truesee's Blog

Wednesday, January 26th 2011, 1:59 PM

Ward for NewsKisha Jones had no criminal history and a life-long record of helping disabled kids, her lawyer said.

A crazed Brooklyn mom who tried to forcibly abort her cheating hubby's love child by poisoning his mistress cut a deal with prosecutors Wednesday that could have out of prison in less than two years.

Kisha Jones, 40, was seven months pregnant when she tricked Monique Hunter, 26, into taking an abortion-inducing medication on October 2009.

Jones' hubby, Anthony Jones, had knocked up both his wife and mistress around the same time, said defense lawyer Barry Turner.

"My client was in the last trimester of her pregnancy and was acting irrationally," he said outside court.

"I guess her hormones were out of whack."

Turner said accused Hunter of taunting his client,  leaving phone messages with details of her three-year affair - and claiming Jones' man  would soon leave her.

Jones had no criminal history and a life-long record of helping disabled kids, and deserved a break, Turner said.

She was under mounting pressure expecting her fourth child and "she acted in a manner that wasn't consistent with her personality," the lawyer said.

Jones admitted that, using a forged prescription and phone number-disguising software, she called Hunter and got her to take cytotec, causing her to go into early  labor.

She was also accused of then trying to kill the premature newborn in  the maternity ward and later impersonating a hospital exec to try getting the baby off a ventilator -  but those attempted murder charges were dropped.

Wearing a knitted pink hat, the spurned spouse pleaded Wednesday to a lesser charge of second-degree assault.

Prosecutors signed off on the plea deal "after careful consideration and only after talking to the victim in this case many times," assistant district attorney David Klestzick told the judge.

Jones will be sentenced to four years in the klink on Feb. 10 - but with time served and credit for good behavior, she could be out in a year and eight months.

Turner said that Jones and her husband are still married and that Anthony Jones cares for the children and is involved with his wife's legal defense.

It wasn't clear if he has contact with Hunter or her child.

"Everybody's fine," the lawyer said. "The baby is fine, Monique Hunter is fine."

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/26/ohio-mom-kelley-williams-bolar-jailed-for-lying-about-kids-scho/?icid=maing|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2|39432

Lawsuit filed in beef over Taco Bell "meat"

Gregory Karp

Tribune Newspapers

6:32 p.m. EST, January 24, 2011

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/videobeta/10e82fdb-bd47-486e-97a3-42b503e15517/News/South-Florida-residents-react-to-Taco-Bell-lawsuit

Fifteen special interest heavy hitters Democrats cannot ignore

Ron Arnold

Washington Examiner 

01/25/11 8:05 PM

These 15 individuals are among the most important power brokers with undeniable leverage to most shape campaigns, candidates and policies in the Democratic Party. There are other Democratic heavy hitters, to be sure, but these 15 are must-haves on any list of those who cannot be ignored.

Big Lawyers:

Briefs and Cash

Gary M. Paul

President, American Association for Justice (AAJ)

Come July, the American Association for Justice, the chief political and lobbying voice of the class-action trial lawyers industry, will be headed by Gary M. Paul, a name partner in a firm -- Waters, Kraus and Paul in Los Angeles -- that proudly claims to have filed more class action asbestos plaintiffs suits than any other firm in the country.

Members of Paul's firm contributed at least $366,000 to political candidates during the 2010 campaign, with more than $364,000 of the total going to Democratic candidates and committees. And the AAJ PAC is the biggest among all legal PACs, according to OpenSecrets.org, giving more than $2.7 million in 2010 contributions, all but $68,500 going to Democrats.

Master Arm Twister

Linda Lipsen

Chief Lobbyist/Executive Committee, American Association for Justice

When Members of Congress see Linda Lipsen coming, they know it's likely to involve a new request to do something or a request for a status report on the last request for a favor for the trial lawyers. And they often make requests.

Lipsen isn't personally a high dollar contributor -- having made only $15,500 in contributions to federal candidates in 2010, with all but $500 going to Democrats and Democratic groups -- despite being paid more than $360,000 annually by AAJ (according to the group's most recently available IRS Form 990).

But senators and representatives know Lipsen represents one of the most powerful lobbies in town and one that routinely is among the most generous contributors to Democrats. No wonder in naming Lipsen one of the top lobbyists on Capitol Hill in 2009, The Hill noted that "with Democrats in power across Washington, the trial bar association and Lipsen have plenty of energy."

Big Labor:

Activist Leader

Gerald W. "Jerry" McEntee

President, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

International president of the 1.4 million-member AFSCME since 1981, McEntee runs one of the most politically active unions in America, dubbed the United States' largest single contributor to political campaigns by the Center for Responsive Politics, with nearly 99 percent going to Democrats. AFSCME is the nation's largest public employee and health care workers union.

AFSME campaigns for a range of issues, from urging larger unemployment benefits to fighting efforts to substitute vacation time for overtime pay. In the 2008 presidential election, AFSCME first endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton for president, then switched to Obama after he won the nomination and pledged $50 million to his campaign. McEntee is a member of the Democratic National Committee and was a "super delegate" from Pennsylvania at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Lawyerly Campaigner

Richard Trumka

AFL-CIO President

Elected president of the AFL-CIO in 2009, Trumka was its Secretary-Treasurer (1995 to 2009), and previously president of the United Mine Workers (1982 to 1995). He worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines to pay for college, earned a law degree from Villanova University, and went to work for the United Mine Workers as a staff attorney in 1974. He was elected UMW president in 1982.

Trumka's AFL-CIO, a federation of 56 unions with 11 million workers, wields enormous influence in Democratic politics. In 1996, Trumka allied himself with a leftist group, becoming a co-founder of Robert Borosage's Campaign for America's Future. An anti-racism speech Trumka gave in 2008 went viral on YouTube, a labor first.

