Saturday, November 12, 2011

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Nov. 12 & 13, 2011


A shout-out to Shaky!

Com'on, folks... admit it... you never know what you're gonna get as the newsbites theme of the day!
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5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-video-shows-man-being-punched-at-red-line-stop-amid-laughs-and-taunts-20111111,0,5079572.story

Police have launched an investigation after a man was caught on video knocking out an older man at the Chicago Avenue Red Line stop while others laughed and mimicked the attack.

The video, posted shows a man in a tan coat moving among people on the southbound subway platform as a group of "youths" joke and laugh. One of the "youths" starts following the man, turning around and smiling as his friends whoop and laugh.

* NOTICE IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH THE DESCRIPTION OF THE ANIMAL IS "A MAN," BUT SUBSEQUENTLY THIS WAS CHANGED TO THE MORE POLITICALLY CORRECT "YOUTH." (BTW... THE QUOTE AROUND THE WORD ARE MINE.)

The "youth," dressed in a black vest jacket, then appears to tap the man to get his attention. When the man turns around, the two appear to exchange a few words before the youth suddenly strikes him on the side of the head. The older man falls on his back so hard his hat flies off, according to the video. The "youth" and his friends board a waiting train as a woman kneels down and touches the man and makes a phone call.

Police and paramedics were called to the station and the older man was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was treated and released, according to Police news Affairs Officer Robert Perez.

* AH... BUT READ ON... HERE'S WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING:

While some websites have named the youth in the video, he has not been charged.

* SO... WHAT DO YOU THINK? DO YOU THINK THAT IF THE OLD MAN HAD BEEN THE MAYOR'S FATHER OR UNCLE THERE'D BE NO ARREST?

* THE PROBLEM ISN'T JUST THE ANIMALS... THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM.

Police are "seeking" the man who was hit to see if he wants to pursue charges.

(*SMIRK*)

November 12, 2011 at 9:30 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.freep.com/article/20111111/BUSINESS06/111110345/Stryker-cut-5-workforce?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|s

Stryker, the Kalamazoo Michigan based maker of artificial hips and knees, will cut 5% of its global workforce by the end of next year to reduce costs in the face of new fees on device makers required by the U.S. health care law.

* BY OBAMACARE THEY MEAN.

The job cuts will reduce annual pretax operating costs by more than $100 million beginning in 2013, when the medical-device excise tax is scheduled to take effect, Stryker said Thursday in a statement. Stryker had more than 20,000 employees as of Dec. 31, according to Bloomberg News data.

* 5% OF 20,000 MEANS THANKS TO OBAMACARE 1,000 MORE AMERICANS ARE GOING TO LOSE THEIR JOBS.

November 12, 2011 at 9:43 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamacare-s-passage-millions-have-lost-employer-sponsored-health-insurance_607994.html

Throughout the ObamaCare debate, President Obama repeatedly promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”

Now, Gallup reports that from the first quarter of 2010 (when Obama signed ObamaCare into law) to the third quarter of this year, 2% of American adults lost their employer sponsored health insurance.

In other words, about 4.5 million Americans lost their employer-sponsored insurance over a span of just 18 months.

This is not what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had predicted would happen.

* DO TELL!

Rather, the CBO had predicted that Obamacare would increase the number of people with employer-sponsored insurance by now. It had predicted that, under ObamaCare, 6 million more Americans would have employer-sponsored insurance in 2011 than in 2010.

(*SMIRK*)

Whether the decline in employer-sponsored insurance over the past 18 months is a product of ObamaCare or of the Obama economy - and whether ObamaCare is the principal cause of the anemic performance of the Obama economy - can be debated.

* WELL... I'M GUESSING THAT THE CONTINUED STAGGERINGLY HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT OF THE AGE OF OBAMA HAS "SOMETHING" TO DO WITH IT.

But what’s clear is that, more than 25 months before ObamaCare would really go into effect - if it’s not repealed first - employers are already dropping employees from their insurance rolls.

Take Walmart, for example - a prominent ObamaCare supporter.

* YES, FOLKS... WALMART WAS ON THE OBAMA BANDWAGON!

Gallup writes, “The nation's largest private employer, Wal-Mart, announced in October that new part-time employees who work less than an average of 24 hours a week would no longer be able to get their health insurance from the company. Wal-Mart laid out several other cuts to its health insurance offerings, including some workers’ ability get coverage for their spouses. Other companies have already made and will likely continue to make similar changes to their health insurance benefits… If Wal-Mart's decision is a precursor of how employers intend to manage their healthcare costs, the downward trend in employer-based healthcare will likely continue.”

