September 23, 2015


News Clips For The Day


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-obama-pope-francis-things-in-common/

What do President Obama and Pope Francis have in common?
CBS NEWS
September 23, 2015

pope-obama.jpg -- Pope Francis (L) is escorted by U.S. President Barack Obama as he greets him and other political and Catholic church leaders after arriving from Cuba September 22, 2015 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. CHIP SOMODEVILLA, GETTY IMAGES


Far away from the poor corners of Buenos Aires where Pope Francis first ministered, ‎or the streets of Chicago's South Side where Barack Obama first organized, there was one unifying thread for these unlikely journeys: the Catholic Church.

"Barack Obama got one of his first paychecks from the Roman Catholic Church when he was an organizer in Chicago ... both the pope and the president understand community organizing because they have that in common," Washington Post reporter E.J. Dionne said.

When President Obama and Pope Francis met in the Vatican last year, they also discussed something both had some experience with -- adoring crowds, elevated expectations and the burdens of unexpected celebrity, reports CBS News correspondent Major Garrett.

Mr. Obama told the pope he had learned people can burn with hope and then just as quickly grow disappointed. He cautioned that even though presidential politics and the papacy are different, this might happen to his holiness over time.

It may -- but there's no sign of it in America, or anywhere else.

Pope Francis has shifted the Vatican's emphasis from policing social issues to caring for the poor and the planet, an approach the president has embraced and found politically useful to applaud.

"I've been touched by his call to relieve suffering, and to show justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable... as Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical this summer, taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation," Obama said in February at the National Prayer Breakfast.

In the pope, the president also found a powerful ally for normalizing ‎relations with Cuba -- harnessing the popularity and the advocacy of the Vatican.

"All presidents have liked to quote the pope and say they are on the pope's side... so President Obama is in a long political tradition and he happens to have a pope in Francis who agrees with him on some central issues," Dionne said.

While the White House is wary of politicizing the pope's visit, officials do point to topics like inequality, climate change, immigration and caring for refugees as topics likely to come up between the president and the pope later today. And while the White House has said that this is not a political meeting, critics point to the White House's decision to invite critics of the pope to the arrival ceremony as evidence that they are politicizing the visit.



"Pope Francis has shifted the Vatican's emphasis from policing social issues to caring for the poor and the planet, an approach the president has embraced and found politically useful to applaud. "I've been touched by his call to relieve suffering, and to show justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable... as Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical this summer, taking a stand against climate change is a moral obligation," Obama said in February at the National Prayer Breakfast."

When I was young in North Carolina, I had little interest in the Catholic Church, because I basically considered it to be dictatorial, and in error on the fact that when faced with a choice between the life of a mother in labor and her child, they would always save the child even if it meant sacrificing the mother. They haven't really changed on that, though thank goodness fewer women die in labor these days as medical science has improved greatly in that time; but I do have a greater respect for their tendency to do real service work of all kinds among the poor. My mother complained about the church where she grew up talking about helping "the deserving poor." A family whose father had a drinking problem was not deserving. Even today I know of one case in which the large local Baptist Church here in Jacksonville would not help a friend of mine when she went to them asking for money to pay rent unless she would agree to join their church. She joined. I wouldn't have.

If you go to Catholic Charities here and make that request they do not ask about your religious beliefs, much less your church membership. I did go to them for help once, and though there was no unpaid bill for them to pay, the director of the organization took me into a storeroom full of food and packed up two large paper bags for me to take home. I changed my view that Catholics are "cold" to outsiders. Now, day after day, this Pope is changing the focus of the Vatican from approved dogma to people. I am very grateful and impressed.





http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/yogi-berras-greatest-quotes-quips/

Baseball great Yogi Berra
AP September 22, 2015

19 Photographs and famous Berra quotations – even quirkier than George W Bush

Go to the website above to see all photos and quips. The great athlete and very popular personality has come to the end of his life, but he will be long remembered with great fondness, at least by Boomers. The comments show double meanings – or simply mistakes, perhaps – but when I read these, I thought I saw a lot of humanity and wisdom rather than simply malapropisms. Reading these is like reading Emily Dickinson’s poetry – it looks strange until you think about it a little, and then you are presented with a totally new and enthralling thought. Some criticize her lack of poetic form, and others praise her genius. The eccentric and entertaining quotations below accompany photographs that show a lean, mean athlete. I highly doubt that he was performing on steroids, also. I want to think he and the likes of Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth were not cheating.

Excerpts are presented below, and an interview that is great as well. For that go to this website, video of the interview, and story: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/yogi-berra-dead-at-90-60-minutes/, “Yogi Berra, legendary New York Yankee, dies at 90
Known for his quirky bits of wisdom, watch this classic 60 Minutes story to hear from the legend himself”.”

“Baseball great Yogi Berra
Yankee legend Yogi Berra, who died at the age of 90 on September 22, 2015, was as well known for his quotable quips as his Hall of Fame baseball career.

Born Lawrence Peter Berra, May 12, 1925, he acquired the nickname "Yogi" from his friend Bobby Hofman, who noticed him sitting cross-legged waiting to play ball one day and remarked that he looked like a yogi in a movie.

Many believe that his chosen name later inspired the popular cartoon character Yogi Bear. The creators of that character deny naming the affable picnic-loving bear after the baseball great, but it certainly "bears" a striking resemblance.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
Berra once said, "Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical."

Here, he proves that quirky statement to be true by taking a direct hit to the back, while sliding safely into home plate, April 18, 1947.

CREDIT: AP


Legendary Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
"In baseball, you don't know nothing."

Well, he may not have known "nothing," but the Yankee great recorded some pretty impressive stats.

He was an 18-time All Star, for example. And in 1948, the year this photo was snapped, the catcher-infielder had .305 batting average.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
"The wind always seems to blow against catchers when they are running."

Well, if that's true, it rarely seemed to hinder Yogi's play.

Here, the Yankees catcher grabs for a foul pop bunted by pitcher Tony Pena of the Kansas City Athletics, September 2, 1962.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
"If you don't know where you're going, you might end up some place else."

Yogi Berra started out as a great player, but he "ended up" as a great coach.

