Another topic of conversation during the super-smart-and-successful employed girls of the girls night was the state of health care.

Someone was mortified that our civilized country would allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise. She contended that they were already the most profitable industry ever.

I narrowed my eyes. "I don't think that's true."

"Yes it is!" she said. She had read several books about it.

A smart and successful approach to the problem is to read books about it. And it is more than the casual interest, quite obviously, because it takes work to read it.

but it also takes work to write such a book. And I am suspicious of that...I hear in the distance the sound of an axe grinding.

So, I want to research which companies are the most profitable. Fortune magazine gives a list.

Johnson&Johnson are at #11...but I think they are more focussed on shampoo than finding the new viagra...Pfizer is #15...that's a drug company for sure.

I wonder what criteria those books use? Here's a site that says they are the most profitable. He cites 2001...When my link above cites 2005.

2001 was a bad year for many many companies...Maybe not the best year to pick for judging profitability across the board. Then again, it depends on what you are trying to prove. Maybe if you want to say they are the most profitable, then it is the best year to pick. 2001 is the year you would be RIGHT!

Profitability is tricky. I mean, Enron looked extremely profitable, until it didn't.

What's the deal here? Do we want to be right, or do we want to solve a problem? I personally don't care to be right, I care to be better off.

The people i know that work in the pharmaceutical industry tell me that the research and development of new drugs all get paid for out of american pockets. That the r&d wouldn't happen if they didn't get the money back from the USA.

is that true? they are insiders, but might be skewed to favor their viewpoint too.

As far as I know, all the big companies are international. Wikipedia has a list. They seem to indicate that all the comopanies are based in some nationality.

But trade being what it is, surely they all sell to america. The word on the street that the USA pays for the R&D could be true.

And maybe that's not fair. The EU and Canada should shoulder their part! All the rich nations should be penalized equally!

then again, maybe they are penalized by not getting the good pills. I don't know. It is most intriguing.

I have heard it said that the problem with Big Pharma's profitabiliyt expecations is with the regulations required to get the goods on the market. That the FDA is so darn picky, and can change teh requirements at any time, meaning that Big Pharma might have to undergo big expensive changes to their testing causing delays. That means that they must build into their pricing very high profit levels, on the chance that they might have to do that kind of silly thing.

Of course, the source of this "de regulate!" message is awfully libertarian. So maybe they are skewing the facts to support their beliefs.

The R&D for drugs is not a sure thing. There are all kidns of experiments that are dead ends. That's what it takes to find the good stuff. Try, try and expensive try again.

In the same way that the scientists must look around to find the cure for cancer or aids or MS, shouldn't we be scientific and open minded about finding the cure for our not-optimal health-care system?

let's look at the situation, and poke at it in various ways without assuming the answer pre-poke. it's a large complicated system. who knows what might be the right action?

Posted by Murphy Horner at 10:05 AM | Permalink

So, other people are thinking about being eco-friendly for the holidays.

It occurs to me, Al Gore set an example for how to handle the good credits I am accruing by using the bus. After all, it would be acceptable for me to take my car to work. I don't though! I am taking the bus, and taking it a LOT. This means I am accruing carbon credits.

And my dear husband has worked for years to create and sustain a business that he can do from home. He does not go out and greedily consume energy by driving places. He stays at home, and also accrues carbon credits.

I am thinking of giving these carbon credits to loved ones for Christmas. I can find a lump of coal, and affix a card to it:

Merry Christmas! Because of eco-friendly steps (literally) taken by Chris and Murphy Daley, this lump of coal avoids incineration. This is your carbon credit, to use against whatever wasteful habit you wish to pursue guilt-free. Peace on earth, and ecological equality for all!

Posted by Murphy Horner at 12:14 PM | Permalink

So while looking for new podcasts to listen to, I found some great speeches...JFK's inaugural address.

It was very stirring.

"...The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary belief, for which our forbears fought, are still at issue around the globe: the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the states, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans, born in this centruy, tempered by war, discplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world."

