US Mulls Placing Black Boxes in All Cars

March 12, 2010

Reuters

By Kevin Krolicki and John Crawley

Unprecedented discounts after a series of damaging recalls boosted Toyota Motor Corp’s (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research) (TM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) U.S. sales in early March, as U.S. regulators weighed new auto safety measures.

Toyota’s U.S. sales surged by nearly 50 percent in the first eight days of March compared with the year-ago period due to zero-percent financing offers and other incentives, industry tracking service Edmunds.com and dealers said on Thursday.

Edmunds, which analyzes U.S. auto sales trends, also estimated that Toyota’s U.S. retail market share in early March had jumped to 16.8 percent, up sharply from 12.8 percent a month earlier when safety problems had sent sales tumbling.

“What they’re doing right now is they are picking low-hanging fruit,” said Chester Schriesheim, professor at the University of Miami School of Business Administration.

“These are the people who are undecided about the brand but given the lower price, now that provides incentives to go ahead and purchase,” he said. “But they’re going to exhaust that pool of individuals and then they’ll find it harder in the longer term to raise the prices backward.”

The early sales estimate comes a week after Toyota launched the most aggressive discounts in its history to win over U.S. consumers and recover from an embarrassing slew of product safety problems that have tarnished its reputation and cut into sales and financial results.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Strickland told a congressional hearing on Thursday that the regulator is considering whether to make “black boxes” mandatory for all new vehicles. [ID:nN11246251]

The devices can capture data on speed, braking effort and other details which can be vital in reconstructing accidents.

Toyota has recalled more than 8 million vehicles globally to address the risk that accelerator pedals on a range of its vehicles could become stuck because of a loose floor mat or a glitch in the pedal assembly.

Unintended acceleration in the company’s Toyota and Lexus vehicles has been linked to at least five U.S. crash deaths since 2007. Authorities are investigating 47 other Toyota crash deaths over the past decade.

TOYOTA, GM BOOST MARCH INDUSTRY SALES

Edmunds.com said that industrywide U.S. auto sales are tracking to hit a rate of 12.5 million vehicles in March because of the steep discounts on Toyota vehicles and a competitive campaign launched by General Motors Co [GM.UL].

GM is offering car shoppers rebates of up to $3,000 on vehicles including the Malibu mid-size sedan, or zero-percent financing.

Toyota, which has traditionally spurned such discount programs in order to protect resale values, has offered up to $3,000 in rebates and dealer incentives on a range of vehicles, including its top-selling Camry, or cut-rate financing.

Both manufacturers are offering steeper discounts on their competing full-size pickup trucks, GM’s Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra and the Toyota Tundra.
Edmunds said GM’s sales incentives lifted Chevy’s retail market share to 12.9 percent, up from 11.4 percent a month earlier.

Several major Toyota dealers said their own sales were running slightly higher than the Edmunds estimate through Tuesday. That would mark a sharp reversal from sales declines in January and February tied to the automaker’s recall crisis.

Paul Atkinson, president of the Toyota national dealers’ council and a Toyota dealer in Texas, said he expected that the March sales boost from incentives would mirror what the automaker saw during the 2009 “cash for clunkers” program.

Toyota was the big winner from that U.S. government-funded scrappage program, which offered tax credits of up to $4,500 to swap out of older and less fuel-efficient vehicles.

Toyota had a 19.4 percent share of vehicles sold under the “clunkers” program which ran from late July through the third week of August 2009. Toyota’s share was the highest in the industry.

“I truly believe that March could rival cash for clunkers,” Atkinson said.

Sales at his own dealership in early March were running at three times the level of January and February, he said. Customers shopping for the bargains do not appear concerned by Toyota’s recalls, he said.

“Honestly, I think the public has had enough,” he said.

Just this week, as Toyota sought to shift attention away from the safety problems, at least three U.S. drivers reported new cases of driving Prius or Lexus vehicles that appeared to surge out of control.
Atkinson has encouraged Toyota dealers to protest GM’s incentives in March, saying they amounted to a taxpayer-funded program of discounts because the U.S. government funded GM’s restructuring in bankruptcy with $50 billion in aid.

“We just want a level playing field,” he told Reuters. “These GM incentives are kind of like using tax dollars to encourage my fellow citizens to not do business with me.”

GM has defended its use of incentives, saying such discounts are a well-established part of the way cars are sold in the U.S. market.

