Please Help, Don't Shop Redux

Though it's only slightly related to the new anti-pandhandling ordinance passed by the Metro Council this week, I've noticed Google is directing folks over here anyway (ah, the benefits of Sitemeter!). Must be the post I wrote last summer related to "Please Help, Don't Give," an anti-panhandling campaign spearheaded by local downtown merchants last summer.

I wrote of my strong moral objection to this campaign at the time. I hold this opinion today.

Let me just say that the problem of panhandlers, "vagrants" and homeless people congregating around downtown is the predictable result of poor planning, poor social services, and Chamber of Commerce, pro-business, pro-development cheerleaders who never saw a highrise they didn't like, but never bothered to consider what will happen to all the folks these new developments displaced. Everyone is to blame for this: the greedy developers, Mayor Purcell, the Metro Council, and the Downtown Business Partnership (and by the way, who exactly are you people "partnering" with, anyway? I've never figured that out.)

Now that the housing boom which has caused this flurry of development has gone belly-up, I predict we will be looking at a glut of fancy, high-priced, high rise downtown living. We will be in the unenviable position of having a lot of glittering new empty buildings, and a lot of people left homeless who can't afford these pricey palaces.

Way to go, folks.

Heckuva Job, Zelly!

Proving yet again that Neocons will screw up boiling a pot of water, Robert Zoellick’s World Bank is mired ijn unprecedented corruption with its Indian projects:

• In the $54 million "Food and Drug Capacity Building Project," for which money is still being disbursed, the INT found "questionable procurement practices, some of which indicate fraud and corruption, in contracts representing 87 percent of the number of pieces and 88 percent of the total value of equipment procured." That is nearly $9 of every $10 in aid funds.
 
• For the $194 million "Second National AIDS Control Project," the INT discovered that "some of the test kits supplied by particular companies often performed poorly by producing erroneous or invalid results, potentially resulting in the further spread of disease."
 
• In the $114 million "Malaria Control Project," the review found "numerous indicators of poor product quality in the bed nets supplied by the firms." And in the $125 million "Tuberculosis Control Project," the INT discovered "bidders sharing the same address and telephone numbers, unit prices showing a common formula, and indicators of intent to split contract awards among several bidders."
 
• After visiting 55 hospitals connected to the bank's $82 million "Orissa Health Systems Development Project" (Orissa is one of India's poorest states), INT investigators found "uninitiated and uncompleted work, severely leaking roofs, crumbling ceilings, molding walls, and non-functional water, sewage, and/or electrical systems." It also found "neonatal equipment that lacked adequate electrical grounding, potentially exposing babies and their medical staff to electrical shocks."

No one could have anticipated this!!! Well, almost no one! I questioned Pres. Bush’s pick of Zoellick back in May, when he was named to replace Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. Wolfowitz, if you remember, was forced out after an embarassing scandal involving his girlfriend.

No one could have anticipated that, either!!

The truth is, the Bushies have always looked down on international bodies like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the UN. Anything that smacks of a cooperative effort by wealthy nations to aid developing countries--you know, all that icky Socialist-sounding stuff left over from the post-WWII era--has received nothing but scorn from the Bush Administration. Predictably, such organizations have been the ideal pasture for their inconvenient Neocon loyalists. Hey, why not? No one pays attention to what’s going on at these places, anyway. If a Neocon or his girlfriend or an important western corporation gets rich in the process, so much the better!

There’s simply no respect for the mission of these organizations, so why not put a crony in the top post? Who cares if there’s a misuse of funds?

I have a lot of problems with the World Bank, don’t get me wrong; for one thing, more often than not their loans support projects that will benefit Western businesses, not the local communities. But putting a corporate Neocon crony in charge doesn’t really solve that problem, does it? Indeed, it simply ensures the problem will continue.

And that, of course, was the entire point all along.

It's Hard Out There For A Fred

... A Fred Thompson supporter, that is! Near as I can tell, the only people still pushing for Fred Thompson are Tennessee Republicans and wingnut bloggers like Michelle Malkin and JimRob of the Freeper brigade.

