Don't be surprised if Walgreens — "The Pharmacy America Trusts®" — leads you out of the door in handcuffs:

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A woman with a brain tumor filed a lawsuit against Walgreens Advance Care Inc., saying when she arrived to pick up her painkiller prescription one day, a pharmacist had her arrested.

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court, Shannon O'Brien, 35, said she went to the drive-up window at a Walgreen Drug Store two blocks from her home last July 7. The pharmacist on duty thought she had faked her Percocet prescription and called police, the lawsuit stated.

"I was in hysterics - crying, very upset and very embarrassed," O'Brien told The Associated Press on Thursday. "They could have checked my records. I've had the same medicine every month."

[...]

O'Brien, who was first diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1994, said she told the officer who handcuffed her that he could call her doctor or her nurse to verify the prescription.

"I told him I had brain cancer, and I had a medical information card inside my wallet," she said. "It didn't matter to him. He didn't believe anything I was telling him."

American life gets more humiliating by the day. Story at FindLaw.

{ 4:58 PM }

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The SEC pulls back the mutual fund industry's veil of secrecy. One of the themes of this blog is exposure of the deception of small investors, so we must nod to what will undoubtedly be a lost story in the hurricane of pre-war propaganda (from The New York Times):

The S.E.C. also approved rules requiring mutual funds to disclose how they vote investors' shares on corporate issues, a change that was criticized by mutual fund executives but widely praised by shareholder advocates.

[…]

Opponents of the disclosure rule warned that it would cost investors money while yielding little benefit. Supporters of disclosure noted that the new rule would not require mutual funds to send additional information to investors, but only to make it available.

"What they are really worried about is the end of all their conflicts of interest," Tim Grant, president of Pax World Funds, said on a conference call with reporters yesterday. Pax is a mutual fund company that does not invest in companies that produce harmful products or by-products or that have interests it considers socially unacceptable.

It is somewhat amazing to realize that, in all this time, mutual fund shareholders have not had any access to how their hundreds of billions of dollars in shares were voted. The power of those votes was held behind closed doors at the largest mutual fund companies. That power, and its political leverage, can now begin to be examined by the people who rightfully own it.

Increased disclosure is a step in the right direction. This is a noteworthy day at the SEC.

{ 4:41 PM }

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Underappreciated Blog of the Day. The first in an occasional series.

First Draft by Tim Porter consists of thoughtful looks at big media, journalism, readership, and the relevance of it all.

Go.

{ 3:52 PM }

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As I mentioned before, "The more I learn about Venezuela, the less I realize I know."

Bloggy steers us to a valuable post about Venezuela, courtesy of jameswagner.com.

{ 3:51 PM }

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"The average Democratic Senator represents about 6.5 million people, while the average Republican Senator represents just over 5 million people."

Tapped and its readers do the math. (Scroll to the end of the post.)

Wouldn't it be interesting to know the difference in aggregate household income and net worth between the regions served by Democratic and Republican senators?

{ 11:44 AM }

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McTort Reform. This letter appeared in The Wall Street Journal:

In regard to yesterday's editorial "Left Coast Justice": District Judge Robert Sweet's immediate dismissal of the frivolous lawsuit against McDonald's for selling Big Macs, etc., is an example of how to fix the tort system with several strokes of the pen. The fundamental problem of large recoveries in meritless litigations requires not legislation but a firm commitment to choosing judges who will, at the earliest possible stage, screen out of the system such claims. The fundamental requirements for excellence in judging are evident: intelligence, industriousness and common sense. Cases such as those brought against McDonald's (including the hot coffee case) would never pass the bar of dismissal.

Steven J. Stein
Greenwich, Conn.

Updated January 24, 2003

Emphasis added. The boldfaced sentence above describes the root of the medical malpractice problem (see this earlier post).

The professional wrangling between greedy lawyers and sarcastic physicians sidesteps the basic objective: proportional judgments in favor of actual victims. Determinations of "proportional" and "actual" should be screened by the courts, not the legislation. Caps, especially ludicrously low ones, are a distraction from the responsibility of judges and juries to make sense of damages and their compensation.

