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Oil prices have risen because the 6 oil companies that control our government have cut down production. No new oil refineries have been built in the US since 1976. We are at an 8 year high in supply for oil, we just don't refine it!

A congressional investigation uncovered internal memos written by the major oil companies operating in the U.S. discussing their successful strategies to maximize profits by forcing independent refineries out of business, resulting in tighter refinery capacity. From 1995-2002, 97% of the more than 920,000 barrels of oil per day of capacity that have been shut down were owned and operated by smaller, independent refiners. Were this capacity to be in operation today, refiners could use it to better meet today's reformulated gasoline blend needs. Profit margins for oil refiners have been at record highs. In 1999, for every gallon of gasoline refined from crude oil, U.S. oil refiners made a profit of 22.8 cents. By 2004, the profits jumped 80% to 40.8 cents per gallon of gasoline refined. Between 2001 and mid-2005, the combined profits for the biggest five refiners was $228 billion. - Public Citizen

If you look at these oil companies investor reports, you will see it is price gouging. Take Exxon/Mobil. Last year as a share of capital investment, Exxon Mobil made a 46% rate of return on it's US oil operations, a 59% profit margin on it's US oil refining, totalling $36 billion. They love reporting this information to their investors. While a barrel of oil costs $20 to make, they turn around and sell it for $70.

It's a myth that Saudis or some organization sets these prices. The prices are set on energy trading markets. Back in 2000, Enron lobbied hard for the "Commodities Futures Modernization Act." Look it up. It deregulated the energy trading exhanges, meaning over half of the trades are unregulated. When the oil companies are the main ones throwing money around on these exchanges, it's easy for them to hike up the price.

As for the Democrats, yes they do receive money. But if you look at the percentage of campaign contributions going to Republicans, Republicans receive 4 times as much money from oil companies than democrats. That means Republicans should be hung 4 times as high for making consumers deal with this BS.

They were asking so they could do a credit check, of course.

They made treatment conditional on your ability to pay.

If it was an emergency (defined with words like "serious") then they broke the law (unless non-lawyer me has misunderstood the law). If you choose to make an issue of it they are now open to a $50,000 fine, a civil suit from you, and if you can get the bureaucrats sufficiently angry at them, *revocation of their Medicare provider agreement*. Start with the regional office of the Health Care Finance Administration -- no, wait, that's the older term, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The crux of your complaint would be that they refused treatment and demanded payment information as a condition of treatment. No charge to you, not expensive like a lawsuit, might help the next person who tries to get medical help there. Say "EMTALA" if they don't recognized section 1867.

There's more you can do than just boycott RIAA labels. Here's some ideas:

1. Write your congressman - you can even do it via email. Follow this link for a really simple way to do that. Will they listen? If enough of you complain they will. (Don't be negative and say democracy doesn't work.)

2. When you talk to your friends, let them know this is going on. Believe it or not, a lot of people don't know about this issue. The more people you tell, the more this becomes an issue.

3. This stuff is making the mainstream news. When you see this issue come up in a newspaper, write a letter to the editor about it. More people read letters to the editor than articles in the paper. Tell people the ideas in this message to get them to not support RIAA.

4. Complain on artist websites and give artists bad press. Not planning on buying the latest Bruce Springsteen CD? Why don't you write him and tell him you're not doing it because he's on a RIAA label. Big artists are not "victims" of decisions by their labels.

5. Buy indie labels and let people know you're buying indie labels.

6. Buy a t-shirt about this. Here's some to choose from:
#1, #2, and #3

Your other alternative is to not give a fuck like everyone else. Everyone has to have their issue and maybe this one isn't yours. Hopefully I've given you some ideas for getting involved about something though.

I'm guessing the law you speak of is the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Here's Bush's signing statement. For the reason you predicted, Public Citizen has already sued to have this law declared unconstitutional.

I envision the lawsuit failing because the courts will essentially say, "Close enough. It's too cumbersome to send this back to Congress and the President to fix a 'harmless' error." Besides, how can a court strike down a law that gives so many agencies funding for a whole year, especially after they've started spending that money? It would be a budgetary and administrative nightmare. No court is going to penalize all those agencies for Congress' and Bush's error.