(*SMIRK*)

So in addition to costing about $2.5 trillion over its real first decade (2014 to 2023), looting nearly $1 trillion from Medicare over that time (according to the CBO), forcing Americans to buy government-approved health insurance under penalty of law, and amassing unprecedented power and money in Washington at the expense of Americans’ liberty - if ObamaCare stays on the books, you may like your health care plan, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can keep your health care plan.

It’s time to repeal ObamaCare.

November 12, 2011 at 9:53 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-smallpox-20111113,0,4293298.story

* HERE'S THE HEADLINE, FOLKS, FROM THE L.A. TIMES:

Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal: A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.

* THE STORY:

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world's richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

When Siga complained that contracting specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services were resisting the company's financial demands, senior officials replaced the government's lead negotiator for the deal, interviews and documents show.

When Siga was in danger of losing its grip on the contract a year ago, the officials blocked other firms from competing.

Siga was awarded the final contract in May through a "sole-source" procurement in which it was the only company asked to submit a proposal. The contract calls for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile. The price of approximately $255 per dose is well above what the government's specialists had earlier said was reasonable, according to internal documents and interviews.

* FOLKS... IF NOT A MILITARY COUP... IF NOT REVOLUTION... THEN HOW DO WE DISLODGE THE CRIMINALS CONTROLLING THE WHITE HOUSE AND THE SENATE?

Dr. Thomas M. Mack, an epidemiologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine, battled smallpox outbreaks in Pakistan and has advised the Food and Drug Administration on the virus. He called the plan to stockpile Siga's drug "a waste of time and a waste of money."

Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the U.S. government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox. If there were an attack, the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire U.S. population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure.

Siga's drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints - and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans. "We've got a vaccine that I hope we never have to use - how much more do we need?" said Dr. Donald A. "D.A." Henderson, the epidemiologist who led the global eradication of smallpox for the World Health Organization and later helped organize U.S. biodefense efforts under President George W. Bush. "The bottom line is, we've got a limited amount of money."

Negotiations over the price of the drug and Siga's profit margin were contentious. In an internal memo in March, Dr. Richard J. Hatchett, chief medical officer for HHS' biodefense preparedness unit, said Siga's projected profit at that point was 180%, which he called "outrageous." In an email earlier the same day, a department colleague told Hatchett that no government contracting officer "would sign a 3 digit profit percentage."

* FOLKS... THIS IS A FOUR PAGE EXPOSE - READ IT!

November 12, 2011 at 10:58 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/business/energy-environment/a-cornucopia-of-help-for-renewable-energy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on a former cattle ranch and gypsum mine, NRG Energy is building an engineering marvel: a compound of nearly a million solar panels that will produce enough electricity to power about 100,000 homes.

* AH... BUT HERE'S HOW "NRG" IS BUILDING THEIR MARVEL:

Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of the project. Similar subsidy packages have been given to 15 other solar- and wind-power electric plants since 2009.

The government support -which includes loan guarantees, cash grants and contracts that require electric customers to pay higher rates - largely eliminated the risk to the private investors and almost guaranteed them large profits for years to come.

The beneficiaries include financial firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, conglomerates like General Electric, utilities like Exelon and NRG - even Google.

* Hmm... I WONDER WHERE OCCUPY WALL STREET IS...???

When the Obama administration and Congress expanded the clean-energy incentives in 2009, a gold-rush mentality took over. ... NRG, along with partners, ultimately secured $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees plus hundreds of millions in other subsidies for four large solar projects. ... From 2007 to 2010, federal subsidies jumped to $14.7 billion from $5.1 billion, according to a recent study. (Most of the surge came from the economic stimulus bill, which was passed in 2009 and financed an Energy Department loan guarantee program and a separate Treasury Department grant program that were promoted as important in creating "green" jobs. )

States like California sweetened the pot by offering their own tax breaks and by approving long-term power-purchase contracts that, while promoting clean energy, will also require ratepayers to pay billions of dollars more for electricity for as long as two decades.

* FOLKS... YOU'RE READING THIS... RIGHT? PUBLIC CAPITAL TO ENRICH PRIVATE INTERESTS WHILE THE PUBLIC WHICH PROVIDES THE CAPITAL IN THE FIRST PLACE GETS HOSED!

* O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A!

* FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... I'LL LEAVE IT TO YOU TO READ THE REST OF THIS RATHER LONG ARTICLE, BUT BE ASSURED... YOU'RE GETTING THE DRIFT VIA THIS NEWSBITE.

(*SMIRK*)

November 13, 2011 at 9:41 AM

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