Author: Justin Lane

The internet service in the United Stated is among the worst in the technologically-advanced world. Compared to other civilized nations, our service is slow, expensive and unreliable. It is an international embarrassment that the nation that literally invented the internet lags so far behind in making its network competitive. So who’s to blame for this American failure? Monopolies. Time Warner, Comcast, and Verizon are a few of the companies that have lobbied to be granted special positions as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and they are not holding up their end of the deal. Telecom companies have been granted special...

A loophole hole in financial legislation is allowing banks to buy commodities and artificially influence markets. It’s a disaster and, yes, the sky is falling. The law that allowed this abomination of a behavior to go on is known called the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and it continued the tradition of  Wall Street deregulation that had been started during the Reagan administration. As part of its revisions, a situation was created that allowed American banks to merge in order to compete in a more global economy. To do this, Congress had to remove...

New numbers are out that disclose the amount major pharmaceutical companies are spending on marketing. The reports indicate that spending on physician speaking engagements is scaling back and analysts suspect that it may be a response to new financial disclosure laws. According to new data collected as part of an ongoing report by ProPublica, most major pharmaceutical companies have reduced their budgets for promotional speaking by as much 50%. This is amid a slew of whistleblower lawsuits that have shown the companies as engaging in illegal marketing practices. These can include promoting drugs for uses that are not approved...

The situation in Crimea and Ukraine is tenuous. It is rife with violence that is the product of a complicated and entangled history that culminated in the conflict that has been making headlines in the past week. How does CNN see the story? As an opportunity to increase its ratings and get feeble-minded viewers to buy into a narrative of fear and saber rattling. It’s nothing new for CNN. With past conflicts and social events, the narrative they choose to forward is one of imminent destruction and chaos. Russia has long planned its recent ICBM test. However, this news...

Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the owner of two adult day care centers had been sentenced for his involvement with efforts to defraud Medicare of as much as $3.2 million. The owner, Glenn English was convicted and will serve eight years in prison and pay $988,529 in restitution. Upon his release, English will serve an additional three years in supervised release. “The filing of false claims for payment is a blight on the health care system,” Christopher Paulos said. “Individuals taking advantage of a trusting healthcare system exploit people at their most vulnerable and needlessly...