California pot shops ordered to shut down within 45 days

(Ah ha, see? Obama has destroyed the medicinal pot industry. The biggest fucking hypocrite ever elected president has broken yet another campaign promise. We knew this was going to happen and saw it coming. They used the Capone law--an ancient prohibition tax law that hasn't been used in ages. They get you on tax evasion because you can't make a single tax deduction when you deal with controlled substances, so you owe years of back taxes totaling huge sums of money. But the pharmaceutical companies sell amphetamines--a schedule 1 controlled substance--they get to take tax deductions. So, how does that work?--jef)

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By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story

Friday, October 7, 2011

The Obama administration is finally cracking down on the medical marijuana industry, in a big way.

In letters received by 16 licensed California dispensaries and their landlords this week, U.S. Attorneys threatened to swoop in and seize the properties if they don’t close up shop within 45 days.

The Associated Press said that a coordinated crackdown on the medical marijuana industry would be announced at a press conference on Friday.

The move comes in the same week that the Internal Revenue Service took steps that may force Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, the nation’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, to shut down.

The same enforcement tactic that’s being used against Harborside — a very old law that prohibits groups that traffic in controlled substances from taking tax deductions — could also be used against pot shops in all of the 16 states that have legalized the drug’s use for medical purposes.

The U.S. medical marijuana market has grown into a $1.7 billion industry, and experts say it could potentially double that figure within just five years.

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Here is what the hypocrite Obama said on the campaign trail:

“My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana then that’s something I’m open to because there’s no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain. But I want to do it under strict guidelines. I want it prescribed in the same way that other painkillers or palliative drugs are prescribed.” — November 24, 2007 town hall meeting in Iowa

“I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.” — August 21, 2007, event in Nashua, New Hampshire

“I don’t think that should be a top priority of us, raiding people who are using ... medical marijuana. With all the things we’ve got to worry about, and our Justice Department should be doing, that probably shouldn’t be a high priority.” — June 2, 2007, town hall meeting in Laconia, New Hampshire

“You know, it’s really not a good use of Justice Department resources.” — responding to whether the federal government should stop medical marijuana raids, August 13, 2007, town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire

“The Justice Department going after sick individuals using [marijuana] as a palliative instead of going after serious criminals makes no sense.” — July 21, 2007, town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire

NYC Mayor Bloomberg Threatens to Shut Down Occupy Wall Street

Bloomberg, 4th Richest Person in US Due to Wall Street, Is About to Snap the Mouse Trap Shut on Those Who Threaten His Fortune

by mark karlin on Wed, 10/05/2011


Mayor Michael Bloomberg is threatening to shut down democracy on Wall Street.

You might expect that from a man who is the fourth-wealthiest person in America, with $19.5 billion dollars in his pocket. Moreover, Bloomberg made a lot of money as a Wall Street financier, but he catapulted into the multibillionaire category by revolutionizing financial market information and selling a specialized terminal and access services to the financial industry (followed by Bloomberg media services).

In short, his fortune is directly integrated into the Wall Street status quo.

That may be why he told a New York City radio show host last week that "New Yorkers need 'to help the banks.'" The Village Voice headlined its story on the plutocratic pronouncements of Bloomberg, "Mayor Bloomberg: 'We'll See' If The City Will Let Occupy Wall Street Continue." 

Bloomberg seemed in a baronial haze, claiming, "The protesters are protesting against people who make $40-50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That's the bottom line." Is the mayor mainlining Fox "news" as his source of information? He royally added, "so anything we can do that's responsible to help the banks ... that is what we need."

Yesterday, BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote that there is little doubt that law enforcement officials - at the behest of corporate-backed politicians - are infiltrating and planning ways to discredit the Wall Street autumn of democracy.

In his plutocratic cloud of personal financial interest and self-serving disdain for the right of assembly, Bloomberg resembles a monarchist, not a mayor.

If the Occupy Wall Street movement spreads and grows, you can count on Mayor Bloomberg to pull the curtains down on this exercise in America's basic right of redress.

As Thom Hartmann noted in a book excerpted on Truthout, Thomas Jefferson warned that "the artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy."

Bloomberg is just waiting to snap the mouse trap shut on democracy.

U.S. Postal Service could shut down by winter

Published: Sept. 5, 2011

WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. Postal Service, facing a deficit that will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year, could be forced to close this winter, officials say.

"Our situation is extremely serious," Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe said in a New York Times article published Monday.

Donahoe has been advocating spending cutbacks recently that would eliminate Saturday mail delivery, close as many as 3,700 postal locations and result in layoffs of 120,000 employees, nearly 20 percent of the Postal Service's workforce.

