Thursday, December 14, 2006
Menorah Madness
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Cell Phone Emergency Number
Helping Rescuers
In addition to the individual putting an emergency number into the phone, it is important to train emergency workers to look at a cell phone for emergency phone numbers.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
God is OK but religion may not be
Why Mix God With Religion
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Letter to the editor:
Regarding the proposed city improvements
I am strongly in favor of the City of Riverside improving the quality of life for its residents. I find fault though with the proposed sources of revenue. For example, borrowing from the electric and sewer funds will prevent necessary repairs and upgrading to infrastructure and will require raising significant money in the future as these needs develop.
The parcel tax is another problem. For example, why should a single family home owner pay the same amount in additional tax as the owner of a 100 unit apartment complex? There are more tenants that will use the improvements in the apartment complex than a single family home owner would use. Wouldn’t it be more equitable for all citizens of
As usual, the players in city hall have taken the easy way out and are again sticking it to the single family homeowner and avoiding taxing the big commercial interests in town.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Back home from trip
Glad to be back but lots of weeds to get rid of at home.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Fighting Terrorism. Each life is important
I think that author of the letter on "Israeli Aggression" may have the right idea. After all, how important is the life of one soldier? Using the author’s logic that invasion of your country by a terrorist group is not important, why is the United States spending lives and treasure fighting the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan? Just as we recognize that the life of every soldier and civilian of the United States is very important, why shouldn't Israel?
Regarding Israel response to consistent attacks by terrorist groups from Gaza and the West Bank, I maintain that they are justified and necessary to protect Israeli citizens. If the "innocent" Palestinian citizens want peace, they can eliminate the terrorist thugs within their cities and villages by cooperating with the moderate authorities trying to get rid of them. As long as the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank continue to harbor suicide bombers and rocket firings, they are vulnerable to retaliation by Israel. I am sorry that "innocent" lives are being harmed by the Israeli response, but if there were no suicide bombers or rocket firings, there would be no Israeli response.
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Need more poll workers
In response to Dan Bernstein
Is there a shortage of poll workers?
Why does the county have difficulty in getting people to work at the polls? I have volunteered as a poll worker for several years and I want to offer my observations.
The job as a poll worker starts the night before election day for setup and at 6:30 am during election day. It continues till 9:30 pm for all the paper work to be completed (polls close at 8:00 pm). County employees that work at the polls receive a full days pay plus $65. Non-county employees receive $65 or $4.33 for 15 plus hours work. I wonder how many more non-county volunteers there would be if the county paid them a decent wage. I think $150 per day would be a fair wage that would attract sufficient non-county volunteers. If a day laborer can receive a decent wage, why can't volunteer poll workers?
Friday, May 05, 2006
Local Traffic Problem
Traffic Congestion
Riverside will be better off by annexing the areas under consideration. Not only will it benefit from the income provided by the growth of housing and commercial, but it will be better able to control the growth of traffic generated from the annexed areas. Now concerning traffic growth. The city is planning to widen Allesandro Blvd. in anticipation of additional traffic as well as accommodating existing traffic. What is going to happen when all the cars arrive at the intersection of Allesandro, Arlington, Chicago, and Central Avenue. The current situation, with cars backing up during rush hour, must be producing enormous quantities of pollution as well as wasting lots of gas.
Wouldn’t it be more efficient to provide better access to the freeways before Allesandro is widened? For example, widen Arlington and Central Avenues. Then at least the bottleneck at the corners of Allesandro and Arlington/Central/Chicago will not be as severe. By the way, what happened to the Overlook bypass that would divert traffic from Allesandro to the 91 Freeway? When will the city traffic planning department discuss proposed concepts with the residents that will be affected before they finalize their plans? After all, the residents probably know more about the problems then hired consultants.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Give me 10 good men and I will give you 10,000 more
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Where is the beef?
