Not only is it a Green Company, It’s a successful Green Company.

Cue the wing nut outrage.

More: Tesla Repays Federal Loan Nearly 10 Years Early - May. 22, 2013

May 20, 2013 — A new report suggests that improved health care and significant reductions in drug costs might be attained by breaking up the age-old relationship between physicians and drug company representatives who promote the newest, more costly and often unnecessary prescription drugs.

This system, which has been in place for decades, at one time benefited doctors by keeping them up to date on new medications, and always provided generous amounts of “free” samples to get patients started on the newest drugs, as well as other supplies and gifts.

But it’s actually a powerful marketing process into which the pharmaceutical industry pours tens of billions of dollars a year, with more than 90,000 drug representatives providing gifts and advice. There is one drug representative for every eight doctors in the United States. This doesn’t necessarily serve the best interests of the patient in terms of economy, efficacy, safety or accuracy of information, experts say.

In one of the first reports of its type — titled “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” — researchers from Oregon State University, Oregon Health & Science University and the University of Washington outlined the deliberate process that one central Oregon medical clinic went through to remove drug company representatives from their practice. It explored the obstacles they faced and the ultimate, successful result. The findings were just published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

The study found that avoiding conflicts of interest and becoming “pharma-free” is possible, but not easy.

“This is a culture change, one that’s already happening but still has a ways to go, especially in smaller private practices,” said Dr. David Evans, now with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Washington, and previously a physician at the Madras, Ore., clinic featured in the article.

“The relationship between physicians and drug company representatives goes back generations, and it took a methodical, deliberate campaign to change it,” Evans said. “We ultimately decided something had to be done when our medical clinic was visited by drug reps 199 times in six months. That number was just staggering.”

Part of what allows the change, the researchers said, is that information on new medications is now available in many other forums. These may have less bias and be more evidence-based than the material traditionally provided by the pharmaceutical industry, which wanted to sell the latest product. In the Madras clinic, the physicians replaced information previously supplied by drug reps with monthly meetings to stay current on new medications, based on peer-reviewed, rather than promotional literature.

“In the past 5-10 years there’s been more of a move toward what we call ‘academic detailing,’ in which universities and other impartial sources of information can provide accurate information without bias,” said Daniel Hartung, assistant professor in the OSU College of Pharmacy. “This is being supported by some states and the federal government, and it’s a move in the right direction.”

Moves to separate the drug industry from the practice of medicine have been more aggressive in large medical teaching hospitals, Hartung said, but much less so in smaller private practice. Of the 800,000 physicians in the U.S., only 22 percent practice in academic settings, the study noted, and 84 percent of primary care physicians still have close relationships with the pharmaceutical industry.

The stakes can be high, the researchers said. In the study example, the “sample cabinet” of medications at the Madras clinic, provided for free by the pharmaceutical representatives, had an average price of $90 for a month’s supply of the medications. Less expensive, generic medications were identified for 38 of the 46 sample drugs, which would have cost $22 a month.

The new analysis explored the necessary steps that a private clinic can take to help address this concern, including quantifying the clinic-industry relationship, anticipating clinician and staff concerns, finding new ways to provide up-to-date information, and educating patients and the public

More: Breakup of Physician, Drug Company Relationship Could Improve Health Care, Cut Cost

So let’s do a quick analysis using facts from this study, shall we?

For a “sample cabinet” of drugs”:

# Drugs x Cost = Total
Pharma Drugs 46 x $90 = $4140
Generics 38 x $22 = $836
Pharma Drugs with no generic substitute 8 x $90 = $720

So the total cost of the “sample cabinet” filled with Pharma Drugs is $4140
And the total cost of the “sample cabinet” filled with Generics plus Pharma drugs that can’t be replaced by Generics is $836 $720 = $1556.

So the percentage increase in the cost of the drugs in the “sample cabinet” due to Pharma Sales efforts is ($4140 - $1556) / $4140 = 62%

Then, let’s calculate what it costs the US Healthcare System to pay for these Pharma Sales Reps:

The study says that there are 90,000 Pharma Reps in the US. And if we estimate that the costs are $300,000 / yr (that includes salary, bene’s, travel, sales promos, gifts, speaker programs etc) then the total cost is 90,000 x $300,000 = $27B / yr.

So the US Health Care System spends $27 B / yr so that we pay 62% more for our drugs.