Was McDonalds morally or legally liable for the poor lady's injury? ... In point of fact, the lady did a stupid thing. Since water boils at 212F, I would expect coffee could be served anywhere up to that temperature and therefore I would never place a flimsy foam cup near my balls in a car. Likewise, I would never place a loaded gun in the waistband of my pants. Any reasonable person would act likewise.

I disagree - I think McDonalds was legally liable. The industry standard was 160F, as has been noted. Therefore, a consumer purchasing coffee at a variety of different businesses would have an expectation of the temperature of the coffee served.

McDonalds chose to deviate from this standard -- no problem so far.

They chose to go significantly higher than the standard - again, still no problem.

They did NOT inform consumers that they were significantly higher than the standard, so much so that THEIR product could cause severe burns where competitors products (ie the industry standard) would not. *HERE* is the problem.

Yes, the woman was foolish to put the cup between her legs, but everyone does foolish things. Her foolish action would not have caused nearly so much damage had it not been for McDonalds' decision to serve coffee dangerously hot *and* not inform consumers how dangerous it was.

The jury wanted to punish McDonald's, plain and simply. They weren't "nice" to the woman. She could have easily prevented the injury by acting responsibly. Because of the publicity of this particular lawsuit and others like it, everybody believes they are just one small injury or slight away from winning the lawsuit lottery. Tort is out of control.

From the analysis I've read (sorry, don't remember where), yes, the jury did want to punish McDonald's. I see nothing wrong with that, since McDonald's was in the wrong (in my opinion). And the fact that the award was later substantially reduced is always left out. However, your last comment is really more of an urban legend - tort is not out of control. There are a few hyped-up cases (like this one - from 1994!) that everyone talks about. The reality is that most lawsuits are between businesses, and it is these B2B lawsuits that are much more likely to be frivolous (one source, but I've read others as well).

I'm glad your personal liability lawsuit came out favorably for you - I have a friend who was in a similar situation and luckily it came out favorably for her as well. It is pretty sleazy that there are all of these ambulance-chasing lawyers who set $$ in people's eyes, but I think we need to differentiate between personal lawsuits between individuals and lawsuits between people & companies. For you I'm sure this was a stressful, frustrating time. For McDonalds, that was just a cost of doing business.

I think I was twelve when I heard that loud music could damage my hearing. I believed it too after an album side played at high volume.

That ringing in your ears when the music stops? That's temporary hearing loss. Listen to enough loud music/sounds and you will have that ringing all the time. Just ask Pete Townsend and Bill Clinton.

I am happy that I never went to many concerts. I've been to a few. Never sat up close. My cat is almost never too quiet for me to hear him getting into stuff - from my bedroom. Although the cat tries.

I would label this complaint as idiocy. Put it right up there with the woman who spilled hot coffee on herself and sued (yes that is not a good, 100 percent comparison, but RTFA before slamming me, please). Perhaps this is more like smokers who die from complications of smoking and their families sue. Did they ever really encourage their deceased loved one from smoking? Did the smoker ever really try to quit? As a former smoker myself I realize it can be very hard to quit but it can be done.

Some people like pain. I don't. If something I like hurts me I try and change something about it so it doesn't hurt or quit it.

Idiots. Idiots all around. They can be identified when they utter: I knew it would hurt/be wrong and I did it anyway and refuse to deal with the consequences.

The author made reference to the mythological "McDonald's Coffee" case as an example of a frivolous lawsuit. As hopefully more and more people know, the lawsuit was anything but frivolous:

http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/tort/myths/ articles.cfm?ID=785

He also incorrectly states that the plaintiffs won in their lawsuit against McDonald's for the fat content of their food. The fact is that the judge threw the case out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_268 8000/2688065.stm

If you examine the 2005 Energy Bill you will discover how deeply flawed it is. It is a bill written to protect the domestic oil companies at the expense of the middle-class taxpayer. Our government simply does not care about us. We need to make them care before they sell out our future to the highest bidder.

