Big Pharma's Latest Puppet - John McCain

DSSA Bill a Big win for Big Pharma?

The dietary-supplement industry is fighting a bid by U.S. Sen. John McCain to force it to disclose ingredients and register with the Food and Drug Administration.

Most of the industrialized world has incredibly restrictive laws governing supplements. People worldwide often purchase supplements from the U.S. because they are freely available at low costs. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 would also strengthen recall authority of any dietary supplement the FDA finds to be hazardous.

Obviously, forcing small companies to go through the FDA's Billion Dollar drug approval process would be way too expensive for natural substances that can't be patented, and would drive up the costs of Natural Supplements substantially.

Tucson's Food Conspiracy Co-op on Fourth Avenue is urging visitors to its Facebook page to take action against the bill, warning it would "create administrative hurdles that small supplement companies could not take on, leaving only products from large pharmaceutical companies."

McCain, who is teaming on the bill with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., held a press conference in early February to tout it, flanked by several athletes, including swimmer Kicker Vencill, who was banned from the Olympics after taking a tainted supplement. He successfully sued the manufacturer but missed out on the Olympics.

Strong Opposition to DSSA

Stung by rapidly escalating criticism about the bill's intent, McCain made a floor speech last week saying he introduced the legislation at the behest of Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the American College of Sports Medicine, along with several other sports organizations.

He recalled the case of Phoenix Suns' star Tom Gugliotta, who almost died in 2000 after taking a "sleep aid" that sent him into a seizure.

But McCain said the bill was also introduced for the half of all Americans who take some kind of supplement. "People have died from taking dietary supplements, including a young mother and wife who lived in my home state, and thousands have had to be hospitalized or seen by a doctor due to an adverse reaction from a dietary supplement."

Of course, McCain didn't introduce a bill to do anything about the more than 100,000 people a year that die from drug interactions from the Pharmaceutical industry.

He said it was about "truth in labeling," saying it only makes sense because Americans can get ingredients off the side of a cereal box or a container of yogurt.

McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said it's important for consumers to know ingredients, too, because some compounds may interact poorly with or nullify their prescription drugs.

Buchanan said the bill has been mischaracterized by opponents. The biggest misconception? "That John McCain is trying to take away people's vitamins. It's just not true. He wants to make is safer for you to take your vitamins."

All of this could change, however, if DSSA passes. DSSA would change key sections of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C), undoing protections in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, effectively eliminating free access to supplements.

The importance of DSHEA
The passage of DSHEA resulted from millions of Americans who worked hard to reinforce their freedom to buy and sell supplements. At the time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was alleging that nutrients like CoQ10 and selenium were dangerous and should be pulled from the market.

Of course, today we know that supplements like CoQ10 have can vastly improve human health, and there are studies that show that CoQ10 can be more beneficial than some of the expressive medications that have been approved by the FDA. In a way, CoQ10 is costing big Pharma Billions in additional profits!

Though weak in some areas, DSHEA established a foundation upon which free access to dietary supplements would be protected from attacks by drug companies and the FDA.

What prompted DSSA?
McCain's DSSA bill emerged in response to illegal steroid use among Major League Baseball players. Likely instigated by pharmaceutical interests, the bill is being posited as necessary to prevent supplement adulteration.

The FDA already has the power to pull supplements from the market that are contaminated but it has not been doing its job. DSSA is not only unnecessary, but it would actually reward the FDA for its failures. DSSA would also strip DSHEA and give full control of the supplement industry to the FDA.

Registration requirements
DSSA would mandate that all supplement companies register with the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the FDA. Any company that refuses to register and comply with HHS would be subject to hefty fines, the classification of its products as "adulterated", and their removal from the market. The new system would burden manufacturers with significant new costs that would cause supplement prices to increase. A new taxpayer-funded bureaucracy would also be created to conduct inspections and oversee compliance.

Reporting requirements
DSSA would require all "non-serious adverse events" received by supplement companies to be reported to the government, regardless of whether or not the events are related to the supplements for which they are submitted. Pharmaceutical companies would have access to these reports which they could use to petition the FDA to have supplements removed from the market. The FDA could also arbitrarily pull supplements from the market if it believes it has "reasonable probability" that there may be a problem.

FDA would decide which supplements are legal
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of DSSA is that it would allow the HHS Secretary to establish a list of permitted supplements. Reversing common law, which assumes all is legal unless restricted, DSSA would allow only what is permitted to be legal.

In a nutshell, DSSA would increase supplement costs for consumers, grant incredible new power over the supplement industry to the FDA, and drastically limit the availability of supplements. Drug companies could also use the bill to remove supplements from the market, patent them, and sell them as drugs!

It is absolutely critical to contact your Congressmen and oppose this bill. LifeExtension Magazine has a convenient "Action Alert" page in which to do so.

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Woopie Goldberg - A Slave To Her Ignorance

It amazes me that people accept the one sided bias of the media with their usual sheepishness, such as how Michelle Obama goes on to The View with a list of topics she won't discuss, and gets the soft ball treatment from them. McCain on the other hand goes on the view and he gets the Major League treatment, but not only that, gets downright outrageous comments and accusations lobbed at him.