Nice business model if you’ve got the money to pay the lobbyists to keep the govt from interfering. Oops, I forgot, we pay for that too!

PS - When Categorizing this, I was going to choose “Health” but since this has nothing to do with that I chose “Business” instead.

Hours after local and federal authorities arrested West paramedic Bryce Reed for possessing a destructive device of some kind, Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers announced they are launching a criminal investigation into the April 17 fertilizer plant explosion.

In a statement released this morning, DPS Director Steven McCraw says, “This disaster has severely impacted the community of West, and we want to ensure that no stone goes unturned and that all the facts related to this incident are uncovered.”

Adds McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara, “The citizens of McLennan County and Texas must have confidence that this incident has been looked at from every angle and professionally handled — they deserve nothing less.”

For now, that is all the information they are releasing.

More: McLennan County Sheriff’s Office, Texas Rangers Open Criminal Investigation Into West Plant Explosion

Second in a series of opinion articles showing the benefits of specific precious metals.

What do we like best about real gemstones like diamond, sapphire and ruby? They each present a beautiful natural color. Why do we like gold? For its color, luster and malleability by jewelers and goldsmiths around the world. Okay so where can we mine white gold? Nowhere of course pure gold is always that gorgeous gold/yellow color. High karat gold Never tarnishes never fades. There is no white gold mine.

So let us think about phasing out white gold until it’s truly the better choice again. If that ever happens. We will be doing the consumers and ourselves a favor.

More: Why We Should Stop Offering White Gold-a Note for Jewelry Professionals and Consumers

The fertilizer plant that exploded last month in West, Texas, holds just $1 million in liability insurance, a negligible amount compared to the estimated cost of the damage caused by the blast, lawyers said.

John McCoy, one of the attorneys representing the company that owns West Fertilizer Co., confirmed the amount in an email to the Los Angeles Times after the Dallas Morning News reported it Friday. He said the plant did not hold excess or umbrella insurance policies.

“We do not yet know how this horrific accident occurred,” McCoy added in the email. “We are waiting for federal and state officials to … complete their investigation.”

The April 17 blast killed 14 people, injured more than 200 and leveled buildings several blocks away. The office of state Insurance Commissioner Eleanor Kitzman said in a statement quoted by the Dallas Morning News that the amount of damage may run into the tens of millions of dollars.

“Others have estimated the damages at $100 million — far more than the amount of insurance we have heard the company may have had,” the statement said.

More: Texas Plant That Exploded Had $1 Million in Liability Insurance

More: Veteran Tech Workers See Themselves Locked Out of Job Market - Computerworld

IDG News Service - Many tech companies have called for Congress to ease restrictions on high-skill immigration because they can’t find qualified tech workers to fill open positions. Yet, many veteran IT tech workers say they can’t find jobs.

More than a dozen veteran IT workers, contacted through the Programmers Guild and high-skill immigration critic Norm Matloff, computer science professor at the University of California at Davis, say they can’t find jobs, with many pointing to a glut of cheap workers available through the H-1B visa program.

Fifty-year-old Robert Wade, who has been in the tech and engineering fields for 27 years, has worked 10 months out of the last 40, he said. It’s been eight months since his last paycheck, even though he has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in industrial engineering, with an emphasis in human/computer interaction and user interface design.

A recent study from left-leaning think tank, the Economic Policy Institute, seems to back up claims by Wade and other veteran IT workers. The U.S. has plenty of workers in the science and technology fields, the EPI study said. Only half of U.S. students who graduate in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, however, gets a job in those fields, the study said.

The Information Technology Industry Council, a tech trade group, said the EPI study was “replete with faulty data, exaggerated claims, and plain wrong facts.” The study relies on 2009 data when the U.S. was still recovering from a recession, Robert Hoffman, ITI’s senior vice president for government relations, wrote in a blog post.

Wade, from Indianapolis, said he’s willing to move for work and has looked in Texas, Florida, Tennessee and other states. “The stories are usually that they have tons of locally unemployed tech workers to choose from so why would they want to pay for me to move there?” he said in an email. “I’ve even offered to pay the move myself, and still nothing.”

Wade has drawn the line at getting additional training, however. “I’ll take whatever training a company wants me to take, but I’m not spending my savings to get yet more degrees and more certs just hoping that some company will then hire me,” he said. “That’s all a crap shoot.”

Read more at ComputerWorld.

