IMAGES:

THE CORPORATE RESPONSE:

AMERICAN POLITICS/ECONOMICS:

"CORNERED"-THE BOOK:

Here's a little book plug for something the people at Wake Up WalMart consider well worth reading.

CCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

New Book Cornered Discusses Walmart, Destructive Monopolies:‏
Do you want the real story about who destroyed America's REAL economy?

We wanted to recommend a new book that just hit the shelves. In Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism And The Economics Of Destruction, New America Foundation's Barry C. Lynn takes an explosive look at how Wall Street financiers took advantage of the overthrow of our anti-monopoly laws to consolidate unprecedented powers.

They use these powers in ways that destroy jobs, degrade safety, crush independent businesses, forestall innovation, harm our environment, and threaten the political foundations of our democratic republic.

Not surprisingly, Walmart is a major player in this disturbing story. Lynn discusses Walmart as one of the quintessential examples of the destructive monopoly, arguing that Walmart needs to change its ways not just for the benefit of workers or communities, but for the entire economy.
Endorsements for Cornered:
Cornered has changed my view of what's gone wrong with American capitalism. Brilliantly argued and meticulously reported, it confronts with the age-old enemy of both progressives and libertarian conservatives -- the power of monopoly.

-Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed and Brightsided.
This book is essential to understanding how we got into our current mess.

-Michael Mandel, chief economist, Business Week.
This is a truly groundbreaking and eye-opening work that everyone interested in understanding how the world really operates should read.

-Ha Joon Chang, winner Leontief Prize in economics, author Bad Samaritans.
Best Wishes,
The Team,

WakeUpWalMart.com

MONOPOLY AND ANTI-MONOPOLY:

MEDICINE AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN:

Considerable controversy has surrounded the idea of "intellectual property rights" in the so-called information age. This sort of monopoly is an obvious one, promoted by private interests, already powerful, and protected and advanced by government. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of instances have arisen in past years where it was obvious that restricted access to information was detrimental to the public good, and campaigns demanding that free access, especially to research funded by public money, have been prominent in their opposition to restricted access, whether it be to genome sequences or to published scientific papers. See The Union for the Public Domain and IP Watch for more on this issue. Also the Against Monopoly site in our links section.

Down Toronto way there will be a panel discussion tomorrow, sponsored by Open Medicine, Canada's independent open source online medical journal. Here's the announcement. catch it if you can for some interesting ideas.

???????????????

Open Medicine presents:

The power of the public domain:

Can improving access to information transform global health?:

A panel discussion with: James Orbinski, Gavin Yamey & James Maskalyk

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

6:30 pm

Free (Donations welcome)

Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building

University of Toronto

144 College Street

Room B150

James Orbinski, MD, MA

James Orbinski is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and author of the national bestseller An Imperfect Offering. He was the International President of Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in 1999 when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and co-founded Dignitas International, an organization focused on community-based care and prevention of HIV in the developing world.

James Maskalyk, MD

James Maskalyk is an associate editor of Open Medicine. He practises emergency medicine and is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. He is the author of the newly published book Six Months in Sudan, which chronicles his humanitarian work with Médecins sans Frontières in 2007.

Gavin Yamey, MD

Gavin Yamey is a senior editor of PLoS Medicine and consulting editor to PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He has written extensively on global health, and has helped to train medical editors at workshops in Barcelona and Addis Ababa. He is on the editorial board of Health and Human Rights and was recently awarded a 2009 Kaiser Foundation Mini-Fellowship in Global Health Reporting.

For more information, please visit OpenMedicine.ca . You can also follow Open Medicine via identi.ca or twitter (openmedicine)

Please help us spread the word!

WINNIPEG;
WILL CO-OP TAXI COME TO WINNIPEG ?:
Most cities across Canada (and the USA for that matter) have "co-op taxis" where the taxi company is owned and controlled as a producers' co-op by the taxi drivers themselves. In Canada such cities as Edmonton, Calgary,St. John's,Regina, Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City, amongst many others have such outfits. Taxi drivers typically have a hard work life, and it doesn't help that they are usually exploited by the cab companies. In other cities taxi drivers have responded by forming producers' co-ops, owned by the cab drivers themselves. For many years Winnipeg has been an exception, but now there is an initiative for a co-op taxi company here in this city. Here in Winnipeg taxi licences are only $200 from the Taxicab Board, but because of the monopoly situation these may retail at $200,000 on the so-called "free market". Here's an item from the Winnipeg Free Press about the latest taxi-cab hearings and the efforts of the established companies to block newcomers that might break their monopoly.
..................................
Cab firms try to block newcomers
Two of Winnipeg's established cab companies tried Monday to keep the road to themselves, speaking out against upstart cab firms that are asking the Taxicab Board to consider adding 250 new taxi licences.