I can't help but wonder what those JFK and those people applauding his speech would say about the current sentiment of cut-your-losses in Iraq.

This speech is so full of strength and action. It is something to inspire before a battle, not to cover the shame of a retreat.

I always assumed that the people who held the peace placards were fans of Kennedy. But I have been hearing what JFK was about second-hard.

Makes me think

Posted by Murphy Horner at 02:44 PM | Permalink

So, I'm watching CNN today as I am eating my banana and morning coffee. CNN is always on around here, because we have to have a source of video and audio to test with at any moment.

I think we watch CNN because we can't seem like we're having fun. CNN is boring, and when it's not boring it's horrifying. I half-seriously suggested we chip in our own money and get Animal Planet, because at least that is cheerful. Or maybe Home and Garden TV! We could decoupage the desks.

the suggestion was not recieved well.

Anyway, this morning, I was watching the recap of the sex scandal and then some blonde woman got up and was doing a press conference. I made a snarky comment "I guess Miss New Hampshire has to do something afterwards..."

I looked again and decided she was too skinny. "No, she's the runner up."

My co-worker said, "I thought they all became trophy wives."

"NO! They all get together and form a coalition to start world peace."

He gave me a look.

But the woman on the screen had started to interest me. She was not taking any garbage from the reporters.

I had to google her: Fran Townsend.

It turns out she rocks. She is in charge of the council on homeland security. And she deserves it! She had to work her way through school, and became a lawyer and then an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn and the got into Intelligence work for the Coast Gaurd. I added things up and figured out that she's only 46!

How impressive.
"Fragos? That's a horrible middle name to live down."

Then I went to wikipedia.

"Wait no...That's her maiden name. Her dad was Greek."

So you know what else? She Orthodox like me! I love this lady.

So I looked up at the screen again and watched her in action. I couldn't really hear what she was saying, but I could see she was in control of the room.

And then I saw it. She had not one, not two, but THREE earrings dangling from her ear! Oh yes, she did live through the 80s.

I'm a fan now. I hope she goes far.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:48 AM | Permalink

This is how I feel when reading any newspaper but the wall street journal.

I am so sick of today's journalists. ALL of them.

Well, except the WSJ.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 03:44 PM | Permalink

In the WSJ, front page, there is an article about Siemens getting caught in bribery scandal.

SCANDAL!

A good portion of the world uses bribery as a matter of course. We, the "western democratic" countries, say that's bad and we can have no part of it.

Shame on Seimens! Don't they know, they are supposed to hire an intermediary company that does the bribery for them? Then the intermediary can disband before they get caught, re-form as a different company, and do the whole thing over again.

Hypocrisy makes the world go round. How many times has the world changed because someone wagged a finger at it and said "Shame! Shame!"

I have long thought that any MBA that includes international business should have a Bribery 101 class.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 03:19 PM | Permalink

This week, I read an article about General Eikenberry's plans to get Afghanistan on track. He wants money, not men.

Eikenberry is in charge of the occupation of Afghanistan, and he has to figure out a way to do that. His proposal is to build a highway system. As I recal from the WSJ article, he says "where the roads end, the Taliban begin." He believes that having a roads to the different Afghan cities will make it easier to get to them, and therefore eaiser to rout the Taliban from them.

ALSO: the roads would be built by Afghani people. That means that instead of taking up arms to fight americans troops, the young men could be building a better afghanistan by making roads that will allow communication and commerce. They could have some money in their pocket and the satisfaction of a hard day's work.

This is GENIUS.

Remember the movie A Bridge on the River Kwai ? I'll never forget the part where the guy in charge say, "If there wasn't a bridge we'd have to invent one." He was saying that the troops needed something to DO, to keep up their morale and stay sharp.

Unemployement for young men...for anybody, really...is a terrible thing. People were meant to have something to do. And we are happiest when we are doing something we are proud of.

The ideological call (in the form of religious extremism) toward war and destruction will be a lot quieter if there is another voice in the room. The voice that says 'Get up and get to work!'