Haven't you folks heard that "change" is the new buzzword? But with Mary Matalin and Liz Cheney on your campaign staff, good luck selling the "I stand for change" message. It's just more of the same.

(Thanks to Watertiger at Dependable Renegade for the pic!)

Zetia: NOT Right For You

A few months ago I heard one of the Air America morning folks say that cholesterol-lowering drugs are just another Big Pharma boondoggle. I was shocked, I mean, we all know cholesterol causes heart disease, right? So lowering cholesterol has to be a good thing, right?

We’ve all been such chumps:

A clinical trial of Zetia, a cholesterol-lowering drug prescribed to about 1 million people a week, failed to show that the drug has any medical benefits, Merck and Schering-Plough said on Monday.

The results will add to the growing concern over Zetia and Vytorin, a drug that combines Zetia with another cholesterol medicine in a single pill. About 60 percent of patients who take Zetia do so in the form of Vytorin, which combines Zetia with the cholesterol drug Zocor.

While Zetia lowers cholesterol by 15 percent to 20 percent in most patients, no trial has ever shown that it can reduce heart attacks and strokes — or even that it reduces the growth of the fatty plaques in arteries that can cause heart problems.

This trial was designed to show that Zetia could reduce the growth of those plaques. Instead, the plaques actually grew almost twice as fast in patients taking Zetia along with Zocor than in those taking Zocor alone.

Well, at least Merck and Schering-Plough rushed these results out to the public, I mean, goodness, this article says the drugs cost $3 a day -- that’s over $1,000 a year, a considerable sum for some people.

Not so fast:

Merck and Schering-Plough completed the trial in April 2006 and had initially planned to release the findings no later than March 2007. But the companies then missed several self-imposed deadlines, citing the complexity of the data analysis from the study and saying they did not know when or if the data would be ready for publication.

Last month, after several news articles highlighted the delay, they finally agreed to release the results soon.

Well, no one could have anticipated that. 70 percent of Schering’s earnings come from this drug, I’m sure they were eager to rush news of it’s uselessness to the market.

I’ve been really concerned about the increasingly lax clinical trials and approval procedure at the FDA. Some of these drugs may even be dangerous. They don’t fix the problem they’re supposed to, and yet they account for billions of dollars in sales. And the media won’t tell us this information because geez, have you turned on a television lately? Pharmaceutical ads are just about all there is anymore. Big Pharma is keeping the mainstream media flush.

Someone needs to take a fresh look at the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, And it’s not going to be a big business GOPer or a Democrat taking campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical lobby.

It’s going to take someone who cares more about people than corporations.

Now, who would that be, I wonder?

I’ve Heard Of Crappy Jobs But This Is Ridiculous

This one’s for you office workers who might have the Monday blues today.

One of last week’s overlooked stories concerns a Merrill Lynch employee who reacted rather strongly to news that he wouldn’t be getting his expected bonus:

It's fast becoming the Wall Street equivalent of an urban legend. Here’s what didn’t happen: a guy did not urinate on his desk because he was “pissed off.” The real story is so much worse.

In the first place, it wasn’t piss. It was shit. DealBreaker can confirm this much. After that the details get a bit fuzzy. The way we first heard it is that a guy took a dump in the rest room, stomped in it, and then dragged it all over the place by walking around with it on his shoes. Merrill’s story is that there was “an unfortunate accident” in one of the stalls—which we take to mean that some guy smeared his shit all over the bathroom because how the Hell could you miss the toilet—and that another person inadvertently stepped in it and tracked it all over.

And you thought your workplace sucked.

My Kind Of Awards Show

Yay! Finally, an awards show I can almost tolerate. Thanks to the Writer’s Guild strike, the Golden Globes were axed and instead replaced by 30 minutes of people reading a list of winners--surely a “record for award-show brevity,” says the San Jose Mercury News.