See http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/tort/myths/ articles.cfm?ID=785

In the meantime, consider producing works under licenses such as the GPL, the GNU Free Documentation License, the Free Art License, or a Creative Commons license with a "share-alike" provision. This is not perfect, but this would use copyright restrictions for preserving freedom. Those wanting to produce works under permissive licenses would have an advantage denied to the producers of proprietary-licensed works.

It is also worth considering the role of money in politics.

The Enron part had me laughing.

"Enron employees seemed to have no compunction about what they were doing."

And why should they? They probably knew that if their accounting scam didn't work, their friends in Congress would write a special law to set them up in their next venture. Buried in the 700-plus page energy bill currently under debate in the U.S. Senate is a provision that provides hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal loan guarantees for a power project apparently to be built by four former Enron executives. Their company name is not mentioned; the legislation only describes what it does and where it's located.

It's an old trick used by our elected representatives to give tax breaks to cronies without identifying them; they write a law whose provisions only apply to one person or company. So you see, it really doesn't matter what the Enron emails said, or if the guys got caught, because when you control the lawmakers you're above the law.

The amount of tax dollars spent on corporate welfare, an appalling percentage of which goes directly to line the pockets of the very wealthy, dwarfs by an order of magnitude the amount of money being returned to those who've paid into the Social Security system, being paid to those who've paid into the Unemployment Benefits system, being returned to those who've paid into the Medicare and Medicaide system during their working lives, and yes, even those getting free handouts ('welfare') because they're too poor, too uneducated, lack resources, lack opportunity, or (in some cases, but not even close to all) are simply too lazy to work.

Are you nuts? An order of magnitude more? Do you even know what "order of magnitude" means?

According to government figures, the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the US will be 12.9 trillion dollars ($12,900 billion). This is the total economic output of the nation.

Social Security ($540 billion), Medicare ($340 billion) and Medicaid/SCHIP ($199 billion) alone add up to $1.079 trillion (1,079 billion) - and that's leaving out traditional "welfare". That's almost 10% of GDP.

You're claiming an "order of magnitude" more in corporate welfare? $10.79 trillion? What kind of tax breaks are you thinking of here? Apparently, you believe that the government should take 100% of GDP in taxes and simply redistribute it as it sees fit, because that $11+ trillion that doesn't go to SS, Medicaid/Medicare is all "corporate welfare".

Dude, even Ralph Nader only puts corporate welfare at $200 billion - only about a fifth as much as is spent on the big three social programs.

You seem to have been bit by the "numerical nonsense" bug yourself. Maybe you meant an order of magnitude less? You'd at least be in striking distance then...

I suppose, of course, that those are just "fascist facts". I'm sure you can figure out some way to link the approximately 10% of GDP paid out in the above services to fundamentalist Christian tithing of 10% of income to the church to "prove" how Amerikkka is becoming a theocratic dictatorship.

The rest of us learned to put down the bong when we started getting paranoid.

That's because of the huge $2 Billion dollar federal government subsidy from the enormous tax break for >= 6000 lb vehicles

Naw, your probably right. It's the Saudi oil cartel that is controlling the development of the automobile and exerting mind control on the consumer. That's what it is.

Who do you think lobbied for that tax break/subsidy? Do you think it was the oil industry, or the environmental lobby.

Shades of TaubmanSucks.com

Maybe Public Citizen can look into it.

• Radioactive cobalt dumped in vacant lot in Bangkok. 3 dead, 12 injured.
• Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Turkey. Two injured cutting up the scrap.
• Radioactive cobalt shows up in scrapyard in Brazil. Four dead, 300 exposed.
• Radioactive cobalt shows up in Mexico. Recycled into rebar and metal furniture. One known dead, injuries unknown. Discovered when some of the furniture was trucked to Los Alamos and set off radiation alarms.

That's right -- they are designing Yucca Mountain to hold 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste (Source: Congress -- search for 77,000 within the page). Yucca Mountain will likely be full to capacity by the time they open it, if it ever even opens (God forbid). Right now the project is dead, because congress didn't give it the funding they needed and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled that it is illegal for the EPA to set the waste storage time period arbitrarily at 10,000 years when it needs to be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years at a minimum. I've heard that Wisconsin may be the next target for the nation's second nuclear waste dump (look out Wisconsin!).