In fact, Berra coached the New York Yankees for eight years, the New York Mets for seven, and the Houston Astros for three.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
"I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house."

Here, Yogi Berra samples ice cream with some Bronx youngsters, at one of his snack bars in New York, April 11, 1955.

So, he clearly isn't anti-kids; he just has a unique turn of phrase.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quips
"He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."

Berra -- seen here flanked by fellow Yankees Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle -- reportedly threw right, but batted left.

Guess that makes him amphibious, too.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
"It's like deja vu all over again."

Here, New York Mets coach Yogi Berra, puts on his old trade catcher's gear to get a little warm-up practice before the Mets game against the Houston Astros in Houston, Texas, April 28, 1965.

Berra was put on the active player roster of the Mets by manager Casey Stengel.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quotes
"I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."

Yogi Berra has a whole host of impressive stats and records to his name. He hit a career 358 home runs and batted in a whopping 1,430.

Here, the New York Yankees' outfielder is congratulated after belting a three-run pinch hit homer in the seventh inning against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium, June 9, 1962.

CREDIT: AP


Yogi Berra's greatest quips
"If the world was perfect, it wouldn't be."

Yogi Berra tags the sliding Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Granny Hamner for an out at home plate during the fourth inning in the final World Series game at Yankee Stadium, October 7, 1950.

The Yankees went on to win the World Series that year; one of an impressive ten times Berra won. So, for Berra, it seems the baseball world, at least, was pretty near perfect.

CREDIT: AP

ADIEU, YOGI!





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/stephen-colbert-offers-donald-trump-a-big-fat-meatball-of-a-question/

Stephen Colbert offers Donald Trump a "big fat meatball" of a question
CBS NEWS
September 23, 2015

Photograph -- In this photo provided by CBS, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, left, joins host Stephen Colbert on the set of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015, in New York. JOHN PAUL FILO/CBS VIA AP
Play VIDEO -- State of the 2016 presidential campaign


It was a straightforward question - a "big fat meatball" as "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert described it. "Barack Obama, born in the United States?" Colbert asked.

And once again, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump declined to say whether President Obama was born in this country or not.

"I don't talk about that anymore," Trump said. "I don't talk about it anymore. I talk about jobs. I talk about our veterans being horribly treated."

The man, who made the "birther" movement a daily part of headlines in the run-up to the 2012 election tried to move past the issue.

The question came on the heels of a New Hampshire campaign event last week, when Trump declined to correct a questioner who claimed Obama was a Muslim and wasn't an American, setting off another firestorm.

This late show appearance didn't feature a skit, like last week's appearance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." Colbert asked harder questions, quizzing him on his immigration plan and political donations. At one point, Colbert asked Trump about his own claim that politicians who receive donations are owned by donors.

"You say the people who give money to politicians owned them," Colbert said. "What politicians did you own when you were giving money?"

"Over the years, I've given a lot of money to a lot of politicians and you certainly have an advantage, no question about it. The word "own" is very strong," Trump responded.

"You're a very strong man," Colbert interjected. "You used the word "owned."

"I guess you could say that with respect to some people," Trump said. "You go back three years later, you gave them a big contribution, and all of a sudden they're very receptive. If you say, 'No, I'm not giving to you,' and they win, and you go back three years, five years later you get the cold shoulder. I'm not sure that's a good thing."

When Colbert asked about his immigration plan, Trump gave his first estimate on what his Southern border wall would cost - between $5 - $7 billion, and he reiterated that he would deport all undocumented immigrants in the country.

The cost of this would be massive, according to experts. The right-leaning American Action Forum, estimates that it would cost $600 billion to forcibly remove every undocumented immigrant in the country.

The appearance did have its lighter moments, though. Colbert asked Trump to sign a copy of his bestseller "The Art of the Deal" for his next guest, Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz, who is among the chief architects of the Iranian nuclear deal that Trump has chastised.




“It was a straightforward question - a "big fat meatball" as "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert described it. "Barack Obama, born in the United States?" Colbert asked. And once again, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump declined to say whether President Obama was born in this country or not. "I don't talk about that anymore," Trump said. "I don't talk about it anymore. I talk about jobs. I talk about our veterans being horribly treated." …. "You're a very strong man," Colbert interjected. "You used the word "owned." "I guess you could say that with respect to some people," Trump said. "You go back three years later, you gave them a big contribution, and all of a sudden they're very receptive. If you say, 'No, I'm not giving to you,' and they win, and you go back three years, five years later you get the cold shoulder. I'm not sure that's a good thing." …. Trump gave his first estimate on what his Southern border wall would cost - between $5 - $7 billion, and he reiterated that he would deport all undocumented immigrants in the country. The cost of this would be massive, according to experts. The right-leaning American Action Forum, estimates that it would cost $600 billion to forcibly remove every undocumented immigrant in the country.”

I’m glad to see that not every politician can be “bought” even by a billionaire. To me that’s a very good thing. It renews my faith in human virtue. “I don’t talk about that anymore.” At least he’s becoming a little less arrogant – he is paying attention to his advisors. Note, however, he is still refusing to retract his idiotic “birther” claim. I have no love or personal interest in Trump, but watching him is like watching a hideous trapdoor spider flip up the piece of clay or whatever he uses to close his tunnel, and come running aggressively out to jump on a poor grasshopper that came too close. It is interesting, however, that so many Republicans don’t like Trump either. Let's face it, he's a scuzzy character. He doesn’t really have any principles -- just a strong hunger to be President of the US.





http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-fbi-pulls-deleted-emails-from-hillary-clintons-server/

Report: FBI pulls deleted emails from Hillary Clinton's server
By CBS NEWS, PAULA REID, HANNAH FRASER-CHANPONG
September 22, 2015

Play VIDEO -- Email controversy surrounding Clinton campaign


The FBI has salvaged work and personal emails thought to have been deleted from the private server Hillary Clinton used while she was secretary of state, Bloomberg first reported Tuesday night.

The FBI has been trying figure out how many classified emails Clinton had on her server and how they got there. The agency is concerned about whether Hillary Clinton's private email system exposed any classified information, and if so, the extent of exposure, as well as why it occurred.