Iconic union boss

Andrew L. "Andy" Stern,

Former President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

President of the 2.2 million-member SEIU from 1996 to 2010, Stern made it the nation's fastest-growing union and OpenSecrets.org's 10th biggest all-time political contributor, with 93 percent going to Democrats, much of it for door-to-door canvassing and other Get-Out-The-Vote actions.

SEIU gave Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign $65 million and $60 million to President Obama's successful 2008 effort, plus another $25 million to other Democratic candidates.

Stern worked forcefully to revitalize the labor movement through legislation, helping design Obama's health care reform, pushing union growth via Card Check, disempowering business with strong regulations and higher taxes.

In 1992, Stern and his then-wife Jane Perkins, head of Friends of the Earth, started the Blue-Green Working Group to merge Big Labor with Big Green, helped by the Sierra Club's Carl Pope. In 2005, Stern pulled SEIU out of the AFL-CIO over expansion disputes.

Big Green:

Left-wing Makeover Master

Carl Pope

Executive Chairman, Sierra Club

A 30-year Sierra Club veteran, Pope grew from associate conservation director (1980s) to long leadership as executive director, and stepped down last year to continue as chairman with a focus on climate change. Pope transformed Sierra from a litigious nature preservation group to an activist-oriented left-wing political machine.

Pope's levers on Democratic policy also come from his also being a director or adviser of numerous other key groups: Apollo Alliance, Alliance for Climate Protection, Clinton Global Initiative, California League of Conservation Voters, Public Voice, National Clean Air Coalition, California Common Cause and Zero Population Growth.

Brains and Power

Joshua S. Reichert

Managing Director, Pew Environment Group

Josh Reichert has been the giant Pew Charitable Trusts' smartest and most effective star since 1990, and now leads its Pew Environment Group. He is the chief architect and founder of an incredible catalog of environmental groups, including Oceana, the National Environmental Trust, SeaWeb, Earth Force, the Ocean Law Project, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Clear the Air, the Campaign for America's Wilderness, the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, the Ocean Wildlife Campaign and the Pew Oceans Commission.

Reichert holds a PhD in anthropology and the strings to a Pew-sized purse of grant money to other environmental groups, and is known for treating each grant as an investment that must produce results. He is courted and feared by environmental leaders for his Godfatherly listening mannerism and his doom-or-destiny decisions. He's also a Humane Society of the United States director.

Biggest Big Green Resume

Albert A. Gore, Jr.

Chairman, Alliance for Climate Protection, investor

As 45th vice-president of the United States, narrator of "An Inconvenient Truth," which won an Academy Award and prompted his Nobel Peace Prize, Gore is co-founder and chairman of Current Media, LLC.

He is chairman of Alliance for Climate Protection and Generation Investment Management; a director of Apple, Inc. and World Resources Institute; a senior advisor of Google, Inc. and Silver Spring Networks, Inc.; a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (venture capital firm), an investor in Capricorn Investment Group, a donor to the Climate Project, a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and a visiting professor at Middle Tennessee State University. Gore's net worth is estimated to be in excess of $100 million.

Big Insiders:

Quirky Left-Wing Messiah

George Soros

Open Society Institute, Soros Fund Management

A Hungarian-born American billionaire who once said he felt "godlike," Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute, and a former board member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He spent millions undermining the governments of the Soviet Union, Serbia, Hungary, and Georgia, then decided communism was no longer the problem, it was capitalism.

Soros spent $23 million trying to defeat President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004. He was also an initial donor to the Center for American Progress and the Democracy Alliance and routinely funds a wide range of left-leaning groups. His Open Society Institute spends about $600 million a year on left-wing programs in more than 60 countries. His 2010 net worth was $14.0 billion, making him the 35th richest man in the world.

Tentacles of the Left

Drummond Pike

Tides Network of organizations

With over 200 groups under his Tides umbrella, hundreds of members in the Tides Nonprofit Centers Network, and $143 million given in 3,532 grants in 2010 alone, Pike funnels more money to more left-wing infrastructure than anyone else. Pike's Tides Foundation opened in 1976 with the money of Jane Bagley Lehman, Reynolds tobacco heiress and president of Arca Foundation, and gradually grew into today's vast network.

Pike is a board member of the Democracy Alliance, the Environmental Working Group, and the Network for Good, and is chairman and CEO of the Tides Advocacy Fund, a lobbying group. He has incubated numerous groups that later became successful stand-alones, including projects of the Pew Charitable Trusts. He has developed the anonymous "donor-advised fund" into a powerful tool for anonymous donors to support controversial groups.

Mortgage Moguls

Herb and Marion Sandler

The Sandler Foundation

Founders of the scandal-plagued Golden West Financial Corporation that sank Wachovia, leading to its cut-rate sale to Wells Fargo, Herb and Marion Sandler were long-time funders of liberal causes when John Podesta snagged them in 2003 as initial donors to his Center for American Progress (CAP).

The couple created the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation in 1991, supporting Human Rights Watch, gay and lesbian rights, abortion rights, and MoveOn.org, as well as art museums, universities and the local Bay Area Jewish Community Fund.

Marion Sandler is a board member of CAP, while Herb founded ProPublica, a non-profit investigative reporting group spewing out blatantly left-wing anti-development, anti-gun, anti-fossil fuel stories.

Smartest Political Operative

John Podesta

President and CEO, Center for American Progress

It's tough to find a better political strategist and tactician than former Clinton White House chief of staff and Obama transition team co-leader John Podesta. His Center for American Progress was conceived in the Democratic National Committee by a seven-person "brain trust" convened by Chairman Terry MacAuliffe, incorporated in 2002 as the American Majority Institute and re-launched a year later as CAP, with the aim of defeating President Bush in 2004.