In response to McCain asserting that he would appoint judges that would not "legislate from the bench", in other words make up their own laws and instead stick to interpreting our constitution, Ms. Goldberg asked the question, "Do I have to worry about the return of Slavery". What?!?! Is she really that dim?

First, let's explore the history of slavery a bit. Slavery was not an institution suffered only by blacks, throughout the history of mankind, many societies such as Greece, the Baghdad Caliphate (Iraq) and Rome were constantly invading their neighbors to fill an unending appetite for slave labor. Just like the spectacle of the Colosseum, with it's "to the death" battles, is no longer considered a civilized event that no civilized society would partake in any longer, slavery as well is a barbaric thing of the past.

Next, let's go on to the conditions that allowed slavery. In the early days of the Colonies, slavery was allowed by our British masters and so land owners especially in the South utilized these rules as a way to farm their vast land holdings. When the colonies wanted to break away from the rule of England, they needed the South to help out in the effort, so as a compromise, in order to bring everyone together, slavery was basically put off by the constitution for 20 years, to give states time to transition their societies away from slavery, this is what happened in the North where slavery was officially ended without federal intervention in most states. The South however, saw things differently and wanted slavery to continue. Clearly, Democrats were not up to the task of ending slavery and it took a Republican and the religious right to make it happen. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln ended slavery, while the Democrats fought to keep it alive. Ms. Goldberg, why do you think the Civil War happened? There are the revisionist out there that say that it was fought over some other issue, but let's take a look at the facts shall we? Lincoln's major campaign theme was the campaign against the expansion of Slavery, he claimed that Slavery was unconstitutional and that Science had taught us that Blacks were not "Three Fifths" of a person as we were told by the Democrats (it took another Republican law to end Democrat Primaries counting "Negro" votes as Three Fifths a vote too), upon the Republican victory, seven souther states declared their succession and independence from the U.S. After the south attacked the north at Fort Sumter, 4 more slave holding states declared their independence. Any student of history will tell you that Slavery was the ONLY issue that the Civil War was fought over, all other issues were nothing but peripheral instances that could have easily been resolved without a war.

So the short answer is, No Whoopi, you don't have to worry about the return of Slavery, Slavery is unconstitutional. The definition of rights, true rights, basically ends at the beginning of another person's rights. Science has also shown us that people of color are every bit as human as the rest of us and therefore not subject to the Democrats "Three Fifth's" rules where they could be enslaved, deprived of voting rights and so on.

The Competing Plans to Destroy America

I was reading the Huffington Post today when I saw this article about how McCain's list of 300 Economists are filled with Skeptics. They were talking about how most of these guys didn't even like McCain, but the truth is, and what they didn't say was that they probably liked Obama even less.

In an era where Congress gets an approval rating of just 9%, the lowest ever recorded people are realizing more and more that Congress, our Candidates and everyone in between in Washington is just in it for themselves.

While the Presidential Candidates might not be in this for themselves, both of them have clearly forgotten that Capitalism has made this country great. Both of them clearly need to read "How Capitalism Saved America" by Thomas Dilorenzo, and "The Myth of Robber Baron" by Burton W. Folsom. Maybe then, they can gain a clear understanding of why America is greater than Europe, and more economically and militarily powerful than any other nation on this planet.

In the mean time, let's take a look at just how each one of these guys is competing to destroy America shall we.

McCain:
John McCain's Cap & Trade system is like a Millstone around the neck of a drowning man. This is a system that would absolutely devastate the U.S. economy by imposing a 3.2 Trillion dollar taxing aparatus that would reduce GDP by anywhere from 1 to 2.8 Trillion by 2050. What that means is if you divide the median figure by our population, you're looking at over $6000.00 for every man woman and child in this country in lost wages and, or extra fees paid to energy producers. The worst part of this is that the whole Global Warming theory is based upon faulty data that is only now seeing the light of day. Most won't bother to tell you that the current warming cycle actually started back in the 1600's at the end of the "Little Ice Age". There are even those saying that Global Warming has ended. Think gas and electric bills are high now? Just wait for Cap & Trade!

But wait, there's MORE:
McCain's immigration policy is something that leaves much to be desired. While I agree that we should do something about the Millions who live here illegally, the very first thing we need to do is to secure our borders and then, only then will we be able to go ahead and provide some sort of integration program for the people living here illegally, otherwise, you're just encouraging this problem to continue. The truth is, we can't solve problems with Health Care, Education and other issues without first addressing one of the biggest drains on those resources.

