Lying

Hat tip to Truth not Tasers on this story. It's long and includes more quotes from a taser fanboy-analyst than necessary, but it also has some very interesting tidbits. From the article:

Its sister Gannett paper, USA Today, has also angered Taser, particularly after publishing a June 2005 story and graphic that significantly overstated the electrical output of Taser’s X26-model stun gun. Taser contacted the newspaper and the story was corrected the next day of publication.

But a few weeks later Taser sued, claiming that the Republic and USA Today “engaged in the ongoing publication of misleading articles related to the safety of Taser products, resulting in substantial economic damages to us, our customers and our shareholders.” Taser claimed the newspapers’ stories cost company shareholders more than one billion dollars in lost value.

Maricopa County (Ariz.) Superior Court Judge Paul J. McMurdie rejected Taser’s claims in granting Gannett’s motion for summary judgment. In his Jan. 25, 2006 ruling, he awarded McLean, Va.-based Gannett attorneys’ fees after finding one of the claims “clearly unjustified.” About three weeks later, the two sides asked the court to formally dismiss Taser’s claims—and with it Taser’s right to an appeal—while Gannett withdrew its claim to attorneys’ fees, court records show.

“It was a total victory,” said David Bodney, Gannett’s attorney in the case. But that’s not how Taser reported it to the SEC, or to Wall Street analysts who covered the company.

In a Feb. 22, 2006 conference call with financial analysts, Douglas Klint, Taser’s general counsel and executive vice president, said: “Our lawsuit against Gannett Company Incorporated was dismissed with the understanding that, in the future, the USA Today and the Arizona Republic newspapers would review their Taser stories with the company prior to publishing in order to ensure accuracy,” according to a transcript of the call.

The next month, in its Form 10-K filing, Taser wrote: “the parties entered into a stipulation for dismissal with the understanding that the USA Today and the Arizona Republic would review articles regarding the Taser device with us prior to publication.” That statement was repeated in the company’s May 18, 2006 quarterly report to the SEC.

A former Arizona Republic editor calls the assertion that Taser International would be reviewing the stories regarding taser, "completely false":

Current San Francisco Chronicle editor Ward Bushee, the Republic’s editor at the time of the settlement, and Randy Lovely, the Republic’s current editor, said they were unaware of Taser’s statements until asked about them recently by CIR, and denied that any such agreement ever existed.

“Taser's assertion in the SEC filing is completely false,” Lovely said. “The Arizona Republic would never allow a source to review a story prior to publication. To do so would completely violate our journalist principles and standards of independence. The Republic has aggressively reported on Taser during the past few years, and we stand behind the full scope and accuracy of our stories.”

Again, the whole piece is worth a read and would make me a very nervous Taser International shareholder.

A Proposal For KBR Executives

Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR), a former Halliburton subsidiary, has profited more than any other US contractor from the war in Iraq, obtaining more than $16-billion in contracts from 2004 to 2006. They accomplished this contracting victory while avoiding the payment of $500-million in Social Security and Medicare taxes.

If the above monetary outrage and allegations of gang-rape by former employees weren't enough, it turns out that KBR has been supplying troops with dirty, illness-inducing water (via ThinkProgress).

My proposal is this: KBR's leaders, including their board, need to be sent on a corporate retreat. Instead of a typical "rent a high-end hotel stocked with booze, prime rib, and prostitutes" week-long male bonding event, supply these guys with a canteen of KBR water, a knife, and cell phones that only dial Dick Cheney or the New York Times and drop them off in Baghdad for a week.