The request for the Justice Department investigation came after the inspector general (IG) for the State Department and the inspector general for the intelligence community penned a memo in late June suggesting that Clinton's private account had "hundreds of potentially classified emails" in it. The two IGs were concerned about the possibility that classified information may have been compromised.

Clinton turned over about half of the 60 thousand emails that were on her server, after telling the State Department that the emails she deleted - about 30,000 - were personal.

Back in August, Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the State Department and FBI to communicate about what was recovered from Clinton's server, as well as a thumb drive that also contained thousands of her emails.

The State Department was also told to communicate with the FBI about documents on Clinton's server that could be relevant to FOIA requests involving her emails.

But when State contacted the FBI to ask for its help on one of those FOIA requests, the FBI wouldn't even acknowledge its investigation, according to a Politico report Monday.

Politico referred to a letter written by the FBI's general counsel with a boilerplate rejection: "At this time, consistent with long-standing Department of Justice and FBI policy, we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of any ongoing investigation."

About a month ago, Sullivan asked the State Department to reach out to the FBI for assistance in addressing a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Judicial Watch regarding Clinton aide Huma Abedin's employment arrangements. The judge also asked State to report on arrangements for the FBI to share information about the ongoing investigation.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement, "We've cooperated to date and will continue to do so, including answering any questions about this that anyone including the public may have."

While the discovery of the deleted mails on Clinton's server is a new development, it is largely incremental. Computer analysts have always expected that the FBI's technical experts would likely be able to recover the information they sought from Clinton's server.

What remains to be disclosed is the number and nature of the emails they're able to extract from the server.




“About a month ago, Sullivan asked the State Department to reach out to the FBI for assistance in addressing a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative group Judicial Watch regarding Clinton aide Huma Abedin's employment arrangements. The judge also asked State to report on arrangements for the FBI to share information about the ongoing investigation. …. While the discovery of the deleted mails on Clinton's server is a new development, it is largely incremental. Computer analysts have always expected that the FBI's technical experts would likely be able to recover the information they sought from Clinton's server. What remains to be disclosed is the number and nature of the emails they're able to extract from the server.”

I am glad to see that the FBI is going to get everything from her server, because I don’t think she should have used a personal computer system for important government work. It wasn’t wise, and was probably a lazy way of ensuring her personal privacy. I will still vote for her if she is nominated by the party for 2016, but I would prefer Biden/Warren or Sanders. Perhaps she didn’t want to do all her personal emails in a restricted way or on the other hand WAIT until she got home to do them.

At many business offices, doing your personal work on a company computer can be enough to get you fired, and is to me unethical. I also think it’s unethical to shop for handbags, do Internet sex, etc. on a company computer or during work hours. Some women and men in offices talk extensively on the phone with friends, etc., and I hate that because I wouldn’t do it. It isn’t honest. I saw a young man fired for that, and it happen in a very dramatic way at the Associated General Contractors of Washington, where I did data entry and general office work. The man was found with several versions of his work resume on his computer, and had been spending work time exploring job openings. I would be afraid to do that, because they can easily go into a worker’s computer use to see what he is doing. There’s no privacy on a company computer. I simply wouldn’t want “the company” to find out what I was saying about the obnoxious mid-level supervisor or any other personal matter. I don't agree with what she did, but I do hope Hillary isn’t prosecuted for a crime, because I can’t believe she was knowingly sharing State Department secrets. She is no spy or traitor.





http://news.yahoo.com/global-marine-populations-slashed-half-since-1970-wwf-003519398.html

Marine life slashed by half since 1970: WWF
AFP By Nina Larson, Marlowe Hood in Paris
September 16, 2015

View Gallery -- WWF stressed that the ocean is a renewable resource and that marine life can be restored if the human population lives within "sustainable limits" (AFP Photo/Cristina Quicler)
View Gallery -- Related search results
Unusual marine life and weather already showing up.
View Gallery -- Geneva (AFP) - Pollution, industrial fishing and climate change have killed off half of marine life in the last four decades, according to a WWF report released on Wednesday.
Photograph -- The WWF report also shows there has been a steep decline in coral reefs (AFP Photo/Rod Salm)

Related Stories:
Half the World's Marine Life Lost in 40 Years: WWF Newsweek
New report reveals how humans are devastating marine life MarketWatch
Global marine populations slashed in half since 1970: WWF AFP


Species essential to global food supply -- especially in poorer nations where fish provide essential dietary protein -- were among the hardest hit, the conservation group's Living Blue Planet Report said.

The family of fish that includes tuna and mackerel, for example, has declined by three quarters since 1970.

"In the space of a single generation, human activity has severely damaged the ocean by catching fish faster than they can reproduce," Marco Lambertini, head of WWF International, said in a statement.

"Profound changes are needed to ensure abundant ocean life for future generations."

Fish are not the only marine organisms in steep decline, the report found. Large swathes of coral reef, mangroves and sea grasses have died off or been hacked away.

This loss has decimated fish populations and, in turn, imperilled (sic) some 850 million people who depend directly on these ecosystems for their livelihoods.

Half of all coral has already disappeared, and the rest will vanish by 2050 if temperatures continue to rise at current rates, previous research has shown.

"Coral reefs occupy less than one percent of the ocean surface, but they harbour a third of ocean species," said French biologist Gilles Boeuf, commenting on the report.

Doubling previous samplings, the joint WWF and Zoological Society of London analysis tracked 5,829 populations of 1,234 species for an updated, "more troubling" picture of ocean health.

At the same time that the volume of marine life is diminishing, so too is the number of species, both in the ocean and on land, other research has shown.

Indeed, scientists believe Earth has entered a sixth "mass extinction event", with species disappearing 100 times more quickly than only a century or two ago.

There have been five such episodes over the last half-billion years, the most recent wiping out all non-avian dinosaurs and most other forms of life some 65 million years ago.

A quarter of shark and ray species face extinction, largely due to overfishing, the WWF report said.

"In the Mediterranean there are four shark species we have not spotted in thirty years," said Philippe Cury, a scientist at the Research Institute for Development in Marseille.

Fifty percent is a critical threshold for loss of marine life, Cury said of the findings.

"When you go below 50 percent, ecosystems begin to malfunction," he said.

WWF called on world leaders to prioritise ocean recovery when the United Nations' 15-year Sustainable Development Goals are approved later this month.