You obviously either didn't read my post about alternative energy or didn't read it very thoroughly [read it here]. Most of your arguments on alternative energy sources are pessimistic, outdated and incorrect. Geothermal can be used in most places in the United States, because the temperature below the crust stays at a steady 55 Fahrenheit year round. You pump water through pipes into wells in the ground to cool or heat it and then circulate it back up to your house. I don't understand the heating/cooling engineering beyond that (that's my father's area of expertise), but it keeps your house toasty warm in the winter and cool in the summer. These are small geothermal systems as opposed to the large commercial ones that you are probably thinking of. I've already addressed your other remarks in my alternative energy post.

A part of the problem with alternative energy is that people have been taught by the corporate owned media to have such negative attitudes toward it. Clean energy is achievable. If you want to play into the hands of big oil, then keep believing that alternative energy isn't possible -- that's what they want you to believe.

No good solution has been found to the nuclear waste problem since the first fission reaction in 1942 and I don't expect that one will be found in my lifetime. The best solution right now is to stop making more nuclear waste.

Even though my generation has inherited a monumental mistake and problem caused by the nuclear industry, I'm no pessimist -- there's still hope. I firmly believe that our society is innovative enough to create the technologies needed to be energy independent and powered by 100% clean energy. The only thing standing in our way is corrupt and powerful corporations that would rather keep doing things the dirty, profitable way. I believe in the people, not the filthy rich, immoral corporations.

Hotlines etc. are not outsourced as far as I know . . .

New Jersey offshored the hotlines for their welfare department to India. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Insurance companies just run the numbers and tack on a profit - they really are the least responsible.

There are issues such as the privacy of information that is processed by others overseas. Though this is an issue with data processed anywhere, it might be harder to hold someone liable for problems if they are located overseas.

wrecked its economy by going too far with some socialistic ideals!?!?!?

The California *I* live in was wrecked due to horrifically ill-advised energy deregulation.

Damn those "socialists" and their free market!

Immediately after 9-11 a DEA agent and a group of FBI agents thought it would be funny to sodomize me again, and ever since I have been followed around and photographed by people I don't know. They go in my home when I am not there and I have spoken with at least a dozen law enforcement officials about this and no investigation was performed

Something like 90% of truly new drugs are supported by government research dollars. Drug companies mostly fund research on "me too" clones of existing drugs or new uses for drugs they have monopolies for. See: http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID =7065

Lets look at some statistics... www.medical-malpractice-lawyers-attorneys.com The two statistics that caught my eye were:
1. From 1996 through 1999, Florida hospitals reported 19,885 incidents but only 3,177 medical malpractice claims. In other words, for every 6 medical errors only 1 claim is filed.
2. Malpractice insurance costs amount to only 3.2 percent of the average physician's revenues according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC)
or this link: Citizen.org:
"10.6 percent of the state's doctors have paid two or more malpractice awards to patientsThese repeat offender doctors are responsible for 84 percent of all payments. Even more surprising, only 4.7 percent of Pennsylvania 's doctors (1,838), each of whom has paid three or more malpractice claims, are responsible for 51.4 percent of all payments. "

Frivolis lawsuits really aren't that much of a problem. I am much more concerned about the increasing privitazation and high price of Prescription drugs in this country.

For those interested to learn more about Public Citizen, here is their website.

If I wasn't feeling so damn lazy this morning, I'd look up the rest of them. Even such "frivilous lawsuit" examples as aren't total urban legends are often exaggerated, probably originally sourced to statements by the corporate legal team. Some lawsuits are, of course, frivilous. But I bet it's a lot rarer than corporate execs and their hirelings in the gov't would like you to believe. For a example of this, there's the classic "woman sues McDonalds for millions over spilled hot coffee". For the actual facts, go here.

The business-backed politicians who pushed the agreement through the three legislatures promised that NAFTA would generate prosperity that would more than compensate "ordinary" people for its lack of social protections. Foreign investors would make Mexico an economic tiger, turning its poor workers into middle-class consumers who would then buy US and Canadian goods, creating more jobs in the high-wage countries.

