Eric Holder Defends the Presidential Right to Declare and Kill Bad Americans.

While most Americans are swept up by the ongoing battle between the red and the blue, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at Northwestern University School of Law, defending the right of a President to kill any U.S. citizen he considers a threat without due process. The first to go was, I believe, American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed last September by a drone strike in northeastern Yemen.

While it's doubtful President Obama will use this decree to go on a mass killing spree anytime soon, it's not so clear what will happen with future administrations.

However, having said that, you have to be pretty naive to believe that prior administrations have not issued orders to kill citizens they believe to be enemies of the state. What's new is trying to justify it to the public.

Maybe this is what President-elect Obama meant by a more transparent government.

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Orwellian Transparency.

President Obama received a "transparency" award...in secret. Members of the press were discouraged from attending.

Well, what do you expect when "many of the Obama administration's top open government initiatives are set to be turned off by May 31"?  Congress  plans to slash the Electric Gov Fund - from $34 million to $2 million, which will shut down President Obama's "transparency" projects and websites: Data.gov, USASpending.gov, PaymentAccuracy.gov, and five other similar sites.

Ironcially, these proposed cuts to e-gov are in the works, despite $3 billion, e-gov saved on IT projects, according to Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra.

What's next? President Obama receives the Nobel Peace Prize? Oh, wait...

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Illegal Big Pharma Activities Contribute to Inflated Spending and Prices.

Update: Big Pharma has surpassed every other industry when it comes to defrauding the US government, according to a new analysis by Public Citizen, which calls for stiffer penalties and increased criminal prosecution Big Ph executives. Here's the thing: 75% of all of these violations and penalties have taken place in the last five years! And four drugmakers: GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Merck’s Schering-Plough.

The report lists all of the violations: kickbacks; financial violations and illegal distribution; overcharging government health programs; illegal promotion; anti-trust violations; concealing clinical trial findings; poor manufacturing practices; environmental violations...

Here's another thing: those who commit the crimes walk while those who report the crimes pay the price...and, it's often life-changing.

However, nothing will change because the primary job and responsibility of US government is to protect the corporate elite, and that includes allowing them to plunder with impunity. In fact, it's not only accepted, it's expected. Those who play by ethical rules, lose.

In other words, what we see play out, in what appears to be the feds going after Big Pharma is all for show. To be sure, Big pharma pays their "drop in the bucket" fine (for them), but, to be even more sure, they earn back double that amount when they take their criminal behavior to the next level. What do the feds get out of all of this? The same thing Big Pharma does: more money...more power...

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Conflicts of interest amongst academic researchers who accept enormous contributions from some of the largest and influential lobbying organizations in Washington, namely,  Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also known as PhRMA, started polishing their image in anticipation of the incoming Obama administration.  This included becoming slightly more transparent with a little pressure from the US Senate Committee on Finance Committee.  PhRMA has a record of hiding its lobbying and PR activities, often by paying other organizations to advocate industry-friendly policies.

After reports of NAMI  coordinating lobbying efforts with drug makers and pushing legislation that benefits the pharma industry, and that most donations made to the big advocacy group came from drug makers in recent years, NAMI agreed to disclose its funding sources.

Links:
Participation of Academic Scientists in Relationship with Industry.

Pharmaceutical  Biotech Top-Performing Physician Leader Analysis

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Financial Enlightenment Projects.

The recent financial crisis has sparked a few projects designed to enlighten the media, policymakers, and we the people regarding the activity in the world of finance. Here are a few examples:

If you have a question about Federal programs, benefits, or services the Federal Citizen Information Center , a part of the U.S. General Services Administration
Small business answer desk.

Pew has launched the project, Subsidy Scope which aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy.

Morningstar is planning to construct a pension, endowment and foundation database that will include performance and operational information on foundations, endowments and pension funds, which they hope to launch in early 2009. The system will track foundations, pensions and endowments along about 300 data points, including portfolio holdings, fees and expenses, assets under management and quarterly performance.

The Library of the International Labour Office (ILO) has produced a new information resource guide on microfinance.. This guide is a starting point for anyone beginning research on microfinance. It provides links to key ILO publications on the topic, ILO labour standards and data, as well as other resources around the world.

With more than 6 million organizations with paid employees in the US the U.S. Census Bureau is releasing a new product, Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS), a data series that allows users to track annual changes in employment for growing and shrinking businesses at the establishment level.