"We must take this opportunity to support the ocean and reverse the damage while we still can," Lambertini said.

The WWF stressed that marine life can be restored if the human population starts to live within sustainable limits.

The report said protected global ocean area -- currently about 3.4 percent -- should be tripled by 2020. It also called on consumers and fish retailers to source from companies that follow certified "best practice" standards.

"If we had not intervened to protect the bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, there probably wouldn't be any," Boeuf said by way of example.

The WWF likewise suggested that a levy on fishing industry profits could be earmarked to restore marine life.

"These changes are happening in our lifetime," Lambertini said. "We can and we must correct course now."




“Species essential to global food supply -- especially in poorer nations where fish provide essential dietary protein -- were among the hardest hit, the conservation group's Living Blue Planet Report said. …. "Coral reefs occupy less than one percent of the ocean surface, but they harbour a third of ocean species," said French biologist Gilles Boeuf, commenting on the report. Doubling previous samplings, the joint WWF and Zoological Society of London analysis tracked 5,829 populations of 1,234 species for an updated, "more troubling" picture of ocean health. …. "In the space of a single generation, human activity has severely damaged the ocean by catching fish faster than they can reproduce," Marco Lambertini, head of WWF International, said in a statement. "Profound changes are needed to ensure abundant ocean life for future generations." Fish are not the only marine organisms in steep decline, the report found. Large swathes of coral reef, mangroves and sea grasses have died off or been hacked away. This loss has decimated fish populations and, in turn, imperilled (sic) some 850 million people who depend directly on these ecosystems for their livelihoods. …. “Indeed, scientists believe Earth has entered a sixth "mass extinction event", with species disappearing 100 times more quickly than only a century or two ago. There have been five such episodes over the last half-billion years, the most recent wiping out all non-avian dinosaurs and most other forms of life some 65 million years ago.”

WWF’s report “Living Blue Planet Report” is sad indeed, since it reports the loss of fish, corals, and other environments supporting ocean life forms, stating that “The family of fish that includes tuna and mackerel, for example, has declined by three quarters since 1970.” Putting a ban on fishing of these species could allow them to reproduce freely and successfully again. That has worked before, but it does mean that the profit motive behind big fishing industries would become unsatisfactory to the owners of the fleets. Japan has a fetish with whaling, for instance, and is preventing some species from recovering a healthy population.

So achieving an enlightened period of a fishing ban – twenty or so years, perhaps -- would require business people around the world to cooperate, and that is never easy to achieve because they live for their profits and in a high state of competition. To be fair, fishermen are not all wealthy by any means, though many of them are. Small fishermen aren’t taking all the fish out of the ocean, anyway. It’s the whole fishing industry that is causing the problem. Even a strictly enforced limit on the size of a catch would help. Japan has been a problem about their fleets of fishing ships in the past, and though they are intelligent people, they aren’t as modern in many cases in their cultural views as are most Western nations.

Likewise, the Far East is responsible for the killing of rhinoceroses and tigers for their body parts almost to the point of extinction. They are doing it for “medicine,” including as a male sexual stimulant, which is really unscientific and dumb in my opinion. They don’t have a strong stance on saving our environment, even if it means that they could literally run out of seafood to eat. Some people just don’t “look at the big picture,” or they wouldn’t be so much like the fabled ostrich with its’ head in the sand. I think after this WWF report is read around the world the UN and other organizations will begin to be active in putting a stop to the totally careless despoiling of our ocean community of life. At least I pray that we will move in that direction, and rapidly!




YOUNG ROBBER BARON GETS HIS COMEUPPENCE


http://www.newsweek.com/martin-shkreli-drug-manipulation-daraprim-retrophin-375416

Man Who Hiked AIDS Drug 5,000 Percent Faces Investigation for His Old Job
Newsweek Business
BY KURT EICHENWALD
9/23/15

Photograph -- The world’s most hated man this week could well be Martin Shkreli, whose pharmaceutical company inexplicably raised the price last month of a decades-old drug needed to treat a complex parasitic infection by more than 5,400 percent. MARK BLINCH/FILES/REUTERS

The world’s most hated man this week could well be Martin Shkreli, whose pharmaceutical company inexplicably raised the price last month of a decades-old drug needed to treat a complex parasitic infection by more than 5,400 percent. But there is a group of folks who are probably delighted that Shkreli thrust himself into the public eye in such a negative way: Federal prosecutors.

Since at least in January, Shkreli has been under criminal investigation by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, court records show. And Shkreli is not alone—some of his business associates have also received grand jury subpoenas in the case.

After being notified of the investigation that month, Shkreli—a former hedge fund manager turned drug company entrepreneur—has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because of the criminal case whenever his testimony has been sought in the many civil lawsuits filed against him about his business dealings.

Shkreli’s lawyer, Elisa Preheim, did not return a telephone call seeking comment on the federal case. And of course, the fact that Shkreli is under investigation does not establish he has committed any crimes; rather, it shows that the government has obtained sufficient evidence to conclude illegal activities may have occurred.

The criminal investigation involves Retrophin, a public company where Shkreli served as an officer, director, and 10-percent owner of the outstanding stock before being ousted amid multiple allegations of misconduct. Retrophin focuses on the development, acquisition and commercialization of therapies for the treatment of catastrophic or rare diseases, and was founded by in 2011 by Shkreli.

The inquiry, according to court records and people with knowledge of the inquiry, involves such a vast number of suspected crimes it is difficult to know where to start. A quick summary of the government’s theory: If there was money, Shkreli took it. If there were facts to be revealed, Shkreli hid them. If there were securities laws, Shkreli broke them.

And that’s why Shkreli’s decision to dramatically raise the price of a decades-old life-saving drug—and then appearing on television, smiling broadly as he justified actions that put lives at risk—was such a bad move. Overnight, he transformed himself from a relatively obscure corporate executive to a boldfaced, widely vilified name, known by presidential contenders and lawmakers alike. It is a truism that prosecutors pursue public figures with the greatest vigor, not only because the publicity set off by their indictment serves as a broader deterrent against wrongdoing, but also because such cases can boost a prosecutor’s career.Public disgust of the type raining down on Shkreli now make the cases even more attractive to bring.