Well, here we are. Oil prices doubled and we are all the poorer. Good job Dick. Even if we put the country into an inflation-recession, your buddies will count their money on the way to the Florida Gold Coast.
Big oil is not going to solve this countries energy problem, not if it hurts their profits. We need a rational energy policy that considers, renewable sources, nuclear, coal gasification and deep drilling on land and in the continental shelf. And probably, most of all we need to change the leadership in the White House.
Monday, April 03, 2006
How many lives? How long do we stay in Iraq? LTE
How many, How long
The United States has been at war in Iraq for over 3 years. Where are we? How many lives and how much treasure are we willing to expend to pacify a people that don’t want us. We have become a colonial power trying to subdue the natives so that we can impose our flavor of democracy on them. From my knowledge of history, no country was able to force a people into submission over long periods of time. Yes, people have been forced to submit, but they eventually seek freedom. Look to Russia as an example.
Our government is trying to impose our form of democracy on three groups of people that don’t want to be united. There is no basis for unity since they have different religions, and tribal relations. The only way the British were able to create Iraq was by force and occupation. Is the United States willing to become an occupying power? I don’t think so.
The question to ask is why are we there. Is it for the oil potential? If it is, we could eliminate the need for Iraq oil by conservation and increasing the gas mileage from our transportation system. We could convert coal into fuel. Is it to settle a political score? If it is, we have declared that we won the war. Lets move on. Is it to stop terrorism? If it is, we haven’t done a very good job, as most of the terrorists still are able to threaten and kill on their schedule.
Why is the administration continuing to lose lives and give away treasure? I think it is ego and afraid to admit that they made a mistake. They are using the war in Iraq as a tool for winning domestic elections by shifting the focus from the real problems in America such as lack of jobs and opportunity, poor education, illegal immigration, lack of competitive manufacturing capability, high cost of medical care; local communities, cities, and states having to assume the burden for the health and welfare of illegal immigrants when it is the responsibility of the federal government to control immigration.
My conclusion is that we should get out of Iraq as soon as our troops can be safely removed. We should let the people of Iraq decide on the form of government they want and should fund their country with the oil revenue that they are receiving.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Sinners and Souls
It is interesting that Christian philosophy believes that all men are sinners in need of a savior. If that is true, why does anyone bother to be good? We might as well all act as terrorists and criminals abusing our fellow man, since no matter how evil man is; he will be saved in the after life. This illogical philosophy makes no sense to me. I would suspect that if there were a God, it would want man to behave not as a sinner but as a decent human being treating his fellow man with respect and decency. Man is not born as a sinner and certainly need not be one during his life.
The atheist may have the right idea. If there is a God, it must look with disappointment on Christian philosophy that only sees bad in man and only after death does man become good.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Are drug companies ripping us off
Is The High Cost of Drugs Justified?
The following article illustrates the schemes drug companies are using to raise prices. The drug company spokesman have been claiming that they need high drug prices to pay for research and development of new drugs. Well, that is far from the truth. Here are examples of drug companies pricing drugs on the basis of what the traffic will bear. I think the government should institute price controls to keep drug costs within reason and prevent medicare from going bankrupt. What do you think?
NEW YORK TIMES
March 12, 2006
A Cancer Drug's Big Price Rise Is Cause for Concern
On Feb. 3, Joyce Elkins filled a prescription for a two-week supply of nitrogen mustard, a decades-old cancer drug used to treat a rare form of lymphoma. The cost was $77.50.
On Feb. 17, Ms. Elkins, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in Georgetown, Tex., returned to her pharmacy for a refill. This time, following a huge increase in the wholesale price of the drug, the cost was $548.01.
Ms. Elkins's insurance does not cover nitrogen mustard, which she must take for at least the next six months at a cost that will now total nearly $7,000. She and her husband, who works for the Texas Department of Transportation, are paying for the medicine by spending less on utilities and food, she said.
