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  • OxyContin Redesigned: Users Switching to Heroin

    This is a story about how smart people are stupid.

    In the past, OxyContin was designed to be released into the body’s system slowly, over the course of many hours, meaning each pill contained a large reservoir of oxycodone. Drug users soon discovered by crushing the pills and inhaling them, or dissolving the pills in water and injecting them, they could bypass the slow-release mechanism and get an immediate ‘high.’  …

    But in 2010, Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, changed the formula of the opioid drug to make it more difficult to crush and much slower to dissolve, which appears to have made the drug less attractive to users, according Cicero and his colleagues.
    The researchers … found that while the new formula has successfully stopped many users from abusing OxyContin, they aren’t abandoning drugs entirely. A significant percentage of former OxyContin users are instead turning to harder drugs, such as heroin and other, stronger opioids.  addicts

    via Fox News.

    Well what did you think was going to happen?  Let me guess, a bunch of guys in suits (the “C” level suite) and bespectacled scientists (the drug researchers) and — THE GOVERNMENT — think they’re going to stop drug addiction by making it so people cannot get high?

    You don’t need a MBA from Booth or a Phd in organic chemistry to know that drugs addicts will move from one drug to another.  So why would Purdue Pharma do this?  Surely they’re selling less Oxy now with the abusers demand subsided.  They spent good R&D money on redesigning the drug to have lower sales.  Why?!

    It’s not in this story but I’m willing to gamble dollars to navy beans that Purdue Pharma did this because of a request from the FDA.  Big brother getting into everyone’s business.

  • St. Charles School Group Hates Class Rankings

    Members of the St. Charles District 303 school community want to eliminate class rank at the high schools and expand foreign language and technology offerings at all levels, according to a report released Monday.

    The information was compiled from several community meetings this year.

    via chicagotribune.com.

    Well this is easy right?

    About 2% of the people love the class ranking system and 98% of the people hate it.

    That mean’s that in out of District 303 2% of the graduates will be ready for jobs in the private sector and 98% will be looking for either government jobs or handouts.

  • New Chemical Makes Teeth ‘Cavity Proof’

    A new chemical could make human teeth ‘cavity proof’ – and do away with the need for visits to the dentists forever.

    The molecule has been called ‘Keep 32’ – after the 32 teeth in a human mouth.

    The chemical was designed by dentists in Chile, and wipes out all the bacteria that cause cavities in just 60 seconds in tests.

    Cool huh?

    Now comes the creepy part.

    The chemical could be added to any current dental care product, turning toothpaste, mouthwash and chewing gum into ‘super cleansers’ that could get rid of the underlying cause of tooth decay.

    via Mail Online.

    Eww.

  • NAACP Requires Photo I.D. to See Speech

    Earlier today, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed the NAACP Nation Convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. What did media need in order to attend? That’s right, government issued photo identification (and a second form of identification too!), something both Holder and the NAACP stand firmly against when it comes to voting. Holder’s DOJ is currently suing Texas for “discriminatory” voter ID laws.

    via Townhall.com.

    The double standard appears obvious enough.

  • Denise Rich: Democrat Who Fled the U.S.

    Denise Rich, the wealthy socialite and former wife of pardoned billionaire trader Marc Rich, has given up her U.S. citizenship – and, with it, much of her U.S. tax bill. Rich, 68, a Grammy-nominated songwriter and glossy figure in Democratic and European royalty circles, renounced her American passport in November, according to her lawyer.

    via Independent Film News.

    Another fine Tax Avoidance / Laffer Curve example.

    Good to see a rich Democrat in on the action (no pun intended.)

  • Eat the Rich vs. Obama

    I was reading this story:

    President Barack Obama will officially launch the battle over the impending fiscal cliff this morning, announcing a plan to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for people earning under $250,000, while letting the rest of the tax cuts expire.

    via Business Insider.

    This got me thinking about how much money will really flow into the Treasury from “the rich”?  I remember this from awhile back.

    If you have not seen… it’s just plain excellent.
    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ?rel=0]

  • John Kerry = Inside Trader and Profiteer

    Another oldie but goodie:

    For years, Kerry has invested millions in a number of green energy companies that have benefitted from the president’s efforts to aggressively subsidize the industry with taxpayer dollars.