But as soon as the ink was dry on NAFTA, US factories began to shift production to maquiladora factories along the border, where the Mexican government assures a docile labor force and virtually no environmental restrictions. The US trade surplus with Mexico quickly turned into a deficit, and since then at least a half-million jobs have been lost, many of them in small towns and rural areas where there are no job alternatives.

Meanwhile, Mexico's overall growth rate has been half of what it needs to be just to generate enough jobs for its growing labor force. The NAFTA-inspired strategy of export-led growth undermined Mexican industries that sold to the domestic market as well as the sixty-year-old social bargain in which workers and peasant farmers shared the benefits of growth in exchange for their support for a privileged oligarchy. NAFTA provided the oligarchs with new partners--the multinational corporations--allowing them to abandon their obligations to their fellow Mexicans. Average real wages in Mexican manufacturing are actually lower than they were ten years ago. Two and a half million farmers and their families have been driven out of their local markets and off their land by heavily subsidized US and Canadian agribusiness. For most Mexicans, half of whom live in poverty, basic food has gotten even more expensive: Today the Mexican minimum wage buys less than half the tortillas it bought in 1994. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans continue to risk their lives crossing the border to get low-wage jobs in the United States.

And whose fault is it that so many hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on ineffective, unneeded, or unprofitable drug lines that vitally needed medicines can be priced out of the reach of the people who need them? If you want to stop talking about rhetoric, let's discuss the actual breakdown of costs and examine ways that a workable balance of economic and social requirements can be met. That discussion is going on across the nation and around the globe today, and it does no good to try and dismiss one side of a very complex issue without considering some real issues.

One issue is the argument made by supporters of pharmaceutical companies that development costs of new drugs are enormous, and that high profit margins are needed to provide incentives for continued R&D. One should consider that high costs and guaranteed large profit margins means that companies have little incentive to reduce those costs. Similar to costs-plus contracts, the companies know that increased costs will be more than made up with increased prices and resulting revenues for successful products.

This brings up the issue of costs due to unsuccessful products. Instead of vague references to undocumented dollars and failed companies, I'll refer to figures in a paper found here. I recommend reading the report, not because I agree with any of its conclusions, but because it gives real numbers backed by referenced sources. Those numbers suggest that the often-stated costs to pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs are overstated, and that risks are highly mitigated. If you have similarly documented figures backing your statements I would be happy to view them.

Finally, we could discuss how you know that patents are crucial to having effective drugs in the future. In another section of the report cited above, an NIH report reveals that publicly funded research provided a majority of the R&D studies behind the most commercially successful drugs in 1995. This does not include the long-term efforts of public agencies like NIH in researching treatment for diseases like cancer and AIDS. Using the FDA priority rating system for new drug approval applications from 1992-1999 it appears that only 22% of them represented important therapeutic gains, while the majority were for "me too" treatments.

There is of course much more than can be said here. Trying to separate out the facts from the opinions and misrepresentations is difficult, but the consequences of making the wrong choices will be reflected in their effects on the lives of real people.

An excellent illustration of the differences is the cost of cocaine at different points along the production and distribution chain.

As far as Microsoft products such as Windows and Office are concerned, the Inquirer dug up some of the more interesting figures.

Basically, most businesses would love to have margins on their products like MS. Only the pharmaceutical companies are in the same league as MSFT.

During discovery, it appeared that McDonalds had previously settled with some 700 previous burn victims for up to $500k.

Get more of a clue here.

I'm sure there'll be problems tying DNA in with medical records, but you'd think its a solveable problem if the records won't come to light long after you're gone

Unfortunately, not even the Senate has the authority to negotiate policy on the FTAA. Why? Because on August 6th 2002 they gave up that right when president Bush signed into law 'Fast Track' trade promotion authority, granting the president the ability to negotiate trade treaties as he sees fit, independant of Congressional input. All Congress gets to do now is vote 'yes' or 'no' on the finalized text of agreements such as the FTAA.

The best action against this corporatization of national policy is to take to the streets. The FTAA's next Ministerial meeting is in Miami on November 20th and 21st. Get some friends in a car, drive there, and make your voice heard by the people making the decisions. Write articles. Put them in your local weeklies and on websites and in flyers and posters and handbills.