Podesta is closely linked to power players who can be rapidly mobilized for manufactured constituency actions, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Education Fund, Women's Voices -- Women Vote, the League of Conservation Voters and the Apollo Alliance.

Persistence Personified

Ellen Malcolm

Founder, EMILY's List

The heiress of an IBM founder, Malcolm took a staff job with Common Cause in the 1970s, then served as press secretary for the National Women's Political Caucus, and later took a consumer affairs job in the Carter administration.

In 1985, she founded EMILY's List and built it into the richest political advocacy organization in America, supporting pro-abortion female Democrat candidates for office. EMILY stands for "Early Money Is Like Yeast." That is, it helps raise the dough: It scares off challengers and draws more donors.

Malcolm is legendary for her fundraising skill, relentless at "the ask," being one of the wealthy herself, at ease prying money from her peers. Her skill at political campaigning is also remarkable -- as its president, she made America Coming Together (ACT) the biggest 527 group in the 2004 Bush-Kerry election. EMILY's List helped elect 16 Democratic women in the 2008 cycle.

Everywhere at Once

Arianna Huffington

Founder, Huffington Post

Greek-born American media maven and political celebrity, Huffington is best known for her left-wing news website, Huffington Post, covering everything from politics to media, style and comedy, with news, blogs and other original material. HuffPost gets a million comments a month, and now has local versions in New York, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles.

25 Major Players

1. Frances Beinecke (30 years with Natural Resources Defense Council, president since 2006; Obama-appointed member, National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling)

2. Simon Rosenberg (founded the centrist New Democrat Network, 1996; NDN's Phoenix Group prompted creation of the Democracy Alliance, 2005)

3. Teresa Heinz (Founder, Heinz Endowments, substantial funder of left-leaning groups; founder, Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, giving annual $250,000 awards; married to Sen. John Kerry)

4. John Doerr (venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with Al Gore; appointed to President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board; pushes clean energy government subsidies hard, funds candidates and activists; net worth $1.7 billion)

5. David Fenton (Founder and CEO of Fenton Communications, top left-wing PR firm using professional ad and PR tools for leftist non-profits)

6. Susan Packard Orr (Chairman, Packard Foundation; founder Telosa Software, fundraising tools for non-profits; highly demanding of grant recipients; arranged media training for scientists to popularize global warming)

7. Paul Helmke (President, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence; former president, United States Conference of Mayors; vociferous activist against gun rights)

8. Terry O'Neill (President, National Organization for Women, chair, NOW Political Action Committee; feminist attorney, professor of law, Tulane and University of California at Davis; activist for "social justice" issues)

9. Carl Ferenbach (chairman, Environmental Defense Fund; managing director, Berkshire Partners, private equity firm not related to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway)

10. William H. Meadows III (President and key lobbyist, The Wilderness Society; chairman, Pew Campaign for America's Wilderness; director, League of Conservation Voters)

11. Joshua Mailman (heir of a large transportation conglomerate fortune; co-founder, Threshold Foundation and Social Venture Network; created or funded many other social investment entities)

12. Nancy R. Bagley, (President, Arca Foundation; editor-in-chief, Washington Life magazine;, Clinton White House health care initiative consultant; Clinton-Gore 1992 campaign advance staff; funds far-left groups and programs)

13. David Brock (Founder and president, Media Matters for America, Tides Foundation incubated, recently Soros-funded, anti-conservative attack group, mostly against Fox News; formerly conservative writer)

14. Hal Harvey (Founder and CEO, Climate Works; founder and president, the Energy Foundation; funds groups opposing fossil fuels, pushes for clean energy subsidies)

15. Robert Borosage (Co-director, Campaign for America's Future, author Taking Back America; associate editor, The Nation; columnist, Huffington Post)

16. Brent Blackwelder (President, Friends of the Earth 1994-2010, now emeritus; most radical of the larger green group leaders)

17. Wayne Pacelle (President and CEO, Humane Society of the United States since 2004, chief lobbyist 1994-2004; executive director Fund for Animals 1989-1994. Absorbed Doris Day Animal League in 2006)

18. Margery Tabankin (executive director of Steven Spielberg's Righteous Persons Foundation and the Barbra Streisand Foundation; directs grants to numerous left-leaning groups; early member, 1967, radical Students for a Democratic Society; director 1977-81, VISTA, a federal agency; executive director 1981-1984, Arca Foundation)

19. Michael Shellenberger (Co-author, The Death of Environmentalism; co-founder, Breakthrough Institute; worked at Fenton Communications; contracted to do public relations in the U.S. for Venezuela's Hugo Chavez)

20. Lawrence Mishel (President, Economic Policy Institute, premier left-wing labor think tank; frequently testifies before and briefs congressional committees on economics)

21. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (Founder and publisher, Daily Kos, a popular blog on left-wing issues and Democratic Party politics; fellow at NDN's New Politics Institute; founded the YearlyKos Convention, rebranded in 2007 as Netroots Nation)

22. Norman Lear (Founder and board member, People for the American Way; television producer)

23. Andrew Kimbrell (Executive director, Center for Food Safety in 1997; executive director of International Center for Technology Assessment in 1994; environmental attorney strongly opposed to industrial agriculture and mass market food supply)

24. Phil Angelides (Chair, Apollo Alliance, and appointed chairman of Obama's Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission)

25. Tim Gill (Founder, Connexion.org, a Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender advocacy group: America's top gay funder)

Compiled by Examiner Contributor Ron Arnold, author of "Undue Influence" and "Freezing in the Dark," books that detail how special interests operate within and without the Democratic Party to advance their agendas.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/special-reports/2011/01/special-report-fifteen-special-interest-heavy-hitters-democrats-cann#ixzz1C5cGR3QE

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/01/26/what-are-trip-advisors-dirtiest-hotels/

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/food/galleries/fat_food/fat_food.html

Do pets pose another threat to safe driving?