Shkreli’s price-gouging involves Daraprim, a 62-year-old generic drug used to treat malaria and toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease often found in HIV-positive individuals and others with weak immune systems. The drug is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, which are the most important medications needed in a basic health system. Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, acquired Daraprim in August, and boosted the price shortly afterward from $13.50 a pill to $750. The Infectious Diseases Society of America, composed of the top medical doctors who work with conditions like toxoplasmosis, sent a letter on September 8 to top officials at Turing, stating that the cost was “unjustifiable” and was putting patients at risk. Moreover, the doctors said that, since Turing’s acquisition of the drug, hospitals around the country were reporting they could no longer obtain it because of Turing’s significant distribution problems.

The controversy burst into public view this week after the New York Times wrote about the price change. A firestorm ensued, and Shkreli was lambasted by news organizations as “skeezy,’’ a “pharmaceutical greed villain,” “the Donald Trump of drug development’’ and other names that are more graphic than I’m willing to repeat. Social media was more relentless. Even Hillary Clinton jumped into the mix, tweeting that “Price-gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous.”

By the time the day was out, Shkreli’s name was so well-known that it began to appear in headlines. And no doubt, prosecutors began licking their chops.

While Shkreli took a step back on Tuesday, saying he planned to drop Daraprim’s price to some undisclosed amount in response to the controversy, it was too late. His infamy is indelible; he will forever be known as the man who tried – and perhaps still will – gouge the most vulnerable. He remains as prominent a target for prosecutors as he was on Monday. If indicted, his name will still hit the headlines, a reality that was almost impossible to imagine a week ago when he was still a relative nobody.

According to the court records and people with knowledge of the case, the allegations against Shkreli that are under investigation involve insider trading, disguising the purpose of corporate payments for his benefit, defrauding shareholders by snatching business opportunities for himself, destruction of evidence, failure to disclose material facts to shareholders and other potential crimes.

One of the key elements of the investigation involves allegations that Shkreli appropriated cash from Retrophin and used it to settle litigation from institutions and individuals who were investors in his hedge fund, MSMB Capital Management, and then illegally classified them in the company’s books as consulting payments. In essence, if the allegations are true, Shkreli stole money from the company to resolve lawsuits that had nothing to do with Retrophin, then lied about what he did in filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission by misrepresenting how and why the cash was spent.

Government investigators have obtained data showing more than 612,000 shares of Retrophin and a total of $400,000 from the corporate coffers were distributed to former investors who had sued both MSMB and Shkreli personally. All of those payments were reported as compensation under consulting agreements.

An array of other payments also went from Retrophin to litigants suing Shkreli, MSMB or both through assorted mechanisms, the data obtained by the government shows. Some of these were so complex that they would put to shame the financial magicians at Enron—the once mighty energy company that collapsed in 2001 amid allegations of accounting fraud and cooking of the books.

For example, MSMB made a $900,000 investment in Retrophin. Afterward, on February 1, 2012, the investment was reclassified as a loan. That would be as if an investor purchased a share in Microsoft and then later demanded full repayment of the purchase price plus interest, regardless of the market price for the stock.

The $900,000 plus interest was returned to MSMB on March 31, 2013. That same day, another $575,000 was paid to Shkreli as a purported performance bonus; all of that money, in fact, allegedly went directly to pay for settlement of arbitration against MSMB and Shkreli. Then, according to the data obtained by the government, the company paid or forgave another $1.2 million of obligations primarily for the benefit of MSMB, none of which was disclosed.

Some of the transactions are just outright weird. In the second quarter of 2014, for example, Retrophin settled two lawsuits brought against the company. However, the data obtained by the government shows about $200,000 in cash from these settlements went to individuals who then immediately transferred 176,388 shares of Retrophin stock to Shkreli personally. The theory on this transaction, people involved in the case said, is that the settlement disguised a stock purchase for Shkreli’s benefit, using corporate cash. Adding to the many problems with that, none of these transactions were properly disclosed in the company’s S.E.C. filings.

Under Shkreli, Retrophin was highly dysfunctional; in fact, it was informed by its accountants, Marcum LLP, that it had not established appropriate procedures for ensuring its filings to the S.E.C. were accurate, a fact that could easily lead to misreporting of the company’s true financial dealings with its own executives. In a government filing on November 2013, Retrophin reported, “our independent auditors advised management that a material weakness existed in internal control over financial reporting and our disclosure controls.”

That only grew worse. On March 31, 2014, Retrophin reported in a government filing that its controls were not enough to ensure that information required to be disclosed was properly reported and had experienced difficulty in following generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). Moreover, it reported, its controls were weakened by the fact that there was not sufficient segregation of duties among its senior officers.

Throughout the time that the data obtained by the government suggests Shkreli was engaging in significant and undisclosed self-dealing, he was aggressively selling Retrophin stock. For example, on May 29, 2014, Shkreli posted extremely bullish messages on the Internet, which he called “non-non-non-GAAP guidance,” and proclaimed on Twitter, without explanation, “this is one of the best days of my life.” The next day, he unloaded 292,400 shares of Retrophin, earning about $4.5 million in profits. Then, the day after, Retrophin revealed the magnitude of its problem with its internal controls and accounting, a fact that, as an insider and the top executive, Shkreli would almost certainly have known when he sold his stock 24-hours before. Around that time, Retrophin terminated its accounting firm that kept delivering the bad news about the company’s controls.

Even Turing is wrapped up in the case. While working as Retrophin’s CEO, Shkreli had a legal duty to act solely in the interest of the company shareholders, but he raised money from investors for Turing. Shkreli was tossed out of Retrophin in September 2014 amid allegations of a variety of wrongdoings. The next month, he was running Turing—the company he had financed while running Retrophin—and began raiding his former company for employees.

But the connections between Retrophin and Turing didn’t end there. On February 13 of this year, Retrophin sold product rights for a drug called Vecamyl to Waldun Pharmaceuticals, which then immediately sold the rights to Turing. In other words, Shkreli used money raised while he was working as the chief executive at Retrophin to purchase, through a two-step process, a Retrophin drug for his new company.

