Glibbertysmidgeon

Ken Ley died of a massive coronary today.

Convicted of 10 counts of fraud and conspiracy in the collapse of Enron corporation, Ley was awaiting sentencing for his crimes.

Enron filed for bankruptcy in December 2001 after investigators found it had used partnerships to conceal more than $1 billion in debt and inflate profits. Enron’s downfall cost 4,000 employees their jobs and many of them their life savings, and led to billions of dollars of losses for investors.

The collapse was the first of the high-profile corporate scandals that later rocked WorldCom, Global Crossing, Adelphia and Tyco.
CNN

He cooked the books to keep stock prices high even as the company was failing so that he could earn his big bonuses (which are tied to stock performance) and artificially inflate stock prices while he quietly sold off his shares.

Now he’ll never pay his debt to society.

Almost makes me wish I believed in Hell.
Almost.

Next time you fill up your car, don’t blame the guy that owns the station. He’s still making an average of ten cents on the gallon, as he has for years. Instead, think about Lee R. Raymond.

Raymond is the freshly retired C.E.O of Exxon Mobile, and he walked away from that job with $167.7 million.

Lofty figures have in recent instances prompted headlines to blare the news of Lee R. Raymond’s golden parachute from Exxon Mobil (nyse: XOM - news - people )–reportedly, a $69.7 million compensation package and $98 million pension payout–and juxtapose the figure to gasoline in the U.S. hitting an eye-watering $3 per gallon at some locations.

Forbes

Raymond’s last reported salary was $38 million in 2004. What does this man do to earn $38 million a year? Is he really that much smarter, hard working, and good looking than I am?
I guess he’s getting credit for Exxon’s all time record-breaking profits.

Exxon Mobil’s first-quarter profit was nearly a billion dollars more than the same quarter a year earlier. Not as much as Wall Street wanted, but still an awful lot of money - especially to people paying $3 a gallon or more to fill their gas tanks. They’re wondering why oil companies don’t feel their pain.

CNN

Yes, that says BILLION.
And they’re not the only ones.

Today, Chevron announced that it has made four billion dollars since January of this year. This is a 49% increase over the same period last year.

Conoco- Phillips earned $3.29 billion in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 13% over last year.

The entire oil industry is generating record breaking profits, while you and I fork over larger and larger chunks of our paychecks to pay for their products. The cost of heating oil for my building rose 70% last year alone.

Since George Bush took office, the price of oil has risen from $1.46 to $2.91. That’s a 100 percent increase in five years. This is the fastest rise in gasoline prices in two decades.

In all this time, he has failed to take action- but now even FOX news polls show his popularity in the dumpster, and he is forced to make some kind of gesture.

President George W. Bush, in trouble over soaring gasoline prices, ordered a probe on Tuesday into any price gouging, called for an end to tax breaks for Big Oil and suspended putting oil into the U.S. emergency stockpile.

As a short-term measure, Bush also gave the Environmental Protection Agency authority to suspend federal clean-burning gasoline rules this summer that are forcing consumers to buy expensive new gasoline blends.

Reuters

Let’s look at his plan more closely:

1. Ordered a probe on Tuesday into any price gouging: Just for the record- the Federal Trade Commission has never investigated the oil industry for price gouging. Ever.
2. Called for an end to tax breaks for Big Oil: Strangely, he called for an end to tax breaks for big oil, then turned around and urged Congress to extend tax breaks to the industry.
3. Suspended putting oil into the U.S. emergency stockpile: Unfortunately, oil shortages are only going to get worse. With global demands increasing and supplies beginning to dwinle,this oil shortage is not going away anytime soon. This tactic is purely political. If he can drop the price by a few cents for a few months by removing one consumer, then maybe the Republicans can hold on to a few seats in the upcoming elections. This is no long term fix, and it’s a terrible band-aid because it depletes our national emergency reserve, which threatens our overall national security.
4. Suspend federal clean-burning gasoline rules: This is just blatant opportunism. If anything, using alternative fuel sources should decrease our dependence on oil. Any excuse to roll back environmental laws…

This plan has no mention of improving fuel efficiency standards for cars, but it does include a scheme to give every American a $100 rebate. Because our votes are always for sale- and cheap too! I guess it worked for him before his last election- but that time he paid $300 per person.

Bush also opposes the measures Congress is proposing to deal with the situation:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is asking the Federal Trade Commission to monitor refiners this summer, while Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., offered a bill that would require energy companies to pay a federal royalty on all oil pumped from the Gulf of Mexico if oil prices exceed $55 a barrel. Some oil now is exempt from royalties, costing the government billions of dollars.

Washington Post

Our entire energy policy is a failure. Though that should be no surprise to anyone, since the whole lousy thing was drafted in a big, secret retreat attended only by Dick Cheney and energy lobbyists.

It’s not as if serious people didn’t see this coming. Europe, for example, spends about half of what the United States does on energy, relative to GDP. But Europe has entirely different policies on everything from mass transit to building codes to gas taxes. Brazil makes more than half of its motor fuels from domestic renewable ethanol. Japan is far ahead of the United States in the development of efficient hybrid cars.

