Last year the Food and Drug Administration rescinded approval of the drug Avastin for treating breast cancer patients, prompting a firestorm of criticism. The decision was denounced by some politicians as health care rationing, and by breast cancer patients who feared that they would be deprived of a drug that they felt had helped them immensely.
But these criticisms ignore the facts: Avastin was rejected simply because it didn’t work as it was supposed to, and the F.D.A. should resist the aggressive campaign by Genentech, the drug’s maker, to get that ruling reconsidered at a hearing in late June.
Avastin has been on the market for seven years, and combined with other drugs it is effective in treating, but not curing, some colon, lung, kidney and brain cancers. It inhibits the development of new blood vessels and in so doing can starve a growing tumor.
Treating a breast cancer patient with Avastin costs about $90,000 a year, and Genentech could lose $500 million to $1 billion a year in revenue if the F.D.A. upholds the ban.
A clinical trial published in 2007 demonstrated that Avastin, when paired with the chemotherapy drug Taxol, halts the growth of metastatic breast cancer for about six months longer than chemotherapy alone. Genentech then asked the F.D.A. for approval of Avastin, combined with Taxol, for use against metastatic breast cancer.
This halt in tumor growth is known as progression-free survival. But delaying the worsening of cancer does not necessarily prolong life, and Avastin was not shown to lengthen patients’ overall survival time. So Genentech argued that the drug led not to longer life, but to improved quality of life.
In 2007, an F.D.A. advisory committee rejected the application, deciding that the toxic side effects of Avastin outweighed its ability to slow tumor growth. The F.D.A., however, overrode the committee and granted what is called accelerated approval, allowing Avastin to be used pending further study. The criteria for full approval was that Avastin not worsen overall survival and that the drug provide clinically meaningful progression-free survival.
To support its case Genentech submitted data from two additional clinical trials in which Avastin was paired with chemotherapy drugs other than Taxol. Like the first trial, neither showed a survival benefit. Both showed an improvement in progression-free survival, though this outcome was much less impressive than in the original study. In addition to seeking full approval for the Avastin-Taxol combination, Genentech also asked the F.D.A. to approve the use of Avastin with the drugs used in these follow-up studies.
Genentech presented progression-free survival as a surrogate for better quality of life, but the quality-of-life data were incomplete, sketchy and, in some cases, non-existent. The best that one Genentech spokesman could say was that “health-related quality of life was not worsened when Avastin was added.” Patients didn’t live longer, and they didn’t live better.
It was this lack of demonstrated clinical benefit, combined with the potentially severe side effects of the drug, that led the F.D.A. last year to reject the use of Avastin with Taxol or with the other chemotherapies for breast cancer.
In its appeal Genentech is changing its interpretation of its own data to pursue the case. Last year Genentech argued that the decrease in progression-free survival in its supplementary studies was not due to the pairing of Avastin with drugs other than Taxol. This year, however, in its brief supporting the appeal, Genentech argues that the degree of benefit may indeed vary with “the particular chemotherapy used with Avastin.” In other words, different chemotherapies suddenly do yield different results, with Taxol being superior. The same data now generate the opposite conclusion.
Perhaps more troubling is the resort to anecdote in the brief to the F.D.A. and in the news media. Oncologists recounted their successes, and patients who were doing well on Avastin argued for its continued approval. But anecdote is not science. Such testimonials may represent the human voices behind the statistics, but the sad fact is that there are too many patients who have been treated with Avastin but are not here to tell their stories.
Avastin will not disappear because of the F.D.A. decision. It remains available for treating other cancers, and research to find its appropriate role in breast cancer treatment continues. In the meantime, the F.D.A., which is expected to make its decision in September, needs to resist Genentech’s attempt to have it ignore scientific evidence.
Serious progress in the treatment of cancer will not be the result of polemics, lobbying or marketing. Genentech’s money and efforts would be better spent on research for more meaningful treatments for breast cancer.