The looming showdown in a city that has not seen any new licences issued in 25 years comes amid growing public complaints about a lack of taxis on Winnipeg streets.



On Monday, the provincial regulator held its second day of public hearings for an application for 100 new licences -- including 50 premium licences for Mercedes Benz cars -- by Tejal Atwal, the new owner of Spring Taxi.



Late next month a hearing is also scheduled for an application from Winnipeg Taxi Co-Op, a group of 100 current drivers that is seeking 150 new licences after being fed up with the current model that they say favours licence holders and exploits drivers.



"We are concerned about public convenience," said Atwal, "The city is growing and the number of cabs has not grown."



Atwal said the evidence that more taxis is evidenced by the fact Spring Taxi -- which is about to change its name to Greenline Taxi -- has been turning away close 1,000 potential fares per day because there aren't enough cabs on the street to meet the demand.



But Atwal's application for new licences is being vigorously opposed by Duffy's and Unicity whose licence holders are keen to protect their business turf -- not to mention the goodwill value of their licence which has risen to more than $200,000 this year.



Atwal is a former Duffy's board member who bought 12 Duffy's licences over the years and sold them for top dollar last February. In the fall of 2007 he bought Spring Taxi which owns 18 licences and also dispatches for 25 other owner/operators.



Recent reports have shown that Hamilton is the only city in Canada with fewer cabs per capita than Winnipeg. Not counting about 10 premium cabs that were converted to standard licences in 1997 and some new handi-transit and accessible taxi licences, there has not been any new licences issued since the late '70s. There are 409 standard taxis in Winnipeg.



It was standing room only at the Taxicab Board hearing room as close to 50 drivers and licence owners from Duffy's and Unicity were in attendance to line up against Atwal's application. Outside the hearing room, Duffy's and Unicity licence holders took exception to some of the claims made by Atwal about demand out-stripping supply.



"They say they have to turn business down, but I wait an hour or more between fares sometimes," said Raj Sandhu a driver for Duffy's.



However, Leonard Kaplan, the general manager of Spring Taxi for the past seven years, backed up Atwal's application.



"You can't tell me that with the casinos, new hotels, the MTS Centre and the increased traffic at the airport that demand has not increased. It's time to increase the supply," Kaplan said.
Navdeep Dhillon, president of Duffy's, said the problem is that there is an increase in demand during the Christmas season and in the cold weather but that demand dies right off in the summer.



"We would put even more cars on in the winter if we could, but the other eight months there is no business," he said.



The Taxicab Board does offer temporary licences during the winter months. The Taxicab Board heard that Spring Taxi did not draw down all the temporary licences it has access to in the winter.



Even some of his opponents say that Atwal is a smart business operator. The 15-year veteran of the industry purchased 12 Duffy's licences over the years eventually helping to bid up the price of the coveted licence to well over $200,000. He sold them all at top dollar and is now applying to buy 100 new licences from the Taxicab Board at a cost of only $200 each,not including the cost of the vehicle itself.



Meanwhile, Terri Prouxl, manager of the Community and Worker Ownership Program at SEED Winnipeg is helping to coordinate a group of 100 disgruntled drivers in their efforts to start a co-op.



She said even though they are not allowed to deduct operating expenses from their income tax, drivers are required to make repairs and pay for all their gas. They are paid less than 50 per cent of the fares they bring in with the licence holders taking the rest as well as claiming the deduction.



"It is a flawed system," she said. "We believe the co-op model is a much healthier way to operate."



SEED Winnipeg has requested that the Taxicab Board reserve the decision on the Greenline/Spring application until after the Winnipeg Taxi Co-Op hearing scheduled for June 23.
The Taxicab Board reserved its decision Monday.
martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
Taxi! Taxi!
Who controls the number of cabs on the road?



The Manitoba Taxicab Board, a quasi-judicial provincial regulatory body issues licences, regulates fares, establishes vehicle standards, trains drivers and investigates complaints.
How much do licences cost?



The Taxicab Board only charges $200 for newly issued licences. But since there have been so few new licences issued over the past 30 years licences can go for than $200,000 on the resale market.



How much do licences cost elsewhere?
In Toronto and Vancouver licences can sell for as much as $300,000 on the resale market. In New York City, for example, the municipal taxi board auctions off a new licence that goes for as much as US$400,000.


How many licenced taxis are there here?
There are 409 standard taxis, 24 accessible, 64 hand-cabs and 54 limousines.
What does the Taxicab Board consider when determining whether to issue new licences?
Its mandate is to ensure that Winnipeg citizens and visitors to the city receive adequate taxicab service. In doing so they attempt to find the right balance between the number of cars and the demand. The economic viability of the operators is also taken into account.

