Steve Cohen has this piece up on the lies of Tort Reform — insurance companies pushed through legislation that severely impacted a patient’s ability to collect for malpractice.

He illustrates that the things insurance companies said would happen — didn’t.  The doctors still used as many tests as before they were protected from malpractice.  This is the same stuff that allowed Big Pharma to be protected from lawsuits of their flawed vaccines.  When you review the history, it was because of lawsuits that Big Pharma was protected — and the thing is, nobody questioned vaccine safety or effectiveness at this important junction!!  All Big Pharma had to do was scare the pants off of people that they were going to quit making vaccines…and voila!  they were given immunity from prosecution when they should have be examined for why their products were causing so much harm.

You can see where Tort Reform is going to lead us…when we already have up to 98,000 people die in hospitals due to malpractice…it’s going to be the vaccines story all over again.  Doctors will feel empowered to be more careless– less concerned with being held liable.

It’s a myth that doctors are being wrongfully sued.  Or that everyone whom has a legitimate concern sues.  I didn’t.  And I had a good case against them for my severe reaction to Synarel and Seldane that I blogged about here.

As Cohen addresses, the insurance industry has lobbied for attorneys’ fees to be on a sliding scale, according to the overall award given to the patient.  And in this whole scenario, it’s the patients that lose.

Well, now….as they said, a stunning victory over the corporate farm.  I had lost hope when I heard the local radio station’s broadcast of the Ag report that was promoting it.  The man speaking was saying that he “had a right to do with his land as he saw fit” without outside interference.  It didn’t seem to occur to him that he doesn’t live in a bubble, and the chemicals he uses, or if a factory farm messed with the ecosystem by having manure lagoons and cows knee-deep in manure…nobody was going to tell him what to do.

There’s been a class action lawsuit filed against Purina for deaths of dogs.  This hits close to home because it’s the dog food my sis gives Pookie.  She has developed nodules over her body, and I wonder…

Wanted to get this up to let the rest of you know.

I thought I’d put up a piece on Shirley Chisholm for those who were scratching their heads when I mentioned Mrs. Chisholm the other day.  She was truly a class act whom I’d vote for in a heartbeat.  She not only fought for women of all races, she went up against black men who tried to keep her down.  In my opinion, she was the female version of Martin Luther King, Jr.

...you extremist.  bwahahahahahaha. *snort*  Believe me, President Obama is middle of the road.

Apparently, Fiscal Times, and specifically, Edward Morrissey, are in the back pocket of the oil industry.  This piece is straight out of the oil industry media playbook, repeating the lie that the U.S. would benefit from the Keystone, and it would create thousands and thousands of jobs.  None of those is true.

Now if only the president would put the kebosh on TPP,  get  Big Pharma and DHS out of the CDC and FDA, condemns mercury amalgam fillings….

You know, when I subbed for a kindergarten teacher, we were talking about animals and one of them was the Blue Jay.  One little boy spoke up and said they were aggressive birds and he let it be known what terrible birds they were.  Instinctively, I knew that either he had been perhaps dive-bombed by one or had a parent that hated them.

I didn’t have my bird feeder out at that time, but to my recall, I didn’t see them as particularly aggressive.  So, I’ve been studying them a little more carefully, and I can say that they’re not any more aggressive than any other bird.  Actually, I have seen them get a bite or two of seeds, then leave the feeder, allowing the smaller birds their turn at the feeder.

I had also read that the Blue Jay mimicked a hawk’s cry.  I found that to be true when I saw the ever-present squirrels out at the feeder.  (Don’t get me started on squirrels…greedy little buggers.)  Anyway, I heard the Jay make the hawk’s cry, and I surmise that it’s to scare off the squirrels, so they could get a bite to eat!  Smart birds.

We also have one that will come and “notify” us that the feeder is empty.  He comes up to the chair on the porch, and sits there crying out until we put seed in the feeder.  Haha.

So, no…I don’t share the little boy’s condemnation of the Blue Jay.  If anything, I admire their cunning, their fairness, and resourcefulness.

If anyone had any doubts about Scott Walker’s indebtedness to the Koch Brothers and ALEC, this press release from PRWatch.org should remove all doubts:

Saturday, February 21, 2015‬
‪CONTACT: Nikolina Lazic, nikolina@prwatch.org, 608-770-1343‬

‪Dear Friend: ‬

‪Scott Walker’s “divide and conquer” strategy to make WI a red state has now come full circle.‬
‪ ‬
‪Wisconsin Republicans have called a special session for next week to take up a “right to work” measure attacking private sector unions — and the text of the bill, the Center for Media and Democracy has discovered, is taken word-for-word from American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) “model” legislation.‬

‪See the side-by-side of the Wisconsin legislation and the ALEC bill at: https://org.salsalabs.com/o/632/images/WI_RTW.pdf‬

‪Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, a former ALEC state chairman, says he has the votes to enact the measure. You might remember that in December 2010, after Republicans took control of the legislature, Fitzgerald told reporters about the wonderful idea he had just been briefed on by ALEC.  “I just attended an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting and I was surprised about how much momentum there was in and around that discussion, nothing like I have seen before.” See the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzs_ZMUvS_w.‬

‪Governor Walker’s support for right to work is no surprise. ‬

‪When Walker proposed to crush public-sector unions in 2011, he said he had to do it because the state was “broke”. But Walker was accidentally caught on tape behind closed doors, with billionaire donor Diane Hendricks, admitting that he was pursuing a “divide and conquer” strategy to make Wisconsin a Republican stronghold by first going after the public-sector unions, then going after private-sector ones. Watch the video <a target=”_blank” title=”here” href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXPCl-1a9ZM“>here</a>. ‬

‪Studies have shown, http://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-is-the-wrong-answer-for-wisconsin/, that wages are significantly lower for both union and non-union members in states with right to work laws.  Maybe that is why the policy is fervently supported by ALEC corporations, and its Koch funders who popped up a front group in Wisconsin to quietly push for the bill, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/12/12682/walker-right-work.‬
‪ ‬
‪CMD broke the story, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/02/12724/walker-strikes-truth-wisconsin-idea-university-budget about Walker striking “truth” and the WI Idea from the budget. CMD’s ALECexposed.org project was launched after a flood of ALEC bills sprung from state capitols in 2011. Stay tuned to @Alecexposed and visit PRwatch.org for regular updates. You can also visit our Walker profile on Sourcewatch.org, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scott_Walker.‬

‪And if you live in Wisconsin, the Senate Committee on Labor and Government Reform will be holding a hearing Tuesday, February 24 at 9:00 a.m.  The AFL-CIO will hold a rally at 12:00 p.m. that day and again on Wednesday, February 25 on the State Street side of the capitol.‬

‪Sincerely,‬

‪Lisa Graves, Mary Bottari, Brendan Fischer and the whole team at the Center for Media and Democracy and ALECexposed.org.‬

‪Please support our work at: https://org.salsalabs.com/o/632/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=9668‬