By: Frederick C. Tucker, Jr., Oncologist and Op Ed Contributor, The New York Times Opinion Pages, May 24, 2011
May 25, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Big Pharma, Capitalism, Consumers, Corporations, Government, Health Care, Health Care Costs, Health Reform, Pharmaceutical Companies, Politics, Public Health, Regulations, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Women, Women's Health, Womens Rights | Avastin, Breast Cancer, Cancer, Cancer Drugs, Cancer Patients, Cancer Survival, Chemotherapy, FDA, Genentech, Health Care Rationing, Metastatic Cancer, Oncologists, Oncology, Patient Safety, Patients, Politicians, Quality of Life, Taxol |
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Billionaires are different from you and me, for obvious reasons, including the fact that they buy much pricier baubles than we do.
A sleek car costing $100,000? Why, for them, that’s just an easy impulse purchase. A few million bucks for a Matisse original? Go ahead — it’ll liven up the hallway. How about throwing a fat wad of cash at a university to get an academic chair named for you? Sure, it’s all part of the fun of living in BillionaireLand.
Then there is the top crust of the upper-crust — such megalomaniacal megabillionaires as the Koch brothers. Using money from their industrial conglomerate, their foundation and their personal fortunes, these two far-out, laissez-faire extremists are literally buying public policy. Their purchases of everything from politicians to the tea party help them push the privatization of all things public and the elimination of pesky regulations and taxes that crimp their style.
To advance their plutocratic privatization cause, brother Charles has even gone on a shopping spree for an invaluable bauble that most of us didn’t even know was for sale: academic freedom. And it’s surprisingly cheap!
For only $1.5 million, Koch bought a big chunk of the economics department of Florida State University a couple of years ago. His donation gives him control of a new “academic” program at this public institution to indoctrinate students in his self-serving political theories.
The billionaire gets to screen all applicants, veto any he deems insufficiently ideological, and sign off on all new hires. Also, the department head must submit yearly reports to Koch about the faculty’s speeches, publications and classes, and he evaluates the faculty based on “objectives” that he sets.
Charles has made similar purchases of academic freedom at two other state universities, Clemson and West Virginia. Also, in a May 20 piece at Alternet.org, investigative researcher Lee Fang reveals that Koch has paid $419,000 to buy into Brown University’s “political theory project,” $3.6 million to establish Troy University’s “center for political economy” and $700,000 for a piece of Utah State’s Huntsman School of Business, which now has the “Charles G.
Koch Professor of Political Economy.”
Imagine the screams of outrage we’d hear from the Kochs if a labor union were doing this.
A recent article in The Onion, the satirical newsweekly, printed a downsize-big-government spoof that Charles and David would love to turn into reality. The parody disclosed that President Obama had come up with a surefire plan to balance the federal budget: Rob Fort Knox! “I’ve got the blueprints,” Obama is quoted as saying, “and I think I found a way out through a drainage pipe.”
Unfortunately, with today’s political climate dominated by howling winds from the far-right fringe, there’s no longer any room in American culture for satire. Sure enough, some laissez-faire extremists at such Koch-funded corporate fronts as Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation are presently howling for the government to sell all of America’s gold stored in Fort Knox. Noting that we have billions worth of bullion in the vaults, a fellow from Heritage made this keen observation: “It’s just sort of sitting there.”
Uh, yeah, professor. Like Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, the Lincoln Memorial and other national assets — being there is the point.
Yet these ivory tower ideologues are using the current brouhaha over the budget deficit as an opening to push their loopiest fantasies of selling off all of America’s public properties, facilities, systems and treasures to create a no-government, plutocratic paradise. Just spread our public goods out on tables, like a flea market from hell, and invite the global rich to buy it all.
For example, a fellow from another Koch-funded front, the American Enterprise Institute, observes that the government could raise billions of dollars to retire that pesky deficit simply by selling our interstate highway system. Americans would then have to pay tolls forever to the corporate owners, but hey, he exclaims, remember that tolls “work for the River Styx, why not the Beltway?”
What a perfect metaphor for privatization! In ancient mythology, dead souls must pay a toll to be ferried across the River Styx and enter the depths of hell.
By: Jim Hightower, CommonDreams.org/Creators.com, May 25, 2011
May 25, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Democracy, Government, Ideologues, Ideology, Koch Brothers, Politics, Regulations, Republicans, Right Wing, Taxes, Tea Party, Unions, Wealthy | Academic Freedom, American Enterprise Institute, Brown University, CATO Institute, Clemson University, Extremists, Florida State University, Heritage Foundation, Politicians, Privatization, Public Policy, Rich, Troy University, University of West Virginia, Utah State |
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In the 2012 Republican presidential race, love apparently means always having to say you’re sorry.