Click here for the full report

Illegally Obtained Blood Samples of Babies in Texas Ordered Destroyed

February 22, 2010

Natural News

By Ethan A. Huff

The subject of a recent federal lawsuit, routine blood samples legally taken from Texas newborns to screen for disorders and diseases were illegally being kept by the Texas Department of State Health Services without parental consent. Found to have begun holding and retaining such blood samples since 2002, the agency is being sued on behalf of the children’s parents by the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Legislation passed in May 2009 allows for blood samples to be retained indefinitely but allows parents to opt out if they wish to do so. However the lawsuit maintains that all blood samples obtained prior to the legislation be destroyed in cooperation with the law at that time. While the Health Department has agreed to destroy the samples, which have been preserved as blood spot cards, it is requesting permission to keep the blood samples of 400 children whose blood tested positive for certain atypical disorders.

The lawsuit is demanding no financial restitution for the state’s crimes, citing only privacy concerns and the principle of holding the government accountable when it violates the rights of its people. According to Andrea Beleno, an Austin mother and plaintiff in the suit, people must stand up and oppose governmental lawlessness otherwise nobody will.

An agreement was reached on December 14 whereby the Center must destroy all samples within 120 days unless the state receives written permission to retain specific samples. The Health Department must also inform the parents who were plaintiffs in the suit how their children’s blood samples were used and if any financial transactions took place during the research process. All projects must also be published on the agency’s newborn screening website.

Spokesmen from Texas A&M’s Health Science Center, the facility where the blood cards were being stored, expressed relief that a settlement has been agreed upon and the lawsuit dismissed, but it mourned the loss of what it described as a “superb database” that would have helped to prevent future birth defects in children.

The Health Department has agreed to comply fully with the new law concerning blood sample retention and is assuring parents that all information will be kept confidential and privacy maintained. The agency hopes that new parents will be willing to voluntarily allow their children’s blood samples to be retained for research purposes that could lead to novel new treatments for serious medical problems.

Click here for the full report

Citigroup May Refuse To Allow Withdrawals

February 22, 2010

Prison Planet

By Paul Joseph Watson

A new advisory being sent by America’s third largest bank to its account holders has stoked fears that major financial institutions could be preparing for old fashioned bank runs if the economy takes a turn for the worse.

Originally reported by John Carney over at the Business Insider website, Citigroup is sending the following information to customers along with their bank statements.

“Effective April 1, 2010, we reserve the right to require (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking accounts. While we do not currently exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past, we are required by law to notify you of this change.”

An almost identical advisory to the one being sent out can be read on page 22 of Citbank’s Client Manual effective January 1, 2010, which can be read here from Citibank’s own website.

“We reserve the right to require seven (7) days advance notice before permitting a withdrawal from all checking, savings and money market accounts. We currently do not exercise this right and have not exercised it in the past,” states the manual.

According to the Future of Capitalism blog, Citigroup originally claimed that the warning was only sent nationwide as a result of a mistake, but that the measures do apply to account holders in Texas.

However, in a statement, Citigroup confirmed that they had reserved the right to impose the new 7 day rule on all account holders nationwide, but claimed they had no plans to enforce it. The bank stated that they had been forced to enact the new policy as a result of federal regulations.

“When Citibank moved to unlimited FDIC coverage in 2009, we had to reclassify many checking accounts to allow for immediate withdrawals in order to ensure all customers qualified for the additional coverage. When we moved back to standard FDIC coverage with most major banks in 2010, Citibank decided to reclassify those accounts back to make them eligible again for promotional incentives. To do so, Federal Reserve Reg D requires these accounts, called NOW accounts, to reserve the right to require a 7-day notice of withdrawal. We recently communicated this technical requirement to our customers. However, we have never exercised this right and have no plans to do so in the future,” reads a statement released by the bank.

Over the last 18 months, numerous rumors of bank runs, “bank holidays,” and limitations on access to cash at ATM’s have been floating around. Citigroup’s new policy to restrict withdrawals won’t do anything to calm such fears.

As we reported back in 2008, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guarantees individual accounts up to $100,000, only has about $50 billion to “insure” about $1 trillion in assets across the nation’s financial institutions.

This revelation prompted fears that an accelerating amount of bank closures could absorb FDIC funds and leave holders of money market and traditional savings accounts exposed.

Click here for the full report

Nurse to Stand Trial for Reporting Doctor

February 8, 2010

The New York Times

By Kevin Sack

It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.When she was fingerprinted and photographed at the jail here last June, it felt as if she had entered a parallel universe, albeit one situated in this barren scrap of West Texas oil patch.

“It was surreal,” said Mrs. Mitchell, 52, the wife of an oil field mechanic and mother of a teenage son. “I said how can this be? You can’t go to prison for doing the right thing.”

But in what may be an unprecedented prosecution, Mrs. Mitchell is scheduled to stand trial in state court on Monday for “misuse of official information,” a third-degree felony in Texas.

The prosecutor said he would show that Mrs. Mitchell had a history of making “inflammatory” statements about Dr. Rolando G. Arafiles Jr. and intended to damage his reputation when she reported him last April to the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and disciplines doctors.

