Category Archives: Uncategorized

Merck Wins Fosamax Case

Merck & Co. on Friday won one of several bellwether product-liability cases over its osteoporosis drug Fosamax. Not a good day for the slip and fall lawyers.

On another marathon Merck matter, Vioxx, New Orleans federal district court Judge Eldon Fallon ordered a payout of $315,250,000 to “all attorneys who performed common benefit work” in the case. That amounts to 6.5 percent of the $4.85 billion settlement.

Russ Herman of Herman, Herman, Katz & Cotlar, plaintiffs liaison counsel, praised Fallon’s decision, which he said was “succinct” and “well-reasoned.”

Andy Birchfield Jr. of Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, who was co-lead counsel in the Vioxx MDL, did not return a call for comment. Nor did Arnold Levin of Levin, Fishbein, Sedrad & Berma, a member of the plaintiffs’ steering committee. Among the other attorneys benefiting from Fallon’s ruling are Chris Seeger of Seeger Weiss; Thomas Kline of Kline & Specter; Richard Arsenault of Neblett, Beard & Arsenault; Shelly Stanford of Sanford Barlow; Elizabeth Cabraser of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; Gerald Meunier of Gainsburgh, Benjamin, David, Meunier & Warshauer; Troy Rafferty of Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Rafferty; Mark Robinson Jr. of Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson; Drew Ranier of Ranier, Gayle & Elliot; and Christopher Tisi of Ashcraft and Gerel.

Link:  Merck Wins Fosamax CaseLead Vioxx Plaintiffs Lawyers Awarded $315 Million of $4.85 Billion Settlement

Palin E-mail Hacker Sentenced

David C. Kernell, 21,was sentenced to a year in a halfway house for his hacking into Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account. His defense said he has suffered from depression since he was 11, and that’s why he is being sent to a halfway house, where he can get some mental health care. David is the son of son of veteran state Rep. Mike Kernell, D-Memphis.

Sounds like a classic case of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome?)

Link: Pensacolanewsjournal – Palin e-mail hacker sentenced to year in custody.

What’s New In City Hall?

Among other topics to be discussed at the Pensacola City Council meeting today is whether to hire a law firm to sue BP for damages. You will recall that days before the recent local election, it was disclosed that there was a good possibility that the City might hire the Levin, Papantonio law firm to represent them in a suit against BP for ‘damages.’

The knee jerk reaction to that story was immediate and contrary. The Pensacola News Journal pulled the story and issued a correction. The nexus being that the name of the law firm (a huge advertiser in the paper) was not mentioned by city councilman Larry Johnson.

Councilman Johnson does have a connection to a local environmental group known as the Emerald Coastkeepers. He is on their board of trustees. And the chairman of the Emerald Coastkeepers is none other than mass tort lawyer and liberal talk radio host Mike Papantonio. Who, just days after the explosion made it known that it was his goal to hold Dick Cheney and the Bush administration responsible.

What happened next? “City Manager Al Coby said several firms have contacted city officials.” Really? Would Councilman Johnson be one of them? Would Levin, Papantonio be one of the firms?

Another blog known to be ‘up’ on local politics had this to say about it.

BP Legal Counsel: Staff has been meeting with the Levin firm and is recommending them to handle the city’s BP claims on a contingency basis. The Levin firm supported Ashton Hayward. Wiggins and Diane Mack rarely vote against a staff recommendation. Will they this time?

Why sue BP? File your claim already. There is $20 billion set aside for you. Why enrich the slip and fall lawyers anyway when a public adjuster is all you might need?

But of course, should the city council decide to sue, the law firm would be one with no connections to Levin, Papantonio, City Councilman Johnson, or the Emerald Coastkeepers club. Right?

After all, this recent election was all about getting rid of this good old boy network behavior wasn’t it?

Links:

National Oil Spill Commission Report, First Take

The findings about the Deepwater Horizon explosion omit the role that the Coast Guard played in the subsequent underwater leak.

From here, it looks like pumping water on the damaged and floating rig for 3 days was, at the very least, a contributing factor to the rig sinking to the sea floor, breaking up the lines and turning one surface leak into three sea-bottom leaks.

The question I asked the oil spill commission concerning the Coast Guard was this, ‘Was their role and the decisions they made in the time-frame between the explosion and the rig sinking ever questioned or examined?’

Aside from the forensic examination of the original explosion, I wonder if it includes the cause of the sinking of the rig itself? I’m just saying.

Link: Spill panel: No evidence of saving $ over safety – Yahoo! News

aSide Order

A random act of culture happened in Macy’s (formerly John Wanamaker’s) in Philadelphia last week, perpetrated by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. See if you can watch this video without tearing up. This brought about a union of people from all walks of life like no other. Only in America? Maybe so.

Another example of how stimulus money is being spent. How about $700,000 to study cow burps? Remember this, candidate, then President, Obama said he would not rest until every one that wanted a job could get one.

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a little shock and awe. Here is a new Israeli hand fired tank buster. Shown here destroying the ordinance in the tank and its crew. The four other Syrian tanks following this one turned around.

Want to see the reason that this global war on terror will be a long one? Maybe a generation or two? Can’t wait to see what C.A.I.R. has to say about this child preacher. Nothing Islamophobic about this. Sad thing about it is, this isn’t the first child raised with the terrorist mindset, and won’t be the last.