Saturday Taser Roundup

Each of the following items probably deserves its own post, but I'm putting them in a round-up format because, after blogging away the last long weekend when I told someone I wouldn't, I don't want to blog through this one. At any rate, here are some taser related items:

• Michigan Lawmakers have introduced two bills that would allow citizens to carry tasers.
• St. Paul Minnesota has ordered 230 tasers. That will give them a total of 370, one for every officer. Remember, this year's RNC is in St. Paul. The tasers will be delivered in time for it.
• Some miscellaneous facts about Taser International (TI) are here. Among those facts is that over 260,000 devices have been sold by TI since 1998.
• TI experienced doubled profits in Q4 last year, but its shares fell on Thursday on gross margins. The Motley Fool still loves TI though (and here).
• I found the LED Incapacitator (or here, or here) recently as I was searching for taser related news. I wouldn't expect it to replace tasers; police really love seeing suspects twitch at the end of the taser lead. Technology replacing traditional law enforcement restraint techqniques is never a good option. The only person who should have the ability to use dizzying light is Dazzler, or maybe Dr. Light.
• Finally, I've added a new site to my Tasers Suck links section to the right. It's a NewsVine collection called, "Taserwatch." Give it a read.

Artificial Heart Maker Goes Artificial Rowing

You've probably seen the Lipitor ads that include Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of an artificial heart, endorsing the drug and rowing off on a pristine lake. The NYTimes has an interesting piece this morning about the ads.

It turns out that it's not Dr. Jarvik doing the rowing in the ads that hock the world's largest-selling drug. From the Times:

The ads have depicted him, among other outdoorsy pursuits, rowing a one-man racing shell swiftly across a mountain lake. “When diet and exercise aren’t enough, adding Lipitor significantly lowers cholesterol,” Dr. Jarvik says in the ad.

Celebrity advertising endorsements are nothing new, of course. But the Lipitor campaign is a rare instance of a well-known doctor’s endorsing a drug in advertising — and it has helped rekindle a smoldering debate over whether it is appropriate to aim ads for prescription drugs directly at consumers.

A Congressional committee, concerned that the Lipitor ads could be misleading, has said it wants to interview Dr. Jarvik about his role as the drug’s pitchman.

Some of the questions may involve his credentials. Even though Dr. Jarvik holds a medical degree, for example, he is not a cardiologist and is not licensed to practice medicine. So what, critics ask, qualifies him to recommend Lipitor on television — even if, as he says in some of the ads, he takes the drug himself?

And, for that matter, what qualifies him to pose as a rowing enthusiast? As it turns out, Dr. Jarvik, 61, does not actually practice the sport. The ad agency hired a stunt double for the sculling scenes.

“He’s about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen,” said a longtime collaborator, Dr. O. H. Frazier of the Texas Heart Institute. “He can’t row.”

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is looking into when and why Dr. Jarvik began taking Lipitor and whether the advertisements give the public a false impression, according to John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee’s chairman.

“It seems that Pfizer’s No. 1 priority is to sell lots of Lipitor, by whatever means necessary, including misleading the American people,” Mr. Dingell said.

Lipitor, the world’s single best-selling drug, is Pfizer’s biggest product, generating sales of $12.7 billion last year. But as it has come under competition from cheaper generic alternatives, Pfizer has used the Jarvik campaign, introduced in early 2006, to help protect its Lipitor franchise.

Pfizer spent $258 million from January 2006 to September 2007 advertising Lipitor, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Much of that went for the Jarvik campaign. ...

Criticism of consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals flared as an issue back in 2004, when Merck withdrew Vioxx, a heavily advertised painkiller, after a clinical trial showed that it sharply increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The pharmaceutical industry adopted voluntary guidelines the next year suggesting that companies delay advertising new products for an unspecified period after they first reach the market.

Despite the efforts by industry and government to curb drug advertising, spending on consumer drug ads increased more than 300 percent from 1997 to 2007, when it reached about $4.8 billion.

That last bit is more evidence for dispersing the pipe dream that conservatives sell about market regulation. The industry will not police itself when billions are up for grabs. It's that simple and simply the nature of business (the scorpion and the fox and all that).

Even if Dr. Jarvik did the ads for free, which the Times article doesn't discuss, they would still be dishonest and amount to little more than Pfizer scrambling to keep people from switching to cheaper generics by using, and tarnishing, a trusted name in medical science.

