It is one of the worst thought out pieces of legislation to come down the pipeline in quite some time. The movement against this bill’s passage in Congress has gained tremendous traction. We’re at the point where politically agnostic online firms such as WordPress have been compelled to speak out.

The legislation in question is called the Stop Online Piracy Act and you need to know about it. If SOPA and it’s companion bill in the U.S. Senate are passed, the United States would mirror countries like China in their blocking of Internet websites. If both houses of the United States Congress are brazen and reckless enough to pass this law, it will be up to the President of the United States to veto the bill.

It’s not like the people who are against SOPA/PIPA are pro-piracy. The MPAA, RIAA and other firms who hold intellectual property copyrights already have venues to pursue offenders. It is time they realize that you simply cannot stop all piracy no matter how hard you try. There’s no sense in dragging the rest of us down a draconian rabbit hole in their pursuit of a magic pill.

Photo credit: Taken from Raw Story article.  Flickr user through my eyes. Right: Castle Harlan, Inc. CEO John K. Castle, courtesy CastleHarlan.com.

Sadly, this is how many in the 1 percent who have lost touch with us commoners must think of the people who “serve” them. Social Darwinists of the world unite! If you attain a certain status level in life you are allowed to break the fingers of those beneath you.

The minor misstep so enraged Castle, who heads the New York-based private equity firm Castle Harlan, Inc., that he allegedly grabbed the 54-year-old waiter’s left hand and began twisting his fingers, even as Castle’s wife sat watching.

All because the waiter dared bring him his check. Yes, he was supposed to put it on the 1 percent CEO’s tab! How dare this common manservant defy the financial caste system!

I happened to come across this chart from Reuters this morning and thought I would blog about it. When I look at this chart I can’t say that I’m surprised at all. Are the executives at these corporations—the 1%—really job creators? Judging from the amount of people they’ve laid off, I would say no.

What I am concerned about is the fact that the American people can’t seem to make the connection between lobbying, campaign contributions and legislation. Follow the money on both sides of the aisle and you will find the truth.

This investigative piece by the Washington Monthly and a British medical journal have shed some light on the dangers of using Bayer’s Yaz and Yasmin birth control medications.

Yaz and Yasmin are among Bayer’s top selling pharmaceutical products. According to the German drug manufacturer, over 4 million women worldwide use Yasmin alone. But the drug has also sparked growing controversy in recent months. A series of studies published in BMJ have shown that users of pills containing drospirenone have an increased risk of blood clots, which can cause deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, heart attack and death. And thousands of women have filed a lawsuit against Bayer, saying they were injured by Yaz or Yasmin.

Back in December the FDA convened a panel to explore the evidence that the  synthetic hormone drospirenone was dangerous. The panel ruled in favor of continued use of the hormone. A month after the ruling we come to learn of the huge conflicts of interest that members of the FDA panel have in regard to Bayer.

…at least four members of the committee have either done work for the drugs’ manufacturers or licensees or received research funding from them. The FDA made none of those financial ties public.

This is a great injustice. Has Bayer bought an entire government agency? Is there no one within the FDA that would question the relationship that some members on the panel have with Bayer? It doesn’t even matter if the panel members were sincere in their deliberations. The FDA has a responsibility to remove any doubt that a conflict of interest could have existed.  Judging from the reports and the lawsuit it would seem that this panel did indeed  overlook the dangers of these drugs  and sought to protect Bayer instead of the American people.

As if there wasn’t enough bad blood out there between people and big banking institutions, we now have to be on the alert for zombie debt. If you have had any debt in the past retired because of bankruptcy, or the statute of limitations have run out in your state, you need to scrutinize any credit card offer you may receive very closely.

The offer for a credit card that you might now be considering could come with some toxic baggage.

The financial institutions (i.e. banks, collection agencies, etc.) that push these cards state that they are only doing this because you “deserve another chance.” I am not buying that argument. These companies are buying up retired debt for pennies and then turning around and offering people credit, in some cases not telling them about the retired debt that comes with it, just so they can make a buck.