The medicine, also known as Mustargen, was developed more than 60 years ago and is among the oldest chemotherapy drugs. For decades, it has been blended into an ointment by pharmacists and used as a topical treatment for a cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, a form of cancer that mainly affects the skin.
Last August, Merck, which makes Mustargen, sold the rights to manufacture and market it and Cosmegen, another cancer drug, to Ovation Pharmaceuticals, a six-year-old company in Deerfield, Ill., that buys slow-selling medicines from big pharmaceutical companies.
The two drugs are used by fewer than 5,000 patients a year and had combined sales of about $1 million in 2004.
Now Ovation has raised the wholesale price of Mustargen roughly tenfold and that of Cosmegen even more, according to several pharmacists and patients.
Sean Nolan, vice president of commercial development for Ovation, said that the price increases were needed to invest in manufacturing facilities for the drugs. He said the company was petitioning insurers to obtain coverage for patients.
The increase has stunned doctors, who say it starkly illustrates two trends in the pharmaceutical industry: the soaring price of cancer medicines and the tendency for those prices to have little relation to the cost of developing or making the drugs.
Genentech, for example, has indicated it will effectively double the price of its colon cancer drug Avastin, to about $100,000, when Avastin's use is expanded to breast and lung cancer patients. As with Avastin, nothing about nitrogen mustard is changing but the price.
The increases have caused doctors to question Ovation's motive — and left lymphoma patients wondering how they will afford Mustargen, which is sometimes not covered by insurance, because the drug's label does not indicate that it can be used as an ointment. When given intravenously to treat Hodgkin's disease, its other primary use, the drug is generally covered by insurance.
"Nitrogen mustard has been around forever," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. "There's nothing that I am aware of in the treatment environment that would explain an increase in the cost of the drug."
Dr. David H. Johnson, a Vanderbilt University oncologist who is a former president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said he had contacted Ovation to ask its reasons for raising Mustargen's price.
"I'd like to have some evidence from them that it actually costs them X amount, so that the pricing makes sense," Dr. Johnson said.
"It's unfortunate that a price adjustment had to occur," Mr. Nolan said. "Investment had not been made in these products for years."
Ovation, a privately held company, also needs the money to conduct research on several new drugs for rare diseases, Mr. Nolan said.
He acknowledged that Merck still made Mustargen and Cosmegen, an antibiotic that is used to treat a rare childhood kidney cancer, for Ovation. He said he was not sure when Ovation would begin producing the drugs, and a Merck spokesman said that Merck would continue to provide the drugs to Ovation as long as necessary.
But people who analyze drug pricing say they see the Mustargen situation as emblematic of an industry trend of basing drug prices on something other than the underlying costs. After years of defending high prices as necessary to cover the cost of research or production, industry executives increasingly point to the intrinsic value of their medicines as justification for prices.
Last year, in his book "A Call to Action," Henry A. McKinnell, the chairman of Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, wrote that drug prices were not driven by research spending or production costs.
"A number of factors go into the mix" of pricing, he wrote. "Those factors consider cost of business, competition, patent status, anticipated volume, and, most important, our estimation of the income generated by sales of the product."
In some drug categories, such as cholesterol-lowering treatments, many drugs compete, keeping prices relatively low. But when a medicine does not have a good substitute, its maker can charge almost any price. In 2003, Abbott Laboratories raised the price of Norvir, an AIDS drug introduced in 1996, from $54 to $265 a month. AIDS groups protested, but Abbott refused to rescind the increase.
And once a company sets a price, government agencies, private insurers and patients have little choice but to pay it. The Food & Drug Administration does not regulate prices, and Medicare is banned from considering price in deciding whether to cover treatments.
While private insurers can negotiate prices, they have limited leeway to exclude drugs from coverage based on price, said C. Lee Blansett, a partner at DaVinci Healthcare Partners, which works with drug makers on pricing and marketing.
"Price is simply not included in whether or not to cover a drug," Mr. Blansett said.
