OTC BIRTH CONTROL

In Defense of OTC Birth Control
Posted Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:55 PM | By Kerry Howley


Emily and Torie, my grasp of the regulatory issues is imperfect, but it’s my understanding that a drug company would have to apply for over-the-counter status through the FDA. (I've never heard a single plausible medical justification for keeping birth control prescription-only.) There are various reasons why drug companies would not want to attempt this; the most obvious being that pharmaceutical companies can charge much higher prices for prescription drugs covered by insurance. Companies would also see resistance from gynecologists, who rely on their prescription powers to keep women coming back for annual appointments.

Torie, I understand your concern about insurance refusing to pay for OTC drugs, but it seems to me that your logic applies to every single drug that has gone over-the-counter, from Prilosec to Nicoderm. Keeping birth control prescription-only actually raises the cost for the poorest women—those without insurance who must pay retail at that the pharmacy counter and pay out of pocket for the doctor’s appointment required to get the prescription. When drugs go OTC the price plummets, so the cost to the consumer without insurance falls. Here's a blurb from a 2006 survey by the Pharmacy Access Partnership, a group that advocates for wider emergency contraception access:

Women said convenience, simplicity and affordability were their highest considerations when choosing their current contraceptive. Fifty-four percent of women also chose their method because it did not require a prescription. African-Americans (65%) were more likely to choose a method because it did not need a prescription, compared to Caucasians (51%) and Latinas (54%). Importantly, 20% of women said the cost of a visit to the doctor was an obstacle in obtaining a prescription contraceptive. Overall, 28% of women have had problems with obtaining a prescription for contraception, filling the prescription or getting to their supplies when they needed them. Women who had fewer resources to manage an unintended pregnancy (uninsured women, single women and younger women) were more likely to have experienced problems with obtaining a prescription for contraception.

RUSH is a big fat a..hole!

Media Matters

Limbaugh
This hour of the Limbaugh Wire brought to you by Barack Ogabe
By Simon Maloy

To kick off the final hour, Rush noted a Reuters article headlined, "Resistance grows to Obama's bigger government," and encouraged us all to look at the bigger picture. Rush took us back to January 15, asking us to imagine where the country would be if, between now and then, there had been no resistance to Obama's "assault" on capitalism.

Limbaugh defense of AIG bonuses follows attacks on "insane benefits" of UAW sending Big Three "down the tubes"

Limbaugh joined by other conservatives standing up for AIG against "mob rule"
Related
Limbaugh defends AIG from "lynch mob"

Latest Limbaugh items
County Fair: Limbaugh refers to "Barack Ogabe," drawing comparison between Obama and Robert Mugabe
County Fair: Limbaugh says ACORN "got three and a half billion dollars from the stimulus bill"
County Fair: Limbaugh on Obama administration: "They are focused on the destruction of the private sector. This is an all-out assault on capitalism"
County Fair: Limbaugh on Obama: "He's a bad guy. He's one angry guy. His wife is angry as well."
Boehlert: Jeff Zucker and the CNBC straw man
County Fair: Limbaugh guest host Steyn on Wall Street bankers: "They're not fat cats. They're emaciated, cadaverous cats. They've got ... that cat version of AIDS that the cats get -- the feline immunodeficiency virus."
County Fair: Burnett claims bailout recipient bonus tax "to some echo[es] the Russian and French Revolutions," asks: "[I]s America starting to look like Venezuela?"
County Fair: Tim Graham is never satisfied
Media Matters: Media Matters Week-in-Review
County Fair: Limbaugh says Obama wants I-bankers "to be hated," asks, "You don't think this guy has a bug up his dress ... chip on his shoulder about wealthy people?"
County Fair: Addressing listeners who disagree with him on AIG, Limbaugh calls them "mobsters," says they've been whipped into "frenzy of totalitarian hatred"
County Fair: CNBC's Francis channels Limbaugh on response to AIG bonuses: "This feels like mob rule"
County Fair: Limbaugh on response to AIG: "We now have mob rule the way it started in Nazi Germany"
County Fair: Limbaugh: Obama "has a chip on his shoulder, and his wife does too, and they are some angry people"
An AIG of conservative enlightenment? Hardly.