Florida AAA Refuses Gay Couples Discounts

The Florida AAA refuses to extend the discounts they offer heterosexual couples to same-sex couples:

A policy for a married man allows him to have his wife on the membership at half-price.

In Florida, a gay man and his partner must both pay full price.

"They do not offer a policy for homosexuals. If I were married I'd be able to do it, but since I'm gay I can't," the man says.

The Florida policy has been in place for some time and AAA says a domestic partner is not a spouse.

"What is a spouse as defined by your policy?" asks Holmes.

"We use the Florida law spouse which describes a husband and wife, and it's a man and a woman," says Florida AAA Vice President John Imming.

The Florida policy is also contrary to the benefits offered by many other states.

From liberal California to the wilds of Texas, from the remote Dakotas to Hawaii, most states allow gays to have their domestic partner on their membership at a reduced rate.

"Other clubs are free to make their decisions based on the needs of their area," says Imming.

Note to News Channel 5 WPTV: your use of "homosexual" in the above quoted article is creepy.

Working Definitions Of Evil

'Evil' is a word that gets tossed out too frequently. It's used by religious types endlessly and usually gets applied following standards that aren't universal. It's unfortunate too; 'evil' ends up losing power it should have.

There are times when we need a word to describe dark and incomprehensible human thoughts and behaviors. Sometimes the evil is collective, as in Burma and Darfur. Sometimes it comes from individuals, like Fox News' John Gibson. From ThinkProgress:

Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a “weirdo” with a “serious drug problem.”

Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you” from Ledger’s gay romance movie Brokeback Mountain, Gibson disdainfully quipped, “Well, he found out how to quit you.” Laughing, Gibson then played another clip from Brokeback Mountain in which Ledger said, “We’re dead,” followed by his own, mocking “We’re dead” before playing the clip again.

The untimely death of anyone is a sad thing. It's especially sad when a young person is denied the full duration of what is likely our one chance at consciousness.

I get what Gibson did. A radio show needs listeners and Gibson and his team think that their listeners want to hear jokes about the death of an actor who played a gay man in an extremely closeted environment (There's so much humor there right?).

But how does Gibson walk around living with himself after such radio play? My guess is that a fat paycheck and his celebrity, such as it is, are rewards that, to him, justify using a young person's death to feed homophobia.

John, yours is an evil act with an evil justification.

Wow

When does the lush Bush economy start? The Dow was off some 300 points this morning and the Fed cut a rate by 3/4 of a percentage point. Yahoo Finance has more info.

A Reminder

Lest we forget, Adam Sandler, who stumped for Rudy back in 2007, is still, in fact, a dick:

And Republican presidential candidates got a few donations as well: singer Pat Boone donated to Mitt Romney and former candidate Sam Brownback, producer Jerry Bruckheimer contributed to John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani got money from Kelsey Grammer, Adam Sandler and Ben Stein. [a full list of celebrities is here.]

In addition to Bruckheimer, Boone, and Grammer, another celebrity joins un-funny man Sandler in his dickery:

Actor and Academy Award winner Jon Voight joins Robert Duvall and Adam Sandler as the latest celebrity to support Rudy Giuliani’s run for president. ...

“His commitment to keeping our military strong and his track record of transforming New York makes him the right man at the right time for our country.”

Is Voight referring to Rudy placing the emergency command center in the World Trader Center after the first World Trade Center bombing or that his administration failed to get first responders updated radios that would have saved lives on 9/11 (you know the event that Rudy loooooves to mention on the campaign trail (or see here, here, here, and here)?

Oh, Oh, Oh, on my TV right now Republican Representative from Long Island, Pete King, is on my teevee (Fox5 News, it's so tawdry) telling me that once Rudy wins Florida, he'll be the front-runner for the GOP. He also says that Rudy's the winner, because no one else has. Bwahahaha!