Child-Preacher Ammar: “A Child Must Be Raised on the Love of Jihad and on the Desire to Be Martyred for the Sake of Allah”


aSide Order

Candidate for Governor of Florida Alex Sink, caught here breaking the very rules that the person sending the text message on her Blackberry had proposed.

She promised an ethical administration, and promptly fired the guy on the other end of the Blackberry. To keep her promise, seems like there’s only one more person to fire.

But let’s be positive. Vote for Farid Khavari for Governor of the State of Florida. No BS, now kowtoing to political party machines. Just sound solutions.

Why the tea party movement? And why now?

Honoring our fallen veterans every summer evening for the last 38 years. A touching tradition at Cape May Point, New Jersey.

‘Tax Cuts For The Rich’ Laid Bare

Brass Oldies by Thomas Sowell

Classic songs from years past are sometimes referred to as “golden oldies.” There are political fallacies that have been around for a long time as well. These might be called brass oldies. It certainly takes a lot of brass to keep repeating fallacies that were refuted long ago.

One of these brass oldies is a phrase that has been a perennial favorite of the left, “tax cuts for the rich.” How long ago was this refuted? More than 80 years ago, the “tax cuts for the rich” argument was refuted, both in theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s.

When Mellon took office, there was a large national debt, the economy was stagnating, and tax rates were high, though the tax revenues were still not enough to cover government expenditures. What was Mellon’s prescription for getting out of this mess? A series of major cuts in the tax rates!

Then as now, there were people who failed to make the distinction between tax rates and tax revenues. Mellon said, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue for the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates.”

How can that be? Because taxpayers change their behavior according to what the tax rates are. When one of the Rockefellers died, Mellon discovered that his estate included $44 million in tax-exempt bonds, compared to $7 million in Standard Oil securities, even though Standard Oil was the source of the Rockefeller fortune.

For the country as a whole, the amount of money tied up in tax-exempt securities was estimated to be three times as large as the federal government’s expenditures and more than half as large as the national debt.

In short, huge amounts of money were not being invested in productive capacity, such as factories or power plants, but was instead being made available for local political boondoggles, because this money was put into tax-exempt state and local bonds.

When tax rates are reduced, investors have incentives to take their money out of tax shelters and put it into the private economy, creating higher returns for themselves and more production in the economy.

Andrew Mellon understood this then, even though many in politics and the media seem not to understand it now.

Mellon was able to persuade Congress to lower the tax rates by large amounts. The percentage by which tax rates were lowered was greater at the lower income levels, but the total amount of money saved by taxpayers was of course greater on the part of people with higher incomes, who were paying much higher tax rates on those incomes.

Between 1921 and 1929, tax rates in the top brackets were cut from 73 percent to 24 percent. In other words, these were what the left likes to call “tax cuts for the rich.”

What happened to federal revenues from income taxes over this same span of time? Income tax revenues rose by more than 30 percent. What happened to the economy? Jobs increased, output rose, the unemployment rate fell and incomes rose. Because economic activity increased, the government received more income tax revenues. In short, these were tax cuts for the economy, even if the left likes to call them “tax cuts for the rich.”

This was not the only time that things like this happened, nor was Andrew Mellon the only one who advocated tax rate cuts in order to increase tax revenues. John Maynard Keynes pointed out in 1933 that lowering the tax rates can increase tax revenues, if the tax rates are so high as to discourage economic activity.

President John F. Kennedy made the same argument in the 1960s — and tax revenues increased after the tax rates were cut during his administration. The same thing happened under Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. And it happened again under George W. Bush, whose tax rate cuts are scheduled to expire next January.

The rich actually paid more total taxes, and a higher percentage of all taxes, after the Bush tax rate cuts, because their incomes were rising with the rising economy.

Do the people who keep repeating the catch phrase, “tax cuts for the rich” not know this? Or are they depending on your not knowing it?

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

Videos On Politics And Immigration

Below are some videos that even the hardened Left can understand. From the funny to not so funny.

Here is a serious video that addresses world poverty and immigration. It is something that the thugs in the United Nations should be forced to watch.

The answer to world poverty can be summed up in one word. Freedom. That is what made the United States what it is in a matter of a couple hundred years.  When people are allowed the freedom to have the fruits of their labor, and not be under the thumb of a dictator or some violent and ancient theocracy, they will thrive. And freedom is the way that these people will be able to help themselves right where they live.

Given where we are today, this funny video looks 20 years into the future.

Funny, isn’t it?

Senator Barbara Boxer worked so hard for that title. This parody explains it all.

And then there is this gem. At a debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters, the moderator Kathy Tate-Bradish, an Organizing For America member, scolded the audience for saying the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the debate. The debate was for Illinois’ 8th Congressional District candidates Joe Walsh, Melissa Bean and Bill Scheurer at Grayslake Central High School.

Apparently she had an agenda of her own. She should have embraced the idea, after she joined in the pledge herself.

The Executive Director of the League of Woman Voters and former ACORN worker, Jan Czarnik, accused supporters of Republican candidate Joe Walsh and tea party members of bully the organization. Right. Saying the Pledge of Allegiance is something you should have to be coerced into doing?

Czarnik also characterized the 300 member audience, standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as, “phony patriotism.”

Apparently, that’s the way the League of Women Voters roll.