Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Sticker Shock: How Big Pharma Gouges the American Public
BillMoyers | Terry J. Allen | 08/05/14

... The adventure began with a rant: "The last time I bought an EpiPen, it cost $60, and that was too much. Now it's $380. You're a reporter. Look into this." My marching orders came from Mary, a friend whose drugs aren't covered by insurance. Allergic to bees, she could die of anaphylactic shock if stung. Millions of kids and adults are similarly vulnerable -- peanuts, stings, various meds can swell shut their airways. Their lives may depend on a pen-shaped, plastic delivery device for self-injecting a fast-acting dose of epinephrine. ...

... Every doctor already knows about EpiPens. A limited customer base? With allergies on the rise and millions of EpiPens sold globally, economy of scale is built in, and a repeat market is guaranteed by quick expiration and dire need. EpiPen earned Mylan a tidy $640 million in 2012, The New York Times reported. ... Read more

The Toxic Algae Are Not Done With Toledo. Not By a Long Stretch.
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 08/06/14

Last weekend, Toledo's 400,000 residents were sent scrambling for bottled water because the stuff from the tap had gone toxic--so toxic that city officials warned people against bathing their children or washing their dishes in it. The likely cause: a toxic blue-green algae bloom that floated over the city's municipal water intake in Lake Erie. On Monday morning, the city called off the don't-drink-the-water warning, claiming that levels of the contaminant in the water had fallen back to safe levels. Is their nightmare over?

I put the question to Jeffrey Reutter, director of the Stone Laboratory at Ohio State University and a researcher who monitors Lake Erie's annual algae blooms. He said he could "almost guarantee" that the conditions that caused the crisis, i.e., a toxic bloom floating over the intake, would recur this summer. But it's "pretty unlikely" that toxins will make it into the city's drinking water. ... Read more

Giant Holes in Siberia Are Evidence of Runaway Climate Change, Scientists Say
AlterNet & ecowatch.com/ | EcoWatch | 08/04/14

Scientists think this mysterious crater may be a giant methane blow-hole that signals the beginning of runaway climate change.

They are calling the point when frozen arctic methane in Canada, Alaska and Russia starts erupting into the atmosphere dragon burps.

I think Dr. Jason Box, who has highlighted the appearance of dangerous spikes in methane above Siberia, sums it up best, "If we don't get atmospheric carbon down and cool the Arctic, the climate physics and recent observations tell me we will probably trigger the release of these vast carbon stores, dooming our kids' to a hothouse Earth." ... Read more
Zoom - Dragon Burp?

WH | Climate Change & Wildfires Explained in Less Than Three Minutes (08/05/14) [2:38]

6 More Nails In Democracy's Coffin: Depressing Trends in Political Spending
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 07/29/14

American democracy--meaning our system of campaigns, lobbying and governing--has been drowning in dollars for decades. But a half-dozen recent trends suggest that 2014 is not just on the way to becoming another record-breaking election, where ever-greater sums are spent by elites to sway voters.

What sets 2014 apart is the staggering amount of outside money that is being spent for efforts that eclipse traditional candidate-run campaigns. This is a direct consequence of U.S. Supreme Court rulings that view all political messaging as free speech, and do not see how the wealthy monopolize the microphone, drown out debate and suppress dissent. ... Read more