The Black Informant

source:followthemoney.org

CAGW Uploads Database of Labor-HHS Earmarks

Washington, D.C. - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today makes public a comprehensive, searchable database of the 2,243 earmarks worth $1 billion in the Fiscal 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor-HHS) Appropriations Act, H.R. 3043.

“CAGW provides taxpayers with the information that Congress wants to keep under wraps: a convenient, searchable database of earmarked spending,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “With our more transparent format, pork gems such as $882,025 for 25 “abstinence education” programs in the state of Pennsylvania, $500,000 for the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, Nevada, and $400,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York are more easily found.”

President George W. Bush vetoed the Labor-HHS bill on November 13, and told Congress, “This bill has too many earmarks. I set out clear goals for the Congress to reform the earmarking process. The Congress chose not to put earmarks in bill text, instead including nearly all in report language, and they did not reach the goal of cutting the cost and number of earmarks by at least half.”

CAGW noted a 41 percent decrease in the dollar amount, as well as a 27 percent decrease in the number of projects compared to fiscal year 2005, the last year that a Labor-HHS bill included earmarks. In that year, the 2005 Congressional Pig Book identified 3,071 projects worth $1.7 billion.

On November 15, the House failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to override the president’s veto, 277-141. CQ Today reported on the same day that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said, “The president vetoed our Labor-HHS bill. We’re gonna now bundle these bills up, [and] send him a bill splitting the difference between the $22 billion that he says we’re over and his budget number.”

“While Congress dithers over whether to aggregate the Labor-HHS bill into another huge omnibus spending bill, or repackage it as a stand-alone bill to be sent back to the president, taxpayers will have the ability to search the earmark database and lobby their legislator to get rid of specific wasteful spending,” concluded Schatz.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. (source)

Click on picture for the answer.

One word: YIIIIKKKKEEEESSSS!

This is the question according to the NY Times that is on minds of many cardiologists as they await a delayed study on Zetia and Vytorin–two cholesterol-lowering drugs.

Cardiologists Question Delay of Data on 2 Drugs

By ALEX BERENSON

nytimes.com

Prescriptions for the cholesterol-lowering drugs Zetia and Vytorin are written for almost 800,000 Americans every week, at a cost this year of about $4 billion. Yet it still is not clear how well the drugs work.

Nearly two years after the medicines’ makers, Merck and Schering-Plough, completed a clinical trial of the drugs, they still have not released the findings. The delay has led to a growing chorus of complaints from cardiologists. And yesterday, the companies responded by promising to publish a portion of the results next March — but not the entire set of data.

Doctors say that decision is highly unusual and will do little to quell concerns about the trial, as well as broader questions about the effectiveness of the drugs.

Cardiologists have been awaiting the results of the trial, called Enhance, to learn how well Zetia and Vytorin work. If they are not as effective as other cholesterol medicines, patients taking them may be putting themselves at unnecessary risk of heart attacks.

“There’s clearly some rightful interest in what the results are,” said Dr. Allen J. Taylor, chief of cardiology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. “You’ve got millions of people treated with the drugs.” (more…)

Bottom line, please get a second or third opinion on drugs unfamiliar to you.

“If the string of lights do not work, please…no duct tape. Just invest the $3 or so at Big Lots and buy another pack.”

For the younger folks out there, from time to time you may hear me or others use the phrase “Who’s on first?”. This is a reference to a famous skit performed by the comedic team of Abbott and Costello simply called “Who’s on first”. Although I was not around when this routine first came out, I do remember watching many reruns of Abbott and Costello as a kid on television as a kid (either channel 29 or 48 in Philly). For the rest of you old heads out there, enjoy the clip as we see the perfect example of what happens with too much bureaucracy.

Atlanta, GA - November 12, 2007 - uRwututhink. Any avid “text messager” knows exactly how this reads. For those less text savvy, that same item may look like a weird “typo”. No need for spellcheck – the message you see is not an accident - u-R-wut-u-think (You Are What You Think). The rationale behind this statement is one that RTKZ is confident both young and old can grasp. Thinking differently and thinking period are objectives that RTKZ wants to emphasize to youth and communities. From poor decisions & education gaps to finger pointing & dodging responsibility, there is a plethora of examples that reflect the need to think differently. RTKZ’s uRwututhink campaign is one of multiple stimuli the company plans to use to meet this need.

RTKZ is a grassroots group focused on empowerment through media, social interaction, and relevant initiatives. The way people think and operate based on those thoughts determines whether or not empowerment is a reality or a distant concept. Aside from the upcoming uRwututhink campaign, RTKZ also uses its “Think Differently” Talk Radio show to connect with the audience. Via internet radio, “Think Differently” airs every Thursday evening from 9pm -11pm EST - attracting over 250 listeners on a weekly basis.

RTKZtv is a visual format used as a channel for outreach, discussing pop culture, as well as thinking on the path to empowerment. RTKZtv is filmed in local businesses & venues so that RTKZ is truly in the community, for the community.