Had we begun adjusting to the need for a post-petroleum economy during the first and second oil shocks, three decades ago when Jimmy Carter was ridiculed for wearing that cardigan, or even 10 years ago when ”Ozone Al” Gore was mocked for taking seriously the threat of global warming, we would not be getting robbed quite so helplessly at the pump by a collusion of Mideast sheiks, oil barons, and their Republican enablers.

Boston Globe

Why is the President continuing to protect Big Oil instead of addressing our energy problems in a forward thinking manner? Why does he oppose rolling back tax breaks for the rich corporations?

Maybe it’s the $450 million dollars the oil companies have spent on lobbying in the past six years.

Over the past six years, oil and gas companies have spent nearly $450 million on politicians, political parties and lobbyists in order to protect their interests in Washington. Since 1990, energy companies have made $183 million in political contributions alone, 75 percent of which have gone to Republicans. In addition, over the past six years, nine of the top ten recipients of contributions from oil and gas companies have been Republicans. In just the last election cycle, the oil and gas industry contributed more than $20 million to Republicans, four times more than the amount donated to Democrats.

Center for American Progress Report

Or maybe it’s just who he is.
The Bush family is a proud Texas oil family. George H W Bush started the family out in oil:

Bush ventured into the highly speculative Texas oil exploration business after World War II with considerable success. Zapata Corporation was created by him in 1953 as Zapata Oil. He secured a position with Dresser Industries. His son, Neil Mallon Bush, is named after his employer at Dresser, Neil Mallon, who became a close family friend. Dresser Industries, decades later, merged with Halliburton, whose former CEOs include Dick Cheney, George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense and, as of 2005, Vice President of the United States.

Wikipedia

The Bush Administration is also loaded with oil barons. Before becoming our government:

George W. Bush ran a number of oil companies, including Arbusto Energy, Spectrum 7, and the Harken Energy Corporation.
Before joining Bush’s cabinet:

Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton.

Condoleeza Rice was on the Board of Directors member for Chevron, and headed their committee on public policy. Chevron was so fond of her they named an oil tanker Condoleezza Rice.

Former Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans: Was first a roughneck oil rigger, then CEO of Tom Brown, Inc.

It’s natural for people to want to look after their own. If my whole family made their living in jelly beans, you can bet I’d be against a jelly bean tax. But I’m not the President of the United States of America.

The President’s job is something larger than to look after his friends and family- it’s to protect everyone in this country. His job is to protect the poor and weak from the rich and powerful.

Not the other way around.

The Supreme Court has just issued a decision that local governments can use Eminent Domain to take away your land so that corporations can build businesses there.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.

“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

CNN

Our government is now so deeply embedded in the pockets of big business that they are happily handing them our homes.

My entire retirement nest egg is my little house.
What’s one woman’s retirement worth, compared to some corporation’s lust for profit?

I guess I just have to hope that no rich, well-connected developer decides to build a mall on my property.
Small comfort, that.

A recent New Yorker Article reveals that insurance companies find excuses to reject 30% of all claims.

In my sister’s case, that number is more like 40%.
Donna is a clinical massage therapist, treating people injured on the job, in car accidents, or in mishaps in their daily lives. As an independent businesswoman, Donna doesn’t have the bargaining power of a major hospital. If the insurance company decides she should only get half her normal wage for their clients, then half is what she gets. If they decide not to pay, she has about a 50/50 chance of getting anything at all, no matter how hard she fights the paperwork battle.

I admit that I’ve advised her many times to go private. Donna sometimes works one or two days a week at a local spa doing relaxation massage, which is paid by cash, instead of insurance. These cash clients always pay, and they never try to force her to work for half her normal rate. On most weeks, she makes more money in her one or two spa days than she does working a 30 hour week treating injured patients at the clinic.

As it turns out, more and more medical professionals are going private. One surgeon, who phoned in on the Brian Lehrer radio talk show today, claims he has given up taking insurance patients altogether. This surgeon charges $8,500 for a gall bladder removal surgery, while a typical insurance company pays only $700 for the same procedure.

While I’m not feeling sorry for a man who gets $8,500 for two or three hours’ work, I am sensitive to the fact that he has invested years of his life and hundreds of thousands of dollars into his education and training. I know that if you want someone good, you’ve got to pay them enought to make their investment worthwhile. I also know that his job is extremely risky. Every surgery could end in the death of his patient, and a nasty lawsuit for him.

It makes me wonder what kind of a surgeon can you get for 700 bucks.

One psychiatrist claims that, by not accepting insurance, he saves thousands on the staff he does not have to hire to process the mountains of paperwork insurance companies require. He claims that that he can lower his rates to a level that could, for a long term patient, work out to be less expensive than using insurance in the first place. But even his lower rate of $125 per hour is out of reach for most people.

That is just one of the ways these insurance policies manage to harm doctors and patients both.

I have health insurance, but I can’t go running anymore.

Three years ago, the pain in my hips was sporadic. It would flare up if I wore high heels, or after sitting in my chair with my legs tucked up under me for too long. When I went to the orthopedic doctor, he told me it’s probably bursitis. Then he sent me home with a prescription for physical therapy, a list of physical therapists, and the following instructions:

“Call these, and find one that takes your insurance.”