I don't know that much about Islam, but I've spent a little time thinking about destructive ideological extremism. Do you know that about a hundred years ago, the Western world was terrified about terrorist extremists too? They were suicidal too.

At that time they were known as Anarchists, and eventually Communists. And they were no joke! One of them even assasinated President McKinley.

Think about that. What would be the reaction in America if our President were killed by the current brand of terrorist? In my way of thinking, it is comparable to the 9/11 attack.

so...what was the response to the terrorist threat of the anarchists? Reading Marx and the people who were revolutionized by the message of anarchy, I see that they weren't kidding about attacking the foundations of power. In fact, they were ruthless in their assesment of who was evil and deserved to die.

They had their eye on King Humbert of Italy.

Humbert was a nice guy. He was a decent king. In them minds of the left-wing Anarchists of the time, he was all the more dangerous for that very reason. They felt that any kind of monarchy was evil, and the fact that he made monarchy look okay made him the more reprehensible.

They assasinated him.

[the reason I learned of Humbert is because he is obliquely referenced in Nabokov's Lolita. Humbert Humbert is the main character. Nabokov being from Russia and active in leftist circles, he couldn't resist this jab]

Well, back to the reaction of this extremely dangerous ideological movement. What should be done about them? What did America do in reaction to these murderous extremists?

History tells us. It's been more than a hundred years. We lived through the Pinkerton oppresion of the unions (a leftist-anarchist movement!).

And then the McCarthyism HUAC: "Are you now and have you ever been a member of the communist party?"

and, most overarching...The cold war

Have we not already been living in an ideological war for decades and decades? Didn't we use the methods of capitalist colonialism to further our ideology?

My parents tell me of living in Tanzania during the 60s...They saw the battle of american democracy vs. socialism on the ground.

Kingsolver tells the story so well in The Poisonwood Bible.

We did that. America did that, in some kind of tussle with the ideology that began with the anarchists. Ideology is not a light thing. The footprints of the steps taken seem to deepen as the history accumulates.

and there is a tendency towards overweening despair when I look at it.

But let's not get too excited. We are where we are. We stand on the ground. What does our hand find to do?

Exactly. What can we do? What can everyone do?

get to work. Build a road.

I am quite familiar with the problems of thinking too hard. And the best remedy for that abyss is a project. Hard work.

Gives you something else to think about.

Go Eikenberry Go. That's a brilliant Idea. I really hope that he gets to do it.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:05 AM | Permalink

The first few scenes in Metroplis show the working classes at the moment of their shift change on the Machine. The shabby black coveralls sagging on the human frames that render them indistinctly craven—one phalanx shuffles off while the next shuffles in.

But the sons of the ones profiting from these wretches are up in the light, healthy and robust. Naturally, one son is inspired to descend into the depth to find out who is paying the cost of his privilege.

With him, we see the men working on the machine. They are stacked in alcoves up and down the sheer face of the machine, bouncing off their walls, lifting, bowing, turning wheels and pulling levers.

But when the hero rushes to his father to confront him about these horrible conditions, he bursts in on his father in his office.

The men in the office are actively hunching over their desks, and bobbing up and down to see and compare the numbers scrolling on the wall. Their clean and well tailored suits are not distinct enough to really tell them apart.

The movie is an extremely unsubtle call to leave behind amoral capitalism for a kinder more humane approach to industry.

It’s a really old movie. Silent, even.

It’s quaint, because work doesn’t look like that anymore. I guess maybe it used to, back when men lined up next to a machine for their 8 hour (if they were union) shift.

But my job looks more like the guys in the suit next to the ticker tape walls. Communism didn’t really win, but this is the face of capitalism I see as a wage monkey.

The news is full of how this is the year everyone is going to get a new job. Or demand better conditions. We are never so well off that we could not be better off.

What is it we want? I guess some people are okay with spending the time it takes to get their office chair to accept the exact contour of their buttocks.

I’m not so okay with that.

