WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients
By Murray Waas
22 Apr 2010 22:03:27 GMT
Source: Reuters

* Algorithms launched probes of breast cancer diagnoses
* Many policies were canceled based on flimsy information
* New health care law lacks teeth, according to detractors
* WellPoint lobbied against reforms to end such practices

LOS ANGELES, April 22 (Reuters) – Shortly after they were diagnosed with breast cancer, each of the women learned that her health insurance had been canceled. There was Yenny Hsu, who lived and worked in Los Angeles. And there was Patricia Reilling, a successful art gallery owner and interior designer from Louisville, Kentucky.

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Wellpoint Lobbyists Axed Key Protections for Breast Cancer Patients From Health Care Bill

Federal investigators have told Reuters that WellPoint, the country’s largest insurance company, is using an algorithm to identify women with breast cancer for the express purpose of dropping their coverage.

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SEC Watching Porn Instead of Financial Industry
by: Husna Haq | Christian Science Monitor

Just when it was beginning to repair its reputation with its high-profile case against Goldman Sachs, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suffers another major blow: Senior staffers there were surfing Internet pornography – as much as eight hours per day, in one case – when they were supposed to be policing the financial industry.

Perhaps this helps explain why the SEC didn’t see the financial collapse coming. Or did nothing to stop Lehman Bros.’ questionable accounting tactics. Or Bernie Madoff’s dubious “investing” strategy.”

They were busy with other things.

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What Happened in Bolivia This Week Could Save Our Failing Democracies
By Naomi Klein, The Nation
Posted on April 23, 2010, Printed on April 23, 2010

It was 11 am and Evo Morales had turned a football stadium into a giant classroom, marshaling an array of props: paper plates, plastic cups, disposable raincoats, handcrafted gourds, wooden plates and multicolored ponchos. All came into play to make his main point: to fight climate change, “we need to recover the values of the indigenous people.”

Yet wealthy countries have little interest in learning these lessons and are instead pushing through a plan that at its best would raise average global temperatures 2 degrees Celsius. “That would mean the melting of the Andean and Himalayan glaciers,” Morales told the thousands gathered in the stadium, part of the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. What he didn’t have to say is that the Bolivian people, no matter how sustainably they choose to live, have no power to save their glaciers.

Bolivia’s climate summit has had moments of joy, levity and absurdity. Yet underneath it all, you can feel the emotion that provoked this gathering: rage against helplessness.

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ACLU of Florida

Various matters
By Glenn Greenwald

There are numerous items — seemingly disparate but all tied together by common themes — worth noting from the last couple of days; they are all individually linkable with links at the bottom of the post:

(1) The New York Times’ Scott Shane reports today that Dr. Henry Heine, a former U.S. Army microbiologist, testified Thursday before a panel of the National Academy of Sciences examining the FBI’s scientific claims in the anthrax case, and said “it was impossible that the deadly spores had been produced undetected in Dr. [Bruce] Ivins’s laboratory”; that “[a]t the Army’s biodefense laboratory in Maryland, . . . among the senior scientists, no one believes it’;” and when “[a]sked by reporters after his testimony whether he believed that there was any chance that Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, had carried out the attacks, [he] replied, ‘Absolutely not’.” Ivins’ hometown newspaper, the Frederick News Post, has long provided excellent and skeptical coverage of the FBI’s case, and provides more details about Heine’s testimony.

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Some voters will find GOP insert in sample ballot
San Diego Union-Tribune ^ | April 24, 2010 | Craig Gustafson

Some county voters may be surprised next month when they receive sample ballots for the June 8 election and discover a shiny, one-page solicitation from the local Republican Party touting its preferred candidates.

The partisan insert tucked inside official ballot materials has been the subject of an unsuccessful legal challenge and has rankled Democrats who say it goes beyond what’s allowed under an obscure state law.

It also raises the question of whether the county registrar of voters should, in essence, be subsidizing the cost of mailing a party’s list of endorsed candidates and ballot measures.

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So here’s another bill intended to spread GMO–in this case, through foreign aid.

MCM

From Diane Kamp:

I wrote to Senator Tester last year alerting him to this bad bill coming out of committee. Called the Lugar/Casey Bill it gives 7.7 billion to Monsanto and other GMO companies to help feed/screw Africans. He did write me a real letter back saying he had sent a letter to Secretary of State Clinton protesting GMOs. I have the copy of the letter. But I’m not holding my breath. African farmers have their own seeds and their own experimentation with sweet potatoes etc. They do NOT want this “gift”. Please write to Tester and Baucus and tell them NO to this piece of crap bill. Another in a long list of piece of crap bills including the so called cap and trade which is a big front for commodity speculation.

Diane Kamp

More info at http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2512

Subject: Say ‘No’ to GE crops in foreign aid

Tell your senator: No GE crops in foreign aid.

