Sense and Nonsense

Crushed and Broken

That's what Americans are, beaten down by consumerism and a corporate-government partnership.

Monsanto: Corporate Evil Incarnate

Any of you who have seen the terrific documentary film Food, Inc., as my wife and I did this weekend, will be as delighted as we are at the news that the Obama Administration is going to investigate the Monsanto Corporation for antitrust violations. Here's an excerpt from the article about this in Sunday's Washington Post:

During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case under antimonopoly laws regulating a dominant firm. But that stretch seems unlikely to continue.

This year, the Obama Justice Department tossed out the antitrust guidelines of its predecessor because they advocated ‘extreme hesitancy in the face of potential abuses by monopoly firms.’

‘We must change course,’ Christine Varney, the Obama administration’s chief antitrust enforcer, said at the time.

Of all the new scrutiny by Justice, the Monsanto investigation might have the highest stakes, dealing as it does with the food supply and one of the nation’s largest agricultural firms. It could also force the Obama administration, already under fire for the government’s expanded role in the economy, to explain how it distinguishes between normal rough-and-tumble competition and abusive monopolistic business practices.

Monsanto says it has done nothing wrong.

Of course Monsanto says it has done nothing wrong!  Monsanto is one of the most evil corporations in American history. If you've seen Food, Inc. or The Corporation (another terrific film), you know how bad Monsanto is.  Just one example: the vast majority of our soy bean supply comes from seeds engineered by Monsanto.  And they've patented the seeds, so any seed that accidentally falls into non-Monsanto field brings the army of Monsanto lawyers down on the unknowing farmer.  Monsanto is about as bad as corporate America gets. 

Grateful for Turkey Factory Farms?

Perhaps you saw the news yesterday about the new PETA ad that NBC and many local TV stations around the country apparently refused to run because they considered it contrary to the spirit of the holiday.   Here's the ad, and you can read more about it here. 

'Grace': PETA's Thanksgiving ad

Have a Heart, for Chrissake

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Cracking Down on Ghostwriting

The Times reports this morning that editors of influential medical journals are going to crack down on industry-financed ghostwriting of scientific articles.  I hope so.  This is a thoroughly reprehensible practice that should bring shame and penalties to the venal companies and unprincipled academics involved in it.

That's No Joke

A Good Drug Company?

You know that I seldom have anything good to say about corporate America.  But Saturday's New York Times carried an article that gladdened the heart of this cynical observer. 

Remember Dick Armey, the unscrupulous former House Republican leader who, among other things, helped lead the fight against the Clinton health reform effort in the 1990s?  Well, he's up to his old tricks again.  He is a lobbyist and the chairman of FreedomWorks, an independent conservative group that has helped orchestrate and inspire the rowdy demonstrations at town-hall meetings with legislators around the country.   He also had been hired by the lobbying firm DLA Piper to oppose President Obama's efforts to overhaul the health care system. 

Well, some of the drug companies are now on the side of reform, having cut a deal with the White House to limit their share of the costs of any revamping.  Some of these companies hire DLA Piper for its lobbying services and are upset and embarrassed by Armey's underhanded efforts to block reform. 
Under pressure from DLA Piper clients, Armey has quit his job with the lobbying firm.   Good.  That's one fewer slimeball in the mix of thousands of lobbyists working to shape the outcome of this issue.

One of the companies credited in the Times article with being unhappy with Armey's association with them through DLA Piper is The Medicines Company, headquartered in Parsippany, NJ.  The Medicines Company had paid DLA Piper $240,000 in lobbying fees for the second quarter of 2009 alone. 

The piper calls the tune.  The Medicines Company should be praised for its disgust with the tune that Armey and his goons have been playing around the country.  Good for them for pulling the plug on Armey.

Big Pharma and Big Insurance

Big assholes.

Rampant Deception

Along with yesterday's news about Wyeth's gross deception (see below) comes this story about the coal industry sending fake letters to members of Congress, purporting to be from nonprofit groups opposed to climate-change legislation.

Good lord.  This country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Big Pharma's Latest Deception

Today's New York Times carried a front-page article about a massive effort by Wyeth, the pharmaceutical giant, to engage in  a communications firm to ghostwrite "scientific papers" that appeared in medical journals, benefiting Wyeth's sales of hormone drugs. What a sleazy company.  The perpetrators of this kind of fraud should go to jail for a long time. 

Obviously, not all pharmaceutical companies are bad.  But many of the big ones are among the sleaziest companies out there.

Be sure to check out the graphic attached to the Times article, as well as the 79-page PDF of a ghost-written article (author "to be determined").  Good lord.