According to former company executives, Shkreli demonstrated what one person described as “extremely erratic” behavior while working at Retrophin. He tweeted complaints about his board of directors and made other comments that, for the CEO of a public company, struck some investors as odd.

Then his actions veered into the bizarre. At a biotech industry convention in June 2014, Shkreli—again, the chief executive of a public company—tweeted that there were lots of “BIObabes” at the meeting and invited them to drop by the Retrophin booth. About the same time, three Twitter accounts began sending out messages praising Retrophin using language mimicking rappers, with sort-of-words like “sukka ass fooos.” The IP address for those accounts traced back to Retrophil, according to a person connected to the company, although the identity of the person or people using the account could not be determined.

At least one other executive sued Shkreli in a complaint that portrayed equally strange behavior. Chun Yi Huang, a senior vice president of scientific affairs at Retrophin, filed the lawsuit on March 23, 2013. Huang complained that Shkreli refused to pay him his salary and other benefits for three months.

Weeks later, Shkreli pushed Retrophin to sue Timothy Pierotti in New York state court. According to the complaint, Retrophin helped Pierotti purchase 350,000 shares in the company—which were then trading at between $8.00 and $8.80—for 1/1000 of a penny each. Retrophin claimed it arranged for the wacky transaction as a pre-payment for what it said was a promise Pierotti would identify acquisition targets. (Such a payment runs completely counter to standard corporate procedures; consultants or bankers are supposed to find acquisition targets and then seek a company to hire them to consummate a deal, not the other way around.) But Shkeli decided that Pierotti didn’t live up to his end of the agreement and not only filed the lawsuit, but launched an unseemly war. In an affidavit, Pierotti claims Shkreli threatened him and his family for months and broke into his accounts with AOL, Gmail, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Among the harassments spelled out in the case is a letter sent by Shkreli to Pierotti’s wife, which stated “Having frozen your husband’s stock account once, I will do so repeatedly until I get what is mine…I hope to see you and your four children homeless and will do whatever I can to assure this.” Then, the records show, Shkreli friended one of Pierotti’s sons on Facebook and sent the boy a message saying “I want you to know about your dad…He betrayed me.”

Remember, this is not a high school kid or an arbitrary Internet lunatic sending these messages. This is a man who, at the time of these communications, was the chief executive of a public corporation.

Suffice to say, Shkreli not only has engendered public contempt, he has left a very troubling and strange trail in his career that has won him plenty of enemies, including members of his former company’s board of directors. Now, with Shkreli the latest corporate executive condemned as a villain, he has an enormous target on his back. And federal prosecutors are holding a loaded gun.



http://cn.multiplenews.com/article/b5a252c6f7cebfc35721a328b6977741/Martin%20Shkreli%20Lowers%20Drug%20Pri

Martin Shkreli Lowers Drug Price, Is Still An Asshole
Samantha Allen The Daily Beast GREEDY
09.23.15

After raising the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 percent and becoming the most hated man on the Internet, Martin Shkreli says he’ll lower the cost. Don’t be fooled.
Well, that was fast. A matter of days since becoming the most-hated man in America for jacking up the price of the drug Daraprim by over 5,000 percent, Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli told NBC news that he would lower the price to a more reasonable level, albeit without specifying the new cost.

But even in lowering the price of Daraprim, which is used to treat the parasitic disease toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease that can be particularly harmful for pregnant women and immunocompromised patients, Shkreli is still trying to paint himself as guileless.

At this point, his denial is almost superhuman.

In a Tuesday night phone interview with NBC News, Shkreli said the decision to reverse the price hike was made not because the decision was wrong but rather because of “the anger that was felt by people,” which is one way of referring to the massive global outrage his company sparked.

He also shrugged off the idea that he was the money-hungry villain that he so transparently seems to be: “I think in the society we live in today, it’s easy to want to villainize people, and obviously we’re in an election cycle where this is [a] very, very tough topic for people and it’s very sensitive.”

As for Hillary Clinton’s accusations of price gouging, Shkreli condescendingly told NBC News that, “It’s very hard stuff to understand,” when, in fact, biotech and infectious disease experts have weighed in on the decision in the past few days and come to the conclusion that the price hike was unjustifiable.

In the original 1979 Alien movie, one character says of the eponymous creature that is killing off the crew, “I admire its purity.” If Shkreli’s particular brand of corporate greed were not potentially deadly, it, too, would be almost admirable in its excess and precision.

In fact, by lowering the price, Shkreli is effectively conceding that his attempts to justify the hike over the past few days were deceptive—good news for patients, bad news for a man that did nothing to salvage an already tarnished public reputation. Shkreli can try to cover over his history of misdirection with a wave of his hand, but we can—and probably should—dwell on it for longer than a social media outrage cycle lasts.

Consider that if Shkreli actually believed that new research and development was necessary to develop a Daraprim alternative—if he actually felt, as he maintained on Monday, that he had the best interests of toxoplasmosis sufferers at heart—he should have kept the price at $750 a pill and produced credible research to substantiate his claim. The fact that he backtracked Tuesday and immediately made his Twitter account private is a tacit admission that these were excuses that barely papered over what seemed to be a blatant attempt to profit off of AIDS patients.

Martin Shkreli Shrugs Off 'Villain' Name

Daraprim might go back down in price but Shkreli is still, as The Daily Beast decorously put it yesterday, an asshole. And because Shkreli is not the first and won’t be the last to try to pull this same pharmaceutical stunt, it’s important not to forget his particular brand of bullshit.

In fact, Shkreli barely left us with time to fully deconstruct just how shoddy his case for the price hike actually was. Let’s not forget that a couple of days ago, the young CEO was still minimizing the effectiveness of Daraprim and attempting to portray himself as a savior for toxoplasmosis sufferers.

“This is a very, very tough disease,” he told Bloomberg Monday. “It requires a lot of attention and focus from the drug companies to partner with patients and distributors to make sure that it’s a very cared-for community.”

Shkreli condescendingly told NBC News that, “It’s very hard stuff to understand,” when, in fact, experts weighed in on the decision and came to the conclusion that the price hike was unjustifiable.
Shkreli also promised Monday that Turing’s revenue would allow the pharmaceutical company to develop an improved version of the drug.