10 years ago most IT departments contained at least 50% or more H1B workers from India and the far East. The IT department where I work now is about 98% White American Male.

I had practically given up ever finding another job but the auto industry bailout saved my career. I’m also getting calls from recruiters.

I see from the article that the disgruntled IT worker did not want to expand his skill set. Well, there are very few jobs available now for FORTRAN programmers. The technology is constantly changing and it’s important to stay current.

Pahrump, Nevada is the home of conspiracy guru Art Bell, as well as the initial landing site for the Martians in Mars Attacks!

Armscor, popular manufacturer of a wide variety of approachable and affordable 1911 pistols and other firearms, is expanding with new ammunition and firearms manufacturing facilities in Pahrump, Nevada.

In addition to helping gun-hungry people everywhere get their hands on firearms and ammunition, their new faciities are expected to create about 50 jobs and be in full production by this time next year.

“We are thrilled with the demand for our Rock Island Armory branded products in the US,” said Martin Tuason, CEO of Armscor and Rock Island Armory. “Our new facility will give us the opportunity to increase production and reduce delivery timelines.”

Tuason continued, “This marks our third facility in the United States and represents a critical progression in growing our markets in North America.”

The new facility will also focus on research and development, designing new types of firearms with help from gunsmith Freddie Craig. Craig and Tuason developed and brought to market a new cartridge .22 TCM and guns to shoot it.

More: Armscor, Rock Island Armory Adding Third Manufacturing Facility, Doubling Ammo Production

More: CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratio Ballooned 1,000 Percent Since 1950: Report

We’ve made progress on a lot of things since the 1950s and so have CEOs — in their quest for more money that is.

The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has increased 1,000 percent since 1950, according to data from Bloomberg. Today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950.

“When CEOs switched from asking the question of ‘how much is enough’ to ‘how much can I get,’ investor capital and executive talent started scrapping like hyenas for every morsel,” Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, told Bloomberg.

The findings come just one day after the S&P 500 soared to a new record, indicating that perhaps the only ones not reaping the benefits from the companies’ historic profitability are workers. Other reports have come to similar conclusions. An analysis from the AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization for many of America’s unions, found earlier this month that CEO pay was 354 times that of the average employee.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law aimed to make it easier for the public to know how much CEOs are getting paid in comparison to their workers. The law includes a provision requiring public companies to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratios, but nearly three years after the law passed, the Securities and Exchange commission still hasn’t put the rule in place, thanks in part to business opposition to the proposal, according to ABC News.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who authored the provision told ABC last year: “It might embarrass some companies to reveal that they pay their CEO in the range of 400 times what they pay their typical worker.”

Read more at Huff Post.

This shows that Obama totally SUCKS at socialism!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is demanding an apology from a California newspaper that published a cartoon that seemed to link his push for less regulations to the recent fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14.

“The Sacramento Bee published a disgusting ‘cartoon’ mocking the deadly explosion in West. While I will always welcome healthy policy debate, I won’t stand for someone mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans. I have written the editor and asked that they apologize to the citizens of West,” Perry wrote on his official Facebook page.

An editor at the paper defended the cartoon.

“Jack Ohman’s cartoon of April 25 made a strong statement about Gov. Rick Perry’s disregard for worker safety, and his attempts to market Texas as a place where industries can thrive with few regulations,” said Stuart Leavenworth, the paper’s editorial page editor. “It is unfortunate that Gov. Perry, and some on the blogosphere, have attempted to interpret the cartoon as being disrespectful of the victims of this tragedy.”

Editorial Cartoonist Jack Ohman also responded to some reader criticism of his cartoon in a column Thursday.

Ohman said he stood by the cartoon and listed many reasons he believes Perry’s policies deserve scrutiny.

“The Texas governor’s campaigning notwithstanding, should I have used the explosion as a vehicle to illustrate my point? I did. I stand by it,” Ohman wrote.

The cartoon, published Thursday, shows Perry standing at a podium in front of signs about lower taxes and lower regulations proclaiming “Business is booming in Texas.”

More: Texas Governor Demands Apology Over Newspaper’s Plant Blast Cartoon

Apparently, Hyundai thought this ad was a clever way to sell cars in Germany. They obviously didn’t put a lot of thought into it.

Warning: If you have experience with suicide this may be triggering. Avoid the comments also. A lot of psychopaths have shown up to go, “Boo fucking hoo. Grow a pair, weaklings.”