On an array of issues, the field of GOP contenders is facing enormous pressure from an ascendant conservative base to renounce earlier positions that challenged orthodoxy on the right. Their response to those demands could cast a big shadow over not only next year’s Republican primary but also the general-election contest against President Obama.
The emergence of these pressures testifies to a decisive shift in the GOP’s balance of power. The ideas now drawing the most fire from conservative activists–including support for a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, a mandate on individuals to purchase health insurance, and a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants–all flowered in Republican circles during the middle years of George W. Bush’s presidency, especially among governors.
In different ways, each of these proposals embodied the common belief that Republicans had to broaden their message beyond a conventional conservative argument focused almost exclusively on reducing government spending, taxes, and regulation. Intellectually, these initiatives reflected an impulse to redefine conservatism in ways that accepted a role for government in empowering individuals or promoting market-based solutions. Politically, they reflected the belief that to build a lasting majority, Republicans needed to attract more minority voters, especially Hispanics, and to loosen the Democratic hold on blue states by reclaiming more suburban independents.
At varying points, this tendency operated under different names, including “compassionate conservatism” and “national greatness conservatism.” But the shared belief “was the sense that the Republican Party, in order to revitalize itself, needed to … show that it had modernized,” said Pete Wehner, who directed the Office of Strategic Initiatives in Bush’s White House.
Behind that conviction, Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress in 2003 created an entitlement by establishing the Medicare prescription drug benefit. In 2006, with Bush’s support, 23 GOP senators voted with 39 Democrats to provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
In the states, this instinct produced health care reform proposals from Govs. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and Arnold Schwarzenegger in California that centered on an individual mandate, as well as initiatives from many GOP governors to promote alternative energy and to impose mandatory limits on the carbon emissions linked to global climate change. Republican governors played driving roles in creating regional multistate alliances to limit carbon emissions in the Midwest (Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota); the Northeast (George Pataki in New York); and the West (Jon Huntsman in Utah and Schwarzenegger). Huntsman joined then-Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona in 2006 to produce a bipartisan Western governors’ plan that favored legalization over deportation for illegal immigrants.
Many hard-core conservatives always bristled at these initiatives. But in those years, they lacked the leverage to entirely suppress them. Now, though, the party’s most conservative elements have clearly regained the upper hand. The tipping point was the election of Barack Obama and his pursuit of an agenda that significantly expanded Washington’s reach across many fronts. His initiatives produced a powerful back-to-basics reaction among Republicans.
The result has been to revert the party’s message toward one focused almost solely on shrinking government. “Obama, by the way he governed, shifted the debate into a much more traditional Democratic-Republican divide over the role of government,” notes Wehner, now a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “That’s pushed to the side or capsized these other issues.”
That dynamic has left the 2012 GOP contenders facing multiplying demands to abandon and apologize for positions they took in what now looks like a brief period of Republican glasnost.
Pawlenty has already apologized for imposing carbon limits in Minnesota but hasn’t yet renounced his parallel support for requiring utilities to generate more of their power from renewable sources, which some conservatives have also demanded. Huntsman, as he considers the race, has abandoned his previous climate policies but not yet walked back his tilt toward legalization for illegal immigrants. Romney renounced his favorable comments about legalizing undocumented immigrants (as well as his earlier backing of abortion rights) during his 2008 run, but he drew a surprisingly firm line this month by reaffirming his support for his health insurance mandate in Massachusetts. Newt Gingrich, who has faced similar complaints about his earlier support for an individual mandate and efforts to control carbon emissions, hasn’t fully tossed aside either.
These maelstroms leave the candidates without many good options. To dig in behind earlier positions promises unending collisions with conservatives (as Romney has now done on health care). But abandoning too many positions under pressure could open the eventual nominee to effective attacks from Democrats. “If these candidates are now sliding back on things they once believed, it raises questions about whether they can be a strong leader,” says Bill Burton, the former deputy White House press secretary who is heading an independent Democratic campaign effort for 2012. If voters agree, the 2012 Republicans may feel sorry later for saying sorry so often now.