Obama News Conference CNN's Ed Henry question?

Ed Henry was out of line on AIG!
That issue is over and the President didn’t do anything wrong.
He just didn’t act as Ed wanted him to act.
I like the calm manner in which the Prez acted instead of
the mob media hounds!
Short order cooks get three months when they start cooking
hamburgers. The President and his people have done a very good job
in most difficult time. Wait for results!
The GOP is totally lost. I can predict on anything BO does they either
say NO or it’s a BAD idea!
No one (as I told my ex wife) can be so perfect they are
wrong all the time. The GOP should try to help BO fix the problems
and not hope nothing works so they can reclaim power!!

LEGAL DRUGS & VIOLENCE DEBATE

Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Over the past two years, drug violence in Mexico has become a fixture of the daily news. Some of this violence pits drug cartels against one another; some involves confrontations between law enforcement and traffickers.

Recent estimates suggest thousands have lost their lives in this "war on drugs."

The U.S. and Mexican responses to this violence have been predictable: more troops and police, greater border controls and expanded enforcement of every kind. Escalation is the wrong response, however; drug prohibition is the cause of the violence.

Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.

Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it's permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.

Prohibition of drugs corrupts politicians and law enforcement by putting police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in the position to threaten the profits of an illicit trade. This is why bribery, threats and kidnapping are common for prohibited industries but rare otherwise. Mexico's recent history illustrates this dramatically.

Prohibition erodes protections against unreasonable search and seizure because neither party to a drug transaction has an incentive to report the activity to the police. Thus, enforcement requires intrusive tactics such as warrantless searches or undercover buys. The victimless nature of this so-called crime also encourages police to engage in racial profiling.

Prohibition has disastrous implications for national security. By eradicating coca plants in Colombia or poppy fields in Afghanistan, prohibition breeds resentment of the United States. By enriching those who produce and supply drugs, prohibition supports terrorists who sell protection services to drug traffickers.

Prohibition harms the public health. Patients suffering from cancer, glaucoma and other conditions cannot use marijuana under the laws of most states or the federal government despite abundant evidence of its efficacy. Terminally ill patients cannot always get adequate pain medication because doctors may fear prosecution by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Drug users face restrictions on clean syringes that cause them to share contaminated needles, thereby spreading HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases.

Prohibitions breed disrespect for the law because despite draconian penalties and extensive enforcement, huge numbers of people still violate prohibition. This means those who break the law, and those who do not, learn that obeying laws is for suckers.

Prohibition is a drain on the public purse. Federal, state and local governments spend roughly $44 billion per year to enforce drug prohibition. These same governments forego roughly $33 billion per year in tax revenue they could collect from legalized drugs, assuming these were taxed at rates similar to those on alcohol and tobacco. Under prohibition, these revenues accrue to traffickers as increased profits.

The right policy, therefore, is to legalize drugs while using regulation and taxation to dampen irresponsible behavior related to drug use, such as driving under the influence. This makes more sense than prohibition because it avoids creation of a black market. This approach also allows those who believe they benefit from drug use to do so, as long as they do not harm others.

Legalization is desirable for all drugs, not just marijuana. The health risks of marijuana are lower than those of many other drugs, but that is not the crucial issue. Much of the traffic from Mexico or Colombia is for cocaine, heroin and other drugs, while marijuana production is increasingly domestic. Legalizing only marijuana would therefore fail to achieve many benefits of broader legalization.

It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual liberty with drug prohibition. The U.S. has been at the forefront of this puritanical policy for almost a century, with disastrous consequences at home and abroad.