{ 11:08 AM }

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Lisa English of RuminateThis clued me into Vello Vannak's idea about a "Sick of the War" day — a day on which we boycotted our regular business activities and just stayed home.

With W spending the next few days learning his lines for the State of the Union speech Tuesday, I thought we should tie the two thoughts together. I submit, for your consideration, the above Strike of the Union flag.

If you agree that the seeming inevitability of this war is sickening, copy the Strike of the Union flag from this page and email it to your friends or post it on your own blog. And stay home on Tuesday. Live your life instead of the administration's agenda.

Resist the scare tactics of meaningless terror alerts and unconscionable vagueness about the real threats to this country. The administration has already said that anyone who disagrees with it is a traitor. Apparently we aren't disagreeing forcefully enough.

The lousy Bush economy has made a dent in all our lives. Let's return the favor by not working on Tuesday and simultaneously showing our profound disapproval of his unilateral war plans.

{ 9:30 AM }

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"The President considers this nation to be at war," a White House source says, "and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason."

Via Orcinus.

{ 5:51 PM }

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"Isn't civilization what happens when people stop behaving as if they're trapped in a ruthless Darwinian struggle and start thinking about communities and shared futures? America as a gated community won't work, because not even the world's sole superpower can build walls high enough to shield itself from the intertwined realities of the 21st century."
— Brian Eno in Time Magazine.

{ 3:43 PM }

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Who's your favorite Republican BABE of the Week?

PAST WINNERS: Bo Derek, Ann Coulter [shown], Laura Ingraham, Shannen Doherty, Patricia Heaton, Debbie Schlussel, Kim Alexis, Patriot Girl, Ellie Michaels, Betsy Hart, Lori Waters, Katherine Harris, Sara Evans, Rachel Marsden, Kristen Andersen, Kim Seraphin, Rachel Alexander, Michelle Malkin, Lauren Bush*, Debbie Brannigan, Ashley Judd, Cheryl Ladd, Emma Caulfield, Emily Pataki, Carol Gargaro, Kathy Ireland, Heather Locklear, Martina McBride, Condi Rice, Monica Crowley, India Allen, and Darcy Olsen.

This site is a treasure trove of tears-in-your-eyes hilarity. Physicists take note: there really is a parallel universe, and it's the Republican culture, or lack thereof.

Where else can you gawk at heaving GOP cleavage and read breathless profiles about the Goldwater and Cato Institutes?

Remember, these are the same über-partisan ladies who want to give lucky small businessmen a tax deductible Hummer.

*Daughter of Silverado S&L beneficiary and Florida educational software "entrepreneur" Neil Bush; niece of W and co-conspirator Jeb.

{ 1:28 PM }

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"This is the worst president ever," she said. "He is the worst president in all of American history."

She is Helen Thomas, she is talking about George W. Bush, and she has a right to compare because she has known eight presidents.

Link via Media Whores Online.

{ 10:28 AM }

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Get on your knees and pray to the Lord for a new administration. Looks like a lot more of your money is headed toward Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and their ilk (The New York Times):

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 — The Bush administration plans to allow religious groups for the first time to use federal housing money to help build centers where religious worship is held, as long as part of the building is also used for social services.

The policy shift, which was made in a rule that the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed this month, significantly expands the administration's contentious religion-based initiative.

The White House says it wants to end discrimination against religious groups. Opponents say the policy breaches the separation of church and state.

Current regulations generally prohibit religious groups from using federal housing and community development grants, which totaled $7.7 billion last year, to build or rehabilitate structures. The new rules, still subject to final approval by housing officials, allow the use of federal aid to acquire, rehabilitate or build centers used for religious and specifically approved nonreligious activities, so long as no federal money is used for the religious section.

A church could erect a building using federal money to create a shelter for the homeless in one part and private money to create a sanctuary in another part, officials said. A synagogue could use a grant to rehabilitate part of its building for a counseling center for AIDS patients or the poor. A Muslim group could apply for federal money to upgrade the lighting and equipment in a room in its mosque to allow it to be used as an counseling center for single parents.