The result has been soaring prices for some drug classes, notably cancer treatments. In 1992, Bristol-Myers Squibb faced protests for its plans to charge $4,000 a year for Taxol, a breast cancer treatment.
Now, most new cancer treatments are priced at $25,000 to $50,000 annually. In some cases, companies are pushing through substantial price increases on already-expensive drugs.
Last year, Genentech raised the price of Tarceva, a lung-cancer drug, by about 30 percent, to $32,000 for a year's treatment.
In an interview last month, Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, the president of product development for Genentech, said that the company had raised Tarceva's price because the drug works better than Genentech had anticipated.
"Tarceva was a more powerful and more active agent than what we understood at the time of launch, and so more valuable," she said. In an environment of soaring cancer drug costs, Mustargen's previous price was a comparative bargain, giving Ovation the opportunity to raise it substantially, said Dr. Richard Hoppe, a professor of radiation oncology at Stanford University and an expert in treating cutaneous lymphoma.
Mustargen's patent protection expired many years ago, so any company can make it. But because its sales are tiny, no drug maker has invested in a generic version.
"There's only one company that makes the drug, and they can decide what it's worth," Dr. Hoppe said.
Nitrogen mustard was initially tested as a chemical weapon. Its properties as an anti-cancer agent were discovered more than 60 years ago; today, it has been superseded by newer, less toxic medicines, and it is a niche product, with sales of only $546,000 in 2004, according to IMS Health, a market research firm.
Still, Dr. Hoppe and other oncologists call nitrogen mustard an effective treatment for cutaneous lymphoma, which initially appears as a rash but can turn deadly if it spreads inside the body. Some patients need only tiny amounts of the ointment, but others must apply it every day across large areas of their bodies.
For instance, Ms. Elkins has a severe case of lymphoma and must cover much of her body with Mustargen each day, a process that requires her to refill her prescription every two weeks. She said that the ointment was working, so she and her husband would find a way to pay for it.
Mr. Nolan of Ovation said that his company intended to work to improve access to insurance coverage for Mustargen. But Ovation has just begun to petition insurers to cover the drug. Meanwhile, patients are paying Mustargen's new, higher price out of pocket.
This is not the first time that Ovation has sharply raised the price of a drug it owns. In 2003, the company bought Panhematin, a treatment for a rare enzymatic disease called porphyria, from Abbott Laboratories. While Abbott still produces Panhematin, Ovation raised Panhematin's price, which had been $230 a dose, to $1,900, according to Desiree Lyon, executive director of the American Porphyria Foundation.
"It was a major increase," Ms. Lyon said. But she said that Ovation had worked to improve insurance coverage for Panhematin and to find ways for patients to get the drug even if they could not afford it.
Ovation also financially supports the porphyria foundation in its efforts to increase awareness of the disease and of Panhematin as a treatment, she said.
But many patients who rely on expensive drugs are stuck in a bind. Don Schare of Saratoga, Calif., said he paid $1,260 last month for 200 grams of nitrogen mustard cream, about 10 times what he paid for his prior prescription.
Mr. Schare, 69, said he was covered by the new Medicare Part D drug program and by supplemental insurance from AARP, but that neither of his plans covered Mustargen.
Jeffrey Malavasic, 58, a retired railroad worker in Florence, Ore., said he had decided to fill only half of his Mustargen prescription when he learned of the price increase. He used the drug sparingly in the past and will be even more frugal, he said.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
A voice of reason
For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats
By JOHN M. BRODER New York Times
Published: March 11, 2006
LOS ANGELES, March 10 — Three weeks ago, Dr. Wafa Sultan was a largely unknown Syrian-American psychiatrist living outside Los Angeles, nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.
“I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book.”- DR. WAFA SULTAN
Today, thanks to an unusually blunt and provocative interview on Al Jazeera television on Feb. 21, she is an international sensation, hailed as a fresh voice of reason by some, and by others as a heretic and infidel who deserves to die.
