Clearing The Air

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Americans enraged by Democratic government (and RWJF lobbied) takeover of our private healthcare system can demonstrate their anger with their wallet

Stop spending money on any and all Johnson & Johnson products Tylenol, Bandaid, Nicoderm, etc. (SC Johnson (cleaning product manufacturer) is not related to the J & J pharmaceutical and medical device conglomerate)

RWJF is the private foundation of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer. In a misguided, rent seeking legislative effort, RWJF has been lobbying for government healthcare in the U.S for over 30 years.

RWJF STRATEGY

For more than 30 years, RWJF has been concerned about Americans' lack of access to affordable and stable health care coverage. RWJF has funded studies, demonstration projects and symposia about this problem.

In 1997, Congress funded the State Children's Health Insurance Program with the aim of providing health insurance coverage to children who were not eligible for private or public insurance programs. That same year, RWJF created Covering Kids® (see Grant Results). In 2001, RWJF reshaped the program and renamed it Covering Kids & Families®, reflecting the Foundation's commitment to help states also cover parents and other adults who work in jobs that do not provide health coverage for them or their children.

Through a series of State Coverage Initiatives, RWJF assisted states in developing and implementing policies that made health care insurance more available and affordable to low-income residents. RWJF also created State Solutions: An Initiative to Improve Enrollment in Medicare Savings Programs, a national program to maximize enrollment in Medicaid, Medicare and other health insurance programs. Communities in Charge: Financing and Delivering Health Care to the Uninsured is a national program to help cities or counties improve access to care for low-income, uninsured individuals by changing the organization and financing of local care delivery (see Grant Results). The Access Project began work to improve health and health care in 1998 (see Grant Results).

RWJF also has supported other efforts to enhance Americans' access to health care coverage, including:

Understanding costs and financing mechanisms through Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (for more information see Grant Results).
Analyzing proposals to expand coverage through the Economic & Social Research Institute's Covering America project.
Helping states plan and develop insurance market reforms to expand health coverage for the uninsured through State Initiatives in Health Care Reform.
Increasing awareness among policy-makers and action by the general public through Cover the Uninsured Week

http://www.esresearch.org/covering_america.php

excerpt:
A major product of the Covering America project was three volumes of comprehensive health coverage proposals that seek to move the country toward universal health coverage.......The proposals were commissioned, reviewed, and assembled by the Economic and Social Research Institute, with a grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

The motive of course is to increase market share, placement, and sales of J & J products in a newly mandated government healthcare system which also gives the IRS unprecedented control of every Americans financial information including bank accounts, records, and history. And RWJF president Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, has been a regular White House lobbyist / visitor to the Obama White House throughout the healthcare debate. This modus operandi is nothing new to regular CTA readers, RWJF funded smoking ban lobbyists in an effort to ban tobacco nicotine use, because parent company J & J manufactures and sells Nicoderm, Nicotrol, Nicorette, Commit, etc. A rent seeking ploy which successfully tripled demand for the aforementioned pharmaceutical nicotine products according to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, once government imposed smoking bans were enacted.

So until Obama's new big government healthcare program is ruled unconstitutional or repealed, use your wallet to punish the lobbying groups like RWJF / J & J Company responsible for getting us into this massive new socialist-style, financially unsustainable, government program.

RWJF financial holdings include but not limited to 80,499,208 and 86,853,208 shares of Johnson & Johnson Common Stock in 2003 and 2002, respectively. This information is found on page 8 of 2004 financials for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. At today's Johnson & Johnson price per share 67.36, that's just a shade over $5.4 billion dollars.
Update: Obama's new socialist healthcare bill seems to also be a flimsy excuse to increase taxes on everything and anything, related or not. A new 10% tax on indoor tanning salons starts today.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

If property rights advocates battling smoking bans forward only one CTA article to lawmakers this should be the one

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2008/10/smoking-bans-air-quality-facts-economic.html

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Smoking ban lessons learned & typical government ineptitude......Circle jerk themselves and taxpayers into bankruptcy

Anatomy of a progressive government movement: Enact government over-regulation on businesses (in this case smoking bans), then as the onerous and unnecessary government regulation destroys those businesses & jobs; throw more taxpayer money at the problem they previously created.