The BDS monitors this activity, tracking annual job creation and destruction at the establishment level using elements not found in similar databases, such as firm age and size. Tracking by firm age, for example, allows users to distinguish between new establishments of new firms and new establishments of mature firms. These statistics are crucial to understanding current and historical entrepreneurial activity in the U.S.

“The Business Dynamics Statistics provide data users unprecedented information on the life cycle of U.S. businesses,” said Ron Jarmin, chief economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. “These rich new data will fundamentally change the way people think about job creation and economic growth.”

A number of key economic data items are tabulated by the Business Dynamics Statistics, including number of establishments, establishment openings and closings, employment, job creation and destruction, and job expansions and contractions.

And finally, the 2008 Financial Crisis Primer, which compiles some of the "best and most accessible materials related to the crisis. It provides resources such as articles on the failure of regulation, the Congressional testimony of key players, editorials on the government's bailout of banks, books on previous financial debacles, and the voices of people who have lost homes in foreclosures."

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Show Me the Spending.

Showmethespeding.com is a collaborative community of advocates for government "transparency."

(Alexandria, VA) -- The 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (NTU) today joined with the online resource Sunshine Review in the next major step toward building a collaborative community of advocates for government "transparency." NTU has integrated its Show Me the Spending Web site with Sunshine Review's Wikipedia-like site that enables people to find and share information about whether state and local governments are effective, accessible, and responsible with tax dollars. Now, anyone from think-tank staffers to taxpayer activists can edit the site, available at www.showmethespending.com, to reflect transparency news and updates from their respective states.

"Because of its interactive nature, we expect this Web site to become the 'one-stop shop' for accurate, timely information about transparency in government spending," said State Policy Analyst Douglas El Sanadi. "Its software platform, similar to Wikipedia's, makes it an ideal Web space both for learning and for educating others about how government allocates taxpayer dollars." For example, each month will feature a collaborative transparency project. November's project is to develop a comprehensive list of links to each state's employee salary data.

In fact, government officials have already found the site useful as they have sought to expand their respective states' disclosure policies. Nebraska Treasurer Shane Osborn has viewed and praised the site, as has the Director of the South Carolina Transparency Project.

The new Web site continues the efforts of the "Show Me the Spending" Coalition, a group of organizations dedicated to transparency. The Coalition formed in the spring of 2007 under NTU's direction, and already has over 30 member organizations. Prior to founding the Coalition, NTU was a key proponent behind the creation of www.USASpending.gov, a federal transparency Web site launched in 2007. Since then, Coalition members have successfully promoted transparency throughout the country.

Launched in July 2008, Sunshine Review is beginning a nationwide project to assess transparency issues at the state and local level. It features news on government's effort to proactively and voluntary disclose information online, tracks transparency legislation, provides outrageous stories of government spending, and covers open records issues. Sunshine Review and its sponsor, the Sam Adams Alliance, want citizens to be able to easily locate basic facts through their governments' Web sites. The Sam Adams Alliance is a member of the Show Me the Spending Coalition.

"As transparency continues to open windows on the way government operates, our site will help taxpayers and elected officials determine which of those windows allow the most sunshine into the process," El Sanadi concluded. "Transparency is essential for government accountability and, ultimately, it leads to more responsible use of taxpayer dollars. We're confident that www.showmethespending.com, because of its collaborative nature, will serve as the guide for this vital, constantly evolving movement.”

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US Judge Orders Whistle-blower Site Offline.

WikiLeaks.org, the transparency website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents, "uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis" has been taken offline in the US and is unavailable due to a restraining order issued by the California Northern District Court in San Francisco. The largest Swiss bank specializing in hiding the assets of the bank Julius Baer (the parent company of the accused Cayman bank) filed federal US proceedings against the transparency group WikiLeaks.

The Presiding Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered a permanent injunction against WikiLeaks - or the web host, Dynadot - as the owner of the site is outside US legal jurisdiction, at first, but then reconsidered if it refrained from posting actual documents.

The Whistle blower site vows to defy court order.

Additional info:

WikiLeaks discussion blog discusses the ethical and technical issues surrounding the WikiLeaks.org project which claims to be the "uncensorable" version of WikiPedia, for "mass document leaking" and whistleblowing."

US Judge Arranges Summary Execution of WikiLeaks.org

Julius Baer vs. WikiLeaks

The Citizen Media Law Project comments.

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