Crystal Clear With goodie baskets for Academy Award presenters and performers getting into the serious money category, $100,000, about two or three times the average paycheck for us working stiffs, the IRS has decided to add a wee token of its own, a 1099. No wonder Billy decided to duck out on his hosting gig. Like he needs a 1099 for $100,000 worth of crap he doesn’t need or want screwing up his eight figure income.


Merck’s Vioxx & Shareholders Get Another Heart Attack I’m not a big fan of big drugs because of the way they rip off the US health care system, but when a retired FBI guy who gets involved in an auto accident then starts taking Vioxx and has a heart attack gets a $50million jury award, you gotta ask yourself if the system’s gone a little nuts. Might not the fact of his previous employment and the accident been contributing factors?

Speaking Of Drug Company Heart Attacks – Bristol-Myers Squibb, maker of heart drug Plavix (U.S. sales last year - $3.5 billion), and Sanofi-Aventis, Bristol’s marketing partner, have reportedly been using trickery and bribery and other scandalous doings to stop Canadian generic drug maker, Apotex, who might also have been a party to the trickery and bribery and other scandalous doings, from selling a cheaper generic version of Plavix in the U.S. Did big bucks change hands? Were secret agreements made? Did Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis try to screw Apotex, or did Apotex try to screw Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis, or was the screwing mutual. Stay tuned.

Should Washed Up CEO’s Get Same Treatment As Washed Up Ballplayers?
Michael J. Burns of Team Dana (Dana declared bankruptcy in March this year) doesn’t think so. He wants $3 million for hanging around until Dana’s coffin is in the ground, $ 3 million more if Dana’s value doesn’t drop from where it is now (the way CEO’s cook the books these days, you can bet it wont drop a dime), and hands off his $5.9 million pension. I say trade the bums, throw the bums out!




The Mel & Andy Show: First it was Mad Max Mel getting soused and blaming all the world’s problems on the Jews (doubtless something he learned from Passion of the Christ). For thinking he could drive in his drunken state (sound familiar), he gets three years probation and has to attend AA for a year. OK, fair enough, though I’d have put a breath analyzer on his starter, but what about the anti-Semitism? What does he get for that?

Now Andrew Young, civil rights leader, former mayor of Atlanta and former US representative to the UN (you know, the world peace people), hired six months ago by Wal-Mart as chairman of Working Families, a Wal-Mart attempt to improve its public image, told an African-American newspaper, the Los Angeles Sentinel, that Wal-Mart should displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods because “You see those are the people who have been overcharging us, and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.” (I guess he doesn’t realize that Wal-Mart, known to many as the substandard wage and benefit company, employs, but some counts, a quarter million blacks).Young apologized, retracted his comments, and resigned as chairman of Working Families. Wal-Mart shouldn’t have given him the option and publicly booted his bigoted ass out the door.

You know what I think? I think Mel and Andy need to spend a year helping the Jews and Arabs rebuild in northern Israel and southern Lebanon then Andy can go on to Korea and solve the nuclear Kim’s problems.

Click, Click That familiar sound of W listening in on your calls might soon disappear. Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the US District Court in Detroit told the NSA to hang up, that Jefferson and his cronies never intended to give W that much power. Good for Judge Taylor, but she forgot one critical point: W takes his instructions from a higher authority.

Questions Of The Week
1. Do you believe this whacko, John Karr, who recently crawled out from under his rock, killed JonBenet Ramsey?
2. How long ago did a federal judge order strict limitations on tobacco marketing as punishment for big tobacco companies’ decades-old conspiracy to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking: (a) one week, (b) one year, (c) ten years? (Answer at bottom)
3. What do $300 (+) billion and $65.6 billion have in common? The first was Time Warner’s value in January 2000 after its merger with AOL; the latter is Time Warner’s value today now that most of AOL’s deceptive bookkeeping has been properly accounted for or at least that’s what all the crossed fingers in TW hope.

Two Women Screw Shareholders & Soldiers: Dawn Schlegel & Sandra Hatfield, execs at DHB Industries, got thrown into chains (alas, since released on bond) for reaping $8 million in profits from jacking around with the books, driving the stock priced up, and selling before the shit hit the fan. OK, bad enough, but far worse, DHB had juicy contracts to supply our soldiers in Iraq with bullet-proof vests whose quality and adequacy have been called into question. These people, along with David H. Brooks, the company’s founder and former CEO, are not only crooks, but traitors. They should not be out on bond; they should not be allowed to ever again take a free step, unless on the front lines in Iraq behind one of their crappy vests.

Nude Air - Coming Soon To An Airport Near You Isn’t that the answer? The new X-Ray machines aren’t leaving a thingy to the imagination, and the lamebrain idea that airport security people can determine passenger emotions by looking at their faces is right up there with duct tape.

Correct answer to Question Of The Week #2 above is (a).The ruling was made this week by Judge Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.
Stupid me, I thought this issue had been resolved ten years ago. Says something about the tobacco lobby.