By: Ronald Brownstein, Political Director, Atlantic Media, The Atlantic, May 20, 2011
May 23, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Affordable Care Act, Climate Change, Conservatives, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Exploratory Presidential Committees, GOP, Government, Governors, Health Reform, Ideologues, Ideology, Immigration, Individual Mandate, Medicare, Politics, President Obama, Regulations, Republicans, Right Wing, States, Taxes | Cap and Trade, Compassionate Conservatism, GOP Presidential Primary, GWB, Medicare Prescription Drugs |
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Republican Gov. Scott Walker is steadily remaking the Wisconsin government, implementing conservative ideals and quietly consolidating power under the office of the governor. His actions range from the much-publicized move to strip collective bargaining rights from powerful public unions to the less-noticed efforts to add more political appointees at state agencies and take away responsibilities from Wisconsin’s democratically elected secretary of state.
Supporters have praised what Walker and his allies are doing as a long-overdue steps to cut spending and unnecessary bureaucracy. But critics fear a loss of public input and transparency in the way the state government operates.
“It’s a power grab,” said Doug La Follette, Wisconsin’s Democratic Secretary of State. “[Walker] wants to control everything.”
“It’s turning Wisconsin’s state government from a body that is charged with serving the needs of the people of Wisconsin, into making its first priority serving corporations — both inside and outside of Wisconsin,” added Scot Ross, executive director of the progressive group One Wisconsin Now. “This is the most massive turn toward privatization of public services in not only the history of the state of Wisconsin, but possibly across the country.”
Walker’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this report.
TURNING THE DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES INTO A ‘CHARTER AGENCY’
The Walker administration is developing a proposal that would turn the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) into the state’s first “charter agency,” a designation that would make it a self-contained entity able to operate outside many of the bureaucratic guidelines other agencies must follow.
Most significantly, DNR would have wider latitude over the hiring, firing and merit pay of employees — issues that also played out in the collective bargaining controversy a few months ago.
“We would be freed up from a lot of the red tape that slows things down,” DNR spokesman Bob Manwell told the Wisconsin State Journal. “We would still be a state agency; we would just be operating under a different set of guidelines.”
But what worries some environmentalists is how the agency will now view its central goals. According to a draft Walker administration document with “talking points” about the plan, DNR will be committed to “increasing customer outreach and assistance” and reducing “permit times for major air and water permits.”
“It’s implying that the customer is those who are seeking permits, so DNR employees will be encouraged to pump out permits with more leniency,” explained Anne Sayers, program director of the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters. “And none of that is about protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink or the places where we hunt, fish and hike.”
“What really bothers me about it is, it sets up a pay-to-play mentality where they can reward DNR employees who are getting polluters sweetheart deals for their big contributors,” added Rep. Brett Hulsey (D-Madison), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.
Amber Gunn, the director of economic policy at Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash., has been one of the leading voices advocating charter agencies around the country. In 2007, she wrote that it’s a “revolutionary concept” intended to “unravel the bureaucratic red tape that plagues many state agencies and replace it with results-driven motivation that promotes flexibility and innovation.”
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Gunn said one of the reasons the charter agency model is being discussed more widely is that it’s a way to cut spending without directly slashing services.
Washington’s Democratic Gov. Christine Gregoire has expressed support for exploring charter agencies. But according to Gunn, one of the reasons she wasn’t able to move forward with the change was the state’s strong collective bargaining laws, which have strict restrictions on contracting out for services.
“We would have to modify the collective bargaining agreements — at least in Washington — in order to oppose charter agencies. And no one wanted to touch that,” said Gunn.
The changes Walker and his GOP allies in the state legislature made to Wisconsin’s collective bargaining laws are currently on hold, while a court considers their legality.
Iowa has also experimented with charter agencies, but a 2011 report by the state auditor found that those agencies failed to deliver what they promised.
But what is most troubling to some Democratic legislators in Wisconsin is that this remaking of a government agency was originally going to be pushed through in an executive order — without any say by the legislature or any public hearings.