[…]

"This is probably the most clearly unconstitutional aspect of the White House's faith-based initiative that we've seen up to this point," said Christopher Anders, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What this does is take federal money that is serving the neediest of the needy in our society and diverts it to the bricks-and-mortar construction of churches and sanctuaries and other places of worship."

[…]

The public has until March 7 to comment before the department is scheduled to issue its final approval.

Theoretically, Saudis could set up a mosque in Florida with a federally-funded flight school and counseling center attached to it. Imagine the convenience!

Link via TBOGG.

{ 9:48 AM }

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Still more astroturfing from No More Mister Nice Blog and Failure Is Impossible.

{ 9:32 AM }

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The more I learn about Venezuela, the less I realize I know.

Today is Keep Democracy Alive Day in Venezuela, so mark your calendar.

{ 9:12 AM }

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The archive and all internal links were down all day today.

They appear to be fine now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

{ 6:07 PM }

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Skimble's first porn link. Hustler magazine, which we only read for the articles, interviews Greg Palast. Many topics are covered, such as the 2000 election and its racist tactics:

And again, you gotta go back to the fact, it's not everybody's ballot that was voided. The blacker the ballot, the higher the chances it will not be counted, and that was the evil of it. That's the modern way: Use computers and mechanisms to steal elections, and if you know the race of a voter, you know the color of their vote.

Found at the ever-dazzling Sideshow.

{ 12:06 PM }

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W wants small businessmen to get a Hummer. Inefficiently fueled by war plunder, the biggest SUVs are proposed to become increasingly tax deductible (The New York Times), thanks to the maniacal generosity of the "stimulus package":

DETROIT, Jan. 20 — The Bush administration's economic plan would increase by 50 percent or more the deductions that small-business owners can take right away on the biggest sport utility vehicles and pickups.

The plan would mean small businesses could immediately deduct the entire price of S.U.V.'s like the Hummer H2, the Lincoln Navigator and the Toyota Land Cruiser, even if the vehicles were loaded with every available option. Or a business owner, taking full advantage, could buy a BMW X5 sport utility vehicle for a few hundred dollars more than a Pontiac Bonneville sedan, after the immediate tax deductions were factored in.

Tax experts and environmentalists say the plan would provide incentives for businesses to choose the biggest gas-guzzling trucks because it takes several years to depreciate the cost of passenger cars and smaller sport utility vehicles.

Conservation appears not to be today's theme. Neither is rationality.

{ 11:10 AM }

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On the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, compare and contrast two opinions: Peggy Noonan's (this link will not be valid very long) and that of Get Your War On's David Rees (scroll down to the last two panels on the page), who takes apart the White House's National Sanctity of Human Life Day (January 20, 2002).

I can't stop shaking, I'm so pissed off. The Lord's ways are becoming less mysterious and more insane with each passing day.

{ 10:39 AM }

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Roboletter III: "Demonstrating genuine leadership" over and over and over and.... Gary Stock of UnBlinking catalogs the copycat antics of the White House's most gullible me-too propagandists with 37 appearances of the same letter in newspaper editors' in-boxes from Hawaii to Florida. (The practice is called astroturfing, as in grass-roots politics, but fake.)

Gary also provides other parrot letters (besides the most recent "demonstrating genuine leadership" stimulus package roboletter) to show how widespread the practice is.

The next logical Googlfication would be to identify and expose the individual frauds and miscreants themselves. For example, as Gary demonstrates, Hawaiian Dirk M. Maurins wrote (I mean, didn't write) not one but two fake letters. This little party apparatchik works at a place called Select Technical Staffing and is a member of the Association of Information Technology Professionals, Honolulu Chapter. Google "Dirk M. Maurins" yourself if you don't believe me.

If we can't stop the astroturfers (and the co-dependent lazy-ass editors who enable them), we can at least shame them for being such mindless robots in public places.

{ 3:18 PM }

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There are other ways of viewing the world, such as this one by an Australocentrist named McArthur.

