Got rBST? Dairy labeling and Governor Kathleen Sebelius

Posted on April 8, 2009 by shirah

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius has some important business before her in Kansas as she is preparing for a role on the federal scene as secretary of Health and Human Services, assuming she is confirmed.

You see, the Kansas legislature has bowed to pressure and passed a law that is intended to prevent dairy farmers who do not use growth hormones in their cows from letting the public have this information. In recent years the public has clearly voted against milk produced using Posilac / rBST / rBGH.

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A Resource for Health Care Policy Information

Posted on April 7, 2009 by shirah

The O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law has announced a project related to national and international health law. Of the project, it says it is �building a diverse portfolio of health law projects . . . collaborative relationships with faculty who possess a diverse set of interests and expertise.�

Incidentally, and before getting into its projects, the O�Neill Institute has announcement of jobs and fellowships. Something to do while waiting out the economic storm . . . and to further health care.

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April 5, 1989 – Remembering the Pittston Strike – Plenty of Law . . . No Justice

Posted on April 6, 2009 by shirah

Sunday marked the 20th anniversary of the start of the Pittston strike, a coal miners’ strike that would drag on for 14 months into 1990. On April 5, about 1,700 miners in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky struck Pittston Group’s coal mining operations. Within a couple months there were demonstrations and solidarity strikes that involved 10 times as many people.

This was a strike that provided and still provides a window into who we were as a people and what we value. It still does. Twenty years after the strike began is time to re-examine the portrait of us as a people.

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Not “SPOT On” when it comes to tracking military contractors

Posted on April 6, 2009 by shirah

The only things certain in life are, death, taxes, and misuse of military contractors. Not that there haven’t been efforts to deal with the third inevitability. And not that those efforts haven’t so far all gone down to defeat. But consider the recent efforts with SPOTting the contractors.
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Future Generations Will Pay for This – Our Money and Our Lives

Posted on March 29, 2009 by shirah

I hear it all over these days: Future Generations Will Pay for [fill in the blank]. We have a stark political breakdown on what load will be transferred to future generations. What does this mean for us?
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Privatizing Medical Research – Your Money and Your Life

Posted on March 28, 2009 by shirah

Traditionally, medical research has been done at academic institutions with high levels of scrutiny and control over the entire process. Key to the system has been the Institutional Review Board (IRB) which has ensured that all aspects of the human subject testing process give participants notice of dangers and are performed in a way to minimize psychological and physical dangers where they cannot
be eliminated.

In recent years, however, private IRBs have come into existence. If you participate in studies in the future, perhaps you would like to know how they operate.
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DOD Contractors and the Unasked Who, What, Where, When And Why Questions

Posted on March 27, 2009 by shirah

You may recall that the basic reporter questions are who, what, where, when, and why. They also seem to apply elsewhere. Or not. When the DOD hires private contractors, it seems to make no effort to answer these basic questions.

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Bush-style Wage and Hour Enforcement – An Agency Gone Mild

Posted on March 26, 2009 by shirah

Ever suspect that the Bush administration wasn’t exactly on the side of workers? Ever suspect that DOL Secretary Chao was in the employers’ pocket but have no strong proof?

Well, look no farther than a new report out yesterday from the GAO. When it comes to enforcing wage and hour laws, the DOL was definitely choosing the employer’s pocket – or at least pocketbook – over the worker’s. Indeed, under Chao, the DOL seems to have become a wholly owned subsidiary of the US Chamber of Commerce.

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Crisis: How we got here, and how to prevent it from happening again

Posted on March 22, 2009 by shirah

by gjohnsit, posted with permission

On June 24, 1982, four bank examiners from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City walked into the rear of a small shopping mall in Oklahoma City.

This unlikely location marks the start of a series of events that have brought us to the brink of a global economic collapse and a second Great Depression.

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