The Richest Rich Are in a Class by Themselves
April 4th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
The rallying cry of the Occupy Movement was that the richest 1 percent of Americans is getting richer while the rest of us struggle to get by. That’s not quite right, though. The bottom nine-tenths of the 1 Percent club have about the same slice of the national wealth pie that they had a generation ago. The gains have accrued almost exclusively to the top tenth of 1 Percenters. The richest 0.1 percent of the American population has rebuilt its share of wealth back to where it was in the Roaring Twenties. And the richest 0.01 percent’s share has grown even more rapidly, quadrupling since the eve of the Reagan Revolution.
Supreme Court Allows More Private Money in Election Campaigns
April 4th, 2014Via: CNN:
If you’re rich and want to give money to a lot of political campaigns, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that you can.
The 5-4 ruling eliminated limits on how much money people can donate in total in one election season.
However, the decision left intact the current $5,200 limit on how much an individual can give to any single candidate during a two-year election cycle. Until now, an individual donor could give up to $123,200 per cycle.
The ruling means a wealthy liberal or conservative donor can give as much money as desired to federal election candidates across the country, as long as no candidate receives more than the $5,200 cap.
While most people lack the money to make such a large total donation to election campaigns, the ruling clears the way for more private money to enter the system.
Threatened Pandemics and Laboratory Escapes: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
April 3rd, 2014Via: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:
The public health danger from the escape, from laboratories, of viruses capable of causing pandemics has become the subject of considerable, well-merited discussion, spurred by “gain of function” experiments. The ostensible goal of these experiments— in which researchers manipulate already-dangerous pathogens to create or increase communicability among humans—is to develop tools to monitor the natural emergence of pandemic strains. Opponents, however, warn that the risk of laboratory escape of these high-consequence pathogens far outweighs any potential advance. These arguments appear in a variety of recent research papers, including Rethinking Biosafety in Research on Potential Pandemic Pathogens; The Human Fatality and Economic Burden of a Man-made Influenza Pandemic: A Risk Assessment; Containing the Accidental Laboratory Escape of Potential Pandemic Influenza Viruses; and Response to Letter by the European Society for Virology on “Gain-of-Function” Influenza Research.
The risk of a manmade pandemic sparked by a laboratory escape is not hypothetical: One occurred in 1977, and it occurred because of concern that a natural pandemic was imminent. Many other laboratory escapes of high-consequence pathogens have occurred, resulting in transmission beyond laboratory personnel. Ironically, these laboratories were working with pathogens to prevent the very outbreaks they ultimately caused. For that reason, the tragic consequences have been called “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Leaders of Teaching Hospitals Have Close Ties to Drug Companies
April 3rd, 2014Via: ProPublica:
Pharmaceutical company payments to doctors extend far beyond rank-and-file clinicians — and deep into the leadership of America’s teaching hospitals, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A team of researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center examined the boards of the 50 largest drug companies by global sales (excluding three companies that were not publicly traded). The researchers found that 40 percent — 19 companies — had at least one board member who also held a leadership role at an academic medical center. Sixteen of the 17 companies based in the United States had at least one. Several had more than one.
All told, the research team found that 41 of the companies’ 2012 board members held leadership positions at academic medical centers. Six of the 41 were pharmaceutical company executives who served on hospital boards of directors or held other leadership posts.
Excluding the industry executives, the academics earned an average of nearly $313,000 that year for their board service.
DARPA: Biological Technologies Office
April 3rd, 2014I saw this trailer for The Machine a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn’t resist including it with this news from DARPA.
Via: DARPA:
Technology, like biology, constantly evolves. It is DARPA’s mission to stay ahead of the shifting technology curve by making critical, early investments in areas that cut across fields of research and enable revolutionary new capabilities for U.S. national security. Now DARPA is poised to give unprecedented prominence to a field of research that can no longer be considered peripheral to technology’s evolving nature. Starting today, biology takes its place among the core sciences that represent the future of defense technology.
DARPA has created a new division, the Biological Technologies Office (BTO), to explore the increasingly dynamic intersection of biology and the physical sciences. Its goals are to harness the power of biological systems by applying the rigorous tools of engineering and related disciplines, and to design next-generation technologies that are inspired by insights gained from the life sciences.
Terrifying Mental and Physical Health Consequences of Taking Statins
April 1st, 2014Madness.
Via: Mercola:
Related: France: Half of Drugs Prescribed Useless or Dangerous – Statins “Completely Useless”
NATO Suspends Russia Co-Operation
April 1st, 2014Via: BBC:
Nato foreign ministers have agreed to suspend all practical civilian and military co-operation with Russia.
In a strongly worded statement, they condemned Russia’s “illegal” annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region and praised the Ukrainian government’s “restraint”.
Moscow is believed to have massed tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s eastern border in recent days, causing alarm in Kiev and the West.
Dr. Michael F. Holick Vitamin D Presentation
April 1st, 2014Via: TheIHMC:
Du Pont Family Heir Convicted of Raping Daughter Sentenced to… (Wait for It) Probation – Also Accused of Abusing Son
April 1st, 2014Is the judge in on it? Compromised in some way?
From The News Journal:
A Superior Court judge who sentenced a wealthy du Pont heir to probation for raping his 3-year-old daughter noted in her order that he “will not fare well” in prison and needed treatment instead of time behind bars, court records show.
Judge Jan Jurden’s sentencing order for Robert H. Richards IV suggested that she considered unique circumstances when deciding his punishment for fourth-degree rape. Her observation that prison life would adversely affect Richards was a rare and puzzling rationale, several criminal justice authorities in Delaware said. Some also said her view that treatment was a better idea than prison is a justification typically used when sentencing drug addicts, not child rapists.
—
Via: Detroit Free Press:
A du Pont family heir who raped his 3-year-old daughter nearly a decade ago but received no prison time now faces a lawsuit from his former wife that accuses him of sexually abusing his toddler son.
Robert H. Richards IV, 47, who is supported by a trust fund and who paid $1.8 million for his 5,800-square-foot mansion near Winterthur Museum, pleaded guilty in 2008 to fourth-degree rape of his daughter. Currently on probation, he has never been charged with crimes against his son.
The lawsuit provides in-depth details about a child rape case that Delaware authorities never disclosed publicly and did not receive media attention.
Richards is a scion of two prominent Delaware families — the du Pont family who built the chemical empire and the Richards family who co-founded the prestigious corporate law firm Richards Layton & Finger. Du Pont family patriarch Irenee du Pont is his great grandfather. His father, Robert H. Richards III, was a partner in the law firm until his 2008 retirement.
Currently unemployed, Richards IV also lists a home in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach as a residence, according to the state’s sex abuse registry.
On Tuesday, nearly six years after Richards’ felony conviction, his ex-wife, Tracy Richards, filed a Superior Court lawsuit on behalf of her children seeking compensatory and punitive damages for assault, negligence, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress on his two children. Abuse of the children occurred at both the Greenville and North Shores homes, the lawsuit alleged.
NSA Infiltrated RSA Security More Deeply than Thought
March 31st, 2014Via: Reuters:
“We could have been more sceptical of NSA’s intentions,” RSA Chief Technologist Sam Curry told Reuters.