    These companies include Exelon, which received a $646 million taxpayer-guaranteed loan in 2011 to build a solar facility in California and created only 20 permanent jobs, as well as Fisker Automotive, the fledgling electric car company that offshored its manufacturing operation to Finland after receiving a $529 million federal loan guarantee in 2010.

    The loan guarantees, approved by the Department of Energy, were made possible by funding allocated in the 2009 stimulus bill, which Kerry supported. According to Kerry’s own office, the Senator “played a key role” in crafting the portions of the legislation designed to offer federal support for green energy projects.

    Additionally, Kerry co-authored the controversial cap-and-trade legislation that would have effectively imposed a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions. Though the bill ultimately failed, the New York Times noted that Exelon and companies like it “would emerge as financial winners” if the legislation was enacted.

    Kerry has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a venture capital firm run by John Doerr, a prominent Obama donor who served on the president’s Economy Recovery Advisory Board.

    The firm, where former vice president Al Gore is a partner, invests heavily in alternative energy companies such as Fisker Automotive and Amonix Inc., a Nevada-based solar panel manufacturer that laid off two-thirds of its workforce earlier this year despite receiving nearly $6 million in federal tax credits.

    Amonix was one of 16 companies (out of 27 overall) listed in Doerr’s “green-tech” portfolio to receive some form of federal support under Obama.

    via Washington Free Beacon.

    People — the problem in NOT in Washington.  The problem in on Main Street.  The goofballs in Massachusetts keep voting for this guy (the Lord knows we have our own corrupt politicians.)  That said, how is the not a crime? And, where is the MSM on this story?

  • Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981

    This story is actually over a month old.  It’s been sitting in the “drafts” folder.  Still just as relevant as the day it was published.

    In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

    via ZeroHedge.

    Whenever you see anything about the “unemployment” rate always keep in mind that number only tells part of the story.  The bottom line is that things are really really bad out there.  Well that and the MSM doesn’t want to tell you about it.  Which is why you have to go to site like ZeroHedge to find out what’s really going on.

  • Your Home’s Router is Spying on You

    It must be spy on American’s week given posts on law enforcement asking for your cell data and how the NSA is going to expand its spying on Americans on a massive scale.  Now we have this:

    Cisco Systems told users of its new high-end home routers — in a roundabout way — they couldn’t use their routers for porn or to send certain types of e-mail and a whole list of other things.  …

    Last week, Cisco sent out an upgrade to the software that makes its routers work, called firmware. The upgrade affected two models, the EA4500 and the EA2700. Without asking, Cisco moved them to its “Cisco Connect Cloud” service.  …

    [T]he Cisco Connect Cloud Terms of Service forbids a whole bunch of things including porn, sending advertising e-mails — it won’t even allow you to “encourage any conduct” that would violate the law.

    Wait, there’s more. Cisco reportedly [also] deleted a portion of [its] privacy statement that said Cisco would keep track of Connect Cloud customers’ “network traffic” and “Internet history,” ExtremeTech reported.

    via Business Insider.

    Does anyone think any company could have gotten away with this in the 1960’s or 1970’s?  The outrage would have been tremendous.

    We’re failing as a society to realize that it’s not polite to air our collective and individual dirty laundry.  And we should be especially wary of sharing our family business with corporations that usually have a cozy relationship with the government.

    This is very very very bad.

    In addition to establishing Internet Freedoms and Net Neutrality we need to start a national discussion on Internet Privacy.

  • NSA to Spy on Everyone… Everyone.

    Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

    But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

    via Wired.com.

    Like most Wired articles this one goes into incredible detail about how the government spy’s on you and me.

    Frankly, it’s kinda terrifying.  I wrote in an earlier post about how we’re at the point in time where Fahrenheit 451 meets 1984.  The government now has all the data in needs to know everything about your life.  All they have to do now is choose to control it… oh, wait.  Check out the Obama health care bill.

    Somewhere right now a government jack-booted thug is ordering a few rat masks.