October 9, 2012 by Cathy C

Government Dependency Will End in Chaos-Ron Paul

Government Dependency Will End in Chaos

The media insists on characterizing statements about dependency on government handouts as controversial, but in truth such statements are absolutely correct. It’s not that nearly half of Americans are dependent on government; it’s actually more than half. If one includes not just people on food stamps and welfare, but also seniors on Medicare, Social Security and people employed by the government directly, the number is more like 165 million out of 308 million, which is 53%.

Some argue that Social Security and Medicare benefits are a right because people pay into these programs their whole lives, or that we need a government safety net in place for people who fall on hard times. However, this all becomes a moot point when the funds people depend on become worthless due to government default or rampant inflation.

This is less an issue of dignity or dependence on government, and more about thedeceitfulness of government promises.

The Fed recently announced that it plans to keep interest rates near zero and keep buying near worthless assets from banks indefinitely. This enables Congress to spend without having to take deficits or the debt seriously and there is every indication they intend to spend with impunity until the system collapses. There are no brakes on the runaway train. The federal debt ceiling law does nothing to limit spending. The ceiling will have to be raised yet again perhaps before the year is out. What is happening in Greece with austerity measures and riots in the street will happen here within a decade according to some realistic estimates if we do not find some way to fiscally restrain our government.

There is little point in a debate about being entitled to healthcare or food or shelter from fellow taxpayers if the whole system has collapsed. And, with the way our politicians have taken over and mismanaged vast amounts of resources, collapse seems almost unavoidable. Yet the number of Americans who have significant dependency on government is dangerously high, and I honestly fear for them.

Worse, corporate welfare is also at an all time high with no signs of diminishing. Though it is hard to quantify, Tad Dehaven at Cato has estimated that the government spends nearly twice as much on corporate welfare than on social welfare. Both parties are equally guilty. More and more, the business sector is learning to rely on taxpayer largesse in one form or another. They used to be solely concerned with providing a better product to the consumer at a better price. Now, success on Wall Street depends entirely too much on having the best lobbyists on K Street. If one includes the employees of “private” businesses who depend on government contracts, grants or bailouts, there are even more people dependent on government in some way.

Government does not create resources when it taxes people and prints money; it merely redistributes the wealth, while supporting a massive, wasteful bureaucracy along the way. Government is a giant, blood-sucking parasite on our otherwise healthy economy. For too long we have entrusted too much economic power and influence to irresponsible politicians in Washington. It’s the chaos that ensues after they run the system into the ground that will be so painful for so many people. But realigning our economy with the free market and away from government mandates and handouts must happen in order for it to thrive again.

The answer is not to keep asking government to do more. The answer is to extricate our economy and ourselves from the grasp of Washington DC as much as possible now, before our dependency becomes our downfall.

Government Dependency Will End in Chaos.

October 9, 2012 by Cathy C

350 million people have depression in world: WHO – FRANCE 24

350 million people have depression in world: WHO

More than 350 million people suffer from depression globally, the World Health Organization said, ahead of World Mental Health Day on Wednesday, calling the disease a “global phenomenon”. One of the best ways to treat depression was to talk openly about it, the WHO said, adding that medicine was not the only solution.

AFP – More than 350 million people suffer from depression globally, the World Health Organization said, ahead of World Mental Health Day on Wednesday.

“It is not a disease of developed countries, it is a global phenomenon. It’s present in both genders and in rich and poor populations,” Dr Shekhar Saxena, head of the WHO’s mental health and substance abuse department, told reporters in Geneva.

No region is free from the disorder and around five percent of the world’s population suffers depression in the course of a year, the health expert said.

Fifty percent more women suffer symptoms than men, said Saxena, who added that post-natal depression affected one in five mothers and one in 10 of all young mothers in the developed world.

According to the UN’s global health arm, depression is more than just a bout of the blues, rather a “sustained feeling of sadness for two weeks or more” which interferes with “work, school or home”.

At its worst, depression can lead to suicide, the WHO expert said, citing a “very clear correlation”.

Nearly one million people take their lives every year and more than half of them have depression, Saxena said, although he noted that it was not the sole cause.

“Depression has existed for centuries, the news is, we’re not doing anything about it,” said Saxena, noting that the shame associated with having the illness meant that fewer than half of those with depression received the care they need.

The figure dropped to less than 10 percent in many countries, he added.

Effective treatment was available, Saxena said, but health workers needed to do more to spot the signs of depression in people who complained of other symptoms, particularly in children as young as 12 and young adults who they did not expect to have the illness.

One of the best ways to treat depression was to talk openly about it, the WHO said, adding that medicine was not the only solution.

“It should not be taken for granted that depression means taking pills,” Saxena said.

350 million people have depression in world: WHO – FRANCE 24.

October 9, 2012 by Cathy C

One in five Americans reports no religious affiliation, study says – The Washington Post

By Michelle Boorstein, Published: October 8

One-fifth of U.S. adults say they are not part of a traditional religious denomination, new data from the Pew Research Center show, evidence of an unprecedented reshuffling of Americans’ spiritual identities that is shaking up fields from charity to politics.

But despite their nickname, the “nones” are far from godless. Many pray, believe in God and have regular spiritual routines.

One in five Americans reports no religious affiliation, study says – The Washington Post.

October 9, 2012 by Cathy C

The Meningitis Catastrophe & Compounding – The People’s Pharmacy®

Please don’t get the wrong idea. I love the idea of compounding pharmacies. After all, my grandfather’s scale and beaker hold a place of honor in our living room. He was a pharmacist at the turn of the 20th century and used a mortar and pestle to turn herbs into medicine.