SUE MANNING, The Associated Press

Posted: 01/21/2011 02:45:54 PM PST

Updated: 01/21/2011 02:49:14 PM PST

This product image courtesy of Drs. Foster and Smith shows the Car Safety Harness available from Drs. Foster and Smith. Experts advise pets be restrained with a harness or carrier when riding in moving vehicles. (AP Photo/Drs. Foster and Smith) 

 

FILE- This Sept. 12, 2007 file photo shows a small dog leaning out a window... (Robin Loznak)

While lawmakers have been banning drivers from texting or using cell phones, many motorists are riding around with another dangerous risk – their dogs.

Experts say an unrestrained dog – whether curled up on a lap, hanging out the window or resting its paws on the steering wheel – can be deadly. Tens of thousands of car accidents are believed caused every year by unrestrained pets, though no one has solid numbers.

"An unrestrained pet can be hugely distracting – if he is seeking your attention, putting his face right in front of yours, starts chewing up the upholstery or is vomiting because he is carsick," said Katherine Miller, director of applied science and research for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The issue is drawing attention in some statehouses. Hawaii is the only state that specifically forbids drivers from operating a vehicle with a pet on their lap. But Oregon lawmakers are considering fining drivers who hold their pets behind the wheel. And some cities are taking action, too.

In 2009, 5,474 people were killed and 448,000 injured in crashes caused by distracted drivers in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Cell phones were the top distraction – the cause of 18 percent of the fatalities and 5 percent of the injury crashes. The agency does not track

Advertisement accidents caused by pets, but said they are counted among other distractions such as disruptive passengers, misbehaving children or drivers who attempt to put on makeup or read. 

Author Stephen King suffered several broken bones and a collapsed lung in 1999 when he was hit by a driver who claimed he was distracted by his dog.

In a crash, an unrestrained pet can turn into a deadly projectile or get crushed by a driver or passenger who is thrown forward by the collision.

Good pet owners will use a harness or carrier and secure their pets in the middle of the back seat, Miller said. That keeps dogs from getting hurt or bouncing around and hurting others.

"A pet that weighs 50 pounds, in a 35 mph collision, is projected forward like a cannonball with 1,500 pounds of force, and that can cause critical injuries to the folks in the front seat," Miller said.

Restraining a pet also keeps the animal from running off after a crash and possibly getting hit or causing another crash, or from getting in the way of first responders, she said.

Susan Footh, 37, of Whitewood, S.D., said her 12-pound Maltese named Mozart could have been killed twice if he hadn't been wearing a harness.

Footh was on her way to a Christmas gathering when her car veered out of control on ice. She smashed into a highway barrier three times before the vehicle stopped. Presents flew through the car, her coffee splattered all over the back window. But Mozart stayed put.

Then, a few weeks ago, another driver clipped her bumper while trying to pass, sending her first into a spin and then into a ditch.

"Mozart was shaking. I'm sure he was saying, 'Not again,'" Footh said. She was able to put the car into four-wheel-drive and climb out of the ditch.

In Oregon, lawmakers will vote in the next few months on a bill that proposes a $90 fine for people who drive with an animal on their lap.

A similar law made it to the governor's desk in California in 2008, but then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to sign it, saying it was not a high priority.

Bill Pace, the former assemblyman from Visalia who introduced the failed bill, said he frequently sees drivers with "animals up in their face, in their lap and on the steering wheel. ... This is not a rare occurrence."

Some cities have passed laws of their own. In Troy, Mich., a law took effect Jan. 1 that makes it illegal to drive with a pet in your lap.

But Jonathan Adkins, communications director for the Governors Highway Safety Association, doubts that many states will single out pets.

Elected officials "can't have a law to outlaw every bad driver behavior," he said. "You go after the big ones."

But Adkins said the problem is underreported because the only way to know that a pet was at fault is if the driver says so.

Education about pet restraints will have to come from pet owners, vets, animal-welfare agencies and insurance companies, he added. And that could take years, just as it took a long time to get people to wear seat belts.

For pet owners, Footh said, the answer is easy.

It takes no more than 10 seconds for her to hook Mozart into his $12 harness. He helps by hopping up on the seat and waiting for her to snap it.

"My dog is my baby. I want him to live a long and healthy life," she said. "It's not just about feeding him and loving him. It's about keeping him safe in every way, and that includes when we are in the car."

Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong

Sharon Begley

Newsweek

January 24, 2011

If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash.  First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t.  Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot).  Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a study released last week finds.  Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule?   More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim.   It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge.   Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong.   The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you.

Joe Raedle / Getty Images Gallery: Medical Breakthroughs:  The Good and the BadBreakthroughs and Breakdown

It’s a disturbing view, with huge im-plications for doctors, policymakers, and health-conscious consumers. And one of its foremost advocates, Dr. John P.A.  Ioannidis, has just ascended to a new, prominent platform after years of crusading against the baseless health and medical claims.   As the new chief of Stanford University’s Prevention Research Center, Ioannidis is cementing his role as one of medicine’s top mythbusters.   “People are being hurt and even dying” because of false medical claims, he says: not quackery, but errors in medical research.