The FTAA isn't a national issue because there isn't enough public outcry. There isn't any public outcry because people don't know whats at stake. Educate yourself and others. Support Indymedia.

Unfortunately, last year Congress gave Bush "Fast Track" negotiating authority. According to Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

Fast Track is a mechanism that delegates away to the Executive Branch this congressional authority for setting trade terms as well as other powers. In one lump sum, Fast Track:

* Delegates Congress' constitutional authority to decide terms for international commerce at negotiations. Congress includes a list of "negotiating objectives," but these are not enforceable.

* Permits the ExecutiveBranch to lock down these trade terms and enter into pacts because under Fast Track, the Administration signs trade deals before Congress ever votes on them.

* Empowers the Executive Branch to write implementing legislation to change federal laws to conform them to an agreement's terms (usually Congress writes law, but Fast Track circumvents the congressional committee process of mark ups, etc..)

* Pre-sets the floor procedures for final consideration of trade deals before negotiations start. Congress must vote on whatever the Administration brings back (agreement and implementing legislation) within a set time with no amendments and only 20 hours of debate.

Although hundreds of trade pacts were implemented since Fast Track's 1974 inception, Fast Track has been used only five times ever. Despite the oft-repeated mantra about how every president since Ford has "had" Fast Track authority, in fact its only uses were the GATT Tokyo Round, U.S.-Israel FTA, Canada-U.S. FTA, NAFTA and the GATT Uruguay Round.

"Nearly 300 separate trade agreements" were negotiated by the Clinton Administration. Of these, only the Uruguay Round Agreement and NAFTA were submitted to Congress under Fast Track procedures.

I would amend this by adding to the list of Fast Tracked trade agreements the recently passed US-Chilean Free Trade Agreement.

Congress has already given away its right to amend the agreement and they have 20 hours to debate it. So, it isn't Congress that loads these "FTAs" with goodies for corporations, it's the executive branch. Congress can only vote up or down on them. The backers of these things seem to think that they have to railroad these things on a fast track because once the contents of the Agreements become known public opposition grows quickly. Democracy is so inconvenient.

Rollovers are a small fraction of accidents, but they are also one of the most likely to kill or injure the driver and passengers in the car, truck, or SUV.

"Although rollover crashes are rare as a type of crash, the death toll from these crashes accounts for a third of all highway motor vehicle deaths, and is sixty percent of the deaths in SUVs." - From Public Citizen's SUV Safety Page

Here is some more information about SUV's and Rollovers.

Obviously, Public Citizen has an agenda, just like most anything you'll read about SUV's and safety. But failure to understand the safety of the vehicle you drive is one of the things that kills people.

--A SAAB Driver

Rollovers are a small fraction of accidents, but they are also one of the most likely to kill or injure the driver and passengers in the car, truck, or SUV.

"Although rollover crashes are rare as a type of crash, the death toll from these crashes accounts for a third of all highway motor vehicle deaths, and is sixty percent of the deaths in SUVs." - From Public Citizen's SUV Safety Page

Here is some more information about SUV's and Rollovers.

Obviously, Public Citizen has an agenda, just like most anything you'll read about SUV's and safety. But failure to understand the safety of the vehicle you drive is one of the things that kills people.

--A SAAB Driver

how is it that these companies can bring in people from other countries to replace jobs for which there are TONS of unemployed people who want those same jobs?

It is called Free Trade . Your government and mine signe the NAFTA agreement because they felt more loyalty to big corporations than they did to their own citizens.

how is it that these companies can bring in people from other countries to replace jobs for which there are TONS of unemployed people who want those same jobs?

It is called Free Trade . Your government and mine signe the NAFTA agreement because they felt more loyalty to big corporations than they did to their own citizens.

You're right, I equated freedom from interference with a kind of protection. In fact, that is what Chapter 11 of NAFTA is all about -- expansive new rights for investors [corps, really] wildly beyond the rights of individuals, neighbourhoods, municipalities, regions, civil powers, and even nation states. A lot of people are freaked out by this trend of non-interference.

On the one hand, they regulate (er, interfere), on the other they protect from interference (er, award radical new freedoms). Splitting hairs, I guess.

Well -- solving the correct problem would help.