Mrs. Mitchell counters that as an administrative nurse, she had a professional obligation to protect patients from what she saw as a pattern of improper prescribing and surgical procedures — including a failed skin graft that Dr. Arafiles performed in the emergency room, without surgical privileges. He also sutured a rubber tip to a patient’s crushed finger for protection, an unconventional remedy that was later flagged as inappropriate by the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Charges against a second nurse, Vickilyn Galle, who helped Mrs. Mitchell write the letter, were dismissed at the prosecutor’s discretion last week.

The case has been infused with the small-town politics of this wind-whipped city of 5,200 in the heart of the Permian Basin, 10 miles from the New Mexico border. The seeming conflicts of interest are as abundant as the cattle grazing among the pump jacks and mesquite.

When the medical board notified Dr. Arafiles of the anonymous complaint, he protested to his friend, the Winkler County sheriff, that he was being harassed. The sheriff, an admiring patient who credits the doctor with saving him after a heart attack, obtained a search warrant to seize the two nurses’ work computers and found the letter.

Both sides acknowledge that the case has polarized the community, and the judge has moved the trial to a neighboring county.

The state and national nurses associations have called the prosecution an outrage and raised $40,000 for the defense. Legal experts argue that in a civil context, Mrs. Mitchell would seem to be protected by Texas whistle-blower laws.

“To me, this is completely over the top,” said Louis A. Clark, president of the Government Accountability Project, a group that promotes the defense of whistle-blowers. “It seems really, really unique.”

Until they were fired without explanation on June 1, Mrs. Mitchell and Mrs. Galle had worked a combined 47 years at Winkler County Memorial Hospital here, most recently as its compliance and quality improvement officers.

The nurses, who are highly regarded even by the administrator who dismissed them, said the case had stained their reputations and drained their savings. With felony charges pending, neither has been able to find work. They said they could feel heads turn when they walked into local lunch spots like El Joey’s Mexican restaurant.

“It has derailed our careers, and we’re probably not going to be able to get them back on track again,” said Mrs. Galle, 54, a grandmother who is depicted around town as the soft-spoken Thelma to Mrs. Mitchell’s straight-shooting Louise. “We’re just in disbelief that you could be arrested for doing something you had been told your whole career was an obligation.”

It was not long after the public hospital hired Dr. Arafiles in 2008 that the nurses said they began to worry. They sounded internal alarms but felt they were not being heeded by administrators.

Frustrated and fearing for patients, they directed the medical board to six cases “of concern” that were identified by file numbers but not by patient names. The letter also mentioned that Dr. Arafiles was sending e-mail messages to patients about an herbal supplement he sold on the side.

Mrs. Mitchell typed the letter and mailed it with a separate complaint signed by a third nurse, who wrote that she had resigned because of similar concerns about Dr. Arafiles. That nurse was not charged.

To convict Mrs. Mitchell, the prosecution must prove that she used her position to disseminate confidential information for a “nongovernmental purpose” with intent to harm Dr. Arafiles.

Mari E. Robinson, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, has warned in a blistering letter to prosecutors that the case will have “a significant chilling effect” on the reporting of malpractice.

The nurses’ lawyers, John H. Cook IV and Brian Carney, have filed a civil lawsuit in federal court charging the county, hospital, sheriff, doctor and prosecutor with vindictive prosecution and denial of the nurses’ First Amendment rights.

Nonetheless, the sheriff, Robert L. Roberts Jr., and the prosecutor, Scott M. Tidwell, express confidence in their case.

Click here for the full report

Thank you for always being so honest…

Kevin: 

I just wanted to let you know that you are a wonderful person! Thank you for always being so honest. They will eventually get theirs for lying and hurting the people of this country and world.  How can they treat human-beings like this? It is really sad! I love your radio program! 

Thanks again! 
Barbara J. Muldoon
El Paso, Texas

Dr. Bob Marshall – Quantum Nutrition Center

Click the picture or link below to hear Kevin’s interview Dr. Bob Marshall, the founder of the Quantum Nutrition Center.

 

 Dr. Bob Marshall 01/19/10

Kevin Comes To The Lone Star State!

December 18, 2009  CHICAGO, IL – The Kevin Trudeau show is proud to announce that starting December 19, 2009, it will be airing on KNVR 1410 in San Saba, Texas!

The show will be on KNVR every Saturday from 1:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M.

Listeners have compared Kevin Trudeau’s radio show to the best parts of Michael Savage, Howard Stern, Art Bell, John Tesh and Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Trudeau is one of the most read authors of all time.  His books have all been best sellers and have sold over 30 million copies globally.  Mr. Trudeau’s most controversial book, Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About was number 1 on the New York Times best sellers list for 26 weeks in a row becoming the best selling health book of all time.