RTKZ’s uRwututhink campaign will launch on December 5, 2007. Campaign mediums will include email, RTKZradio.com, social networking sites, street teams & viral marketing, as well as a custom designed uRwututhink microsite. RTKZ has already launched a grassroots buzz campaign to set the stage for uRwututhink. “It is much harder to mislead the informed than it is to drag the ignorant”, says Lex “Specta” Matthews, RTKZ Founder & “Think Differently” Talk Radio Host, “uRwututhink is a tool to show the relevance of our message. This campaign is just one tactic – community service & outreach are things that we do on a consistent basis.”

Started in 2004, The RTKZ Co. (RTKZ) is a multi-media, grassroots effort to provide a new outlook for America’s youth and communities. RTKZ’s toolbox is equipped with RTKZradio.com, “Think Differently” Talk Radio, RTKZtv, RTKZ Outreach, and viral campaigns.

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Atlanta, GA (BlackNews.com) - In 2005, Devin Robinson was shopping in a Korean-owned beauty supply store for his new salon when the Korean owner threatened him with a golf club and threw Devin out of the store for no apparent reason. This enraged the author so much that he put his writing career on hold and decided to open his very own beauty supply store. With no industry experience to guide him but only his willpower to lead him, he plummeted into this Korean dominated industry and to everyone’s surprise it was an alarming success.

Eighteen months after the opening of his first store, Devin had opened three stores. All stores began to thrive. Devin had many pitfalls while trying to navigate his way through this industry but somehow always came out on top. He partnered with Aron Ranen, the filmmaker of The Korean Takeover: Black Hair DVD and decided to write, Taking It Back: How to Become a Successful Black Beauty Supply Store Owner, a book that teaches other aspiring, badly treated Blacks how to get into the business and be successful at it. (more…)

I have very mixed feelings about my days living in a row home in Philly. While I was always attracted to the design and layout of these structures, I hated them immensely for two main reasons: A. No matter how well you kept your house clean, if the neighbors had roaches–you had roaches. B. You could hear just about everything happening in your neighbor’s house.

Well apparently the woman in the following story could hear and smell everything going on in the abandoned home next door. In fact, her neighbors were squatters who were not supposed to be there in the first place.

BURNED OUT

By STEPHANIE FARR

Philadelphia Daily News

ALVIRA PERRY knew when the squatters moved in next door by the smell of their cooking.

She’d lie awake at night, alone in her house on a deserted block in Frankford, frightened that she’d left the stove on.

“It’d wake me up and it scared me because I knew no one else was in my house,” Perry, 66, said.

With her home not a foot away from the squatters’ den next door, it didn’t take long for Perry’s nose to lead her to the odor’s origin.

“My major concern was I was scared I was going to get burnt out,” she said.

For months, Perry complained to an aide in her councilman’s office about the vacant building and the squatters.

For months, nothing was done.

Now, Perry leaves her stove on anytime she’s in the house. She doesn’t have a choice. It’s the only source of heat she has left after her house was severely damaged one year ago today in the fire she had predicted the squatters next door would start. The squatters didn’t care about her house, and now she’s wondering if anyone does.

Even though she warned, even though she pleaded - and even though, according to Perry, the city itself owns the vacant building where the fire started - the city’s Office of Risk Management has offered her only part of the cost of the needed repairs.

“I’m not asking anyone to rebuild my house,” she said, “just to fix what is broke.”

Two gaping holes in the roof, two broken-down doors, and the destruction of the house’s heating system were among the damage from the fire, Perry said.

She bought the two-story house on Margaret Street near Darrah in 1998 for $3,500. It wasn’t much - “it was one of them drug houses you buy at an auction,” she said - but she managed to clean it up.

The house has a bar and kitchen downstairs and an apartment upstairs. At first, she rented out the downstairs portion for small events.

“It was good for a while,” she said. “This was my getaway relaxation.”

But it didn’t take long for the neighborhood to turn uglier, particularly when, she claims, a nearby barbershop began selling drugs as well as haircuts. Today, all the houses on the block are vacant, except for Perry’s.

While the building next door to hers was vacant from the time she moved in, Perry said she didn’t begin noticing the presence of squatters until late 2005. That’s when she began contacting an aide to her then-councilman, Rick Mariano.

“I could hear walking up and down next door. Sometimes it sounded like there was a whole gang of them in there,” she said.

After Mariano was convicted of corruption in March 2006, the aide went to work for the new councilman, Daniel J. Savage, and Perry continued her complaints: “They just kept hearing me complaining all last year. They kept saying they would get somebody out there to clean it out and board it up again,” she said. “As far as I know, nobody came out.”

In desperation, Perry grabbed the ear of any city worker who showed up on her block. One night a police officer came by, and she told him about the squatters. Another time, she approached a city crew boarding up a different house and asked them to re-board the one next to hers.

“They said yes and they put it on a list to do it,” she said. “It did get boarded up, but later on the squatters broke back in it again.”

It was 1:53 a.m. on Nov. 27, 2006, when the fire that Perry had long feared finally broke out.

Luckily, she was staying the night at a friend’s house. It wasn’t until the next morning that she saw what the fire had done to her home.

“After I seen my damage and the next-door damage, I knew what it was,” she said. “I knew it had happened.” (more…)

If a person lives in an area that has historically been neglected by local politicians, why is it so important for them to vote?