The U.S. repealed Prohibition of alcohol at the height of the Great Depression, in part because of increasing violence and in part because of diminishing tax revenues. Similar concerns apply today, and Attorney General Eric Holder's recent announcement that the Drug Enforcement Administration will not raid medical marijuana distributors in California suggests an openness in the Obama administration to rethinking current practice.

Perhaps history will repeat itself, and the U.S. will abandon one of its most disastrous policy experiments.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeffrey Miron

TOXIC ASSET SOLUTION DETAIL

Asset Purchase Program Details
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS March 23,2009

The Obama administration's plan to finance purchases of as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets from banks will include programs supported by the Treasury Department's bailout fund, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Here is a look at how they will operate.

--Public-Private Investment Program: The umbrella organization that will support the effort to entice private investors to join with the government to purchase troubled assets. The administration plans to commit $75 billion to $100 billion from the government's $700 billion bailout program to support $500 billion in troubled asset purchases initially with the potential to expand to $1 trillion over time.

--Troubled Mortgage Loans: The FDIC, the agency that insures deposits at the nation's banks, would operate auctions of troubled mortgage loans and then provide financing to the winning bidders. Under an example provided by the administration, the FDIC loan would cover 86 percent of the purchase price of the troubled mortgages with the Treasury's bailout fund contributing 7 percent and the winning private investor bidder contributing the remaining 7 percent.

--Troubled Asset-Backed Securities: The Treasury and the Federal Reserve announced they were expanding the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, beyond its goal of boosting consumer debt in the area of credit cards, auto loans and student loans. The facility, which has the capacity of supporting $1 trillion in loans, will be expanded to cover securities backed by residential and commercial real estate and other types of asset-backed mortgages. Five asset managers will be chosen by Treasury to compete for purchases of troubled asset-backed securities with financial backing provided by Treasury and the TALF. The assets would be held in public-private investment funds.

OBAMA continues doing it right!

The Obama plan to solve the `toxic’ assets (?) of banks that has frozen the leading
of banks is a winner! It let’s the market value the toxics and take care of this problem which is a major piece in the overall finance problem.

The DOW jumped almost 500 (497.48) points on March 23/09 is first POSITIVE reaction proof. Plus there are other signs that the very complex steps taken by Obama administration are working in the record!

The GOP is consistent that NOTHING Obama is doing is right.
Again this problem is faled according to the GOP. How predictable!
They are wrong again! I wouldn't what to be these dummies when it WORKS!!
Like in 1993 when BILL CLINTON solved the deficit problem of another BUSH!

Some weird folks are reaction to BO laughing on `60 Minutes’ night.
I’v no problem withe Prez - What would be better sack cloth and ashes?
Program noy live and subject to CBS TV edit out of context!

Two weeks ago people were upset because BO was to sober!?
Forget the nit wits, who have a dammed if you do and dammed
if you don’t silliness!

AIG BONUS – The media, congress, and the people don’t get it!
The bonus was paid (155 million) to people who got rid of over a trillion and half dollars in bad business for AIG!!!
This makes the company less likely to fail and it’s bad ripple effect.

March 23 2009 HIGHLIGHTS

E.J. Dionne, Jr.Washington Post 9-23-09
A deep narrative is taking root in the political class, and it goes something like this: Obama is biting off way more than he can chew, "overloading" the system and dealing with all sorts of "side issues," when he should be focusing solely on the broken economy. He is said to be asking Congress to do too much.
Note that anyone who makes an argument of this sort is freed from responsibility to mention any of the specific problems Obama is proposing to take on. Insisting the economy trumps everything means you don't have to say a thing about health-care reform, energy, education and taxes.

Meizhu Lui Washington Post 9-23-09
Every three years, the Federal Reserve, in its Survey of Consumer Finances, takes a look at how U.S. households are doing and reports on our assets and liabilities. The euphoria of our gambling spree is over. In the harsh glare of morning, the hangover is tough. And the latest data are from 2007, so they don't even capture the worst of the decline.
The net worth of the average American family is less than it was in 2001. We borrowed more for that trip to Vegas than we brought home. Everyone knows this now.
But here's something being talked about much less: The gap between the wealth of white Americans and African Americans has grown. According to the Fed, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African American family has only one dime. In 2004, it had 12 cents.