“If we’re playing our role as a separate branch of government correctly, we should — Democrats and Republicans alike — be questioning. How is it you can completely reform a state agency … without an act of the legislature?” asked Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine), one of the lawmakers investigating the legality of such a move.
STRIPPING POWER FROM THE SECRETARY OF STATE
The Joint Finance Committee is expected to vote Thursday on a proposal to scale back the responsibilities of the Wisconsin Secretary of State, moving its notary public and trademark duties to the Department of Financial Institutions (DFI). The Department of Administration, which is part of the governor’s office, would take on other duties.
La Follette is adamantly opposed to the proposal, telling The Huffington Post that he was not consulted at all by the governor’s office about the changes and is lobbying committee members to vote against it.
“It’s a very dumb idea,” he said. “First of all, it won’t save money, which some people claim it would. Second of all, it will make Wisconsin difficult for people to do business. The governor’s slogan is, ‘Wisconsin is open for business,’ and I’m all in favor of that. … But in 46-47 states around the country, the Secretary of State has the responsibility for trademarks and notaries, and those are two of the functions he wants to move to this obscure agency called DFI. No other state has DFI.”
GIVING THE GOVERNOR POWER TO CHOOSE THE VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY
Currently, one of the main duties of the seven veterans appointed by the governor to the Board of Veterans Affairs is to choose the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. But under a proposal being considered by the Assembly, that power would be transferred directly to the governor. The bill would also change the number and tenure of board members.
Walker has not directly taken a position on the legislation, however, he was critical of the board’s membership during his campaign.
Veterans groups are divided on the proposal. The American Legion has said allowing the governor to choose the secretary would politicize the agency, whereas the Veterans of Foreign Wars has said it would “elevate this important role to a cabinet level position equal to all other agency heads where it rightfully belongs.”
But what most upsets outgoing Veterans Affairs Board member David Boetcher, who was appointed by former Democratic governor Jim Doyle, is this provision in the proposal: “Under current law, all of the members must be veterans, and at least two of the members must be Vietnam War veterans. Under the bill, all of the board members must have served on active duty, but need not have served in any particular war or conflict.”
According to Boetcher, that would bar National Guard and Reserve members from serving.
“It’s like, I guess their military service just wasn’t good enough for the governor, so he’s blocking them out,” said Boetcher, who himself was enlisted in the Wisconsin National Guard. “It’s strange, because with a lot of the benefit programs, some of the major users are National Guard and Reserve members — especially like the GI Bill. … Either way, a lot of the people served by the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs are currently in the Guard and Reserve, but they’re going to be locked out of being on the board. Which I think is very unfortunate.”
Boetcher said there’s a possibility that the Assembly, which has been adding amendments to the bill, may change the language and allow National Guard and Reserve members to continuing serving on the board. The sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), did not return a request for comment.
CONSOLIDATING MEDICAID DECISIONS
Tucked into the budget repair bill Republicans initially proposed earlier this year was a provision granting the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) sweeping authority to make changes to the state’s Medicaid program — which covers one in five residents — with virtually no public scrutiny. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the Walker administration can use “emergency” powers to allow DHS to restrict eligibility, raise premiums and change reimbursements — all moves traditionally controlled by the legislature.
Part of the reason that advocates were so alarmed at the legislation was that the man who heads DHS is Dennis Smith, someone who has advocated for states to leave the Medicaid program.
Jon Peacock, research director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, equated it to if President Obama gave Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius total power to rewrite Medicare policy, even though it wouldn’t save any money in the current fiscal year.
“That’s what you have here,” said Peacock. “If President Obama proposed that, there would be rallies all over the country, and we would be marching out there arm in arm with Tea Party members, protesting against it.”
The legislation that was eventually signed into law eliminated the “emergency” powers but still gave the DHS administrator broad power to write regulations through the regular rule-making process.