The delivery service, which has no-layoff clauses with unions, faces higher costs, particularly for labor, which accounts for 80 percent of its expenses.

It also has seen revenue decline as the Internet has resulted in fewer people relying on traditional mail as they use other delivery companies, e-mail, pay bills online, and receive news and advertisements online.

"The situation is dire," said Sen. Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service. "If we do nothing, if we don't react in a smart, appropriate way, the Postal Service could literally close later this year. That's not the kind of development we need to inject into a weak, uneven economic recovery."

Without emergency congressional action, by early next year the agency won't have the money to pay employees and put gas in its delivery trucks, which would force it to stop delivering the estimated 3 billion pieces of mail it handles weekly, the Times reported.
But lawmakers haven't agreed on a solution.

Among other things, the Postal Service has asked Congress to allow it to discontinue Saturday delivery but that has drawn criticism.

Apple's Pre-Emptive Strike Against Free Speech

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 by Save the Internet

by Tim Karr

 

So you think you control your smartphone? Think again.

Late last week reports uncovered a plan by Apple, manufacturer of the iPhone, to patent technology that can detect when people are using their phone cameras and shut them down.

Apple says this technology was intended to stop people from recording video at live concerts, which should worry the creative commons crowd. But a remote "kill switch" has far more sinister applications in the hands of repressive governments. And it further raises concerns about the power new media companies hold over our right to connect and communicate.

Imagine if Apple's device had been available to the Mubarak regime earlier this year, and Egyptian security forces had deployed it around Tahrir Square to disable cameras just before they sent in their thugs to disperse the crowd.

Would the global outcry that helped drive Mubarak from office have occurred if a blackout of protest videos had prevented us from viewing the crackdown?

This is more than speculation. Thousands of people across the Middle East and North Africa have used cellphone cameras to document human rights abuses and share them with millions via social media.

In a February speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton credited the viral spread of a cellphone video depicting the shooting death of a young Iranian woman named Neda for bringing world attention to the human rights abuses of the regime.

What would we know of Neda's shocking death had Iranian security forces disabled that camera?

Social Media's Wild West
But here's the rub. The First Amendment and Article 19 of the U.N.'s Declaration on Human Rights don't really apply to the corporations that build these cellphones and run these social networks. Free speech rules don't apply to Silicon Valley.

And while platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr might enable individual expression more than governments do, many governments are at least accountable by law for protecting your right to speech and assembly.

The social networks are only beholden to their terms of service, which in most cases extend them the power to take down your communications "for any or no reason."

That's why Flickr got away with taking down the photographs and files of Egyptian security officers, which were posted by a local activist wanting to draw attention to their crimes. That's why Amazon.com could kick Wikileaks off its hosting platform after it released a series of diplomatic cables that exposed abuses of power by American agents. And that's why Facebook could shut down the pages of any anonymous political protester who decides to use the network to build a community of like-minded activists.

"Hosting your political movement on YouTube is a little like trying to hold a rally in a shopping mall. It looks like a public space, but it's not," writes Ethan Zuckerman of Harvard's Berkman Center.

"Even if YouTube's rulers take their function as a free speech platform seriously and work to ensure you've got rights to post content, they're a benevolent despot, not a representative government."

A Pre-emptive Strike
What Apple is proposing to develop is worse in many ways. Its cellphone camera kill switch can be used as a pre-emptive strike against free speech.

In its patent application, Apple describes the technology as making it impossible to capture video or pictures at events where cameras and video recorders are prohibited. Your phone determines whether an image includes an infrared beam with encoded data. This data is sent from an emitter that directs the cellphone or a similar device to shut down image capture.

Disabling emitters could be mounted on stages, throughout public squares or, conceivably, on police helmets.

While the technology might not be available now, the grave consequences of its use far outweigh any worry Apple and its entertainment industry allies have about video piracy.

More than ten thousand people have already signed a letter imploring Apple CEO Steve Jobs to pull the plug on this technology.

Smartphones like the iPhone and Droid are becoming extensions of ourselves. They are not simply tools to connect with friends and family, but a means to document the world around us, engage in political issues and organize with others. They literally put the power of the media in our own hands.

Apple's proposed technology would take that power away.