Obama Plan announced March 23-09 NYTimes
At the core of the financing package will be $75 billion to $100 billion in capital from the existing financial bailout known as TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, along with the share provided by private investors, which the government hopes will come to 5 percent or more. By leveraging this program through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve, huge amounts of bad loans can be acquired.
The private investors would be subsidized but could stand to lose their investments, while the taxpayers could share in prospective profits as the assets are eventually sold, the Treasury said. The administration said that it expected participation from pension funds to insurance companies and other long-term investors.
The plan calls for the government to put up most of the money for buying up troubled assets, and it would give private investors a clearly advantageous deal. In one program, the Treasury would match one-for-one every dollar of equity that private investors invest of their own money in each “Public Private Investment Fund.”
On top of that the F.D.I.C. — tapping its own credit lines with the Treasury — would lend six dollars for each dollar invested by the Treasury and private investors. If the mortgage pool turns bad and runs big losses, the private investors would be able to walk away from their F.D.I.C. loans and leave the government holding the soured mortgages and the bulk of the losses.
The Treasury Department offered this illustrative example of how the program would work: A pool of bad residential mortgage loans with a face value of, say, $100 is auctioned by the F.D.I.C. Private investors would submit bids. In the example, the top bidder, an investor offering $84, would win and purchase the pool. The F.D.I.C. would guarantee loans for $72 of that purchase price. The Treasury would then invest in half the $12 equity, with funds coming from the $700 billion bailout program; the private investor would contribute the remaining $6.
For a relatively small equity exposure, the private investor thus stands to make a considerable return if prices recover. The government will make a gain as well. In the worst case, the bulk of the risk would fall on the government. The presumption, of course, is that the auction will lead to realistic purchase prices.

CLIMATE CHANGE FACTS & MYTHS

Chris Mooney
March 21, 2009

A recent controversy over claims about climate science by Post op-ed columnist George F. Will raises a critical question: Can we ever know, on any contentious or politicized topic, how to recognize the real conclusions of science and how to distinguish them from scientific-sounding spin or misinformation?

Congress will soon consider global-warming legislation, and the debate comes as contradictory claims about climate science abound. Partisans of this issue often wield vastly different facts and sometimes seem to even live in different realities.

In this context, finding common ground will be very difficult. Perhaps the only hope involves taking a stand for a breed of journalism and commentary that is not permitted to simply say anything; that is constrained by standards of evidence, rigor and reproducibility that are similar to the canons of modern science itself.

Consider a few of Will's claims from his Feb. 15 column, "Dark Green Doomsayers": In a long paragraph quoting press sources from the 1970s, Will suggested that widespread scientific agreement existed at the time that the world faced potentially catastrophic cooling. Today, most climate scientists and climate journalists consider this a timeworn myth. Just last year, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society published a peer-reviewed study examining media coverage at the time and the contemporary scientific literature. While some media accounts did hype a cooling scare, others suggested more reasons to be concerned about warming. As for the published science? Reviewing studies between 1965 and 1979, the authors found that "emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then."

Yet there's a bigger issue: It's misleading to draw a parallel between "global cooling" concerns articulated in the 1970s and global warming concerns today. In the 1970s, the field of climate research was in a comparatively fledgling state, and scientific understanding of 20th-century temperature trends and their causes was far less settled. Today, in contrast, hundreds of scientists worldwide participate in assessments of the state of knowledge and have repeatedly ratified the conclusion that human activities are driving global warming -- through the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific academies of various nations (including our own), and leading scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

Will wrote that "according to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979." It turns out to be a relatively meaningless comparison, though the Arctic Climate Research Center has clarified that global sea ice extent was "1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979." Again, though, there's a bigger issue: Will's focus on "global" sea ice at two arbitrarily selected points of time is a distraction. Scientists pay heed to long-term trends in sea ice, not snapshots in a noisy system. And while they expect global warming to reduce summer Arctic sea ice, the global picture is a more complicated matter; it's not as clear what ought to happen in the Southern Hemisphere. But summer Arctic sea ice is indeed trending downward, in line with climatologists' expectations -- according to the Arctic Climate Research Center.