Would that they could all be that way. No lame dance routines, cheesy film montages or dorky acceptance speeches from actors thanking their agents. All they needed was a fashion show starring Keira Knightly and George Clooney and it would have been perfect.

No, I didn’t watch it. I was at the hockey game, of course.

I hate awards shows. I think they’re patently stupid. I’ve sat through more than my fair share of CMA’s, ACM’s and Grammys as an audience member, and let me tell you: without the benefit of a bowl of popcorn and the remote control, the evening is excrutiating.

The Grammys are the worst. Hours of self-congratulatory snores as the industry awards the Best Salsa Performance By A Redhead On A Tuesday. Come on, Recording Academy, do you really need to award every musical genre imaginable--and broadcast a smattering of them to boot? No one cares about that classical stuff and most people don’t know the difference between Banda, Norteno, Mexican American and Tejano musical styles. Plus, don’t you have a Latin Grammy show to address that stuff, anyway?

The only awards show worth watching is the Oscars and the only reason to watch that is to see beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes.

The real reason I hate awards shows is that they're simply glorified advertisements, and as everyone knows, I hate being marketed to in such a dishonest way.

Awards shows have become very popular with the entertainment industry as a way to promote their product to a national audience. So they've basically become elaborate sales pitches for CDs and movies, and big advertising generators for the networks that carry them -- the actual “awards” are beside the point, selling advertising and giving artists exposure is the goal. That’s pretty much the point of the MTV Movie Awards, the CMT Awards (remember the “Flame Worthy” Awards? Agh.), the Billboard Music Awards, the Teen Choice Awards, the American Music Awards, MTV Video Awards, the People’s Choice Awards, the Kids Choice Awards, etc. etc. I can’t imagine enough people watch this crap to make staging these shows worthwhile, but apparently they do.

Anyway, Sharon Cobb has the list of Golden Globe winners, for those of you interested. If you read it with a copy of InStyle magazine in hand, it will almost be like a real awards show.

Rude People Suck

To the people who thought it would be a good idea to bring your infant to the 4:30 showing of Atonement at Regal Green Hills on Saturday: fuck you.

I guess you thought the baby would sleep through the movie. Well, guess what: it didn’t. It was fussy and disruptive throughout the entire film, most annoyingly at the very end when Vanessa Redgrave, playing Older Briony, makes the film’s Big Reveal.

So thanks to you and your child, we missed most of the film’s climax. I guess you didn’t want to miss it either, since you let your baby cry in the theater, instead of taking it out of the auditorium until it settled down. Again: fuck you.

How unbelievably, incomprehensibly rude of you.

I guess it never occurred to you that there might be 150 other people trying to watch the film, too. In fact, concern about those other people was the only thing preventing me from yelling “get a baby-sitter!” from my seat 15 rows behind you.

You know, I hate to break it to you, but having a baby means you might have to make sacrifices. It means not going out to see the hot new movie everyone is talking about whenever you want; you just might have to wait for the DVD. This might come as a shock to you but guess what: your world now revolves around your child. That was the choice you made when you decided to have this child. And I don’t appreciate you including me in that choice.

I’ve seen you people in the future. Two couples just like you brought four toddlers to Mafiozas and proceeded to drown out their screams with wine and beer while the rest of us in the restaurant tried to have our dinner. We watched as your children threw their food-filled plates on the floor, while you did absolutely nothing save order another round of drinks. Whoever you are: fuck you, too.

That is all.

IOKIYAR, Local Edition

Oh, hypocrisy thy name is Republican!

We all know that GOP moneybags Lee Beaman is financing the Oak Hill WATB’s fighting Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen’s “conservation hall” project. I wrote about it back in December, when it became apparent to anyone with half a brain that this was just another case of TN GOP partisan poo-flinging. This project has little relevance outside the wealthy and privileged neighborhood NIMBYs affected by construction noise, specifically blasting to build the underground facility. But let’s get real here: someone at the TN GOP has their eye on the governor’s seat, and thinks they can turn this into a statewide smear.