What stories are we telling ourselves about what this work is for? Should it be enough that we eat and stay warm? It’s not enough for the people I know. We want more!

A car! And not just any car…A home…a set of fancy matched mathoms.

...I don’t think this is what Marx had in mind…

But who is Karl to tell us what we want? Maybe Karl Marx is not so relevant as other Karls .

Posted by Murphy Horner at 03:35 PM | Permalink

Did you vote?

I did. I got the sticker, but it fell off.

We've been having ballot discussions for the past two weeks.

I will be glad to have it over. I am disgusted with both major parties. I am disgusted with loud debate between people who are utterly uninterested in understanding new information that might cause them to change their minds.

I said this today:
"I would discuss that with you, but you are apparently uninterested in my viewpoint or in adjusting your own."

The man sitting between us gave me a startled look, understanding the challenge I had laid out.

The recipient of the challenge didn't pause. He continued talking as if I had not spoken.

I will be glad when the election is over.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 06:54 PM | Permalink

I’m horrified by the comment John Kerry made. He made a huge error of judgment. But the people who gave him a microphone and platform to deliver his error made the bigger error.

Is this really the best the democrats could come up with?

Maybe the problem is that the people who run for office are a particular personality, a sort that wear mirrored sunglasses with the mirrors facing in.

Locally, there is a new development in my state’s race. Remember the big gubernatorial recall? Schwarzenegger ousted Gray Davis.

In California, the Lieutenant Governor runs separately from the Governor. The Lt. Governor all during that time was Cruz Bustamante.

Bustamante is not running for Lt. Governor again. This time he’s running for Insurance Commissioner. This would be cause for a very large yawn, except for one thing:

Cruz B. has lost weight.

Weight loss is a personal triumph. Good for him. But…it’s a personal triumph, nothing to do with politics.

EXCEPT:

He has run some campaign ads trumpeting this accomplishment. They begin with

“I was really fat.”

I had no current knowledge of Cruz B. when I heard that ad. But I was caught up short with this unusual and utterly absurd campaign.

I was trying to talk to my co-workers about this ridiculousness, and I couldn’t remember what office he was running for. No problem, I’ll just look up Cruz Bustamante on Google, and his campaign web page should pop right up.

This is what popped up:
www.startwithcruz.com

BUT NOWHERE ON THIS SITE IS ANYTHING POLITICAL!

It’s a diet and exercise site.

Here’s my thought: Cruz B. doesn’t want to be insurance commissioner. He wants to be the Richard Simmons of the new millennium. And he is spending his political war chest money on this website to start the marketing.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chris came to bed. Three is only a little later than his usual bedtime.

I woke up, feeling him look at me. I sleepily felt around to give him a kiss.

He said, "Something important has happened."

"What is it?"

"The British have captured 21 people who were planning a terrorist attack. They were going to use liquid explosives on flights to America."

"Wow. I'm really glad they caught them."

" Well, they are not sure they caught everybody. All flights from the UK are grounded. Heathrow is totaly shut down, and they say that you can't take carry-on luggage with you anymore. Only a wallet, and no CD players or cell phones orlaptops. Not even water."

"No water?"

"Yeah, because the plan was to use liquid explosives. They can't even carry car keys with them, because the car keys trasmit signals"

"This is scary."

"Don't worry baby, we are not flying anywhere. Not for a month, and I don't think that the terrorist will target Bozeman. But that probably means that when we go to Germany next year, we will not make any stopovers in London."

"Man. I bet all the business people will travel to somewhere else first, and then take a short hop to London. They aren't going to want to travel without their laptops for that long."

"That would add a lot of time to the travel. But they were talking about that on the news. That people could fly to France and then take the chunnel."

"That's going to have a big impact on tourism for Britain. Wow."

We eventually fell asleep again.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On March 25, a huge number of people showed up in downtown Los Angeles to draw attention to illegal immigration. What sort of attention did they draw? The estimated half million people who were there paid attention. From the reports I heard, you couldn’t even move without paying close attention.