This is Ioannidis’s moment.   As medical costs hamper the economy and impede deficit-reduction efforts, policymakers and businesses are desperate to cut them without sacrificing sick people.   One no-brainer solution is to use and pay for only treatments that work.   But if Ioannidis is right, most biomedical studies are wrong.

In just the last two months, two pillars of preventive medicine fell.   A major study concluded there’s no good evidence that statins (drugs like Lipitor and Crestor) help people with no history of heart disease. The study, by the Cochrane Collaboration, a global consortium of biomedical experts, was based on an evaluation of 14 individual trials with 34,272 patients.   Cost of statins:  more than $20 billion per year, of which half may be unnecessary.   (Pfizer, which makes Lipitor, responds in part that “managing cardiovascular disease risk factors is complicated”).   In November a panel of the Institute of Medicine concluded that having a blood test for vitamin D is pointless:  almost everyone has enough D for bone health (20 nanograms per milliliter) without taking supplements or calcium pills.   Cost of vitamin D: $425 million per year.

Ioannidis, 45, didn’t set out to slay medical myths.   A child prodigy (he was calculating decimals at age 3 and wrote a book of poetry at 8), he graduated first in his class from the University of Athens Medical School, did a residency at Harvard, oversaw AIDS clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health in the mid-1990s, and chaired the department of epidemiology at Greece’s University of Ioannina School of Medicine.   But at NIH Ioannidis had an epiphany.   “Positive” drug trials, which find that a treatment is effective, and “negative” trials, in which a drug fails, take the same amount of time to conduct.   “But negative trials took an extra two to four years to be published,” he noticed. “Negative results sit in a file drawer, or the trial keeps going in hopes the results turn positive.”   With billions of dollars on the line, companies are loath to declare a new drug ineffective.   As a result of the lag in publishing negative studies, patients receive a treatment that is actually ineffective.   That made Ioannidis wonder, how many biomedical studies are wrong?

His answer, in a 2005 paper:  “the majority.” From clinical trials of new drugs to cutting-edge genetics, biomedical research is riddled with incorrect findings, he argued.   Ioannidis deployed an abstruse mathematical argument to prove this, which some critics have questioned.   “I do agree that many claims are far more tenuous than is generally appreciated, but to ‘prove’ that most are false, in all areas of medicine, one needs a different statistical model and more empirical evidence than Ioannidis uses,” says biostatistician Steven Goodman of Johns Hopkins, who worries that the most-research-is-wrong claim “could promote an unhealthy skepticism about medical research, which is being used to fuel anti-science fervor.”

Even a cursory glance at medical journals shows that once heralded studies keep falling by the wayside. Two 1993 studies concluded that vitamin E prevents cardiovascular disease;  that claim was overturned by more rigorous experiments, in 1996 and 2000.   A 1996 study concluding that estrogen therapy reduces older women’s risk of Alzheimer’s was overturned in 2004.   Numerous studies concluding that popular antidepressants work by altering brain chemistry have now been contradicted (the drugs help with mild and moderate depression, when they work at all, through a placebo effect), as has research claiming that early cancer detection (through, say, PSA tests) invariably saves lives.   The list goes on.

Despite the explosive nature of his charges, Ioannidis has collaborated with some 1,500 other scientists, and Stanford, epitome of the establishment, hired him in August to run the preventive-medicine center. “The core of medicine is getting evidence that guides decision making for patients and doctors,” says Ralph Horwitz, chairman of the department of medicine at Stanford.   “John has been the foremost innovative thinker about biomedical evidence, so he was a natural for us.”

Ioannidis’s first targets were shoddy statistics used in early genome studies.   Scientists would test one or a few genes at a time for links to virtually every disease they could think of.   That just about ensured they would get “hits” by chance alone.   When he began marching through the genetics literature, it was like Sherman laying waste to Georgia: most of these candidate genes could not be verified.   The claim that variants of the vitamin D–receptor gene explain three quarters of the risk of osteoporosis? Wrong, he and colleagues proved in 2006:  the variants have no effect on osteoporosis. That scores of genes identified by the National Human Genome Research Institute can be used to predict cardiovascular disease?   No (2009). That six gene variants raise the risk of Parkinson’s disease? No (2010). Yet claims that gene X raises the risk of disease Y contaminate the scientific literature, affecting personal health decisions and sustaining the personal genome-testing industry.

Statistical flukes also plague epidemiology, in which researchers look for links between health and the environment, including how people behave and what they eat.   A study might ask whether coffee raises the risk of joint pain, or headaches, or gallbladder disease, or hundreds of other ills.   “When you do thousands of tests, statistics says you’ll have some false winners,” says Ioannidis.   Drug companies make a mint on such dicey statistics. By testing an approved drug for other uses, they get hits by chance, “and doctors use that as the basis to prescribe the drug for this new use.   I think that’s wrong.”   Even when a claim is disproved, it hangs around like a deadbeat renter you can’t evict. Years after the claim that vitamin E prevents heart disease had been overturned, half the scientific papers mentioning it cast it as true, Ioannidis found in 2007.

Photo Gallery  Medical Breakthroughs: The Good and the BadBreakthroughs and Breakdown

http://www.newsweek.com/photo/2010/05/19/medical-breakthroughs-the-good-and-bad.html

The situation isn’t hopeless.   Geneticists have mostly mended their ways, tightening statistical criteria, but other fields still need to clean house, Ioannidis says.   Surgical practices, for instance, have not been tested to nearly the extent that medications have.   “I wouldn’t be surprised if a large proportion of surgical practice is based on thin air, and [claims for effectiveness] would evaporate if we studied them closely,” Ioannidis says.   That would also save billions of dollars. George Lundberg, former editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, estimates that strictly applying criteria like Ioannidis pushes would save $700 billion to $1 trillion a year in U.S. health-care spending.