Before drug companies took over the world of pharmaceuticals, pharmacists actually used to make many of the medicines they sold to customers. It was routine for a pharmacist in the 1940s and 1950s to make remedies to treat diarrhea, coughs or fungal infections like athlete’s foot. In fact, there was no distinction back then between a standard pharmacy and a “compounding” pharmacy. All pharmacists were trained in the art of making medicine.

These days most chain pharmacists (and pharmacy technicians) are so busy with insurance hassles, drive thru windows, and a huge volume of prescriptions to fill that they don’t have the time or resources to actually compound a lot of pills, creams and emulsions. As a result, a cottage industry has grown up in the United States involving compounding pharmacies. They create bio-identical hormones to deal with menopausal symptoms and a variety of other products that are tailored to specific patients’ needs.

When such pharmacies make a small number of products for people in their community, the consequences of a compounding error are likely to be limited to only those few products. But over the last few decades we have seen the growth of larger compounding facilities that sell products to a much wider audience. Some advertise on the Internet or even send sales representatives to doctors’ offices promoting special formulations. Some of these products have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Others are copies of commercially available products and are sold at a steep discount. This makes them attractive to physicians who get to charge a fee for injecting a particular product. With drug shortages creating havoc for hospitals and clinics around the country, compounding pharmacies sometimes fill the void.

And this leads us to the terrible meningitis outbreak caused by fungal contamination of injectable methylprednisolone. At the time of this writing it is estimated that as many as 13,000 patients could have been exposed to spinal steroid injections containing the fungi aspergillus and exserohilum. Over 100 people in nine states have become ill and eight are dead. The toll is likely to rise over the next several days and weeks. Over 17,000 vials of the spinal steroid were shipped to doctors’ offices, clinics and surgical centers in 23 states.

How could this happen? Compounding pharmacies are not regulated the way drug companies are. Even if they have lots of employees and advertise on the web, they do not get the same oversight a pharmaceutical manufacturer might. Kevin Outterson, an associate professor of law at Boston University, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “The Food and Drug Administration has more regulatory authority over a drug factory in China than over a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts.”

That is a sad commentary on the oversight of this cottage industry. The Supreme Court has restricted the ability of the FDA to monitor compounding pharmacies. States are limited in their ability to inspect these production facilities the way the FDA does and regulate what drugs are compounded and in what quantities. So there is a kind of legal limbo that has evolved in which some compounding pharmacies may slip between the cracks. If the FDA doesn’t have the authority to oversee their manufacturing processes and the state they operate in does not have the resources to do so adequately, consumers are pretty much on their own.

This does not mean that we should give up on local compounding pharmacies. A community pharmacy that serves its customers with care and caution is a valuable resource. Pharmacists can create liquid medicine or drug-containing gummy candy that is tasty and easier for a child to take than a large pill. Pharmacists can formulate special doses to help people discontinue antidepressant medications that would otherwise cause unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Injectable drugs, on the other hand, need special care. And large compounding pharmacies that advertise on the Internet may not always get the oversight you deserve. Perhaps it is time for patients and physicians to insist that the FDA take a more active role in monitoring drug manufacturing here at home as well as abroad.

Patients will also need to be more vigilant when interacting with the pharmacist. These days they are overworked and overextended. In our book, Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them we document that as many as 1 out of 5 prescriptions may have an error or deviate from the physicians’ written orders (Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, March-April, 2009). Although most errors are not life-threatening, far too many can lead to harm.

Top 10 Pharmacist Screwups:

• Not counseling patients
• Dispensing the wrong drug
• Dispensing the wrong dose
• Ignoring drug interactions
• Not standing up to doctors (when a mistake is made)
• Trusting all generic drugs
• Relying on inadequate labels and leaflets
• Not reporting errors
• Switching drugs without patient approval
• Not supervising techs carefully

Be proactive! Ask your pharmacist for specific instructions on how to take your medicine (with food or on an empty stomach). It can make a big difference when it comes to drug effectiveness. Find out about food and beverage interactions. Make sure your pharmacist explains carefully the most common and most dangerous side effects of your medicine. WRITE THEM DOWN! Do not rely on that little slip of paper that may be included in your bag. It will likely get lost easily. Ask your pharmacist to double check for drug incompatibility with any other medicines you are taking. And finally, make sure you have received the right medicine in the right dose and the instructions match those your doctor gave you. Do not just grab and go the next time you pick up your prescription!

The Meningitis Catastrophe & Compounding – The People’s Pharmacy®.

October 8, 2012 by Cathy C

kd lang “Hallelujah” CSHF 2006 – YouTube

Thanks Gillian for the reminder.

k.d. lang recorded a version of “Hallelujah” in 2004 on her album Hymns of the 49th Parallel. She sang the song at several major events, such as at the Canadian Juno Awards of 2005,^[42] where her rendition “brought the audience to its feet for a two-minute ovation.”^[43] Lang also sang it at the 2006 Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on the occasion of Cohen’s induction into the Hall of Fame.^[44] Of that rendition, Cohen’s partner, singer Anjani Thomas, said: “After hearing k.d. lang perform that song at the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in 2006 we looked at each other and said, ‘well, I think we can lay that song to rest now! It’s really been done to its ultimate blissful state of perfection’.”^[45] Lang sang the song at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, before a claimed TV audience of 3 billion.^[46]

October 8, 2012 by Cathy C

Tig Notaro on Going ‘Live’ About Her Life : NPR

Tig Notaro walked out onstage, hours after finding out she was diagnosed with cancer, and talked about it in a set that Louis C.K. described in a tweet as ‘masterful.’ Notaro talks with Fresh Air’sTerry Gross about the set entitled, Tig Notaro: Live.

Tig Notaro on Going ‘Live’ About Her Life : NPR.