, Schwartz, and Spector.” Less than 18 months later, the “credit products” underlying these bonuses were worthless.

Payoffs to CEOs when they accept or resign a position are often even larger. Citigroup, which wrote off over $20 billion in losses in 2007 and whose shares fell 47 percent, paid $216 million to hire its new CEO, Vikram Pandit. This included $165.2 million in connection with Citigroup’s $800 million acquisition of Pandit’s former firm (“alternative investment” specialists Old Lane Partners), $2.7 million salary for Pandit’s six months as head of Citigroup’s alternative investments division, and $48 million in stock options.

In recent months, the pay packages of a number of financial executives have gained public attention, especially in the light of the collapse of mortgage-backed “alternative” or “exotic” investments. Despite Citigroup’s disastrous performance, its former CEO Charles Prince retired in November 2007 with a $68 million retirement package. In October 2007, after investment bank Merrill Lynch had written down over $12 billion in bad mortgage debt, its CEO Stanley O’Neal left with a severance package of $161 million, on top of his $48 million salary.

Exorbitant CEO pay demands are prevalent throughout the entire economy, going far beyond financial firms. In January 2007 retailer Home Depot ousted its CEO, Bob Nardelli, for poor stock performance and an abrasive personality. Nardelli, who went on to become CEO of automaker Chrysler, took a $210 million severance package. When pharmaceutical firm Pfizer fired its CEO, Hank McKinnell, in July 2007 – amid layoffs of thousands of workers and $4 billion in losses – McKinnell took a severance package of over $180 million.

Such stories demolish commonly repeated claims that CEOs’ exorbitant pay is justified by the value they add to their companies, or by the enormous cost of hiring an executive capable of expert stewardship of a major corporation.

Instead, top executives are each looting tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from their companies, as their irresponsible management – perhaps best symbolized by the failed gambling on large-scale issuing of subprime mortgages, which are by definition very risky investments – decimates their companies’ bottom line and stock value.

To the extent that companies cannot find replacements for such executives who do not demand similar compensation and behave in similar ways, this simply points to a broader social problem: all major decisions at large corporations are taken by representatives of an elite class whose immense wealth effectively shelters them from the consequences of their actions.

The cynicism and complacency of this layer were highlighted in an April 6 column in the New York Times by Ben Stein, titled “In the Boardroom, Every Back Gets Scratched.” In the essay, Stein noted that CEOs’ salaries are approved by corporate boards, which are periodically nominated by CEOs and approved by shareholders. This effectively gives CEOs huge power over board members who will set their salaries.

Stein gives a remarkable description of the life of the members of a corporate board – often members of top management at other corporations. He writes: “To be a member of the board of a large company is a little example of paradise. You get good pay for just sitting in a meeting and listening to summary presentations. You get insurance and a pension. You can go to luxurious resorts and play golf. What the heck are [airport] security lines? You fly in private jets. Sometimes you get stock options, and these can be meaningful. In other words, it’s nice to be the director of a public company. How do you keep your job? You are really nice to the person who put you in that job.”

Even having observed, however, that “the nation has become, to some at the top, far more of a looting opportunity than a family,” Stein cannot bring himself to condemn the situation. Instead, he blandly concludes: “Your basic human is not such a hot item – and the structure of the joint stock company does not bring out the best in us.”

Though Stein is unquestionably correct regarding the behavior of the CEOs of today’s joint stock companies, as to his toxic pessimism about humanity one can only reply: speak for yourself. To masses of people who work for or depend on the decisions of major corporations, the looting carried out by top executives is not the inevitable reflection of human nature, but a direct threat to their jobs and living standards. For them, the behavior of CEOs and boards at joint stock companies will reveal above all the destructiveness of placing private profit above the needs of society.

Comment: These “Snakes in Suits” are the corporate psychopaths who are reaping the rewards of their actions which have brought the US and its economy to the brink of destruction.

Along with their brethren in the government they are sitting pretty while the rest of us struggle to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.

Not to mention those who are suffering the most from these “snakes” as their countries are torn apart by war and genocide.

Water, Water Everywhere – But Not a Soul to Think

by Cameron Martin

JustGetThere Featured Author

Chorus of Change

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Coleridge, 1798

The talking points of this, my second sojourn into writing what will be a monthly editorial piece for this fledgling new column, Chorus of Change, are twofold. First, I would like to acquaint those of you whom are unaware with Dean Kamen’s newest invention: the Slingshot; and how it’s potential for global good is beyond anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Secondly, I am taking this opportunity to voice my frustration with how difficult it has been to come by this information: what Kamen and his team have managed to accomplish in the conception and realization of this glorious contraption.

I believe that the only real downside to this story is the fact that you can go to the Google News’ search engine and type the search string, “Dean Kamen” and the word “Slingshot” in combination, and only two articles will appear (as of the writing of this article). Both of these commentaries belong to Wired News, the second article whimsically titled, “Dean Kamen Saves the World, Again.” I especially enjoyed the comédie noir writer Charlie Sorrel utilizes in this piece’s title because it seems to me that Kamen’s inventions, which are mostly medical in nature, are so often either overlooked or under-reported on, and are nothing less than spectacularly epic in their proportions and genius.