Of course, not all conventional health wisdom is wrong.   Smoking kills, being morbidly obese or severely underweight makes you more likely to die before your time, processed meat raises the risk of some cancers, and controlling blood pressure reduces the risk of stroke.   The upshot for consumers: medical wisdom that has stood the test of time—and large, randomized, controlled trials—is more likely to be right than the latest news flash about a single food or drug.

Special Opinion Report: The plain truth about who owns the Democratic Party

Mark Tapscott

01/25/11 12:11 AM

 
Editorial Page Editor

Nate Beeler/The Examiner

Examiner Special Report

Who Really Controls the Democratic Party?

It's unlikely that Howard Dean intended to expose one of his party's greatest weaknesses in August 2009 when he explained why Obamacare could not include a tort reform provision that experts said could save up to $400 billion in health care costs.

Speaking at a Northern Virginia town hall meeting, the former Democratic presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee chairman stunned many in the nation's capitol with these unexpected words:

"Here's why tort reform is not in the bill. When you go to pass a really enormous bill like that, the more stuff you put into it, the more enemies you make. And the reason the tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everyone else they were taking on and that is the plain and simple truth."

Dean's admission was especially shocking because for years study after study has shown that doctors are forced to practice defensive medicine -- ordering unneeded tests and procedures in case they were sued by trial lawyers looking for deep pockets and big paydays that come with multimillion-dollar settlements. Tort reforms that put limits on such unrestrained class-action medical lawsuits by trial lawyers would save $40 billion annually, and up to $400 billion over a decade.

But President Obama and his Democratic congressional allies in the 111th Congress dared not alienate the Big Lawyers special interest of class-action trial attorneys. The lawyers and three other special interests - Big Labor union leaders, Big Green environmentalists, and Big Insiders with billions of dollars in personal wealth and foundation grants -- together essentially dictate what Democrats can and cannot support on many key public policy issues.

Call them the Four Horsemen of the coming Democratic apocalypse.

These four groups provide most of the campaign funding and workers, political and policy expertise, legal and regulatory muscle, and strategic communications for the Democratic Party. Consequently, most Democrats are prisoners of a narrow agenda of constantly growing government budgets, regulation and taxing.

This development comes at a time when public opinion surveys show conservatives, who favor less government, outnumber liberals by about two-to-one. In other words, the special interests are taking the Democrats in the opposite direction favored by most Americans.

This Examiner Special Report is about the plain truth of who owns the Democrats, beginning today with Douglas Schoen, former adviser to President Clinton, a clear voice from among a growing band of loyalists who fear the special interests are making it all but impossible for Democrats to attract support from moderates and independents.

Schoen also exlains what President Obama must do to save his party and his presidency. Examiner columnist and political power structures expert Ron Arnold analyzes how the revolving doors swing between special interest and the government. And I examine the present state of the Democratic National Committee.

Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/special-reports/2011/01/special-report-examiner-special-report-plain-truth-about-who-owns-de#ixzz1BzeFMWSA

Funeral Home Director Sentenced To 8 Month

DAVID OWENS

The Hartford Courant

1:49 p.m. EST, January 25, 2011

Prosecutor John Malone recommended Riley be sentenced to 7 years and Faulker to 5 years, but Judge David P. Gold said that was too much.

Gold said they took advantage of people at difficult times, but because Faulkner cares for a disabled husband and her elderly mother, putting her in prison would hurt them, Gold said. He also took into account that Faulker served 5 days in jail after her arrest.

Gold said Riley deserved prison time because he had to pay a price for his conduct and to send a message to others.

Riley pleaded guilty under the Alford doctrine to first-degree larceny, second-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for crimes involving the taking of money and property from the homes of dead people and for providing an extravagant funeral for a man whose life insurance policy he had cashed in.

He entered straight guilty pleas to charges that he double-billed the state and the families of dead people for whom he made arrangements at a facility in Meriden. State investigators said Riley billed two different state agencies at least $200 per body to transport more than 100 bodies to his East Hartford funeral home.

All told, Riley, through Hartford Trade Services, billed the Department of Social Services and the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner more than $25,000. In many of those cases, Riley also charged the state $1,800 in burial fees — while also charging the person's estate that same amount.

The dead were cremated and the cost of a box in which their remains were placed was included in the cost of service. Riley admitted double-billing the state Department of Social Services and families of the dead for the boxes.

Riley was ordered to pay restitution totaling $62,902. Faulkner was ordered to pay restitution of $13,296.

Riley was arrested in 2009, culminating a three-year investigation by the chief state's attorney's office that started when Meriden Probate Judge Brian Mahon raised questions about how Riley handled the disposal of the body of Julia Drozd, who died in August 2006.

In the Drozd case, Riley was appointed temporary administrator and immediately cleaned out Drozd's house, even though she had a son who was still living in the home. When Mahon notified state probate officials of his concerns, they ordered a review of all cases that Riley had been involved in.

The arrest warrant quotes former employees of Riley as saying that they found "bundles" of money tucked away under recliners and in desk drawers when they cleaned out the Drozd house. One employee estimated that there was between $20,000 and $24,000 found in the home.

In an itemized list handed to the Meriden Probate Court, Riley stated that they found $923 in the Drozd home.

Investigators believe that at least some of the items taken from Drozd's home, as well as from the estates of Anne Drysdale of Stamford and Joseph Chionski of West Hartford, both cases that Riley handled for the medical examiner's office, were sold by Faulkner at Weston's Antiques in Coventry.

Auction house records show that among the property sold from the Drysdale estate were Tiffany and sterling silver items.