In the interview, which has been viewed on the Internet more than a million times and has reached the e-mail of hundreds of thousands around the world, Dr. Sultan bitterly criticized the Muslim clerics, holy warriors and political leaders who she believes have distorted the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran for 14 centuries.
She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.
Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private.
"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.
Dr. Sultan, who is 47, wears a prim sweater and skirt, with fleece-lined slippers and heavy stockings. Her eyes and hair are jet black and her modest manner belies her intense words: "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."
Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."
She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."
She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."
Her views caught the ear of the American Jewish Congress, which has invited her to speak in May at a conference in Israel. "We have been discussing with her the importance of her message and trying to devise the right venue for her to address Jewish leaders," said Neil B. Goldstein, executive director of the organization.
She is probably more welcome in Tel Aviv than she would be in Damascus. Shortly after the broadcast, clerics in Syria denounced her as an infidel. One said she had done Islam more damage than the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, a wire service reported.
DR. SULTAN is "working on a book that — if it is published — it's going to turn the Islamic world upside down."
"I have reached the point that doesn't allow any U-turn. I have no choice. I am questioning every single teaching of our holy book."
The working title is, "The Escaped Prisoner: When God Is a Monster."
Dr. Sultan grew up in a large traditional Muslim family in Banias, Syria, a small city on the Mediterranean about a two-hour drive north of Beirut. Her father was a grain trader and a devout Muslim, and she followed the faith's strictures into adulthood.
But, she said, her life changed in 1979 when she was a medical student at the University of Aleppo, in northern Syria. At that time, the radical Muslim Brotherhood was using terrorism to try to undermine the government of President Hafez al-Assad. Gunmen of the Muslim Brotherhood burst into a classroom at the university and killed her professor as she watched, she said.
"They shot hundreds of bullets into him, shouting, 'God is great!' " she said. "At that point, I lost my trust in their god and began to question all our teachings. It was the turning point of my life, and it has led me to this present point. I had to leave. I had to look for another god."
She and her husband, who now goes by the Americanized name of David, laid plans to leave for the United States. Their visas finally came in 1989, and the Sultans and their two children (they have since had a third) settled in with friends in Cerritos, Calif., a prosperous bedroom community on the edge of Los Angeles County.
After a succession of jobs and struggles with language, Dr. Sultan has completed her American medical licensing, with the exception of a hospital residency program, which she hopes to do within a year. David operates an automotive-smog-check station. They bought a home in the Los Angeles area and put their children through local public schools. All are now American citizens.
BUT even as she settled into a comfortable middle-class American life, Dr. Sultan's anger burned within. She took to writing, first for herself, then for an Islamic reform Web site called Annaqed (The Critic), run by a Syrian expatriate in Phoenix.
An angry essay on that site by Dr. Sultan about the Muslim Brotherhood caught the attention of Al Jazeera, which invited her to debate an Algerian cleric on the air last July.
In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."
Her remarks set off debates around the globe and her name began appearing in Arabic newspapers and Web sites. But her fame grew exponentially when she appeared on Al Jazeera again on Feb. 21, an appearance that was translated and widely distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, known as Memri.
Memri said the clip of her February appearance had been viewed more than a million times.
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions or a clash of civilizations," Dr. Sultan said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality."
She said she no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said.
The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.
Dr. Sultan said she took those words as a formal fatwa, a religious condemnation. Since then, she said, she has received numerous death threats on her answering machine and by e-mail.
One message said: "Oh, you are still alive? Wait and see." She received an e-mail message the other day, in Arabic, that said, "If someone were to kill you, it would be me."
Dr. Sultan said her mother, who still lives in Syria, is afraid to contact her directly, speaking only through a sister who lives in Qatar. She said she worried more about the safety of family members here and in Syria than she did for her own.
