Judge Finds Tobacco Firms Deceived Consumers

The original article header for this Washington Post online article had a different title, specifically: Tobacco Firms Deceived Consumers, Judge Finds. Then, the Post pulled the link and put the article back up under a different title, namely: Big Tobacco Lied to Public, Judge Says.

I can only guess why the Washington Post did that. Maybe their editors got a call from some lawyer threatening a huge lawsuit or something; I mean, it's one thing to be caught lying to the public in general. But to be caught lying to one's own consumers, specifically? That would affect sales! And the press simply can't print a headline that would affect a company's sales, now can it?

Or maybe the Post simply found a shorter, less space-consuming headline. Who knows.

At any rate, I want you to think about the implications of the article for a few moments. Here's a bit of interesting information from said article:

A federal judge ruled yesterday that tobacco companies have violated civil racketeering laws, concluding that cigarette makers conspired for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product and ordering the companies to make landmark changes in the way cigarettes are marketed.

But U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said that under a 2005 appellate court ruling, she could not impose billions of dollars in penalties that had been sought by the Justice Department in its civil racketeering suit against the eight defendant tobacco companies.

So a judge can find that a company lied about its deadly product, but can't do anything to hold them accountable like imposing a hefty fine for deceit that led to the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of smokers over decades?

While the article states that the ruling "will cost the industry millions of dollars -- a fraction of the cost of sanctions the companies faced at the outset of the case," it goes on to lay out the fact tobacco companies willfully and deliberately lied to consumers and destroyed evidence. Why a more devastating fine cannot be imposed on companies that got their customers hooked on a highly addictive drug so they would keep buying a product that would eventually kill them with cancer and respiratory diseases--and engaged in a massive conspiracy not only to cover it up but to continue the cycle by targeting younger "replacement" consumers in ad campaigns--is beyond my comprehension.

Tobacco companies have, through deceit and willful practices, sold a product that slowly kills its customers. They should be punished by sending their executives to prison that knew the truth and still engaged in those practices. They should be fined into bankruptcy and shut down. But they won't be, because that would rob an increasingly corrupt government of hundreds of millions of future bribery dollars paid out by tobacco lobbyists.

Case in point, current U.S. House Majority Leader John Boehner passing out blank checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of the House of Representatives, trying to bribe his fellow members into supporting pro-tobacco legislation.

In 1995, Boehner handed out campaign checks from the tobacco industry to members on the House floor at a time when lawmakers were considering eliminating a tobacco subsidy.

Why Boehner is even still in Congress much less the House Majority Leader is a question that should be answered with something along the lines of, "damned if I know, let's vote the bum out!" by his constituents. Whether or not that happens is up to the election-rigging J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and candidate for Ohio governor even though he himself has committed numerous criminal acts violating voting laws.

As we inch closer to the November elections in Ohio, it is imperative that voters turn out in enough numbers to oust the GOP from power. Newspapers report the growing anger at the Republican Party by Ohio voters, and by voters across the nation. They're sick and tired of the rampant, unchecked corruption and criminal wrong-doing by a GOP-dominated government that has stripped away civil liberties and padded the pockets of the already very wealthy--all at the expense of the public.

Ohio voters must turn out in droves to vote out Boehner, Senator Mike "I never saw a doctored 9/11 image I couldn't exploit" DeWine, and the majority of the state's Congressional GOPers. Most importantly, they must turn out in enough numbers to vote out the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature and elect Ted Strickland governor.

The future of our state, and our nation, hinges on taking back power from those who abuse it to further their own ends.

EDIT: In case you require further proof of those abuses of power, look no further than here. A dictatorship trying to justify and make legal blatant lawbreaking by a sitting occupant of the Oval Office. If this were Clinton doing it, the GOP would be all over his ass screaming for his head. But it's George W. Bush using the NSA to spy on Americans without warrants, so to them it's okay. This is the reason ALito and Roberts were appointed to the Supreme Court, folks.

NOTE: You may have noticed there is no longer a feature on this blog for leaving direct comments. That's because I have a discussion forum for you to make use of. If you'd like to make a comment, please feel free to sign up for my forum. It's the first link in the right-hand link column. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to reading what you have to say.

More B.S. From Israel

I've remained largely silent on the whole Israeli invasion of Lebanon, because quite frankly what can be said about the situation that won't be taken by some readers (falsely) as anti-Semitism? And what could be said that really hasn't been said already a million times before?

But a news article from Reuters today had me thinking that letting this go without comment would be against my personal sense of decency.

Okay, so Israel is demanding it will halt its pull-out from Lebanon unless the Lebanese military steps in to bolster the cease-fire. Except, and as Israel's government well knows, Lebanon's military has been pretty badly pounded and is unable to deploy. So what we have here is a demand by Israel's government that it knows cannot be met, just so it has an excuse to keep its forces in Lebanon.

Jews suffered a great deal in the last century, but they're not the only ones to have someone try to wipe them off the face of the planet as the ongoing genocide in Darfur and the Congo and other parts of Africa can attest. And frankly, sooner or later the Holocaust stops being a valid excuse for unprovoked aggression against neighbors in the region, and enforcing a system of apartheid against the Palestinians.

Don't get me wrong; it's one thing to defend yourself from people trying to kill you. But you don't accomplish that by killing innocent women and children. Hezbollah may have kidnapped a couple of soldiers, hoping they could manage a prisoner swap. But that does not excuse waging war on the whole of Lebanon, reducing its neighborhoods to rubble and murdering women and children while preventing any and every means of escape or aid from happening.

Now before anyone starts thinking about calling me a Jew-hater, I want you to think about the dangers of nationalist thinking, the kind that sees any and all dissent as unpatriotic, treasonous, or an attack on the entire people or nation. Germany went through that phase in its history, and look what happened. Israelis need to realize that their government and the minority of extremists to which it caters have turned into the very thing that tried to wipe out all Jews more than sixty years ago. Nationalist thinking prevents critical self-analysis, and forces rational minds out of the discussion--indeed, it ends all discussion.

The fact of the matter is the only way to get at Hezbollah and organizations like it is to get at the causes that allow terrorism to flourish. Go back to the 1967 borders, dismantle the illegal settlements in the occupied territories, make peace with the neighbors. Israel might be surprised at how the terrorist groups attacking its civilians lose influence and power.