For regular pubgoers, it could be the investment of a lifetime. The public are to be given cash and advice on how to invest and buy pubs as part of a package of measures designed to stem the wave of closures.....The initiative has been prompted by the closure of around 40 pubs each week, resulting in losses of jobs and millions of pounds from the economy....In a 2008 report on community pubs, the group found pub takings had been hit by...... heavy regulation, such as the smoking ban.

As a reminder to readers, over 3,300 UK pubs have gone out of business since lawmakers enacted smoking bans across the pond.

Rest of the story is online here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/18/investors-offered-cash-buy-pubs

What makes this entire circle jerk even more troubling is that smoking ban lobbyists ALA, CTFK, AMA, etc were funded by the pharmaceutical nicotine industry via (RWJF) whose real motive was to increase Nicoderm, Nicotrol, Nicorette, etc. product sales by making it illegal to smoke tobacco products in the pubs. If anyone should pay for the losses incurred as a result of the rent seeking legislation it ought to be the lobbyist (non-profit) groups as well as their benefactor Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and Johnson & Johnson Co. as parent entity of RWJF and manufacturer / owner of the now artificially demanded pharmaceutical nicotine products.

Lawmakers who are stupid enough to write laws that financially benefit one industry or company over another should also be personally responsible for providing (financial) recompense to those that lose business or jobs as a result of the rent seeking laws passed.......but the industry or company (RWJF / J & J) which funded and benefited from the immoral legislation should provide the majority financial contribution.

Around the globe smoking bans have decimated an entire industry eliminating tens of thousands of businesses, hundreds of thousands of jobs; which eventually impacts other industries and jobs until the negative worldwide effect snowballs into what we are currently experiencing.

http://cleanairquality.blogspot.com/2009/03/worldwide-economic-meltdown-and.html

....Who wouldn't want these same bumbling idiot bureaucrats running our healthcare system?

Thursday, March 04, 2010

CTA editor warned Iowa lawmakers they were being lied to by smoking ban advocates, now 1 year later the truth is being exposed

One year ago Iowa smoking ban advocates, funded by Nicoderm sales, told lawmakers the blatant lie that smoking bans are good for business. Ignorant and unconcerned lawmakers either believed that lie, or felt obligated to return favors for the campaign funding provided by the non-profits now lobbying for anti-business initiatives (smoking bans).

One Iowa bar owner tells his story here:

After a decade in business, the Nest Bar and Grill in Johnston is empty.
The owner, Rich Marx, said the smoking ban drove him out of business."We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary last Wednesday and then shut the doors three days later," Marx said.
He said former customers who used to smoke at the Nest are now smoking at home with a 6-pack or visiting a casino.
"Since the smoking ban went into effect July 1, we've lost just over 40 percent of our business," he said.
That made paying the bills impossible.

online here:
http://www.kcci.com/news/17984101/detail.html

The Nest isn't the only bar taking a hit.
The Iowa Restaurant Association said members who catered mainly to smokers are down this earnings quarter.
However, government numbers show gains in the hospitality industry. Iowa Workforce Development shows 2,400 more jobs in hospitality this month than last year at this time.
Likewise, bar and restaurant earnings are up 1.5 percent.Iowa Department of Revenue public information officer Renee Mulvey said bar losses could be getting lost in restaurant gains.
"That's very possible that's happening," Mulvey said.

"...bar losses could be getting lost in restaurant gains....." CTA can verify that's exactly what is happening, and it's happening around the globe to intentionally hide the loss of businesses and jobs from smoking ban legislation. Here in Minnesota government economists used hotel room revenue data in their report in an effort to hide the revenue losses to the hospitality industry after smoking bans were enacted.

Smoking bans HAVE NEVER increased revenue or jobs in the hospitality industry. They have however, increased revenues for the manufacturer of Nicoderm, Nicotrol, Nicorette, Commit etc.....which is exactly why they continue to fund the non-profit activists to push the smoking ban agenda.