House Approves Bill With Massive Spending Cuts After All-Night Session

Saturday, February 19, 2011 by Huffington Post

by Elise Foley 

 

WASHINGTON - After an all-night session, House Republicans early Saturday morning passed legislation that would slash $60 billion in government spending between now and the end of September, setting up a showdown with President Barack Obama, who has vowed to veto the measure.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) led the charge as the GOP cut near $61 Billion from the federal budget. The cuts, which were passed without a single Democratic vote, are aimed primarily at domestic social spending but also have policy goals -- going after the Environmental Protection Agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Hmmm, trhe House GOP wants to cut funding for our public health & land, a financial investigation bureau, a bureau to protect private investors, and an oversight group for financial products and commodities. Basically, they don't want to get caught breaking laws--jef)


Funding for the government runs out on March 4. Obama said on Tuesday he would veto the House version, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has promised to remove many of the bill's funding cuts. So Saturday's passage makes a government shutdown more likely, not less.

The bill is a stop-gap measure - known as a continuing resolution - that would establish spending levels for the rest of the current fiscal year. An even shorter-term solution to buy the chambers more time for a compromise may be off of the table, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on Thursday.

"We are hopeful that the Senate will take up the House passed bill that comes out of here today, tonight, tomorrow morning, whenever it is, and we hope that they will move it," he said. "But I am not going to move any kind of short term CR at current levels. When we say we're going to cut spending, read my lips: We are going to cut spending."

But he later backed off the threat, telling reporters on Friday he would allow for another stop-gap funding bill to prevent government shutdown. Details of that plan will be released "soon enough," he said.

The bill passed 235 to 189, with three Republicans joining all the chamber's Democrats in voting no.

An aide to Nancy Pelosi told Democratic chiefs of staff on Friday that he thinks a government shutdown is likely.

The final funding bill approved by the House included a number of amendments after a time-intensive process that kept lawmakers debating and voting late on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights as well. Some amendments were approved with bipartisan support, such as an effort to kill funding to a Pentagon program to build duplicate fighter jet engines. That amendment, which was supported by the Pentagon, passed on Wednesday in a 233-198 vote.

Other amendments would take additional funding from agencies that were already weakened by the original funding bill. The Environmental Protection Agency, already facing $3 billion in cuts from the main bill, would lose an additional $8.4 million for its greenhouse gas registry thanks to a measure introduced by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kans.), which was added in a 239-185 vote.
The House also targeted the EPA's regulations on cement plants, approving in a 250-177 vote an amendment prohibiting the agency from using funds to implement or enforce the rule.
White House "czars," or advisers would also be banned after an amendment by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), which was approved on Thursday in a 249-149 vote. The amendment prohibited funds to be used to so-called czars on health care, climate change, global warming, green jobs, automobiles, Guantanamo Bay Closure, Pay and Fairness Doctrine.

"To the czars I say, Nyet," Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) said in support of the amendment. "I will leave it to the gentleman to work out his Lenin fantasy," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) quipped in response.

On Friday, the House approved two amendments to de-fund the president's health care law, another step toward blocking the legislation they have already voted to repeal. The amendments, both introduced by Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, would block funding to implement health care reform and prohibit agencies from hiring staff to implement the law, effectively rendering its protections against insurance companies unenforceable.

Another longtime Republican target, Planned Parenthood, would be banned from receiving funding under an amendment offered by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), which Democrats called an "all-out war on women." The measure would prevent the organization from receiving any federal funding because it performs abortions -- even though using government money for abortions is already illegal -- undermining programs for reproductive health and pregnancy prevention.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) spoke out against the attack on Planned Parenthood after delivering an emotional account on the House floor of an emergency abortion she underwent for medical reasons.

"A continuing resolution is a mechanism to allow the government to continue to operate," Speier told HuffPost. "It should not be a vehicle for political rhetoric and high drama that was exhibited last night on an issue that was unrelated to the federal budget. It didn't create one job, it didn't reduce the deficit, so what was the point?"

Efforts by Democrats to restore funding to agencies were mostly voted down. Rep. Rush Holt's (D-N.J.) amendment to restore some funding to the CFPB was struck down on a party-line vote Thursday 163-265, leaving the bureau with only half of its current funding in the final bill. Frank attempted to restore $131 million in funds to the Securities and Exchange Commission, but that amendment also failed in a 160-270 vote.

"I've talked to a lot of people about whether they like the freedom to be cheated on credit cards, to be cheated on mortgages, to be cheated on overdraft fees, and I found that was not really a freedom they valued," Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) said on the House floor on Thursday. "They don't really value that any more than Americans 100 years ago valued the right to buy rancid beef."

An amendment to end a tax loophole for major oil companies, introduced by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), failed in a 251-174 vote on Friday. Democrats aimed to end subsidies to Big Oil as a revenue-booster to protect social programs, but found little support from Republicans.
"Republicans once again sided with BP, Exxon and the oil companies, not with the American taxpayer and the poorest Americans most in need of help," Markey said in a statement. "This legislation focuses on just the kind of special interest loophole that should be closed before we open attacks on programs for the poorest Americans."