Back to Sandler, this weekend I saw a trailer for an upcoming film in which Sandler plays a former Israeli commando turned hairstylist. The racist and xenophobic stereotypes abound, as does the gender stereotyping (i.e., look at the big tough guy doing something that a woman would normally do, now that's funny!).

It looks like Adam's transitioned from making fun of gay people to making fun of the Arab-Israeli conflict, or something.

Our Allies In The Middle East

(CBS News)

Here's a little tidbit from CNN:

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which those convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery are executed in public with a sword.

The maid is the second person to be executed this year in the desert kingdom, according to an Associated Press count.

Saudi Arabia beheaded 137 people last year, up sharply from the 38 in 2006.

Democracy's on the march, or something.

A Developer Stopped

The city of St. Paul has stopped a developer from building an upscale complex in a flood plane. From the NYTimes:

“We started with the previous mayor, and we were in agreement on this,” [the developer] Mr. Trooien said in an interview conducted on the top floor of his office building that overlooks the proposed site, which sits between two major spans over the Mississippi on the more residential south side of the river, opposite downtown. “We’ve done everything we can, but the squishy liberals think small-scale is morally superior.”

The article goes on to state that the developer was looking for government handouts and even admitted that a gradual implementation of his plan wasn't economically feasible:

Meanwhile, the economics of the project caused concern among City Council members. Not only was Mr. Trooien asking for substantial tax deferments, but the entire project was to be built all at the same time, raising concerns about whether a city with a population of 300,000 could absorb it at once.Still, Mr. Aberg and Mr. Trooien maintain that it could not easily have been phased in, and that the economics of a smaller scale project just do not work on the site.

These types hate government involvement in business right up to the point where they get to stick their hands in the cookie jar. Good for St. Paul.

Pardons

The Saudi King has pardoned a rape victim sentenced to 200 lashes and 6 months in prison. I'm betting that conservative pundits here in America will follow his lead and pardon Jamie Leigh Jones, the former Halliburton/Kellog Brown and Root employee who dared talk about being raped by coworkers while working in Iraq. I mean, it's the season of giving, right?

White As Snow Visa Commercial

A fairly accurate take on Christmas for Manhattanites.

Acceptable Losses

Q: What does the Bush administration consider appropriate in American health coverage?

A: 11,000 children thrown out of the system.

That's compassionate conservatism at work. Absolutely stunning isn't it?

Frightening Hate For Health Care Coverage

ThinkProgress is reporting that a popular conservative blog is receiving kudos from the White House for its stand on SCHIP. Comments at the blog call for ruining the family at the center of a right-wing smear campaign. ThinkProgress has more information on the campaign under their health care tag. The amount of hate being directed at SCHIP recipients is astounding.

Income Gap Widens

Being rich is awesome. Just ask the 1% of Americans who earned 21% of our income in 2005. From the Wall Street Journal:

The richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record, surpassing the highs reached in the 1990s bull market, and underlining the divergence of economic fortunes blamed for fueling anxiety among American workers.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks.

The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000.

Catch that last sentence? In 2005, half of our country earned 12.8% of the income. America, the land of opportunity.

America's Moral Leaders

Oral Roberts and family are in it deep. Scroll to the end of this article for the long list of things you'd never expect from a good Christian family.

Abandon Ye All Hope

Although we don't really have a choice about entering. The Supreme Court reconvenes today. The NYTimes has a graphic that highlights some upcoming cases. They paint a fairly rosy outlook considering this is the court that recently issued a pro-segregation ruling, gutting Brown vs. Board of Education.

Walmart Flip-Flops

I don't know what to say about this. Beware. The pictures are pretty rough (but work safe). What an ordeal. No one should have to worry about product safety.

The People Bush Aligns Our Country With

Saudi TV fantasizes about the futuristic concepts of movie theaters and allowing women to drive. Smell the freedom!