“These patients deserve a company that is turning a fair profit and also developing a drug that is better for them,” he added in the Bloomberg interview.

The Daily Beast attempted to contact Shkreli multiple times via e-mail and through Twitter over the last few days to ask him to substantiate his claims that Daraprim needed to be improved. We received exactly one response: a tweet referencing a study, with no citation provided. In browsing through Shkreli’s responses to other reporters, he referenced concrete data only a handful of times, never including citations. These responses are now hidden from the public.

Before Shkreli lowered the price, however, Dr. Nick Bennett, the Medical Director of Infectious Disease and Immunology at Connecticut Children’s Hospital, helped The Daily Beast sort through Shkreli’s public attempts to justify the development of a Daraprim alternative.

It is important to note, too, as multiple infectious disease experts told The Daily Beast, that even if Shkreli genuinely wanted to develop a new toxoplasmosis drug, other funding routes would be more ethical than exploiting the same patients who suffer from the condition.

Shkreli first told The Daily Beast on Twitter that a study of two people with myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disorder, showed that “both died despite treatment.” That appears to have been a reference to a 2015 study that Bennett hunted down in the journal Neurology: Neuroimmunology and Neuroinflammation.

Bennett reviewed more of Shkreli’s once-public statements on Daraprim and came to the following professional conclusion: “This guy does not know what he’s talking about.”
Does this study specifically speak to a need for a new version of Daraprim? By no stretch of the imagination. The paper is a case study of just two patients, one suffering from myasthenia gravis, the other from a condition called inflammatory myopathy. Both patients developed toxoplasmic encephalitis (TE), were then treated with pyrimethamine (the generic name for in Daraprim) as well other drugs, and both patients died.

But the emphasis of the study was this: Because TE has such a “high morbidity and mortality,” it must be recognized and treated earlier.

“As earlier recognition and treatment has been reported to improve outcomes in TE, these case reports emphasize the need to consider TE in any patient receiving [the immunosuppressant] MMF who presents with new cognitive or neurologic defects,” the authors wrote.

“There’s no evidence there that says you need new agents to treat this disease,” Dr. Bennett stressed to The Daily Beast. “The message of the paper is that you should watch out for toxoplasmosis if you’re using the kind of immunosuppression that we used for these [two] patients.”

Shkreli then wrote in a now-hidden tweet that toxoplasmosis has a “20 percent real-world mortality” and that “40 percent of patients can’t tolerate [a] full course.” That tweet contained kernels of truth but it was also misleading in its presentation.

Bennett could not independently verify the mortality rate but he said it was “probably reasonable” depending on certain conditions. As for the 40 percent intolerance rate, Bennett located a reference in a 2006 paper on toxoplasmosis and HIV patients in which combined treatment with pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine (an HIV-related drug) was said to cause “adverse effects (primarily rash)” in up to 40 percent of patients.

But if the rash becomes too severe, Bennett says, physicians can simply switch to an alternative regimen of medication, and this decision would happen even more frequently if Shkreli had left the price where it was—a sign, perhaps, that Shkreli’s decision to lower the price was financially motivated after all.

Bennett reviewed more of Shkreli’s once-public statements on Daraprim and came to the following professional conclusion: “This guy does not know what he’s talking about.”

“If he really wanted to be a good guy and develop a new drug for toxoplasmosis, he could have gone about it a totally different way,” Bennett told The Daily Beast. “So for him to argue that the costs are justified to develop a toxoplasmosis drug is ludicrous.”

Even with the price reportedly on its way back down, there are lessons to be learned from Shkreli’s shoddy, cherry-picked attempt to build a case for his 5000 percent price bump.

For one, sustained public engagement with the pharmaceutical industry can, in fact, be efficacious. In the midst of the outrage directed at Shkreli and Turing, Rodelis Therapeutics lowered the price of its recently acquired tuberculosis drug Cycloserine from $10,800 for 30 capsules back down to $500. Shkreli’s Tuesday night announcement is the second victory for consumer outcry in as many days. The FDA cannot control “the prices charged for marketed drugs” but apparently Twitter can.

We could have used a similar level of social media passion for any number of cases in which generics received price hikes last year, some of them, as The Wall Street Journal reports, increasing anywhere between 1,000 and over 17,000 percent. This trend prompted a probe by lawmakers led by Senator Bernie Sanders but it did not become a trending topic on Twitter.

In many ways, Shkreli’s social media hubris and his easily debunked data were blessings in disguise. It’s rare that these price hikes have a public face, or are accompanied any sort of justification. By being so loud and so transparently uninformed on social media, Shkreli has painted a bulls-eye on his own industry.

The public loves a face to put to pressing problems. Shkreli, generously, has offered his own.




“For one, sustained public engagement with the pharmaceutical industry can, in fact, be efficacious. In the midst of the outrage directed at Shkreli and Turing, Rodelis Therapeutics lowered the price of its recently acquired tuberculosis drug Cycloserine from $10,800 for 30 capsules back down to $500. Shkreli’s Tuesday night announcement is the second victory for consumer outcry in as many days. The FDA cannot control “the prices charged for marketed drugs” but apparently Twitter can.” …. Remember, this is not a high school kid or an arbitrary Internet lunatic sending these messages. This is a man who, at the time of these communications, was the chief executive of a public corporation. Suffice to say, Shkreli not only has engendered public contempt, he has left a very troubling and strange trail in his career that has won him plenty of enemies, including members of his former company’s board of directors. Now, with Shkreli the latest corporate executive condemned as a villain, he has an enormous target on his back. And federal prosecutors are holding a loaded gun.”

I believe I can safely draw a parallel between police brutality nationwide, Shkreli’s personal foolishness and arrogance, and the rise of religious fundamentalism as one of our national enemies rather than an unquestioned friend – it’s the miraculous power of Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet sources. Folks not only are no longer willing to stand for these things, but until the Koch Brothers via the machinations of the Tea Party do succeed in closing down the public use of our free Internet system, the bad guys won’t keep getting away with it without at least receiving massive public criticism and harassment from the public. Enough of that and some of these name brands will begin to lose their market share – take VW, for instance. There have also already been quite a few city police departments’ initiation of hopeful changes in their training, police department rules, active supervision of street cops, etc., and I think it’s simply because they no longer find it possible to escape all punishment by just saying “I feared for my life.” Every time another one of those cases hits the news there is more public anger. One police department head said that he didn’t want all that “publicity.” That’s really sick.