Guantanamo is 'Not Even Close' to Closing Down

May not close down during Obama's term



vidlink

Lieberman: China Can Shut Down The Internet, Why Can’t We?

video link

'Shocking' conditions at Tylenol plant

By Parija Kavilanz
May 14, 2010
'Shocking' conditions at Tylenol plant


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The quality and safety violations that led to the shutdown of a Tylenol plant were extremely serious, and could lead to tough action by regulators on drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.

"It's absolutely shocking," said David Lebo, a professor of pharmaceutical manufacturing at Temple University in Philadelphia, referring to the Food and Drug Administration's May 6 inspection report on the facility in Fort Washington, Penn., operated by Johnson & Johnson's McNeil division.

"This inspection report is pretty close to being the worst I've seen. It suggests that basically the FDA found an issue with almost every system at the plant," said Lebo, who had previously worked for Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceutical sourcing group in 2002. Lebo said he left that job after nine months because the work required too much travel.

On May 1, McNeil recalled some 50 children's versions of non-prescription drugs, including Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, Fortune 500) has suspended production at the plant.

The FDA report listed 20 violations, which include 46 consumer complaints on the recalled products. Johnson & Johnson has not revealed details of those complaints.

However, Congress has opened an investigation into the recall, and lawmakers have given both Johnson & Johnson and the FDA a May 17 deadline to hand over details about the consumer complaints and any other FDA inspection reports on the Fort Washington facility.

On Friday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced that it would hold a hearing on May 27 to examine the recall. The panel said it had invited J&J Chief Executive William Weldon to testify.


The most damning, according to Lebo, was the charge that the plant "does not maintain adequate laboratory facilities for the testing and approval (or rejection) of components of drug products."

The report also said that McNeil failed to follow up on 46 consumer complaints received from June 2009 to April 2010 "regarding foreign materials, black or dark specks." Neither the FDA nor Johnson & Johnson would provide more details about the complaints.

"When you get consumer complaints you want to make sure you at least investigate them," said Albert Wertheimer, professor of health economics at Temple University.

The FDA also said that lack of proper controls in the manufacturing process led to some batches of infant's Tylenol being "superpotent," or having too much of some ingredients.

Also, the report noted that employees at the plant were not trained in current good manufacturing practices. The FDA inspectors further detailed dusty and filthy conditions at the plant, including "incubators with a large amount of visible gray and brown dust/debris, large hole in the ceiling and thick dust covering the grill inside a filtered cabinet."

In addition, the FDA said some drums used to transport raw materials to the Fort Washington facility were contaminated with a bacteria identified as B. cepacia.

Johnson & Johnson maintains that those contaminated drums never reached its plant and all finished products tested negative for the bacteria.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), B. cepacia poses little medical risk to healthy people. However, those with certain health problems like weakened immune systems or chronic lung diseases, particularly cystic fibrosis, may be more susceptible to infections with B. cepacia.

It was unclear what action the FDA would take next, but the agency has said that it is considering a full range of actions.

One option is to shut down the plant completely. Wertheimer said that would be a tremendous blow to Johnson & Johnson. "The company would lose an enormous amount of market share in the over-the-counter drugs category," he said.

Another option is that the FDA could issue a consent decree. McNeil would be able to continue production at the plant, but would have constant third-party inspection. "It's a very expensive settlement for a drugmaker," said Lebo.

David Rosen, who worked at the FDA for 14 years and now advises major pharmaceutical companies on FDA regulation and compliance, agreed. "This is a very serious situation for the company," he said. "Having repeated recalls will cause reputational and trust damage for J&J," he said.

The latest recall is Johnson & Johnson's fourth in the past 7 months.

In November 2009, the company recalled five lots of its Tylenol Arthritis Pain 100 count with the EZ-open cap product due to reports of an unusual moldy, musty, or mildew-like odor that led to some cases of nausea, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea.

In December, McNeil expanded that recall to include all available product lots of Tylenol Arthritis Pain caplet 100 count bottles with the red EZ-open cap.

In January, McNeil recalled an undisclosed number of containers of Tylenol, Motrin and other over-the-counter drugs after consumers complained of feeling sick from an "unusual" odor.

J&J spokesman James Freeman would not comment on how long the facility will remain shut.

However, in a statement emailed to CNNMoney.com, the company said it will not restart operations until "we have taken the necessary corrective actions and can assure the quality of products made there."

Freeman also declined to comment on the number of employees at the plant or whether the workers are still on payroll.