I am sure everyone knows about this this video of government spending and corruption within military contracts, but just in case anyone missed it, here it is again.

This is a clip from “Iraq for Sale”. The video talks about the problem of government spending in the Iraq war. It seems that every time I open the paper I see another company “investigated” for ripping off the tawpayers. Recently, security contractors were in the news for billing for security gaurds they apparently never had.

War always brings out the “profiteers” it seems. And why not? The government is handing out billions. right?

Military over-spending and plain government overspending has always been an issue. I used to work for them. I remember a time when they wanted to have a barbaque for employees (about 100 people at that office or less). They went out and got a barbaque grill that they needed for 1 day only. The grill looked like any other you would get at the store except this one cost in excess of 50K.  Yes, the office spent 50,000.00 for a barbaque grill for a 1 hour lunch.

Seems sick? When I worked there the daily joke was what percentile everyone was in for the day… you see, the government office said that 20% of the people do 80% of the work on any given day.

Working there, I remember when voters, voted against salary increases for everyone… But no one was worried or cared because no increases just means bigger yearly bonuses. Yep, they voted against the 6% increase so the office authorized a 15% year-end bonus because bonuses were not in question and would not look like an increase on paper.

I really do wonder why anyone even has to vote for such things, in the end they get what they want anyway and throw in some extra for that F.U.

I have a friend who was in the military. He tells me that there were times when they threw expensive equipment… like brand new 100k bulldozers and stuff off planes into the ocean. Why? well, so they could say they used them and did not come back with the brand new unused equipment. If it came back, they would get less money in their budget.

The spending is SICK, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill for the bulldozers swimming in the Pacific.

I have figured this out… every single day I give $65 to the US government (split between sales tax, gas tax, property tax, income tax, etc.) as do the rest of us to fuel excessive spending…. I mean those overseas contractors do need to make a living, why have 1 mansion when my 65 daily + millions of others will contribute to 2 or 3 mansions…  maybe even in the Bahamas. Why have 1 Jaguar, when you can get a fleet? hmmm?

Pharmaceutical companies using third world countries for unethical drug trials, who would have guessed?
[Link]Associated Press
Pfizer facing 4 court cases in Nigeria By HEIDI VOGT

A security guard in this dusty Nigerian city is living with tragedy - a 14-year-old son whose dazed eyes, slow speech and uneven gait signal brain damage. Mustapha Mohammed says he knows who to blame - Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker.

New York-based Pfizer is facing four court cases - two filed by the Nigerian government and two by officials in the northern Nigerian state where Mohammed lives - over a decade-old drug study that included Mohammed’s son.

The company, which denies any wrongdoing, is accused of using a 1996 meningitis epidemic to push through a sloppily managed drug study that contributed to death in some and infirmities in others.

The fallout provides a case study of the ethical dilemmas that arise when Western medical priorities run into Third World poverty and ignorance. The communication gap between those handing out medical alms and those receiving has bred mistrust and anger in Kano - with damaging, far-reaching effect.

The Pfizer case was cited as one reason residents of Kano and the state of the same name boycotted a polio vaccine in 2003, fearing it was a plot to make Africans infertile. Polio exploded in Nigeria and eventually spread to 25 previously polio-free countries.

Though the meningitis epidemic is long over and the polio vaccination program is back on track, misinformation and suspicion persist.

Mohammed is sure no one asked his permission to test a drug on his child. But he also wasn’t asking many questions when he rushed his son to the hospital in 1996.

“We were desperate for drugs. We just took it in good faith,” said Mohammed, who lives in a tiny house off a dirt road in one of Kano’s poorer neighborhoods. Mohammed - who can’t read or write - only later found out that the pink paper he kept with Pfizer’s name and treatment dates meant his son had been in the study.

Pfizer says it explained the study to families using practices in line with U.S. and international guidelines, even employing Nigerian nurses and doctors who spoke Hausa, a main Nigerian language. Written permission was obtained when possible, or oral consent if parents were illiterate.

Across town, Abu Abdullahi Madaki can’t be sure if her daughter Firdausi took part in the Pfizer study. Citing privacy concerns, Pfizer has declined to release the names of the 200 children it treated.

All Madaki knows is she took a feverish 8-month-old infant to the hospital in 1996, and now her daughter suffers severe brain damage that left her unable to sit up or talk.

Meningitis - a brain infection - leaves 10 percent to 20 percent of survivors with mental damage, hearing loss, or learning disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.

But Madaki said: “My younger sister had meningitis, but it was nothing like this. My younger sister is now a mother with children.”

Madaki, who is illiterate, said she’d always felt that the hospital did something wrong. She decided when she heard about the charges against Pfizer on the radio that her daughter must have been in the study.

“The central events at issue in this lawsuit occurred in 1996, not long after epidemics of bacterial meningitis, measles and cholera broke out in Kano, Nigeria. Pfizer established a treatment center at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Kano to treat victims of the meningitis epidemic.

Plaintiffs allege that Pfizer, instead of using safe and effective bacterial meningitis treatments, used the epidemic as an opportunity to conduct biomedical research experiments on Nigerian children involving Pfizer’s “new, untested and unproven” antibiotic, trovaflozacin mesylate, better known by its brand name, Trovan.”

Plaintiffs claim that Pfizer failed to obtain informed consent, and that some children were deliberately given inadequate doses of ceftriaxone so that Trovan would look more effective by comparison. Several children died. The case is ongoing .

What is the chance that justice will be served under the circumstances?

Four years later it seems that Pfizer is going to try to keep the whole thing quiet through some form of payment of money or perhaps a large bribe.
Source: AHRP