Dear Diane,

Despite a mountain of evidence that genetically engineered (GE) crops have failed to deliver, a new multi-billion dollar aid bill directs taxpayer dollars towards more GE research. As written, the Senate bill is a stealth giveaway to corporations like Monsanto in the name of feeding the world’s poor.

Act Now!» Tell your Senator to oppose the Global Food Security Act until the GE clause is removed!
The Global Food Security Act (SB 384) is the biggest U.S. agricultural aid initiative in more than half a century. The bill mandates that U.S. taxpayer dollars support research on genetically engineered crops. No other specific technologies are even mentioned.

By including a federal mandate that GE crop research and development be funded by U.S. taxpayers, we are writing a check to Monsanto and other industry giants. Monsanto has been lobbying actively for the bill’s passage. No wonder. The law directs $7.7 billion to agricultural research and development, and Monsanto has a clear interest in how this money is spent.

“At the end of the day, GE crops don’t have much to offer farmers in the developing world,” notes PAN senior scientist Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman. “Recent UN reports point to agroecological farming for more promising solutions to world hunger.”

Send your email today» Scientists who have examined the evidence around the globe agree: GE crops are not the answer to world hunger. Tell you senator: No GE crops in foreign aid.

Thank you for taking action.

If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. While we struggle to amend, or halt, the Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) in the Senate,* we must also push our government to cease its opposition to the labeling of genetically modified (GMO) food.

To be clear: We want to know which foods are “GMO-free,” and which aren’t–but the US doesn’t want us knowing that difference. Why? Probably because Monsanto, the planet’s top purveyor of GMO, enjoys quite warm relations with Obama (who, in January, appointed the Monsanto lawyer Michael Taylor to the FDA, putting him in charge of food safety). So we’re now faced with the nauseating prospect of not knowing when we, and our children, might be swallowing Monsanto’s “Frankenfoods.”

And yet what is at stake here isn’t just the food we eat–although God knows that that’s a matter of immeasurable importance. What we are also facing here is a betrayal of democracy, as this passage (from an email I received just now from Michael Parenti) spells out loud and clear:

“The Obama administration is planning on dispatching delegates, on May 3rd, to a WTO meeting to propose changes to a document called the Codex Alimentarius, which is responsible for determining international standards on food labeling. Specifically, these changes would restrict labeling as it pertains to genetically modified genes and organisms. Much more than a giveaway to multinational agribusiness interests, this is an affront to democracy and national sovereignty itself for any number of nations, including our own. In short, if this passes, it would literally become illegal, under international law to inform consumers of genetically modified foodstuffs–and our own FDA and USDA, as well as state and local agencies, would become powerless to protect the interests of American consumers, with regard to our food supply. If you
have any interest whatsoever in knowing what’s in the food you eat, I would strongly urge you to please have a look at this petition, and consider signing it. And then pass it along to everyone you know, as soon as you can. We have until May 3rd on this.”

So please sign this petition, and pass this on.

MCM

* http://markcrispinmiller.com/2010/04/this-bill-will-kill-small-farms-and-wreck-our-food-supply/

PETITION:
Stop the sneak attack on food labeling.

From Peter Tucker:

A group of us who are opposed to DC’s mandate that sixth grade girls receive the controversial HPV vaccine testified at the DC Council before the Health Committee on Wednesday morning at a hearing on the DC Department of Health budget. The Chairman of the Committee, David Catania, who is responsible for creating the mandate, could not respond to Emily Tarsell’s testimony.

Ms. Tarsell lost her daughter, Christina, 18 days after Chris was vaccinated with her third dose of Gardasil. Chris had shown signs of complications after the second dose, but since doctors don’t always forewarn those receiving the HPV vaccine about the possible side effects, Ms. Tarsell had no idea that it was Gardasil that was causing the complications and that futher vaccination could make things worse for her daughter.

Ms. Tarsell is a psychologist and she has merged her grief from losing her only child with her scientific skills and has become an expert on Gardasil. Among other things, she has started a website in honor of Chris (www.gardasilandunexplaineddeaths.com). After giving her amazing testimony, as she was riding in a car to Union Station to catch a train back to Baltimore on her way home to northern Maryland, I got to interview her (attached). The interview aired Wednesday evening on Spectrum Today on WPFW 89.3 FM

She is truly an amazing woman. Please spread this far and wide.

best,
Pete

INTERVIEW: Emily Tarsell 4-21-10

Moyers: Six Banks Control 60% of Gross National Product — Is the U.S. at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy?
By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal
Posted on April 23, 2010, Printed on April 23, 2010

The following is a transcript taken from Bill Moyers’ recent interview with Simon Johnson and James Kwak on Bill Moyers Journal.

So even if the Tea Party folks saw the light, what can ordinary Americans do?

That’s the question I want to put to my guests, Simon Johnson and James Kwak. They have written this new book, 13 Bankers: The Wall St. Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. It’s a must read – already a best seller — and it couldn’t have come at a better time. This book could change the debate over financial reform by tipping it in favor of the public.

Simon Johnson is a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. He now teaches at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

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