Just ONE other thing that bothers me:
I wonder what McCain would say if someone told his Wife, that her Beer company had to come up with a non-alcoholic Wine alternative to beer? He would probably say, "It's her company, she's in the business of producing Beer, not Wine. In that same vein, why is he chastising Oil companies for not producing alternatives to hydrocarbons? Also, why is he chastising them for earning a mere 8% return on investments, when Banks are earning 18%, Software 25% and many other industries earning much more? Government taxes actually take up much higher percentages of what we pay for Gas than anything else, and I'm sure Regulations add quite a bit to that figure as well. What bothers me is that again, he shows that he doesn't have a clue as to how this country runs and what makes it great. Comments like these don't show leadership, they show pandering to the left and pandering to those who don't understand the issues.
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Barrack Obama:

Where do I even start. When it comes to everything I've just said, his plans are equally as devastating to the economy as McCain's, and even worse. To top it off, his repeal of the Bush Tax cuts will raise the average tax paying families taxes by at least 10%. To many people, they don't quite understand this because they have the Government withhold say $5,000.00 from their income, owe $4500.00 in taxes, and get back $500.00 at the end of the year, so they think they're ahead. Those guys don't realize that they can now forget about that $500.00, it now belongs to Obama and company.

To top it off, most people don't realize that the Bottom 50% in America only pay just over 3% of all income taxes collected, the top 50% pay almost 97%, so this claim on his website that he will "completely eliminate Income Taxes for 10 Million Americans" is a farce, they already pay either nothing or next to nothing. In addition, why should Senior citizens making $49,000.00 a year not have to pay any taxes, when a single Mom with children to feed and cloth, she does have to pay taxes under the Obama plan. I'll tell you why, because since Seniors vote in much larger groups then younger people, this is an outright attempt by Obama to buy their vote. Back to the same old Class Warfare that Democrats are so good at.
It only gets worse, the top 2% that Obama is talking about already pay about half of all income taxes collected. While you may not wish to cry a tear for them, since hell, they are the top 2% right? Well, most of those same top 2% own the small businesses that provide 65% of all the jobs in the U.S. It only stands to reason that the more cash you take away from these guys, the less cash they will have to provide new jobs, and small business is the engine that drives the U.S. Economy, thanks for throwing a wrench in there Obama.

Oh and here's the Good part:
In addition to higher taxes on the top 2%, Obama's also promoting the elimination of the caps on Social Security. This means that a small employer will have to substantially increase what he's now paying to Social Security, especially if that small business has some professionals on his staff who earn more than the Social Security cap, which again means less incentives to hire more.

Stance on Energy & Trade:
Up until 2005, the U.S. was the worlds largest exporter, and the only reason we've fallen behind to 3rd place, was because of the fall in the value of the U.S. dollar in 2005, that continued through 2006, 2007 and 2008. The biggest reason for the fall in the Dollar started with the Dollar sell off in Europe because of the new Euro Currency displacing dollars, but more recently, the dollar has been more and more affected by our imports of Oil, which are projected to be at over a HALF TRILLION a year at current prices or just under half of all our exports. We are literally giving away America's wealth to the Oil producers of the world. What's Obama's stance on more Oil production? Dr. No! Relying on the fantasy of Solar Power and Wind is not a viable solution, these technologies currently cost up to ten times more than hydrocarbons (Oil & Gas), and while yes, they will become less expensive in the future, the goal seems to be to make hydrocarbons cost more, instead of getting alternatives to cost less. Which means we can expect even higher electric bills and gas prices.

What's Obama's stance on trade, more protectionists policies, even though we've had a net gain in Jobs from NAFTA and our other trade agreements, Obama instead chooses to pander to fears instead of facts, that somehow we're getting the short end of the stick. Yes, some people do lose jobs with some of these agreements, but for the most part, more new jobs are created than the ones that are lost. Free trade is one of the reasons the U.S. has some of the lowest levels of unemployment in the world. In the EU, they celebrate that their unemployment is "only 7.1%, here that would be a disaster!

Big Government Spender
Obama is all about investments, and his website is chock full of "We will invest in this and invest in that" so of course, where the heck is all this cash going to come from? The government budget is already almost 2.8 Trillion Dollars, a 13 fold increase since 1970, so how much more do we have to pay in taxes? There's only so much you can take away from the private sector before all the cash starts to disappear. Just like in the 70's when the top rate was 75%, people just won't bother to make the money, if they know they just have to hand it all over to Uncle Sam. That will leave me and you with the bill.

Bob Barr:
Sure Bob Barr the Libertarian candidate is running for president, but they've got the whole thing ass backwards. When the Republicans wanted to take on the Democrats and the Wigs back in the 1800's, they didn't say "Hey, we're going to run Abe Lincoln here for prez. No, they built up a solid grassroots support network, got support from others who wanted to end slavery and give non-landowners the right to vote, along with support for land for the Poor programs. One they had their platform in place, they got congressmen elected, took over a good deal of seats in the house, and then, only then did they field their presidential candidate. The rest is history, the Wigs ended up joining the Republicans and ceased to be a party. However, the Libertarians seem to want change from the top down, instead of from the bottom up.

It doesn't matter that I support almost every issue that the Libertarians have, even if Bob Barr were to win the election, no one in congress or the senate will work with him, so what's the point. He'll have zero political capital to spend and won't get anything done.

So that's it folks, that's our choices:
Which candidate will do his best to destroy America and ruin the foundations on which she was built upon? Do we take:
Dumb or Dumber?