Author: KJ McElrath

Keep Celebrating Bayer … Xarelto is Just Starting

Keep Celebrating Bayer … Xarelto is Just Starting

Posted by | May 15, 2015 | |

The Xarelto Internet home page trumpets “#1 Prescribed Blood Thinner in Its Class!” This news is accompanied by three popular celebrities: Saturday Night Live alumnus Kevin Nealon, retired golf legend Arnold Palmer, and NASCAR driver Brian Vickers (proudly displaying the name of his corporate sponsor on the front of his jacket – something that members of CONgress should be doing as well). Apparently, these happy celebrities have yet to suffer the uncontrolled hemorrhaging associated with Xarelto and other “next generation” anti-coagulants. Meanwhile, in Louisiana alone, the number of Xarelto lawsuits is up 1200%  since December 2014, from 33 to...

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Corporate “Free Speech” Castrates the FDA

Corporate “Free Speech” Castrates the FDA

Posted by | May 10, 2015 | , |

The First Amendment of the Constitution has surely sparked controversy over the decades. What is “free speech”? What are its limits? It is generally agreed that yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater is not protected under the First Amendment. And while the courts have ruled that political candidates can say virtually anything they like about rivals, truth be damned, this freedom doesn’t protect politicians from libel and slander lawsuits. Publicly threatening a public official with bodily harm is also against federal law (though such laws pretty much go unenforced anymore, at least for right-wing politicians, talking heads and celebrities)....

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Rubio Pimps for Corinthian College of Fraud

Rubio Pimps for Corinthian College of Fraud

Posted by | May 4, 2015 | |

For all his accomplishments and his illustrious career, Thomas Jefferson considered his greatest achievement to be the establishment of the University of Virginia, a publicly-funded institution with one goal: turning out educated, free-thinking citizens. Jefferson would have been appalled and outraged at the very concept of for-profit education – and the late, unlamented Corinthian College of Fraud is the poster child for everything that perversion of civilized society represents. Founded by a group of executives for a California-based, for-profit corporate operator of vocational schools, Corinthian was founded in 1995. The company’s mission: “…to acquire schools that were fundamentally sound...

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DuPont’s Long History as Environmental and Health Predator

DuPont’s Long History as Environmental and Health Predator

Posted by | May 1, 2015 | |

It is unlikely that the corporate version of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythical Cthulhu will be going away anytime soon, but if activist billionaire investor Nelson Peltz has anything to say about it, there will be major changes at DuPont – including a breakup of the $64 billion conglomerate. DuPont Chemical was founded in 1801 by a minor French aristocrat who had fled his homeland during the Revolution one step ahead of the guillotine. Starting out as a manufacturer of gunpowder, the company grew over the decades of the 19th Century like a tumor. It’s an apt metaphor given DuPont’s environmental...

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Budweiser’s Freakish Ad Campaigns: Maybe Try Another Beer

Budweiser’s Freakish Ad Campaigns: Maybe Try Another Beer

Posted by | Apr 30, 2015 | |

Anheuser-Busch, the commercial brewery that produces Budweiser beer, hasn’t been doing well lately in winning customers and influencing beer drinkers (debatable quality of its product notwithstanding). First, there was that Super Bowl 2015 ad that employed “reverse snobbery” tactics attacking craft micro-brews with messages like “Brewed the hard way,” and “Let them sip their Pumpkin Peach Ale” (newsflash, Budweiser: most connoisseurs of fine micro-brews prefer traditional lagers and ales and don’t generally care for the flavored ones). It completely backfired, though given the fact that big corporate breweries have been steadily losing market share to local craft breweries, you...

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