"I have no fear," she said. "I believe in my message. It is like a million-mile journey, and I believe I have walked the first and hardest 10 miles."
Mad Cow Desease and Govertment Ineptness
Here is another mess Ollie.
Is our government doing its job in protecting us or is it more worried
about the politics of some contributors? Here is another example of
"don't see-don't tell". It's time for the impeachment of King George.
He is leading a party of politicians that are only interested in feathering
their own nests. They are not concerned about how much of a mess
they leave behind for the rest of us to clean up.
Editorial from USA Today
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Mad cow cases met with shrug instead of safeguards
When bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as mad cow
disease, first surfaced in the United States in 2003, cattle ranchers
and government officials shrugged it off as a cow infected in
Canada before being imported here.
When a native-born cow tested positive this June, they explained
it away once again, saying the animal was infected before cattle
feed restrictions were put in place in 1997.
nd when a third possible domestic case surfaced last week, they
hastened to note that the 12-year-old cow hadn't entered the
food chain.
The story is always the same. Consumers are urged not to worry
about the chance of a major outbreak of the disease, like the
one that occurred in Europe a decade ago. They are assured
they will be protected by the practices of the cattle industry
and the policies of responsible government agencies.
In fact, those practices and policies are considered so
ineffective that 64 nations have total or partial bans on U.S.
beef products. And the two agencies charged with ensuring
a safe beef supply, the Agriculture Department (USDA)
and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have
become as much a part of the industry's public relations
team as they are public health watchdogs. Agriculture
Secretary Mike Johanns' response to each episode seems
to be to tell everyone he's going to have beef for dinner.
This inadequate oversight, resulting from short-sighted
cattle industry pressure, forces American consumers to
buy the beef that others will not. It's also counterproductive
for the industry itself, which would like diners worldwide
to think of its products as top of the line.
As the Agriculture Department investigates the latest
possible case of the disease - results are expected this
week — it has reaffirmed how lackadaisical and insufficient
its testing practices are. The FDA, meanwhile, oversees
cattle feed policies so riddled with loopholes they would
be laughable if they weren't so nauseating.
Mad cow disease is spread when cows, which are herbivores
by nature, are fed parts of cattle and other ruminant
(cud-chewing) animals. It can be prevented from spreading
to humans by careful monitoring of what cattle eat and by
effective, timely testing.
At the moment, American consumers have neither protection:
•Feed loopholes. In 1997, the FDA imposed a so-called ban
on the feeding of ruminant protein to cows. But that policy has
two enormous exemptions. Weaning calves may drink cattle
blood as a milk substitute. And feed may include the waste
from chicken coop floors as a protein supplement. This waste
poses a risk not because of its many unsavory elements,
including feces and feathers, but because FDA officials estimate
that up to 30% of it can be uneaten chicken feed — which
routinely contains beef.
•"Keystone Kops" testing. The brain tissue of the cow
that is currently being tested was first collected in April.
The investigation was delayed because the veterinarian
forgot to send the sample to the laboratory. The sample
that tested positive in June had originally been cleared
by USDA last year. Subsequent tests were ordered by a
suspicious internal investigator, showing how inadequate
the department's testing is.
The industry is right to argue that the chances of anyone
contracting the human form of the disease are quite low.
But the issue isn't the overall risk, but whether the
government and industry are taking reasonable steps
to ensure it is as low as it can be.
By that standard, consumers are right to have a beef.
The feed loopholes need to be closed. Quicker, more accurate
testing processes need to be fast-tracked.
Only then will Americans be able to enjoy their summer
barbecues without having to worry that eating a hamburger
might lead to a fatal brain-wasting disease.
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Lobbyists and security
It’s nice to know that the Republicans and their lobbyists feel that the security of the United States is secondary to the money they can receive. The evidence shows that it is the Republican Party and their loyalists that are willing to let potential security risks take over operations that can provide open doors to terrorists.