The medical insurance issues that you speak of are caused not by the lawyers but rather by the Medical Boards failure to discipline the doctors that have repeated malpractice claims against them.

According to the CPUC information that comes with my electric bill every few months, nuclear in California costs about $0.14/kwh, not including the decommissioning surcharge. The CATO Institute can not be trusted on energy policy, as they're in bed with the industry lobby and firmly believe that "research" should be a for-profit endeavor, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Look at what they were saying about tobacco in the 1980s.

Do you realize that the nuclear industry has a blanket insurance policy from the U.S. congress? Without the Price-Anderson Act subsidy, the insurance on nuclear would make it way more expensive than even solar. I've heard figures in the $0.45/kwh range. So be careful if you want to stop talking about subsidies.

You also haven't adaquately addressed the reliablity problems of wind

What reliability problems? There aren't any. That's why wind is the fastest-growing source, and has been for the past six years, not counting a jump in natural gas at the tail end of the economic boom. Do you think all the other types of plants are going to go away? There is plenty of backup power on-demand for periods of widespread calm winds already attached to the grid.

nor have you mentioned that many hundreds of facilites would have to be built to replace existing power plants.

The number is 1.5 million wind turbines to completely power the entire U.S. As a matter of complexity, two street lights take more time and effort to install than one wind turbine.

If you had 10 nuke plants for California, then if one goes down it's rolling blackout time. The inherent redundancy of wind turbines avoids that problem.

This has really become as distorted as the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit. Please read this for the lowdown behind the wisecracks.

How did things get this bad?

As to the benefit of local judges, you may want to think again. A local judge in the Bronx recently presided over a lawsuit in which a local jury awarded $51 million to Darryl Barnes, who was paralyzed when he drew a TEC-9 on a police officer who fired first. Bronx voters favor judges who dispense Robin Hood justice.

Similarly, local courts have made Mississippi and many other southern states "judicial hellholes" for product liability litigation according to the American Tort Reform Association. The problem here is that the voters in the court's jurisdiction tend to identify with the plaintiff. The corporations sued generally have their factories elsewhere, so it doesn't affect the local voters if jobs dry up. On the other hand, a large award can bring a lot of money to a small county. It is this abuse of discretion by local judges and juries that makes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce call for moving litigation out of local courts and into federal courts while consumer rights groups want to keep litigation in local courts.

As to your comment, "If someone has really done something so wrong that they deserve to pay out 30 billion dollars in punative damages then they should go to jail instead," I would only direct your attention to O.J. Simpson. O.J. did not go to jail (again, your beloved local justice did a fine job with him, as it did with the murderers of Emmett Till) and punitive damages were the most justice he received.

At the same time, the number of liability suits ending in bizarre awards is much smaller than most people think. Just as the press tend to exaggerate spectacular events, such as civilian casualties in Iraq, and make them seem more common than they are, they also exaggerate the frequency of liability blunders (absurd verdicts, excessive awards, etc.) and do not follow up six months later when absurd awards are thrown out on appeal.

Here are some facts, courtesy of the Center for Justice and Democracy and Public Citizen:

• 0.02% of all civil cases handled by the state courts concern product liability.
• The defendants win more than half of these cases.
• When plaintiffs do win product liability cases, more than half the awards are less than $27,000.
• Awards over $1 million are most common when the plaintiff has suffered grievous injury (paralysis, brain damage, amputation) and over half of these large awards are either reversed or reduced substantially by the trial judge or on appeal.
• Only a small fraction of a percent of all findings for the plaintiff award punitive damages. Between 1965 and 1994, there were 379 punitive damage awards in the U.S. in product liability lawsuits. Half of these awards were less than $50,000.
• According to the Consumer Federation of America, liability suits add about 0.26% to the cost of consumer goods. This number is similar to what the National Association of Insurance Commissioners found.

How about an "Ask Slashdot" with Hank Mishkoff of www.taubmansucks.com and/or Paul Levy of Public Citizen? Their fight and eventual win against Taubman and their crooked lawyers (just read the account and you'll see -- they're lying and distorting throughout the process, and frankly I find it amazing what they *get away* with[0]) is not only important in itself, but the way Hank documented it is an inspiration to all. It provides real insight into fighting a corporation out the crush you.