My office chair faces south, so this feels intuitively correct to me. I'm in Chicago; New York is on my left; Tokyo is on my right.

{ 1:40 PM }

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For media watchdogs: an overview of FCC policymaking. Philip M. Napoli dissects the communications policy process as it relates the interests and values of people who don't always agree:

It is clear that this communications policymaking process was initiated long before the Commission began its formal ownership review in 2001. That being said, the process has now reached the stage where the Commission soon will issue its decisions –- decisions that are the product of a variety of direct and indirect influences, the majority of which are a reflection of either political ideology or economic interest. Thus, in the end the key question is whether the Commission will issue decisions that effectively disentangle self-interest from the public interest. Those of us with no financial interest in the decision outcome, but who are instead concerned with maintaining the diverse marketplace of ideas that best serves the political and social values inherent in our pluralist democracy and culture, certainly hope that they do.

Emphasis changed from the original, which you can see at Poynter Online.

{ 1:17 PM }

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"Since 1997, the C.I.A. said, Pakistan had been sharing sophisticated technology, warhead-design information, and weapons-testing data with the Pyongyang regime. Pakistan, one of the Bush Administration's important allies in the war against terrorism, was helping North Korea build the bomb."
—Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker.

Found at War in Context.

{ 2:07 PM }

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Maybe you had read something, or maybe you heard someone on television talk about how the lawyers are fleecing all of us, and then maybe you learned that the White House has proposed a $250,000 cap on medical malpractice suits under the rubric of tort reform, and maybe you thought, "Yeah, that's a good idea. Damn lawyers are ruining this country with bogus lawsuits."

That's when you should remember Linda McDougal, who was the recipient of an unneeded double mastectomy:

Dr. Daniel Foley, medical director of United Hospital, told a local television station on Friday that the hospital had made changes to ensure that "this kind of mix-up would never happen again."

In other words, "Gosh, we're sorry."

Now imagine that Linda McDougal is your mother, or your wife, or your daughter, or you.

The White House plan proposes a maximum of $125,000 per surgically removed healthy breast of Linda McDougal's.

Besides its inhumane favoritism of the interests of doctors and hospitals over those of patients, this disastrous plan would exacerbate the medical liability crisis by removing economic accountability — a pet Republican catchphrase — from medical practice.

We all need to stop thinking in terms of the spoon-fed soundbites emanating from the White House, and think more in terms of actual lives being affected by policy. Or, rather, actual lives being permanently damaged by poor policy.

Postscript #1: There are many excellent posts on tort reform and medical liability at The Bloviator.

Postscript #2: Dwight Meredith at PLA articulates this issue in useful and comparative detail, and even suggests a new cap.

{ 12:17 PM }

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Lisa English of RuminateThis has written a thorough and thoughtful overview of the influence media owners hold over Congress, and how the whole rancid mess prevents true campaign finance reform.

Our own recent thoughts on some of the problems of American media ownership are here.

{ 11:02 AM }

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Honor Dr. King — remember the 2000 election. Scoobie screens Unprecedented:

Unprecedented examines the aftermath in Florida after the 2000 Presidential election. Long-time readers of this site won’t find anything surprising in the film. However, most Americans don’t know about the thousands of mostly African-American voters whose voting rights were taken away in the phony felony purge by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush; I can think of no other way to honor Dr. King than to buy the video.

And also to remember how the stupendously underachieving W got into Yale ahead of plenty of more deserving African-Americans whose only lack of achievement was in not coming from a whiter, richer, more socially lubricated family.

{ 10:33 AM }

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Todd Haynes's Far from Heaven achieves an almost perfect balance of script, cinematography, casting, art direction, production design, and direction to create incredible tension in one of the most sexually charged films ever — and no one takes off their clothes. Astonishing on several levels.

Skimble says: 9 out of 10.

{ 9:31 AM }

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Antiwar to pro-war protest, final score: 200,000 to 50.

Demand a recount! I can't believe they had 50! (From The Washington Post.)

{ 6:04 PM }

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