However, it seems that the only credit to Mr. Kamen’s good name, widely known publicly, on any tangible level, is his Segway mobile transportation devices. You’ve all seen them magically whipping and dashing about on television, seeming to defy the known laws of both physics and gravity. Of course, few realize that this plaything was only an afterthought, built on the medical technology of the iBot. The iBot is a “mobility system,” built from the same principles of gyroscopic compensation you’ve seen in the Segway devices; however, this modern miracle takes a wheelchair-bound individual and gives a sort of freedom-of-movement and dignity-of-engagement that, within the boundaries of our current sciences, is as close to restoring a person’s legs as we’re capable of. The ability to allow the owner to climb stairs, traverse difficult terrain, and the restored humanity of being able to “stand” near a person and engage him, at eye-level, are only a few of the attributes this medical marvel is capable of performing. But, alas! The public knows not of this divine sanction; nor of Mr. Kamen’s Stirling cycle-based 1-kW electrical generator, the AutoSyringe, a new type of mobile dialysis system for medical applications, and the first insulin pump, to name a few.
While all the major news networks, hijacking our airwaves, perpetually berate me with relentless updates on Britney Spears’ never-ending vortices of personal tragedies, Paris Hilton’s latest appearance on Rodeo Drive or some other dead-behind-the-eyes, rehab-bound, train-wreck of a life misspent, ad nauseam; news stories such as Kamen’s never get so much as a top-of-the-hour nod. Why is that?

Faithful worship of such media junk has become the essential ingredient in the dumbing down of Americans. Any person with even the slightest hint of cognitive lucidity can see what’s being done, plainly and openly, before our very (glazed over) eyes. Apathy is the cancer eating away at the American Spirit. We lay down when fraudulently elected leaders take office. We change the channel when the statistics of dead civilians from our current invasion are reported. We order another “biggie size” combo-order from our local heart disease dealers and tune out the radio announcers citing that the current “war” is costing the American people ($12,000,000,000.00) twelve billion dollars per month.

What I am commenting on, here, specifically is the media’s hijacking of free-thought. The manipulated masses complacent, yearning for more trivial news-junk, de jour. The media anchors? Thou talk’st of nothing. They report celebrity. …Which are the children of an idle brain. Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind. (Thanks there to “Bill” for always providing some appropriate wording.)

An informed population would be concerned about the matters at hand. The depletion of everything from our rainforests to the ozone layer. Here, the informed individual citizen is vital to the protection of such resources.

An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world (20% of every person on the planet) go to sleep every night without clean water to bathe in or drink. The water they do have is tainted. One point one billion, with a “b.”

“Eighty percent of all the diseases you could name would be wiped out if you just gave people clean water,” says Kamen. “The water purifier makes 1,000 liters of clean water a day, and we don’t care what goes into it. And the power generator makes a kilowatt off of anything that burns.”

• The Slingshot’s advanced Stirling Engine can run on any combustible product, propane or …even cow dung (Wired)
• The Stirling Engine, which is still considered a mystery to most engineers, can generate 1 kilowatt, or enough electricity to light 70 efficiency light bulbs according to Wired, and can be used as an electrical generator producing 200 watts of electricity and 800 watts of waste heat (TED)
• The Slingshot weighs less than 60 pounds (TED) and is smaller than a portable washing machine (Wired)
• The Slingshot uses vapor compression distillation to completely remove pure water from any “wet substance” (Wired) using just 2% of the power of anything that is currently in production
• The Slingshot can produce 1,000 liters of fresh water per day
• The heat from the purified water is recovered with a “counter-flow heat exchange” process and recycled to the next batch of water (TED)
• There are no filters on the Slingshot to replace, no carbon filtration system, no fluoride or chlorine necessary, and no ion extraction process is utilized (Wired)
• The Slingshot can use any water source available, safely: the ocean, bio-hazardous water sources, lakes, chemical waste dumps, removing everything from arsenic, hexavalent chrome, poison, heavy metals, etc.

The Slingshot is one of those once-in-a-lifetime inventions that truly can save the world. It takes any contaminated source of water, even pure raw sewage, and blasts the water out of the source by vaporizing it, extracting it, and storing it. The contents that have been extracted from the water is deposited in a separate bin and can even be used as a combustible to power the engine!

My favorite quote of Kamen’s is the following, “Not required are engineers, pipelines, epidemiologists, or microbiologists. You don’t need any -ologists. You don’t need any building permits, bribery, or buræucracies.” Sounds like my kinda guy…

Kamen says that the prototype device is hand-machined at a cost of $100,000 – however, his goal is through mass production to lower the cost to $1,000 per unit.

Kamen named the Slingshot in reference to the duel between the biblical characters of David and Goliath, putting the power back into the hands of the little guy through the use of a small piece of technology, a slingshot.

Once a fluid has passed through this device it’s actually pure, distilled water. Any bottled water that you can buy off-the-shelf has far more minerals and other contaminates than you’ll find in this clean liquid-gold. It really doesn’t matter what the input source was, the export is pure, clean water. Generally, water is taken from its source, then chlorine along with other chemicals are added to disinfect it to make it biologically inactive. When these units are a thousand dollars a pop, sign me up. I’d prefer the water processed by this machine to anything I’m drawing from my faucet, and nuts to paying three dollars a liter for off-the-shelf bottled water that’s nowhere near as clean!