You are all wrong. SCOTUS will rule that this is nothing more than a corporation using it’s newly defined “corporate freedom of speech” to do this.

I am wondering if this recent ruling will make any difference:

In 2007, the state of Vermont passed a law forbidding the data mining of prescription drug records (i.e., which drugs are being prescribed and how frequently) for marketing purposes. But earlier today, the Supreme Court ruled that the Vermont law interferes with drug makers’ right to free speech.

The law had been intended to protect the privacy of doctors and patients, but six of the Supremes said Big Pharma’s right to hone its marketing pitches is more important.

http://consumerist.com/2011/06/supreme-court-says-data-mining-of-prescription-drug-records-is-free-speech.html

Regardless, I guess that I am glad that they are getting nailed.

Regards to the Kelster.

The bad: Many associate the 1960s with ‘the hippies.’ And many of those hippies are now bitter and angry people, with senses of entitlement and pacified by their own excesses.

The good: People cared enough to protest. There were well populated protests. There were popular songs. Hollywood participated. Even Nixon was a 1960s radical (Clean Air ACT, created the EPA, clean water, etc) because of social pressures). In those days, popular opinion trumped what the business community and the Chamber of Commerce wanted.

Lots of sorrow and transitions this year, but still on track with Manuel and BCN. I’ll send you an email.

And U?

Same wicked smile! Hello to Peg, too.

Hands downs, The Ref. I like holiday movies with a ‘dysfunctional family’ theme.

The Anti-Gay Industrial Complex is about to go bankrupt. Now that’s something to celebrate.

Watch for them to get more outrageous in their downward financial spiral. It won’t surprise me to see them call for the death of all LGBTs.

We must remember that their livelihoods are at stake, and they’re not going to take this lightly.

Pity the religious thugs that used their anti-gay rhetoric for personal financial gain. The party is over, guys.

See you in the unemployment lines.

I’m white. I’m male. Sadly, due to social inequities, these two characteristics alone allow me to be more financially successful than women and non-whites.

Whether intentional or not, beyond our culture’s institutional racism and sexism there is also consumerist ‘cultural conditioning’ at work here. I was born and raised in an economically very middle class/working class family. But it was a multi-generational, immigrant household too.

To a certain extent, I was ‘off the grid’ but not in my family’s pursuit of any ideology – but that’s just how we lived.

And because of that, even though I am lacking nothing, I have lived with less and that is one reason, that relatively I am financially successful.

I have not been conditioned to buy so much crap. I have not been conditioned to buy a McMansion. I have not been conditioned to eat fast food. I am not susceptible to peer and cultural pressures, always needing the latest and greatest.

I’m not blaming people who are consumerists. Some choose to be that way. But most of us are conditioned by our culture to over consume. Not that I would want to drive a BMW, but by my way of thinking, I really couldn’t afford one. But there are people who make 1/3 of my salary driving new BMW’s. There are people paying outrageous prices to go on a two week vacation, about double with I spend on two months vacation. And I live pretty well on vacation.

I don’t get it. Back to the economic disparity discussion in this post, policy has a big part to do with this disparity. But I think that racism, sexism and consumerist cultural conditioning also play into the economic disparity.

And unless something is done, it is going to get worse.

No, you’re wrong. In the last election, we voted to eliminate the 2/3 majority required to pass a budget, and we voted down the propositions that were sponsored by ‘big business.’ And we nearly voted to legalize marijuana – which many believe forced Schwarzenegger to reduce the enforcement and penalty for marijuana to traffic-ticket status.

You’re ignoring my point: Prop 13 won because our elected officials ignored the pain and suffering caused by a real estate bubble. I never said that it was good law. The point is that the initiative process is often a ‘last resort’ mechanism.

Yeah but John Diaz is an idiot who ‘cherry-picks’ his facts.

And let me go out on a limb here: Prop 13 was the result of our State representatives and governor ignoring the fact the people were being forced from their homes because of runaway increases in property taxes, based upon the idiotic notion that the unrealized profits from the increases in assessed value of homes should be taxable.

A better solution should have been a strong ‘sales-tax’ on the profits from the sale of a home that had increased in value. I know this all too well: My mother was about to lose her home as the taxes she was paying went from about $200 a year to over $3,000 a year, and this was in the late 1960s, when salaries were not that high.

So should we eliminate voting because of the corruption that led to Bush getting election in 2000? I don’t think so. Just because a good tool isn’t working for us now, doesn’t mean we should get rid of the tool.

Yes, the right to privacy, medical marijuana, safe drinking water, and dozens of others.

One of the more important initiatives was the coastal act (1970s) that protected California coastline from privatization, and preserved it for the use of all Californians.

And the privacy initiative has been the foundation of many court rulings, etc.

Yeah, there’s some bad stuff. But do you think that our elected officials are going to make laws legalizing marijuana? How about medical marijuana? How about the right to privacy, clean water, clean air, public transit (BART, etc.)?

It’s easy to look only at the bad stuff. But it is disingenuous to do so without the proper context of the good stuff.

As a native Californian, I cringe every time I hear that the initiative process needs to be eliminated. People whine because there are just too many initiatives each year. While some of the initiatives are a bit of an annoyance, I fully support the people’s right to gather signatures and put things on the ballot, even evil stuff like proposition 8.

Many who complain about the initiative process are apologists of privilege.

Get over it. The initiative process is one of the best tools we have and it is a cornerstone of a democratic society.

Obama’s lack of backbone is a real concern. What is he going to do if we are attacked by terrorists – meet them halfway?

Cutting the payroll tax is a slap in the face to all working people. The ‘agenda’ of those who want to ‘privatize’ Social Security is profit. I we are all forced to have brokerage accounts, etc, guess who profits?

I will not vote for anyone worse than Obama in the next presidential election. Nor will I be voting for Obama.

I’m guessing that these documents are about past communications, not future strategies. They will be embarrassing but they will not endanger any troops on the ground.

The last time I checked, embarrassing the President and world leaders is not a threat to ‘national security.’ And they already manage to embarrass themselves every day anyway.

With all the money and lives wasted in Iraq, and the continued mismanagement of the somewhat justifiable military action in Afghanistan, maybe these documents will ‘embarrass’ Obama and Congress to actually do the right thing.

Now that I think of it, embarrassing these leaders is probably our only hope. Otherwise we’ll get more of the same tainted, corrupt crap from Democrats and Republicans and other ‘world leaders.’

It’s looking like Obama’s legacy will be that he was the first black president and nothing more.

Where we are headed is easy to see: Our elected leaders will ask those of us in the working classes to make ‘sacrifices’ to the national debt, while continuing to allow the wealthy classes and corporations to fleece us. Obamacare is just one example – mandatory insurance for all with some price controls via indexing, but no caps on the base insurance rates. So while seniors cannot pay more than 3 times the rate for non-seniors, the rate for non-seniors is not controlled at all.

The USA was a nice experiment. But given our complacent attitudes and laziness, given how we watched and did nothing as the previous president launch pre-emptive strikes at a country that did not attack us, given how we are now allowing our current president to renege on just about every major campaign promise in the guise of “meeting them in the middle” – a middle that is far on the right, given that plutocracy is now our governing system and we refuse to recognize that, and given that all of this leads to an income/wealth disparity that we have never seen in our history, we as a country are going to doomed to revert to a kinder, gentler form of slavery, not based on race, but based upon economic class.

I give up. I have been voting for more than 35 years and at this point, I am asking for a reason to vote that is not “the other guy is worse.”

We need to “let go” of our hope for anything from Obama. Cash in the chips and look for another candidate.

Move on.