As for Shkreli, the capitalist creed is that a businessman may morally and ethically and legally charge “whatever the market will bear.” This particular case proved that when a monthly supply rose from about $1,130 to $63,000 or more for a month’s supply, that price is NOT within the range of what “the market will bear.” Shkreli not only has very little morality in his thinking patterns, he has little understanding of results also. Rodelis Therapeutics also spontaneously backed down on its’ price for a TB drug from $10,000 a month to $500.00. I think the whole pharmaceutical industry is paying attention to this. Perhaps next other groups of Robber Barons will join the line to reexamine their prices, if not their motives. I think maintaining good motives is a lost cause in the proudly capitalistic community. They are religiously fundamentalist in many cases, but are not morally and ethically even compliant with what Jesus taught, much less interested in giving their workers safe and positive conditions of employment. Some of that group recently criticized the Pope for being “too political.”

According to another article from yesterday, both Clinton and Sanders have jumped on this issue in the legislature, so I hope some legal changes will be made that outlaw this kind of unethical business practice. Totally unrestrained capitalism is not good for this country, and even as the RBs cried foul, their activities have been restricted in the past and can be now without running against the Constitution. The Constitution does not require or even condone unbridled control by the very wealthy and the “free market.”





http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/arctic-%e2%80%98doomsday%e2%80%99-vault-to-open-because-of-syrian-civil-war/ar-AAeCLrT?li=AAa0dzB&ocid=iehp

Arctic ‘doomsday’ vault to open because of Syrian civil war
The Washington Post By Ishaan Tharoor
September 23, 2015

Photograph -- The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
© Provided by Washington Post


The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is the world's greatest repository of seeds. It has about 860,000 samples from most of the countries in the world stored in a facility cloaked in permafrost, 800 miles beyond the rim of the Arctic Circle on a Norwegian archipelago. Even if electricity failed, its location means the specimens kept within the vault could survive at least two centuries.

The more than 4,000 plant species kept here provide a "global backstop" for the world's biodiversity in the face of climate change and other dramatic transformations on the planet. So it is conspicuous that, for the first time, the Norwegian-run facility will open the vault to remove some of its contents.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (or ICARDA), which was forced to relocate from the Syrian city of Aleppo to Beirut in 2012, requested almost 130 boxes out of the 325 it had deposited in the Svalbard vault, according to Reuters. ICARDA's temporary unit in the Lebanese capital was only partially functioning, and it needed these samples as part of "its role as a hub to grow seeds and distribute them to other nations," the news agency explained.

The organization's research in part focuses on cultivating crops that can cope with shifting climate patterns in particularly dry areas of Africa, the Middle East and Australia. This vital work was interrupted by the horrors of the Syrian conflict, which has leveled swaths of Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city and its economic center.

Some of the world's first grains and cereals are thought to have been cultivated in the Levant, including Syria's river valleys, a cradle of civilization now rent asunder by war.




Are you scared yet? I’ve been scared for years, and especially since I’ve been reading and reporting on the number of news articles that I do now. It has put so many stories that have alarming elements in them before my eyes that I am almost at peace with death. I have, however, only begun to fight, so I’m not giving up. I fight by political and personal commitment to the things that I believe are right and true.

I’m very much relieved that the Pope is coming out on the side of progressive ideas and a less aloof Catholic Church. I think the true body of believers is not any particular church, but those of us who have worked during their lives to include more forgiveness, gentleness, kindness, free-hearted helpfulness, good solid logic, hope, justice, and as much enlightenment and education as we can incorporate into our view of life, will be in the right place if there is an apocalyptic “end of the world.” I believe that if we try to improve in all ways and especially in our acceptance of our fellow man, we have a chance at being “saved.” If we allow viciousness and dishonesty to take root in our lives we are moving in the wrong direction, and should probably “repent.” I also think that those who are moved most of all by their “love of money,” are in grave danger. They may "win the battle, but lose the war." Jesus did say that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

You can talk about early pre-school all you want, but the seeking of wisdom and goodness is a personal effort, a lifelong goal that individuals follow, and it is a task and a duty that every sufficiently intelligent individual should pursue. It’s a great source of pleasure to me, but it is also work. One citizen at a time, we will have a more peaceful, fair, generous, prosperous, and honest citizenry in this country and in the world if we all try to achieve those things. I believe in incremental individual and group progress, built on the basis of a good skill level in mathematics, logical activity, reading, creative thinking and open-mindedness. The following definition of “open-mindedness” is found in The Free Dictionary website, and it explains my point clearly: “Receptive to new and different ideas or the opinions of others: remained open-minded on the issue.” To me that is the same as saying that we should retain and increase our intelligence by continuing to use it fully. For instance, I refuse to "believe" a church that tells me the earth was made about 5,000 years ago instead of the fascinating process of evolution. While I believe in a healthy commitment to certain views and the cooperation with others of like mind, I believe my mind must remain open to new information and thoughts, or whatever “intelligence” I have will become biased and outdated. That new information should be within the scope of logic and not "faith" or dogma, of course. I notice that the Chinese Buddhism or other meditative religions do not bind their people's minds like they used to bind a woman's foot to "keep it small."

What I call knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, becomes something new all the time, and therefore must be reviewed regularly. That knowledge can save us if we will follow it's guidance rather than a billionaire oriented doctrine of Free Market dominance in this country. Our wealth of animal life, plant life and the future of our planet in general are at stake due to CO2 pollution from coal-fired power plants. I don’t want my beloved Earth to become nothing but a series of open pit mines, “mountaintop removal” coal mines, oil rigs and fracking, poisoned water and soil, and the stupid continuance of this unbridled release of CO2 and other noxious gases into our air when there is a way around it. Stop subsidizing big coal and big oil, and subsidize instead renewable energy technologies, the more the better. We, surely, don’t want to end up like China in their shocking current state of environmental pollutants and waste. Photos of people on the street there often include those face masks, which really don't do much good I wouldn't think, that they wear in an effort to breath the air. That's sad.