Will also wrote that "according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade." The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is one of many respected scientific institutions that support the consensus that humans are driving global warming. Will probably meant that since 1998 was the warmest year on record according to the WMO -- NASA, in contrast, believes that that honor goes to 2005 -- we haven't had any global warming since. Yet such sleight of hand would lead to the conclusion that "global cooling" sets in immediately after every new record temperature year, no matter how frequently those hot years arrive or the hotness of the years surrounding them. Climate scientists, knowing that any single year may trend warmer or cooler for a variety of reasons -- 1998, for instance, featured an extremely strong El Niño -- study globally averaged temperatures over time. To them, it's far more relevant that out of the 10 warmest years on record, at least seven have occurred in the 2000s -- again, according to the WMO.

Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence. That, in the end, is all that good science really is. It's also what good journalism and commentary alike must strive to be -- now more than ever.

Chris Mooney is the author of "The Republican War on Science" and co-author of the forthcoming "Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future."

PERVERSE COSMIC MYOPIA - David Brooks

March 19,2009

You’d think if some tiger were lunging at your neck, your attention would be riveted on the tiger. But that’s apparently not how it works in the age of global A.D.D. As a tiger sinks its teeth into the world’s neck, we focus on the dust bunnies under the bed and the floorboards that need replacing on the deck. We live in the world of Perverse Cosmic Myopia, an inability to focus attention on the most perilous matter at hand.
The tiger, of course, is the collapsing world financial system. Americans actually have a falsely mild view of this crisis because the economy is worse abroad. The U.N.’s International Labor Organization projects between 30 million and 50 million job losses worldwide. Central European countries are teetering; Japan’s economy is horrifying; and the Chinese job creation machine is losing the race against its demographic pressures.
There have been riots in Greece and China as well as huge protest rallies in Dublin, Paris, London and beyond. So far, the protesters express anger without an agenda, but if the global economy continues to slide through 2010, they’ll discover one. A predictable result is a series of beggar-thy-neighbor exchange-rate policies, followed by rising trade barriers and the degradation of the entire global system.
In times like these, you’d expect prudent leaders to prepare for the worst. After all, the pessimists have recently been vindicated by events. But that’s apparently too painful to think about. In normal times, leaders like to focus on the short term at the expense of the long term. But now the short term is really confusing, so leaders take refuge in projects that are years or decades away.
The president of the United States has decided to address this crisis while simultaneously tackling the four most complicated problems facing the nation: health care, energy, immigration and education. Why he has not also decided to spend his evenings mastering quantum mechanics and discovering the origins of consciousness is beyond me.
The results of this overload are evident on Capitol Hill. The banking plan is incomplete, and there is zero political will to pay for it. The president’s budget is being nibbled to death. The revenue ideas are dying one by one, while the spending ideas expand. By the latest estimate, the health care approach will cost $1.5 trillion over 10 years and the national debt will at least double, while the Chinese publicly complain about picking up the tab.
The Obama administration is at least distracted by important things. The Washington political class has spent the past week going into made-for-TV hysterics over $165 million in A.I.G. bonuses. We’re in the middle of a multitrillion-dollar crisis, and our political masters — always willing to throw themselves into any issue that is understandable on cable television — have decided to risk destroying the entire bank-rescue plan because of bonuses that account for 0.001 percent of the annual G.D.P.
Even this is not the most idiotic of the distractions. For that, you have to look abroad.
This is a global crisis, and a core lesson of the Great Depression is that a global crisis calls for a global response. As such, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers are preparing for the upcoming G-20 summit with an agenda that has the merit of actually addressing the problem at hand: coordinate global stimulus, strengthen the International Monetary Fund, preserve open trade.
But the G-20 process is heading toward global impotence because the Europeans are dismissing this approach. Instead, they want to spend this moment of peril working on a long-term architecture to regulate global finance. The world is in flames and they want directorates and multilateral symposia and vague plans for a powerless “college of supervisors.” This is what Marie Antoinette would be for if she were an annual Davos attendee.
Why are they taking this position? First, many European leaders think the answer to every problem is more global architecture. They’ve got Jean Monnet on the brain. Second, they prefer to free-ride on the stimulus packages that the Americans and Chinese are already paying for. Third, the fiscally responsible European countries can’t commit to a policy that their debt-ridden partners can’t live up to. Fourth, some reject the idea of using fiscal policy to end recessions.
Some of these reasons have merit, especially the last one. But one thing is for sure: The American agenda might work to ease the immediate crisis, but efforts to build a long-range global architecture certainly will not. After all the pious talk about post-Bush international cooperation, the current approach will lead to a big multilateral zero.
Many people used to wonder how the world’s leaders could be so myopic at various points in history — like during the Versailles Treaty or the turmoil of the 1930s. We don’t have to wonder any more. We get to watch the cosmic myopia replay itself in our own times.

