The Family

Burning Trash

hanging out

swimming

The new couple

View from our room.

Sisters

Relaxing

Plant thing

Rain Forest

Mona

Eating Lunch

Mona and Paula

Hotel

Garden

Eating at hotel overlooking ocean.

Flower in Costa Rica

Butterfly Garden

Nasty tasting cows

Bird

Bridge in Costa Rica

Nick - David - Jamie

Guest

Mark and Mona

Butterfly

Mona and Scott

Mona in Costa Rica

Our Jeep

Big Bug in Costa Rica

The beach

Hotel in Costa Rica

view outside our room

Mona in Costa Rica

Me

Josh - David - Me

Wedding

Scott, Jen, Mom, Dad

Writing Your Own Bills

A Washington Post article details "a provision that was slipped into a large budget bill, which will require state Medicaid programs to pay for a brand drug for depression rather than generics which are far cheaper and generally considered to be every bit as effective." The "pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. and other businesses secured a provision ensuring that their mental health drugs continue to fetch top price at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the states." Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind,) "whose district flanks Lilly’s Indianapolis headquarters," inserted the provision. Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex) strenuously opposed the Buyers amendment. A proponent of the bill, National Alliance on Mental Illness, has "been fighting efforts to restrict access to mental health drugs for years and strongly backed the Buyer’s amendment." So, who are the National Alliance on Mental Illness? According to their website they are "nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of persons living with serious mental illness and their families." Look a little deeper (page 13) and you find that NAMI is funded by Eli Lilly and Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Pfizer, Inc. along with a host of others. A spokesman for Eli Lilly states "He acknowledged that his company sought the provision, but he noted that other drug companies did so as well, as did mental health advocacy groups." He doesn’t bother to mention that Eli Lilly funds these advocacy groups. As if this weren’t enough, it turns out that "Lilly has been the biggest corporate contributor to Buyer’s campaigns." The drug company has donated $46,000 to Buyer’s congressional campaigns. The article also says that "Lilly has been adept at using Washington for its own purposes" and that Congressman "Buyer’s measure underscores the excessive power that corporate interest wield on Capitol Hill."

Mark McCowen

Happiness Net

Russia must be a pretty dreary place because only 2 percent of the population consider themselves to be "quite happy" or "very happy". Iceland ranks the highest with 94 percent and the United States is at 84 percent.
The link is at
www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/lif_hap_net

Polls and Propaganda

Here are some of the results from a British poll about Iraq. The poll was taken by Ministry of Defense and seen by the Sunday Telegraph.

• Forty-five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified - rising to 65 per cent in the British-controlled Maysan province;
• 82 per cent are "strongly opposed" to the presence of coalition troops;
• less than one per cent of the population believes coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security;
• 67 per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation;
• 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened;
• 72 per cent do not have confidence in the multi-national forces.


This is pretty amazing considering the US has been paying for propaganda and "multimillion-dollar contracts that included paying Iraqi newspapers and journalists to plant favorable stories about the war and the rebuilding effort."

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart has received over one billion dollars in government subsidies! These subsidies mostly came in the "form of free or reduced-priced land, job training funds, sales tax rebates, tax credits and infrastructure assistance, including investment in roads." Plus the report found "that 84 of Wal-Mart's distribution centers received an average of $7.4 million in subsidies, totaling about $624 million."
Mark McCowen

Watching TV

Thailand is the number one television watcher in the world with an average of 22.6 hours per week. The US ranks at number 6 with 19 hours per week.
Mark McCowen

Wealth

Source: Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership, 1983-1998," April 2000.


The top 10% own 71% of all private wealth.

The top 1% now own more than the bottom 90%.

Among the industrialized nations, the U.S. has the highest concentration of individual wealth -- roughly 3 times that of the No. 2 nation, Germany.

Real Wages

Real Wages have been slowly declining in the United States since 1964 even though manufactoring output per hour (productivity) has increased 123 percent since 1977.

Mark McCowen