The gathering had been promoted by Spanish radio stations for weeks. Viva la Raza everywhere. I don’t understand Spanish, so I didn’t know about it until I spoke with my co-worker. Gus was born in Mexico and has a lot of family still there. His father applied for immigration to the US and legally brought his whole family to America when Gus was little.

Gus told me how the radio stations had been ramping up for this protest event for a long time. “I just had to shut it off. It made me really mad.” He remembered the work his father did to gain entrance to America. He told me how these protestors had one hand grabbing for instant American citizenship, and the other hand reaching to pull Aztlan—legally known as the state of California—back into Mexico.

That seems a little conflict of interest. But we could hardly expect otherwise, with that many people involved. It was a lot of people! In my mind. It was really a big story--a huge cultural event.

And it wasn’t just the Saturday protest. Myspace.com had been organizing a walkout for high-schoolers. The teenagers left school and went downtown to protest longer. Monday had a big crowd of kids holding signs. They had even blocked the 110 freeway with their March.

I heard the morning news the next day, exclaiming, “The kids were walking in the freeway! That’s so dangerous! Someone could get KILLED!”

I know that stretch of freeway. It is never free flowing, never. Those kids were never in danger, which is a good thing.

I wanted to hear what other people were saying, so I tuned into my radio stations to hear what the reports and opinions were. What a revelation! Here is the line-up:

KPCC [NPR]: a feature about the California condor
KCRW [NPR again]: a sampling of eclectic alternative music
Power 106 “Where Hip Hop Lives”: Destiny’s Child is getting their Star on the Walk of Fame
KISS fm [ugh...Ryan Seacrest]: Destiny’s Child is getting the Star! And King Kong DVD is out today
KBIG [80s, 90s and TODAY!]: King Kong is out on DVD
Latino 96.3 Reggeaton and Hip Hop: ~~Now this is where it gets interesting…

The reggeaton station is a Spanglish station, and reggeaton is teenager music. Mostly the DJs speak English, and some Spanish. Usually they are repeating the same thing, once in Spanish and then again in English. It’s about 90% English, 10% Spanish.

But not Tuesday. It bumped up to about 60% English, 40% Spanish during the high school walkouts. They were talking about nothing else. They were taking calls from teenagers to ask about what they thought, and how they felt about the protests. It was from there that I first began to understand the role myspace played in organizing the protest. To hear the excited kids calling in on cell phones to talk about their opinions—it confirmed to me how important this event was to these kids. It probably was a life-changing experience for them.

But I wanted to hear more. I button punched to the other radio stations, thinking they must be taking calls too.

It was a deafening silence on the subject.

The only other radio station I found talking about it was KPFK, an NPR Pacifica station. They are fringe of the fringe, and I can always count on them to report on any given protest.

This is sort of my point in writing this. Our free and democratic society seems very willing to ignore the issue. What kind of all-men-are-created-equal institution can get up and say there are jobs that Americans are unwilling to do (presumably because they are distasteful—beneath them) but are willing to exploit non-Americans into doing?

Mainstream culture is humming with its fingers in its ears. The top radio stations don’t want to talk about it. Even NPR. Condors! There’s relevance for you.

This is a serious issue for our whole nation. This is not something only Spanish-speaking media outlets should be covering.

Those in positions of influence, our journalists and univerisity professors, should be listening and proposing solutions. The politicians and policy makers need to put their heads together and find a new way to come to terms with this situation. We need a way that is fair and respectful of the equality of all humans.

What's happening right now is not working.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There is still time to purchase the new Burqu-ini!

"Nowadays when we slowly feel the warmth of the sun, Hasema has already started to lead the summer fashion with its new collection...HASEMA TEKSTİL LTD.STİ. was founded in 1989 in order to produce appropriate swim suits through islamic rules..."

Maybe there are some on clearance now that summer is almost over.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 07:50 AM | Permalink

I've been really mulling this one over for a while.

Things have come to a pass. I have questions about why certain political choices are being made,and the voices I am hearing from media outlets are almost exclusive liberal voices.