Homeland Security reports that our ports are a porous sieve allowing anything or anyone into the country through our ports. It is five years since 9/11 and the Bush administration has fallen down on protecting the US. Why does anyone think the Republican Party and it's titular leader King George can solve the security problem.
Remember, its the same committees that reviewed the DP World's control of US port issue, that identified weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and let us to the debacle in Iraq that is costing us untold lives and treasure.
Should we worry about foreign investment being at risk as some experts claim? No, if it's an attractive business proposition, the foreign money will still be willing to purchase American businesses. Profit and return on investment guide business decisions. The concern about foreign investment is a smoke screen to deflect opposition to handing over potential security to a country that had a hand in supporting terrorism. Since the Emirates are a kingdom and vulnerable to being overthrown by the same mid east forces that are operating in Iraq and Iran why aren't we concerned?
Let us rid the country of inept, corrupt, and money hungry politicians. Let us start by impeaching King George.
From stardust we came and to stardust we will return.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Christian Evangelist and Muslim Fundamentalists
What about those millions that don't want to worship Jesus or Allah? The world would be better off if all religious extremists would mind their own little world and not bother the rest of us.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
God and the Devil in Washington DC
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Eminent - domain Good Idea?
Letter to the editor Press enterprise 3/7/2006
Eminent - domain Good Idea?
I am not in favor of using eminent domain to take private property from an owner to give to a private developer. However, in the case of the property opposite the Riverside Plaza on Merrill Avenue, I am in favor of the Redevelopment Authority purchasing the property by use of eminent - domain to redevelop the property. If the owners of the property are unable or unwilling to remove what I think is both an eyesore as well as a health hazard, then the Redevelopment Authority should use eminent - domain to purchase the property for redevelopment.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Coming in second and Saudi oil
Letter to the editor February 26, 2006
Coming in second.
We didn’t lose, we weren’t beaten we just came in second. This seems to be the rallying cry of the Bush administration. It seems everything they touch comes in second, Iraq, Katrina, corruption, and now our dependence on Saudi oil.
Saudi oil is very venerable to disruption or destruction. We have seen the first attack and it failed. Next time the attackers will use a different strategy, maybe long range rockets that can’t be protected by wire fences, or maybe incendiary balloons like those the Japanese used in WW2. The point is that our supply is extremely vulnerable. We should be creating a Manhattan type project to make us independent of foreign oil. The government should be pulling out all the stops including better mileage on transportation, nuclear energy for stationary power plants, converting waste biomass to liquid fuel, massive wind farms in the plains states to provide electric power, drilling for oil along the continental shelf, building power plants using coal gasification at the mine head instead of transporting coal to distant power plants, better electrical infrastructure to allow more efficient power distribution from the generator to users. This is but a short list and if it sounds familiar, it is many of the same ideas created during the last oil crisis.
Unless we do something soon, the United States may have won the race, but it will come in second.
President Bush, get rid of your advisers and get some people on your staff that are interested in the welfare of the United States and not on how much power they can control for themselves.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Dumb and Dumber
From Press Enterprise 2/17/06
Duh! Who forgot to do their homework? Eight leading citizens of Riverside County (including Marion Ashley-County Supervisor) go to Washington to lobby for a program that was cancelled in February 2005. Can they explain who they were going to visit and why? Did their contact know that the program was cancelled or did they ask? The trip cost $10,000. Who paid for it and how much did the taxpayers pay?
Will their next trip be to the North Pole to lobby Santa Claus?
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Pity the poor oil companies
Considering the extraordinarily high profits that the oil companies are producing as a consequence of the high price of gasoline and natural gas, they still need more. Instead of the oil companies using the additional profits to build refineries in the US, explore for additional sources of petroleum in the US, build additional pipelines to better distribute product, they are buying bigger and better lobbyists and distributing more money to congress (the best congress money can buy).
The administration supports the corporate donors and individuals who are willing to buy political capital.
