Wednesday, May 15th, 2019
DAVID EDWARDS, - Raw Story
Stephan: You know my opinion of Monsanto and the recent California judgment against them. Here is how that all played on Fox.
Andrew Napolitano speaks with Stuart Varney
Credit: Fox Business/screen grab
Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney on Tuesday lashed out at a California court after it awarded more than $2 billionto a couple who accused Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer of causing cancer.
In a rant on his Fox Business show, Varney insisted that the cancer victims had been awarded too much money.
“I’m going to call that a travesty of justice,” Varney explained. “Get your case in front of a sympathetic jury and who knows how much money you can walk away with. But is it justice?”
“There’s more [Monsanto] lawsuits to come,” the host warned. “The German company which makes Roundup faces absolute ruin.”
According to Varney, environmental activists — who he refers to as “the greens” — dislike the way Roundup only works with genetically modified crops.
“It’s like blasphemy to them!” Varney griped. “See what’s happening here? A heavy dose of environmental politics. If the plaintiffs can pin a cancer verdict on Roundup, they can take down the world’s biggest gene modifier and that’s what […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2019
Stephan: Here's how the christofascist billionaire propaganda machine works. Couldn't be clearer.
Credit: Fox News Radio
A couple weeks ago we discussed the ongoing Koch effort to fight electric vehicle tax credits, and the many debunkings of their “factual” and rhetorical justifications. So excuse us for retreading slightly old ground, but we would be remiss not to point out the latest and starkest example of how the Koch network creates its own reality.
On Thursday, the Daily Caller “reported” on a letter sent to Congress opposing electric vehicle tax credits, signed by a bunch of conservative groups. Now the story makes it seem as if it’s a broad coalition of conservative groups presenting a credible argument, independent of any possible profit motive.
That is, of course, hardly the case.
As Ben Jarvey at DeSmog pointed out in his debunking, the Caller’s story went live at 5:10am- well before the letter could have possibly been delivered and press notified. So it seems that the Koch groups coordinated with the Koch-funded media outlet on the release of a letter filled with Koch talking points, in order to advance the Koch’s argument for a political change Koch Industries will benefit from.
This is one of the […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2019
Stephan: Fifty six percent of Americans are against teaching Arabic numerals to American children. Can you believe that in MMXIX such ignorance exists? Or is it just American racism? Or both together?
Not to be pedantic but actually, the notation system was developed in India sometime during the 1st to 4th century CE not Arabia.
Who knows exactly what a new poll says about mathematics in America, but the reactions to a recent poll on the topic are a little alarming.
When CivicScience, a Pittsburgh-based market research firm, polled more than 3,200 Americans on the issue of mathematics instruction last week, 56% of the respondents said Arabic numerals should not be taught in American schools; 29% said it should be part of the curriculum, while 16% offered no opinion.
Did they realize we’ve been using Arabic numerals for just about everything under the sun since the founding […]
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Jake Johnson, - truthdig/Common Dreams
Stephan: It is in the interest of the country as a whole, as well as each individual in that country to have universal healthcare. Why? Because it makes for a healthier more productive society, and because it is much much cheaper. When someone tells you we can't afford to implement universal healthcare you can be sure they are either willfully ignorant or just outright lying. No other nation in the world pays anywhere close to what healthcare costs the people of the United States. And all the money produces what? Amongst the worse healthcare in the developed work, we rank 37th to be exact. But boy oh boy is American healthcare profitable for those who own it, which is why I think it should be called an illness profit system, not a healthcare system.
An election is coming up so we can be sure that healthcare is going to be an issue. And just as surely as the sun sets in the West, you can be sure the liars and profiteers will be out in force to protect their money machines. This story is an example confirming the truth of what I have just said, QED.
Medicare-for-all supporters take to the streets of Los Angeles
Credit: Molly Adams / Flickr
As nurses, doctors, and ordinary Americans ramped up their nationwide effort to build support for Medicare for All at the grassroots level and in Congress, staffers for some of America’s top Democratic lawmakers reportedly attended a “luxury” retreat hosted by corporate lobbyists working to undermine the growing push for single-payer.
According to The Intercept‘s Lee Fang, who first reported on the swanky gathering on Saturday, “around four dozen senior congressional staffers decamped for a weekend of relaxation and discussion at Salamander Resort & Spa” on April 5-7 in Middleburg, Virginia.
Hosted by the group Center Forward—whose board, Fang noted, “is made up almost entirely of registered corporate lobbyists”—the retreat was attended by the chiefs of staff for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), as well as many other staffers for centrist Democrats and Republicans.
Wendell Potter, an insurance industry executive-turned-whistleblower, told The Intercept that any “congressional staffer serious about finding solutions wouldn’t touch that retreat with a 10-foot pole.”
The gathering, […]
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Stephan: Your health, your families health, is held hostage every day to the rapacious greed of the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps the scummiest corporate sector in the American economy, and it is a very competitive competition.
A majority of the health care industry’s profits in the first three months of 2019 went to the top 10 companies, and 9 of those 10 companies were pharmaceutical manufacturers, according to Axios’ quarterly analysis of industry financial reports.
The bottom line: Quarter after quarter after quarter shows drugmakers continue to wield the highest profit margins in the industry even though the political and public uproar over drug prices has somewhat dampened their stocks.
Between the lines: Nothing has fundamentally changed for drug companies even though the Trump administration is tinkering with ideas on how to lower what people pay for their prescriptions.
- Drug companies are charging more for their patent-protected medicines at prices that are well above what it costs to make them, and/or they are selling more of their drugs overall.
- The insulin made by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, Merck’s cancer drug Keytruda, and Pfizer’s breast cancer pill Ibrance epitomize this growth of sales and prices.
By the numbers: Investors have soured a bit on health care, including pharma, but the numbers don’t […]
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