2centsworth.info

Another fascinating article on the front page of today’s New York Times (24 March 2007): Fraud Inquiry Looks at Lawyers in Diet-Drug Case. In what experts are describing as one of the biggest and most brazen frauds in legal history, the lawyers who settled the fenphen diet-drug lawsuit on behalf of 440 clients for $200 millions kept most of the money for themselves. The three lawyers involved are William J. Gallion, Shirley A. Cunningham, and Melbourne Mills, Jr. Mr. Mills lawyer said that he denies any criminal wrong-doing… “He may be liable for a little money if he was overpaid.”

Given the original agreement between the three lawyers and their clients, the clients should have received $135 million dollars from the settlement. Instead they only received $74 million. $106 million went to the lawyers and $20 million went to a “charitable fund.”

But wait, you say… Settlements have to be approved by the judge. Why did he approve this bogus settlement? Well that’s where the “charitable fund” came in…. It turns out that the judge, the “honorable” Joseph F. Bamberger ended up as a director of the “charitable fund” and was paid $5,000 a month for all his hard work on its behalf.

I suppose we have all become rather numb to rampant greed but I’d like to point out that these lawyers could have perfectly legally divided $65 million between themselves… Unless my calculator’s broken that’s nearly $22 million each.

I saw a very interesting program on PBS FrontLine the other night about the growing epidemic of addiction to meth-amphetamines. You can find out more at the The METH EPIDEMIC page on the pbs.org website.

The program describes how the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) attempted to head off the problem of meth-amphetamine addiction 20 years ago by controlling the production and distribution of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, the key ingredients used to manufacture meth-amphetamine. Apparently both ingredients require very sophisticated manufacturing technology and they are made by only 9 industrial plants world wide.

But when the DEA attempted to set up controls on the manufacture and distribution of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine they were repeatedly stymied by Congressional interference brought on by lobbyists from the various companies that make over-the-counter cold medicines that use ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Even as “Meth” addiction grew to epidemic proportions during the 90’s, Congress and the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists fought every attempt to keep these key raw ingredients out of the hands of the drug cartels.

When the DEA managed to stop direct shipments from the manufacturers to the cartels, the cartels began having people buy over-the-counter cold remedies containing ephedrine and pseudoephedrine from local pharmacies. When various States tried to have pharmacies take action to control who was buying these cold medicines, the pharmaceutical industry lobbied against it. In the FrontLine program someone suggested that 75 percent of the cold pill industry sales in some States came from people buying on behalf of the Meth drug cartels.

I generally view class action suits as an excuse for lawyers to get a lot of money but they do serve a useful punitive purpose at times and given that we now have more than 1.5 million citizens addicted to Meth, and since there seems clear evidence that this was avoidable… and that it happened because of lobbying by the cold pill manufacturers… Perhaps one or more law firms might try bringing a class action suit against the manufacturers.

And given the huge costs that Meth addiction has imposed on local and State law enforcement, prison systems, and healthcare… I don’t remember the exact number but something like 80% of the prison inmates in Oregan are Meth addicts. Perhaps the various State Attorney Generals should bring suit against the manufacturers as well and recover, say, 80% of the cost of operating the prison systems.

I think it is high time for our friends at the highest reaches of government to “share in the sacrifice.”

George, Dick, Don, and Condaleeza got us into this mess.

Thousands of soldiers and marines are on their third or fourth tour of duty in Iraq, more than three thousand have made the ultimate sacrifice, around twenty thousand have been maimed, and the US taxpayer is pouring billions of dollars down a rathole.

I am getting a little tired of listening to this smug, complacent bunch of fools driving around in armored limousines surrounded by Secret Service agents talking about how they “feel the pain” of our injured troops, widows and orphans, and the public in general.

Let’s see some real sacrifice… Collectively the Gang of Four is worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. I think its time to pony up. I’d like to see the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice fortunes donated to US Treasury. Let ‘em keep a million dollars a piece to supplement their lavish government and corporate pensions but let’s use the rest to pay for this debacle they’ve jointly created. Even with all their millions it will just be a drop in the bucket… But, hey, it’s the thought that counts.

Another interesting New York Times article (Senate Approves 2-Year Extension of Bush’s Tax Cuts – May 11, 2006)

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 54 to 44 to approve $70 billion in tax cuts benefiting, no surprise here, the country’s wealthiest taxpayers.

To put it in perspective, here is an excerpt from the NY Times article:

The overwhelming share of the tax cuts the Senate voted to extend will flow to the wealthiest taxpayers. People earning $1 million a year would save about $42,700, and reap about 22 percent of the total tax cut, according to the Tax Policy Center, a research group in Washington. People earning $40,000 to $50,000 a year would save about $47 and receive less than 1 percent of the benefits.

I think, just maybe, that the folks that voted for GW and the Republicans in Congress may finally be realizing that they’ve been taken to the cleaners. Unless you are among the tiny percentage of Americans who’s income is more than $1 million per year, you are getting royally screwed.

GW came into office with a budget surplus and we have had nothing but disasters of every kind ever since. We now have the largest budget deficits in history, GW’s self-inflicted war in Iraq is costing us $100’s of billions per year, more than 2,000 US soldiers and marines have died, Home Land Security is a laughing stock, Osama is still out there, and oh, by the way, GW and his Republican buddies in the House and Senate are going to leave office having made sure that they and their wealthy cronies won’t have to pay for it… The average US taxpayer will.

I read an interesting article in today’s New York Times (January 10, 2006 page A19). Entitled “I.R.S. Is Sued on Failure to Release Tax Data.”

It turns out that back in 1976, Professor Susan B. Long won a Federal court case against the IRS. The Federal court ordered the IRS to provide her with data which show how thoroughly the IRS audits big corporations and the rich, and how much it discounts taxes assessed these corporations and individuals following an audit.

For decades the IRS has provided this data at no charge to Professor Long, who posts her analyses on a website Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse along with tools which allow people to conduct their own analyses.

Among Prof. Long’s findings from earlier IRS data was that in 1999, poor people were much more likely to be audited by the agency than rich people.

But in May 2004, the IRS informed Prof. Long that it would no longer provide this information and ordered its statisticians to stop answering her questions. It also advised her that if it were ever to make the data public again that it would cost $12,000/month to receive the data in electronic form.

The senior national spokesman for the IRS, Frank Keith, has apparently claimed that no court order exists. Details on the orginal court order and the suits being brought to enforce it can be found at trac.syr.edu/foia.

Mr. Keith (the IRS Senior National Spokesman) went out of his way to state that no Bush political appointees had been involved in the decision to stop supplying Prof. Long with the data.