H I V epidemic is USA Capital

Tue Mar 17, 2009
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - "Who's next for testing?" Nathalie Boittin asked on Tuesday in a crowded waiting room at the Whitman-Walker Clinic in northwest Washington.
A young black man rose and Boittin, a community health educator, led him to get tested for the AIDS virus.
Testing has spiked at this clinic and others in the U.S. capital since an official report this week showed that 3 percent of the city's residents are infected with HIV. Officials believe the true figure is even higher.
"There are a lot of people who don't know they are HIV positive because they don't want to know or are afraid to know," said Edward Harris, a 55-year-old man who gets care at the clinic.
With a large poor and minority population, the District of Columbia has struggled with HIV for decades. Its report on Monday showed the number of people with HIV infections rose 22 percent from 2006 to 2007.
"I think the true prevalence rate could be 30 to 50 percent higher," Dr. Shannon Hader, the city's HIV/AIDS Administration director, said in a telephone interview. Many people are likely infected without knowing it.
The report showed that 6.5 percent of the city's black men were infected. Overall, there were 15,120 HIV-infected people. Blacks make up 53 percent of the population of just over half a million people, but account for 76 percent of infections.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Washington has one of the most severe epidemics in the nation.
"It's an epidemic across all aspects of District life," Whitman-Walker Clinic CEO Donald Blanchon said. "It's not an epidemic of one group. It's not just gay or black."
COMPLEX EPIDEMIC
Blanchon said people are being infected in three different ways, making it harder to target those at highest risk.
While sex between men was the top cause, accounting for 37 percent of cases, heterosexual sex led to 28 percent of cases and injection drug use to 18 percent, according to the report.
Hader said the city is stepping up its efforts. The city said it raised the number of people in its AIDS drug assistance program by 50 percent from 2007 to 2008, while the number of young people getting HIV tests doubled in the same period.
The city said it is one of two in the nation with a major condom distribution program, distributing 1.5 million in 2008.
"We want to make condoms widely available for free at a lot of easy-access points around the city," Hader said, including beauty parlors, barber shops, liquor stores and bars.
In 2007, the U.S. Congress, which under a special arrangement can control some of the district's operations, lifted a ban on a needle-exchange program, now under way.
"There's not a lack of qualified service providers or interesting or good programs in the city. But clearly it wasn't all coming together to satisfy the scale and the complexity of our needs here," Hader said.
The city also released survey data highlighting the fact that many heterosexuals do not use condoms and have multiple, overlapping sexual partners.
"At the end of the day, there's the need for individual responsibility. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, where you come from, what your (sexual) orientation is," Blanchon said. "You need to practice safe sex."