Personally, I just don't think we’re that dumb here in Tennessee.

I hope.

Anyway, funny story: turns out Mr. Beaman dynamited when constructing his own house in nearby Forest Hills. Oh, snap! From the Nashville Scene:

It turns out that Lee Beaman, the zillionaire businessman who’s leading neighbors fighting “Bredesen’s Bunker” partly to prevent blasting for the gigantic underground banquet hall at the governor’s mansion, isn’t opposed to dynamiting at his own house. Beaman blasted away last year for the home he’s building in ritzy Forest Hills, but denies any hypocrisy.

“My concern with the governor’s project is not the blasting,” Beaman tells the Scene by cell phone from the ski slopes of Jackson Hole, Wyo., where he’s vacationing. “That doesn’t bother me at all. It’s the inappropriate use of taxpayer money. I’ve never taken issue with the blasting.”

Maybe not, but other of the governor’s Oak Hill neighbors, including Beaman’s wife Kelley, have made blasting one of their major complaints during raucous public meetings on the bunker—at times verging on the hysterical on that topic, in fact. Blasting is supposed to last two months in the otherwise quiet neighborhood, and contractors haven’t reassured anyone by promising to blow a horn whenever the dynamite’s fuse is about to be lighted, presumably so residents can cover their ears.

“I find it arrogant for you to come in one month before you are going to start blasting and say this is what we are going to do,” Kelley Beaman scolded state officials at one meeting.

One resident, Lorelee Gawaluck, fretted aloud that dynamiting might damage the tender young minds of neighborhood kids. “Are they going to send in a psychologist to tell us how to prepare our children?” she demanded to know.

Oh, get over yourselves. A psychologist? Yeah, just like Belmont University dispatched psychologists to help citizens cope during construction of the Curb Events Center--NOT!!!! (A project, I might add, named for and financed by another major GOP moneybags, Mike Curb).

Anyway, these Oak Hill people sound like the worst group of whiners. Try living in Green Hills for the past 10 years, where massive construction projects have sprouted on every corner. We’ve had plenty of blasting going on--one right next door to my house, thank you--and a lot of these Oak Hill folks got rich off of it. So now they’re worried about the blasting when it’s in their neighborhood? Oh, whaaah! Welcome to (pun intended) boomtown! They've been blasting around my street for years. We survived. So will you--your lots are at least five times as big as mine.

Grow up, already.

And as for the Beamans, who are happy to finance a smear of the Democratic governor while blasting away on their own residential construction project, no one buys your lame "think of the taxpayers!" screeching. The project will be financed by private donations. You know, like the kind you made to smear John Kerry's war record.

Stop The Inanity

President Bush continues to embarrass and humiliate us with stupidity like this:

President George W Bush has said that America should have bombed the Nazi death camp Auschwitz during the Second World War.

The comment, which Mr Bush reportedly made to his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a visit to Israel's Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, appeared to be the first acknowledgement by an American president of failure to strike Nazi death camps.

Let that one settle in for a moment. Let's stop the killing by bombing the place to smithereens. Now, how exactly is that supposed to work?

Perhaps, as one commenter at Eschaton noted, he thinks we have "Kill-Only-Bad-Guys" bombs.

A perfect example of Baruch's Law: "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

We have got to get these people out of the White House NOW. And never let them near the reins of power again.

I'm Wearing Orange Today

And so should you! Here's why:

JANUARY 11, 2008, is the six-year anniversary of the first arrival of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay.

On January 11, we are calling on everyone opposed to torture and indefinite detention to WEAR ORANGE to symbolize their sadness and disgust with the national shame that is Guantánamo Bay.

There will also be rallies, protests, and candlelight vigils all across the country today, which I'm sure our "liberal" media will refuse to cover, just as they always do. I guess they think, like the SoCal bureau of the Associated Press, that Brittney Spears is more important.

Sigh.