Great work by the team of Public Citizen; Press Release (Won appeal)

Here's an article in the Dallas Observer about the case -- check the spin Taubman tries! (third paragraph from the end)

[0] Maybe we should Ask Slashdot with Julie from Gifford-Krass-Groh-Sprinkle and ask her how she sleeps at night. "Great", I guess :-\

How about an "Ask Slashdot" with Hank Mishkoff of www.taubmansucks.com and/or Paul Levy of Public Citizen? Their fight and eventual win against Taubman and their crooked lawyers (just read the account and you'll see -- they're lying and distorting throughout the process, and frankly I find it amazing what they *get away* with[0]) is not only important in itself, but the way Hank documented it is an inspiration to all. It provides real insight into fighting a corporation out the crush you.

Great work by the team of Public Citizen; Press Release (Won appeal)

Here's an article in the Dallas Observer about the case -- check the spin Taubman tries! (third paragraph from the end)

[0] Maybe we should Ask Slashdot with Julie from Gifford-Krass-Groh-Sprinkle and ask her how she sleeps at night. "Great", I guess :-\

True, I doubt that ammount will be awarded. Assuming Bonzi loses, they will probably be slapped with a fine or fee that is large enough to convince their company that such practices are not ok. Depending on their companies wealth and revenue, that could be hundreds of thousands, millions, even tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. I dont think it will ever be close to a billion dollars... unless this company is making several million dollars in revenue every day, like McDonalds.

What you're really saying is, Microsoft failed to pay their blackmail^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H contribution money to the democrat party during the 1990s. This is what happens when you cross the Clintonistas.

While I doubt the relationship was quite that direct, that is what I'm saying -- MS's competitors bought politicians (from both parties) while MS wasn't paying attention.

Make no mistake about it - the Green Party handed the election to Bush.

This beyond offtopic, but here goes:

It is a technical truth that if Ralph Nader were not on the ballot in Florida (or New Hampshire), Al Gore would've easily won the election. It is also true that Al Gore would've won the election if he hadn't run one of the worst campaigns in modern political history. It is even truer that he would've won the election if the Republicans didn't control the Florida Governor's Mansion and the U.S. Supreme Court. Finally, this entire matter would not be an issue if we joined most of the world's democracies and stopped using first-past-the-post winner-take-all voting.

And don't forget, multi-millionaire Ralph Nader got rich by speculating in stocks of the very corporations he rails against.

Actually, he first came into money after writing Unsafe at Any Speed, when GM hired private detectives to spy on him and attempt a smear campaign. He sued them, won a lot of money, and used it to start Public Citizen. He does have money invested in the stock market, and uses the proceeds to fund his organizations. The man lives in a tiny apartment in Washington D.C. and doesn't even own a color television. Most of this is a matter of public record, and has been reported on frequently in the press.

I do know what I'm talking about. Thanks for the other link tho :) I like it. :)

"funny" indeed. do you even know that facts about that lawsuit?

try reading up on it.

This is half business as usual, but half the result of the ongoing corporatization of America... The majority of publicly held companies face serious pressure to make greater and greater (not just sustainable) profits for obvious reasons. As most shareholders only have an interest in the return on their investment, they don't give a shit about how it happens. Thats what these upper-management types get paid to do; squeeze as much profit out of the company as possible, regardless of the way customers or the environment or (insert innocent victim here) is affected. And, take the fall for the shareholders when they screw up enough to get in trouble legally, or in some way that adversely affects profits.

As the article says, the fees that are shown separately as fees are done so very intentionally...You don't see anywhere on your wireless bills your share of the $415,000 in PAC campaign contributions that SBC made in 2002 alone. Or, the $548,000 that AT&T made.

Or, conversely, that they receive millions in 'corporate welfare' every year in the forms of subsidies and tax breaks that don't translate into lower prices, but....You guessed it:

Higher profits!

Called "investor-to-state" dispute resolution, this extraordinary mechanism empowers private investors and corporations to sue NAFTA-signatory governments in special tribunals to obtain cash compensation for government policies or actions that investors believe violate their new rights under NAFTA.