CANADIAN LABOUR:

INFORMATION: MONOPOLY = MUZZLING:

The Canadian Labour Congress is presently holding its national convention in Toronto, and one of the subjects being discussed is the increasing corporate concentration in the media. Here's the statement of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) on the subject.

............................

Canada’s major unions defending information
Toronto –

“The quality of information is threatened across the country and journalists are about to become an endangered species.” This is the opinion expressed by CUPE at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) convention in Toronto. “The convergence of media and the perfunctory closure of newsrooms constitute a serious threat to the diversity of voices of information, and as a result, to the vitality of our democratic debate,” said Michel Bibeault, assistant director of CUPE-Québec.“ We are witnessing an accelerated decline in the plurality of sources of information, a phenomenon that can be seen everywhere, but that is felt especially in the outlying regions that are losing their local news. It is high time for the Harper government to change its political position, defend the public interest, and put pressure on the CRTC to maintain the newsrooms in radio and television stations serving a general audience.”

CUPE believes that the situation is particularly troubling in Québec, given the announced closure of the TQS newsrooms and the CHRC newsroom in Québec City, and cutbacks at Global TV, TVA-Québec and The Gazette, not to mention the lockout at the Journal de Québec that has been going on for over a year. “While our planet is becoming smaller and, at the same time, increasingly complex, large conglomerates control the bulk of our information, creating little news but continually broadcasting the same information on a variety of platforms. Does this serve the interests of our citizens? Does this allow us to know what is happening in our communities? Does this enable us to make enlightened choices? Definitely not. We are on a slippery slope, and the major Canadian unions are reacting before it is too late,” added Michel Bibeault.

COST TO THE CONSUMER:
The owner of the Against Monopoly site (see also our links section) has posted an interesting item on the relative costs of the monopoly granted by drug patents. It is basically a report on a case study published in the American Economic Review of the relative costs and benefits of patent protection in the case of quinolone antibiotics. The generally accepted opinion is that the loss to a developing country is about 150% of the gain to the developed country holding the patent. This, according to the study cited, is a gross underestimate as the conventional wisdom counts the cost to the pharmaceutical industry in a developing country but ignores the cost to consumers in such a country. In the case studied, quinolone antibiotics in India, domestic Indian firms may actually gain as consumers opt for other less expensive domestically produced drugs not covered by patent protection. The Indian government regulates the price of imported drugs, and the loss to the Indian consumer depends upon the letter of the price regulation by their government. According to the study the net loss (read transfer of money from India to countries/companies holding the patents) can range from $144 to $450 million dollars. The gain to the multinationals ranges from $19.6 to $53 million dollars. In other words the loss to the Indian consumer of these drugs is 7 to 9 times the gain of of the foreign companies.
Go on over to the Against Monopoly site for the full article.
Molly Note:
The whole subject of quinolone antibiotics is covered very extensively in the CPS and on the net in a less extensive treatment at the American Family Physician site. For the totally uninitiated the fluoroquinolones are derivatives of nalidixic acid- the old "drink more cranberry juice for your bladder infection" standby. This classification of antibiotics acts by inhibiting "topoisomerase" enzymes in bacteria. There are four classes of this enzyme, one of which, "type II", is the "DNA gyrase" that Molly was under the impression that all quinolone antibiotics acted on. In actual fact the various drugs may also act on the "type IV" topoisomerase, action which is associated with increased activity against gram positive bacteria. in human medicine the "second generation" quinolones such as ciprofloxacin have now passed beyond patent protection, and there are now 3rd and 4th generation quinolones that claim better pharmaceutical properties and efficacy. There are actually a whole slew of these drugs whose claims to patents depend upon minor tweaking of the molecular structure. For the average practitioner, both human and veterinary evaluating the various claims can be an exercise in "head banging". In the veterinary field the old standby is enrofloxacin (Baytril). Orbifloxacin (Orbax) nad marbofloxacin (Zeniquin) are also available (at an increased price of course, because they have patent protection). Claims by the companies holding the patent rights to the newer drugs are usually countered by propaganda from the original drug company. Like most veterinarians I depend upon academic reviewers for an unbiased comparison, but I have yet to come upon such, and so I stick with the old Baytril.
In the human field the situation is even more confused, and I pity the doctors trying to make a rational choice amongst the alternatives. Ciprofloxacin, by the way, is now available in Canada at least in generic formulation from both Apotex and Novo-Pharm. Some pharmacies make an automatic policy of generic substitution and some don't. Best to query both your doctor and your pharmacist directly.