By: Amanda Terkel, Huffington Post Politics, May 17, 2011
May 17, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Class Warfare, Collective Bargaining, Conservatives, Consumers, Corporations, Democracy, Democrats, GOP, Gov Scott Walker, Government, Governors, Ideologues, Ideology, Lawmakers, Medicaid, Middle Class, Politics, Public Employees, Public Opinion, Regulations, Republicans, Right Wing, State Legislatures, States, Union Busting, Unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Republicans | Bureaucracy, Charter Agencies, Environment, Environmentalist, Public Services, Veterns Affairs, Wiscon Sec of State, Wisconsin Dept of Natural Resources, Wisconsin Government |
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Once again the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has shown the nation it will always favor corporations over people even if it means conjuring new law out of thin air. Like Citizens United, the recent 5-4 ruling in AT&T’s favor gutting the power of consumers to file class-action lawsuits against giant corporations tips the scales of justice against the people and renders the enormous power of corporations even more enormous.
When I first heard about the case, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion there was little doubt in my mind that the Gang of Five — John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas would figure out a way to ignore Supreme Court precedent and again apply their judicial activism in service to the corporations, and by extension, to the oligarchy they apparently believe the “founders” intended.
It’s kind of funny when we see Republican presidential candidates like Mitt Romeny, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich pandering to the “little guy” denouncing “elites” who are trampling on their rights only to remain mute on the fact that their beloved Republican Supreme Court never, ever rules in favor of the “little guy.”
The Republican president Ronald Reagan gave us Scalia and Kennedy; the Republican president George Herbert Walker Bush gave us Thomas; and the Republican president George W. Bush gave us Roberts and Alito. This cabal has shown over and over again where its true loyalties lie, not to “the law,” not to “the Constitution,” not to “calling balls and strikes,” but to a 21st century version of corporate feudalism. This new corporate feudalism that the High Court is determined to thrust on the nation is even more exploitative than the earlier brand of Medieval feudalism because it is absent noblesse oblige.
The serfs toiling on the corporate plantation can only continue to pay Chase and Bank of America for their underwater mortgages, ExxonMobil and Chevron for their $4 a gallon gas, and AT&T, Comcast, T-Mobile and the rest for the privilege of communicating in a modern society. And if the serfs seek redress the High Court will slap them down before they can get anything substantial off the ground. With Citizens United placing a stranglehold of corporate power over our state, local, and federal system of elections, we cannot turn to our political “leaders” for redress, we can’t turn to the courts, and we certainly can’t turn to trying to morally persuade sociopathic non-human entities called corporations — so where does that leave us?
In the current context of unrestrained corporate dominance it’s unconscionable that the Obama administration has not done more to blunt its disastrous effects. The Justice and Treasury Departments, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, etc. could be doing a hell of a lot more in bringing balance to the equation of corporations versus people. The administration’s lagging performance in holding Wall Street accountable is well known, but it won’t even lift a finger to block grotesque mergers like the one between Comcast and NBC Universal, and AT&T and T Mobile. In all these mergers and acquisitions it’s always the consumers and the employees who lose, while the CEOs and a select few of shareholders and financiers make out like the bandits they are.
Nothing illustrates the corruption rampant in Washington more than the recent resignation of Federal Communications Commission member, Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican who Obama appointed to show how “bipartisan” he can be, who is now going to work as a lavishly paid shill for the very industry she was supposedly “regulating.” Ms. Baker will now make the big bucks serving Comcast/NBC Universal after she voted for the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal. Sweet. And few in the Beltway see anything unsavory about it.
Our political leaders, our Supreme Court, our captains of industry and finance, are so out of touch it’s going to be a long, long time before ordinary working people see any relief. All of our institutions, political, economic, even religious, social, and cultural, all of them, are failing the people miserably in pursuit of the Almighty Buck. The cunning game of appointing young ideologues to the bench has paid off handsomely for the corporate power structure. Someone should tell those people running around in tri-cornered hats and talking about the “founders” that it might be wise to save an ounce of their collective wrath for the Republicans who have appointed five Justices who are trampling on individual freedoms in service of corporations.
By: Joseph A. Palermo, The Huffington Post, May 15, 2011
May 15, 2011
Posted by raemd95 |
Big Business, Businesses, Congress, Consumers, Corporations, Elections, Justice Department, Lawmakers, Politics, Regulations, Supreme Court | AT&T, Citizens United, Class Action Lawsuits, Comcast, Concepcion, FCC, Gang of Five, IRS, Judicial Activism, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Mergers, NBC Universal, People, Republican Presidential Campaign, SEC, T Mobile |
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