This seems to be mostly the effort of the collection agencies, but someone has to underwrite the credit cards and that is the banker’s domain. The financial industry in my opinion has got to find a way to wean itself off of the profit over misery business model. Everything is about keeping people in perpetual debt and that’s not good.

When banks would give college students credit cards it was because they made the money off of the debt that these kids entered into. It’s what Sandy Weil liked about credit cards when he was with Citibank. Matter of fact, they would consider you a “deadbeat” if you paid off the entire balance of your credit card in one billing period.

This should not amaze me but I must admit I am always shocked at the lengths that some will go to lie with statistics. In 1954, Darrell Huff told us how it could be done and in my reading, I’ve encountered countless authors who have referenced his work in discussing how corporate interests or conservatives attempt to influence a debate.

This time we witness an attempt by those who support hydraulic fracturing to lie in this manner.

In an intensive lobbying campaign to influence a skeptical public’s opinions about fracking, the gas industry has commissioned a number of economic studies that find huge job gains from fracking. A recent study by the economic forecasting company IHS Global Insight Inc., paid for by the America’s Natural Gas Alliance, projects that fracking will create 1.1 million jobs in the United States by year 2020. However, a closer read of the study reveals that the analysis also projects that fracking will actually lead to widespread job losses in other sectors of the economy, and would result in slightly lower overall employment levels the following 10 years, compared to what it would be if fracking were restricted.

I’ll throw in one more story from the article.

In another study, commissioned by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, researchers with Penn State University estimated that gas drilling would support 216,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone by 2015. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show employment in the oil and gas industry to be 4,144 in Pennsylvania.

It appears that to gain access to the Indian market cell phone manufactures gave the Indian intelligence apparatus backdoor access through their devices to allow for spying on the United States.

An internal memo from India’s Military Intelligence that hackers have posted online suggests that manufacturers of mobile devices have provided “backdoor” access to the Indian government in exchange for access to the Indian market. The manufacturers, referred to collectively in the memo as “RINOA,” include RIM, Nokia, and Apple.

This is a shame but I’m not surprised. Google et al. have appeased China when it came to gaining access to their market. Although spying on the US wasn’t involved in that case, they nonetheless compromised on free speech in return for access to a lucrative market.

So he wants to be the President of the United States. Yet, how can you be the President of a country that you don’t like paying taxes to? Setting up off shore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands? Oh, Mitt.

As the ABC News report says:

The Romney campaign says he has paid tax on all his income including the off shore investments and the investments are now held in a blind trust. But tax experts say the fact that Romney’s company Bain Capital under his leadership, established investment funds off shore in the first place, helped them to attract  business from people looking to avoid US tax.

I think Marion Nestle says it best here.

Publicly traded companies cannot simply make a profit. They must grow profits and report growth to Wall Street every 90 days. This requirement is tough on all corporations, but especially tough on those selling food. People can only eat so much.

A class action lawsuit of 30,000 Ecuadorians living in the Amazon rainforest has reached a major milestone in its litigation. An appeals court has upheld a 2011 ruling that the oil company Chevron pay 9.5 billion dollars for damage caused to the environment. The President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa is said to be pleased with the ruling.

The latest verdict is the culmination of a process that began as far back as 1993. Throughout the years the legal proceedings have gained a global following and has even been featured in a documentary directed and produced by Joe Berlinger. In 2008, two Ecuadorian attorneys Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza won the prestigious Goldman Prize for their work on the Chevron case. In addition Pablo Fajardo was also named a CNN Hero.

As the Miami Herald now reports:

In its ruling late Tuesday, the court found the company liable for the shoddy environmental practices of its predecessor, Texaco, that included pumping millions of gallons of oil-tainted water in to creeks and streams. Texaco operated in the Ecuadorian Amazon from 1960 to 1992 and the two companies merged in 2001.

As it stands now Chevron has no property in Ecuador so it will be difficult to seek compensation from the company.