After a series of stories in The Courant about Riley and estates that he had administered, the Connecticut Board of Examiners of Embalmers and Funeral Directors conducted a hearing and eventually fined Riley $10,000 while allowing him to keep his license.

When he testified before the board, Riley said he had been unfairly portrayed as a "ghoul" by The Courant.

Kevin Riley

Obama embraces campaign system he shunned

President Obama became the first candidate ever to opt completely out of public financing, and he largely is credited with putting the final nail in the taxpayer-funded presidential campaign option.

Stephen Dinan-The Washington Times10:34 a.m., Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Though he opted out of the public campaign financing system in 2008 to run the most expensive presidential race in history, President Obama on Tuesday said he opposes House Republicans’ effort to do away with the system altogether.

Mr. Obama became the first candidate ever to opt completely out of the public-financing system, and he largely is credited with putting the final nail in the taxpayer-funded presidential campaign option. But in a statement of policy, Mr. Obama said he wants to see the system fixed, rather than follow Republicans who want to drop the system entirely.

“Its effect would be to expand the power of corporations and special interests in the Nation’s elections; to force many candidates into an endless cycle of fundraising at the expense of engagement with voters on the issues; and to place a premium on access to large donor or special interest support, narrowing the field of otherwise worthy candidates,” the White House said in a statement of policy.

Mr. Obama called for repairing the system, though he didn’t give any specifics on how he would do that.

The public campaign finance system, established after the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, offers to match money candidates raise during their party primaries, and then offers a lump sum of taxpayer money to those candidates who choose to play by its rules and limits during the general election. It also offers some money for Republicans’ and Democrats’ nominating conventions.

Lawmakers’ goal when they created the system was to try to tone down the influence of money in politics and the time candidates spend fundraising, but their efforts repeatedly have been thwarted by loopholes or candidates who shunned the system altogether.

In 2008, Mr. Obama opted out of the system for both the primaries and the general election, and instead raised nearly $750 million on his way to defeating Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee. Mr. McCain opted out of the primary funding but accepted taxpayer funding for the general election.

Mr. Obama, who has proved adept at fundraising both for himself and for his party’s congressional candidates, said he worries about the corrupting influence of such money.

House Republicans have deemed their bill to eliminate the system a part of their pledge to hold a vote every week cutting spending.

Rep. Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who is sponsoring the bill, called the system “obsolete” and said ending it would save $520 million over 10 years. He said Mr. Obama and others have opted out “with no discernible harm to our democracy.”

The public system is funded by taxpayers who voluntarily check off the box on their income tax forms that sends $3 of their tax bill to the Federal Election Commission.

Pot meets pop: Local entrepreneur plans to market line of smartly branded medical-marijuana soft drinks

WALLACE BAINE

01/24/2011 01:30:02 AM PST
   

 

Clay Butler and his soda pot. (Bill Lovejoy/Sentinel)

SOQUEL -- How strange is the emerging world of medical-marijuana entrepreneurship?

Consider Clay Butler, who may soon be marketing a food product that he's never tasted, and that he would never buy. The product is called Canna Cola, and it's a soft drink that contains THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, aimed at medical marijuana dispensaries.

"I don't do drugs," said the Soquel-based commercial artist. "Never have. I never drank, never smoked. I'm a clean-living guy. I've had two beers in my whole life, and I remember them both too. No marijuana, I've never smoked a cigarette. I take an aspirin when I get a headache. That's it."

Yet, Butler is a partner in a company that is poised to move aggressively in a market that could one day be enormously popular by combining pot with soda pop, two products widely seen as scourges by many Americans -- though those upset by one tend to be approving or indifferent to the other.

"Even though, personally, I'm not interested and I don't think it's right for me," said Butler, "I'm a firm believer that adults have an inalienable right to think, eat, smoke, drink, ingest, decorate, dress any way they choose to do so. It's your life; it's your body."

What really intoxicates Butler is branding, the art of differentiating a product in the marketplace through words and images. And he's designed a line of soda pop that he says will be branded to take advantage of an entirely new market. The line

entincludes the flagship cola drink Canna Cola, the Dr Pepper-like Doc Weed, the lemon-lime Sour Diesel, the grape-flavored Grape Ape and the orange-flavored Orange Kush.

Marijuana sodas do exist in the marketplace. But, said Butler, none of them have the branding savvy of his product.

"You look at all the marijuana products out there, and they are so mom-and-pop, hippie-dippy and rinky-dink," he said. "If someone can put every color on the rainbow on it, they do. If they can pick the most inappropriate and unreadable fonts, they will. And there's marijuana leaves on everything. It's a horrible cliché in the industry."

Butler's epiphany was to market the THC-laced sodas "how Snapple or Coca-Cola or Minute Maid would make a marijuana beverage, if they ever chose to do it."

Thus, he used the marijuana leaf -- it's an unavoidable part of the "brand DNA" of marijuana products, he said -- but he designed a leaf made of bubbles, to suggest soda pop.

The beverage line's dosage of THC will be "somewhere between 35 to 65 milligrams," said Scott Riddell, the founder of Diavolo Brands, which is marketing Canna Cola. He said the levels of THC in his line of soft drinks will be substantially below the levels of many drinks now on the market. He likened his product to a "light beer" alongside high-proof liquors.

"It's got a mild marijuana taste," Riddell said. "But the taste factor is really negligible compared to some competitors with three times the THC. When you get to that level, you really have a heavy aftertaste."

The new sodas will retail for between $10 and $15 per 12-ounce bottle.

The company plans to launch its product in medical marijuana-friendly Colorado in February. California, however, remains a wild card. Plans are tentatively to have it in California dispensaries in the spring.