Two years later, my hips hurt every day, and the pain is enough to make me limp. I am thinking of taking up the list again. Maybe someone has joined my preferred provider plan since last I checked. I wonder where that prescription has gotten to? If I can’t find my two year old prescription, will my insurance pay for another visit to the orthopedist to get a new one?

How does my health insurance help me if I can’t find a doctor who is “in network”?

Looking at all this from the insurance company’s point of view, it makes perfect, if ominous, sense. These are for profit organizations. Their goal is to make money. How does a business make money? By increasing revenue, and by cutting costs.

So they bring in lots of revenue by raising rates, and they cut costs:

• Make it their policy to avoid paying on claims
• Work hard to limit the things they will pay for

It seems to be working. My former employer, AIG insurance, is the 12th richest company in the country. Or was, when I was there.

It feels good to tell ourselves that our health care system is the best in the world. I believe it’s true that we have great doctors, great technology, and great hospitals. But if our system encourages our best and brightest to stop taking health insurance as payment, then these great doctors are really only there for the rich who can afford to pay them in cash.

Right now, my sister is balancing her desire to help injured people with her need to pay her student loans by working two jobs. Speaking for myself, I’m not sure how long I’d be willing to to work that hard for so little.

When we leave a for profit corporation in charge of deciding how much to pay for our medical service, as well as which services it should pay for, isn’t it a bit like leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse?

Kris’ godson, Sammy, was in the newspaper recently, because his school is being shut down. Sammy attended an extended day program that specialized in helping autistic children.

We were surprised when we heard of Sammy’s diagnosis, but not for the reasons you might expect.

“What are the odds,” we asked ourselves, “that we’d have a godson AND a nephew who have autism?”

As it turns out the odds are quite good.

The current incidence of autism is 60 for every 10,000 children. That’s one child out of every 166 born. I was astonished. If autism is so prevalent, why didn’t I know any autistic kids when I was in school? Turns out there weren’t as many then. In 1988, 6 out of every 10,000 children had autism. That’s one out of every 1660. In just seventeen years, the number of intances of the disorder has increased tenfold.

What could have caused this alarming increase? Some suspect it was something environmental:

In 1988, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended important new additions to the nation’s infant immunization program, including three Hepatitis B immunizations (one injected at birth), and three Haemophilis B shots—all delivered by six months of age. Drug companies responded with vaccinations supplied in multiple dose containers preserved with the mercury-based antibacterial Thimerosal. Neither the CDC, nor the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which monitors the safety of vaccinations, expressed concerns at that time about the relatively high doses of mercury that newborn babies and infants would be exposed to through these shots.
A dramatic nationwide increase in autism followed directly on the heels of the abrupt rise in thimerosal exposure (Blaxill 2001).

Environmental Working Group Report

I’d never heard of Thimerosal until I read recently about a leaked memo, which revealed drug company Merck’s big mercury coverup. Written by Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman, a former SVP of Merck, to the (then) head of Merck’s vaccine division, Dr. Gordon Douglas, the memo says:

… infants who receive their vaccines on schedule would be dosed with as much as 87 times more mercury than is accepted as safe in daily consumption. “When viewed in this way, the mercury load appears rather large,” wrote Hilleman.

News Standard

(Public health officials did not find out about the high levels of mercury in vaccinations unti 1999- eight years after Hillman wrote this memo. )

Dr. Jill James is a former FDA senior research scientist who now works for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Dr James has recently published a new study that could explain why some kids who recieved immunizations containing the poison have autism, while some do not.

The new study shows that autistic children have a severe deficit in a chemical called glutathione. Our bodies use glutathione to remove poisons from the body.

When compared to normal health children, autistic children showed a significant impairment in every one of five measurements of the body’s ability to maintain a healthy glutathione defense. These findings are strong evidence that if these children were exposed to a potentially toxic dose of mercury or other compound they would be much less able to mount an effective defense.

Environmental Working Group Report

Drug companies continue to say there is no hard evidence that the immunizations containing Thimerosal were unsafe.

When I was a little girl, I broke a thermometer on the floor at Grandma’s house. When I attempted to clean up I discovered a grand new game. Aunt Barbara found me half an hour later, on my hands and knees, chasing little silver globes of liquid around the chipped legs of the clawfoot tub.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” she shrieked, sweeping me up and away from the mess. Even in the early 70’s, Every mother knew that mercury was poison.

Common sense tells me that you don’t inject poison into babies, ever.

When corporate behavior flies in the face of common sense and the common good, their excuse needs to be better than, “There is no hard evidence it was unsafe .”

FDA Statement on thimerosal

Update: A new book has been published on this topic called “Evidence of Harm“.

Today, everyone at Oracle corporation went home like any other Friday.
After the stock market closed, the company announced that it would lay off 5,000 employees.

Oracle said employees would learn if they are out of a job when they open overnight packages delivered to their homes Saturday.

New York Times

Right now, thousands of people are wondering what news tomorrow will bring.
I hope the corporate executives at Oracle will sleep as poorly as all of those families tonight.