The Kevin Trudeau Radio Show originates from studios at Trudeau’s World Headquarters in Chicago. For information regarding affiliate relations visit www.KevinOnAir.com

Neocon Trying to Oust Ron Paul

October 28, 2009

InfoWars

By Kurt Nimmo

Tim Graney of Katy, Texas, has announced a bid to unseat Ron Paul in the 14th congressional district of Texas. According to FortBendNow, a news website in Houston, Graney is a small business owner and this is his first political campaign. Graney told FortBendNow the district needs a new voice in Congress, particularly in the area of foreign policy.
 
Ron Paul adamantly opposes the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. “I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military alliances. In other words, noninterventionism,” Paul wrote in 2007. He believes Congress needs to reassert its authority over foreign policy. The Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign matters, Paul insists. “Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive.”

“I am a fiscal conservative, but I do not support Ron Paul’s weak foreign policy views, nor do I support his do whatever you want ultra-Libertarian views that conflict with our American values,” Graney said.

In other words, Graney subscribes to the unitary executive doctrine of an imperial presidency. The Constitution makes a distinction between the power of the Congress and that of the president by stating that Congress shall “make all laws” and the president shall “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Graney apparently believes invading small countries and killing large numbers of people — more than a million so far in Iraq — represents “American values.”

Ron Paul is not an “ultra-Libertarian” (ultra-libertarianism would be defined as anarchism). Paul is a mainstream Libertarian. Mainstream Libertarians support free market capitalism by advocating a right to private property, minimal government regulation of property, minimal taxation, and rejection of the welfare state, all within the context of the rule of law.

According to Graney, Paul’s mainstream Libertarianism is not consistent with the beliefs of residents in the district. Mr. Graney apparently believes the residents support undeclared and illegal wars, unchecked federal power over the states, federalized local police, and an astronomical federal debt that threatens to impoverish them and their children.

It is not clear if Mr. Graney’s campaign is supported by defenders of the Federal Reserve and the bankers. In February, Ron Paul introduced HR 1207, a bill to audit the Federal Reserve. If enacted, the bill would enable the Comptroller General of the GAO to audit the Federal Reserve system before the end of 2010. HR 1207 now has 307 sponsors. Committee hearings were held on September 25.

On October 12, the neocon Republican Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, told a town hall meeting he would not allow Paul to “hijack” the Republican Party. Graham supports a big government climate bill “because it could mean good business,” according to Politico. He told Politico he backs “combining an energy independence bill with one to control carbon dioxide emissions.”

“I am more resolute than ever to help steer our nation back onto the path of common-sense energy initiatives,” said Graney.

Ron Paul has signed the “No Climate Tax Pledge” sponsored by Americans for Prosperity. The pledge opposes “legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue” through taxation.

Click here for the full report.

Ron Paul: Obama’s ‘Goal’ is Economic Collapse

June 23, 2009

The Raw Story

by David Edwards and Stephen Webster

Ron Paul, the popular Republican Congressman from Texas, is ripping into the president and Congress for what he sees as their “goal” with round after round of stimulus: complete economic collapse.

“From their spending habits, an economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress and this administration,” he said in his June 22, 2009, weekly address.

He added that Democrats who voted for the president’s war funding request, which gave an additional $106 billion to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — among other, unrelated items — were actually voting in favor of the wars, not just authorization of the president’s agenda.

He called it an affront to everyone who believed a vote for Obama was a vote for a peace candidate.

The president’s insistence on including an additional $108 billion in asset exchange with the International Monetary Fund is merely “buying global oppression,” he said.

Paul added that, “this [bill sent] $660 million to Gaza, $555 million to Israel, $310 million to Egypt, $300 million to Jordan and $420 million to Mexico; and some $889 million will be sent to the United Nations for so-called peace keeping missions.”

In other words, the latest U.S. war funding was an “International bailout,” he said.

The legislation’s provisions for the IMF included 100 billion dollars for the New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB), a credit instrument providing the multilateral institution with additional resources to deal with exceptional risks to the stability of the international monetary system.

They also include an expansion of the nation’s special drawing rights by five billion SDRs, adding roughly eight billion dollars to the IMF’s financial firepower.

The 100 billion dollars for the NAB acts as a credit line for the IMF in case member countries need emergency loans that exceed the institution’s resources. As such, the money is not considered an immediate budget expense.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) had proposed to strip out the IMF funds, but his measure was defeated in May by a vote of 64-30.

“Not only does sending money to the IMF hurt citizens here, evidence shows that it even hurts those it pretends to help,” Paul said. “Along with IMF loans come IMF required policy changes called ’structural adjustment programs,’ which amount to forced Keynesianism. This is the very fantasy-infused economic model that brought our own country to its knees.”

This audio is from Congressman Ron Paul’s weekly address, released June 22, 2009.

Click here to view the full story and hear the audio from The Raw Story.