But, Riddell said, he is concerned about a bill in Congress, the so-called Brownie Law SB 258, which would double the penalties for anyone who produces a product that combines marijuana with "a candy product" or markets it to minors. The bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, passed the Senate last summer and is currently in the House. The bill poses a threat to all so-called "medibles," food products containing THC, Riddell said.

Working in the medical marijuana field presents entrepreneurs with unique challenges. The use of marijuana for any purpose is still illegal in federal law, despite various state laws regarding its medicinal use. As a result, the soda cannot be transported across state lines. Canna Cola sold in California would have to be manufactured in California. The company also has to conform to a wide range of county and municipal laws regarding medical marijuana.

And then there's the supplier factor. Butler said that his company has had to inform all of its suppliers -- bottles, caps, the shrink-wrap labels that go on each bottle -- about the nature of their product. Many have balked.

"We tell everyone flat out what the product is. We can't have a supplier finding out after the fact and saying, We can't be involved in this.' Not everyone will take your job," he said. "Of course, if we're selling cigarettes or alcohol or Vicodin or Viagra, it would be fine."

Assuming the Canna Cola line becomes profitable selling to dispensaries, its business profile will change dramatically if marijuana should ever become decriminalized on a federal level. If that were to happen, Butler doubts the food-industry behemoths will dive into the market immediately.

"My suspicion is that, if some day it is decriminalized, and you can get marijuana products in a liquor store or a 7-Eleven, I really don't think it would be the big established food companies that would get involved," Butler said. "I could see them buying out existing brands, which is a lot easier for them anyway. I think the market is going to the early pioneers." 

I was arrested for stealing my own car, says Bronx man who is suing NYPD

Tuesday, January 25th 2011, 4:00 AM

Harbus for NewsJamieson Prince's car was taken by NYPD after son crashed it and fled. Prince says cops lost the SUV and he found it and took it back. Then he was arrested for 'theft.'

Harbus for NewsJamieson Prince with papers proving car ownership.

A Bronx man arrested in front of his kids for "stealing" his own car is suing the NYPD for $1 million.

Jamieson Prince, 43, says cops swarmed his 2007 GMC Yukon and cuffed him as he prepared to drive his daughters to school on Nov. 11 - even though he had papers proving ownership.

"I told them it was a mixup and proved to them I owned the car, but they wouldn't listen," Prince, a Norwood resident, told the Daily News.

"My little girls saw me arrested over nothing. It was so painful and humiliating."

Prince explained to the officers that his 23-year-old son had borrowed the SUV in July and fled from a crash in Harlem - leading to the son's arrest.

Cops say he hit a pedestrian and they seized the Yukon as part of that investigation.

When the elder Prince went to the 28th Precinct stationhouse to retrieve his SUV, police couldn't find it, according to court papers.

"They had absolutely no idea what happened to it," said Prince, an MTA track worker. "It had disappeared."

An NYPD spokesman confirmed Monday that the Yukon was stolen around 2 a.m. on July 7.

Four months later, Prince says, he found the Yukon, parked three blocks from the stationhouse.

He drove off, thinking everything was okay, but cops rolled up to his home and arrested him a week later - accusing him of removing police property without permission.

"How can the NYPD just confiscate property, lose it, then arrest you for possessing it?" said Prince. "It's totally wrong. I want an apology."

Prince's lawyer Neil Wollerstein said a rogue police employee may have improperly used the SUV, leading to its disappearance.

"You can't lose a 5-ton truck," said Wollerstein. "Either they're completely incompetent or someone was up to no good."

The charges against Prince were dropped Jan. 12.

"I just want my daughters to know their father didn't break the law," he said.

"This turned my world upside down."

http://www.page2live.com/2011/01/22/exclusive-district-wants-20000-in-donations-to-poor-school-paid-back-to-strip-club-owner/?cxntlid=cmg_cntnt_rss

President Obama, Sarah Palin team up to take on comic book legend Archie

Monday, January 24th 2011, 3:05 PM

Writer Alex Simmons and artist Dan Parent bring President Obama and Sarah Palin to Archie's Riverdale...

...in issue #617 of Archie, on sale this Wednesday.

If only the rest of the country was more like Riverdale .

At least the fictional version of the Bronx suburban neighborhood populated by Archie and his pals -- where President Obama and Sarah Palin can find common ground.

In the unlikely storyline of Archie No. 617, in stores this Wednesday, the rivals bridge their partisan divide and descend on Riverdale High School to straighten out the mess left behind when Archie and Reggie each claim one of the politician's support in a student body election.

"It really gets back to the idea of 'can't we all get along,' " says Archie Comics co-CEO Jon Goldwater. "Both [Palin and Obama] want what's best for America, so we came up as an idea of how we put the President and the woman who I consider the de facto head of the Republican Party in a story set in Riverdale, which is an inclusive place where everybody gets along."

Cynics, though, wonder if the company has ulterior motives for planting two of the most famous figures in the world on the cover of a comic book.

"It's going to be interpreted as both [a sales stunt and a political statement], says Robert Conte, owner of Manhattan Comics in midtown. "You're going to have the natural curiousity-seekers wondering why Obama and Palin are in the same comic, but it's also a way for young readers to get to know a little more about politics."

Conte says comic book publishers elect to put Obama and Palin on covers all the time - especially since as public figures they're owed no royalties.

In recent months, issues of "Steam Punk Sarah" - a parody with Sarah Palin as a terminator -- and "President Evil" - starring Obama in a Resident Evil sendup, have been big sellers at Conte's shop.

"It's very very tricky," says Goldwater of the idea of introducing political figures into a comic book for kids. "But the fundamental belief I have is that both people want what's best for this country, so that was the genesis of this storyline."