Yes Virginia, There Is A Huge Huge Oil Spill In Brooklyn

(see 2 updates below)
Mother Jones has an excellent (and I mean EXCELLENT) update on the country's largest urban oil spill (right in Brooklyn, larger than Exxon-Valdez, and courtesy of ExxonMobile) that Stuart blogged about a few months ago.

Something interesting happened when Stuart posted about the spill. A commenter to Stuart's post, claiming to be a Brooklyn resident, fervently disputed local news reports about the spill and claimed that almost no one in related lawsuits was from the neighborhoods near the spill. The commenter initially seemed to be implying that there was no spill even though the spill itself is indisputable.

The commenter claimed that the recent news about the spill was just a smear campaign and cited rosy health stats; health stats that aren't from studies designed to exam the spill and its health effects (Which means that you can't use them to say much of anything about the spill, but more on that in a bit.).

I found it odd that someone would be so adverse to a cleanup effort in their own borough. I mean, even if adverse health effects were in a distant future, why wouldn't a resident in the area of the spill want a cleanup?

I did a bit of searching for other websites that had posted about the spill and found the same commenter posting the exact same text posted at Stuart's thread. That always raises a red flag. It raises the obvious questions, "Why would someone be searching every site that references the spill and then posting the same text at every site?" and "What Brooklyn resident, living near a potentially toxic spill, is going to embark on a web-campaign against the state and news agencies to make sure that the company responsible for the spill isn't smeared?" It just didn't (and still doesn't) add up.

Fast forward to now. Mother Jones has an update on that spill that is also a really good synopsis of the story to date. It also contains the perspective of people living near the spill and the admission by the state that no studies examining the effects of the spill have been, or plan to be, conducted. Some excerpts:

"you become something of a stink connoisseur when you live in Greenpoint," says Teresa Toro, who lives two blocks from Newtown Creek. The neighborhood features rows of meticulously kept houses, manicured parks, and cafés catering to an influx of ex-Manhattanites, but it also remains the location of choice for projects that would never be placed along Fifth Avenue: sewage treatment, waste transfer, natural gas storage. For Toro, the oil fumes are the worst. "When the wind is just right, I can smell it blowing off the creek. Sometimes we can't open our windows. ...

By the time the environment department convened a public meeting last year, the neighborhood had built up a full head of steam. Hundreds packed the Princess Manor banquet hall to hear presentations by ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron, hectoring company representatives with catcalls of "liar!" and "shame on you people!" A health department spokesman tried to reassure the crowd, saying the state was unaware of any health threat but acknowledging that no studies had been done and none were planned. When state officials announced the cleanup would last another 20 years or more, the room fell silent.

That April, Riverkeeper obtained internal ExxonMobil documents showing that the company had known of high levels of benzene and other chemicals a decade earlier, when the substances were detected in a commercial property just 1,000 feet from the Pedota household. (ExxonMobil spokesman Brian Dunphy told Mother Jones that the tests, which were not conducted by the company, aren't proof of a health threat.)

This story is one is worth reading in its entirety. It really, really is. It's about a natural disaster that elected officials and wealthy oil executives wanted to keep underground, literally.

PostBlog: I see the commenter referenced above has already visited the Mother Jones piece! The comments are at the end of the article. Enjoy.

PostBlog2: The Post reported the other day on an EPA report that can be found here (there's a link to the report in pdf format at the bottom of the page). When the NY Post starts writing about the potential dangers of an environmental disaster, you know it's worth looking at.

As ExxonMobile and their lawyers try to spin themselves as the good guys working hard to clean up the spill, keep in mind this nugget that both Mother Jones and the NY Post articles report:

In March, ExxonMobil stopped its groundwater-cleanup pumps removing oil in response to a DEC lawsuit threat and once the company's discharge permits were revoked. This led to the shutting down of 23 of the 35 recovery wells, said officials.

The EPA said if the continues for a few more weeks, the loss of suction will release oil back into the ground.