I am trying to follow the tangled thread. Here are some of the things that concern me:

Health Care
Cost of Living
Whether jobs will be available
How much stuff costs
Being fair to everyone
Taking good care of natural resources

These seem really basic to life enjoyment. I have to live, I have to pay for stuff, I have to have a job to pay for said stuff. I think that we have to be fair to everyone, because it's the right thing to do. Plus, if we aren't fair, they will exact revenge.

And we have to take care of natural resources, like the EARTH for a big example, because I have to look at it when I am not working or shopping for stuff. And I like the earth. It's where I keep my stuff (okay, that's a quote from The Tick).

If we take care of the stuff that keeps my list of concerns taken care of, we're doing okay.

Alright. So who pays for Health care to keep me living? In the USA, insurance companies do. That's really really convoluted. I mean, at one point in history, Doctors used to take their knowledge and think of a way to cure the person, and then they would take money or some trade item from the person they were treating. That was the end of that.

Now, getting your tonsils out takes huge statistical charts and indexes to pay for. Whoa. That's strange and weird. But that's really what we are living with.

The people that pay the insurance companies to pay the bills for our medical needs are:
the employers, i.e. Large Corporations

Mostly, that's true. Some individuals can pay the premiums themselves, if they want. The governmentactsd as a safety net, that picks up the slack sometimes for those who don't have an employer to pay.

That's how we do it in the US. In Europe, the government picks up the tab for the whole bill. It's called socialized medicine. And socialized medicine has a whole host of problems, such as lowered quality of care and restaints on compensation for the professionals who are therefore unmotivated to innovate and invent such needed things as new cures.
Socialized medicine is not the best way to do it. But neither is our way. Both of us are figuring out what to do next.

But things being the way they are, Large corporations are the biggest customers of the health insurance companies who control the health care in america.

So, when you are dealing with health care, it's really a lot about large corporate interests.

Large corporate interests = the Republican party

right? well, maybe.

But the democrats are the ones who are always bringing up health care concerns. And they are full of speeches about how new programs can be funded by new taxes that will be paid for by big business or 'the rich.'

But, if the democrats expect to milk the corporate cow, it would seem to require checking that the cow is well fed. If we learned nothing from the stock crash of 2000 it's that businesses are quite apt to fail.

Interestingly, the democrats are for 'equality' too. That is what they seem to talk about a lot. I hear a lot about people being underpriviliged. Or people being minorities or poor. Sometimes, they even talk about people being oppressed.

These are pretty big words. The conservatives tend to say things like "Idiots" and "Morons" about the liberals. Not very helpful, just to oversimplify into name-calling.

But the liberals voices seem to forget where their bread is buttered. I have listened for a long time, and I can see that their basic idea is to take money from rich people and from big business in the form of taxes and redistribute it (through government branches) to 'the less fortunate'.

That bothers me. This country has a high regard for independence, and we seem to be setting up a structure whereby people become dependent on the government, that thing that NO ONE, conservative or liberal, trusts.

It seems to be better to take obtacles out of people's way and let them do what they feel like doing.

I like the idea of compassion that the democrats supposedly espouse. I'd like to be a democrat and help out where help is needed.

But this constant talk of 'the less fortunate' seems to place those speaking on a superior plane than the others. Sure, they may be speaking about compassion, but there are ways of giving help without stripping the recipients of their dignity. But the speechers raise themselves by referring to others in a one-down position. It's as if they are attempting to become patrician by designating all others as plebian. But it is smoke and mirror. We do hold to the truth that all people are created equal.

It is non-humanitarian to create a system of whereby people become dependent for their basic needs. That's infanticizing the 'less fortunate.'

So, I have a bad taste in my mouth for these psuedo patrician non-humanitarian democrats. I know there may be plenty of truly compassionate charitable people who work hard to help the less fortunate, but the loudest voices in the democratic party (at least those around me in liberal LA) are terrible examples.

Posted by Murphy Horner at 11:33 PM | Permalink